Which seems to explain Gainor's March 23 MRC column defending "pink slime" -- a meat byproduct used as a filler in ground beef. His column is headlined "ABC Takes a Pro- E-Coli Position in Hit Job on Meat Industry." That's right -- according to Gainor, if you don't like "pink slime," you're a lover of deadly bacteria.
Gainor serves up this benign description of the byproduct:
The meat, often called lean finely textured beef, is made up of beef that is just harder to get at, so the meat isn’t lost. It’s treated to get rid of the fat and included with the rest of the ground beef. The USDA declares it healthy, but it is less expensive. As an added bonus, it is treated tiny amounts of ammonium hydroxide to make it safer to eat. But network broadcasts and activist videos act as if this treatment is somehow bad.
You know what else contains ammonium hydroxide? Household cleaning products and furniture stain. Gainor doesn't mention that. Nor does he mention that, while the USDA considers the byproduct as generally safe, the scientist who coined the "pink slime" term points out that it apparently has never been specifically approved for use in ground beef.
Instead, Gainor rants that ABC, by promoting the story, "is out to destroy a family owned business to push the agenda of a couple of 'whistleblowers' who don’t like the company’s beef ," dismissing one of them as a "loony activist" while not backing up the insult.Gainor also touted how " The International Association for Food Protection gave its singularly best award – called the Black Pearl Award" to the company that makes "pink slime."
Gainor goes on to attack the media in general: "Major media have attacked a long list of industries in recent years – coal, oil, guns, Wall Street, banks and more. Each time, they savage an industry, they do it for ratings, never caring what damage they do to a company, shareholders or employees who might soon be looking for work." This from an employee of an organization that manufactures controversies over museum art it doesn't like.
Gainor even complains that an ABC commentator has advised viewers to limit their intake of red meat to six ounces a week over two servings: "When’s the last time someone dealt you just six ounces of red meat in a week – or in one sitting. The ABC food police think they know better than you what you should eat and how much."
Dietary advice is "liberal bias" too? We had no idea.
WND Rushes to Defend Anti-Gay Pastor's Work in Uganda Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is joining Accuracy in Media in defending anti-gay pastor Scott Lively's anti-gay activities in Uganda.
A Jan. 14 WND article by Bob Unruh uncritically repeats Lively's defense against a lawsuit filed against him on behalf of what Unruh described as "an organization of homosexuals in Uganda" accusing Lively of helping to inspire a proposed law that would permit the death penalty for mere homosexuality.
According to Unruh, Lively claims that "I opposed the death penalty provision of the Ugandan bill from the beginning. … It is a baseless charge for which they have not a shred of proof, but in any case advocacy for legislation is speech." But Unruh does not present any documentation to back up Lively's claims -- indeed, it appears that the only person Unruh talked to for this article was Lively.
Unruh didn't mention that in a February 2011 WND column, Lively ranted about how "lavender Marxists" are "murderers" who "have fixed their malevolent gaze on Christian Uganda." If Lively was this harsh while in the U.S., it's entirely possible he was even more inflammatory while in Uganda, where he was out of the reach of U.S. media. Indeed, the lawsuit includes quotes from Lively in Uganda in which he calls pornograhy a "tool of 'gay' social engineering," held a closed-door meeting with pastors there, after which he claimed he described how "America was brought low by homosexual activism," and equated homosexuality with sexual violence against children.
Unruh, curiously, did not mention any of these statements from Lively in his article, stating only that "a multitude of Lively’s comments and statements" are cited in the lawsuit.Unruh also does not provide a link to the lawsuit so his readers can check it out for themselves.
Unruh followed up with a March 24 article that attacked the lawsuit by complaining it targeted Lively's "speech" under a law "that usually is used to target torture, genocide, war crimes and summary executions."This, apparently, is the defense being used by Lively's lawyers from the right-wing legal group Liberty Counsel.
Unruh also whitewashed the allegations against Lively, claiming only that he "shared his opinion on homosexuality and pornography" in Uganda. Unruh completely omits the fact that the lawsuit claims that Lively helped inspire a proposed law that would permit the death penalty for mere homosexuality.
Unruh quotes Liberty Counsel repeating an earlier defense Lively made regarding the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato: "The suit leaves out the fact that the suspected killer is a male prostitute with which Kato had sex and refused to pay." In fact, as we've noted, Ugandan police may be trying to cover up a motive of homophobia in Kato's death, and that observers say that the man who was convicted in Kato's death may have been set up to murder Kato for being gay and thought if he established a homosexual sex demand, he would be treated leniently.
Given WND's anti-gay agenda -- and the fact that one of its own opinionators, Molotov Mitchell, embraced Uganda's proposed "kill the gays" law -- it's no surprise that Unruh and Co. would defend Lively. After all, WND sells Lively's factually challenged book "The Pink Swastika."
UPDATE: Warren Throckmorton focuses on Unruh's claim that Lively was expressing "his biblically based religious beliefs," adding:
Where does the Bible say that homosexuality is responsible for the Holocaust? For the Rwandan genocide? That gays are pedophiles? Are those Biblically based beliefs?
Even if one disagrees with the suit, the truth is that Lively is not being sued for his beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. There are many evangelicals who believe that in the U.S. and in Uganda who also abhor the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and tell the truth about their GLBT fellow citizens.
CNS Still Twisting Facts on Contraception Mandate Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how CNSNews.com, led by Terry Jeffrey, has twisted a proposed Obama administration mandate that sterilizations be covered for free under health plans offered by universities to their students, suggesting coercion by claiming that sterilizations "must be offered." CNS is now using that misleading wording in the questions they ambush membwers of Congress with.
This is made clear in a March 20 article by Thomas Cloud:
At a pen-and-pad meeting with reporters on Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol, CNSNews.com asked [Rep. Steny] Hoyer: “The administration has approved a regulation under Obamacare that says, quote, ‘all women with reproductive capacity,’ end quote, must be offered free sterilization –”
Hoyer interrupted: “How is that related to a pre-existing condition?”
CNSNews.com continued: “--hold on--free sterilization in their health care plans. Do you support the mandate for free sterilization for college-age women?”
Hoyer said, “Free sterilization? I don’t know anything about free sterilization. I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry. The answer is, I don’t. But I don’t think anybody is proposing that.”
This same wording shows up again in March 21 article by Patrick Burke:
CNSNews.com asked [Rep. Tom] Price, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee and a physician, this question: “(T)he administration has offered a regulation under the Affordable Care Act that says ‘all women with reproductive capacity’ -- including college age women -- must be offered free sterilization in their health-care plans. Do you support that particular mandate?["]
As we've previously pointed out, CNS is engaging in propadanda, not reporting the news, by deliberately twisting the facts.
Like everyone else, Barack Obama’s perception of a just society is based on his upbringing, his education and his personal experiences. Though the media refused to vet him when he ran for president, it is common knowledge that he had a tragic childhood – a childhood that, as Dinesh D’Souza explains it in his book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” justifiably made him a very angry person.
Shortly after his birth, Obama was abandoned by his alcoholic, polygamist father. Later, his mother virtually abandoned him as well, and he was left to be raised by his philosophically far-left grandparents.
So, as odious as everything about communism is, historically speaking, why is it scarcely worth reporting? Well, the second point I was fortunate enough to get across on Hannity’s show is also the reason that some desensitized fools in the conservative community don’t see fit to address Obama’s closeted Marxism: It’s because the political left has, in a very large measure, succeeded in legitimizing radical socialist and communist thought in America.
During the course of the discussion of Obama’s ideology vis-à-vis racial politics, I contended that the aforementioned viewpoint is no longer acceptable. Marxism, as an ideology antithetical to everything American, which breeds criminality and suffering, cannot be tolerated. This once-conventional wisdom has been turned on its head, not surprisingly by communists and liberals in politics, media and education.
When the dust settles in Tampa in August, the candidates, Ron Paul included, will unite behind the Republican nominee. They will decide that a flawed candidate – and every candidate is a flawed candidate – is better than a Marxist incumbent. Republicans of all stripes and persuasions are unified in their understanding of one imperative: Removing Obama from the White House is more than a political goal: it is a constitutional imperative.
Months ago I wrote a column about Obama entitled “A president of ‘His People,’ not ‘We the People.’” This characterization has certainly been borne out even more with the Bell revelations and the president’s penchant to further the Pigford fraud.
The Breitbart videos linking Derrick Bell to Obama, showing the president as a Harvard law student leader asking his black compatriots to open their hearts and minds to this racist and anti-Semite, and then hugging Bell, more than unmasks who Obama really is. Whether it is Pigford black reparations or his disdain if not latent hatred for the Jewish state of Israel and his endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque – or a host of other similar outrages toward whites, Jews and Christians – this president certainly does not represent “We the People” but instead “his own people.”
That is why we must use all legal means to remove Obama and his racist, anti-Semitic comrades from access to the White House, and we must do so in short order before the country devolves further into a racial and religious civil war, and our nation and Israel are destroyed, by virtue of the president’s actions.
It’s hard to imagine how Obama could run on that record and succeed. Is this the change Obama promised?
I always believed it was precisely what Obama had in mind. His own energy secretary, in a moment of candor, told Americans the administration’s policy was to push gas prices higher. That was true of Democrats going back to Al Gore – maybe earlier.
Could it be Obama also intended to create more misery for the American people as a matter of policy?
Could he possibly have done any more to achieve that objective?
Could it be he actually sees political advantage in making more Americans dependent on government?
The answer to all three of those rhetorical questions is yes.
That’s the Saul Alinksy plan.
That’s the Cloward-Piven plan.
That’s the Obama playbook.
Will enough Americans awaken in the next eight months to stop this miserable, Marxist social experiment?
Rescuing “Dreams” from Obama’s sluggish work ethic and sophomoric style was a major investment of Bill Ayers’ time. It would not have been hard, however, for Tom Ayers to make it worth Bill’s while.
This all might have worked as planned – if only Obama had contented himself with Chicago, but as the mailman discovered, Obama had bigger ideas.
Although it would be damnably difficult to prove unequivocally, it is pretty much common knowledge in the conservative community that during the 2008 election cycle, GOP leaders made a “deal with the devil” in agreeing not to press then-Sen. Obama’s eligibility if the Democratic leadership would not press on the eligibility of John McCain. It was supposed that a major issue might have been raised with regard to McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone.
Whether the Republican leadership has made a similar deal for the 2012 election cycle vis-à-vis Obama’s radical associations and history remains to be seen, and there’s neither time nor space for me to illustrate the abysmally treasonous nature of such a “deal,” if it exists. Suffice it to say that neither Republican leaders, candidates, nor conservative pundits are addressing the issue of Obama’s Marxism, despite all indications, including new evidence that has recently come to light.
In the White House sits a man touted as the first “black American president” whose only claim to that recognition (his skin color) tacitly validates the inhuman, Darwinian understanding of race used systematically to oppress my dark-skinned ancestors during and after their “Time on the Cross” of American slavery. This pseudo-scientific ideology of racism involves categorizing human beings by purely physical attributes, without regard to their moral characteristics. Though it claims to have some foundation in empirical science, it involves willfully ignoring all that constitutes the special distinctiveness of the human species, an ignorant willfulness that makes empirical observation literally impossible. (We cannot observe what we refuse to see.)
Engineered with all the craftiness of evil, Obama’s election in 2008 represented the conceptual triumph of this dehumanizing ideology.
[...]
As I said in the aforementioned article, written soon after Obama’s perjured swearing-in (for he swore to uphold what he fully intends to overthrow): ...
The media in unison call anyone that mentions the Obama birth certificate controversy and Obama’s lack of vetting and documentation as “obsessed and loony.” But Obama himself cannot stop talking about it. This week alone, he has mentioned it in public twice. On March 20, he joked about it while meeting with the prime minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny. The assembled reporters and supporters greeted his snide comment with uproarious laughter.
Also, while in Cushing, Okla., to talk energy, Obama couldn’t help but talk about his birth certificate again. He asked a woman in the crowd who was allegedly born at the same hospital as he was if she could “find her birth certificate.” We know this only because Fox News reporter Ed Henry tweeted about it.
But if the president wants the issue of his birth certificate not to be in the news, why does he personally continue to talk about it? We contend he does want it in the news so that he can wield this “rules for radicals” strategy against his opponents.
CNS Commenters Still Piling Up the Anti-Obama Racism Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how the comment thread for a March 23 CNSNews.com article about President Obama's remark that "if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” Martin, the teenager killed by a neighborhood watch captain in Florida, has brought out the kind of racist and homophobic Obama-haters CNS appears to be catering to these days.
Well, the parade of hate and racism among CNS readers has been continuing:
Are Brent Bozell and Terry Jeffrey proud to attract such people as CNS readers? Apparently so.
WND's Ethics-Challenged Pollster: Obama Is An 'Apparent Imposter' Topic: WorldNetDaily
We already know that Fritz Wenzel, WorldNetDaily's favorite pollster, is more than a little ethically challenged. Now he's even more clearly demonstrating his right-wing bias.
In a March 18 WND article detailing the results of a birther-related Wenzel poll, Bob Unruh quotes Wenzel thusly:
“Politically, the findings on this subject spell potential disaster for the Obama re-election campaign in that one in three independent voters does not believe Obama has provided enough documentation to prove he is legally eligible to hold the presidency,” Wenzel said. “These people will not be voting for him.
“This is a substantial bloc of what we think to be swing voters to have taken off the table right from the beginning, and it spells political disaster for the White House.”
However, he said that Obama is not the only one at fault.
“That no serious action has been taken in Washington to confront this issue paints a sad picture of the impotence or spinelessness of the president’s political opponents and a pathetic portrait of a nation’s citizens who are mostly content to sit idly by while an apparent imposter raids their national treasury and runs their once-great nation into the ground,” Wenzel said.
So, apparently, Wenzel is a birther, and an Obama-hater to boot. Such blatant bias on Wenzel's part is all the more reason not to trust the results of his polling, since it appears he's putting a political message over accurate, impartial polling.
You Reap What You Sow: CNS Article on Obama Bring Out Racist, Homophobic Obama-Haters Topic: CNSNews.com
When your editorial content is increasingly centered around Obama-hating, as CNSNews.com's content hasbecome, it should be no surprise when your readership is increasingly made up of Obama-haters.
A relatively unbiased March 23 CNS article by Susan Jones on President Obama's remark that "if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” Martin, the teenager killed by a neighborhood watch captain in Florida, has brought out the kind of haters that you'd expect to see trolling around websites not operated by a multimillion-dollar nonprofit group.
Here's a sampling of comments in the article's comment thread:
This is apparently the kind of audience CNS wants, and that's exactly what it's getting.
Newsmax's Kessler Fawns Over Karl Rove's Anti-Obama PAC Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler devotes his March 19 Newsmax article to touting "the powerful political action committee American Crossroads." Kessler promotes the role it intends to play in the election:
American Crossroads and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, which focuses on issues, will be major players in the November election. Together, they expect to raise and spend $300 million to defeat President Obama and congressional Democrats.
What Kessler doesn't do, of course, is explain where that money will be coming from. In the 2010 cycle, a large chunk of American Crossroads' funding came from Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls, as well as other corporate donations who can hide behind the 501(c)4 nonprofit status of one American Crossroads division, which is not required to disclose its donors.
Kessler is too locked into hagiography mode, however, to concern himself with such things. He'd rather fawn over the "tremendous amount of research" that goes into American Crossroads' messaging and push the idea that "Americans reject Obama’s negative view of America and embrace Republicans’ positive view."
MRC Can't Stop Whining About 'GCB,' But Still Won't Back Up Attacks Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson is still incensed about the existence of the TV show "GCB."
IN a March 19 MRC Culture & Media Institute post, Thompson complained yet again about how the show is "attacking Christianity." Thompson's outrage meter has been working overtime: "In just three episodes, the anything-but-Christian show has chalked up more than 100 anti-Christian remarks, gags and plot twists, in a calculated attempt to offend believers."
But as before, Thompson fails to make this list of "anti-Christian" events on the show available to her readers. What is she afraid of?
WND Pretends It Doesn't Know What Arpaio Birther Posse Will Dig Up Next Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 21 WorldNetDaily article by Joe Kovacs quotes Sheriff Joe Arpaio as claiming that "there is 'tons' more potentially shocking information on Barack Obama in connection with his probe into the president’s eligibility."
It's kinda cute how Kovacs pretends he doesn't know what Arpaio will come up with next. Can't he just holler at his co-worker and de facto posse member Jerome Corsi for the scoop? Heck, all the evidence indicates that WND is coordinating information releases with Arpaio and the posse. Kovacs is simply playing dumb.
He goes on to quote Arpaio calling "the media’s suppression of his findings of a likely forged presidential birth certificate and Selective Service Card 'probably the biggest censorship blackout in the history of the United States.'" Bigger than Arpaio's own blackout on the secret relationship between him and WND?
Of course, we can't count on Kovacs to suss out that information -- he's too busy being a useful idiot.
AIM Fearmongers About Obama Executive Order Topic: Accuracy in Media
Alan Caruba joins in the fearmongering over an executive order by President Obama in his March 19 Accuracy in Media column:
The President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, has generated so much fear that the most common theme of posted comments and private communications is that he will refuse to relinquish power if defeated in November or that, under some pretext, he will declare a state of martial law.
[...]
The new EO evokes fear because it is occurring in peacetime and, more specifically, when the United States remains the strongest military power on Earth. There is no indication that an attack by any other nation is anticipated, so the implementation of the EO raises concerns that its purpose is not what it says.
In effect, the EO allows the federal government, directed by the President, to commandeer and control all aspects of the economy and the lives of all Americans. It centralizes control to an astonishing and frightening degree.
[...]
The obvious question is why should the President of the United States, in the run-up to a national election, feel that this is the time to issue such an EO?
As we noted, even the normally paranoid WorldNetDaily has pointed out that this executive order is nothing but an update of earlier executive orders delineating emergency powers dating back to Dwight Eisenhower, done to refect changes in government agency structure.
CNS Article on Fluke Omits Limbaugh's Denigration of Her Topic: CNSNews.com
A March 21 CNSNews.com article by Elizabeth Harrington details part of an ambush interview CNS did with Sandra Fluke, in which she "declined to comment on Bill Maher's used of vulgar terms to describe former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin."
Missing from Harrington's article: Any mention of the vulgar terms Rush Limbaugh used to describe Fluke. That's a crucial context for Harrington's question, yet Harrington didn't feel the need to include it in her article.
This seems to be yet another example of how CNS' parent organzation, the Media Research Center, is giving Limbaugh a pass on his three-day tirade of misogyny against Fluke, to the point ofessentially denying that Limbaugh calling Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" is in any way offensive.
NEW ARTICLE -- Birther Bribery, Part 2: Joe Arpaio's WorldNetDaily Posse Topic: WorldNetDaily
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's cold case posse "investigation" of President Obama's "eligibility" may as well have been written by WND. Jerome Corsi's unusually close relationship with Arpaio and the posse and WND's financial ties to them seem to prove it was. Read more >>
CNS Still Pushing Baseless Suggestion That Obama's Grandmother Was Never Discriminated Against Topic: CNSNews.com
A March 20 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas essentially calls Michelle Obama a liar for claiming that Barack Obama's grandmother suffered discrimination while working in the banking industry. Lucas' evidence to back this up? The grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, "was the first female vice president of the Bank of Hawaii," and the Obamas "inherited almost $500,000 worth of the bank’s stock from the president’s grandmother."
As we pointed out last October when CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey made this exact same argument, Dunham's ultimate success in the banking industry does not disprove the claim that she was discriminated against earlier in her career.
This bogus talking point appears to be something CNS won't let go, further indicating that Jeffrey and Co. care only about attacking Obama at every opportunity, not actual journalism.