Noel Sheppard Defends Michael Savage's Smear of Kids With Autism Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters normally steers clear of right-wing extremists like Michael Savage (even though its operator, Brent Bozell, would fit right in on Savage's show for his calling Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead"). Which is why it's odd to see Noel Sheppard running to Savage's defense in an April 14 post.
Sheppard notes that an episode of ABC's "What Would You Do?" deals with "how people respond in a public setting when an autistic child acts up," apparently inspired by Savage's statement that in "99 percent" of autism diagonses, "it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out." Sheppard compained that it wasn't noted that Savage's words "were spoken almost four years ago," then defended Savage's attack by noting that some callers to his radio show -- "including a school psychologist - [were] agreeing with him that autism like so many childhood behavior disorders is overdiagnosed oftentimes for financial reasons." Sheppard then complained: "Did What Would You Do? even casually address the possibility that autism is currently being overdiagnosed in America? Not at all. Instead the show depicted Savage as a kook for thinking so."
Sheppard didn't note the rest of what Savage said in his anti-autism rant, in which he went far beyond concerns about overdiagnosis and well into insulting those with autism as coddled brats who need someone to tell them to "act like a man":
SAVAGE: Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket. For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden -- why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I'll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], "When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], 'I don't know, the dust got me.' " See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one.
Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.
What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."
Autism -- everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, "Don't behave like a fool." The worst thing he said -- "Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry." That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have.
Further, Savage has called autism a "phony disease" -- which undermines Sheppard's argument that he was concerned only about overdiagnosis. Savage later recast his attack to claim he was taken out of context.
Sheppard needs to ask himself if he really thinks Michael Savage is a credible spokesman for autism overdiagnosis.
Echo Chamber: WND Touts Its Columnists' Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily thinks the paranoid rantings of its columnists are news. That appears to be the explanation behind an April 13 WND article by Bob Unruh, which begins this way:
There always have been those few who have launched diatribes over the dictatorial actions of any given U.S. presidential administration, over civil rights, foreign affairs, the economy, the draft or a dozen other topics – even though the Constitution was written specifically to prevent the collection of too much power by one branch of government.
Now, again, there are words like “egocentric megalomaniac” being ascribed to the White House, and warnings about detention camps and government surveillance of its citizens.
Who called Obama an "egocentric megalomaniac"? None other tha WND columnist and obsessive Obama-hater Mychal Massie, whose claim that "many" call Obama that remains unsubstantiated.
Unruh also name-checks the Obama derangement of other WND columnists like Robert Ringer and Erik Rush.
Meanwhile, Unruh appears to be treating the idea that Obama wants to round up dissenters and put them in "detention camps" as a real thing. It's not.
Unruh also rehashes one of WND's favorite zombie lies:
As a presidential candidate Obama called for a “national civilian security force” that would be as big and as well-funded as the half-trillion dollar U.S. military. And a study a short time later confirmed that there are several ways to create the suggested “Stability Police Force” so that it legally could operate inside the U.S. borders.
As we've repeatedlypointed out, Obama has explained that he was referring to an expansion of the foreign service and diplomatic and humanitarian aid. Unruh's suggestion that Obama provided no such explanation, or that it means something other than what he said it did, is nothing but a bald-faced lie.
CNS Gives Its Readers Opportunity to Insult Planned Parenthood President Topic: CNSNews.com
As we'veseen, CNSNews.com appears to posts "news" stories for no other purpose than to allow its readers to hurl denigrating insults while hiding behind anonymous screen names. The fact that CNS makes little effort to keep its comment threads from descending into racism and hatred tells us that this is the readership Terry Jeffrey -- and, by extention, Brent Bozell -- wants for his website.
Following in this tradition is an April 9 CNS article by Patrick Burke featuring Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards describing how she obtained birth control from Planned Parenthood while a college student. That was all the excuse CNS readers needed to hurl denigrating. misogynist insults at Richards, portraying her as a "slut," a "ho bag" and a "baby murdering whore," among many other things:
Are Jeffrey and Bozell proud that these are the people who now read CNS? They must be, since they have shown little interest in doing anything about it.
MRC Doesn't Like the Media Telling the Truth Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how the Media Research Center's "Tell the Truth" campaign is curiously hostile to anyone who actually does. It does so again in a TimesWatch item by Clay Waters.
Waters uses his item to mock New YorkTimes writer Joe Nocera for accurately pointing out that right-wing media outlets like Fox News have been carrying out a vendetta against the Chevy Volt hybrid car. Waters portrays Nocera's criticism of Volt-bashers as "what he saw as a Fox News conspiracy campaign against it."
Waters doesn't mention that Nocera is correct. As Media Matters points out, Fox and other right-wing media have relentlessly attacked the Volt as part of its anti-Obama agenda (even though the Volt had been in development well before the federal government bailed out GM).
In other words, Waters is mad at Nocera for telling the truth. But isn't that what the MRC wants?
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Robert Ringer Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
I began warning about Barack Obama’s dictatorial ambitions before he even won the 2008 presidential election. Now, finally, more people are beginning to take this possibility as a serious threat.
Obama’s recent contention that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to overrule congressional legislation had dictatorship written all over it. It was, quite obviously, an ignorant slip on his part.
[...]
I will say yet again what I have been saying for more than three years: If polls indicate that Obama is going to win the upcoming election, no problem. He’ll keep flashing that fake Barry Obama grin until Nov. 7, then move swiftly to begin unleashing a dictatorial full monty – consisting of more regulations, higher taxes and less freedom – that will shock all but his staunchest Marxist allies.
Nothing will be off limits – a national police force, instant citizenship for all Third World people who want to come to America, forced equalization of income (except for Obama’s wealthy supporters), widespread use of tax audits to carry out vendettas against enemies of his administration, a virtual end to oil drilling, coal mining and gas exploration, suspension of habeas corpus, a new sedition act that will make it a crime to speak out against the government, the police, or the military … and much, much more.
On the other hand, two or three months before the election, if the polls clearly show that Obama is going to go down in defeat, I believe there’s better than a 50-50 chance of a major “emergency” coincidentally making its appearance, convincingly manufactured in such a way as to cause the average entitlement junkie to agree that we must rally around the president and “postpone” the November elections.
[...]
Dictatorship and total collapse is in the air. I can feel it. That’s why it was encouraging when Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, a decorated Army doctor, refused to go to Afghanistan unless Barack Obama would make his birth certificate public, which resulted in his serving six months in prison and being dishonorably discharged. But it’s far more discouraging that no other high-ranking officer has had the courage to join him.
This is an important issue, because I continue to believe that if a dictatorship starts to emerge (many would argue that it already has), it may ultimately get down to a question of whether, at the moment of truth, the military will take orders from Barack Obama or, instead, side with American citizens.
Those who chuckle at all this would do well to bone up on their history.
MRC Selective Outrage Watch Topic: Media Research Center
Lauren Thompson used an April 10 MRC Culture & Media Institute item to complain that "ABC is running its second show this season with the word 'bitch' in the title, and there’s only silence from the exquisitely sensitive feminists so aghast at Rush Limbaugh’s comments about left-wing activist Sandra Fluke."
Of course, given that Thompson's fellow MRC co-workers all but endorsed Limbaugh's repeated smearing of Fluke as a "slut," a "prostitute" and worse, she's probably the last person who should complain about the hypocrisy of others.
Sheppard Touts Pickens Quote, Omits That Pickens Is MRC Funder Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard devotes an April 11 NewsBusters post to recounting how oilman T. Boone Pickens said on MSNBC that "I've lost my a--" in wind power.
Unmentioned by Sheppard: Pickens is a major funder of NewsBusters' owner, the Media Research Center, to the point that the MRC has an endowed position of T. Boone Pickens Fellow, currently held by Dan Gainor.
Sheppard similarly failed to make this crucial disclosure in a December post touting something else Pickens said.
Wayne Allyn Root Is Glad Ted Kennedy Is Dead Topic: Newsmax
Wayne Allyn Root's obsessive hatred for all things Obama takes a bizarre turn in his April 10 Newsmax column, in which he praises Ted Kennedy for dying at the right time to throw a wrench in Obama's agenda:
No, I was never a big fan of Ted Kennedy while he was alive and screwing over the taxpayers.
But in death I’ve started to really appreciate the guy. He has managed to do in death what he never accomplished in life — become a hero and patriot. In death, Teddy Kennedy saved America and capitalism from Obama.
Ted Kennedy’s death changed the course of history. It opened the door for Scott Brown to become the new Massachusetts senator, the first Republican to win in almost half a century.
That one gift from Kennedy deprived Obama of the 60th vote he needed in the U.S. Senate to push through every socialist program his little heart desired. So by dying, Ted Kennedy became the anti-Obama.
[...]
Who knows what Obama, Reid and Pelosi could have accomplished if they still had that 60th vote? The GOP was powerless to stop Obama, with Kennedy still in his seat. But it wasn’t to be. Kennedy's brain tumor turned out to be a cancer for the Obama agenda.
In death, Ted Kennedy became a patriot and hero . . . to conservatives. What a way to go Teddy. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to know you single-handedly changed the course of history and saved America from Obama.
I never thought I’d say this, but let’s raise a glass of Irish whiskey . . . and toast our savior Ted Kennedy!
WND Just Republishing RNC Press Releases Now Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetdaily has almost always put its right-wing bias ahead of actual journalism. Now, it's apparently taking the next step by republishing Republican press releases.
An April 11 WND article by Joe Kovacs touts how "The Republican National Committee has produced a video showing separate speeches a year apart from Obama talking about financial issues. The strange thing is that the sentences uttered by the president are virtually identical."
Did WND ever care about journalism? Well, Kovacs' partisan laziness demonstrates it sure doesn't now.
MRC Thinks Wall Street Journal Is 'Liberal Media' Topic: Media Research Center
Lauren Thompson complains in an April 10 MRC Culture & Media item:
YouTube released 100 new channels in April, and there’s not a conservative voice to be found. The site embraced lefty culture with a vengeance, and liberal voices rule the social realm. From former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur to lefty new age author Deepak Chopra, liberals are commonplace figures in the new content.
But if you look at that list of new YouTube channels, what do we see? The Wall Street Journal. That's right -- Thompson apparently believes the Journal, with its Rupert Murdoch ownership and notoriously right-wing editorial page, is "lefty culture." Go figure.
But Thompson isn't done running around hanging the "liberal" tag on everything in sight:
Huffington Post contributor [Deepak] Chopra will be able to preach his radical new-age sermons from his channel “The Chopra Well.”
Google-owned YouTube granted channels to liberal outlets like “The Onion,” which viciously mocked Christian quarterback Tim Tebow in a video about his trade to the New York Jets. The "humorous video" on their YouTube channel predicts that upon his move to New York, Tebow will become a “homeless crack addict,” and he will “fall in love with a man named Javier and engage in unprotected sensual discovery.”
The Onion is "liberal" because it made fun of Tim Tebow? The Onion makes fun of Obama too; why doesn't Thompson call it conservative for doing that?
Thompson seems to be finding "liberal bias" where it really doesn't exists. That, presumably, is what makes her the ideal MRC employee.
“Obama in Wonderland” (officially titled “The Road We’ve Traveled”), the world’s first 16-minute political ad, would have pleased Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous propaganda minister. Like the ruling party in George Orwell’s “1984,” this super-slick Hollywood production rewrites history with an alarming arrogance.
The first thing you see in this vulgar, vile, vitriol-filled video is the Obama family walking on stage to greet a huge crowd of tearful, cheering, flag-waving Stepford wives, husbands and children. The melodrama of it all rivals New York City’s 1951 ticker-tape parade for Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
[...]
Enough! Let’s get serious here. Let’s pretend that BHO is not a Marxist. Let’s pretend that he isn’t really trying to collapse the economy. Let’s pretend that he really isn’t obsessed with redistribution of wealth.
Even if none of these was true, it still leaves one inconvenient question unanswered: If a president’s only response to an ailing economy is that he inherited it, what does he think he was elected to do – play golf and fly around on Air Force One?
The specter of a communist takeover of the U.S. still remains singularly preposterous to millions of Americans who would quickly come to arms if they actually believed it a possibility. I’m not entirely certain how President Obama proposes to suppress those who would rise up against him were his intentions to become widely apparent, but I believe that part of the plan is to factionalize us (such as is occurring over the Martin case and Occupy Wall Street). I believe he’s also counting on deepening economic adversity to heighten Americans’ collective stress. Another element might be to provoke concerned patriots into action that he could point to as a threat to domestic tranquility, thereby convincing a preponderance of Americans to accept fundamental compromises to their civil liberties.
In such a case, Obama could then employ some of the more traditional Marxist tactics, such as mass executions, as cohorts of his friend Bill Ayers once advocated.
The “lesser evil” approach guarantees the triumph of wrong. So in choosing between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama we are like the cornered target of the hit man who says, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The fatal outcome is inevitable in either case. Obama’s way takes us to domineering socialism along a path that moves more openly and harshly against right, conscience and property. Romney’s way takes us to domineering socialism along a path that reserves the harsher methods, preferring to use deception and prevarication so that we go more gently into the night.
Now, almost a decade later, our government, as well as our society as a whole, has grown even more corrupt than even during the Clinton years. The “regime” of President Barack Hussein Obama – who defrauded the American people to elect him president, his having taken advantage of the people’s political reaction to eight years of a disastrous and failed George W. Bush presidency – is more than a threat to our Judeo-Christian heritage and American way of life. Obama is, plain and simple, the black communist equivalent of the Manchurian candidate, an evil force who is bent on destroying our beloved nation and our religious freedoms. It is no coincidence that Hillary Clinton is his secretary of state.
Obama needs blacks to be angry and disaffected for two very important reasons. The first, as I have outlined in recent weeks, and as his history confirms, is that Obama is a socialist cut from the same cloth as Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers. The second is because Obama needs the black and Hispanic vote to get re-elected. This last reason is why Obama so quickly injected himself into Sanford, Fla. He needs this unrest because it attracts the very elements most likely to embrace his form of socialism. And let there be no doubt, Obama fears losing Florida. Ergo, he can use Trayvon Martin unrest to show he’s down with the cause.
Barack Obama, just as he did when there was the incident in Cambridge, Mass., a few years ago, immediately jumped to a racially based conclusion. Just as professor Henry Gates had to be right and Sgt. James Crowley and the entire Cambridge Police Department had to be wrong before anyone actually knew the facts of the matter, we had Obama solemnly intoning, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.” Well, I suppose he would unless, Mother Nature being the naughty pixy she sometimes is, he came out looking like your Caucasian mother.
Obama’s vocal and loud endorsement of Trayvon Martin as a boy he would like to have sired sent a message to the nation and the world – much like his offensive threatening statements about the sovereignty of the Supreme Court – that he does not respect the rule of law and that he, as the nation’s fuehrer, can decide for the rest of us who is guilty and who is innocent. And, true to his black-Muslim leanings and associations, President Obama refused to, as is the correct approach, keep his mouth shut so as not to influence law-enforcement authorities or any eventual jury. Instead, he improperly used his office to judge for himself, and then broadcast, who caused the sad death of this young boy.
[...]
So, once again, Obama has shown his true colors; he is a racist, black-Muslim sympathizer and Jew-and-white hater himself. For this, with all of the whoredom on display in the last weeks, he wins the prize for the biggest and most evil whore of all.
Too many white Americans voted for Barack Obama for president in 2008 because they wanted to prove they weren’t racists. They believed Obama’s promise that his election represented a triumph over racism. Those white Obama voters have been betrayed.
Then and now, opponents of Barack Obama are routinely labeled racist. Hillary supporters found that out in 2008. Nothing’s changed. The president, who promised a post-racial presidency, has played the race card ever since.
From “the Cambridge police acted stupidly” to “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama has deliberately fanned the flames of racial resentment among black Americans.
The racial divisions in American society are worse now than when Obama took office.
One of his two autobiographies was titled, “The Audacity of Hope.” It’s not as imaginative or as well-written as his first – the one ghostwritten by Bill Ayers.
MRC Adds to 'GCB' List Of Offenses (Which It Still Won't Publish) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson cranked up her outrage detector once again for her weekly viewing of "GCB." Her headline seems to sum up her feelings: "Easter ‘GCB’ Shills for Porn in Christian Marriages."
Thompson now informs us that she has now compiled 157 "Christian-bashing" offenses in the show. And, asbefore, she refuses to publish the entire list. But how will we know how offensive they are if she hides them from us?
WND's Klein Confuses Guilt-By-Association With 'Vetting' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is back to rehash his guilt-by-assocation attacks on President Obama. Literally.
WND is republishing Klein's years-old attacks on Obama and his aides. The first article starts with this editor's note:
Editor’s note: In 2008, WND thoroughly vetted President Obama’s radical background. Many of those original exclusive reports, almost entirely ignored by the establishment news media, currently are being utilized four years later by some media outlets in the lead up to this year’s presidential election. From now until election day, WND will present its original investigations into Obama and his radical ties with bonus updates. These reports are as important today as they were in 2008. Following is the first in a series of articles aimed at re-vetting Obama.
And what is this article about? Strongly suggesting that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett is a communist plant. A follow-up article, containing the same editor's note, falsely claimed that Obama called for "Israel's destruction" in speeches during thte 1990s at "fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps." Even Klein backs away from that outrageous allegation, offering no evidence he knows what Obama said during these speeches.
Um, Aaron? Guilt-by-association is not "vetting."And re-publishing guilt-by-association is not "re-vetting."
Meanwhile, Wonkette has a different view of Klein's reruns, positing that Klein and WND are mad that the Breitbart websites are stealing Klein's stuff for its own "vetting," adding, "This is the sound of a riding glove meeting a soft hairless cheek!"
An April 10 CNSNews.com article by Edwin Mora uncritically touts an analysis by Charles Blahous of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center claiming that "President Obama’s health care legislation, contrary to promises made by proponents, will add up to $530 billion to federal deficits and boost government spending by at least $1.15 trillion over the next decade." Mora went on to claim that "Blahous explained that the fiscal crisis generated by Obamacare, formally known as The Affordable Care Act, is fueled by a gimmick contained in the law that involves double-counting of funding."
Mora ignored the fact that the Mercatus Center is funded in part by foundations controlled by the Koch family, generous funder of right-wing causes.
While Mora noted that the White House "accused Blahous of making erroneous claims about the fiscal ramifications of the health care law," he failed to note that economic and health care experts, as well as Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, have also criticized Blahous' analysis and called his accusation of double-counting an "old, discredited argument."
Meanwhile, an April 10 MRC item by Scott Whitlock also highlighted the Blahous report. Whitlock conceded that Blahouse is a "conservative economist ," but he did not mention the Mercatus Center's link to the Kochs, nor did he acknowledge any criticism of the report, even as he criticized non-coverage of it in the media.
Bozell Demands That Congress Harrass A Private Business for Partisan Purposes Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center Brent Bozell is taking his war against NBC over the editing of an audiotape to a new level, demanding that Congress to harass a private business in service of the MRC's right-wing agenda.
That's the only conclusion one can draw from the MRC's April 10 press release:
Today, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell announces the media watchdog is calling upon Congress to investigate Comcast / NBC News for the intentional editing of the George Zimmerman audio that was broadcast multiple times and subsequently flamed the fires of racial hatred and animosity:
“NBC is laughing at the public. Last week we said we would have more to say if their behavior in this matter didn’t change. Given their continued irresponsibility, today we open up a new front. “
Bozell is not demanding this because NBC violated any federal law or policy -- at no point does he identify any such violation. It's because Bozell has made NBC his enemy, and he wants Congress to play along.
Bozell whines that "This is a complete violation of the public trust" -- but Bozell provides no evidence that Congress has ever involved itself with such matters in a private business.
The only justification Bozell provides for congressional involvement in the editing of an audiotape is that Comcast, NBC's parent company, "is in the midst of a business deal with Verizon requiring approval by the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Justice; the public policy issues related to the approval of this deal are so critical that the United States Senate held hearings on the matter." But this proposed deal involves Comcast selling wireless spectrum to Verizon -- it has nothing to do with NBC. Which just further proves that Bozell's goal is harassment.
Bozell is playing politics here -- nothing else. He wants Congress to help him destroy a business that he has been spectacularly unsuccessful at doing on his own.
Make no mistake: NBC's destruction is what Bozell wants. Not fairness. Not justice. Destruction.
