The promo email WorldNetDaily sent out for an Oct. 27 article was a conspiratorial affair:
The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly says: "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January".
But if Barack Obama loses his bid for a second term, he won't be vacating the executive mansion on Jan. 20. And he has precedent on his side.
Here's why ...
Despite WND's implication, Obama will not be defying authority by refusing to leave the White House if he loses. The actual article is much more tame on that front: It points out that due to the Martin Luther King holiday, inauguration day will fall on Jan. 21.
There is nothing nefarious going on -- but that doesn't keep WND from pretending that there is. And that's where the race-baiting comes in.
WND notes that "Obama, the first black president, was sworn in on the traditional Inaugural date of Jan. 20 – the day before the holiday," and then gets all paranoid, quickly moving from suggesting that District of Columbia officials will be violent to recounting purported threats of violence by "Obama supporters":
But will civility rule on Jan. 21?
Protests are already being planned. No matter who the victor is Nov. 6, local District of Columbia officials have already announced they will be out along the parade route demonstrating over Washington’s lack of budgetary and representative autonomy. Even Mayor Vince Gray will be among the protestors.
“While we don’t have concrete plans at this stage, we all very cognizant of the opportunity we have in front of us,” he said.
Meanwhile, the social media have been abuzz with threats by Obama supporters to riot if Romney wins.
[...]
Not content with threats to riot if Romney wins in November, some Obama supporters have announced on Twitter they intend to vandalize and burn down the White House if the GOP candidate is victorious, Twitchy reports.
“If Romney wins I’m blowing up the White House (sic),” tweeted “Davis.” The tweet was later deleted, but not before being captured by Twitchy.
“Romney gets on my nerves. If he wins I’m throwing black paint on the white house (sic),” added “Octoburr 30th.”
Twitter user “Panther Biddness” threatened to assault the White House with a contingent of Black Panthers, while another threatened to defecate on the White House lawn.
Several threatened to burn the White House down and one individual said he would shoot the presidential residence.
“[I]f romney wins, i will set the white house on fire and make it look like an accident (sic),” another grammatically-challenged individual wrote.
So who is going to be providing security for the Inauguration Jan. 21, 2013?
WND fails to provide any evidence -- links or screenshots -- of the actual existence of any of these alleged "social media" posts.
Presumably, this article filled with paranoia and hate will generate yet another column by WND editor Joseph Farah wondering why nobody pays attention to his website.
Richard Viguerie Does A Revisionist History of Evangelical Movement Topic: Newsmax
Richard Viguerie writes in his Oct. 26 Newsmax column:
As one surveys today’s political scene, it is impossible not to compare the effect of Obama’s gratuitous attack on freedom of conscience at Catholic institutions — through the Obamacare abortion coverage mandate — with Jimmy Carter’s attack on evangelical Christian schools during the late 1970s.
When Carter’s IRS administrator issued an order stating that any religious school founded after the 1952 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court school integration ruling was presumed to be created to circumvent the ruling, and integration, the response from religious educators of all faiths was swift opposition — but it set off what amounted to an atomic bomb in the middle of the hitherto apolitical evangelical community.
Jimmy Carter’s unprovoked attack on evangelicals brought millions of new conservative Christian voters into the Republican Party. It helped propel Ronald Reagan to victory in two national elections, led to the near-destruction of the Democrats as a national party in the Bible Belt and made Carter a one-term president.
Viguerie is misleading here, and not just because he has gotten the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision wrong (it was in 1954.) That tells us the rest of what he has written is bogus as well.
As it turns out, it is. Randall Balmer -- a professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University and contributing editor to Christianity Today -- points out that the supposed Carter administration action against "religious educators" Viguerieis, in fact, actions taken against Bob Jones University, which definitely was racist in that it banned interracial. Further, the IRS action against Bob Jones U. actually predated Carter's presidency. From Balmer's book "Thy Kingdom Come," discussing a presentation by right-wing activist Paul Weyrich:
Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.
Bob Jones University was one target of a broader attempt by the federal government to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had sought to penalize schools for failure to abide by antisegregation provisions. A court case in 1972, Green v. Connally, produced a ruling that any institution that practiced segregation was not, by definition, a charitable institution and, therefore, no longer qualified for tax-exempt standing.
The IRS sought to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in 1975 because the school's regulations forbade interracial dating; African Americans, in fact, had been denied admission altogether until 1971, and it took another four years before unmarried African Americans were allowed to enroll. The university filed suit to retain its tax-exempt status, although that suit would not reach the Supreme Court until 1983 (at which time, the Reagan administration argued in favor of Bob Jones University).
[...]
For his part, Weyrich saw the evangelical discontent over the Bob Jones case as the opening he was looking for to start a new conservative movement using evangelicals as foot soldiers. Although both the Green decision of 1972 and the IRS action against Bob Jones University in 1975 predated Jimmy Carter's presidency, Weyrich succeeded in blaming Carter for efforts to revoke the taxexempt status of segregated Christian schools. He recruited James Dobson and Jerry Falwell to the cause, the latter of whom complained, "In some states it's easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."
Viguerie doesn't explain why he apparently thinks it's permissible for Christian schools to discriminate on the basis of race -- which is what the implication of his touting of the founding of the evangelical movement ultimately means.
Flaherty Plays Dumb, Pretends His Race-Baiting Isn't Appreciated By 'White Nationalists' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is anybody at WorldNetDaily capable of mounting an intellectually and morally honest defense of themselves? It seems not.
First, it was Joel Gilbert. Now it's WND's resident race-baiter, Colin Flaherty, who can't be honest with, or about, his critics.
Flaherty's Oct. 26 WND column is headline "The psychos from Salon" -- a phrase he repeats in his opening paragraph -- so you know he has immediately ceded any moral high ground to any argument he makes.He goes onto claim that "Salon has ganged up with the Guardians of the Liberal Universe known as the Southern Poverty Law Center to say that I am peddling White Nationalism."
In fact, all Salon did is reprint an SPLC article about Flaherty, which notes that Flaherty went on a "white nationalist" radio show to promote his work and that "Several articles from his WND series have been picked up by American Renaissance, a white nationalist hate group that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites."
Flaherty insists he's not a racist nor a "white nationalist," insisting that "Their only evidence of me peddling 'White Nationalist propaganda' is me saying I was not a White Nationalist." But he doesn't explain his obsession with "black mob violence" or express any concern that his work has found an audience in the "white nationalist" circles he purports to abhor.
Flaherty also fails to mention that the SPLC has debunked his and WND's assertion that so-called "black mob violence" is being ignored by the media (the subtitle of Flaherty's self-published book):
As it happens, the “liberal media” has had much to say about the subject of violent “flash mobs” consisting of mostly black youths – particularly after several members of a such a group were arrested for attacking white people at 2011’s Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee.
The New York Times, which WND frequently holds up as a leading light of the “liberal media” conspiracy, has repeatedly covered (for instance, here and here) violent flash mobs consisting of black youths whose targets were primarily white people and their property.
So has The Root, a blog owned by the Washington Post that examines news “from an African-American perspective.” There, columnist Nsenga Burton wrote approvingly of a message delivered by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who is black and who said the mostly black teens who formed a series of mobs that wrought havoc on his city in 2010 and 2011 were “damaging the race.”
In June, We Are Respectable Negroes, a left-leaning blog that specializes in tackling sensitive racial issues, published two pieces on the issue of “black youth mob violence” (here and here) and the tricky politics of addressing it in writing. So, for that matter, did Hatewatch’s own Robert Steinback, in a blog post published a week after the attack in Milwaukee.
Flaherty concludes:
So here I stand. Willing to be judged by what I have written and said. Not who heard it. Not what it appears to mean.
What it is.
What I cannot figure out from Salon and SPLC is this: Are they unhappy with me for being wrong?
If so, show me. It should be simple.
Or are they mad at me for being right?
How about being mad at Flaherty for his strategic obtuseness in pretending that his fearmongering about "black mob violence" doesn't find an audience in "white nationalist" circles?
CNS Doesn't Understand Social Media Or Terrorism Topic: CNSNews.com
Media Research Center employee Eric Scheiner writes in an Oct. 29 CNSNews.com article:
The government doesn’t treat all social media the same.
Claims of responsibility for the September 11th attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi by Ansar al-Sharia on Twitter and Facebook are still being investigated by officials. However, an anti-Islamic video posted on You Tube was blamed for stirring unrest almost immediately.
The anti-Islamic YouTube video made in the U.S. was linked to stirring Mid-East violence and criticized by the Obama Administration multiple times in the days following the attack. Even as late as Sept. 25th, President Barack Obama condemned the video is his address to the United Nations saying, “a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.”
Evidently, Facebook claims are investigated at a slower pace. Even though e-mails sent from a State Department address on Sept. 11th say the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack on Facebook and Twitter, administration officials are still investigating.
[...]
Perhaps the makers of the anti-Islamic video that was posted on You Tube should have loaded it on to Facebook instead? Then perhaps, they wouldn’t have been so quickly blamed.
Apparently Scheiner knows nothing about social media or terrorism.
A YouTube video is self-evident -- either the video is there or it's not -- and the video was undeniably being used to inflame passions across the Middle East.
On the other hand, a claim of responsibility for a terrorist attack -- whether or not it was on Facebook -- cannot be taken at face value. There is a length history of groups falsely claiming credit for such attacks in order to enhance their own terrorist cred. Former CIA military analyst Tara Maller states:
Claims such as these need to be corroborated. Sometimes multiple groups claim responsibility after attacks; obviously claims of responsibility are often false. It's also possible that the attackers had ties to multiple groups, or had different motives. Expecting policymakers to publicly examine and go through every conflicting piece of intelligence collected in the hours before and after an attack would be unreasonable and potentially even damaging to national security.
Further, as Mother Jones' Adam Serwer points out, the email Scheiner reference stating that Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the Behghazi attack on Facebook turns out to have been wrong. The group expressed its approval of the incident, but didn't actually take credit for it, although the group did imply some of its members might have been involved.
Which is why Secretary of State Hilllary Clinton said -- as Scheiner himself notes -- that “Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be.”
If Scheiner can't tell the difference between Facebook and YouTube -- as it appears he can't through his remark that the anti-Muslim video should've been posted on Facebook to avoid blame -- what is he even doing on the Internet?
NEW ARTICLE: Nobody Believes WorldNetDaily Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah frets that his website is being ignored -- but WND has so beclowned itself with promoting birtherism and conspiracy theories that the American public has no choice but to dismiss what it reads there. Read more >>
Newsmax Fearmongering About Economy to Boost Romney Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Moneynews website has also been following the corporate line of working to get Mitt Romney elected.
An Oct. 23 article touted a claim by Robert Wiedemer that "Stocks could take a plunge if President Barack Obama is re-elected on Nov. 6; however, they could surge if GOP challenger Mitt Romney takes the White House."
You might recall that a couple years back, Newsmax built one of its money-making schemes around Wiedemer's book "Aftershock."
Moneynews is also fearmongering about the economy. An Oct. 26 article states that "A combination of rising taxes and cuts to government spending coupled with continued murkiness out of Europe could send the U.S. economy into a recession in the first quarter of next year, said Laurence Fink, CEO of asset management giant BlackRock.
WND Abets Joel Gilbert's Dishonest Defense Of His Anti-Obama Film Topic: WorldNetDaily
You already know that Joel Gilbert and WorldNetDaily can't defend Gilbert's anti-Obama film, "Dreams From My Real Father," in an honest manner.
An Oct. 26 WorldNetDaily article notes the "strong reaction from establishment media" to Gilbert's film, but it ignores the substantive criticisms lodged against it.
For instance:
Barack Obama’s official website issued a response to Gilbert’s film Tuesday, charging it “peddles ridiculous conspiracy theories about President Obama.”
Gilbert told WND the campaign website falsely claimed Ann Dunham, the president’s mother, was only 15 years old in the nude photos, “copying a liberal blogger’s factually flawed attack on the film.”
In fact, this is what the Obama campaign actually said about the film:
Gilbert makes disgusting and false claims about graphic photos he says depict the President’s mother; they do not. In fact, the photos were published before she ever moved to Hawaii when she would have been only 15 years old.
See the difference? The campaign never acknowledged the pictures Gilbert used are of Obama's mother; it points out that that the only way Gilbert's claim could be true is if Ann Dunham was 15 years old when the pictures were taken and had arrived in Hawaii two years earlier than she did. And if you've seen the pictures, it's clear that the woman is much older than 15.
The campaign also links to the Orlando Sentinel article featuring Loren Collins pointing out that the pictures were published in fetish magazies two years before Gilbert claimed Frank Marshall Davis purportedly took them.
Gilbert offers no evidence to back up his claim that Collins' claim is "factually flawed" -- or even that Collins is a "liberal blogger." In the Sentinel article, Collins describes himself as "a conservative libertarian who does not support Obama politically."
Indeed, it seems that at this point, given Collins' detailed debunking, the onus is on Gilbert to prove Collins wrong, not just whine that he's getting fact-checked.
WND also states:
Gilbert granted an extensive interview and provided a DVD to The Daily Beast at the request of reporter Michelle Goldberg.
“I was amazed that in her article she had the audacity to call the president’s mother a ‘whore,’” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said he presented to the reporter personal photos of Obama’s mother at Frank Marshall Davis’ house to establish the possibility of an intimate relationship.
“The photos are covered up with black bars to be respectful,” Gilbert said. “I respect the right of women to choose to pose for personal photos, I would not judge someone in a sexist way as Michelle Goldberg has done in the Daily Beast.”
In fact, Goldberg did not call Obama's mother a whore -- she was describing how Gilbert and otherswere describing her. From Goldberg's article:
After four years of invective, four years during which the right has called President Obama a traitor, a communist, a fraud, an affirmative-action case, a terrorist-sympathizer, and a tyrant, its shrillest voices have been reduced to the most primal insult of all. They are calling Obama’s mother a whore.
WND makes no effort to correct Gilbert's false depictions of what others have said about him. This makes WND a full partner in Gilbert's dishonesty.
Amid all this dishonesty, WND quotes Gilbert laughably talking journalists to task for ignoring his sleazy, dishonest film:
Gilbert noted that he challenged journalists in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on July 19 with a reading from the “The Journalist Creed,” a code of ethics for reporters.
The creed requires journalists to be unbiased public trustees, accurate and fair, and maintain a single standard of truth.
“Unfortunately, I have experienced first hand what we all knew – the media has collapsed as a public watchdog, and only propagates misinformation,” he said.
“How is this different than Pravda’s reporting in Soviet Russia?” he asked.
How indeed. With WND, Gilbert has his own personal Pravda.And he certainly doesn't expect WND to abide by "The Journalist's Creed," since doing so would further discredit him.
The headline on an Oct. 26 NewsBusters post recounting MRC chief Brent Bozell's latest appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show reads, "Bozell: After 'Delusional' Rantings, It's Pretty Clear Chris Matthews Is 'Bully' and 'Unmitigated Liar'."
WND's Klein Tries to Commit Identity Fraud As Anti-Obama Stunt Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is getting some serious Drudge attention for his Oct. 29 article claiming to have made a donation to President Obama's re-election campaign under the name "Osama bin Laden" using " a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address."
In addition to being late to the game -- RedState's Erick Erickson tried this same stunt a few weeks ago -- Klein, or the "WND staff" member he claims actually did the deed (perhaps Joshua Klein, who is credited with "additional research"), is admitting to identity fraud. Isn't that illegal?
Klein also exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of how credit card verification works. As Media Matters points out, the Obama campaign has explained that it has anti-fraud protections in place to stop fake or illegal donations and that just because a fraudulent donation "may initially appear to a donor to have been accepted," such a donation will soon be rejected.
So, what we have here is Klein (or his lackey) committing identity fraud for the purpose of trying (and failing) to embarrass Obama on the eve of an election and, it seems, to get a Drudge link. Klein can ultimately take heart in the fact that most people are too preoccupied with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy to pay much attention to his failed stunt.
UPDATE: Remember that a couple years ago, WND was so unconcerned about online security that anybody could -- and did -- pad WND's anti-Obama birther petition. And it has yet to release the names of those 500,000-plus signatories it claims signed it, or subject the petition's counting methods to any sort of outside auditing.
NewsBusters Falsely Smears Maddow As 'Baghdad Bob' to Defend Romney Topic: NewsBusters
An Oct. 29 NewsBusters post by Jack Coleman unleashes a torrent of hate against MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, under the headline "It's Official: Rachel Maddow Completes Conversion to Baghdad Bob":
"The Rachel Maddow Show" really shouldn't air weeknights on MSNBC. It is much better suited for Saturday mornings, you know, along with the other cartoons.
Maddow is so deep in the tank for the Obama administration at this point that she no longer cares how ludicrous she appears in her melodramatic inveighing against the staggering mendacity of one Willard Mitt Romney, a man who clearly haunts her fitful dreams and restless nights.
What did Maddow do that made Coleman so mad? She caught Romney in a lie -- his statement that "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China." In fact, as Maddow pointed out, Chrysler is adding workers at U.S. plants that make Jeeps, and that production in China would be to serve that market, not shift production out of the U.S. Romney apparently got a right-wing blog's distorted view of a Bloomberg story stating that Chrysler owner Fiat "may eventually make all of its models" in China. Coleman then writes:
Still unclear to me where Romney lied about this. Chrysler is majority-owned by Fiat and hence it is within Fiat's power to move Jeep production wherever it wants. Since the company "may eventually" make all its Jeeps in China, as Bloomberg reported, citing a company executive as its source, one can only conclude that Romney's lying about this, as far as Maddow is concerned, stems from him not actually reading a story about it as he claimed, but getting his information elsewhere.
But Coleman overlooks a statement in the Bloomberg story, made by Mike Manley, chief operating officer of Fiat and Chrysler in Asia: "Manley referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China."
Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
In other words, Maddow is correct to say that Fiat "wants to build Jeeps for China -- in China," and Romney is wrong.
David Kupelian's Obama-Hating Crystal Ball Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian begins his Oct. 22 column -- headlined "My crystal ball" -- by stating, "I’m not a prophet. In this world of wall-to-wall deception, it’s hard enough for a journalist to figure out what’s going on right now, let alone predict the future."
We'll agree Kupelian is not a prophet. We'll also argue that he's not a journalist -- these days, he's nothing but an anti-Obama propagandist.
And Kupelian does a fine job of delivering on the propaganda in his column, which argues that "should Obama be re-elected, some things are almost certain to happen, in my view."
Among them, he writes, include political violence:
If Obama in a second term accelerates his relentless assault on the American system, there may be some who conclude all is lost and that their only response is to commit violent acts in the misguided belief they are channeling America’s founding generation – refreshing “the tree of liberty,” as Jefferson said, with “the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Of course, such miserable actions will fail to achieve any good result, innocent people will suffer, the perpetrators will rightly be reviled (along with millions of others), and the net result will be a level of government repression unprecedented in the modern age.
Of course, Kupelian doesn't mention that the type of person who would be prone to anti-Obama violence is also likely an avid reader of the anti-Obama propangada at WND.
Another purported consequence is "Depression and mental illness":
One could jest that another four years of Obama is enough to give anyone a case of depression, but it’s no laughing matter. Presidential character is enormously important, especially during difficult times. While things were very tough during the Great Depression, America was basically unified and citizens respected and looked up to their president (first Hoover and then FDR). Today’s president, in contrast, is neither a unifying nor inspiring figure, but quite the opposite – a grossly unqualified, polarizing, ideologically driven and jarringly narcissistic politician widely perceived as dragging the nation downward.
Let’s remember that a president of the United States is a lot more than chief executive of a gigantic “corporation” and commander in chief of the armed forces. He is also, in a very real sense, the “father of the country” during his time in office. Just as fathers exert an immeasurable, almost cosmic, influence on the well-being of their family, so is the national family similarly influenced by its presidential “father.” During Reagan’s presidency, for example, more Americans became pro-life, because he was pro-life; they became confident, because he was confident; and they became more hopeful (“It’s Morning in America”), because he was hopeful. And it was all real: Unlike Obama’s “hope” campaign slogan, Reagan exuded genuine hope and confidence – rooted in a deep understanding of, and love for, America and an enlightened determination to enact policies that would lead to greater freedom, prosperity and security.
The influence of a good presidential “father of the country” is like sunshine; though far away, it warms everybody with its life-giving rays. Likewise, a troubling father figure like Obama – who himself has never matured, but rather is a profoundly broken person and has developed into a ruthless and deceitful Chicago politician with a winsome persona – exerts a malignant “radiant” effect on the American mind and culture. Thus, while ours is already a nation of drug-takers, with approximately one in 10 adults currently taking dangerous anti-depressant drugs, I believe psychiatric drug dependency – and much more to the point, the mental-emotional conditions that lead to their use – will increase under a second Obama term. He’s one stress Americans really don’t need.
Recall that Kupelian baselessly blamed antidepressants for Andrea Yates killing her five children, ignoring that she and her husband were in thrall to an ultra-fundamentalist Christian preacher who believed that women should be subsurvient to men and who berated her Catholic upbringing.
This would apparently be followed by "de facto secession":
By de facto, I mean that actual, legal secession will not happen. We fought the Civil War over this issue and the secessionists lost, costing over 600,000 lives (and recent authoritative research shows the number of Civil War dead was probably closer to 750,000). Secession from the union is extremely unlikely simply because the national government won’t allow it.
However, the Internet plays a crucial role here. Just as commerce, communications, recreation, education, the news and information media and many other areas of life have been revolutionized by the Internet, the same amazing technology – which allows unfettered free communication with basically anyone on earth, without middlemen or gatekeepers – will enable society to re-align over new lines of force: common values. In other words, people of like mind, who believe in traditional American constitutional values, will be able to find each other over the Internet – and if they wish, move to a common geographic location. They can pick a state – Texas, South Carolina, North Dakota, wherever – and do what the Mormons did in moving en masse to Utah. Utah didn’t secede, but the massive influence of the LDS church there sure made it a great state to live in if you’re a Mormon.
Kupelian doesn't mention that WND has promoted actual efforts at secession.
What Kupelian is peddling here is not "crystal ball" thinking but moreanti-Obamaparanoia.
CNS Sneers That Obama Returning To Washington To Monitor Storm Is "Optics" Topic: CNSNews.com
For part of today, the front page of CNSNews.com carried a sneering banner at the top of the page reading: "Optics: Obama, in Fla. to campaign, suddenly cancels, now returning to D.C. to storm-watch."
CNS made no mention of the "optics" of Mitt Romney trying to take political advantage of Hurricane Sandy by having his campaign volunteers using a Romney campaign bus to collect relief supplies.
Lying Preacher Bradlee Dean Strikes Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bradlee Dean just can't stop himself from lying.
While ranting against President Obama's alleged promotion of "abortion and radical Islam, both of which are destructive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Dean declares in his Oct. 25 WorldNetDaily column that "Decades of medical evidence have revealed that abortion carries significant psychological risks; including increased risks of depression, anxiety and suicide."
In fact, according to the American Psychological Association, "the prevalence of mental health problems observed among women in the United States who had a single, legal, first-trimester abortion for non- therapeutic reasons was consistent with normative rates of comparable mental health problems in the general population of women in the United States." While "some women do experience sadness, grief, and feelings of loss following termination of a pregnancy, and some experience clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety," the APA concluded that there is "no evidence sufficient to support the claim that an observed association between abortion history and mental health was caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors."
Dean then writes another lie-filled paragraph, as he's prone to do:
Obama and his criminal syndicates have advocated for the murder of children in the womb 241 times since he took office. This “grown-up fetus” even went so far as to block the protection of a child born alive during an abortion to be sure the child is snuffed out. He has declared a “war on women” by attempting to force all Americans to fund Planned Parenthood. Obama also wants to force the church in America to supply birth control for women as well, because he wants to promote the church’s doctrine of a moral, healthy lifestyle for women … right?
Dean provides no evidence for his "241 times" claim; it appears to be some sort of internet meme promoted by anti-abortion website LifeNews, whose list really desperately stretches things to inflate numbers. For instance, the appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is on this list, as is funding for Planned Parenthood even though no federal money pays for abortion beyond Hyde Amendment restrictions.
Dean's claim that Obama tried to "block the protection of a child born alive during an abortion to be sure the child is snuffed out" is false, and he falsely implies Obama did this while president. In fact, Obama took those purported actions as an Illinois state legislator, and as we've pointed out, Illinois already had a law requiring medical care for a viable fetus that survived an abortion. What Dean is referring to are efforts in 2001, 2002, and 2003 to expand that law with a "born alive" clause requiring that any fetus that survived an abortion, even ones that could not survive outside the womb, receive medical care. Obama has said he opposed those bills because the law would likely have been struck down in the courts for giving legal status to fetuses, a requirement that a second doctor be present at abortions, and their lack of a "neutrality clause" to make sure the bill would not affect current abortion laws.
Dean's claim that "Obama also wants to force the church in America to supply birth control for women" is also false. Churches are exempt from the mandate to cover birth control under the health care reform law, though religious-affiliated organizations are not. And even then, religious organizations who object to that mandate many have their insurance companies pay for the contraceptive coverage.
Dean also claims:
Barack Hussein Obama gave $1.5 billion to Muslim-led Egypt in foreign aid, shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood declared war on the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated to the governmental implementation of Shariah law, which wages the worst war on women known to the world.
PolitiFact has found that claim to be misleading: "In fact, the aid package was for the nation of Egypt, not the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood may control the largest bloc of seats in parliament, but it's not even a majority. Not only that, the country itself continues, for now at least, to be controlled by the military. And more than 80 percent of the aid package is military aid."
Doesn't the Bible warn about deceivers like Dean? And how does Dean square his record of filth and lies with the God he purports to be preaching on behalf of?
MRC Attacks Nat Geo Over Seal Team Six Doc, Won't Say Who Owns Channel Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center issued an Oct. 26 press release demanding that the National Geographic Channel "delay the airing of 'SEAL Team Six: the Raid on Osama bin Laden' until after Election Day." According to the MRC, it was produced by The Weinstein Company, "co-chaired by Harvey Weinstein, a major donor to the Democratic Party and long-time fundraiser for Barack Obama" and because it allegedly has "recut to enhance Obama’s role at the request of Weinstein."
The release also quotes MRC chief Brent Bozell claiming, "We don’t want to pass judgement on the content, because we haven’t watched the film." When has that ever stopped the MRC before?
Nowhere in the press release, though, is it mention who the majority owner of the National Geographic Channel is: none other than News Corp., also the owner of the MRC-friendly Fox News Channel.
An Oct. 24 MRC item by Matt Hadro on Bozell's appearance on CNN to register his protest of the scheduled program also fails to mention that Nat Geo is owned by News Corp.
It's not as if the MRC is shy about going after the corporate owners of broadcast entites -- remember, earlier this year Bozell was trying to get Congress to harrass Comcast, owner of NBC, because of some things on NBC he didn't like.
Then again, Bozell appears every week on Fox News as part of Sean Hannity's show, and he certainly doesn't want to jeopardize that gig by pointing out how Fox is linked to a sister network he's criticizing.
WND Selectively Notices Criticism Of Gilbert's Discredited Film Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 25 WorldNetDaily article is headlined "Media finally notice 'anti-Obama' film 'Dreams.'" But WND is being very selective about noticing the media that has "noticed" the film.
The article focuses on a Denver TV station that called Joel Gilbert's "Dreams From My Real Father" an "anti-Obama film full of false claims." OF course, it is, but WND will never admit that; in this case, WND complains that the reporter "presents no evidence to back his assertions."
Unmentioned by WND was the fact that the Orlando Sentinel published an article about Gilbert's movie that backs up its claim that the film is fraudulent.
Whereas WND complained that the Denver TV report "made no mention of Davis’s relationship with Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, and the photographic evidence that she posed nude for him about the time she became pregnant," the Orlando Sentinel article does, and it features Loren Collins -- who has extensively debunked the film -- pointing out that the photos Gilbert claims are of Obama "were actually published in a magazine two years before Dunham arrived in Hawaii."
And thus, WND continues its pattern of ignoring any legitimate, documented criticism of Gilbert's flim, just as it has ignored any documented debunking of birther conspiracy theories.
UPDATE: WND's article is even more dishonest than we first thought. Contrary to WND's assertion that the Denver TV station's report "presents no evidence to back his assertions," an article accompanying the video on the station's website provides that evidence -- quoting not only Collins but Obama biographer David Maraniss refuting Gilbert's claims. WND made no mention of this article.
The article also notes this: "Gilbert would not agree to an interview regarding his film unless 9News agreed not to use clips from his film. 9News did not agree to those parameters for an interview." That seems to fit with Gilbert forcing Collins to remove a excerpt of Gilbert's video for his own video debunking Gilbert.
Flaherty's Oct. 26 WND 
Bradlee Dean just can't stop himself from lying.
