NEW ARTICLE: Motley, Fool
Topic: NewsBusters
Former Media Research Center employee Seton Motley returns as a NewsBusters blogger -- and so do his cheap shots and factual inaccuracies. Read more >>

WND Still Pretending It Played A Role In HSBC Scandal
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For months, WorldNetDaily has been touting John Cruz as the main whistleblower on HSBC's money-laundering schemes, even though that's not the case. With the news that HSBC is paying a record $1.9 billion in fines to settle the case with U.S. authorities, WND and Cruz are still eager to take credit for something they didn't really play a role in.

A Dec. 11 WND article by Art Moore is filled with Cruz's (and, by extension, WND's) self-aggrandizement:

Cruz was terminated in 2010 by HSBC after he provided evidence, including bank documents, that the identities of clients were being used to launder funds.

“I gave them tape recordings of employees talking about all of the fraud they are doing,” Cruz said. “To cover it up, they needed to get rid of me.”

As WND reported, Cruz turned over his evidence to federal authorities in 2009 but was not contacted until the allegations were first exposed by WND earlier this year.

Cruz met with special agents with the IRS criminal division in April and handed over a computer disc with copies of his internal documents. The agents, according to Cruz, were overwhelmed with the volume and detail of the information, calling it “mind-boggling.”

He said he doesn’t know the degree to which his evidence played a role in the investigation but believes it was a factor in the size of the fine.

“When I was first terminated, they were talking $800 million to $1 billion,” he said “I don’t think the fine would be anywhere near what it is right now if I had done nothing.”

Actually, it's unclear what role, if any, Cruz played in the federal case against HSBC. Reuters reports that the investigation can be traced back to 2008, when "the federal prosecutor in Wheeling, West Virginia, began investigating allegations that a local doctor used the bank to launder money from Medicare fraud." A Senate subcommittee report on HSBC issued in July makes no mention of Cruz.

Moore also touts how there was "fallout for WND" from the story in the form of how "senior reporter Jerome Corsi was fired by the New York City investment firm he had worked with for two years as a senior managing director, Gilford Securities." But as we noted, Corsi was apparently required to put disclaimers on his WND work distancing it from Gilford while he worked for both places, so it seems they weren't exactly proud to be employing him, and it also speaks to the cheapness of WND editor Joseph Farah that he apparently was paying his "senior reporter" so little that he had to take another job.

Yes, Noel Sheppard Is Using 'OH SNAP' In A Headline
Topic: NewsBusters

Is Noel Sheppard a sassy black woman in disguise? Or has he watched too many bad sitcoms?

We're not sure, but the factually challenged NewsBusters associate editor highlights an insult of Nobel-winning economist in a Dec. 9 post under the headline "OH SNAP."

Perhaps we can look on the bright side: At least he didn't use "schools" or "smacks down."

WND Adds AAPS-Linked Doctor As Columnist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has added as a new columnist Dr. Lee Hieb, whose bio describes her as "an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in spinal surgery" and also "past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a free market medical organization."

Actually, as we've detailed, AAPS is a right-wing group that opposes health care reform and mandatory vaccination, doesn't think doctors should be punished for massively overprescribing pain pills, and advocated Clinton conspiracy theories in the 1990s.

So, yeah, the perfect person to be a WND columnist. And she doesn't disappoint. Her inaugural column is one huge red-baiting screed:

Call a Code Blue! Medicine in America is in cardiac arrest.

If the election results are to be believed, the majority of Americans do not trust themselves and their highly trained physicians to make decisions about their health. Rather, they have relinquished total control of their medical care, including 14 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product to the same crew of incompetents who crashed the housing market, who poured billions into business failures such as Solyndra and who see food stamps as supporting a jobs-growth program.

I am a practicing physician and surgeon, with over 30 years experience in hands-on patient care. I have seen firsthand the march to socialism, and the systematic destruction of the noble profession of medicine. And, believe me, we are at the end game.

Hieb goes on to write that "the Russian communist Vladimir Lenin, too, understood the role of medicine when he opined, 'Medical care is the keystone in the arch of socialism.'" In fact, as David Blumenthal and James A. Morone write in their book "The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office," the quote was apparently fabricated by a public relations firm hired by the American Medical Association to fight an attempt at health care reform during the Truman administration. Blumenthal and Morone note that the AAPS dredged up the fabricated quote in 2000.

Newsmax's Kessler Still Unhappy That Jews Support Obama
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax's Ronald Kessler is still trying to pry Jews away from President Obama.

In his Dec. 3 column, Kessler complains that American Jews care more about the economy and health care than they do about Israel, and that they also still like Obama. "Advertisements criticizing President Obama on Israel backfired with Jewish voters and more often solidified support for the president," Kessler wrote, citing polling from the pro-Israel group J Street:

Confirming the results, national surveys conducted by Gallup have found that American Jews have approved of Obama’s job performance throughout his presidency by an average of 14 percentage points more than the rest of the American electorate.
 
The new poll shows that those who think Obama’s policies toward Israel are hurting him with Jews in America are deluding themselves.

In his Dec. 7 column, Kessler features a spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition who took issue with the J Street poll results. This time around, Kessler labels J Street as "left-leaning," a descriptor he did not apply in his earlier column, and attacks it for being unclear about whether it had accepted money from "left-wing activist" George Soros.

Kessler then touts how the RJC's polling has found that "the Republican share of the Jewish vote jumped nationally in the presidential election from 22 percent to 32 percent."

WND's Farah: Boycott the Military While Obama Is President
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah writes in his Dec. 6 WorldNetDaily column:

This may sound like a strange idea coming from someone who loves and respects the U.S. military.

It’s time to deny it our sons and daughters and our grandchildren. For those young enough to serve, it’s time to deny it yourselves. It’s time to boycott the U.S. military.

What am I talking about? Have I completely flipped my lid? Who will protect the nation from foreign enemies in these turbulent times without manpower?

Let me begin with something that put me over the edge: When foreign-serving U.S. military personnel were systematically denied by the Barack Obama administration the right to vote in the 2012 presidential election, I decided I would never encourage any son, daughter or friend of mine to enlist voluntarily in the U.S. military again – at least during the next four years.

That was a disgusting, self-serving and deliberate political act by a White House hell-bent to maintain power by hook or by crook. And it denied those risking their lives for their country the sacrosanct right to participate in our electoral system.

That was it for me.

Farah provides no evidence that "foreign-serving U.S. military personnel were systematically denied by the Barack Obama administration the right to vote in the 2012 presidential election." Indeed, FactCheck.org has debunked the idea that Obama tried to curb early military voting and discredited a claim that delayed military ballots would have swung the vote for Mitt Romney as coming from a parody blog.

But Farah is not done ranting, because he hates Obama so, so much:

I don’t want to see the best and the brightest of this generation sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, same-sex marriages at West Point, women in combat, interventionism all over the globe without regard to national security interests or even humanitarian reasons.

It’s time to just say no to Obama playing God with our sons and daughters.

He demonstrated he has no commitment even to saving the lives of Americans under threat in Libya. That should be the central purpose of the U.S. military.

He clearly doesn’t recognize the gravest threats to our country – insolvency and global jihad. In fact, he seems to do everything in his power to foster both.

As a parent, would you encourage your children to work for a boss who is corrupt and dangerous?

I wouldn’t. And I won’t.

The same words could probably apply to Farah -- as an inveterate liar, he is corrupt and dangerous. Or he would be if anybody believed what his website published.

CNS Story on CIA Seeking Gay Recruits Illustrated With 'Dykes on Bikes' Picture
Topic: CNSNews.com

In October, CNSNews.com dishonestly claimed that the federal government was giving "preference" in hiring same-sex domestic partners of government employees at the U.S. Embassy in Libya; in fact, the preference was for "qualified U.S. citizens who were family members of U.S. government employees," which included same-sex domestic partners. Now, CNS is going for a different type of dishonesty in smearing gays.

A Dec. 4 CNS article by Penny Starr on the CIA is "actively seeking recruits from a new demographic – the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community " is accompanied by an Associated Press picture of a group of "Dykes on Bikes" taken during San Francisco's annual gay pride parade in June.

What does one have to do with the other? Starr's article doesn't explain. Apparently, CNS believes all potential gay CIA employees will ride motorcycles during a gay pride parade.

Remember, CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a pretty heavy anti-gay agenda.

WND's One-Sided Story on Discrimination Lawsuit
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh uses a Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily article to pull off yet another one-source wonder, this time on the lawsuit filed by a woman who claims she was fired from her job as a university human resources administrator because she wrote a letter to the editor criticizing gay rights.

Unruh quoted only representatives of the law firm representing the woman, the right-wing American Freedom Law Center. While he quotes the AFLC bashing a ruling dismissing the woman's lawsuit, at no point does he quote, or even link to, the ruling itself.

Thus, Unruh has free rein to frame the lawsuit as the woman being fired for "expressing an opinion that conflicts with the institution’s adopted political perspective" and not telling the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, actual journalists at the Toledo Blade quoted from the ruling dismissing the lawsuit:

" … The balance of [Ms. Dixon's] interest in making a comment of public concern is clearly outweighed by the University's interest as her employer in carrying out its own objectives. Therefore, [Ms. Dixon] has failed to establish that her speech was protected," the judge wrote. "[Ms. Dixon] also claims that she was fired for violating an impermissibly vague speech policy. However, the damage she did to her ability to perform her job and to the University provide ample justification for her termination."

In other words, the woman's attack on gay rights raised questions about her ability to perform her human resources fairly and without bias, threatening the university's reputation and justifying its decision to terminate her.

Unruh, of course, mentions nothing about this aspect of the case -- he's clearly too sympathetic to the woman's side to tell the full truth.

WND's Prelutsky Lies About Obama, Capital Gains Tax
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's a sign of both Burt Prelutsky's lack of interest in the facts and WorldNetDaily's lack of interest in copyediting that Prelutsky's Dec. 4 column repeatedly misspells Warren Buffett's name as "Buffet." It's also a sign of both that this line appears:

Not content with having helped finance Obama’s re-election, Buffet has spoken out in favor of Obama’s desire to raise the tax rate on capital gains to something like 45 percent. He insists with a straight face it would do nothing to curtail investment. Oh, sure, just like the financial cliff and Obamacare haven’t done anything to curtail investment. I knew that Buffet had a head filled with rocks, but does he also live under one?

In fact, Obama has proposed raising capital gains tax rates to 20 percent for the two highest income brackets -- not 45 percent.

Seems that the person with a head filled with rocks is Prelutsky.

WND: Obama's Re-Election Means 'American Tribulation'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Led by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily's hatred of President Obama has become angry and apocalyptic since his re-election.

That increasingly desperate attitude has been codified in the new issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine, the theme of which is "THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION: Can the greatest nation in history survive 4 more years of Obama?"

Note that the cover superimposes debris from the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse onto a backdrop of Washington, blaming him for ... something:

The promotion for the issue is equally apocalyptic:

Unthinkable. A cataclysmic disaster. The end of America as we know it.

That pretty much sums up how millions of Americans regard the re-election of Barack Obama.

Actually, that pretty much sums up the view in the WND offices after it destroyed its own reputation trying -- and failing -- to destroy Obama.

But WND wasn't done with the scaremongering, complete with repeating a discredited claim about regulations and proclaiming that only people who hate Obama as much as Joseph Farah and David Kupelian do are "right-thinking":

But amidst all of this sound and fury, the big question remains: What do the tens of millions of Americans – those who see Obama’s re-election as the national catastrophe it really is – do now? With four more years of the Obama juggernaut, with government still spending amounts of money only physicists can comprehend, with an average of 68 new regulations being imposed on Americans every single day, with devastating economic meltdown imminent and the world daily becoming a far more dangerous place because of the U.S. president’s scandalous failure of leadership, what can and should right-thinking people do now?

This difficult question is dealt with forthrightly and comprehensively in the December issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION: Can the greatest nation in history survive 4 more years of Obama?”

“This was a challenging issue to put together,” said Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “We didn’t want to sugar-coat the harsh reality of what has happened, but neither is it cause for good people to fall prey to hopelessness, anger or depression, nor to give up or drop out. Quite the opposite. This issue presents a totally realistic assessment of where we are now, but shows, almost paradoxically, how there is real hope and a definite way forward.

“‘THE AMERICAN TRIBULATION’ provides real direction and inspiration for readers who desire to preserve the America in which they grew up.”

Nah, not so much, unless you count inspiring fear and hatred in its readers as "inspiration."

MRC Complains New Sitcom Is Too Gay-Friendly
Topic: Media Research Center

For the second time in a week, the Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute devotes a post to hating gays.

A Dec. 4 CMI post by Lauren Thompson complained about how gay-friendly Reba McEntire's new sitcom "Malibu Country" is and that McEntire "crowed about how much she cherished her gay following and the show’s gay themes." Thompson grumbled, "'Malibu Country' is one of the many shows on ABC that cater to the gay agenda."

Thompson doesn't explain what this "gay agenda" is, but she and her CMI cohorts (like Paul Wilson) do love to go on about it.

Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Aaron Klein has been piling up the anonymous sources in his WorldNetDaily articles lately, often so vaguely described as to be meaningless:

A Nov. 27 article cites "knowledgeable Middle Eastern security sources."

A Nov. 29 article cites "informed Israeli security sources."

A Dec. 3 article cites "informed Middle Eastern security sources."

A Dec. 5 article cites a "European envoy to Israel."

A Dec. 6 article cites "informed Israeli security sources."

Much of Klein's reporting is cited to anonymous, unverifiable sources.

Meanwhile ...
Topic: Newsmax
Media Matters details how Dick Morris' Super PAC for America raised $3.7 million in the month before the election -- and paid $1.7 million of that to Newsmax Media, some of which appears to have made its way back to Morris in the form of renting Morris' mailing list (which Newsmax administers) to his super PAC.

WND's Robert Ringer Has Issues With Women
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Robert Ringer doesn't like women, apparently.

In a Dec. 5 WorldNetDaily column in which he purports to be in "Andy Rooney" mode, Ringer unleashes a hateful tirade against hose who appear on Forbes magazine's list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, and one who's not:

No. 2: Hillary (“Hilla the Hun”) Clinton. Hillary is the ultimate fraud. She’s an accomplished liar, a thief and an embarrassment as secretary of state. The only solace we can take is that she and Bubba genuinely believe that Obama is going to support her bid for the presidency in 2016 as a payback for their supporting his candidacy in 2012. Instead, what they’ll get is his middle finger.

No. 7: Michelle (Big Mac and Fries) Obama. You don’t need any input from me on this one. Best not to go there.

No. 14: Lady Gaga. I have never heard this decadent humanoid sing and wouldn’t know her face if I saw her on the street. But, please America …

No. 32: Beyonce. Brilliant, thoughtful, intellectual – a bold, fresh piece of … well, you know what I mean.

Hard as it is to believe, the princess of frumpiness, Sandra Fluke, didn’t make the Forbes list. Even so, she’s on course (as in intercourse) to be the first recipient of the Nobel Contraceptive Piece Prize. Rest assured that once this caricature of every man’s worst fear about his upcoming blind date gets her masters in contraception, she will be a force to be reckoned with.

That's followed up with this:

Last night I had a nightmare about being held captive by terrorists in a 10-by-10 room with no windows, and my captors told me they were going to throw one of four things into the room with me, to be left there until I died: 1) Rachel Maddow, 2) Hilla the Hun, 3) Frumpy Fluke, or 4) a cup of hemlock.

Then, in a show of mercy, they said they would allow me to choose which one I preferred. It was an easy decision. As I drank the poisonous hemlock, I woke up in a cold sweat thinking about what my fate might have been had I made a different choice.

Yep, the man's got issues with women.

Ringer is not the only WND columnist with that affliction; Vox Day has major issues as well.

NewsBusters' Motley Bizarrely Likens Chevy Volt to 'Obama Phone'
Topic: NewsBusters

Seton Motley turns in another fact-challenged rant about General Motors in his Dec. 4 NewsBusters post, this time centered around the picayune complaing that the Chevrolet Volt tops customer-satisfaction surveys. It doesn't take long for Motley to whine about "government money" being spent to develop the Volt, which he insists is "a lot like the Obama Phone."

Actually, the current federal program of subsidized phone service was created in 1996 and expanded to cover cell phones in 2008, before Obama took office. It's funded by surcharges on phone bills, not the federal government.

From there, Motley launches into more false or misleading claims. He whines that "more-than-$3 billion-in-federal-government-subsidies-alone" on the Volt, ignoring that development of the Volt began in 2007, well before the government got involved with GM.

He also claims "The Volt costs GM $89,000 to manufacture." In fact, GM has pointed out that this number includes development costs, which are spread over the vehicle's lifespan -- meaning that amount per vehicle drops with every Volt sold -- as well as use of the vehicle's techology in other GM products, which will spread those costs out even further.