NEW ARTICLE: A Cop-Killer's Best Friends
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't want to talk about how its operations earned Facebook likes from cop-killer Jerad Miller, and WorldNetDaily doesn't want to talk about how its anti-police rhetoric mirrors that of Miller's. Read more >>

WND Delves Into Lame Ethnic Humor With 'Sum Ting Wong' Headline
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Somebody apparently forgot to tell WorldNetDaily that ethnic humor based on derogatory stereotypes stopped being funny a good 30 years ago, if not more.

That would seem to be the logical explanation for why WND headlined a June 17 article "Sum Ting Wong: Feds bust illegals at Chinese restaurants."

The odd point of the article is that it's "bizarre" to go after "Asian restaurants in the sleepy little town of State College, Pennsylvania, the home of Penn State University" when there's an "ongoing flood of illegal aliens pouring across the Mexican border into the U.S." But it comes off as portraying Asians as somehow more desirable immigrants than Hispanics.

That shows that the place where something's wrong is actually WND.

Seton Motley Misleads About Net Neutrality Again
Topic: NewsBusters

Seton Motley has long misled about net neutrality, and he does so again in a barely coherent June 16 NewsBusters rant, in which he targets HBO's John Oliver for explaining the subject in a manner of which Motley does not approve:

Oliver doesn't explain Net Neutrality - he gets it fundamentally wrong.

Oliver’s segment was start-to-finish Leftist rote.  Unwittingly I’m guessing, he’s carrying the water of the Internet’s bandwidth hogs.  Particularly video-streaming companies like Netflix, Google (who owns YouTube) - and, perhaps, movie channel HBO? - who want the government to mandate that they get a free ride for being bandwidth hogs.

And Oliver omits a panoply of contravening information.

Oliver begins his piece by incorrectly asserting that huge-bandwidth-using-companies paying for the bandwidth they use is the creation of an Internet “fast lane.”  Thus leaving the rest of us consigned to the “slow lane.”

Only there will be no such thing. What Oliver and Company report as brand new “fast lanes”- are in fact regular lane deals that have existed as long as has the Internet.  It is all a part of what is called peering.

The words "fast lane" and "slow lane" are the total extent to which Motley quotes Oliver, which poses a problem in Motley trying to disprove Oliver -- and a sign that Motley will be building straw men instead of engaging in a actual discussion.

Motley also undermines himself by including in one of his links showing how "pseudo-news pseudo-consumers were thrilled" a substantive debunking of the point he's trying to make, a Slate piece by Marvin Ammori.

Motley takes particular umbrage at Netflix over the peering, or interconnection, issue:

Netflix for years had no problem paying middle men for their monster bandwidth use - companies like Level 3 and Cogent.  Who are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) - just for these guys rather than us.

Then it occurred to Netflix that it made more business sense to cut out these middle men - and deal directly with our ISPs.

[...]

Except Netflix suddenly, disingenuously claimed these very ordinary deals were Net Neutrality violations.

[...]

But again, Netflix has always paid someone for their bandwidth hoggishness (as well they should).  The only thing new here is their trying to get the government to mandate they no longer have to.

Ammori debunks this idea, responding to a critic named Jon Healey who had made claims similar to Motley's:

Interconnection is a term referring to where and how Comcast’s network connects to the network carrying Netflix’s traffic. This connection is necessary for Comcast users to watch Netflix. Netflix claims that Comcast (and apparently Verizon and others) deliberately congest these connections to force Netflix and other companies to pay Comcast (and Verizon). John Oliver suggested—based on these facts of Netflix’s speeds on different networks—that Comcast and others would have the incentive to make websites work poorly to force them to pay.

But you don’t have to know what interconnection is to realize Healey is being misleading. If you watch the video, you’ll notice Oliver never says the Comcast-Netflix dispute is a network neutrality issue. But, if he had, he would have been in good company. As a matter of fact, not spin, the net neutrality proposal actually includes questions on interconnection (and other things Wheeler opposes, like Title II, protecting mobile users, and banning discrimination). That suggests that interconnection has at least something, not “nothing,” to do with net neutrality. Plus, as I explain here, the net neutrality legal orders have repeatedly rested on interconnection concerns from 2005 through 2010, including for their jurisdictional authority in key decisions. Oh, and the lawyers at Netflix, Level 3, Cogent, and ... the major Internet companies ... all believe that the interconnection is part of this debate and have filed legal arguments about it in the FCC's net neutrality docket. So clearly interconnection has something to do with net neutrality. Healey is just repeating the FCC chairman's talking points that interconnection is not related to net neutrality.

Ammori notes that "John Oliver joined the huge chorus that consists of just about everyone except the phone and cable giants, politicians opposed to anything Obama supports, and the FCC chairman." Add Seton Motley to that list.

WND's Massie: Michelle Obama Is A Filthy Whore
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Mychal Massie has long had an irrational hatred of Michelle Obama (one word: Buttzilla). For his June 16 column, Massie hauls out his thesaurus to come up with new ways to denigrate her:

I am prepared to argue same because, if we have a white Christian conservative as president, we can criticize his (or her) policies without concern of being called racists. It would be expected of that person to adhere to the highest standards of integrity, truthfulness, transparency and protocol. A white Christian conservative’s wife would be expected to exhibit social grace and decorum consistent with the office her husband held and not comport herself as a demimonde or slattern in expensive designer clothes.

A "demimonde" is, according to Merriam-Webster, "a class of women on the fringes of respectable society supported by wealthy lovers; ... the world of prostitution." A "slattern" is "an untidy slovenly woman; also :  slut, prostitute."

Which means that Massie is calling Michelle Obama a filthy whore.

This is apparently the kind of thing that keeps WND paying him the big bucks.

MRC Desperately Tries To Discredit School-Shooting Statistic
Topic: Media Research Center

When the group Everytown for Gun Safety came out with its statistic last week that there have been 74 school shootings since the Newtown massacre, the MRC knew it had to shoot it down, as it were.

In a June 11 MRC item, Matthew Balan dismissed Everytown for Gun Safety as a "pro-gun control group" founded by Michael Bloomberg, taking refuge in a conservative blog's insistence that gang violence and gun suicides don't count as "school shootings."

A June 12 NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer called the group's number a "falsehood" and touted how CNN allegedly debunked the group's figure by focusing only on "situations similar to the violence in Oregon -- a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school." As Media Matters notes, this follows the strange right-wing logic, articulated by right-wing writer Charles C. Johnson, that"It's not a school shooting when someone goes and shoots a specific person on campus. It's a shooting that happens to take place at school."

In a June 13 item, Kristine Marsh attacked the group's purportedly "false data," as if people killed at school by means other than mass shootings didn't really die.

WND's Geller Slurs Rabbi As A 'Kapo'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Pamela Geller, it seems, really can't handle criticism. She writes in her June 15 WorldNetDaily column regarding a Washington Post article on her latest anti-Muslim transit ad campaign:

She even added that “Rabbi Charles M. Feinberg, Congregation Adas Israel, said that because of Geller’s ‘vicious’ ads, Muslims are ‘being yelled at and disrespected.’”

Shame on “Rabbi” Charles M. Feinberg. What a betrayal of his people. What has he done to combat the vicious Islamic texts that are responsible for the unimaginable death toll of Islamic Jew-hatred over the past 1,400 years? What has this tool said or done about the vicious jihad against the Jews and the Jewish state? One can only imagine what these Islamic supremacists say about this kapo when he leaves the room.

As we noted when Ben Shapiro did the same thing to Rahm Emanuel, "kapo" is a derogatory to "a Nazi concentration camp prisoner who was given privileges in return for supervising prisoner work gangs: often a common criminal and frequently brutal to fellow inmates."

So, for simply pointing out the  meanness of Geller's crusade, Feinberg is denigrated as a Nazi and suggesting he's not a real rabbi. It's as if Geller said, "Vicious? You wanna see vicious? How does smearing a Jew as a Nazi fit ya, fancy pants?"

Mission accomplished. Geller simply can't take criticism.

CNS Equates Gays With Satanists
Topic: CNSNews.com

The Media Research Center has an anti-gay agenda, so why wouldn't its "news" division try to portray gays as satanists? That's exactly what CNS managing editor Michael Chapman does in a June 11 article headlined "Satanic Temple: Gay Marriage is 'a Sacrament’":

While Chapman goes on to admit that the Satanic Temple considers heterosexual marriage to be as much of a sacrament as gay marriage, much of the article is given over to "why TST focuses on gay rights." It's clear that the only reason this article exists is for Chapman to liken homosexuality to satanism.

After all, CNS is part of an organization with an anti-gay agenda, so of course Chapman would do this.

WND's Loudon Makes Armchair Diagnosis of Obama As Going Insane
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily will publish pretty much any smear of President Obama, so it was happy when one of its own columnists did the smearing. Drew Zahn writes in a June 6 article:

A prominent therapist and author has publicly questioned the mental stability of both Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. president who traded five terrorists back to the Taliban to secure Bergdahl’s release.

Dr. Gina Loudon is host of “Smart Life with Dr. Gina” on Money Biz Life Network and has appeared on or been cited by the BBC, ABC, CNN, New York Times, Fox News and more. Her columns also appear regularly on WND.

Earlier this week, Loudon told Lou Dobbs on Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that Bergdahl’s anti-American rhetoric doesn’t suggest someone suffering from torture or even “Stockholm Syndrome,” but rather the mind of a man whose thinking had been twisted long before his capture by the Taliban.

She also suggested President Obama may relate to Bergdahl’s “anti-colonialist” rantings, and his recent “erratic” behavior may not be what we “deem sane.”

[...]

Dobbs asked Loudon why Obama would trade five terrorists for Bergdahl, a serviceman suspected of deserting his unit, but not even speak out about the imprisonment of decorated 25-year-old Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who sits in jail in Mexico for inadvertently crossing the border with a gun in his vehicle.

“I am very, very concerned about the mental stability of this president at this point,” Loudon said. “Some of his behavior seems irrational to me. It seems beyond that of just a typical, narcissistic, arrogant sort of ‘I’m a leader of a big country and I feel tyrannical at the moment’ kind of attitude.

“It really seems to me like this president is demonstrating behavior that is not only anti-American, but irrational and erratic and perhaps not exactly what we might want to deem sane,” she concluded.

Loudon followed up in her June 8 column by defending her armchair diagnosis:

First let me say that diagnoses are for purposes of medical treatment, and I do not diagnose or treat. I am a policologist, and it is my job to report on politics and psychology, and the impact of psychology on politics. That is what I do.

No one can accurately diagnose this president for medications or treatments he might need without talking to him – that is true. But that does not mean we surrender our First Amendment rights when we go to graduate school. If the leader of the free world is acting erratically, I would think it would be incumbent upon those who know the signs of instability the best to call out what they see, before something crazy happens, like the release of five terrorists in the exchange for a defector, or something! Thousands, tens of thousands of Americans, could die for that decision. How is that rational? And others have died and been “left on the battlefield” by this same president. This is top-level peril for all Americans. I believe someone needed to say something, and that is why I said it.

Loudon then goes on a tirade against Bowe Bergdahl's family, blaming the father for drawing attention to himself instead of a media jumping to conclusions before all the facts are in as she jumped to her own conclusions:

If one more stiff-lipped talking head talks about how “heartbroken” the Bergdahl family feels, and how we need to “withhold judgment,” they forfeit their credibility. We, the People didn’t make the Bergdahls the center of negative attention. Bob Bergdahl made a spectacle of his wife and deserter son when he praised Allah and made claim to our White House beside the loving approval of the American, Islamic-terrorist-sympathizing president.

[...]

This family is not pro-American, as I said in the Dobbs piece. In emails published in 2012, Bergdahl told his father of his growing disenchantment with the Army’s mission in Afghanistan. He said, “The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

There is always a right to dissent in America. America is founded on that freedom. Those facts will wash out, and I stand by my prediction that this is a leftist, anti-American, anti-colonialism vein that runs through the Bergdahl family, and that Bowe Bergdahl cost American lives.

Loudon seems not to understand that the right to dissent also depends on the responsibility to base that dissent on facts, not armchair analysis based on political smears. She should stop confusing right-wing talking points with objective reality.

MRC's Graham Upset Planned Parenthood Leader Makes Slightly More Than His Boss Does
Topic: NewsBusters

Tim Graham complains in a June 5 NewsBusters post:

Planned Parenthood likes to paint itself as a crucial provider of affordable women's health care to the poor. But it also aids the rich. JillStanek.com reports that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s 2012 IRS Form 990 shows that CEO Cecile Richards made over one-half million dollars – $523,616 – for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2013.

In fact, for that 2012 reporting period, PPFA’s 12-member executive team tallied a combined income of $3.87 million.

When questioned about it, Richards has replied “None of my salary is paid for by the federal government.”  But if “[n]early half of Planned Parenthood patients rely on Medicaid coverage,” as Planned Parenthood claims, does Richards think she’d draw checks that big if government funding of more than $500 million a year were removed from Planned Parenthood’s total revenue of $1.2 billion?

What Graham won't tell you: Richards' salary is something of a bargain. 

Compare Richards' salary to that of Graham's boss, Brent Bozell, who in 2011 made a whopping $422,804 for managing a tiny fraction of the revenue -- the MRC had $11 million in assets at the end of 2010.

It seems that, if anything, an argument can be made that Richards is underpaid. And by the same standard of salary vs. revenue, Bozell is grossly overpaid. Not that Graham will ever admit it, of course -- after all, it took a round of public shaming before Graham to finally receive credit for writing Bozell's syndicated column after years in the shadows.

Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Dr. Conspiracy makes a valiant attempt to untangle some of the links between WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi and birther Sheriff Joe Arpaio. They involve a man named Dennis Montgomery, who was a paid informant for Arpaio and just so happens to live very close to self-proclaimed birther expert Douglas Vogt, and a billionaire named Tim Blixseth, who is a player in Arpaio's latest dubious investigation against Attorney General Eric Holder and who just so happens to have been interviewed by Corsi.

Don't expect to read about any of this at WND.

Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Newsmax Edition
Topic: Newsmax

Let's face it, Hillary. You've never excelled at anything except being an activist in college and standing by your man Bill.

You were a lousy senator from New York. You were a lousy secretary of state — and not just because of Benghazi.

You have no issue to run on, except that you're a woman. And the only thing you have going for you is that you're still married to Bill and everyone loves and adores him now that he is powerless.

Hillary, you don't even have the demeanor or the personality to be president. Did you see yourself in that Diane Sawyer interview?

Do you think anyone wants an in-your-face person like you to be president? Someone who acts arrogantly — "I'm Hillary Clinton and I want to do what I want to do and so I'm going to do it."

-- Michael Reagan, June 12 Newsmax column

NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's 'Shack' Attack
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND has spent years obsessing over a spiritual novel for failing to advance its fundamentalist Christian agenda. Read more >>

MRC Bashes Connection Between Cop-Killers And Right-Wingers, Ignores Cop-Killer's Fondness For MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is doing what it can to bash anyone who dares point out the fact that cop-killers Jerad and Amanda Miller had links to right-wing ideology:

• A June 9 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Meyer complains that Michael Eric Dyson tried to "connect the shooting in Las Vegas to conservative media and politicians."
• a June 10 NewsBusters post by Laura Flint grumbled that MSNBC's Joy Reid said that the shootings proved the rise of “right-wing extremism.” Flint groused: "MSNBC is leaning forward so heavily on this meme that it’s falling over itself to paint blood on the hands of mainstream conservatives for the violence of mentally-disturbed extremists who have nothing to do with the conservative movement."
• A June 10 MRC item by Kristine Marsh complained that a CNN writer cited the Southern Poverty Law Center -- which is somehow an accessory to terrorism because "when Floyd Lee Corkins tried to shoot up the conservative Family Research Council in 2012, he later admitted he targeted the conservative organization because the SPLC listed the FRC as a 'hate group' for it’s 'anti-gay' stance on marriage"-- in "blaming the right for the deadly cop shootings in Las Vegas."Marsh continued, "It’s pretty rich to talk down to conservative media for using hateful and negative language while on the network that employs Al 'White Interlopers' Sharpton, but again, nobody ever accused liberals of too much self-awareness."

Unmentioned by all of these MRC writers: Jerad Miller's Facebook page includes likes for MRC operations NewsBusters and CNSNews.com, as well as For America, the political operation run by MRC chief Brent Bozell.

That alone puts the lie to the MRC's claim that pointing out the Millers' link to right-wing media is inaccurate. Plus, it's utterly hypocritical given the MRC's past eagerness to link mass killers to liberal causes.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Christopher Monckton Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Christopher Monckton is a birther dead-ender, and birthers gonna birther. So Monckton spends his June 10 WorldNetDaily column blaming President Obama's decision to trade Gitmo detainees for Bowe Bergdahl on him not being a "natural-born citizen":

Why, then, did Mr. Obama take that bizarre decision? One reason stands out above all the rest. He is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. He is a citizen of Indonesia. He does not consider himself as owing any loyalty whatsoever to the United States Constitution, which debars him from holding the office he occupies. During his first election campaign, he spoke openly of the Constitution as an obstacle.

He was brought up as a Communist. He despises the liberty and democracy and prosperity that has made the United States powerful. He loathes capitalism. He execrates the West. He has on several occasions either identified himself as a Muslim or identified himself with Islamic causes. On the basis that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he has shown himself relentlessly unwilling to stand up for America in the face of Islamic terror. And now he has shown himself willing to stand up for Islamic terror in the face of America.

[...]

But the intellectual and military history of the West in general and of the United States in particular means nothing to Mr. Obama. For, even if he were born in the United States, even if the Hawaiian “birth certificate” on the White House website/crime scene were not a transparent forgery, even if he had renounced his Indonesian citizenship and had obtained U.S. citizenship, even if he had not claimed a university grant on the basis that he was a foreigner, even if his draft card were not a forgery, he hates America and all that she stands for.

Even if the birther conspiracy theories Monckton spewed were not discredited, Monckton would continue to spew them anyway.

CNS' Hollingsworth Serves As Right-Wing Stenographer Yet Again
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth has a disturbing tradition of simply serving as a stenographer of right-wing talking points, making no effort to seek out an alternative view. She does this again in a May 29 CNS article in which she regurgitates "eight pervasive 'myths' about the Affordable Care Act," as claimed by the right-wing National Center for Policy Analysis.

Hollingsworth simply takes the NCPA's word for their claims and makes no apparent effort to seek out any response.

The sad thing is, Hollingsworth is a senior editor at CNS. You'd think someone claiming a title of senior editor would be capable of doing more than copying right-wing talking points. That's apparently not how that works at CNS.