MRC Rants About 'Heavily-Tattooed, Androgynous Lesbian' WNBA Player Topic: Media Research Center
It wouldn't be the Media Research Center if it wasn't denigrating anything that's even remotely non-heterosexual, so of course the MRC is having a fit over WNBA star Brittney Griner.
Lauren Enk whines in a June 18 MRC Culture & Media Institute item: "If you’re looking for a new role model for your daughter, USA Today has a suggestion: heavily-tattooed, androgynous lesbian Brittney Griner." Enk huffed that "USA Today’s Scott Gleeson lauded her as both 'the face of WNBA' and as a 'role model.' He simpered over her sense of humor as she picked out new tattoo ink with her current girlfriend, and hailed the moment of an example of how Griner is 'finally free to be herself' after coming out last April."
Enk's disgust for Griner becomes even more thinly veiled as the piece concludes:
We already know the media will gush over any athlete who comes out of the closet, and even blame discrimination when teams cut underperforming athletes who happen to support the gay agenda. And the sports world certainly has pushed the sexual image of its stars in the past. But, seriously? A tattoo-splattered androgynous lesbian rebel with road rage who dresses like a guy is the new role model for our daughters?
Maybe she should just stick to being a model for men’s clothing instead.
This is the kind of anti-gay agenda we've come to expect from the MRC, and Enk is certain doing what she's being paid to do.
WND Takes the Birther Bait Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has toned down its birther coverage since President Obama's re-election proved its four-year anti-Obama jihad to have no effect whatsoever beyond discrediting itself, but even WND will still swallow easy birther bait.
Thus, we have a June 22 WND article by Drew Zahn taking very seriously how Yahoo! News briefly and erroneously claimed Obama was born in Kenya. Zahn tries to peddle a conspiracy theory by pondering if Yahoo!'s mistake was "a sign of something more," then rehashes all the old discredited conspiracy theories about the "purported copy of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate" released by the White House.
Zahn, as is WND policy, can't be bothered to point out how Mike Zullo's Cold Case Posse has been discredited, and he certainly won't say anything about these conspiracies in the way Dr. Conspiracy has summed it up:
Given the independent verifications that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there has never been any sense to the birther claims that Obama’s long form birth certificate PDF was the creation of a human forger. What they did was to dig deeper and deeper into bits of the file until they went beyond their competence, found something they didn’t understand, and then claimed that it was an anomaly that proved forgery.
The infamous Maricopa County Cold Case Posse published analyses from unqualified amateurs who argued that the Obama form was a fake because the hardware and software they tried didn’t give the same results. They basically said that because the Obots couldn’t match, detail for detail, the White House PDF, that it must be a fake (never mind the proof of the external proofs that it was authentic).
The fact that Zahn -- and everybody else at WND -- deliberately ignores facts that don't comport with its anti-Obama agenda despite being repeatedly caught in the act is just one more reason why (c'mon, say it with me) nobody believes WorldNetDaily.
CNS Takes Putin's Side on Syria Topic: CNSNews.com
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb component siding with Bashar Assad's murderous regime in Syria.
A June 16 CNSNews.com article by Patrick Goodenough promotes Russian leader Vladimir Putin's attack on a reporter who repeated a statement by British leader David Cameron that "those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands," and his mention of of a video purportedly showing "a jihadist rebel leader cutting out and making as if to eat the heart of a Syrian soldier."
While Goodenough admits the video has been promoted by a "pro-Assad group," his article is clearly tilted toward those who advocate against the U.S. arming Syrian rebels and makes only a passing mention of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons.
The fact that CNS is apparently taking sides with Obama is another piece of evidence showing how deep the anti-Obama hate is at the "news" website.
regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own people - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
a video clip circulating last month apparently showing a jihadist rebel leader cutting out and making as if to eat the heart of a Syrian soldier. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
WND Columnist Takes Obama's Remarks On School Out of Context Topic: WorldNetDaily
Patrice Lewis rants in a June 21 WorldNetDaily column:
It was a remark meant for no other purpose than to be divisive.
When President Obama stood in front of a crowd in Northern Ireland and said, “If towns remain divided – if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden – that, too, encourages division and discourages cooperation.”
In other words, the president was suggesting that private and/or religious schools encourage division and discourage cooperation. Was this remark meant to be unifying? What other purpose could such a hostile suggestion have except to be divisive?
Well, let's think about where Obama was speaking, Ms. Lewis. He was in Northern Ireland, which -- as we pointed out when CNS' Terry Jeffrey similarly pulled Obama's statement out of context -- has a lengthy history of violence between Catholics and Protestants. Lewis also forgets that one reason there is a large system of Catholic schools in the U.S. is because the public schools were largely controlled by Protestants.
But Lewis doesn't care about context or history, because she's in the middle of a massive anti-education rant:
If there’s one thing totalitarian governments detest, it’s citizens who can think for themselves and who question the ever-expanding role of government. The easiest way to prevent such seditious thoughts is to seize children at a young age and force them into central indoctrination centers, where they are taught that any questioning of government mandates is subversive and wrong. Hitler demonstrated the effectiveness of these techniques.
When our president suggests that private schools – noted for their academic excellence and high moral standards, as well as their willingness to accept students of all races – discourage cooperation, it sounds eerily like he’s referring to cooperation with government authority.
Is Lewis denying that private schools indoctrinate their children like public schools do? Surely not -- she believes education is indoctrination and brainwashing, but that the parents are the ones who should do it.
Newsmax Tries to Cash In on Gandolfini's Death Topic: Newsmax
A June 20 article on Newsmax's health website, by Charlotte Libov, touts how the death of actor James Gandolfini via heart attack is "tragically common," quoting a doctor saying, "When you’re on vacation, you don’t eat the same way that you do when you’re at home. People tend to indulge, and that can lead directly to a heart attack."
Scattered throughout Libov's article are links reading, "These 4 Things Happen Right Before a Heart Attack — Read More." These lead to a 35-minute video video featuring the doctor quoted in Libov's article, Chauncey Crandall, providing "startling presentation" about heart attacks.
This leads into a page where one can subscribe to Crandall's Heart Health Report -- published, of course, by Newsmax, where Crandall serves as "medical editor" -- and receive all sorts of freebies in the process.
It's a bit crass for Newsmax to try to make money on Gandolfini's death, but Newsmax has alwaysbeen about trying to fleece its readers by capitalizing on whatever's in the news.
WND Ignores Child Sex Charges Against Anti-Immigration Activist Topic: WorldNetDaily
A June 21 WorldNetDaily article highlights how "A University of Washington neurobiology student charged with child rape after being accused of picking up a 12-year-old girl from the Seattle streets and taking her to his apartment has been identified as a volunteer with a leading Islamic activist organization." It even quotes anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller declaring that "Muslim men in Islamic cultures have no obligation to control themselves."
Meanwhile, a more serious case of alleged child sex abuse has gone unreported by WND, even though it involves a former ally.
Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a self-appointed border patrol group, has been arrested on suspicion of molesting three young girls. The Southern Poverty Law Center has noted that Simcox's first wife made child abuse allegations against him, and that his third wife obtained a restraining order against him.
WND has long been a promoter of Simcox's anti-immigration efforts, touting its claims of having aided the capture of illegal immigrants and endorsing his efforts at "vigilante justice." He even appeared as a guest on Joseph Farah's onetime radio show and played a starring role in a book on illegal immigration by then-WND reporter Jon Dougherty. Jerome Corsi took the side of Simcox and other anti-immigration activist when another activist, Jim Gilchrist, endorsed Mike Huckabee for president in 2008.
Despite Simcox's other troubles, which include him failing to deliver on promises to spend money he raised on a highly secure border fence by instead putting up a barbed-wire cattle fence -- something else WND has failed to tell its readers about -- WND was still featuring his work, most recently in 2010 in an article by Anita Crane.
So, WND will tell you about alleged sexual abuse involving a Muslim but not abuse involving one of their own. That's yet another reason nobody believes WND.
Brent "Skinny Ghetto Crackhead" Bozell Complains About Character Assassination Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell used his weekly appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to complain about a CBS reporter calling Iranian presidential candidates "very conservative. In U.S. terms, it was as if all the candidates for the presidency came from the Tea Party." Bozell huffed, "If that isn't character assassination, I don't know what is."
Really? The guy who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is accusing others of committing character assassination?
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, personally selected Hassan Rouhani to win Friday’s presidential election even before he received the majority of the votes cast, according to a former Revolutionary Guard intelligence analyst who has defected from Iran.
Naturally, it's another anonymous, untraceable source "Kahlili" is using, and, therefore, is highly suspect.
Surprisingly, this is not the most objectionable thing about this article -- that would be how WND promoted it on its front page.
Never mind the fact that 1) WND offers no credible evidence of fraud in Obama's re-election, let alone fraud of the kind Kahlili alleges took place in Iran, and 2) Obama isn't even mentioned in Kahlili's article, let alone any allegations of fraud purportedly involving Obama.
CNS' Jeffrey Dishonestly Tries to Paint Obama Remarks As Anti-Catholic Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a longtime Obama-hater, and that hate comes through yet again by omitting the context of a recent remark by President Obama in a speech in Ireland.
Likening religious schools to segregation--a racist system that forced blacks to attend different schools and use different facilities than whites in the American South--President Barack Obama told a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Monday that there should not be Catholic and Protestant schools because such schools cause division.
"Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity--symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others--these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it," said Obama. "If towns remain divided--if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs--if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.
[...]
Obama is now insisting on enforcing an Obamacare regulation that would force Catholic individuals, business owners and institutions to provide health care plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously ddeclared this regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of religion.
But Obamacare has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's remarks, and Jeffrey refuses to report why Obama would say them.
Michael McGough of the Los Angeles Times describes the context that Jeffrey can't be bothered to tell his readers:
Northern Ireland is not the United States. Even in my childhood, when Catholic kids were encouraged to attend Catholic schools and there was an arguably Protestant ethos in many public schools, Catholics and Protestants weren't as isolated from (or as distrustful of) one another in this country as they continue to be in Northern Ireland.
Today, thanks to Vatican II and the relentless asssimilation of Catholics, it’s common for Catholics to attend public schools (where teachers no longer recite from the Protestant King James Bible). But it is also common for Protestants, Jews and others to attend Catholic schools. And a lot of children, Catholic and non-Catholic, will attend both public and Catholic schools over the course of their education.
Society in Northern Ireland is much more stratified, and the role of religiously defined schools more problematic. You can be perfectly comfortable with the role of Catholic schools in the American context and worry about their contribution to estrangement between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Jeffrey also seems to have forgotten that there's a lengthy history of animus and violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, resulting in the deaths of thousands.
But then, Jeffrey is too busy trying to stoke anti-Obama sentiment among right-wing Catholics to tell his readers the truth.
Libyan expatriate sources proven to be credible have posted a gruesome video on YouTube showing a group of Syrian “rebels” brutally beheading a man and shooting two women and tossing their bodies down a hole in the ground.
The Libyan expatriates forwarded the video to WND to make bolster their claim that the “rebel forces” about to be armed by the Obama administration are made up of radical Islamic terrorist groups with international ties to al-Qaida.
Given that Corsi once called the researchers who plagiarized from other news articles for a smear job on Obama as "trusted Kenyan professionals," his faith in these supposedly "credible" Libyan expatriates should be skeptically at best.
On the other hand, Corsi's article embeds the video in question, with the tantalizing disclaimer "Viewers are warned that the video is so horrific that it could be psychologically disturbing."
Meanwhile, in another June 20 WND article, Michael Maloof places his faith in authoritarian Russian leader Vladimir Putin to defend the Assad regime," touting "a little-publicized revelation by Russian President Vladimir Putin his country has evidence chemical laboratories in Iraq produced weapons for the Sunni rebels."
While Maloof concedes that "Putin did not detail the sourcing of that evidence, the name or location of the laboratory," he doesn't explain why a man who stole a Super Bowl ring should be trusted.
CNS' Lucas Tries To Invent An IRS Controversy Topic: CNSNews.com
Fred Lucas' June 20 CNSNews.com article certainly sounds ominous:
The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, will not say who provided it with a confidential list of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, although NOM’s chairman believes someone at the Internal Revenue Service leaked the information. The IRS also is silent on the question.
Providing such donor information is a felony, John C. Eastman, chairman of the board for the National Organization for Marriage, told CNSNews.com. The Justice Department deferred the matter to the Treasury Department, but Eastman said the probe by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration seems to have stalled.
To keep up this tone, however, Lucas has to ignore the evidence that undermines it.
As Media Matters details, congressional testimony from acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller made it clear that the disclosure of NOM's donor list was done by an IRS employee who wasn't follow proper procedures, and disciplinary action was taken.
Further, former NOM chairwoman Maggie Gallagher has also debunked the conspiracy theory, writing in May that "You may recall that a low-level employee also released NOM's private tax-return information to a guy claiming to be a NOM employee, who then posted it on the Internet."
On top of that, the HRC's "NOM Exposed" campaign states that the NOM Form 990 it's referring to was "obtained by the American Independent."
Lucas makes no mention of any of this. Of course, if he had, he wouldn't have a conspiracy story to write.
WND does apparently agree, however, that Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke Snowden's revelations, is a horrible person. Aaron Klein plays his usual guilt-by-association game in a June 19 article, claiming that Greenwald "founded a progressive activist coalition that encompasses a who’s who of the George Soros-funded radical left." And, of course, it wouldn't be a true Aaron Klein guilt-by-association special if he couldn't link Greenwald to Obama:
Greenwald also served on a conference panel titled “Revolution and imperialism in the Middle East” with Chicago based pro-Palestine activist Ali Abunimah.
Greenwald and Abinimah teamed up to defend the 2010 flotilla attempting to end Israel’s naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Abunimah was part of the Free Gaza Movement that helped to organize the flotilla.
WND broke the story that Obama spoke at fundraisers in the 1990s for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps.
Abunimah recalled introducing Obama at one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha Palestinian camp in the West Bank.
Abunimah previously described meeting with Obama at a fundraiser at the home of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a former PLO activist.
It was WND that first exposed Obama’s long relationship with Khalidi.
NewsBusters' Sheffield Plays the Bureaucrat-Whisperer Card Topic: NewsBusters
In a June 18 article at the far-right American Spectator (excerpted in part at NewsBusters), NewsBusters managing editor Matthew Sheffield blames President Obama for creating the climate in which the IRS felt it was just peachy to subject conservative activist nonprofit groups to extra scrutiny:
The persistent lies that have been told about right-leaning political groups by leading Democrats, including President Obama himself, may have led to the IRS abuses of power that we’ve heard so much about in recent weeks.
Even assuming that the Internal Revenue Service decided to target conservative groups without explicit orders, the fact is that Obama and other Democrats have been smearing conservatives for so long with vague but outrageous charges of criminality, it’s no wonder that some bureaucratic goons decided to harass “tea party” and “patriot” groups.
[...]
At this stage of the investigation of the IRS scandal, it is unclear whether the Obama White House or other top Democratic politicians directed the tax enforcement agency to deliberately audit Tea Party groups and to delay their applications for tax-exempt status. What is clear is that President Obama and fellow Democrats, with the willing assistance from the supposedly “objective” media, created a climate of intimidation and slander that quite easily could have spurred the IRS to abuse its power.
Ah, the ol' "bureaucrat whisperer" ploy. As Media Matters' Simon Maloy details, "This is a popular argument because it allows for literally anything to be brought forward as evidence of Obama's culpability. Any conservative hobbyhorse or perceived slight by Obama or anyone remotely connected to Obama ... can be easily recast as part of the president's alleged campaign to undermine the tea party via innuendo and pseudo-telepathy."
Sheffield goes on to whine: "If Republicans decided to go around making such outrageous accusations without providing a shred of proof for them, you can bet that the media would have attacked them mercilessly just as they did radio host Rush Limbaugh after he insulted left-wing activist Sandra Fluke." This is the same guy who uncritically bought Limbaugh's self-serving apology to Fluke that was more of a CYA operation in the face of mounting criticism and advertiser boycotts than anything genuinely "heartfelt" and "sincere," as Limbaugh insisted it was.
And this is the same Matthew Sheffield who expressed glee that one advertiser who withdrew from Limbaugh's show due to his three-day tirade of misogyny against Fluke saw its profits go down.
This is just another example of Sheffield's attempt to be some kind of right-wing new-media guru descending into mere repetition of tired conservative talking points.
Does WND Like Running Racist Ads On Its Website? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when WorldNetDaily had standards for the advertising it runs?
In 2001, WND "at least temporarily" discontinued national advertising on its website "because too many are offensive to management and readers." Those allegedly offensive ads WND editor Joseph Farah disliked ranged "from the promotion of online gambling to the marketing of national television programs that, he says, he would never allow his own children to watch."
In 2009, WND railed against "Sexually provocative ads, sexually suggestive ads, sexually oriented ads and those that are in bad taste," and Farah asked readers to flag ads "of questionable merit or taste" appearing on the website.
What WND apparently doesn't find offensive, though, are racially inflammatory ads that smear the wife of the president of the United States. Wonkette has caught WND publishing the following ad on its website:
Did anybody not flag this for Farah until now? Or does Farah not find this offensive? Perhaps he should explain to his readers why this ad appears on his website.
How high can the price of gold go? Former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul thinks it could go to infinity.
Appearing on CNBC's "Futures Now," Paul explained that "excessive spending and excessive computerized money" is driving down the dollar, and in turn raising the price of gold.
"Eventually, if we're not careful, it will go to infinity, because the dollar will collapse totally," Paul said.