Bradlee Dean Claims Obama Is Corrupt, Offers No Evidence Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bradlee Dean is a very petty, narrow-minded man -- odd since he also proclaims himself to be an ordained minister (not to mention a heavy metal drummer").
With today being Veterans Day I thought it appropriate to tell you that most recently I had a radio station manager approach me because I was calling out Obama's corruption on the air. He admitted that he knows President Obama is "un-American, reckless, ignorant and even corrupt." And, of course, I agreed with him.
But then he went on to say, "He is still the president of the United States, and we need to honor him and his office as such."
I said, "Honor him as such? You've got to be out of your mind to think that I am going to honor any individual in any office that steps on the sacrifice of our veterans who ratified the Constitution of the United States with their blood." (Which, by the way, is the same Constitution those in office swear to uphold.)
When we tolerate corruption in government, then we dishonor the price veterans paid! I am in fact honoring the office of the president when I point out that which corrupts the office he holds. I will never honor any man or woman in office who disrespects the sacrifice of those who put him or her there. Never. And neither will anyone who is a true American patriot.
Dean offers no evidence to back up his claim that Obama is "un-American, reckless, ignorant and even corrupt."
Dean, if you'll recall, is the latest legal toy of sue-happy defamer Larry Klayman, who is squashing journalistic freedom on Dean's behalf by suing MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and the Minnesota Independent website over reporting Dean's anti-gay remarks.
MRC's Graham Declares Catholic Abuse Scandal Off Limits, Attacks Critic Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham uses a Nov. 10 NewsBusters post to concede that there has been a problem with sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church -- but followed that up by attacking the leader of a group that has criticized the abuse.
What set Graham off was a writer at CNN's website, Dan Gilgoff, who likened the sexual abuse scandal involving a former Penn State football coach to problems within the Catholic Church. Complaining that Gilgoff didn't quote anyone defending the church, Graham offered himself up as a spouter of pro-Catholic talking points:
Memo to Dan Gilgoff: You may call me and other Catholics at (703)683-9733 for comment when officials won't talk. But you didn't want anyone to defend the church, or you might have made another phone call. I would tell you the Catholic priest scandal was much worse than a football coach scandal, because a football coach doesn't make solemn vows to God to shepherd souls with the deepest love and integrity. But to drag the church through the mud now is a gratuitous cheap shot.
So the church abuse scandal was horrible, but we're not allowed to talk about it anymore because it's old news? Odd for someone who works for an organization that has no problem bringing up decades-old political scandals, like Chappaquiddick or Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, at the drop of a hat.
Graham then went on a blame-the-victim tear, attacking Gilgoff as a "lazy anti-Catholic reporter" for quoting David Clohessy, head of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. That's reductio ad absurdum -- quoting a critic of the Catholic Church does not make one "anti-Catholic."
Graham turned this into an personal attack on Clohessy and "his own priest coverups within his own family," portraying Clohessy as a hypocrite by claiming that Clohessy "covered up for his own brother, Father Kevin Clohessy," who had been suspected of abuse.
In fact, Clohessy did not "cover up" for his brother; he merely gave his brother a heads-up when he learned that the allegations were about to go public. Clohessy had not previously discussed his brother's situation publicly because no public allegation had been made against him. Clohessy's situation was also much more complicated than Graham tells it. From a 2002 New York Times article on Clohessy:
''From early on,'' David says, ''the raging debate within me was: he's my brother; he's an abuser. Do I treat him like my brother? Do I treat him like an abuser?'' Those conflicting loyalties never settled into any easy balance.
On one hand, he wanted to help Kevin, to tend to him. Like him, Kevin had once been vulnerable, and Kevin had also been scarred, maybe even more so, for all David knew. ''I knew the power a priest would have had over him -- a kid who single-mindedly wanted to be a priest from the time he was 7 or 8,'' David says, remembering that all during Kevin's childhood, ''he never traded those vestments for a toy gun.''
He understood that Kevin's actions might well be a manifestation -- a tortured echo -- of what had happened to him. By some estimates, perhaps half of adults who sexually abuse children were themselves molested, a figure that David says he believes is on the low end. In addition, Kevin's specific transgression, at least as Cox was informed of it and the diocese defined it, hovered at a murky intersection between a possibly repressed homosexuality, which was being channeled inappropriately, and outright molestation.
But to David, that was a distinction without a difference. ''My position,'' David says, ''is that clergy involved in sexual activity with parishioners is inherently abusive,'' because the relationship is one of intimate trust and unequal power. And what if there had been other young men, or boys, as the complaints to Cox suggested? What if Kevin was a present and future danger to the children who crossed his path? David says he felt he could not stay entirely quiet and had to confront Kevin, for those reasons and for others that, he admits, were selfish. ''It would have eaten away at me,'' David says. ''It would have gnawed and gnawed.'' In his countless hours of psychotherapy, David had come to believe that nothing could be as damaging as running away from the truth, and he did not want to run anymore.
It was even more complicated than that. David was in the process of trying to rebuild his relationships with his parents and siblings, from whom he had drifted further and further since his lawsuit. They wondered about his involvement with SNAP and worried about its implications for Kevin. For his part, David wished they were better able to grasp his pain and passion, a desire expressed by one of his recurring nightmares, which also hinted at how haunted he still was by the feeling that no one had been able to protect him in the first place. ''It was so transparent it was almost laughable,'' David says. ''I was walking through my family's old house, and my mom was ironing while my dad was watching TV or something. And Whiteley was walking right behind me. He had a big, long kitchen knife, and he was stabbing me. And each time it would hurt, but I wasn't saying anything, and he wasn't saying anything, and there was no blood, so no one would hear or see.''
David knew there would be less tension between him and his parents if he persuaded Kevin to divulge the details of his situation, and so he tried, over many months and many long phone conversations. ''I want to have a relationship with our parents and the rest of the family,'' he recalls telling Kevin, ''but here's my quandary: I can't do that and pretend I don't know what you've done. I can't sit across from you at Thanksgiving dinner and laugh and joke and pretend everything's hunky-dory.'' David says that Kevin begged for some time, and then for more time, while David kept pestering him.
Apparently, in Kevin's eyes, David was something of a zealot. Msgr. Mike Flanagan, a priest in the diocese who was friendly with Kevin, says that Kevin could not understand why David ''kept beating it into the ground, the whole thing. And his parents wanted to get over it.''
Graham quoted NewsBusters writer Dave Pierre for his attack on Clohessy. As we've noted, Pierre exhibits the same confusion that Graham does, admitting that abuse by Catholic priests was bad but also attacking Clohessy and SNAP for discussing it. Pierre has also declared that the media are no longer allowed to talk about the scandal, at least not without equivocating it by mentioning the "massive child abuse" in public schools or "by Orthodox rabbis in New York City."
Graham concluded by complaining that "Clohessy plainly told Time magazine their vision at SNAP is to get Pope Benedict in handcuffs and have him thrown in jail like an international war criminal." But isn't that roughly the MRC's vision, except for President Obama instead of the pope?
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Robert Ringer Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
Che Obama, at the G-20 in France, saying, with a straight face: "I have to tell you, the least of my concerns at the moment is the politics of a year from now." Sure, Barry.
[...]
From Greece and Portugal to California and Wisconsin, from Italy and Spain to Illinois and New York, the socialist model is collapsing under its own weight. Economic and demographic forces are shining a spotlight on the reality that the combination of ever-bigger government financed by an ever-smaller tax base is doomed to failure.
Nevertheless, Obama and his class-warfare pals can win. The more obvious their failure becomes, the more angry and panicked the wealth redistributors, especially in Washington, D.C., will be. Their bull slinging is easy enough to laugh off, but if it doesn't work – if it becomes clear that the Democrats are going down to defeat in 2012 – look for them to go to their weapon of last resort and use brute force to "temporarily" suspend elections.
Just a few days ago, Obama and the White House went out of its way to issue a special proclamation for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim “festival of sacrifice.”
In an official White House statement, the president and first lady gushed about Eid and congratulated Muslims involved in the Hajj “pilgrimage.”
All of that is well and good, but what struck me about this special message was the reminder that this very same president deliberately ignored Easter this year, the most holy of Christian holidays, by snubbing Christians here and around the world.
In April there was disbelief that the White House issued no proclamation about Easter, let alone a personal statement by the president and his wife. Newsmax noted:
"By comparison, the White House has released statements recognizing the observance of major Muslim holidays and released statements in 2010 on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha." On top of neglecting Easter, the president "also failed to release a statement marking Good Friday." The White House did, however, "release an eight-paragraph statement heralding Earth Day," which fell on Good Friday.”
Most of us recognized a problem with a man whose spiritual leader and father figure ran a church where pleading to God to “damn” America was standard, but it now seems Obama’s contempt for this nation is personal and isn’t even something he bothers to mask.
Bruce is merely indulging in some factually deficient Obama-hate. Newsmax "news" article by L.D. Breen she cites in claiming that "the White House issued no proclamation about Easter, let alone a personal statement by the president and his wife" ignores the fact that, as Media Matters documented, Obama held an Easter prayer breakfast for which video and a transcript are available. Also, no president has issued an Easter proclamation since at least 1980.
Bruce then conflates this fraudulent comparison into an attack on Obama's purported "a personal contempt for the Christian foundation of this country," as further exmplified by "the announcement of a “Christmas Tree Tax” by Obama’s Department of Agriculture." She went on to sneer: "Oh sure, the Fed is saying it was a marketing fee for the Christmas tree 'industry,' to supposedly improve the image of the apparently much hated and dreaded tree. The fact is it was a tax meant to fund a board appointed by a federal agency targeting one religion and one religion only — Christianity."
Bruce doesn't mention that Christmas tree growers support the fee, and that the Department of Agriculture collects similar assessments on numerous other agricultural commodites to promote those products.
But Bruce didn't care about the facts, as she was on a rant:
There is a precedent for this — in the Muslim world it’s called the “Jizya” — a tax levied on non-Muslim citizens in the Islamic world, allowing them to practice their religion while being "protected" by the Muslim state.
In our case, it seems more like an atheistic federal government looking for tribute by those pesky Christians who dare to think there is a higher authority than the permanent political class.
While I believe our main problem is the fact that our president is simply narcissistic with a chip on his shoulder, I also believe his narcissism keeps him from being able to embrace faith of any sort, contributing to the mess of a president that he is. You see, when everything revolves around you or is about you, that leaves no room for anything higher and beyond yourself.
Obama’s pandering to Muslims is just that — pandering, while his rather apparent hostility toward Christianity, Israel, and Jews is a natural reaction for anyone who has contempt for the United States in general.
Bruce clearly hates Obama too much to care about the truth.
WND Columnists Defend Cain By Denigrating His Victims Topic: WorldNetDaily
They've finally brought forth a female face with a name and a narrative to nail Herman Cain. OK, I admit it was attorney Gloria Allred who did the dredging, but even if it's the sleaziest member of the team who scores a touchdown, it still counts for six points. I still say Solyndra was better at making solar panels than Cain's accusers are at making sex scandals. It looks very bad for Herman, even though my wife says, "There's something weird about that woman!"
[...]
Cain's sex crimes, even as alleged, were nowhere near as egregious as Bill Clinton's. Did Clinton stop when she said "Stop!"? Did he drive her back to the hotel when she asked? That doesn't excuse Herman Cain if he's guilty. But it makes me feel less freaky standing by Herman Cain. And none of Clinton's victims needed Gloria Allred. Some sculptors work in clay. Some work in stone. Allred works in sleaze.
There are 50 states in this country. What are the odds that the first woman to come forward with tawdry details of a distasteful encounter with presidential candidate Herman Cane [sic] lives in the state that elevated Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate? I'm just asking.
There are some 1,300 municipalities in the state of Illinois, so what are the odds that Sharon Bialek lived in the same one as David Axelrod, the mastermind behind Obama's rise to power. I'm just asking.
There are 131,704,730 housing units in the United States, so what are the odds that Bialek lived in the same apartment building as Axelrod? I'm just asking.What are the odds, that a woman like Sharon Bialek, who has twice filed for bankruptcy, had a child out of wedlock, can't hold a job for very long, was fired from the National Restaurant Association, hasn't been employed for two years and lives with an unemployed boyfriend was desperate for money? I'm just asking.
Mr. Cain was known to be a fair and generous CEO. Bialek may well have asked him for help and, given her history, didn't receive any. What are the odds that she was holding a grudge? I'm just asking.
Given the number of employees Mr. Cain has had over the years, what are the odds that he would remember her? I'm just asking.
CNS Still Shilling for Oil Industry Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedetailedhow CNSNews.com has been using its "news" section to shill for the oil and gas industry, presumably a result of the more than $400,000 the Media Research Center has received from ExxonMobil since 1998. That shilling continues in a pair of CNS articles this week.
In a Nov. 4 article on "anti-oil activists" who planned a protest of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, Penny Starr makes sure to point out that "TransCanada claims, however, that 'billions of gallons of oil are safely transported by pipeline' and that protecting the environment is a priority."
A Nov. 7 article by Starr details a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute to make the point that "Less than three percent of shares in 173 publicly-traded, U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies are owned by corporate management, contrary to the perception that a very small number of wealthy people are the major beneficiaries." That dovetails with previous work Starr has done to parrot API talking points about oil company ownership.Unlike with her Nov. 4 article, Starr made no effort to include an alternative view.
A Nov. 9 article by Susan Jones claims that "Virginia's two U.S. senators, both Democrats, and the commonwealth's Republican governor are pressing the Obama administration to reconsider its decision to omit Virginia from its 5-year offshore drilling plan."
It seems that ExxonMobil is continuing to get a decent return on its MRC money.
WND's Corsi turns Revenge Into An Article Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi is a petty act of revenge, his attempt to get back at a reporter for refusing to share information with him.
Here's Corsi's complaint against Sally Jacobs, a Boston Globe reporter who wrote a book about Barack Obama's father earlier this year:
In writing her biography of Barack Obama's father, Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs had access to what appears to be the father's unredacted Immigration and Naturalization Service file. The documents cover the time Barack Obama Sr. arrived in Honolulu in 1959 until he was forced to leave the United States in 1964.
However, the redacted file the Department of Homeland Security provided in an Freedom of Information Act request to independent reporter Heather Smathers whited-out key facts about the president's birth narrative, judging from the one unredacted page WND has obtained.
Get the inside details on what could be the most serious constitutional crisis in the nation's history in "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President."
Jacobs, in a telephone interview with WND, said she got a "less redacted" file than Smathers appears to have received.
Jacobs refused to share with WND the less-redacted file or to post it on the Internet as Smathers has done with her file.
"Why would I do that?" Jacobs asked.
WND suggested it would be in the public interest to have available for study the additional information her less-redacted file might contain.
Jacobs suggested WND needed to make that request in a FOIA to DHS.
"I'm sure they will give you what they gave me," she said.
WND's own FOIA request is in process.
That's right -- Corsi is bitching because Jacobs won't share something with him that he was too lazy to file an FOIA request and get his own copy of.
Corsi then bizarrely claims: "Jacob's refusal to make the file public is reminiscent of Sen. John Kerry's decision in 2005 to sign Standard Form 180, releasing his Navy Records only to the Boston Globe, known to be a newspaper favorable to Kerry, not to the U.S. public at large."
Uh, no, it doesn't. Corsi offers no evidence that the information on Obama Sr. that Jacobs obtained via FOIA was released only to her -- after all, he apparently never bothered to make the same FOIA request that Jacobs di.
Corsiis simply trying to cut corners by demanding that Jacobs give him her copy of the FOIA documents, and Jacobs merely called out his laziness. The fact that Corsi is a lousy reporter is not Jacobs' fault.
Corsi's not engaging in journalism -- he's engaging in revenge.
NEW ARTICLE: The Herman Cain Defense Center Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center goes all in to defend Cain against sexual harassment allegations. Is MRC chief Brent Bozell simply performing a favor for his "personal friend"? Read more >>
WND Jumps Into Fetid Swamp of Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed how WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi and D.J. Dolce have been taking various stabs at mucking around in one of the sleaziest corners of Obama derangement: allegations that Barack Obama was involved in gay affairs and may have killed some of the men he was purportedly involved with.
This fetid sleaze is proving too irresitible to resist -- more WNDers are embracing it.
Jack Cashill jumps in with both feet in his Nov. 9 WND column, proclaiming that Larry Sinclair -- the other central figure in this dollop of sleaze, whom WND enthusiastically promoted until it was clear he couldn't be trusted -- made his case "in exquisite and oddly believable detail" during a 2008 press conference.
It says much about Cashill that he finds Sinclair to be "believable," since nobody who actually attended that press conference came away with that conclusion. As the Huffington Post detailed, Sinclair has a long criminal record (and was arrested after the press conference on an outstanding warrant for theft and forgery charges), and the lawyer accompanying him wore a kilt and had a suspended law license.
That's the sort of thing that makes you a credible person in Cashill's world.
Cashill reached back to one of his earlier (unproven) conspiracies, that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Obama's book "Dreams From My Father":
Although Obama spent 13 years on the mainland as a single man, on only one occasion in "Dreams" does Obama make any reference to his love life.
In a brief recounting, he tells his half-sister Auma that in addition to a white woman he had loved and lost, "There are several black ladies out there who've broken my heart just as good."
The problem is that Obama shares with the reader not a word about any of the black ladies, and not one of them has come forward on her own.
The white woman in question presents a different set of problems. In terms of height, hair color, eye color, parentage, and highly specific place of origin – namely a large country estate with a lake in the middle – she is a dead ringer for Bill Ayers's lost love, the late Weatherwoman, Diana Oughton.
One can imagine the conversations between Obama and his muse. "Hey, bro, we got 457 pages on the bachelor king of Chicago, and you don't get so much as kissed?"
"Make something up, Bill. Just be sure it's by a girl."
Um, no, we'd rather not imagine the conversations going on inside Jack Cashill's head.
Cashill isn't the only WND columnist to reference such sleaze. Erik Rush -- no stranger to Obama derangment; hebelieves that Obama's father is Malcolm X -- does so in his Nov. 9 column, in the service of defending Herman Cain against sexual harassment allegations: "Allegations of homosexual trysts and hard drug use on the part of Barack Obama – among many, many other issues – were ignored by the press during the 2008 campaign."
This, by the way, comes amidst Rush's grumbling that "the narrative of the left" about Cain is an "archetypal depiction of the 'sex-crazed black buck' on the prowl for white women" that is "right out of a Klan rally." Rush is clearly devoid of a sense of irony.
Bozell Thanks A (Very Rich) Old Friend (Who Has Given Big To The MRC) Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell's Nov. 9 column is dedicated to his "old friend" T. Boone Pickens, with whom Bozell spent time in his skybox at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, to which Pickens has given hundreds of millions of dollars. Bozell touts Pickens other acts of philanthropy as well, mainly as a way to bash critics of the rich: "Think about this charity, you Occupied Do-Nothings, the next time you bash the 1 percent that have been so instrumental in helping you in more ways than you'll ever know - or appreciate."
Bozell curiously doesn't mention, though, how much of Pickens' largesse has made its way to the organization he runs, the Media Research Center.
And he has donated a lot. Most notably, as detailed in the MRC's 2007 annual report, Pickens gave a $1.5 million challenge grant to the MRC for the creation of its Business & Media Institute. As a result of that donation, MRC vice president Dan Gainor -- last seen obsessing over the philanthropy of George Soros -- holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow.
You'd think that Bozell, who loves to pass judgment on the journalistic sins of others, would want to fully disclose his financial interests in what he writes about.Then again, Bozell has been loath to disclose that he's a personal friend of Herman Cain, the man the MRC has been directed to defend to the point of sliming Cain's sexual harassment victims.
Farah Doesn't Mention WND's Business Interest in Publisher's Sale Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah laments the purchase of Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson by publishing giant HarperColllins, claiming that the result will be "more pseudo-Christian, pop theology like "The Purpose-Driven Life" and less of the prophetic, hard truth the world has been dependent upon genuine Christians to produce." Farah also self-aggrandingly touts "independent efforts like my own with WND and WND Books."
Farah failed to mention, however, his personal and business stake in this story: Thomas Nelson was WND's original partner in the WND books venture in 2002.
Farah goes on to lament that "too many Christian businessmen are more interested in making a fast buck than in spreading the good news." So what's motivating WND to do things like defend an online stalker? It certainly doesn't involved "spreading the good news"; the stalker's victim would likely beg to differ.
NewsBusters' 'Ultra' Double Standard Topic: NewsBusters
In a Nov. 6 NewsBusters post, Brad Wilmouth complained that MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe "labeled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's supporters as 'ultraconservative.'"
Wilmouth might have had a point if, 21 minutes earlier, Tim Graham hadn't written a NewsBusters post in which he described the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne as "ultraliberal."
Aaron Klein Is Still A Coward Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein puts on a show of faux bravery in a Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily article, in which he "accused seasoned radical activists and organizations of being behind the Occupy Wall Street protests and has invited those very activists, including billionaire George Soros himself, on his program to explain their ties to the anti-capitalist movement."
This is nothing but a self-aggrandizing stunt designed to promote his new guilt-by-association book.
Of course, Klein is still afraid of me -- I remain prohibited from doing something so innocuous as following his Twitter account on the ConWebList. If Klein was really a man, he would invite me on his radio show, where we could discuss his history of lies, guilt-by-association smears, and shady anonymous sources.
But he hasn't. It must've gotten lost in the mail or something.
Noel Sheppard, Lazy and Incompetent Researcher Topic: NewsBusters
We've previously noted that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, as part of his barrage of sycophancy in defending Herman Cain, claimed that, according to his headline, "MSNBC Runs More Stories on Cain 'Scandal' Than it Did Obama's Ties to Ayers, Rezko and Wright Combined."
But looking more closely at Sheppard's Nov. 7 post in which he announced that claim, it looks even more fishy. He writes:
At press time, the Obama-loving outlet had aired at least 30 segments involving the now growing Cain scandal since it broke late last Sunday.
Yet according to LexisNexis, in the over 20 months between the time Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007 to Election Day 2008, MSNBC offered viewers seventeen stories concerning Ayers, nine involving Wright, and none dealing with Rezko.
At no point did Sheppard describe how he searched in Nexis for these results. A real researcher would have disclosed his search parameters.
And then there's this note at the end of his post:
Readers are advised that MSNBC doesn't transcribe all of its programs.
That's right -- Sheppard has been portraying his search results as encompassing all of MSNBC when he concedes that it covers only what's in Nexis, and he apparently doesn't even know exactly what MSNBC shows are or are not in Nexis.
Sheppard goes on to call MSNBC a "so-called news network." Does that mean we can call Sheppard a "so-called media critic"? And the Media Research Center a "so-called media watchdog group"?
Chuck Norris' Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily column largely ignores reality in trying to ramp up fearmongering about how vaccines are linked to autism.
Norris concedes that Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine, which he called "the nation's bastion of authoritative health and medicine advice," have declared that there's no link between vaccines and autism. But he responds by citing ... PRNewswire. Yes, he's citing press releases to respond to authoritative medical research.
This is just the latest anti-vaccine activism by WND, which has been of late raging against Gardasil.
UPDATE: An actual scientist examines Norris' fearmongering in detail, and finds it full of crap.