WorldNetDaily's relentless and flawed promotion of the apocalyptic work "The Harbinger" continues with a June 15 article claiming that a message President Obama wrote at the site of the Freedom Center being built at the site of Ground Zero is the latest instance of "American leaders fulfilling an ancient biblical prophecy and a curse of judgment on the U.S."
Richard Bartholomew takes a closer look at the book's author, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. Turns out he's a messianic Jew who's misusing a Bible verse.
Matthew Sheffield devotes an entire June 21 NewsBusters post to ranting that the group Common Cause is described as a "nonpartisan" group when it is actually a "liberal activist organization" and "a liberal astroturf group masquerading as a non-partisan government watchdog."
What about conservative groups that hide behind a "nonpartisan" description? Sheffield doesn't care.
Indeed, just a couple weeks earlier, in a May 30 post, Sheffield uncritically repeated a description of the Tax Foundation as a "nonpartisan research group" in regurgitating its claim that "millions of Americans are leaving high-tax areas like New York or California in favor of lower-tax jurisdictions like Texas or Florida." In fact, the Tax Foundation has been described as having a "pro-business leaning," and U.S. News & World Report called it a "conservative-leaning group."
There was no ranting from Sheffield about the Tax Foundation being desribed as "nonpartisan" when it's actually conservative.
That's not the only example of Sheffield's hypocrisy in recent days. He used another June 21 post to rail against "the far left's recent campaign to silence those who dared to question" that "Freedom of speech is one of the core values of the American constitutional system," including "outright attempts to use government force to compel groups of people to be silent before elections."
Sheffield made no mention of the censorship efforts of the person who operates the blog his post is published on: Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell. As we've detailed, Bozell demanded that MSNBC fire hosts who said things he didn't like, and even tried to encourage Congress to interfere with a business deal involving NBC's corporate parent, Comcast, because NBC did something he didn't like -- effectively insisting that Congress use government force to intimidate a private business in service of his personal vendetta against NBC.
If Sheffield is so concerned about "censorship," he should start with his own side. Since he obviously won't, he's nothing but a coward and a hypocrite.
WND's Farah: Obama Now An 'Accessory to Murder' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his June 20 WorldNetDaily column:
When Barack Obama claimed executive privilege today in an effort to protect Attorney General Eric Holder from a contempt-of-Congress charge in the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, he may have inadvertently exposed himself as an accessory to murder.
[...]
Obama cannot claim executive privilege for any member of his administration. He can only do so for himself and his inner circle of advisers, and should never do so unless it’s a matter of national security.
What Obama did, in apparent desperation, was to expose his own personal complicity in this scandal, making him, quite possibly, an accessory to murder.
Can you imagine how big this scandal is and how far it reaches for the administration to take such a gamble?
[...]
Obama is going down for this – whether it’s in the election in November or before. Democrats should start deciding now if they want to go down with him or stand up for principle as many Republicans did during the darkest days of Watergate.
Farah has already accused Obama of deicide, so this is actually a step down for him. Besides, as Media Matters points out, Farah is misreading Obama's declaration of executive privilege.
So deranged Obama-hater Farah is not just hyperbolic, he's wrong. Anyone surprised?
MRC: Critics Who Like HBO's 'Girls' Are 'Left-Wing' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has decided: Any TV critic who likes the HBO show "Girls" is, by definition, "liberal."
In a June 19 MRC Culture & Media Institute article headlined "Liberal Critics Still Consider ‘Girls’ Irresistible," Ryan Robertson complains that critics "love" the show, which in its final episode contained "frank discussions about STD’s, abortion references, frequent drug use, and brutish behavior – basically what audiences have come to expect from premium cable networks." He went on to grouse that "numerous left-wing columnists will continue to praise the show for its ‘brutal honesty’ and ‘gritty realism.’"
Robertson did not explain how anyone can be declared a "liberal" or "left-wing" based on the sole metric of liking one specific TV show.
Yet one of the critics he singlees out for loving the show is quoted as saying "there were some parts … that I absolutely loved, but it didn’t exactly leave me wanting more." He further undermined his own premise later in the article by noting that "a couple of writers were actually critical of 'Girls.'"
WND Fully Plays Race Card, Repeatedly Depicts Blacks As Violent Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last month, WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs took a dip in the race-baiting pool by highlighting a story in which it claimed that "100 blacks beat white couple" (later changed to "many blacks" after it couldn't come up with evidence that "100 blacks" partcipated), then did the occasional backpedal after it became clear the attack wasn't as racially motivated as originally claimed. It then followed that up with a scary-black-people story headlined "Wave of black mobs brutalizing whites," though the evidence she provided was somewhat less than a "wave."
WND has since decided that playing the race card suits it -- and, apparently, likes the class of readers such race-baiting attracts to its website -- because it's been ramping up its scary-black-people article output with the help of a freelancer named Colin Flaherty, a "talk-show host" and "online ad agency owner" who just happens to have penned a self-published book titled "White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How The Media Ignore It."
Under the headline "Call for crackdown on black-on-white terror," a May 18 article by Flaherty highlighted a state lawmaker in Maryland who claims to be "concerned about 'black youths' who are 'terrorizing' Baltimore’s upscale Inner Harbor," which the legislator insists is a "hard truth." Flaherty followed that up with another article the same day touting how the lawmaker "wants the governor to send in state troopers to make the area safe."
Flaherty returned on June 6 to fearmonger about "blacks marauding" in Minneapolis:
Minneapolis police want you to know race has nothing to do with an epidemic of violent crime in their downtown.
Same for crime reporter Matt McKinney: The recent increase in what he calls “flash mob” violence and mayhem is “random” and “no other real pattern emerges” and the “motivation for the attack remains unclear.”
But more and more people in Minneapolis are connecting the violence with groups of blacks marauding through the downtown; beating, hurting, destroying and stealing. Sometimes right in front of police.
A lot of it on YouTube. With lots of witnesses – 15 to 20 times over the last year.
The attacks are part of a nationwide pattern of hundreds of episodes of unreported racial violence and lawlessness found in more than 50 cities over the last three years.
On June 17, Flaherty ranted about "one of the worst crimes scenes in the history of downtown Indianapolis" caused by "thousands of blacks who roamed the streets of downtown in the aftermath of an Indianapolis Black Expo marred by fighting, vandalizing, assaulting and even shooting. Lots of shooting."
And on June 20, under the headline "Chicago's unreported race war," Flaherty wrote:
City officials and the media might be the only two places left where people still deny Chicago is under assault from more than 50 episodes of black mobs attacking, beating, robbing and vandalizing over the last three years in and around downtown. Many of them are on display at YouTube.
Some call it the “Chicago Intifada.”
Over just the last two weeks, black mobs are under investigation in at least five new violent incidents in downtown Chicago.
Clearly, if you white people out there need confirmation for your lizard brain that all blacks are scary and out to kill you, Colin Flaherty and WND are happy to oblige.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' War on John Holdren Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey and his crew advance its anti-Obama agenda by scouring decades-old textbooks for cherry-picked quotes it can take out of context to smear the Obama administration adviser -- and even bizarrely bashing him for owning a car. Read more >>
NewsBusters Dismisses Right-Wing Group's Offensive Tweet As 'Mistaken' Topic: NewsBusters
The resignation of Commerce Secretary John Bryson over health issues raised by a seizure that caused car accidents reminds us that we forgot to highlight how NewsBusters tried to cover for an offensive tweet about Bryson made by a right-wing group.
MRC researcher Kyle Drennen headlined his June 12 NewsBusters post "NBC, Arbiter of Civility? 'Today' Correspondent Slams Conservative Group for Mistaken Tweet." But Drennen offers no evidence that the tweet -- published on the Twitter account of Karl Rove-founded right-wing super PAC American Crossroads -- was mistaken. In fact, one can argue that typing out the tweet and hitting the "Publish" button is the exact opposite of "mistaken."
Drennen also avoids discussing the content of the American Crossroads tweet, leaving it only in the transcript at the end of the article, but nevertheless insisted that it was a "joking" tweet. Here's the tweet, which falsely accused Bryson of being drunk: "How does @commerce sec have three car crashes in five minutes and alcohol not be involved? #Skills." Where's the joke? Drennen doesn't explain.
Drennen also baselessly suggested that the offensive tweet wasn't live for very long; in fact, Politico reported that it was up for "a few hours" before it was deleted and followed by an apology from American Crossroads.
Of course, nobody at the MRC was offended when Rush Limbaugh spent three days hurling misogynistic smears at Sandra Fluke -- in fact, Drennen was more offended that Fluke was allowed to appear on TV to talk about Limbaugh's tirade. Drennen's outrage that NBC was portraing itself as an "arbiter of civility" when he couldn't be moved to say a word of criticism over Limbaugh is doubly hypocritical.
Given that, it's no surprise that Drennen would work so hard to spin away the offensive nature of the American Crossroads tweet. Making false accusations is nothing more than a "joke" to him.
A June 20 WorldNetDaily article reports that Hilmar von Campe, "the former Hitler Youth who came to understand that totalitarian systems are based on lies, and they can be defeated only with the truth," has died.
As we've detailed, von Campe used his WND columns to spew his hatred of President Obama by spreading falsehoods and making repeated allusions to Hitler. His words echoed the odious Nazi-esque Big Lie tactics he claimed to distance himself from.
Here's hoping that von Campe has, in death, been able to achieve the peace he apparently was not able to find while alive.
Tim Graham has been the Media Research Center's chief promulgator of taking writer Charles Pierce's 2003 profile of Ted Kennedy out of context by falsely insisting that he was praising Kennedy with a reference to Mary Jo Kopechne -- in fact, it was intended as "a tough, but fair, shot."
Graham keeps up the falsehood in a June 20 NewsBusters post, in which the mere mention of Pierce by a Washington Post blogger (who was quoting Pierce dismissing as "clown analysis" an attempt to co-opt baseball phenom Bryce Harper as a conservative hero) was enough to send Graham into a paroxysm of rage:
If you want to consult someone in the act of some "fundamentally dehumanizing dragooning," please consult Charles Pierce in the act of lionizing Ted Kennedy. May we recall Pierce's rhetorical atrocity about the woman that drowned at Chappaquiddick as Kennedy swam away? "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age...." That, Mr. Steinberg, isn't "clown analysis." It's mouth-breathing political idolatry.
Obama-Hater And Birther Conspiracist Erik Rush Joins 'Pink Pagoda' Group Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush recently announced that he was named "Vice President of Administration and Strategic Alliances" for Pink Pagoda Girls USA, a group that claims to be "involved in rescuing baby girls in the People’s Republic of China from infanticide as a result of that nation’s 'one child per family' policy." (As it jiust so happens, WND recently published a book on the subject by Pink Pagoda founder Jim Garrow.)
But is an extremist conspiracist like Rush really a good fit for such a prominent position?
We've detailed how Rush is a virulent, vicious Obama-hater, even likening the president to a prison rapist. Rush is also a birther, promoting the fringe-of-the-fringe conspiracy theory that Obama's real father is Malcolm X.
We wonder if Garrow sufficiently vetted Rush before hiring him. It's hard to imagine someone like Rush -- who has such rage against a sitting president and who embraces such fringe conspiracies -- rising to the leadership of any organization that strives to be something other than fringe.
We're not questioning the cause of Pink Pagoda Girls, only its wisdom in hiring Rush. As the group's founder and only other apparent employee, perhaps Garrow can explain why he made this questionable hire.
Newsmax Slobbers All Over Marco Rubio Topic: Newsmax
Even for someone with a documentedhistory of fawning over his favorite conservatives (and Donald Trump), Ronald Kessler's obsequiousness toward Marco Rubio is pretty embarassing.
In a June 18 Newsmax interview of Rubio to promote his new autobiography, Kessler introduces himself to Rubio with this incredible bit of sucking up: "Congratulations on your book. It's really remarkable. It's riveting, it's detailed, it's candid and inspiring. I don't know how you did it. It's really a great achievement."
Wow.
Kessler keeps up his Rubio-fluffing in his June 19 column:
What people hate most about politicians is how phony many of them can be. Sen. Marco Rubio’s new book “An American Son: My Story” shows he is anything but.
[...]
Rarely do we see such candor and detail in any autobiography, let alone one written by a politician. At the same time, Rubio presents an uplifting and inspiring story about an immigrant’s son who has lived the American dream.
Kessler's not the only one at Newsmax who's slobbering over Rubio. Wayne Allyn Root devoted his June 19 column to lobbying Mitt Romney to pick Rubio as his running mate:
Mitt Romney has a shot to lock down the presidency this week. Thursday to be precise. The key is two words: Marco Rubio. Why? Because like it or not, this presidential race comes down to the Latino vote.
Politics is a chess game. Romney can look into Obama's eyes and say "CHECKMATE" on Thursday.
[...]
Mitt Romney must walk onto that same stage and upstage Obama. This is the place and time for the announcement of the year. Mitt Romney coolly steps up to the microphone and says, “It’s time for a Latino to join a presidential ticket.
"It’s time for the fastest growing group in America to have a seat at the table of power. To have a voice in the White House. Today — right here — right now.
"I’m going to change the game — forever. Today you get your seat at the table. Today we change American politics — forever. Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce my pice presidential running mate: United States Sen. Marco Rubio."
Marco walks out to embrace Mitt Romney while the crowd stands, screams, and cheers! Tears stream down cheeks.
CHECKMATE.
Obama is out of the news. Obama has been upstaged in front of one of his most important groups of supporters. The headlines that night and the next day ignore Obama. Romney and Rubio are the hot news in the media. The game is changed. And no matter what Obama says that day — or any other day to Latinos — Marco Rubio is forever more the elephant in the room (excuse the pun).
Is there a competition at Newsmax to see to can fawn the most over Rubio? It seems so.
WND's Massie Doesn't Know What 'Amnesty' Means Topic: WorldNetDaily
Unhinged Obama-hater Mychal Massie rants in his June 18 WorldNetDaily column:
Forget for the moment Obama bypassed Congress to arbitrarily grant amnesty to illegal aliens vis-a-vis what amounts to the Dream Act. Forget for the moment that for years he has said that without congressional approval he didn’t have the authority to do precisely what he did today. Forget for the moment that college students and high school seniors have just graduated into an employment market that has lost millions of jobs. Forget for the moment that unemployment amongst legal American citizens is 10.4 percent, and forget that as legal Americans are searching for jobs and students are looking for summer employment, Obama has granted amnesty to 800,000 illegal aliens up to 30 years of age who are now cleared to compete for jobs that millions of citizens desperately need. And forget for the moment that in arbitrarily granting amnesty to these illegal aliens, he micturated on the Constitution of the United States.
Obama did not "grant amnesty" to anyone -- he permitted prosecutorial discretion in delaying legal action against cewrtain undocumented immigrants. "Amnesty" has a specific definition, and this is not it.
Is Massie -- who loves to beat people over the head with his thesaurus -- really so ignorant of the correct definition of the word? Or is he simply so unhinged in his hatred of Obama that facts simply don't matter to him?
NewsBusters Decrees: Rich People on TV Cannot Complain About Romney's Wealth Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters seems to have invented a new rule: It's not permissible for media personalities with large contracts to talk about the wealth of Mitt Romney.
Noel Sheppard whined in a June 19 post that MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell "mocked Ann Romney for having the nerve to combat her multiple sclerosis by riding horses," going on to complain that O'Donnell makes too much money for him to engage in such commentary:
Furthermore, who is O'Donnell to ridicule anyone for his or her wealth? According to Celebrity Net Worth, his estate is valued at $8 million.
That makes him just another rich liberal castigating Romney for his wealth.
Sheppard doesn't explain why it's suddenly forbidden for people over a certain income level to comment on Romney's wealth, nor did he establish the maximum income one can make and still comment on Romney's wealth.
The same day, Randy Hall complained that "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart " called Romney a "multi, multi,multi, multi-millionaire" "while carefully avoiding the fact that he too is considered to be very wealthy." Hall continued to regurgitate his new right-wing marching orders:
But in an article in the Daily Caller, reporter Sandy Nelson indicated that “Stewart's own income level brings him and his wife Tracey to approximately $41,000 a day,” a number derived from the comedian's annual salary of $15 million and an estimation of his net worth at $80 million.
While $80 million doesn’t yet put Stewart into the same wealth bracket as Romney, he is already on pace to be richer than the former Massachusetts governor when he reaches his age.
These figures show that Stewart makes more than 300 times the median American salary, a fact you'll never hear on The Daily Show.
[...]
In 2005, Stewart bought a two-story Manhattan penthouse for $5.8 million and then bought two adjacent lakefront mansions in Red Bank, New Jersey, during 2009 and 2010.
Like Sheppard, Hall did not state the maximum income one can make and still be permitted to commment on Romney's wealth.
Further, even the Daily Caller article that Hall was regurgitating concedes that Stewart's wealth is not in "the same wealth bracket as Romney." And in contrast to Stewart's income coming mostly from working for a living by hosting "The Daily Show," most of Romney's income the past two years came from capital gains, not from working at a job.
Joseph Farah's Sad Little Publicity Stunt Topic: WorldNetDaily
So it's come to this: Joseph Farah arguing with a fake Barack Obama.
No, really. And he's proud of it. From a June 16 WorldNetDaily article:
Have you ever wished you could corner Barack Obama and ask him the tough questions the mainstream media refuses to ask – from “Fast & Furious” to his hidden records to his real agenda for America?
At BookExpo America in New York City last week, Joseph Farah, editor and CEO of WND, got the opportunity of a lifetime: a one-on-one interview with “Barack Obama.”
OK, it wasn’t really the current occupant of the Oval Office, but Obama impersonator Kevin Michael, also known as “FauxBama.”
Yet the answers Farah received sounded remarkably like words right from the sitting president’s lips.
They weren't, of course. But given that Farah cares nothing about the truth, he may have actually thought he was talking to the real Obama.
To judge this tree by its toxic fruit, since President Obama is ruling like a megalomaniac who puts himself above the law, can any American ever again trust Barack Obama as president?
It was our mistake in 2008. We elected as America's chief executive someone with zero executive experience.
We picked a commander in chief with zero military experience.
And, in a time of terrorism, we elected someone to safeguard America's security an ideological radical who — because of his past associations with terrorists such as Bill Ayers — would probably not qualify for a security clearance to see America's classified information.
Voting for President Obama was a dangerous mistake that no one should make again in 2012.
Barack Obama was my college classmate at Columbia University, class of '83. For 3 1/2 years I have shouted from highest rooftops that Obama has a purposeful plan.
His plan is to damage and weaken the private sector, dramatically increase the number of government employees, strengthen unions, dramatically increase dependence on entitlements, and dramatically increase taxes on the private sector — thereby bringing down the U.S. economy and forcing Americans to their knees to beg big government (and big unions) to save them.
[...]
It took the socialists of Europe 50 years to accomplish what Obama did in 3 1/2 years. Congratulations, Mr. President. You are the biggest loser.