AIM's Caruba Pretends Anti-Immigration Group Is 'Non-Partisan' Topic: Accuracy in Media
In an Oct. 24 column for Accuracy in Media bashing immigration reform, Alan Caruba does his best to whitewash the true nature of the Center for Immigration Studies, proclaiming it "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization."
In reality, CIS is an anti-immigration group. As the Southern Poverty Law Center details, CIS was founded by John Tanton, "a man known for his racist statements about Latinos, his decades-long flirtation with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, and his publication of ugly racist materials." It's also not "independent" -- it was founded as the research arm of the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform and still has ties with the group.
So it appears that Caruba has found yet another subject to bamboozle his readers about.
Corsi's Pope-Bashing Source Isn't A Real Bishop Topic: WorldNetDaily
Pope Francis continues to freak out conservative Catholics -- one of whom, apparently, is WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi. He writes in an Oct. 19 article:
Citing the famous prophecies of Fatima, traditionalist Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard Fellay warned in an address in Kansas City that Pope Francis is precipitating the church’s decline and could be a herald that the world is entering the age of the Antichrist.
Fellay, who leads a society that has no canonical status in the Roman Catholic Church, said the “modernist views” professed by the pontiff are at odds with traditional Catholic teaching.
“The situation in the Catholic Church is a real disaster and the present pope is making it 10,000 times worse,” Fellay charged Oct. 12 at the Angelus Press Conference in Kansas City.
Corsi downplays the fact that Fellay isn't a real Catholic bishop -- he's an apostate whose ministry is not officially recognized by the Catholic Church due to its extremism. He eventually gets around to the gist of the story:
Fellay is superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, whose ministers, according to the Vatican, do not legitimately exercise ministry in the church.
[...]
Fellay’s Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, was founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who strongly opposed communists and “Catholic socialists” who he believes hijacked Vatican II to abandon traditional Catholic practices and beliefs, including replacing the Latin Mass with a modern format in the vernacular of local cultures.
In 1988, in an apostolic letter titled “Ecclesia Dei,” or “The Church of God,” Pope John Paul II officially excommunicated Fellay because he was consecrated by Lefebvre in an act the Vatican characterized as “unlawful” and “schismatic.”
In 2009, the Congregation for Bishops, on instructions from Pope Benedict XVI, rescinded Fellay’s excommunication, while stressing that the SSPX has no canonical status in the Catholic Church and that any minister established by the SSPX has no right to exercise its ministry in the church.
Corsi, however, doesn't mention a recent controversial statement by Fellay, in which he listed Jews among "enemies of the Church." SSPX released a statement claiming that Fellay was referring to leaders of Jewish organizations, not the Jewish people, though such a statement seems to have the same ring of truth as Larry Klayman insisting his repeated smears of President Obama are metaphorical.
A plan by President Barack Obama to create a unisex-style cap for the Marine Corps' uniform has Leathernecks up in arms over a look that many have derided as "girly."
"We don't even have enough funding to buy bullets and the DOD is pushing to spend $8 million on covers that look like women's hats," a senior Marine told The New York Post.
The hats, which are smaller and thinner, are apparently aimed at looking as good on females as on males.
Barron didn't see fit to obtain any comment from the Marine Corps. If she had she would have learned that 1) the new caps are only for women, and that's only because the previous manufacturer went out of business, and 2) Obama has nothing to do with it.
There are times when one must go beyond simply rewriting someone else's article in order to get the full story, and Barron apparently didn't realize this was one of those times. The bogus hit on Obama was just too good to fact-check, it seems.
In Jackson, Miss., a bass fisherman who was participating in a professional fishing tournament was gunned down by a hoodie-wearing, 17-year-old black youth in a case that has become a sobering reminder of violence in America.
The case is noteworthy because the suspect’s description is almost the same as that for Trayvon Martin the night he was shot and that it took place in the city that just elected a radical, black separatist, Chokwe Lumumba, as its mayor.
Jack Cashill, author of “If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman,” believes this case highlights a lot of the troubles that currently are plaguing the nation and reveals the biases of the mainstream media, particularly in how media outlets referred to Trayvon as a “child” while the Jackson murder suspect is not, despite the two being similar.
“The accused killer is the same age and race as Trayvon Martin and yet, in no article that I’ve seen has anyone described him as a ‘child.’ He would have become a child, however, and his hoodie a symbol, if Johnny [sic: Jimmy] Johnson [the slain fisherman] had managed to defend himself from attack as George Zimmerman did. Strange world,” Cashill explained.
So just because Johnson's accused killer is a back teenager who wore a hoodie, he's just like Trayvon? Please.
According to news reports, Johnson noticed someone burglarizing his boat outside his motel room; he went out to investigate and was shot. 17-year-old Shaun Brown was arrested and has reportedly confessed to being responsible for the shooting. By contrast, there is no evidence Martin was armed or engaged in criminal activity at the time he was confronted by Zimmerman.
Regarding WND's claims that Jackson's mayor is a "radical, black separatist," that is actually in his background. But that ignores Lumumba's record in Jackson and as mayor, which is less radical that WND would have you believe:
Jackson’s small size also made it hard to successfully demonize Lumumba, who alongside his radical involvements and controversial cases was also known as a family man, youth basketball coach (he named his team the Panthers), member of the Word and Worship Church and neighbor.
“During the campaign, they raised all this hay about how he’s a radical,” said Melvin Priester Jr., a lawyer who won the election for Lumumba’s seat on the City Council and a childhood friend of the mayor’s daughter, Rukia. “Aside from wearing dashikis in the neighborhood, he was just a loving father,” Priester said. “I saw him as Mr. Lumumba from up the block.”
Besides, depicting a black activist as a radical doesn’t make sense in a place like Mississippi, said Priester. “From outside it’s easy to draw lines between the Republic of New Afrika and mainline civil rights organizations like the NAACP. But for black people in the South, there’s not so much a division, because even the most mainline, suit-and-tie-wearing activists were getting shot at.”
"People were looking at Lumumba as the radical, but they missed the fact that as an attorney and advocate, he made so many deep relationships over the years,” said Rhodes, who voted for Lee but spoke highly of both men. “He was able to speak to the mood of a number of disenchanted black working-class folk, who saw in him the one who finally comes and revolutionizes this chocolate city.”
[...]
Lumumba’s core supporters espouse a program called the Jackson Plan, which the MXGM posted on its website in 2012. The plan’s aim is to “build a base of autonomous power in Jackson that can serve as a catalyst for the attainment of Black self-determination and the democratic transformation of the economy.” Many of the specifics are practical, even business-friendly — improving Jackson’s paltry recycling program; bringing hothouses and pesticide-free techniques to community gardens; building cheap, energy-efficient housing.
But given WND's record of portraying blacks as radicals and/or criminals, it's not a surprise that WND would rather fearmonger than report the truth.
CNS Pushes Bogus Claim About Obamacare Website Privacy Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Hunter writes in an Oct. 24 CNSNews.com article:
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Thursday grilled Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal Inc., the company that built the Obamacare health-insurance exchange website, on language hidden in source code on the site that says applicants have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
[...]
The HIPAA Privacy Rule “establishes national standards to protect individuals’ medical records and other personal health information and applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers that conduct certain health care transactions electronically.”
“HIPAA is designed to protect the patient’s privacy, and this explicitly says in order to continue, you have to accept this condition that you have no privacy, or no reasonable expectation of privacy,” he said.
At the hearing on Obamacare implementation failures, Campbell admitted that she was aware of the language in the source code. However, she told the committee earlier that her company was HIPAA compliant.
When Barton pressed her on whether the source code was HIPAA compliant, Campbell said it was a decision for CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) to make.
Hunter fails to mention that Campbell is correct that her company is HIPAA compliant. As Hunter acknowledges, HIPAA applies to "health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers that conduct certain health care transactions electronically" -- none of which describes Campbell's website-building company.
Hunter also failed to tell her readers that the "no reasonable expectation of privacy" gotcha is totally bogus. Because that language was "hidden in source code," it is not applicable -- such language is part of standard "terms and conditions" clauses and because it was removed from display text, it is not legally enforceable.
But telling the truth was not the point of Hunter's article -- fearmongering about the Affordable Care Act was.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Erik Rush Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
We have Obama’s abject tyranny during the recent government shutdown, which infringed upon the rights of so many that I am astounded it did not result in at least a few deaths stemming from authorities’ reactions to “overzealous” civil disobedience.
The president is in violation of Article III, section 3, clause 1, of the U.S. Constitution; this clearly states that the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy is a treasonable offense. With a wave of his hand, Obama waived that law and is now supplying weapons to al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood jihadists in Syria anyway. Then there’s the host of unconstitutional executive orders and under-reported crimes about which Congress remains mute.
In the background, the president has engaged in even deeper collusion with our enemies at home and abroad, among them insinuating members of the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization with a written mission to destroy America – into high places in government. His administration has conspired to sign the U.S. on to the U.N. International Arms Trade Treaty, which would impinge upon American citizens’ Second Amendment protections, as well as providing a disadvantage to our allies abroad. Through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), he is attempting to subordinate America’s economic policy to foreign interests.
[...]
Since all of the checks and balances in our government have been effectively subverted, the solutions will have to be out of the box. There is the course of civil disobedience to consider; obviously we saw elements of this in protests stemming from the recent government shutdown. There is insurrection, but of course this should be considered only as a last resort. Given the dictatorial proclivities of this president, such action might ultimately wind up being a reaction rather than being initiated by the American people.
[...]
From a preponderance of evidence gleaned from the press, intelligence operatives, military personnel and lay witnesses, it is evident that President Obama is a Marxist and Islamist sympathizer who was maneuvered into the presidency by well-heeled socialists and Saudi Islamists. The latter has become more readily apparent as a result of several revelations published recently concerning Obama’s Middle East policy.
I fear that those who still insist upon defending Obama and his ilk, whether liberal commentators or our neighbors, are those who will merely shrug their shoulders when they start kicking down doors and herding people into cattle cars. As such, they certainly shouldn’t be trusted. We have entered the time when we cannot be certain how rapidly this administration’s malignant agenda will advance, so the less such people know about each of us in general, the better.
Meanwhile ... Topic: Accuracy in Media
Right Wing Watch catches Accuracy in Media's Roger Aronoff claiming -- without proof, of course -- that there was a secret deal between the Obama administration and Comcast that it would ensure liberal bias at NBC and MSNBC in exchange for federal approval of Comcast's purchase of NBC Universal.
Which Part Of His Radical Left-Wing Past Is Joseph Farah Lying About? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah is quite a shameless and aggressive liar, so it's not a surprise that he would embellish his own past. He writes in his Oct. 23 WorldNetDaily column:
I officially became a Republican in 1982.
Two years earlier, I voted for Jimmy Carter for president for the second time.
But, more importantly, in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a stone cold radical leftist – literally working shoulder to shoulder with the likes of revolutionary terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and whacked out traitors Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
"Literally working shoulder to shoulder"? That's not what he's said previously on the subject. In a 2012 column he wrote:
During the euphemistically named "Indo-China Peace Campaign" organized by Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, I was given the "honor" of serving as a body guard for Fonda, recently returned from North Vietnam where she posed for photographs sitting in an anti-aircraft emplacement meant to shoot down American planes.
I was recruited for terrorist attacks such as blowing up chemical plants by older radicals who didn't have the courage to do it themselves. (I thank God today I never followed through on these plots.) I wrote for some of the most left-wing periodicals in America — the Guardian, the Liberated Guardian and more.
And my reputation preceded me. Even after college, when my views had moderated considerably, I was invited to meet Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were still underground for their own acts of domestic terrorism.
Serving as a bodyguard for Fonda and merely meeting Ayers and Dohrn? That's not exactly the "literally working shoulder to shoulder" Farah now claims. It seems Farah has decided to embellish his former left-wing cred.
Or is it the other way around? It could be that Farah was lying before and is telling the truth now. If he really was "literally working shoulder to shoulder" with Hayden and Fonda and Ayers and Dohrn, that means he may have been lying about not committing terrorist attacks.
Whatever the truth is, the one thing we know for sure is that Farah is lying about his past. And if he's willing to do that, there's no reason to trust anything that appears on a "news" website Farah operates.
Noel Sheppard's Double Standard on Double Standards Topic: Newsmax
Noel Sheppard uses an Oct. 24 NewsBusters post to rage against Daily Beast contributor and comedian Dean Obeidallah, who dared to respond to criticism of his tweet that he hoped "Ted Cruz and John McCain settle their feud in an Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton style duel":
The First Amendment is supposed to apply to everyone in our society. Unfortunately, what we have seen - particularly in the last six or seven years - is that it applies more to liberals than conservatives.
Liberal politicians and pundits - such as Obeidallah - can write and say whatever they want with total impunity.
Joe Biden can make clearly racist remarks and be excused for them. So can Harry Reid.
Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher can make misogynistic comments with narry a concern that it might impact their livelihood.
Alec Baldwin can go on a homophobic tirade and rather than losing his position as spokesman for Capital One actually get rewarded with his own show on MSNBC.
But if you're a conservative, and you make such comments, you'll be required to apologize and even that might not save your job.
Heck, if you're a conservative, you don't even have to make a racist, homophobic, or misogynistic joke to draw the left's ire.
Just criticize President Obama and there'll be people lining up to call you a racist - many of them elected officials as well as members of the media.
As such, in the plainest English I can summon, we conservatives want the same freedom of speech rights as liberals!
[...]
When his inbox fills up with hate-mail, some of it threatening, and he ends up either getting fired or having to issue a formal apology, he'll know what a double standard is.
The real question is: Does Sheppard know what a double standard is? Not that we can tell. After all, this is the guy who:
Heartily approved of Jay Leno insulting Harry Reid by saying of John Boehner telling Reid to "go fuck himself," then a mere 28 minutes later wailed that Arnold Schwarzenegger "took a cheap shot at New Jersey Governor Chris Christie."
Lamented "the level of political discourse in America today," then approvingly cited an ugly insult by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue about President Obama.
Ranted against Stephen Colbert and "the toxic political tone in our nation," then five days later approvingly quoted Colbert telling CNN host Piers Morgan to "get the f--k out of Dodge."
And Sheppard feels the need to lecture others about double standards? Puh-leeze.
WorldNetDaily devoted an Oct. 24 article to reproducing a blog post purporting to prove that an incident at a recent speech by President Obama in which a pregnant woman standing behind the president fainted was staged.
This is not a surprise, of course -- publishing outlandish, barely substantiated conspiracy theories about Obama is what WND does. The only real surprise here is that it lifted somebody else's work instead of laundering it through in-house conspiracy-mongers like Jerome Corsi or Aaron Klein.
Still, WND has fully embraced the conspiracy, asking in an email blast to its mailing list asking, "Is there ANYTHING about this president that isn't totally phony?"
CNSNews.com has a weird obsession with counting specific words President Obama and other administration officials say -- or don't say. It's at it again in an Oct. 23 article by Susan Jones:
In response to simple questions asked by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius often appeared vague or uncertain, frequently hedging her remarks with the phrase, "I think." She appeared to "know" very little.
Sebelius used the phrase "I think" or "we think" or "I don't think" 17 times during the interview. In fact, the first words out of her mouth were, "I think what we know is..."
Yes, that's the entire point of Jones' article. The rest of it is devoted to detailing all 17 instances of Sebelius saying "I think."
WND Klein Fearmongers About Foreign Ownership of Electronic Voting Firm (And, Of Course, George Soros) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein sounds quite paranoid in an Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily article:
Scytl, the foreign-headquartered company that recently purchased the leading U.S. electronic voting firm, won an award for potential in growth and innovation.
The judging panel for the award included executives from Microsoft and Google and members of the news media such as analysts for CNN, BBC, USA Today and the San Francisco Chronicle.
The inclusion of Google may be instructive. WND reported in May 2012 that Scytl had announced the successful implementation of technology that allows ballots to be cast using Google and Apple smart phones and tablet computers.
Last week, Scytl was awarded the Longhorns 2013 Bully Award, which seeks Europe’s technology stars whose firms are determined to have demonstrated excellence in innovation and growth potential.
Aaron Klein’s “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office” is available, autographed, at WND’s Superstore
The award is handed out annually by White Bull, a European technology consulting firm.
According to the Bully Award website, this year’s judging panel included the San Francisco Chronicle’s David Einstein; USA Today tech columnist and former Barron’s Editor Mark Veverka; Google’s Yves Cornaz; Microsoft’s Roxanne Varza; Colleen DeBaise of Entrepreneur Magazine; and BBC and CNN analyst Ralph Silva.
Klein doesn't really explain why any of this is a bad thing -- apparently, there is some sort of right-wing alchemy in which a foreign-owned company, electronic voting and mainstream media put together in the way Klein has is supposed to be self-evidently evil, but we're not seeing it.
An Oct. 3 article by Klein on the subject, however, adds an extra ingredient that makes a little more sense from a right-wing paranoia standpoint -- George Soros:
WND has learned the firm vouching for Scytl has links to billionaire activist George Soros.
WND recently reported Scyrl acquired the software division of a non-profit election organization tied to Soros’ Open Society Institute.
WND also reported Scytl announced its technology will be deployed at more U.S. jurisdictions ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.
But that's merely invoking a bogeyman. Klein's efforts to insert Soros into the story proves nothing -- other than WND's desire to fearmonger.
NEW ARTICLE: Newsmax's Peter King Presidential Boomlet Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax basically talks the New York Republican congressman into throwing his hat into the ring for 2016 -- then strangely doesn't include him in a Newsmax poll about potential presidential candidates. Read more >>
WND's Geller Freaks Out About De Blasio Changing His Name Topic: WorldNetDaily
The ConWebfreakout over Bill de Blasio changing his name has spread to WorldNetDaily's Pam Geller:
De Blasio has a great deal to hide: He has had a number of aliases and name changes. And it’s not surprising that he would want to cover up his past. He’s continuously scrubbing his past.
[...]
Even aside from the mystery surrounding his name, what we know about Bill de Blasio is bad enough. He stands by his fervent support for the vicious communist Sandinistas in the 1980s – even the New York Times expressed concern about de Blasio’s communist activism. De Blasio said last week that he could not celebrate Columbus Day, as “there are some troubling things in his history.” Funny, the same can be said of “Bill AKA Warren de Blasio AKA Wilhelm AKA Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm AKA Bill de Blasio.”
Geller goes on to bash de Blasio as "seditiou," and a "terror-supporting Marxist," and she promotes an anti-de Blasio press conference she will be holding with Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid and foreigner Trevor Loudon later this week.
TruthRevolt Picking Up NewsBusters' Bad Habits Topic: Horowitz
TruthRevolt's aping of NewsBusters means that it's picking NewsBusters' bad habits.
One of them is Heathering. An Oct. 21 post attacks Business Insider's Josh Barro for deviating from the right's anti-Obamacare dogma by dismissing him as someone "who has masqueraded as the left’s favorite conservative."
Another one is promotion of discredited sources. An Oct. 22 post by Paul Bois goes after MSNBC's Chris Matthews' denial of FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe's claim that polls showing the American public blaming Republicans for the government shutdown can be blamed on media bias:
This probably would've been a good time for Kibbe to suggest that Matthews head down to his local bookstore to pick up a copy of Left Turn by Tim Groseclose. Indeed, the book's studies reveal the heavy sway media bias (left leaning) has on the average American -- 25 points on a scale of 100 to be exact.
As we've documented, Groseclose's book -- which was promoted by NewsBusters and others in the ConWeb upon its release in 2011 -- uses a methodology that is highly flawed. Under its definition, the National Rifle Association is only slightly more conservative than the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Drudge Report "leans left" because the methodology doesn't take into account Drudge's biased presentation of the news.
The capper: Even though imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Media Research Center has yet to acknowledge TruthRevolt's existence.
In an Oct. 24 column for Accuracy in Media bashing immigration reform, Alan Caruba does his best to whitewash the true nature of the Center for Immigration Studies, proclaiming it "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization."
Pope Francis continues to 
Lisa Barron writes in an Oct. 24 Newsmax 
An Oct. 19 WorldNetDailiy 
Melanie Hunter writes in an Oct. 24 CNSNews.com 
We have Obama’s abject tyranny during the recent government shutdown, which infringed upon the rights of so many that I am astounded it did not result in at least a few deaths stemming from authorities’ reactions to “overzealous” civil disobedience. 
Joseph Farah is quite a 
Noel Sheppard uses an Oct. 24 NewsBusters 
CNSNews.com has a 
Aaron Klein sounds quite paranoid in an Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily 
The 
TruthRevolt's 
