Tim Graham's LGBT Freakout Du Jour Topic: NewsBusters
Freaking about about gays and transgenders is what the Media Research Center does. And few MRC employees do that better than Tim Graham.
In a Sept. 13 NewsBusters post, Graham complains about an upcoming TV series about a transgendered teen: "Unsurprisingly in today’s era of LGBT propaganda on television, the star of the show 'may be the most well-adjusted' character on the show."
The next day, Graham whined about a New York art exhibit on "A Queer History of Fashion" and how it got money from the state: "Here’s more government-subsidized liberalism, for the museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology."
You might remember that the MRC played this same gambit about a gay-themed art exhibit at the Smithsonian, complaining that tax money went toward it when they were really complaining that gays were the subject of an art exhibit in the first place.
WND's Flaherty Mocks The Idea of White People Rioting To Cover His Race-Baiting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Colin Flaherty -- WND's residentrace-baiter obsessed with "black mob violence" finally finds a riot that black people didn't commit:
In Newark, Del., Monday night, police dispersed more than 3,000 rowdy teenagers who were just blowing off some steam at a “Shmacked Tour” party event.
Everyone was white. There might have been a few Asians here and there. But white was the color of this crime.
But the point of Flaherty's article is to mock his critics for his race-baiting obsession:
News of the white riot should provide some comfort to pundits at MSNBC and other liberal outlets. They insist that WND’s coverage of black mob violence – also documented in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence to America and how the media ignore it” – is distorted because the news site and book ignore racial violence from white people.
Even the most devoted denier of black mob violence has to admit white mob mayhem is harder to find. Even so, contrasted with many of the more than 500 examples of black mob violence in WND and White Girl Bleed a Lot, this “riot” is something of a disappointment:
No fractured skulls.
No Apple picking.
No panicked calls to 911.
No bricks through storefronts.
No bottles thrown at cops.
No murders.
No stabbings.
No kick downs.
No bloody faces.
No broken jaws.
No one in the hospital.
No gunfire.
No locks in socks.
No permanent brain damage.
No racist threats.
No beating old people.
No kicking pregnant women.
No baseball bats in the face.
No robberies.
No pushing people into moving cars on a busy street.
No toddler taunting.
Just one measly car fire. And a couple of people jumped on cars.
There was some public urination. And a few guys dropped their drawers, displaying their tighty whities. Other than that, a few parents wondered what videos of their children acting stupidly were doing up on the Internet.
You call that a riot?
Flaherty clearly ignores riots when his agenda warrants. Otherwise, he would've told us about an incident in Huntington, Beach, Calif., earlier this year when a crowd at a surfing competition went wild. Much of the crowd appeared to be white.
Flaherty has a more dishonest take on bashing his critics in a Sept. 14 WND op-ed:
Two things caused me to write about black mob violence: One, I saw a ton of black mob violence and black-on-white crime happening all over the country. When Thomas Sowell wrote about “White Girl Bleed a Lot,” he said the problem was far worse than what he thought.
That was a year ago. Today, I know the problem is far worse than I thought it was when The Great Doctor Sowell wrote that column.
The second thing that caused me to write the book and articles is even crazier than the black mob violence. It is the people who ignore, condone, excuse and even deny it is happening. The deniers are the truly crazy ones.
[...]
Once I started paying attention, I noticed black mob violence was happening all over the country in cities big and small – in places where you might expect it, like Baltimore and Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. But also places like Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Seattle, Portland, Greensboro, Peoria.
Places that if you did not live there, you would never know or even suspect it was happening. And even lots of people who live in these places did not know because their local media did not tell them.
[...]
Multiply that episode and denial by 500 – many on video – and that is what “White Girl Bleed a Lot” is about, and why so many deniers are receiving books as Christmas presents.
Of course, if "black mob violence" is all you're looking for, that's all you're gonna find, even if you have to goose the numbers by including dogs and white people.
But the really dishonest thing Flaherty has done is promote his body count without any context. Over what period of time did those 500 incidents take place? What relation do they have to overall crime rates? Flaherty never says.
That's why people see Flaherty's obsession for what it is -- race-baiting, pure and simple. And that's another reason why nobody believes WND.
ConWeb's Climate Change Deniers Get It Wrong on Arctic Ice Topic: The ConWeb
Reports of increased Arctic Sea ice brought out the usual climate change deniers in the ConWeb to trumpet the news:
NewsBusters serial misinformer Tom Blumer touted "the cold, hard fact of growing Arctic ice cover, as well as its possible implications," as reported by British newspapers like the Daily Mail, adding: "As is all too often the case, in certain matters affecting things here in the United States, if we didn't have news from Britain, we wouldn't have any real news at all."
Newsmax's Melanie Batley similarly promoted how "An unusually cold Arctic summer has resulted in almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice compared to the same time last year, bucking predictions that global warming would result in the disappearance of the ice cap by 2013." She also cited the Daily Mail.
But as Media Matters documents, Arctic ice was at a record low last year, so a large percentarge increase of the kind conservative outlets are reporting is not unexpected, and the recent historical trend shows that Arctic ice is in decline and this year's numbers still fall short of the average over the past 30 years. Neither Blumer nor Batley mentioned the historical trend.
Further, Blumer might want to widen his British newspaper reading horizons to include the Guardian, which points out that "When it comes to climate science reporting, the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph are only reliable in the sense that you can rely on them to usually get the science wrong." The Guardian adds: "Every year when the weather acts to preserve more ice than the previous year, we can rely on climate contrarians to claim that Arctic sea ice is 'rebounding' or 'recovering' and there's nothing to worry about."
CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth -- who we last saw at the Washington Examiner promoting bogus statistics about tea party rally attendance -- devoted a Sept. 13 article to attacking Al Gore for repeating a prediction that Arctic ice could disappear by this year, repeating claims that there is "a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet. "Hollingsworth made no mention of the Guardian's statement that given the historical trend, "an ice-free Arctic appears to be not a question of if, but when."
We Still Don't Know Whether Farah Repented On 9/11 Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Thompson is a roundup of boss Joseph Farah's "National Day of Prayer and Repentence" three days earlier. But there are some holes in the self-aggrandization.
Thompson claims "an estimated quarter of a million people across the nation this year participated in the first 9/11 National Day of Prayer and Repentance," but he offers no proof to support this claim. Then he quotes Jonathan Cahn -- whose prophecy book "The Harbinger" was retold as a WND-produced video-- claiming that “It was told me [sic] that an estimated 250,000 people or more were dedicating 9/11 as a day of prayer, intercession and repentance.” Again, there's no explanation of who told Cahn this or how that number was derived.
Thompson also repeats previous quotes from Farah about his little event, but there's no evidence that Farah used the day to do any repenting of his own, specifically the sins he has committed against President Obama by publishing lies and dishonest claims about him and his administration.
If Farah didn't repent, what moral standing does he have to demand repentence from anybody else?
That's the problem with having a shameless liar inspire a day of prayer -- there's a good chance he's lying about how many people took part.
CNS' Jeffrey Upset That Poor People Are Allowed To Own Things Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is quite put out that poor people haven't had their blongings stripped from them for the crime of being poor:
Americans who live in households whose income is below the federal “poverty” level typically have cell phones (as well as landline phones), computers, televisions, video recorders, air conditioning, refrigerators, gas or electric stoves, and washers and dryers and microwaves, according to a newly released report from the Census Bureau.
In fact, 80.9 percent of households below the poverty level have cell phones, and a healthy majority—58.2 percent—have computers.
Fully 96.1 percent of American households in “poverty” have a television to watch, and 83.2 percent of them have a video-recording device in case they cannot get home in time to watch the football game or their favorite television show and they want to record it for watching later.
Refrigerators (97.8 percent), gas or electric stoves (96.6 percent) and microwaves (93.2 percent) are standard equipment in the homes of Americans in "poverty."
More than 83 percent have air-conditioning.
Poor people own stoves? The heathens! Jeffrey's scare quotes around "poverty" are also amusing.
Jeffrey is a couple of years late to his new crusade of shaming the poor -- Fox News worked that in 2011. But as Think Progress pointed out, new technology is relatively cheap -- televisions, for example are much cheaper than they used to be, and "even a low income person can reliably obtain a level of television-based entertainment that would blow the mind of a millionaire from 1961" -- but housing, education and health have gotten more expensive, as has quality legal services.
Think Progress adds: "The federal poverty line for a family of three is $18,530 a year. I wonder how many Heritage Foundation policy analysts are deciding they want to cut back and work part time because it’d be super easy to raise two kids in DC on less than $20k in salary?" We suspect the same is true about CNS reporters and editors.
Joe Kovacs uses a Sept. 11 WorldNetDaily article to raise "the question of arson as a form of major terrorism" in the wake of Western wildfires, but try as he might, he can't prove that terrorists have ever set a wildfire.
The subhead for Kovacs' article reads, "Ex-NSA official: Al-Qaida ignited California blazes." But that's extremely misleading to the point of being false. The only "ex-NSA official" Kovacs quotes is William Scott, and 1) his quotes are from last year, and 2) he offers no proof.
Kovacs quotes Scott claiming that “U.S. officials have pretty much determined that some of the fires that burned in California [in 2011] were ignited by al-Qaida operatives." At no point is it stated who these "U.S. officials" are or how they "determined" this.
Kovacs' article is shoddily written with the intent to fearmonger, not enlighten -- which seems to be WND's modus operandi.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:59 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, September 14, 2013 10:22 PM EDT
Christopher Ruddy's pro-Obama contrarian streak continues by being one of the few conservatives to say anything nice about President Obama's address to the nation about Syria:
President Obama's speech to the nation reminded me of the other best speech he gave, that one was in Oslo, Norway.
Back in 2009, accepting the Nobel Prize, the new president offered some surprising remarks. While acknowledging the virtues of nonviolence as preached by the likes of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, he reaffirmed that the powerful cannot sit by idly in the face of evil. Evil doers, as Obama noted then, must be confronted, even with the use of military force. He cited World War II and the necessity of force to stop and defeat Hitler.
His comments then were sensible. As Americans we prefer not to use force, but we do so, to paraphrase the great statesman Edmund Burke, because we know that evil triumphs when good people sit back and do nothing.
Tonight the president offered a justified response to evil.
He reiterated some of the key points I made in my recent column on Newsmax.
That last part is what seems to impress Ruddy the most. He continues:
On the right, one can still oppose Obama on many issues — as I do — but support the president on a military strike in this case. On the left, one can still hold strong to their opposition to the war in Iraq, but support a limited action to punish the Assad regime for their particularly heinous act.
I realize I may not persuade one person with this column, so strongly held are views here. But one thing I do admire about Obama today is that he is sticking to his guns and, despite overwhelming opposition from the public and even the world community, is making a stand for what he believes is right.
if Ruddy keeps this up, he's going to get Heathered by NewsBusters.
WND's Cashill Rushes to George Zimmerman's Defense Topic: WorldNetDaily
The other day, we surmised that WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill -- who has a WND-published book coming out soon trashing Trayvon Martin and lionizing George Zimmerman -- was feverishly working on a way to spin Zimmerman's arrest on domestic violence charges in such a way as to absolve him of guilt.
We speculated correctly. Cashill's Sept. 12 column indeed paints Zimmerman as a victim, painting as a racial martyr on the scale of Clarence Thomas:
Dismayed by the not-guilty verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, they are trying to criminalize Zimmerman in the public’s mind if for no other reason than to save face.
The media have made Zimmerman’s speeding tickets national news stories. They made his wife, Shellie, a celebrity for divorcing him. They giddily turned a routine divorce spat into the Gunfight at O.K. Corral.
As with Thomas, fair-weather supporters grow weary of defending Zimmerman. They begin to doubt their own judgment. They begin to question the story Zimmerman told and the verdict itself. They shouldn’t.
[...]
An Obama supporter, he helped a black homeless man, Sherman Ware, find justice. He was helping guide two black teens through life. He helped a terrified mother secure her house. And he had recently volunteered to serve as neighborhood watch coordinator in a crime-plagued community, a responsibility he took seriously.
Cashill then amped up Zimmerman's martyr status to that of neglected Vietnam veterans:
In his battle with the Democratic-media complex, Zimmerman had few of the resources available to Thomas, including high-powered allies and the support of a stable, mature wife.
In this regard, he more closely resembles those lonely, traumatized veterans of the Vietnam War who returned from the field of battle to a public hostile to their cause, indifferent to their struggles, and eager to move on.
Zimmerman did not choose to represent us in the culture wars. The media thrust that role upon him. He does not deserve our scorn. He deserves our prayers. If we abandon him, the unthinking left and their media allies win.
Cashill has done his whitewashing, book-protecting duty. The spin he'll have to do to respond to a police chief's statement that Zimmerman is a "ticking time bomb" and another "Sandy Hook" waiting to happen, however, may take a little more work.
Alissa Tabirian writes in a Sept. 3 CNSNews.com article:
The real problem with the Lifeline Program that provides free cell phones – commonly known as “Obamaphones” – to low-income individuals is not that it’s been abused, but that not enough low-income Latinos are using the subsidized phones, according to The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
[...]
When CNSNews asked for a comment on documented reports of fraud and abuse in the “Obamaphone” system, he replied, “From our perspective, it’s not that there’s too much use, it’s actually too little.”
But as Tabirian concedes later in her article, Obama has nothing to do with "Obamaphones":
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Lifeline assistance program began in 1985 to give “a discount on phone service for qualifying low-income consumers to ensure that all Americans have the opportunities and security that phone service brings.” It was expanded in 2005 to include “pre-paid wireless service plans in addition to traditional landline service.”
Despite proving that Obama has nothing to do with the program in question, Tabirian persists in perpetuating the myth that this was all Obama's idea by uncritically using the term "Obamaphone."
Tabirian had a chance to tell the truth, but she decided instead to keep a lie alive.
Obama Derangement Syndrome, Erik Rush Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
Most observers have settled on the likelihood that it is his desire to redirect attention from his many scandals, Obamacare and immigration reform legislation that impels the president toward carrying out this attack. There is also a distinct possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood (whom he has supported worldwide and who have fighters among the rebels in Syria) is putting pressure on him to deliver after his failure to resist the ouster of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Q: How does Obama know what kind of weapons the rebels in Syria have?
A: He has the receipts …
I propose another scenario: It has been well-established that the Obama administration clandestinely provided arms to the rebels in Syria. (I say “rebels in Syria” rather than “Syrian rebels” because many of them are jihadis from other nations.) It is a pretty safe bet that this operation was at least part of the reason for the 9/11/12 attack on the American facility in Benghazi. I have contended for some time that President Obama himself either orchestrated the attack or was party to it. His motivation, I have asserted, would have been in perceiving a need to erase the evidence of the Benghazi operation – and perhaps even some of the personnel involved.
A subsequent revelation that Morsi provided military assets for the attack on the Benghazi compound does tend to lend credence to the notion that Obama was involved. After all, Obama was Morsi’s benefactor; indeed, there would have been no Arab Spring and no Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy in Egypt had it not been for Obama’s destabilization of the region.
Since it has been established that the Obama administration provided weapons to the rebels in Syria, and nearly a certainty these factions came to possess chemical weapons, is it then possible that Obama’s desire to strike Syria with all due speed stems from a need to erase the evidence of having provided them, and perhaps even other treasonous actions? It would certainly make the truth getting out with regard to Benghazi much more of a threat to Obama if evidence speaking to this being factual exists.
If this is factual, Barack Obama might ultimately be looking at occupying a noted place in history quite different from the one he currently occupies.
Newsmax's Dream Comes True As Peter King Calls Himself A Presidential Candidate Topic: Newsmax
Greg Richter sounds very pleased and almost giddy in a Sept. 8 Newsmax article:
The first presidential candidate for 2016 has announced his run: Republican Rep. Peter King of New York.
King told a New Hampshire radio station that he was visiting the state last week "because right now I'm running for president." It was King's second of four scheduled visits to the state this year, the New York Daily News reports.
King earlier this year hinted at running, but the radio admission not only seemingly makes it official, it would also make King the first member of either party to official throw a hat in the ring.
Richter, however, didn't note one major conflict of interest: His boss, Christopher Ruddy, is the one who put the bug in King's ear about furthering his presidential ambitions.
It would seem important to not that King is Newsmax's candidate (du jour, anyway, depending on what longtime Newsmax presidential paramour DonaldTrump decides), but apparently Richter disagrees.
CNS Still Keeping Its Obama-Bashing Afghan War Body Count Topic: CNSNews.com
Since President Obama took office, CNSNews.com has been obsessed with monthly body counts of the U.S. troops that died in Afghanistan, despite the fact that it did no such body count of troops killed in Iraq under President Bush.
CNS had abandoned the body count in recent months, but it's back with a vengeance with a Sept. 11 article by Dennis M. Crowley:
Twelve years ago today, nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
In the war that Congress authorized against al Qaeda only three days after that attack, the vast majority of the U.S. casualties have occurred in the last four and a half years during the presidency of Barack Obama.
In fact, according to the CNSNews.com database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.
The 91 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far in 2013 are more than those that occurred in the first two full calendar years of the war (2002 and 2003) combined, when 30 and 31 U.S. troops were killed there.
In blaming Obama for the vast majority of Afghan troop deaths, Crowley mentions President Bush only once, to state that "569 U.S. military personnel were killed in and around Afghanistan fighting in Operation Enduring Freedom" under his presidency, and he makes no mention of Iraq at all, let alone the fact that the vast majority of the 4,000-plus U.S. troops killed in Iraq died under Bush.
Crowley also fails to mention the fact that there were far fewer troops in Afghanistan under Bush than there were under Obama, which accounts for the lower Bush body count. According to PolitiFact, the number of troops in Afghanistan under Bush rarely exceeded 20,000 and typically hovered around 10,000. By contrast, the Afghan surge under Obama topped out at around 90,000 troops.
Of course, CNS has typically ignored context in doing its Afghan body counts, so why would it stop doing so now?
WND's Farah Lies About Existence Of 'Epidemic' Of 'Black Mob Violence' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah's Sept. 9 WorldNetDaily column is a response to a "devoted WND visitor" who is tired of WND's obsession with "constantly running stories about black-on-white violence." Let's break down Farah's response, shall we?
First he responds:
Are there heinous examples of white-on-black violence in America today? Of course. There are 350 million Americans. Are WND reporters and editors uninterested in covering white racial violence when it rears its ugly head? Of course they are interested, willing and eager to report it.
Note that Farah does not provide an example of "white racial violence" WND has covered recently.
One of the many disturbing trends the rest of the media have ignored over the last two or three years is the rapid escalation of black mob attacks on whites. I would characterize it as an epidemic of violence – racially motivated violence usually involving multiple attackers.
Because other news agencies are not reporting these incidents, it is literally impossible for Americans – black or white – to understand the problem or to come to grips with the truth. There’s no doubt the absence of honest reporting by others spurred WND’s conscious decision to report the trend, and, more importantly, to illustrate it frequently with coverage of individual attacks, usually supplemented with video.
In addition, WND is publishing the book that brought this trend to our attention as well as to the attention of many distinguished black Americans who are as alarmed about them as I am. That would be Colin Flaherty’s “White Girl Bleed A Lot,” now available as an e-book and soon, for the first time, as a paperback with national distribution.
In fact, Neither Flaherty nor Farah -- let alone or anyone else at WND -- have ever provided any statistical evidence that there is an "epidemic" of "black mob violence" in the U.S. All Flaherty has done is cherry-picked anecdotal examples of "black mob violence" -- which, as we've noted, includes dogs and white people -- in order to create fear among WND's predominately white and elderly audience that blacks are scary and out to rob and/or kill them.
But Farah wasn't done defending WND's race-baiting:
Is it racism that motivates me to do this? Yes, but not my racism. We’re reporting on an outbreak of black racism and violence that others are afraid to recognize and report – probably in part because of the fear of being labeled racist. We don’t report it to exploit it. We don’t report it to sensationalize it. We don’t report it to fan the flames of racism. We report it because when cruelty and hatred and violence go unnoticed, they go uncorrected, unchallenged and unaddressed.
Is a white person who is victimized by violence motivated by black racism any less a victim? When we see a pattern of escalating racial violence of this kind, is it not justified and appropriate and even our moral responsibility to expose it? That’s the way we overcame white racial violence a generation ago, and I believe we will not overcome black racial violence unless we approach it the same way.
Farah is simply lying that WND doesn't "sensationalize" or "exploit" its race-baiting. Type in the word "black mob violence" into WND's search engine and see what comes up -- and see how sensational the headlines are:
NEW ARTICLE -- NewsBusted: The Pierre File, Catholic Edition Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Dave Pierre is overly desperate to downplay any media mention of child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, while offering little more than lip service to its victims. Read more >>
Freaking about about gays and transgenders is what the Media Research Center does. And few MRC employees do that better than Tim Graham.
Colin Flaherty -- WND's 
Reports of increased Arctic Sea ice brought out the usual climate change deniers in the ConWeb to trumpet the news:
A Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is 
Joe Kovacs uses a Sept. 11 WorldNetDaily 
Christopher Ruddy's pro-Obama 
The other day, we 
Alissa Tabirian writes in a Sept. 3 CNSNews.com 
Most observers have settled on the likelihood that it is his desire to redirect attention from his many scandals, Obamacare and immigration reform legislation that impels the president toward carrying out this attack. There is also a distinct possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood (whom he has supported worldwide and who have fighters among the rebels in Syria) is putting pressure on him to deliver after his failure to resist the ouster of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Greg Richter sounds very pleased and almost giddy in a Sept. 8 Newsmax 
Since President Obama took office, CNSNews.com has been 
Joseph Farah's Sept. 9 WorldNetDaily 
