Last night on FNC’s The Kelly File, host Megyn Kelly sat down in an exclusive interview with six soldiers who served with Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
When Kelly asked them about accusations floating around that they’re just engaging in “swiftboating” and “playing politics” by speaking out, the men voiced their frustration. One soldier told her, “I don’t know how he [Bergdahl] felt about us, but we would all die for him and he left.”
It was a remarkable reaction from the men Bergdahl left behind. It was clear earlier in the discussion that their frustration with Bergdahl isn’t necessarily one of anger at him, but of concern for why he felt the need to leave them all behind, something thse men pointed out is not what a soldier of “honor and distinction” would do.
Bergdahl’s platoon leader made the point that speaking out about Bergdahl leaving has nothing to do with politics, but everything to do with wanting to know the truth behind why he left.
But Seal leaves out one important fact: Those platoon members are working through a Republican operative to get on TV.
Richard Grenell and his public relations firm have been coordinating interviews for the soldiers, including the ones who appeared on Kelly's show. Buzzfeed reports that Grenell has "played a key role in publicizing critics of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl."
That seems to be a fact worth noting. But apparently, Seal and NewsBusters didn't think so because it interfered with the right-wing media's narrative that Bergdahl is a deserter, never mind that Bergdahl has not had a chance to tell his side of the story.
Bad Timing: WND Dismisses Domestic Terror As 'Theoretical' While Domestic Terror Hits Las Vegas Topic: WorldNetDaily
Greg Corombos writes in a June 8 WorldNetDaily article:
The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced.
The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee was created in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but was scrapped soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks as intelligence and law enforcement officials shifted their focus to threats from outside the country. The committee will be comprised of figures from the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.
In his statement announcing the return of the committee, Holder said he remains concerned about the specter of attacks prompted by Islamic extremists, but he said this committee will be tasked with identifying other threats.
“We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Holder said.
Around the time that WND was posting this article, however, Jerad and Amanda Miller were murdering two cops inside a pizza restaurant, following by shooting another man to death inside a Walmart, where they both eventually took their own lives.
Yet Corombos quotes Horace Cooper, co-chairman of the black-conservative group Project 21, as dismissing domestic terrorism as a "theoretical problem" and the resurrected task force as "more about a political agenda than it is in protecting Americans."
Perhaps Cooper and WND should ask the Millers' victims how "theoretical" domestic violence is.
Las Vegas Cop-Killer Loved the MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Jerad Miller has been identified, along with his wife, Amanda, as the perpetrators in the Las Vegas incident in which three people, including two police officers, were shot to death before he and his wife committed suicide. Turns out he was a big fan of Brent Bozell's Media Rsearch Center empire.
Among the 107 entries on what appears to be Miller's Facebook "likes" page are the MRC's NewsBusters and CNSNews.com, as well as Bozell's quasi-super PAC operation For America.
Why point this out? Because turnabout is fair play. The MRC has regularly highlighted the supposed liberal links to other shooters, including FloydCorkins, who has been described has having been inspired by the Southern Poverty Law Center; the MRC complained that "media isn’t interested in holding the SPLC accountable for its rhetoric." The MRC has also highlighted how "Chris Dorner, an ex-cop on a vengeful rampage against police officers in Los Angeles, praised liberal media personalities in his oddly chatty 'manifesto' posted on Facebook. " (Dorner's manifesto also contained praise for conservatives, which the MRC conveniently failed to mention.)
Will the MRC tell us what of its rhetoric may have inspired Miller? Will the MRC even admit that Miller was a fan? Don't count on it -- as of this writing, no MRC outlet has devoted any original coverage to the shootings.
Though the Bergdahl issue has ostensibly provided President Obama with the opportunity to claim that his administration supports veterans, in the current political climate, he is probably more than happy to have Congress excoriating him over the legality of the arrangement, the irresponsibility of negotiating with terrorists and so forth. Compared to what could come to light if the truth is ultimately revealed with regard to Benghazi (to offer but one example), the potential fallout from this prisoner swap is hardly a worry.
I believe that when all is said and done, the Bergdahl-Taliban deal will have served its purpose in distracting Americans from the Benghazi select committee hearings and the Veteran’s Administration scandal. To a lesser extent, it will also distract us from the NSA and IRS scandals, the administration’s illegal support for Islamist rebels in Syria, the Fast and Furious scandal, Bureau of Land Management excesses (and the revelation of high-level political corruption attendant to that), the administration’s collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood at home and abroad and their complicity in the Arab Spring, which has cost tens of thousands of lives, their support for al-Qaida in Libya, Obama’s insinuation of Muslim Brotherhood operatives into the Department of Homeland Security, dismantling of terror training protocols in the FBI and Pentagon, backing Nazis in Ukraine, as well as the mountain of fiat federal regulation calculated to cripple America economically.
Obama obviously doesn’t share the ordinary American’s concern about jihadists, as he has bent over backward to close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, tried to sanitize the term “terrorism” from our vernacular and often pretended we are not in a war with Islamic jihadi.
Obama has made clear that he believes that radical Muslims have legitimate grievances against the United States – or, at the very least, that if we sweet-talk them, they will be less inclined to annihilate us.
Does Obama identify with Bowe Bergdahl? Is Bergdahl his kind of guy? Is he much different, for instance, from the man Obama chose to be secretary of state – John Kerry? Remember, Kerry served in Vietnam. When he returned, he became a vicious critic of the U.S. military. Some of the messages Bergdahl wrote about his fellow soldiers sound uncannily like the claims Kerry made about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.
Or is there something else – a motivation even darker?
Is there evidence suggesting Obama actually sympathizes, at some level, with the jihadist enemy? Could we, at least, safely conclude that he is more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than he is with Republicans in Congress? That’s the stark and seemingly undeniable conclusion of one member of Congress – Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina. Think about that! We have a president whose enemies are not mass murderers who enslave people, subjugate women and convert by the sword. His real enemies are those who disagree with him and oppose his policies at home.
Obama’s latest case of historical revisionism – trading five terrorists from the Gitmo Hilton for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whom some of his fellow soldiers describe not as a hero, but as a deserter – raises an interesting question. Does treason even exist anymore?
With apologies to Drudge and WikiLeaks, I am releasing the following transcript of President Obama’s farewell press conference, held on June 6, 2016, the day after the U.S. Senate voted 65-35 to convict him of five of the seven Articles of Impeachment adopted in the House on April 1, 2016. The transcript was obtained from a high-level source in the White House basement.
For Richard Nixon, it was a cover-up surrounding illegal wiretapping. For Bill Clinton, it was lying under oath about sex with an intern. Obama thinks he’s untouchable. He believes he’s above the law.
Evidently, he’s right.
What will it take for our spineless U.S. Congress to impeach this tyrant? This is way beyond partisan politics. This is about justice. This is about the safety of the American people. Barack Hussein Obama is America’s biggest threat to national security. He is “an enemy within.”
It’s official. America is no longer a constitutional republic. Under this “progressive” nut, we’ve become a banana republic.
What’s clear now is that Obama wasn’t motivated by compassion for a POW, as his small band of Kool-Aid drinkers would have you believe. Bergdahl was hanging out with the Taliban because he chose to do so. It’s what he wanted to do.
So what was his motivation?
Was Bergdahl an excuse to do what Obama had long pledged to do – free all the Gitmo psycho-killers?
I’m going to suggest Obama has a long history of siding with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which the Taliban is a part.
Obama has been a Taliban supporter for some time now – despite the slaughter, the insider attacks, the destruction of schools, the attacks on girls, etc. No hashtags for those girls. He strong-armed Afghan President Karzai into partnering with them. He insisted that NATO recognize the Taliban. Karzai has said that the Obama administration actually told him that the Taliban, which provided al-Qaida its base of support for Sept. 11, was not an enemy of the U.S.
Newsmax's New Scandal: Obama Chews Gum! Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has apparently found the latest Obama scandal, as detailed in a June 6 article:
Social media users tore into Barack Obama on Friday after the US president was seen chewing gum during solemn ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
People took to Twitter to denounce Obama's "shameful" and "vulgar" chewing, with one user attacking him as a "lout."
Yep, the entire article is all about how random people on Twitter disapprove of Obama chewing gum. It's not until the very last paragraph that it's noted that Obama "has faced an on-off battle to quit smoking and often chews a nicotine-based gum to drive away the craving."
You'd think that piece of information would be more important. But it appears Obama-bashing was the agenda for this article.
Bradlee Dean Promises Facts, Tells More Lies Instead Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his June 5 WorldNetDaily column, Bradlee Dean promises to "lay out the facts (yes, I said facts), not opinions, not half lies or distortions" about his defamation lawsuit against MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. But since Dean is a lying preacher, you know that's not going to happen.
Indeed, just a few words after saying he would tell "facts ... not opinions, not half lies or distortions," he tells a total lie by calling MSNBC a "communist network." The fact that MSNBC accepts advertising and is owned by a large for-profit corporation easily debunks Dean's false claim.
Dean goes on to rehash his complaints about Maddow accurately if incompletely quoting his anti-gay remarks and complains that Maddow left context out. But that supposed context contains another Dean lie, that Obama "said we are no longer a Christian nation, we’re a Muslim nation." As FactCheck.org documents, Obama's statement in full reads: "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."
In other words, Dean took Obama's words out of context -- he's doing to Obama what he's accusing Maddow of doing to him. Does he think Obama should sue him for defamation?
Dean goes on to rant:
However, seven months after filing a lawsuit, our attorney wanted to withdraw the case from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and file it in federal court.
The move to another court was a “tactical, strategic decision.” Our attorney then informed Judge Zeldon that he wanted to voluntarily dismiss the case from her court since it had been filed in federal court. Zeldon ruled that she would dismiss the case without prejudice if I would pay Maddow’s attorneys for the work they did in her court, which she assessed to be worth $24,625.23.
Pay the ones defending MSNBC and Rachel Maddow? The ones who put a hit piece out on my family, my ministry and me? I was not about to hand over $24,625.23 to the attorneys defending those who put a hit out on me, prompting persecution, death threats and an array of attacks from every angle against my ministry.
But Dean is not telling all the facts. First, he fails to identify his attorney, who is failed lawyer Larry Klayman. Second he doesn't explain the real reason Klayman tried to move venues -- as we noted, it was to deny Maddow an anti-SLAPP defense, which she could have in the D.C. court but not in a federal court.
Dean's framing this as a “tactical, strategic decision” obscures the fact that Klayman is such an incompetent lawyer he didn't research venues before filing Dean's lawsuit. Thus, the judge ordering Dean and Klayman to pay Maddow's lawyers for seven months work of work that would be moot in a different venue is entirely justified.
If Dean really was interested in telling all the facts instead of an orgy of self-aggrandizement, he would have mentioned Maddow's defense -- that she accurately represented what Dean said and that her words are protected by the First Amendment.
Dean rants that "my comments were clearly taken out of context and twisted" -- even though that is something Dean does all the time to others. If Dean was actually concerned about the truth, he would correct and repent for all the lies he has told about Obama and others through the years.
The U.S. economy added 217,000 jobs in May, pusing the number of jobs in the country past its pre-recession peak -- but you'll never read about that at CNSNews.com.
Following its anti-Obama agenda, CNS once again ignored good news about jobs to cherry-pick stats that make Obama look bad, as demonstrated in two articles by Ali Meyer:
The fact that Meyer could find only two statistics to cherry-pick shows that there is little bad news about the economy for her to report. That just goes to show once again that good news for America is bad news for CNS.
WND Article On Google Ads Doesn't Disclose That WND Uses Google Ads Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 31 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh carries the semi-alarming headline "Get ready for Google ads ... everywhere," and Unruh writes about how "the technology behemoth envisions selling ads that would appear on refrigerators, thermostats or even wristwatches."
Unruh doesn't mention, however, that one of the places you can find Google ads is at WND -- and there are some places at WND Google doesn't want its ads.
As we've documented, WND has complained that Google "Google "has threatened to block ads" on its race-baiting series of articles about "black mobs." WND ultimately decided to put revenue before principles by claiming it was "preemptively blocking Google ads" on its race-baiting (except that it wasn't).
Indeed, at least two ad spaces in Unruh's article -- the vertical in-article ad on the left side of the page and the text ad below Unruh's byline -- are controlled by Google.
WND has neverbeenbig on disclosing conflicts of interest, as journalistic ethics dictate, so why should it start doing so now?
MRC Writers Trash A Movie They've Never Seen Topic: Media Research Center
Journalistic honesty dictates that you actually watch the movie you're passing judgment on. The Media Research Center apparently doesn't care about such things.
In a June 2 MRC Culture & Media Institute column, Katie Yoder rants about the film "Obvious Child," complaining about the "abortion romantic comedy" and how "lefty media types were enthusiastic" about it. Given that Yoder wrote hger article five days before the film opened, it's highly unlikely she had a chance to see the film before spewing her opinion on it.
The ignorance continues in Brent Bozell and Tim Graham's June 6 column, in which they rail against "the courageous destruction of God's most beautiful and most innocent creation" and smear the film as "feminist nihilism." Their column was posted on the morning of June 6 -- the day the film opened -- making it highly unlikely that they too bothered to watch the film they're trashing.
Yoder followed up with an article posted later on June 6 in which she complains that eople who have actually watched the movie -- unlike her -- are expressing positive opinions about it. Even though Yoder may have had the chance to watch the film before posting her article, there's no indication she did.
Then again, since Yoder, Bozell and Graham are clearly going to trash this movie whether they saw it or not, they apparently decided to cut out that waste of time of seeing a film they've already formed an intractable opinion about.
WND's Empty Allegation of Bergdahl Ransom Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Maloof's June 5 WorldNetDaily article is headlined "Questions mount over 'ransom' for Bergdahl," but the only person who's asking the question appears to be Maloof:
While the Afghan Taliban, which negotiated with the U.S. for the release of US. Army Sgt. Bowe Berdahl, is not on the U.S. terrorist list, it is a member of the Haqqani network, which has been designated by the State Department as a terrorist entity.
The Haqqani network is a notoriously violent Islamic movement out of Pakistan that for years has slipped into Afghanistan and attacked U.S. troops.
Kidnappings have been a means of raising money for its activities, which has raised concern that the U.S. may have paid a ransom to a designated terrorist entity, contrary to U.S. policy.
Informed sources say that the Haqqani network passed Bergdahl to its close ally, the Afghan Taliban. The soldier then was brought to eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province to be handed over to U.S. Special Forces in exchange for five top Taliban commanders incarcerated at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
[...]
The Haqqani network, which raises operating funds through kidnappings and ransom payments, that may have received a ransom of more than $5 million for Bergdahl’s release, sources report.
According to sources, Bergdahl was held most likely in Pakistan’s northern province of North Waziristan[.]
Note that Maloof provides no substantiation for his rumor-mongering, citing only "sources" (and in one case "informed sources").
Despite the utter lack of substance behind Maloof's allegations of a ransom paid for Bergdahl, WND is running with it anyway. Garth Kant pulls in his BFF, soon-to-be-former congressman Steve Stockman, to echo it in another June 5 article:
Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, is demanding to know what others in Washington have virtually only dared whisper: Did President Obama pay a ransom to terrorists to secure the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl?
The highly provocative ransom question is actually an obvious one, because even though Bergdahl was turned over by the Taliban, he wasn’t held by the Taliban. He was held for five years by the ruthless Haqqani network, which is infamous for raising money by ransoming prisoners.
“The Haqqani network generally does not release Westerners unless they receive a large payment. It would be hard to believe they would release Bergdahl in an exchange that does not directly benefit them,” the congressman said in a summation of a letter he sent to Obama.
That assessment was confirmed in an analysis just released by WND security expert and former pentagon analyst F. Michael Maloof, who called the Haqqani network a notoriously violent Islamic movement out of Pakistan that uses kidnappings to raise money.
So WND is citing WND, which is citing, well, nobody. And Joseph Farah wonders why nobody believes WND.
MRC Censors News Of Bodies In Septic Tank of Irish Nun-Operated Home Topic: Media Research Center
Earlier this year, the Media Research Center repeatedlyattacked the film "Philomena" as "anti-Catholic" for detailing the abuses in the Irish system of unmarried mothers working in indentured servitude in laundries and other convent facilities operated by Catholic nuns (despite the fact that the woman whose story the film is based on praised it as "a testament to good things, not an attack").
In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.
Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
We'd ask what Brent Bozell and his MRC crew had to say about this story, but they have not weighed in on it -- or, perhaps , they have expressed their opinion by refusing to acknowledge it exists.
Asof this writing, no MRC website has mentioned this story -- not even its ostensible "news" division, CNSNews.com.
Remember that Bozell asserted that woman whose story was told in "Philomena" believes that her child really wasn't taken from her since he was "adopted by loving parents," and the girl "obviously" did "something wrong" for the nuns to take the child from her.
How will Bozell justify the nuns' disposal of hundreds of children in a septic tank? We can't wait to find out the answer.
NEW ARTICLE: Monckton's Mendacious Musings Topic: WorldNetDaily
Christopher Monckton is a birther and a climate change denier, two things that seem to explain how he became a WorldNetDaily columnist. Read more >>
CNS Afghanistan Body Count Obsession Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
cns'CNSNews.com's Afghanistan body-count obsession resurfaced last month, and now Ali Meyer keeps feeding the body-count beast with a June 2 article:
Eighty-six percent of the U.S. troops who have been wounded in the war in Afghanistan incurred their injuries after January 2009, the month President Barack Obama was first inaugurated, according to the Department of Defense.
Unusual for CNS, Meyer does acknowledge the existence of war casualties before Obama became president, noting that 'From 2003 until the first quarter of 2009, the majority of the major limb amputations due to battle injuries occurred in [Operation Iraqi Freedom]." But she doesn't mention who was president from 2003 to early 2009 (hint: it wasn't Obama).
At Barbwire.com I recently read Steve Baldwin’s excellent analysis of the flawed thinking characteristic of self-styled “conservatives” who are part of what he rightly describes as “a headlong rush by many conservatives … in support of various aspects of the homosexual agenda.” Mr. Baldwin questions the assumption that homosexual activity involves an issue of constitutional or civil rights like the one involved in the movement to end law-enforced racial discrimination.
[...]
In their clamor about global warming, poverty or an end to racism, those who advocate such respect pretend to be “humanitarians.” Yet they seek to discard our respect for the activity that implements the law (of the Creator) intended to preserve and perpetuate the nature of humanity as, in and of ourselves, we know it to be.
We do not forbid people to fly because they are born without wings. So the advocates of law-enforced respect for homosexuality may argue. But if and when they propose that, as a species, we should, like Icarus, fly into the sun, what then? If genocide is wrong for this or that race of human beings, how can self-inflicted genocide be right for humanity as a whole?
There's A Reason Live Action Is Ignored By Non-Right-Wing Media Topic: Media Research Center
Katie Yoder writes in a May 28 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute item:
It seems like prime media bait: a group accusing a taxpayer funded organization of horrors from racism to sex trafficking. Except that the story is centered on abortion – and the accused is Planned Parenthood.
Pro-life advocacy group Live Action has released an investigative report and video compiling “shocking activity” that occurs within Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics. As part of a Planned Parenthood Exposed campaign, Live Action asked Americans to sign a petition to halt the $500 million per year in taxpayer money that funds Planned Parenthood. Members of Congress received copies of the report on May 28, according to the press release.
The fact that Yoder is uncritically copying from a Live Action press release shows us the low level of scrutiny she is providing the group. And why should she question anything Lila Rose's group does? They adhere to Yoder's anti-abortion agenda, and that's all she needs to know.
Yoder laments that Live Action "most likely can’t rely on the media to spread its message" -- but she can certainly count on the MRC to do so, which presumably is why Yoder is so willing to be the group's hype woman. But she ignores a key reason what that is: Lila Rose is as dishonest as the activist who trained her, James O'Keefe.
Media Matters has documented how Rose's group has released numerous false attacks on and dishonest smears of Planned Parenthood, which Rose has apparently declared her mortal enemy.
Yoder will never tell you about any of that, of course -- that runs counter to her little PR operation.
Neither will the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, which published a May 30 article by Zoey DiMauro that promotes Rose's campaign of dishonesty and made no apparent effort to let any of her critics respond.
Jackie Seal writes in a June 6 NewsBusters post:
Greg Corombos writes in a June 8 WorldNetDaily 
Jerad Miller has been 
Though the Bergdahl issue has ostensibly provided President Obama with the opportunity to claim that his administration supports veterans, in the current political climate, he is probably more than happy to have Congress excoriating him over the legality of the arrangement, the irresponsibility of negotiating with terrorists and so forth. Compared to what could come to light if the truth is ultimately revealed with regard to Benghazi (to offer but one example), the potential fallout from this prisoner swap is hardly a worry.
Newsmax has apparently found the latest Obama scandal, as detailed in a June 6 
In his June 5 WorldNetDaily 
The U.S. economy 
A May 31 WorldNetDaily 
Journalistic honesty dictates that you actually watch the movie you're passing judgment on. The Media Research Center apparently doesn't care about such things.
Michael Maloof's June 5 WorldNetDaily 
Earlier this year, the Media Research Center 
cns'CNSNews.com's Afghanistan 
At Barbwire.com I recently read Steve Baldwin’s excellent analysis of the flawed thinking characteristic of self-styled “conservatives” who are part of what he rightly describes as “a headlong rush by many conservatives … in support of various aspects of the homosexual agenda.” Mr. Baldwin questions the assumption that homosexual activity involves an issue of constitutional or civil rights like the one involved in the movement to end law-enforced racial discrimination.
Katie Yoder writes in a May 28 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute 
