Media Matters details an ad sent by a gun and ammo seller on WorldNetDaily's mailing list which portrays President Obama as just like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin (well, actually, Forrest Whitaker playing Idi Amin) in wanting to impose gun control.
Sheppard Likens EPA Chief to Hitler, Khomeini Topic: NewsBusters
In a June 7 NewsBusters post, Sheppard got all bent out of shape when CNN's Piers Morgan asked if the tea party was a "similar mob to Mussolini’s and Hitler’s in the modern democratic era." But Sheppard has no problemdoing the exact same thing when it suits his right-wing agenda.
In a fawning interview of fellow global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe ("If Margaritas were the official drink in Cancun, what would you and I be drinking if we were in Durban right now?"), as transcribed in a Nov. 30 NewsBusters post, Sheppard asked him whether Politico naming EPA chief Lisa Jackson as "Energy Policy Maker of the Year"was "kind of like Time picking Hitler or Khomeini as Man of the Year - whoever had the most impact whether for good or ill?"
Only Sheppard, it seems, is allowed to go Godwin. Do as he says, not as he does -- after all, he contradicts himself on a depressingly regular basis.
Later in the interview, Sheppard asserted that Jackson is "trying to set policy without oversight by the legislature" based on the "anthropogenic global warming myth." In fact, as Media Matters points out, the EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases under the bipartisan Clean Air Act.
We thought Sheppard would run out of ways to embarrass himself in public, but he keeps proving us wrong.
Newsmax's Kessler Likens Obama to Soviet Leader Topic: Newsmax
We've detailed how Newsmax decried how President Obama will deploy "a $750 million wrecking ball to demolish the Republican opponent," even as Newsmax will deploy its own multimillion-dollar, Scaife-funded wrecking ball to demolish Obama.
Another swing of that wrecking ball came in Ronald Kessler's Nov. 28 column likening Obama to leaders in Soviet Russia:
“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you,” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared when addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow in 1956.
This was an assertion of the Marxist contention that capitalism as a system would collapse and be replaced by socialism. By this philosophy, wealthy people exploit the working class, and the capitalist system must be replaced by a socialist government that would redistribute the wealth.
If that philosophy sounds familiar, it’s the approach taken by President Barack Obama and the Occupy Wall Street movement he has embraced. At every turn, Obama demonizes those who have achieved financial success, and he has made hatred of the wealthy the key to his re-election campaign.
[...]
Obama rejects this underlying premise of the capitalist system that is a key to this country’s success. At the same time, he disses Americans for being “a little bit lazy” over pursuing foreign investment and for having “lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.”
His comment about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling” to their faith, along with their guns, and their “antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” suggests just how much disdain he has for a large segment of Americans.
[...]
Khrushchev was proven wrong when he said the Soviet Union will bury America. Obama will be proven wrong about this country and what it stands for when he is defeated in 2012.
For good measure, Kessler flogs the dead horse of Jeremiah Wright yet again:
Like his self-described mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama appears to despise America. On the Sunday following 9/11, Wright characterized the terrorist attacks as a consequence of violent American policies. Wright said America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks.
“We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty,” Wright has said. “God d— America!”
Ninety-nine percent of Americans would walk out if they heard a sermon like that. Instead, Obama listened to such hate speech for 20 years and said he considered Wright a sounding board who was like an uncle to him.
Kessler will be rewriting versions of this anti-Obama tirade again and again until the election.
MRC's Graham Attacks NPR for Reporting News Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how the Media Research Center's Tim Graham has been one of the leading right-wing voice in trying to bury the phone-hacking scandal at British newspapers owned by News Corp. Even now -- with the reprehensible behavior of British journalists in the employ of Rupert Murdoch copious detailed and beyond doubt, Graham still wants to bury it.
Graham issued a Nov. 29 tweet aimed at NPR media corespondent David Folkenflik, who has apparently been committing the offense of reporting on the scandal:
Graham seems to have forgotten that Soros is an American citizen.
Folkenflik responded by setting Graham straight on basic news principles:
Given that Graham likes his attacks on Democratic presidents laundered through notoriously unreliable British newspapers, bashing Folkenflik for reporting on British newspapers is a strange attack for him to make.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily vs. Gardasil Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND finds another vaccine to fearmonger about, this time one that protects against cervical cancer. But to do so, it must rely on fringe medical groups and a man once described as "Austria’s most notorious abortionist." Read more >>
Oil-Funded MRC Defends Oil Industry Again Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how funding from the oil and gas industry appears to be fueling favorable coverage of the industry at the Media Research Center.
That fossil-fueled bias pops up once again in a Nov. 29 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Iris Somberg, in which she complains that the villain in the new Muppets movie is an oilman:
Muppet fans around the world were excited to see their childhood friends reunite; only to find out it was to save their studio from a rich oil executive. Liberal Hollywood loves an evil oil company - better yet, make it a successful business man that runs an oil company. The movie industry has repeatedly bashed businessmen and gone after gas and oil.
Tex Richman, a wealthy man that plans to demolish the Muppet studio after the National Geological Survey finds oil directly beneath it, has his plans foiled by three Muppet fans. They "discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets' former stomping grounds," as described by "The Muppets" website.
Muppet fans around the world were excited to see their childhood friends reunite; only to find out it was to save their studio from a rich oil executive. Liberal Hollywood loves an evil oil company - better yet, make it a successful business man that runs an oil company. The movie industry has repeatedly bashed businessmen and gone after gas and oil.
Throughout the movie, Richman cackles maniacally and shows just how heartless he really is by denying Kermit's personal plea to give back the studio. He even tells the Muppets its "time to give up your dream," which is one of the worst things anyone can say to a Muppet (or a Hollywood liberal).
Yes, it's a Muppet movie - farcical and silly. But how sadly predictable that the villain is the perennial bogeyman of liberal environmentalists, and how sadly telling that the writers politicized a children's movie. Again.
Somberg doesn't mention her employer's not-insignificant funding from oil interests.
WND's Klein Baselessly Implicates Obama Nominee In Medicare Fraud, Ignores GOP Gov's Role Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein keeps up his long series of dubious hit pieces on the Obama administration in a Nov. 29 article, in which he attacks Marilyn Tavenner, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for her longtime employment at the hospital conglomerate HCA:
Tavenner is a 31-year veteran of HCA. She began with the company in 1981 as a nursing supervisor at Johnston-Willis Hospital in Richmond, Va. After serving in a number of supervisory positions, she became CEO of the hospital in 1993.
In 1996, Tavenner became president of HCA's Richmond Division and in 2001 was appointed the company's Central Atlantic Division president.
In 2004, Tavenner was promoted to group president for HCA's Outpatient Services.
In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies. The company reportedly admitted to overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable; striking illegal deals with home care agencies; and filing false data about the use of hospital space.
HCA also reportedly admitted to defrauding Medicare by billing the agency and other health programs using exaggerated diagnoses and by filing false cost reports.
HCA agreed in 2002 to pay the U.S. government $631 million, plus interest, and pay $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims.
First, Klein offers no evidence whatsoever that Tavenner was ever implicated in any of those HCA scandals.
Second, Klein makes no mention of who was the CEO of HCA at the time those settlements over Medicare fraud were reached -- Rick Scott, currently the Republican governor of Florida.
A search of the WND database reveals that WND has never reported on Scott's links to Medicare fraud. But severalarticles have highlighted Scott's opposition to health care reform.
Noel Sheppard Doesn't Know What Crowdsourcing Is (And Neither Does Brent Bozell) Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard uses a Nov. 28 NewsBusters post to howl that Washington Post is "looking for dirt on the current Republican presidential frontrunner," New Gingrich. How? By tweeting that he is seeking "outlandish/incorrect predictions and quotes from Newt Gingrich's past."
Um, Noel? That's called crowdsourcing. And checking the veracity of statements Gingrich has made in the past isn't "dirt" -- it's fact-checking.
Sheppard went on to howl, "What would one expect from a newspaper that only five months ago called for readers to sift through former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's email messages?" That's crowdsourcing too, Noel. If you had a large cache of documents you wanted to sort through quickly -- like the 24,000 Palin emails -- you would do the same thing.
But because the Media Research Center is so paranoid and unaware of legitimate newsgathering methods, Sheppard's stupid meme was picked up by his boss, Brent Bozell, who went on Fox News to rant about it and demand that Blake be fired:
This is what we've been saying for a year. The Obama team can't run on its message. The only thing they can run on is character assassination. Fine, that's politics. That's something that the Obama team might do. But for the media to be complicity in this, for the media to be participatory. And now you've got this person just putting it out on the Internet in open, help me crucify Newt Gingrich, we want him next. You feel like they got fangs or something and blood coming down the sides of their mouth.
If Bozell is really serious about the media not getting involved in politics, he should tell the person who runs his own "news" organization, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNews.com, to stick to reporting the news and stop his character assassination of President Obama and his wife.
WND's Massie Attacks Colin Powell Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie's Nov. 28 WorldNetDaily column is dedicated to bashing Colin Powell for alleging going from "a conservative who saw the world as true conservatives see it" to an "Obama supporter and apologist." Massie ranted about one Powell interview:
Powell's praise for Obama's mythical economic recovery also failed to mention that, instead of focusing on jobs, he was focused on destabilizing the Middle East and squandering money on green technology companies that went bankrupt literally weeks after being given billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. He also failed to mention that Obama's was a manic pursuant to seize control of one-sixth of the economy, when the federal government has been unable to run the U.S. Postal Service competently and has mishandled Social Security to the brink of insolvency.
And even more deplorable, his reference to Obama not being "Superman" was code-speak to blacks who could later be told that told Obama hadn't been given enough time.
Massie then attacks Powell for not being as reactionary and close-minded as he is:
Where would Powell be today, and what are the chances that the black family in the White House today would, at best, be there as servants if Lincoln had decided to compromise and let the South and New Jersey have slaves? What would America be today if our Founding Fathers had worked a compromise on taxes and minerals with King George? Obama claims to be a Christian – where would Christianity and God's plan of salvation be if Jesus had decided to compromise on sin and the cross? What if Churchill had compromised with Hitler, telling him he could kill all the Jews he wanted if he didn't advance against England? What if Everett Dirksen had compromised on the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
In every instance above, the groups/persons leading the charge were called extreme right-wing and accused of being unwilling to compromise, but they held their ground and we are better off for it. Compromise has brought us nothing but a downward spiral of society. Compromise has brought us the homosexual agenda and abortion on demand. Compromise has brought to the very brink of destruction of our nation.
Maybe instead of fomenting racial and societal discord, Powell would be better served by remembering there is a reason the military has been inflexible in its training regimens. It's because the military understands that compromise is the surest way to disorder and defeat.
Powell worked his way through the military to become a general, secretary of state, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Massie writes a hate-filled column for a fringe website. Whose opinion is more trustworthy?
CNS Highlights One Paper's End To 'Ugly' Anonymous Comments -- But Not At CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
A Nov. 28 CNSNews.com blog post by CNS senior editor Susan Jones notes how one newspaper is requiring that comments be made through Facebook, thus minimizing anonymous comments, which the newspaper states has "encouraged a few readers to engage in some pretty ugly behavior."
Jones curiously didn't mention CNS' own comments policy, which allows for anonymous commenters and, needless to say, vile comments.
For example, here are some representative comments from readers of a Nov. 28 CNS article on the retirement of Rep. Barney Frank, the vast majority from anonymous commenters:
Damn...With Ted Kennedy dead and Barney retiring to write his pornographic memoirs...It seems to have left Mass-a-two-shits in a lurch...Oh what a dilemma?
While it is good to say goodbye to this pimp, make no mistake. The state that has sentenced the nation to the likes of John Kerry and Splash Kennedy for all these years will have an ample supply of moonbats taking aim at that seat.
Focus on fighting his AIDS infection, you mean.
Writing what? Homo porn? Bad checks?
Of all the well educated, urbane, Ivy League graduates in Massachusetts it is so hard to believe that this crude, slobbering homo is the best they have to fill a congressional seat.
I'm glad the queer is retiring. He should be in prison, not writing books.
Barney's Book Title "Barney's Frank in Boys Town".
Limp wrist excuses if you ask me. Barney Fagggggggie would never win an election given the redistricting included a conservative area. In any event Mr. Frank, when your signing your new claim to fame academia books and blabbing about how great you are, please pass out raincoats.
I think barney boy is a bottom bunk guy!
Apparently, CNS has no problem with such anonymous slurs residing on its website -- which makes it curious that it would highlight how another website has banned them.
WND Columnist Peddles Falsehoods About Brazilian Companies Topic: WorldNetDaily
Failed Alaskan senatorial candidate Joe Miller writes in a Nov. 28 WorldNetDaily column:
Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has accomplished great things for the economy ... of Brazil, that is. For some bizarre reason, Obama continues to do all he can to help out workers and businesses in South America's largest nation.
We all remember the U.S. Export-Import Bank's multi-billion dollar loan proposal to Petrobras – a large Brazilian oil firm – to aid in the development of Brazil's deep sea oil exploration.
In fact, Obama had nothing to do with the Petrobras loan. The loan process began before Obama was elected, and the Ex-Im bank was controlled by Bush appointees when the loan was approved.
Miller goes on to complain that the Air Force "has turned down the bid from American aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft to produce a light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft," instead going with "Brazilian aircraft company Embraer and its 'Super Tucano' airplane."Miller went on to complain, " It's odd that the Air Force would prefer U.S. pilots to fly in war zones in planes constructed in Brazil by Brazilian workers."
In fact, according to Aviation Week, the prime contractor on the project, and Embraer's partner, is an American company, Sierra Nevada Corp., and the plane will be built in Jacksonville, Fla.
MRC Tries to Smear Another Cain Accuser Topic: Media Research Center
When accusations of sexual harassment began to pile up against Republican presidential cqandidate Herman Cain, the Media Research Center was quick to defend Cain -- a "personal friend" of MRC chief Brent Bozell -- and smear his accusers.
Now, with a woman stepping forward to claim that she had an affair with Cain, the MRC smear job resumes.
In a Nov. 29 NewsBusters post, the MRC's Scott Whitlock makes a point of highlighting Ginger White's "questionable past" and "past legal problems, which include claims of stalking."
funny, we don't remember the MRC being concerned about Paula Jones' "questionable past."
Meanwhile, Whitlock's boss, Brent Bozell, provides more heavy-handed defense of Cain in his Nov. 29 column, in which he plays the Clinton Equivocation card:
Ginger White’s charges sound a lot like Gennifer Flowers in 1992 saying she has a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton. So many in the press pounce on Flowers as unequivocal evidence of the media’s sense of balance. After all, they will remind us, just look how we covered that scandal!
Yes, look. Because it’s a wonderful exercise in media disinformation. Political junkies remember that Flowers held a <ital>press conference<ital> carried live on CNN on Thursday afternoon, January 23, 1992. It had all the elements for snappy news. She played audio tapes of phone conversations with Clinton. Despite all this, the first network mention was a brief mention by NBC’s Lisa Myers – more than 24 hours later. Other than that, the three broadcast network morning and evening newscasts waited to breathe the name “Flowers” for four days.
And then they dismissed the scandal as a non-scandal.
Bozell didn't mention whether he scrutinized Flowers' past the way his organization is scrutinizing White's. Probably because he didn't.
Bozell also howled: "But when Juanita Broaddick accused Chelsea’s father of raping her in a 1999 Dateline NBC interview, then-anchor Tom Brokaw never allowed one single second of her voice to break into the NBC Nightly News." Bozell ignores the fact that Broaddrick had spent years denying anything that happened with Clinton, making her flip-flop suspect.
And at no point in his column does Bozell mention the pertinent fact that Cain is a friend of his.
WND's Farah Wants to Restrict Muslim Immigration to U.S. Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only do I – an Arab-American male – agree on the importance of considering the ideological and religious worldview of those being screened for sensitive security jobs and for passenger flights for the safety of all, but I would go much further.
I say it's time to strictly limit Muslim immigration into the United States to avoid the kinds of disasters we're seeing in Europe.
Having said this, I can anticipate the hysterical reactions from the phony civil libertarians who consistently act against America's best interests and vital national security concerns.
"Isn't that religious bigotry and intolerance?" they will say. "Isn't America supposed to be religiously blind and welcome one and all to our shores?"
No, plain and simple. That's their blueprint for America's destruction, not mine. America doesn't owe anyone – no foreigner anywhere – an engraved invitation to be part of our national covenant and community. We've been far too lax in allowing anyone and everyone who flouts the rules entry to this country. That has to stop immediately. The very next step we need to take is to determine what kind of people will help our nation stay true to its Constitution and other founding principles – and what kind of people will not.
It seems obvious to me that anyone who subscribes to Saudi-style Shariah law, as described in the Islamic Quran and Hadith, would not be inclined to swear allegiance to the Constitution – at least not without crossing his fingers taqiyya-style.
[...]
But we need to do more than just require immigrants seeking entry to the U.S. as visitors or citizens to swear allegiance to our Constitution. We need to put the burden of proof on Muslims to demonstrate their desire to leave the world of Shariah behind them, to renounce its principles as well as to take a formal oath to uphold and affirm America's national covenant.
Furthermore, we need strict national quotas on immigration by Muslims – even those willing to renounce Shariah and swear an oath to the U.S. Constitution.
Why?
Because there are 1 billion Muslims in the world, most of whom simply do not share our Judeo-Christian worldview – the one that separated us from the rest of the nations and made America special and great.
Already, with only a few million Muslims living in America, they are having a disproportionate impact on our culture. Let me give you one example: There are still more Jews in America than Muslims, though the gap is narrowing quickly. Yet, Jews do not use their influence to ensure that Jews and non-Jews alike are forced to eat according to rabbinical kosher rules. However, it is increasingly difficult for non-Muslims in America today to buy a Thanksgiving turkey that has not been ritually sacrificed to Allah. Most of the meat sold in Costco is also halal.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to eat meat sacrificed to Allah. With Islam a tiny minority religion in the U.S., it seems perverse that people like me have to be careful not to eat food ritually sacrificed to this god of the few.
NewsBusters Thinks Coulter's Foul-Mouthed Insults Are 'Irrepressible' Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters regularly excoriates people in the media for saying unpleasant things about conservatives, but when right-wingers say vile things about liberals, it's either ignored or encouraged. One beneficiary of this blatant double standard has been Ann Coulter.
In that spirit, Mark Finkelstein performs a similar service with a Noel Sheppard level of fawning in a Nov. 29 post, gushing over how, in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," "the irrepressible Ann called Ted Kennedy 'human pestilence.'" Funny, we don't recall Finkelstein or anyone else at NewsBusters describing, say, Bill Maher as "irrepressible."
Further, Finkelstein makes no mention whatsoever of another insult Coulter hurled during the same show that was so vile MSNBC cut off her audio.
Is Finkelstein so gutless that he won't call out Coulter for saying something he'd attack had it come out of the mouth of someone who wasn't a right-wing darling? Apaprently so.
Sheppard, meanwhile, is similarly gutless, since he hasn't said a word about the foul words out of his beloved Coulter's mouth. He was too busy being distracted by Coulter saying something adorable on another channel.
WND Unloads Cain Book While It's Still Worth Something Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Cain-gasm is over.
WorldNetDaily, it seems, has given up on Herman Cain's presidential campaign, which it breathlessly promoted and defended in the face of sexual harassment allegations. Allegations of an affair by Cain, however, seem to be the final straw.
But not until WND can find one final way to cash in on it.
So WND is trying to unload Cain's autobiography while it still might sell for something vaguely close to retail price by portraying it as a "collector's item." But there's resignation in the sales pitch in a Nov. 29 WND article:
It was a bold plan, he told us.
But what might have been bolder than the 9-9-9 economic plan was the audacity of a presidential candidate who didn't realize you can't sweep a 13-year affair under the rug.
With Herman Cain now reassessing his bid for the Republican nomination – and probably no more than hours away from withdrawing from the race – the WND Superstore is commemorating the 9-9-9 plan with a blowout sale on his book, "This is Herman Cain: My Journey to the White House."
You guessed it. The sale price on what is likely to become a collector's item is $9.99 – while supplies last.
"This book is sure to be a collector's item – given the circumstances of his presidential campaign," says Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND. "Just look at what presidential memorabilia of the past is selling for these days."
That feels exceptionally cynical and insincere, even for Farah. He knows what doesn't sell now is heading straight for the remainder bin, and he doesn't want to take a bath on the losses.
