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Sunday, October 5, 2014
CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's a new month, and you know what that means: Time for CNSNews.com to bury the good news and cherry-pick any bad news about the latest unemployment numbers.

For September, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.9 percent with 248,000 jobs created. By contrast, this is what CNS reported:

Only one of these articles noted the drop in the unemployment rate (and even then not until the sixth paragraph), and none mentioned the fact that 248,000 jobs were added. All three articles were written by Ali Meyer

That first story, by the way, is a lazy rewrite of an article from last month by Meyer, which carried the suspiciously similar headline "Record 92,269,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 36-Year Low." That's a demonstration of how CNS reports an agenda instead of reporting the news.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:11 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:12 PM EDT
WND Can't Stop Fearmongering About Ebola
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily just loves to fearmonger about the purported threat of Ebola in America, and the facts aren't about to get in their way.

In an Oct. 3 WND column, Dr. Jane Orient of the right-wing-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons insists that, contrary to pretty much every other medical opinion on the subject, Ebola is an airborne virus:

Officials are frequently reassuring people that the virus is not “airborne” and that “direct contact” with a sick person is required to get infected. It is not possible, we are told, to get Ebola from a person who does not have symptoms. We just need hand-washing and other “simple, basic precautions.”

Meanwhile, CDC officials are in full hazmat gear, and some say that you need a buddy to make sure that every square millimeter of your skin is covered at all times. A tiny pinprick through your glove, and you’ve got Ebola.

The official website of the Public Health Agency of Canada stated that “airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated.”

As we noted when Orient's AAPS-linked colleague Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet made the same claim, that's just the medical-scaremongering equivalent of doctor-shopping, clinging to an anomalous finding that contradicts all other established medical opinion on the subject.

Further, Vox points out that the Canadian study that was the basis for this finding examined if Ebola can travel from a pig to a primate and is not necessarily applicable to human transmission of Ebola.

Orient goes on to freak out that "sometime between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 the Agency actually changed the language of their Pathogen Safety Data Sheet on Ebola to softer, less alarming language on airborne transmission, including the removal of citations to key scientific literature." Perhaps the Agency realized that people like Orient were cherry-picking their report in order to scare people and decided to make it more accurate, but Orient seems not to have considered that possibility.

A separate Oct. 3 WND article by Leo Hohmann featured the claims of Dr. Gil Mobley, who claims that the Centers for Disease Control is "not leveling with the public about the potential for Ebola to spread in the United States" and who "gained notoriety Thursday when he showed up at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport in a hazmat suit with the words 'CDC is lying!' across his back." Hohmann uncritically quoted Mobley:

“Yesterday on the front page of USA Today the CDC said we’re at a low risk because of our advanced healthcare and sanitary systems and because we are screening at airports,” he said. “Yet I had just come through Customs the day before, and they didn’t screen me.

“They didn’t ask me where I’d been, they didn’t ask me if I’d been sick, they didn’t ask me if I’d had a fever, and they didn’t thermo-scan for my temperature. That was two days ago.”

That may because customs officials knew that Mobley was coming from Guatemala, which has no Ebola outbreak.

This being a WND article, Hohmann couldn't be bothered to contact anyone to respond to Mobley's stunt.

Such fact-free fearmongering is just the latest reason why nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:55 PM EDT
Friday, October 3, 2014
More Logrolling: MRC Gives Mark Levin An Award
Topic: Media Research Center

The logrolling between right-wing radio host Mark Levin and the Media Research Center has reached a new level: The MRC has given Levin its highest award.

At last week's MRC's "DisHonors Awards" dress-up ball, Levin received the MRC's William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence. MRC chief Brent Bozell delivered a fawning introduction, followed by Levin himself delivering what the MRC described as "remarks about the path to success shown by Buckley and Ronald Reagan."

While Bozell and Levin touted their friendship with each other, not once in their combined 18 minutes of remarks (which included Levin getting interrupted by applause from the right-wing audience for a childish reference to "The Washington Compost") did they mention one crucial fact: the MRC is paying Levin to promote the MRC on his radio show.

This raises the question of whether the MRC's award to Levin is part of their business arrangement.

Meanwhile, the MRC keeps up its longtime conflict of interest regarding Levin:

  • A Sept. 24 NewsBusters post by Jack Coleman slobbers over Levin as "a widely respected constitutional scholar, author and lawyer" whose reputation was being besmirched by Lois Lerner.
  • A Sept. 25 CNSNews.com post by Michael Morris notes how "Levin says he sincerely believes that 'World War III has begun.'"
  • An Oct. 2 CNS post by Katherine Rodriguez proclaimed how "Levin ripped into the dangers of President Obama's weak stance on immigration when news of the first CDC-confirmed case of Ebola virus in the U.S. broke on his show."

None of these posts mention the MRC's business arrangement with Levin.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:02 PM EDT
Oops: WND Confuses Abbie Hoffman, Anti-Abortion Activist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

You simply can't make up anything about WorldNetDaily because it provides so much derangement and fail on its own. Take, for instance, a promotional email of anti-abortion products WND sent out on Oct. 2. Among the things promoted is a book by former Planned Parenthood-turned-anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson. And how does WND promote this book?

"What I have told people for years, what I've believed and taught and defended, is a lie. What if I'd known the truth and what if I'd told all those women?"

Those are the heart-wrenching words of Abbie Hoffman. 

No, really. WND referred to Abby Johnson as '60s radical Abbie Hoffman. Here's the screenshot:

Like we said, you can't make this stuff up, folks.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:50 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, October 3, 2014 1:56 PM EDT
Thursday, October 2, 2014
MRC Latino Upset That Hispanic Media Is Helping Its Audience
Topic: Media Research Center

Ken Oliver-Méndez, head of the Media Research Center's project attacking the Hispanic media for being insufficiently conservative, complains in an Ot. 1 NewsBusters post:

Univision is out with another ad in partnership with the Obama administration. This time, U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent for Univision morning show weatherwoman Ximena Córdoba to exhort beneficiaries of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to renew the permits exempting them from deportation proceedings for another two years.

“If you are a young undocumented and fulfill the following requirements, you are on time to apply for DACA and obtain your work permit,” says the network’s glamorous weatherwoman, who ticks off the eligibility requirements and points viewers to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website for more information.

Oliver-Méndez insists that this attempt to inform viewers is a "highly questionable expenditure of taxpayer dollars," huffing, "The use of such talent in government ads is considered, with good reason, as compromising both the talent’s and their media outlet’s impartiality and credibility in discussing or reporting on government policies and programs."

Oliver-Méndez also repeats an earlier attack on Univision,claiming that "liberal advocates of ObamaCare were cited nearly five times as often as conservative opponents of Obamacare" but ignoring response to that earlier criticism from a Hispanic media expert who pointed out that Republicans generally refuse to appear on Hispanic media outlets.

Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" handled that earlier criticism, and it applies here as well: "Bastardos! How dare a cable network use its reach to help the audience comply with the law!"


Posted by Terry K. at 10:01 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, October 2, 2014 10:09 PM EDT
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Eric Holder Derangement Sydrome, WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It is time to bind criminals such as Eric Holder down with the chains of the Constitution and throw him in jail where he belongs. America is a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. Therefore, it is our responsibility to hold our public servants to their oaths of office under the Constitution of the United States and the laws of our republic.

-- Bradlee Dean, Sept. 25 WorldNetDaily column

I am not patting myself on the back for my simple words, but I am saying that it’s time that we all do what we can to reverse the egregious narrative cultivated by too many people in this administration and elsewhere that cops are our enemy. Shame on anyone who spreads such slander, even if some individuals in their ranks are bad apples.

The Obama-Holder legacy in these areas – pitting races against one another and citizens against their government protectors – has been regrettable, and we should all do what we can to reverse it on our own.

-- David Limbaugh, Sept. 25 WND column

Indeed, the “genius” of Eric Holder and the way that he was able to remain in power despite an “accomplished” Justice Department career of corruption, was that he could relate to both races in a very warm and personal way, much like Obama in his earlier years. They were soul brothers, both half white and half black. And perhaps this helps explain both of their latent antipathies to whites, which became so manifest during the last six years. Perhaps being half black, neither man has felt that they were totally accepted into white society even though they tried hard to be, even after they both had risen to a high government office. And together they have apparently sought to “level the playing field” now that they were in power. It helps explain Obama’s parting comments about Holder just the other day.

In short, both men wear race on their sleeves. They live and breath it, and notwithstanding all of Holder’s and Obama’s phony scandals, their legacy together had been, sadly and despicably, to ignite a race war between blacks and whites through their biased and prejudiced use to the powers of the Justice Department.

-- Larry Klayman, Sept. 26 WND column

If Obama invoked executive privilege when Holder sat before Congress to protect him from his role in Fast and Furious, who’s to say he isn’t protecting him again – or vice versa – through Holder’s own resignation? What better way to avoid the line of fire than to move completely out of the way? And what if Obama and Holder are not only protecting themselves from some past public sin through his resignation but also prepping Holder for some future position by his absence from the public stage?

[...]

(Next week, I will give even more details and evidence for “Obama’s master plan with Eric Holder,” and explain exactly how and when a SCOTUS seat replacement would occur.)

-- Chuck Norris, Sept. 28 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 10:24 PM EDT
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
NewsBusters Thinks WMDs Were Found In Iraq
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters' Tom Blumer desperately wants to cling to the idea that weapons of mass destruction really were found in Iraq.

Blumer rants in a Sept. 29 post:

Apparently, "There were no WMDs in Iraq" is the left's Iraq War equivalent of their false "settled science" on human-caused global warming. Of course, climate science isn't settled at all, given that there hasn't been any warming in almost 19 years.

What is settled is that there really were WMDs in Iraq. The left's, Democrats' and others' claims that there were none — zero, zip, nada — is what is self-evidently false.

Wikileaks documents, purloined by Bradley/Chelsea Manning, considered a folk hero by many, show that there WMDs in Iraq.

Blumer cites as evidence of this a Wired report noting that the WikiLeaks findings show that "Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained" and that no "evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq."

Blumer also cites the existence of uranium yellowcake in Iraq as evidence of WMDs.

Blumer huffs that the Wired writer "tries to minimize the impact by overstating the Bush administration’s actual position." But Blumer is also overstating the opposite position. Nobody is claiming that "zero, zip, nada" chemical or nuclear weapons were found in Iraq. The standard as articulated by the Bush administration prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was amassing WMDs that posed an "imminent" threat to the U.S.

Degraded, decaying 20-year-old chemical weapons aren't WMDs as defined by the Bush administration. Non-enriched, natural uranium that Iraq had no capability to enrich aren't WMDs either.

Nevertheless, Blumer concludes: "There were WMDs at the time of the Iraq invasion, and it's not arguable." Actually, it is -- just don't expect Blumer to admit it.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:38 PM EDT
WND's Farah Lies About Assad And ISIS
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's current favorite repressive dictator is Syria's Bashar al-Assad. WND editor Joseph Farah is ramping up the love.

In his Sept. 21 column, Farah asserted that "Obama exaggerated the offenses of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, led a fight to bomb it, sent arms and funding to Sunni Muslim rebels and then watched as those arms fell into the hands of ISIS – literally launching these demons into a regional threat," adding that "a bulwark against radical Sunni domination in the Middle East and a surprisingly good protector of minority religious groups like Christians and Druze." Farah also claimed that "we need to recognize Syria and Assad are on the front lines of fighting ISIS."

A day later, Farah claimed that "the people Assad was battling in his own country were ruthless killers, thugs and terrorists. In fact, it was ISIS."

Actually, the opposite is true -- Assad is not only not fighting ISIS, he effectively created the group.

Newsweek reports that the Assad regime released many terrorists from its prisons in 2011 at the start of the Syrian civil war, presumably to create a pretense to crack down on dissent. NBC agrees, adding that Assad had released terrorists from his prisons during the Iraq War as a bulwark to prevent U.S. troops in Iraq from advancing into Syria.

The Christian Science Monitor also concurs:

Although sworn enemies on paper, ISIS has largely refrained from fighting the Syrian regime to focus on building an Islamic state in northern Syria and ousting more moderate rebel rivals. In return, the regime has left ISIS alone, allowing the Syrian military to concentrate on fighting the moderate rebel groups. At the same time, Assad also points to the brutal exploits of ISIS and other jihadist groups in the conflict to justify its argument to the international community that it is fighting Islamic “terrorists.”

NBC also points out that Assad has no interest in fighting ISIS because they have performed their expected duty:

The Islamists grew, and for Assad, were increasingly convenient. He could point to the radicals — and parade them on Syrian television — as evidence that the opposition was nothing more than a band of dangerous zealots. Syrian state television never talked about the rebels asking for democracy. It described the government’s war on terrorism. The regime even gave the Islamists a boost.

Assad’s forces bombed the secular Free Syrian Army, killing thousands of civilians in the process, but rarely targeted the Islamists. It allowed the militants — later known as ISIS — to have a safe haven. 

But ISIS has grown beyond Assad's control, and unfortunately, according to analysts, U.S. bombing strikes against ISIS ultimately serve to benefit Assad's regime.

Farah's lies about Assad and ISIS are just another reason nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:01 PM EDT
Monday, September 29, 2014
CNS' Hollingsworth Provides An Uncritical Platform For Factually Challenged Climate Denier
Topic: CNSNews.com

As we've documented, CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth is way into serving as a stenographer for right-wing causes but not so much into fact-checking or talking to more than one source for a story. She performs her stenography services once again in a Sept. 24 CNS article:

According to the datasets used last year, October 1st will mark the 18th year of “no significant warming trend in surface average temperature," says Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science.
And even if the current 18-year trend were to end, it would still take nearly 25 years for average global temperature figures to reflect the change, said Michaels, who has a Ph.D. in ecological climatology and spent three decades as a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.

Sooner or later, even Al Gore and the numerous scientists, academics and politicians who agree with him that “Earth has a fever” will have to admit that their climate models predicting catastrophic global warming were off by a long shot, said Michaels, who was also a contributing editor to the United Nations’ second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

“It has to be admitted eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast. That just has to happen. You can’t go on and on and on,” he told CNSNews.com.

“If the surface temperature resumed the warming rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a century without significant net warming because there’s such a long flat period built into the record now. “

Hollingsworth, of course, can't be bothered to seek anyone out who might counter Michaels' assertions, even though he has a history of getting things wrong. But because they are apparently of one mind in being climate change deniers, Hollingsworth gives Michaels the benefit of the doubt and treats his claims as undisputed fact.

Indeed, Michaels' central claim, that there has been no global warming for 18 years, is misleading. As we've documented, Michael's claim relies on cherry-picked data and choosing an arbitrary starting point; meanwhile, the long-term trend demonstrates continued global warming.

Hollingsworth also gullibly swallows Michaels' assertion of Arctic ice: “And if you take a close look at the Arctic data, it appears the decline stopped somewhere around 2005/2006, which means we’ve almost had ten years without any net loss in Arctic ice." In fact, Arctic ice remains near record lows.

Hollingsworth has a history of mindlessly repeating the claims of climate deniers.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:12 PM EDT
WND Censors Palin's Gaffe
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Garth Kant gushes over Sarah Palin in a Sept. 26 WorldNetDaily article:

Sarah Palin brought down the house without saying a word.

The former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate came to the Values Voters Summit in Washington Friday to deliver a speech, but she may have spoken volumes with a simple, silent gesture.

Offering the gesture to the commander in chief on behalf of all Americans who support the military, Palin suddenly stopped speaking and raised a Styrofoam cup in a mock salute.

It was a satirical critique of President Obama’s Sept. 23 salute to Marines with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. The moment was captured in a photo that prompted criticism from many who found the informality beneath the commander in chief.

Not only did Kant fail to mention that Republican presidents have also saluted the troops with things in their hands, he hid a major Palin gaffe from his readers: In the same speech, she referred to the White House as being located at "1400 Pennsylvania Avenue" when, as everyone knows, it's at 1600 Pennsylvana Ave.

But then, Kant writes for WND, a "news" outlet that's not terribly interested in reporting the truth.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:03 AM EDT
Sunday, September 28, 2014
The Rehab Continues: Newsmax Publishes Dick Morris' New Book
Topic: Newsmax

Since his spectacular punditry flameout during the 2012 presidential election, Newsmax has been giving Dick Morris the space to rehabilitate his image. Now Newsmax has arrived at the next step in the rehab process: the book.

A Sept. 24 Newsmax article by Jim Meyers is in full promotion mode:

What is Obama's real end game?

Now, for the first time, noted political strategist Dick Morris reveals Obama's secret strategy in his powerful new book "Power Grab: Obama's Dangerous Plan for a One-Party Nation."

In "Power Grab," Morris warns that America is at a crossroads — we can choose the path of the Founding Fathers and keep a strong constitutional government that thrives on our bipartisan spirit, or opt for President Barack Obama’s dream: a nation ruled by one political party with a far-left agenda.

Morris writes that almost all of Obama's key initiatives and agenda items have one common theme: They seek to turn America into a banana republic ruled by one party, by putting the Republican Party out of business — effectively ending America's long bipartisan system of government.

That's the dire warning from best-selling author and political insider Dick Morris and his co-author, Eileen McGann, in their compelling new book that is gaining national attention.

The authors make a convincing case that Obama has an overarching strategy in pushing his liberal agenda — one that grabs power from our traditional and bipartisan institutions in favor of a single party: his Democratic Party.


Meyers left a lot of things out of his article -- for instance, Morris' horrible history political prognostication and the fact that McGann is not just Morris' co-author, she's his wife. The biggest omission, however, is the fact that his employer is publishing Morris' book.

The Amazon page for Morris' book indicates that it's being published by Humanix Books. As we've documented, Humanix is Newsmax's book division.

Newsmax also gave Morris a Sept. 27 column to promote his book, in which he declares it to be "my new bestseller." That claim is hubristic at best and delusional at worst -- the book had been released only four days before Morris' column appeared, and as of this writing Amazon ranked the book at No. 146, which doesn't exactly scream bestseller status as of this point.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:29 PM EDT
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

So the choice Obama faces is between the potential loss of Democratic control of the Senate or the loss of his last remaining shred of credibility. Poor thing!

All this president ever wanted was “hope and change.” He “hoped” that he could sit cross-legged around a solar-powered heat source, sing “Kumbaya” with world leaders and they would all be friends. Then, with the money saved from his defense budget, he could “change” our economy from one based on work and reward to one where the government provides every need. Life really is unfair!

-- Jane Chastain, Sept. 17 WorldNetDaily column

The dumbing down of America has been on the runaway fast-track for more than 50 years and counting, just in time to brainwash unsuspecting sheep into voting for an America-hating Muslim community organizer dedicated to the fundamental transformation of the greatest nation on earth into some “social justice” hellhole.

-- Ted Nugent, Sept. 17 WND column

Why didn’t the gay community march on Washington after the gay couple was assassinated in accordance with the Shariah?

And so more gay people will be tortured and murdered by jihadists. But San Francisco officials and the enemedia, and Barack Obama himself, can congratulate themselves that they weren’t “Islamophobic.”

-- Pamela Geller, Sept. 21 WND column

The White House is surrounded by security details. There are cameras everywhere. Agents are locked and loaded, determined to prevent any existential threats to the first family and others. The nation is on heightened awareness of potential terrorist threats.

Yet, Omar J. Gonzales, 42, of Copperas Cove, Texas, made it all the way to the White House entrance unscathed.

What does this tell you?

It should tell you no one in America is safe as long as Obama is on watch.

-- Joseph Farah, Sept. 23 WND column

Unfortunately, in this world of politically correct freakzoids, the inexplicable self-inflicted curse of denial has festered the big lie of so-called animal rights, and these dishonest zealots remain maniacal in their clamor to ban hunting, fishing and trapping.

These are basically the same lying scammers that allowed the Chicago community organizer to weasel his way to the presidency, nearly neuter America's defense system, increase the national debt like a crack whore in an opium mall, abandon security 101 in Benghazi and elsewhere, ignore a gunrunning attorney general, allow an IRS to operate like a third-world gang, unleash U.S. Fish & Wildlife agents to raid Gibson guitars and get away with it, cause America to lose all respect around the world with a foreign policy straight out of the Ann Arbor Hash Bash and cause myriad embarrassments by a government completely out of control.

-- Ted Nugent, Sept. 24 WND column

Possibly the surest sign that America is in decline is that the country twice elected Barack Hussein Obama to be its commander in chief. The chump hasn’t the know-how to be a crossing guard, but we gave him the same two terms we once gave George Washington and Ronald Reagan. As I said just prior to the 2012 election, I thought America could probably survive eight years of Obama, but I wasn’t so sure it could survive an electorate that would grant him a second term.

-- Burt Prelutsky, Sept. 25 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 9:50 PM EDT
Friday, September 26, 2014
MRC Intern Denounces Opera She's Likely Never Seen
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center intern Tianna DiMartino devotes a Sept. 22 item to ranting about Metropolitan Opera's upcomingh production of the John Adams opera "The Death of Klinghoffer," which she denounces as "disgusting, vulgar, and anti-Semitic." DiMartino sneers at the composer's defense of his opera:

Adams argued that he didn’t write The Death of Klinghoffer to be controversial or provocative and was “appalled at how hot some of the response was” to the opera. He felt he was trying to show the humanity in the civilians and Jewish family on board as well as the terrorists and wasn’t picking sides.

 “For all the brutality and moral wrong they,” the terrorists, “perpetrated in killing this man they’re still human beings and have to have had reasons for doing so,” Adams claimed. Seriously? What next? An opera about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an effort to humanize those terrorists? A tacit justification of their motives?

DiMartino offers no evidence that she has ever seen the opera (or any opera, really) or examined its libretto beyond cherry-picking the most controversial segments out of context by regurgitating the claims of her fellow critics.

As such, DiMartino's attack on Adams botches the truth by ignoring the fact that he didn't write the libretto; Adams wrote music to Alice Goodman's libretto.

In fact, "The Death of Klinghoffer" is a much more emotionally complex production that DiMartino would have you think. Writer Robert Fink examined the issue of whether the opera was anti-Semitic in a 2005 monograph in the Cambridge Opera Journal. He states:

In summary: to call The Death of Klinghoffer anti-Semitic is to claim that it offends because it is an ideologically driven distortion of American Jewish identity, a caricature, ‘agit-prop’, as Rothstein would have it. But looking closely at the opera (and the controversial Rumor scene) in historical context, it becomes clear that theportrayal of American Jews was offensive and upsetting to New York Jewish audiences because it reflected perfectly their worst nightmares about their own conflicted identity as Jews back to them. Beset by Jewish-Gentile hyper-assimilation, the collapse of American–Israeli Jewish dialogue, and the incineration of Black–Jewish multicultural solidarity, American secular Judaism simply did not function anymore. With Klinghoffer, we are dealing not with an anti-Semitic caricature from outside, but a devastatingly accurate insider’s reflection of what Irving Howe sensed in 1989 as anunprecedented ‘deepening crisis in Jewish identity’. Two difficult years later, watching Klinghoffer laid the crisis bare for its New York audience; it was, evidently, akin to standing culturally naked in front of an unflattering music-dramatic mirror.

American Jews did not like what they saw.

Fink added: "This opera does not romanticise terror. It tries for something much more difficult, so difficult that its failure has been splattered for decades over the pages of the American press. The Death of Klinghoffer attempts to counterpoise toterror’s deadly glamour the life-affirming virtues of the ordinary, of the decent man, of small things."

Such examinations of the opera have been around for years -- the opera was first staged in 1991 -- bit DiMartino showed no interest in doing even the most cursory research about it, choosing instead to transcribe what critics were feeding her and adding her own uninformed outrage on top of it.

Apparently, that's all it takes to write for the MRC these days.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:46 PM EDT
Aaron Klein's Lying Benghazi Book Fail
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Aaron Klein's Benghazi book is tanking -- as of this writing it's ranked at No. 6,845 at Amazon, a dismal ranking for a current-events book that's been out for less than a month -- so he and his publisher, WorldNetDaily, have to do something to gin up sales. So it's desperately trying to pick a fight with Media Matters.

Klein has already challenged Media Matters founder David Brock to a debate, complaining that the group has been "lobbing falsehoods and smears in a clear attempt to discredit the messenger.” As we've noted, WND is falsely denying that Klein is a birther in order to salvage what little credibility he has.

Now, WND and Klein is trying to play gotcha in a Sept. 24 WND article:

In a blog post Wednesday titled “Conservative Media Attack Clinton Allies In Desperate Ploy To Smear Her Over Benghazi,” Media Matters claims Klein’s book “attempted to smear another Clinton ally: former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.”

Continued Media Matters: “Klein suggested that Morell was ‘given’ his new job at the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies (co-founded by Philippe Reines, a Clinton adviser), ‘in exchange for his silence in the talking points scandal.’”

However, those quotes never appear in Klein’s book. Thy were entirely fabricated by Media Matters.

Klein’s book never states Morell was “given” his job, nor does the quote “in exchange for his silence in the talking points scandal” appear anywhere in the book.

The relevant section of the book states: “Morell served 33 years in the agency and was a frontrunner for CIA director; it is doubtful he resigned to become a family man. Morell later reemerged as a counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consult group particularly close to Hillary Clinton. The firm is led by Philippe I. Reines, who served from 2009 to 2013 as Clinton’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications and Senior Communications Advisor.”

In fact, the Klein quote is not fabricated. From page 177 of Klein's "The Real Benghazi Story":

Morell later reemerged as a counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consult group particularly close to Hillary Clinton. Was Morell given this job in exchange for his silence in the talking points scandal?

It comes from a list of "76 key questions for Benghazi investigators to answer," which WND published on Sept. 14 noting that "Klein included the list of questions in his just-released book."

Either Klein is an extremely dishonest reporter, or he doesn't know what's in his own book.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:24 PM EDT
Thursday, September 25, 2014
At The MRC, The Truth Is A Distraction
Topic: Media Research Center

Conservatives had a field day with a picture of President Obama saluting troops with a hand that also held a coffee cup. But when the media. But when some media outlets highlighted a photo of then-President George W. Bush saluting the troops while holding his dog, Kyle Drennen used a Sept. 24 Media Research Center item to cry foul:

Running defense for Barack Obama on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer touted "some of the President's defenders" pushing back against a video of the commander-in-chief sloppily saluting Marines while holding a coffee cup by "circulating this photo of George W. Bush during his presidency...saluting service members while holding his dog, Barney."

Lauer noted that despite Obama gaffe going viral on social media and "sarcastically being called the 'latte salute,'" it "didn't take long for that photo [of Bush] to come out as well."

The hosts of Today's 9 a.m. ET hour revisited the subject, with Tamron Hall declaring: "President George W. Bush saluted as well in a way that was seen as controversial. He was holding Barney, the dog, there." She observed: "So you have people who don't care for President Obama who say, 'This is so disrespectful!' The supporters of Obama then show the picture of Bush. And then it goes back and forth."

News anchor Natalie Morales chimed in to defend Obama: "He's got a lot – he's got ISIS to deal with, a lot on his mind. So, I – you know, there's a lot more – bigger concerns in the world and we're focusing on a cup of coffee."

Rather then just cover the incident as a gaffe for Obama, the NBC morning show sought to muddy the waters by seizing on a photo of Bush put out by liberal spin doctors and dismiss the whole thing as just another "back and forth" between political partisans. 

Funny, we don't recall anyone at the MRC getting their knickers in a bunch when Bush did the same thing Obama did. That's not a distraction or "running defense" -- it's reporting facts.

Drennen's just upset that the media reported the truth, thus proving Stephen Colbert's adage that reality has a liberal bias to be correct yet again.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:02 PM EDT

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