Newsmax Baselessly Calls Obama Gay Marriage Stance A 'Debacle'
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax is carrying a front page headline that reads "Biden Apologizes to Obama for Gay Marriage Debacle":

But if you look at the Bloomberg article it links to, it carries the headline "Biden Said to Apologize to Obama for Forcing Gay Marriage Issue." And nowhere in the article does the word "debacle" appear, stating only that Biden's remarks "prompted the president to disclose his support for same-sex marriage before he planned to." Not exactly anyone's definition of a "debacle."

Obama's stance on gay marriage can be described many ways, but a "debacle" isn't one of them. That's just wishful thinking on Newsmax's part.

Quid Pro Quo: WND's Corsi Helps Arpaio Deflect Scandal
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerome Corsi is in bed with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Sorry about the mental imagery.) Corsi has special access to the cold case posse "investigation" of President Obama's "eligibility" -- which he played a key role in instigating -- and he apparently has been made a secret "special deputy" by Arpaio. Therefore, anything Corsi says about Arpaio should be seen as one sees a press release: stenography that shold not be mistaken for "news."

So when Arpaio was finally sued by federal officials for allegedly violating the civil rights of Latinos, he knew he could count on Corsi to serve as his stenographer and wingman. And that's exactly what Corsi does. It's a nice quid pro quo.

Corsi's first response to the charges was a May 9 WorldNetDaily article providing Arpaio's response, repeating earlier unsubstantiated claims that there is "White House coordination in an effort to remove from him from office or discredit him before his investigation uncovers more about Obama’s past."

Corsi spins even more furiously for Arpaio in a May 10 article featuring Arpaio in full attack mode, resuming his attack on one Arpaio critic, Randy Parraz, as a "radical agitator with a union-trained background as a Saul Alinsky 'organizer.'"

Corsi tems with Arpaio to try and change the subject from Arpaio's alleged criminality with another May 10 article touting how the cold case posse "has pressed the director of the Selective Service System not to destroy any microfilm records that may yet exist of Obama’s 1980 draft registration form."

Corsi repeats claims that Obama's Selective Service registration was a forgery because of alleged anomalies in the post office stamp that recorded it -- a claim that has largely been discredited.

Expect Corsi to report on that around the time he answers the question of whether he is a "special deputy" of Arpaio.

Shocker: MRC Finally Discovers Media Bias on Fox News!
Topic: NewsBusters

Well, here's a rarity: the Media Research Center criticizes Fox News for exhibiting bias. Not the conservative bias for which it's infamous, of course, but for not hating gays enough.

Jeffrey Mayer was indignant in a May 9 NewsBusters post:

On Wednesday’s edition of Studio B w/ Shepard Smith, anchor Smith let slip his personal political views on same-sex marriage with some condescending remarks about how being pro-traditional marriage is an outdated notion.  Following the "official" announcement that Barack Obama now supports same-sex marriage, Smith opined that the President of the United States is "now in the 21st century," suggesting of course that the near half of Americans who support traditional marriage are somehow retrograde.

Smith’s true colors became more apparent in the hour during the first of two interviews he conducted with the host of Special Report, Bret Baier:

What I’m curious about whether it’s your belief in this time of rising debts and medical issues and all the rest, if Republicans would go out on a limb and try to make this a campaign issue while sitting very firmly without much question on the wrong side of history on it?

After the interview Smith furthered the liberal talking point with what seems to be a veiled reference comparing same-sex marriage to the 1960s civil rights struggles:

Of course, in reality, what really matters is what governors are saying, this makes no legal changes of any kind, this is a states issue for now, at least, which may sound familiar to a couple of generations ago, but that's where we are.

These two comments helped Smith continue his gay rights crusade later on in the show where he again spoke to Baier and commented again that, "Shades of segregation and states rights and the whole thing [are] playing itself out all over again isn’t it?"

Of course, the MRC has never criticized a Fox host for expressing their personal views when those views are conservative, as its "news" anchors regularly do.

Mayer followed up with a May 10 post bashing MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell for highlighting Shepard's comments -- or, as Mayer tells is\t, "prais[ing] him for violating FNC's central value of remaining 'fair and balanced.'" Mayer doesn't actually watch Fox News, does he?

Mayer also gave a pass to Fox News-operated website Fox Nation claiming that Obama was "declar[ing] war on marriage" with his support of same-sex marriage. That's apparently the kind of "fair and balanced" Fox coverage Mayer prefers.

WND Denigrates Gay Activist As 'Promo-Homo'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A May 10 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh carries the headline "Promo-homo's case tossed out of court." No, really:

Unruh's article involves a defamation lawsuit filed by gay activist Wayne Besen against Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX). The lawsuit was dismissed because Besen was deemed a “public figure,” which raises the bar on proving malice in defamation lawsuits. But in Unruh's PFOX-friendly version of events, it was dismissed because Besen "admitted to 'self-aggrandizement' in court papers."

Unruh goes on to parrot PFOX's version of the story behind the lawsuit:

PFOX reported that the federal judge tossed out the lawsuit by Besen. The case was prompted by [PFOX president Greg] Quinlan’s statements “that Besen had been fired from the Human Rights Campaign and had uttered hateful rhetoric against Quinlan because he disagreed with Quinlan’s ex-gay sexual orientation.”

[...]

In the arguments raised by Besen, PFOX reported that “Besen once told Quinlan in a private conversation that someone should run him over with a bus or inject him with AIDS.”

(That ellipse jumps over an irrelevant five-paragraph digression about Dan Savage, who played no role whatsoever in this lawsuit.)

Besen's organization, Truth Wins Out, tells a much different version of events, pointing out that Quinlan had originally claimed that Besen said "statements to other people" about Quinlan, then changed his story "when confronted with TWO’s threat of a lawsuit." Quinlan never disclosed the date and location where the supposed "private conversation" between he and Besen occured, according to Truth Wins Out.

Regarding Quinlan's claimed that Besen was "fired from the Human Rights Campaign," TWO supplied a letter from the group refuting the claim. Quinlan's repeat of the false claim in a press release, TWO states, "set[s] the stage for another potential lawsuit." Unruh's uncritical cribbing from that press release may expose WND to legal action as well.

Not only doesn't Unruh care about the truth, WND demonstrates immaturity in mocking Besen. But then, WND has an editorial policy of hating gays and employs at least one commentator who wants them dead.

CNS' Jeffrey Misleads on Women in Workforce
Topic: CNSNews.com

Terry Jeffrey declares in a May 9 CNSNews.com article:

324,000 women dropped out of the nation’s civilian labor force in March and April as the number of women not in the labor force hit an all-time historical high of 53,321,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What Jeffrey doesn't tell you: According to  the BLS statistics he cites -- which he links to in the first paragraph of his article -- the nmber of women not in the labor force has been on a steady increase since 1999.

Further, Jeffrey concedes later in his article that the number of women in the workforce is near historic highs, and it hit a historic high in February.

While Jeffrey does not mention Obama in his article, it's clear that's who he wants to blame for this, given the prominent picture of Obama at the top of his article:

So, what we have here is Jeffrey once again using his purported "news" website to indulge his personal hatred of Obama. Talk about unprofessional behavior.

Did Minister Sabotage His YouTube Account To Promote His WND Book?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Last week, we detailed how WorldNetDaily promoted the story of YouTube suspending the channel of "ministry" PPSimmons -- which once claimed that President Obama is the Antichrist and has made numerous birther videos -- while failing to disclose that WND is publishing a book by PPSimmons' leader, Carl Gallups, later this month. That got us to wondering if the shutdown was provoked in order to promote the book.

Now, a May 8 WND article by Michael Thompson informs us that  YouTube has restored the PPSimmons channel after "a firestorm of protest from the more than 21,000 subscribers to the PPSimmons YouTube Channel." Thompson includes this interesting tidbit:

“After the outrage created by the WND story, my ministry was bombarded with emails and requests for me to appear on radio programs to discuss what happened and the outpouring of support was just tremendous,” said Gallups.

“Well, one of the emails we got was from a fan of the PPSimmons YouTube Channel who knew someone that worked at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. That person investigated why our channel was taken down and found out that we were targeted in a mass ‘flagging’ campaign,” Gallups said.

All videos that are posted on YouTube can be rated by those who view it; an individual can click the “like” button (a “thumbs up” icon); or they can click the dislike button (a “thumbs down” icon); they can click an icon a “flag” to alert YouTube that the video they just viewed needs to be “flagged as inappropriate.”

The source inside Google, who must remain anonymous, told Gallups that a “coordinated flagging” campaign had occurred, which triggered the channel to be pulled.

That tells us how easy it is to provoke YouTube into suspending the account. That "coordinated flagging" campaign -- neither Gallups nor Thompson offer any evidence that anyone actually called for one -- could just as easily been conducted by Gallups and WND, with the explicit intent of exploting the controversy in order to promote Gallups' book "The Magic Man in the Sky." Thompson makes sure to prominently plug the book in the second paragraph of his article and, again, fails to disclose that it's published by WND.

If you think WND is not capable of such underhanded tactics to promote something, you haven't been observing WND.  In 2008, for example, WND was practically begging for Muslims to riot over its placing of an image of Muhammad on the cover of its 2008 book "Why We Left Islam." But even Muslim extremists don't care what WND does.

Underhanded tactics are practically WND's modus operandi. There's no reason not to assume that this is yet another one.

NewsBusters Hates It When Conservatives Get Fact-Checked
Topic: NewsBusters

We've documented how the Media Research Center's "Tell the Truth!" campaign really means it doesn't want the truth told about conservatives. We see that again in a May 9 NewsBusters post, in which Matthew Sheffield claims that fact-checking has a liberal bias.

No, really.

Sheffield rails against the Washington Post's fact-check of an Americans for Prosperity attacking the stimulus bill for allegedly giving more than $2 billion to "foreign companies," forwhich the Post gave the ad four Pinnochios. Sheffield claimed the Post fact-check was "a pro-Obama puff piece" with the goal of "protect[ing] the Obama legacy," adding:

The “fact-checking” label they slapped onto their article was itself a lie, but these days the liberal media uses the “fact-check” label as a fig leaf to cover its partisan biases and mislead readers and viewers into thinking they are getting an unbiased, factual investigation of the truthfulness of political ads.

But Sheffield's attack on the fact-check is deceptive. He insists that the claim of $2 billion in stimulus money going to "foreign companies" is a "fact," and that the Post "neither fact-checked the ad nor debunked it." Sheffield never directly quotes from the fact-check, which means he's hiding the fact that it did address the ad's claims, including that one:

First of all, we live in a globalized world. American companies make products overseas; foreign companies make products in the United States. Sometimes parts are made in a variety of places overseas and then assembled in the United States. That’s a fact of life, and these ads frequently confuse the difference, so that any hint of foreign involvement is depicted as a bad thing.

Both ads cite the same source — a Washington Times article from Sept. 9, 2010 — for the claim that “jobs were sent overseas” (American Future Fund, which displays a Chinese flag when those words are said) or that “$2.3 billion of taxpayer credits went overseas while millions of Americans can’t find a job” (Americans for Prosperity).

The article actually said that the tax credits “went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.”

That’s different from saying the money went overseas; it is talking about companies based overseas. Indeed, the original source for that information was American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, and its reporting was much more nuanced. Its reports noted, for instance, that foreign-owned firms already dominate the market for wind turbines. In some cases, the firms have U.S. facilities or U.S. subsidiaries, which then assemble the turbines with foreign-made parts. So most of the jobs are in the United States, not overseas.

Indeed, the Post went on to specifically address other claims in the ad, contrary to Sheffield's assertion:

Similar faulty reasoning extends to other claims in the ads. Americans for Prosperity says that “$1.2 billion [went] to a solar company building a plant in Mexico.” So what? The stimulus money went to a solar plant in California; the Mexican plant is simply another investment.

Another claim — “half a billion to a car company that created hundreds of jobs in Finland” — cites ABC News. That report focused on the fact that engineering and tooling work for a new electric vehicle — funded through the Energy Department — was being done in the United States, but that the vehicles are being assembled at a plant in Finland because the United States did not have right facilities. But ABC noted that Fisker will “ultimately produce 2,500 more jobs when Fisker builds a lower-priced version of the car in Delaware.”

Americans for Prosperity also asserts that the stimulus bill sent “tens of millions of dollars to build traffic lights in China.” The source is the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, but again, the article was much more nuanced. The traffic lights are for the United States market, but the article noted that there is a shortage of American-made light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, so parts are sourced overseas while the lights were assembled in the United States.

[...]

One can certainly raise questions about how stimulus funding was used and whether it was effective. But there is no excuse for these kinds of ads, which take facts out of context or simply invent them. These groups should be especially ashamed, given that these claims have been previously debunked, or, in the case of the erroneous ABC report, withdrawn.

Sheffield is simply lying about the Post fact-check. Yet he asserts that "the verdicts of the 'fact-checkers' must be fact-checked, too."

Presumably, Sheffield thinks he is the exception to that rule.

WND's Farah Laments He Can't 'String Up' Alinsky For Not Thinking Like He Does
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah uses his May 7 WorldNetDailiy column to argue that Satan was the first leftist, citing as evidence Saul Alinsky's "over-the-shoulder acknowledgment" to Lucifer as "the very first radical" in his book "Rules for Radicals." Farah then laments that he can't "string up" Alinsky:

Lucifer was the first radical, the first rebel, the first opponent of God’s order. And even a pedigreed lefty like Alinsky agreed they were kindred spirits.

It may be too late to string up Alinsky. It may be too late to string up the agitators of the French Revolution. It may be too late to string up Karl Marx or Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler (another lefty, by the way) or V.I. Lenin or Mao.

Farah doesn't identify any offense Alinsky committed that would require him to be "strung up." Organizing powerless people to work in their best interests? That's not a crime, let along anything akin to what Hitler or Stalin did.

Which means Farah wants to "string up" Alinsky for disagreeing with him. That's not a crime either, however much Farah might want it to be.

NEW ARTICLE: CNS Goes Bottom-Feeding for Readers
Topic: CNSNews.com
Under Terry Jeffrey, CNSNews.com is becoming a propaganda mill that attracts racist, misogynistic and homophobic readers to its comment threads. Read more >>

New Book By Ex-Posse Member Slams Birther Probe; Will WND Report?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joining John Woodman's birther debunking and Phil Berg's detonation of the idea that President Obama is using a fake Social Security, WorldNetDaily has another anti-birther story it must endeavor to ignore: A new e-book slamming the cold case posse "investigation" of Obama's "eligibility," written by a former member of the posse.

As Phoenix New Times details, Michelle Dallacroce co-wrote the book. She attacks the investigation has having been hijacked by ideologues, specifically stating that the Surprise Tea Party was using Arpaio as part of a publicity stunt in one press conference in order to gather signatures for a birther bill.

As we've documented, WND has worked with the Surprise Tea Party to manipulate Arpaio into doing his posse "investigation." WND's Jerome Corsi gave his birther presentation to the tea party group, which then gathered signatures on a petition to ask Arpaio to look into it.

Dallacroce also claims that Arpaio has granted Corsi "special deputy" status -- which means, according to New Times, that "a man claiming to be an 'investigative reporter' was made a 'special deputy,' given material from an investigation that hasn't been released to the public, and co-author a book with the lead investigator that's being sold for profit."

That also dovetails nicely with how WND has clearly been collaborating with Arpaio to release details of the "investigation" as Corsi pens fluff piece after fluff piece about the sheriff.

Phoenix New Times also notes that Arpaio refuses to answer the question of whether he granted Corsi "special deputy" status. Arpaio has also denounced the book, while also admitting he hasn't read it.

Given WND's penchant for ignoring or burying anything that contradicts its birther conspiracy narrative,  we can expect it to ignore the question of whether Corsi was made a "special deputy" for as long as humanly possible.

NewsBusters Quote AIM's Kincaid, Ignores That He Cited A Racist
Topic: NewsBusters

In a May 8 NewsBusters post, Matthew Sheffield quotes from an Accuracy in Media article by Cliff Kincaid noting a statement by Fox News that Jehmu Greene will not be fired as a Fox commentator for likening Tucker Carlson to a "bow-tying white boy."

Sheffield curiously made no mention of the fact that in his article, Kincaid cited white supremacist Jared Taylor to bolster his assertion that Greene was being "racist."

That's what's known as selective quoting. Way to exercise it to hide the racist nature of one of your fellow conservatives, Matt.

WND's Corsi Picks Up Breitbart Death Conspiracy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs, it seems, has had enough of the conspiracy suggesting that President Obama had a hand in killing a medical examiner in California. So he's passed the story on to someone with even fewer scruples and less ethical integrity than him: Jerome Corsi.

And so, we have a May 7 WND article in which  Corsi tries to make something out of even more nothing that Kovacs had: the apparent disappearance of "the only eyewitness to the sudden death of media innovator and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart." This is all so stupid that Breitbart's allies want nothing whatsoever to do with Corsi's obsession:

Filmmaker Steve Bannon, appointed executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network after Breitbart’s death, has insisted to WND that the media mogul died of natural causes and to suggest anything else is irresponsible.

“Breitbart had an enlarged heart,” Bannon told WND. “He had been hospitalized for the problem last year and told to lose weight that he did not lose.”

Because this is Corsi, however, the facts do not matter. He returns to hinting -- without any evidence whatsoever -- that Obama had something to do with some of this. He fails to mention, as Kovacs failed before him, that the medical examiner who died had nothing to do with Breitbart's autopsy.

Is this more of the "real news" Kovacs claimed to be so proud to report as a WND employee? Or has WND in full super PAC mode?

AIM's Kincaid Cites Racist to Attack Jehmu Greene
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Mychal Massie isn't the only person in the ConWeb to take offense at Jehmu Greene referring to Tucker Carlson as a “bow-tying white boy.” While Massie channels Bull Connor, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid finds his own racist to invoke.

In a May 7 AIM article, Kincaid brings in Jared Taylor of American Renaissance to weigh in on the subject:

“There is an obvious double standard according to which blacks needn’t worry about showing the kind of ‘racial sensitivity’ that is always required of whites,” says Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an organization that is often criticized by the Left for examining racial issues from the point of view of white self-interest. Taylor’s book, White Identity, argues that whites should not be afraid to exercise the same rights as other racial and groups.

Taylor told AIM that the double-standard that guides media coverage of racial controversies excuses racially-charged comments like those of Jehmu Greene as well as Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC. 

As we pointed out the last time Kincaid did this, the Anti-Defamation League calls American Renaissance a "white supremacist journal" that "promotes pseudoscientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies." Taylor himself has declared that we don't "need more Hispanics" and attacked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for not "pronouncing her name the way an American would."

Kincaid laughably insisted that "there is no evidence that American Renaissance by any objective standard is a racist organization" and that it merely deals with racial issues just like the Congressional Black Caucus -- a claim he walked back a few days later.

Despite his own embrace of a racist, Kincaid insists that Greene is the racist one here.

Meanwhile, if Kincaid was really concerned about racist remarks on Fox News, wouldn't he have complained by now about Brent Bozell calling Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead"?

WND's Massie Channels Bull Connor, Calls Black Woman A 'Negress'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A few years back, Mychal Massie used his WorldNetDaily column to accuse Sen. Harry Reid of sounding like "His Uncle Bull Connors [sic] and his Uncle Orval Faubus" for committing the offense of criticizing Clarence Thomas. So it's sadly funny to see that the person who has come to truly emulate the likes of Connor and Faubus is Massie himself.

In his May 7 column, Massie bizarrely refers to Jehmu Greene -- who recently got into trouble for calling Tucker Carlson a "bow-tying white boy" -- as a "Negress." That, of course, is an archaic term dating from the era of segregation. In other words, the kind of word a Connors or a Faubus would use.

Massie seems to delight in this sort of thing -- saying things that would be considered screechingly racist if he were not black. For instance, there's Massie's obsession with labeling Michelle Obama as "Buttzilla."  If a white man did that, he would be hounded out of the public square. But Massie does it with impunity, and WND continues to publish his increasingly hateful and bitter column.

But WND loves hate and bitterness when it's directed at the Obama, and Massie delivers that in spades.

WND doesn't care that Massie is using historically racist imagery to denigrate people. And, apparently, neither does Massie.

Noel Sheppard Forgets That Right-Wing Gay-Bashers, Not 'The Media,' Made Issue of Grenell
Topic: NewsBusters

The first thing you realize when reading the May 7 NewsBusters post about Noel Sheppard's appearance on CNN to discuss the resignation of Richard Grenell from Mitt Romney's campaign is that, despite the "NB Staff" byline, it's pretty clear it was written by Sheppard himself. The phrase "video follows with transcript and commentary" appears here as it does in most Sheppard posts, and the attention lavished on further elucidating on what Sheppard said could only have been done by someone with a personal stake in it. Like, you know, Noel Sheppard.

The second thing you notice is that Sheppard got it all wrong. He repeatedly blames "the Obama-loving media," including the host for his on-air discussion, CNN's Don Lemon, for making Grenell an issue as a distraction from reporting on the economy:

It’s the media that made it a gay rights issue because they’d rather talk about anything other than how lousy the economy is.

Consider that this discussion took place the day after the Labor Department released horrible numbers about job creations in April. There were other terrible economic stats that emerged in the prior week involving real estate, durable goods, consumer spending, as well as the very disappointing first quarter GDP estimate.

Instead of discussing those issues Saturday night – issues that every poll including the one Sheppard referred to show are front and center on the minds of the American people – Lemon chose to address a social issue that although important doesn’t appear on most national priority surveys.

This of course is what the media have been doing all year beginning with the contraception issue in January to the student loan issue last month and now Romney’s gay adviser.

Everything is important to the media EXCEPT the state of the economy.

Sheppard went on to insist, "It was Grenell's decision to resign. There’s absolutely no evidence that he did so due to pressure from either Romney or the campaign." Never mind the fact that nobody, including Sheppard, knows what actually went on behind the scenes.

But Sheppard conveniently ignores who made a big issue out of Grenell's sexuality in the first place -- right-wing activists like Bryan Fischer and Sheppard's MRC colleague Dan Gainor. If Grenell's sexuality wasn't a big deal as Sheppard claimed, why did Fischer and Gainor make it one? Sheppard might want to ask Gainor about that the next time they pass in the hallway at MRC headquarters.

And Sheppard's furious spinning on this tells us that all his ranting about how "the media" would rather talk about anything but the economy is a smokescreen for the fact that Sheppard would rather talk about anything but right-wing homophobia.

After all, Sheppard's employer does have a pretty obvious anti-gay agenda, which was further exemplified by Gainor's anti-Grenell activism. And despite Sheppard claiming that "the media" are seizing on this issue to "try to make Romney appear as a homophobe who's opposed to gay rights issues," it's obvious Romney was under pressure by anti-gay activists whose votes he needs to get rid of Grenell. Neither liberals nor "the media" were pressuring Romney.

This is the problem with the MRC, as we've detailed -- everything can, and must, be blamed on "liberal media bias," even when the facts show otherwise.