Bozell Takes His Heathering To CPAC Topic: Media Research Center
Last year, Brent Bozell pulled himself and his Media Research Center out of conservative confab CPAC in a huff because Bozell wasn't granted a prominent enough speaking slot -- which MRC's own news organization and blog failed to tell its readers.
This year, Bozell apparently got the speaking slot he demanded, and he used it to do some serious Heathering, continuing his expansion of his right-wing purity test to the entire Republican Party. Craig Bannister quoted from the speech in a March 16 CNSNews.com blog post:
"So what do we conservatives believe? What is a conservative?
"Throughout this wonderful conference so many very good leaders have discussed this so eloquently. Another discussion is unnecessary. Instead, let me tell you first what a conservative isn't.
"Paul Ryan, you're a good man and you mean well, and good for you for your courage trying to reform Medicare and rid us of Obamacare. But your proposed budget that has the federal government spending $41 TRILLION over the next ten years, with more and more and more spending increases every single year, and assumes all the oppressive Obamacare taxes. Congressman, that's what liberal Democrats do, not us.
"This is not conservatism. It is, literally, Democrat Lite.
"Do you have national aspirations? Do yourself and your country a favor. Rip that budget up and come back with one that truly does reduce the size of government, which puts us on the path toward a balanced budget by reducing deficits, and one that puts us on the path of solvency by eradicating our debt. Watch what happens to both your national aspirations, and your legacy.
"Haley Barbour, my friend, when you call for unity and on conservatives to "sing from the same hymnal" and then publicly trash good conservative groups like Club for Growth for supporting good conservatives, you're out of tune, and you're out of line. Do you want to be seen as a national conservative leader? Start supporting national conservative groups.
"John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy: You said all the right things to conservatives to propel the GOP back to the majority and you to the top three leadership positions in the House.
'You, like virtually every single other Republican elected to Congress solemnly vowed to rid us of Obamacare, which you can do simply by refusing to fund it. Why haven't you done so?
"While we're at it... when the Secretary of HHS decrees that we should be forced to pay for the murder of babies, why don't you decree that Americans are no longer going to pay for HHS? What of all the other oppressive, and in the case of Planned Parenthood, evil organizations immorally funded by our tax dollars? What of the utterly useless agencies like NPR, and PBS, and Legal Services, and the NEA and so many others you solemnly pledged to put out of our misery?
It looks like the war between establishment Republicans and right-wing agitators like Bozell will be continuing for some time.
WND's Schilling Repeats Zombie Lie About Military Voting Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the midst of the dubious pile of evidence Chelsea Schilling tosses out in a March 14 WorldNetDaily article as purported evidence that President Obama has "declare[d] war" on the U.S. military -- that phrase, by the way, appears in quotes in the headline but nowhere in the article -- this one stood out:
WND reported in August 2012 when the Obama re-election campaign sued Ohio state officials in an attempt to suppress, in that pivotal swing state, the votes of America’s military men and women – who traditionally lean conservative and vote Republican.
Schilling links to an August 2012 WND article by her boss, David Kupelian, as evidence for the claim.
One little problem: Kupelian was lying.
As we documented at the time, the goal of the lawsuit was to extend civilian early voting to that of the military, not reduce the military deadline to the existing civilian one. No military votes were suppressed, no matter how Kupelian tried to twist the truth.
Because Kupelian never bothered to correct his lie, Schilling -- who has her own lengthy record of falsehoods -- uncritically picked it up, thus making it a zombie lie, which WND is also fond of.
If Schilling is such a lazy reporter that she just copies-and-pastes WND's factually challenged attacks on Obama without bothering to check their accuracy (and, really, doesn't Schilling know how much WND has lied about Obama?), why trust anything else in that article?
MRC's Bozell Is Heathering The Entire Republican Party Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long engaged in political Heathering -- denigrating and dismissing any conservative who displays even the slightest deviance from right-wing dogma as not a "real" conservative. MRC chief Brent Bozell appears to be expanding his Heathering to the entire Republican Party.
Since President Obama won re-election in November, Bozell has been on one long temper tantrum, trying to intimidateRepublicans into not straying from right-wing by threatening to stop raising money for Republicans. jhat's a little awkward, given that the MRC is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that is not supposed to take partisan stands. Bozell has since expanded that to going after Karl Rove's operation to promote electable Republicans over right-wing extremists, which prompted a tussle over a Rove spokesman who (accurately) called Bozell a "hater."
Bozell has now unleashed some Heathering on Rove, in the form of a letter signed by him and other right-wing activists to donors to Rove's American Crossroads super PAC, declaring that Rove isn't a real conservative:
Karl Rove and others are attempting to blame conservatives and the tea party. But a simple analysis shows this to be simply untrue. In 2012, the only Senate Republican winners were Jeff Flake, Deb Fischer, and Ted Cruz—all of whom enjoyed significant tea party and conservative support. Meanwhile, more moderate candidates like Tommy Thompson, Heather Wilson, Rick Berg, and Denny Rehberg went down to defeat despite significant support from Crossroads.
It was firmly expected that Republicans would capture the Senate in 2012. It is inexcusable that they failed and, in fact, lost two seats.
[...]
Mr. Rove and his allies must stop blaming conservatives for his disastrous results. It is time for him to take ownership of his record. He must also stop posturing himself as a conservative: his record supporting wasteful government spending and moderate candidates over conservatives spans decades.
No matter how he positions himself in this attempt at damage control, Mr. Rove’s efforts will not elect the type of leaders who will come to Washington to fight for conservative principles. In fact, they are likely to stifle the emergence of candidates like Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, and Rand Paul. Further, the model that will be employed by the Conservative Victory Project has proven to be ineffective and a waste of political resources.
Heathering hasn't exactly worked on the TV-talking-head level. Why does Bozell think it will work against an entire political party?
Richard Bartholomew catches WorldNetDaily promoting the pseudo-prophecy that Pope Benedict's resignation fulfills a prediction that his successor will be the "final pope." That's something even Joel Richardson (one of WND's favorite end-times prophets) calls a "proven fraud."
And Eqality Matters sums up Joseph Farah's March 12 WND column on the reaction to a previous column likening gay marriage to child sacrifice, which involves him denying he did such a thing before wishing he had.
NewsBusters Still Citing Bogus Climate Change Claims Topic: NewsBusters
Matt Vespa uses a March 13 NewsBusters post to push dubious climate change denier tropes.
Attacking a Slate blogger for highlighting that the Earth's temperature is rising “faster than it has been in 11,000 years," Vespa responded by citing a Daily Mail article claiming that global warming stopped 16 years ago. In fact, that claim relies on cherry-picked data and an arbitrary starting point for examining the data; the long-term trend demonstrates continued global warming.
Vespa also claimed that "1,000 scientists have questioned manmade global warming, and they’re made up of ex-NASA personnel and Nobel laureates." But as we've previously noted, not many of scientists on the list he cites -- peddled by global warming denier Marc Morano -- are trained in climatology, the relevant discipline for scientifically examining climate change.
Vespa complains that the Slate blogger, Phil Plait, "has cited Think Progress and another so-called media watchdog group, which shall not be named, in his posts – so you know it has a left-wing tilt." The watchdog "which shall not be named" is a presumed reference to Media Matters (my employer).
What kind of researcher goes all Voldemort on someone with whose views he doesn't agree with? Not a credible one.
What Happened With WND Live-Streaming CPAC? Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 1 WorldNetDaily article declared: "Can’t attend the Conservative Political Action Conference March 14-16? Now you can follow much of the action free online, courtesy of WND-TV." The article went on to state thatin addition to the main speakers, "WND-TV will pick up other highlights throughout the event as well as turn to NRANews for live interviews with other speakers and guests."
One would think that such a statement would mean that CPAC would be streaming at WND. Well, not so much.
A March 14 WND article headlined "Watch Live: CPAC 2013" begins with the editor's note "Click here to watch live coverage of CPAC 2013." That link takes you to the live feed at the conservative website The Right Scoop -- not to anywhere at WND.
So what happened? Did WND ever intend to live-stream CPAC at its own website, or was it merely trying to glom onto the CPAC bandwagon in an attempt to erase the stain of its discredited birtherism?
Or is it something a little more simple? A sign-up box at the bottom of the March 1 article states, "By signing up for for this FREE live event, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email."
It seems that WND was invoking CPAC to do a little bait-and-switch -- promising access to video it wasn't actually providing in order to harvest some email addresses for its mailing list.
Most people would call that dishonest. Actually, it's just another business day at WND.
As the planet enters its seventeenth year in which temperatures have been steadily falling in response to a natural cooling cycle, the result of reduced solar radiation, the global warming hoax is finally being revealed as an instrument of the United Nations and individual governments, including our own, to impose “carbon taxes” that would raise billions of dollars for everyone involved.
Mychal Massie Being Mychal Massie Topic: WorldNetDaily
In recent years, many have voiced concern to me pursuant to Obama instigating a race war between blacks and whites. I argue, we are already in a race war and have been since every race-based divisive piece of legislation and every segregative word, phrase and assignation became the parlance of the day.
The idea of blacks not having a level playing field and blacks needing special dispensation from the caring white liberals has transmogrified into an intellectual pursuit of understanding for whites suffering from guilt and the liberal white illuminati who treat same as their exclusive realm of intellectual empathy.
[...]
Nothing sickens me to my stomach more than the unwitting and/or pompous liberal illuminati making references to “African-American, the black community, the black church, the black educational system,” or any other of countless race-based assignations covertly designed to divide, separate, alienate and develop the idea that blacks are aboriginal Americans.
People, whites specifically, take no thought to the fact that every time they speak using race-based assignations they contribute to the dissolution of the American fabric they want to believe they are making stronger. Segregative language does just that – it segregates.
In a March 13 CNS blog post, Joe Schoffstall promoted a video suggesting that Vice President Joe Biden said a "garden-variety slap across the face" is not as bad as other kinds of domestic violence.
In fact, the full video of the remark shows that Biden immediately added, "which is totally unacceptable in and of itself."
Schofstall based his item of a Washington Free Beacon post, which has since issued a correction. When will Schoffstall issue his correction?
UPDATE: The missing text has been added to Biden's quote, but there is no notice that the post has been corrected, and the original, edited video (which has since been made "private" so nobody can watch it) remains in the post.
WND Can't Stop Fearmongering About HPV Vaccine Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been fearmongering about vaccines such as Gardasil approved to combat the human papilloma virus, which can cause cervical cancer in women for quite some time now -- and it looks like the dishonesty won't be stopping anytime soon.
A March 12 WND article by Alyssa Farah (daughter of WND editor Joseph Farah and now apparently a "special Washington correspondent for WND") begins this way:
A widely popular HPV vaccine the federal government has recommended for girls and boys as young as 11 has caused thousands of adverse reactions, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death.
As we've detailed, proclaiming "thousands of adverse reactions" for a drug is meaningless without also reporting how many doses of the vaccine were administered. As even WND concedes, the rate of adverse reactions of the more than 35 million doses of Gardasil administered is a paltry 0.05 percent.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that there is "no statistically significant increased risk" for such specific severe adverse events such as Guillain–Barré Syndrome (GBS), stroke, VTE, appendicitis, seizures, syncope, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis resulting from a Gardasil vaccination. The most common adverse events, according to the CDC, are pain and redness at the site of immunization, dizziness, nausea, fainting and headache.
Farah went onto fearmonger, "There are serious side effects including, occasionally, sudden death." Actually, "occasionally" is overstating the case; try "extremely rare." Forbes' Matthew Herper has debunked the idea that Gardasil has killed more than 100 people, pointing that many of those who died had other risk factors and "only a handful could possibly be linked to Gardasil. And based on the data available, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that even those deaths were caused by the vaccine."
Farah also wrote: "There are more than 100 strains of HPV; Gardasil and Cervarix, the most commonly prescribed vaccines, offer protection against two of them." In fact, Gardasil protects against four HPV strains -- two of which cause 90 percent of genital warts cases and two that cause 75 percent of all cervical cancers.
Farah concludes by repeating more Gardasil fearmongering from one Dr. Joseph Mercola. But as we've noted, Mercola is a seller of health supplements who opposes immunization, fluoridation of water, and mammography; claims that amalgam fillings are toxic; and makes many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements. Mercola has been twice ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to stop making claims about his supplements that go beyond their intended uses.
Farah's dishonesty and one-sided reporting seem to demonstrate that she has learned way too much from her father.
Our left-wing media's somber, mourning coverage of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez once again demonstrates the double standard journalists reserve for dictators.
Seven years ago, the left's greatest South American hate object, Augusto Pinochet, passed away. Never mind how he used free-market reforms to modernize Chile. Never mind that after 15 years of rule, he allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully. The left-wing outrage pulsed on the front pages.
So "free-market reforms" are supposed to make upfor the fact that Pinochet's regime murdered and tortured its own people? Really, Brent?
Bozell does note that others reported on Pinochet's "repressive 17-year rule" and huffed that "Both the [Washington] Post and the [New York] Times used post-Pinochet government estimates that more than 3,000 people were executed or disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship." But at no point in his column does Bozell express any disapproval of Pinochet's atrocious human rights record.
Bozell's claim that "after 15 years of rule, [Pinochet] allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully" also ignores history -- namely, that Pinochet took power in a military coup, overthrowing the democratically elected Salvador Allende, and that the plebecite was the only time during his regime that he put himself up for a public vote. (And since it was a plebecite, there were no other candidates, only an up-or-down vote on whether Pinochet should stay in power.)
Further, Bozell's assertion that Pinochet "stepped down peacefully" is not quite true -- he actually attempted to overthrow the plebecite results.
We're not defending Chavez -- just pointing out the disgusting absurdity of Bozell claiming a highly murderous right-wing dictator is no worse than a non-murderous left-wing dictator. And what person in his right mind thinks instituting "free-market reforms" offsets in any way the deaths of thousands and the torture of hundreds of thousands? Bozell, apparently.
Let me tell you something: If Barack Obama has his way, this is only the beginning. He’s got nearly four more years to devastate the U.S. economy and bankrupt the country.
That’s exactly where we are headed unless – and this is a big unless – the so-called “opposition party” grows some cojones.
Woody Allen wished that Obama didn’t have to answer to Congress or the Supreme Court, and Harry Belafonte wants Obama to toss his Republican critics in jail. Even that’s not enough for Bill Maher, Will Ferrell and Chris Matthews, who wanted George Bush dead and would like to see the rest of us in the terminal ward.
But that’s nothing new. George Bernard Shaw, an avowed socialist, had nice things to say about Hitler and Mussolini. Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson and half the self-labeled intellectuals in Hollywood and New York, thought that Josef Stalin was the cat’s pajamas.
Although, nobody seems certain whether it was Marx, Lenin or Stalin who first dubbed those radical zealots who blindly promoted communism as “useful idiots,” the fact is he was only half right.
Zombies eat brains. If they weren’t already dead, they’d most certainly starve to death on the squalid diet of grey matter served-up by Obama, Reid, Pelosi and every other cracked skull who voted to open the curtain on this unconstitutional Obamacare freak show.
I know why this man is president, but I do not know why he remains president.
Barack Obama was elected the first time and then was re-elected.
Unless I don’t understand the law, the Constitution and common sense, I do not know why he remains in that position with the power he has over more than 300 million people in this country and what he does to them.
[...]
Obama and Napolitano aren’t the only insane ones in Washington. So too, are McCain and all the others in Congress who are anxious for the possibility of votes and power.
Every one of them, from top to bottom, should be tossed out of office – but not before facing impeachment and perhaps jail time with no parole.
The funniest thing to come out of the gun debate was the photo of Barack Obama allegedly skeet shooting at Camp David. Even I, who haven’t fired a rifle since my days in the ROTC, know that you don’t hold a rifle that high up on your shoulder, and you certainly don’t aim it straight-on when skeet shooting, as if your target were Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. Skeets, as we all know, are airborne. Firing at the angle shown in the photo, the only thing Obama would have hit was the poor schmuck working the skeet release. You would think that Team Obama would do a better job of it even if they were merely Photoshopping the picture in order to show that Obama’s trumped-up war on guns was nothing personal.
All this made me wonder what would happen if someone like Dr. Benjamin Carson were to run against Obama in 2016. (Don’t think Der Fuhrbama won’t try to run for a third term.) Always in search of a good fantasy, I closed my eyes and pictured their first presidential debate – head to head, with no moderator – and this is the way it unfolded:
Carson: “Before we begin, so there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind, I would like to lay on the table a certified copy of my birth certificate. I have also instructed the Vital Records office in Detroit to make the original of my birth certificate available to any legitimate member of the media or Congress who wishes to examine it. Mr. Obama, are you willing to do the same with your birth certificate?”
Obama’s response: “Can we take a smoke break?”
Carson: “I have instructed the proper authorities at both Yale and the University of Michigan to make all of my records available to any legitimate member of the media or Congress who wishes to examine them. Mr. Obama, are you willing to do the same with your college records at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard?”
Obama’s response: “Can we take a crack break?”
Carson: “I have instructed … etc. … Mr. Obama, are you willing to do the same?”
Obama’s response: “Can we take a break for a change of clothes? I think I just wet my pants.”
Carson: “Mr. Obama, once we get these foundational issues out of the way, I have a list of several hundred more questions I’d like to ask you about your background, your work experience, your close associates, organizations you have belonged to and your philosophy of government. It goes without saying that I welcome your asking me as many questions as you’d like about my life, my fundamental beliefs and my track record.”
Then, wouldn’t you know it? Just as His Royal Highness was about to respond, the phone rang and I lost my train of thought.
The story of Hugo Chavez is one that parallels Barack Hussein Obama’s disastrous but popular rule over the American people. Obama, too, ran as a candidate of the people. Obama, too, announced his intention to “fundamentally transform” the United States – a nation of which his racist wife was never proud before her husband’s rise to power. Once elected, Obama proceeded to implement policies that have done nothing but harm this nation’s economy.
Comedian Chris Rock, not to be outdone by a mere politician, said, “Barack and Michelle Obama are kinda like the Mom and Dad of the country. And when your Dad says something, you listen, and when you don’t it will usually bite you on the a– later on.”
If Barack and Michelle are Rock’s notion of the ideal parents, things must be even worse in the black community than a 71 percent rate of illegitimacy had led me to believe.
No, MRC, GE Is Not Ed Schultz's 'Parent Company' Topic: Media Research Center
A March 8 MRCtv post from the right-wing blog Radio Equalizer features a caller to Ed Schultz's radio show pointing out that Schultz's "parent company" is "knee-deep in profiteering off drone manufacturing," suggesting that this is behind Schultz's support of President Obama's drone program.
The "parent company" Schultz's caller is referring to is General Electric. But GE has no connection whatsoever to Schultz's radio show -- his syndicator is Dial Global, which is owned by two private equity firms. (Dial Global does operate the NBC Radio Network, which NBC sold in 1987.)
Even if the caller was referring to Schultz's status as a host for MSNBC, that's not quite correct either. Comcast purchased a majority stake in NBC from GE in 2011, and is currently in the process of buying the rest of the company from GE.
WND's Unruh Still Fearmongering Over VA Supposedly Taking Away Veterans' Weapons Topic: WorldNetDaily
The last time WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh wrote about the Department of Veterans Affairs sending letters to certain veterans about how they could lose their right to own a gun if the VA finds them incompetent to handle their affairs, he fearmongered that the Obama administration was "threaten[ing] the Second Amendment rights of American military veterans" until dialing it back to an "apparent threat to Second Amendment rights" without telling readers he had changed the content of the article. Unruh also failed to tell readers that the VA was following long-established procedure in sending out such letters.
Unruh is writing about it again, and he's still fearmongering. From Unruh's March 11 WND article:
The Obama administration insists it’s routine for officials to send out letters informing veterans that an unidentified “report” indicates they may be declared incompetent and consequently stripped of their Second Amendment rights.
It’s the same administration that in 2009 warned that “returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists.”
The 2009 report, from the Department of Homeland Security, was called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” It also said Obama’s governmental managers were “concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.”
So when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of veterans began receiving letters like the one dispatched from the Portland, Ore., office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, alarm bells went off.
First, Unruh provides no evidence that the VA's letters have anything whatsoever to do with the 2009 DHS report -- which, by the way, was correct in its assessment of attempted radicalization of returning war veterans, a conclusion also arrived at by the FBI under the Bush administration.
Second, despite citing only one letter received by an anonymous veteran in his article, Unruh speculates that "hundreds, perhaps thousands" were sent out. Such wiild guessing indicates he has no clue at all how many letters were sent out, has no proof that the VA's procedures on such issues has changed under the Obama administration, and he's just trying to fearmonger.
Unruh also writes that "the VA declined to provide information about any adjudication process." In fact, the VA describes the adjudication process on its website.
Despite the fact that he has no proof that the VA is doing anything out of the ordinary, Unruh continues to fearmonger, allowing the anonymous veteran's attorney -- who is with the right-wing United States Justice Foundation -- ramble at length about the purported slippery slope such letters represent:
“We have to ask who will be next. If you are receiving a Social Security check will you get one of these letters? Will the government declare that you are incompetent because of your age and therefore banned from firearm ownership. It certainly fits in with the philosophy and plans of the Obama administration.”
In keeping with the fearmongering, Unruh brings up another thing completely unrelated to the issue at hand: a study issued by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center examining the "violent far right." Unruh lets "constitutional law professor" ludicrously claim that the study's author is representative of "many left-wing members of the professoriate" and is "a propagandist for the existing regime." Because, you know, nothing says "left-wing professor" like teaching at the nation's premier military academy.
Unruh also claims that the study "cites 'anti-abortionists' as an active threat for terrorist activity, followed by anti-abortion activist Judie Brown retorting, "The use of two words expose the bias and hatred for what we stand for as a movement. Those words are ‘attacks’ and ‘violence’."
Unruh and Brown themselves ignore a couple of key words in the study: "far right." The study is not about all conservatives, but -- as the title of the report makes clear -- the "violent far right." The report also states that anti-abortion extremists have mostly switched tactics from attacks on people to attacks on property (though Unruh and Brown are clearly ignoring two other key words: Scott Roeder).
Supposed constitutional scholar Titus also ignored the fact that the study is about the "violent far right," for Unruh paraphrases him as saying that the report is "an attempt to link conservative thought with violence."
Unruh is simply putting his right-wing agenda before the facts. That may be why he's working at WND instead of his former employer, the Associated Press.
NEW ARTICLE: Accuracy In Media Honors Inaccuracy In Media Topic: Accuracy in Media
AIM's Reed Irvine Awards have an unfortunate tendency to be given to right-wing activists known more for their mendacity than for telling the truth. Read more >>
A March 1 WorldNetDaily 
