WND Columnist Takes Coolidge Out of Context Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bill Federer has a thing he does called the "American Minute," which his website tells us is "broadcast daily across America and by the Internet." WorldNetDaily republishes his "American Minute" things, which is why we have gotten involved.
Federer's May 15 "American Minute," as republished at WND, begins this way:
President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech given May 15, 1926, at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia: “But there is another … recent development … the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful, minority rule is established. … The result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive. …”
All those ellipses should set off warning bells that something is being left out. Indeed, if you look at Coolidge's original speech, you'll find what that is:
But there is another element of recent development. Direct primaries and direct elections bring to bear upon the political fortunes of public officials the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful minority rules is established, and the result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive. Not only is this one country, but we must keep all its different parts in harmony by refusing to adopt legislation which is not for the general welfare.
So Coolidge is actually specifically referring to "direct primaries and direct elections" as resulting in "paid agitators," not making some sort of sweeping statement. But what does that mean?
The 1926 book "American Labor and American Democracy" provides some context, explaining that Coolidge is actually railing against the direct election of U.S. senators, enacted a decade earlier, and the practice of allowing voters to select party candidates in a primary election instead of party officials doing it.
In other words, Coolidge is complaining about the effects of what he saw as too much democracy -- as if letting party officials or state legislatures control the process was ever free of propaganda, paid agitators, and selfish interests. And WND itself is nothing if not a font of artificial propaganda, paid agitators, and selfish interests.
You can see why Federer edited all that stuff out about taking away the voice of voters and insisting that a small cadre of party officials knows better than the general public.
CNS Just Can't Stop Bashing John Holdren Topic: CNSNews.com
For years, CNSNews.com has been bizarrely obsessed with Obama administration science adviser John Holdren, plucking 40-year-old quotes out of context in order to attack him as an extremist. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey -- apparently feeling it's been way too long since he's bashed Holdren -- resumes his jihad once more in his May 13 column, desperatelhy stretching to claim that Albert Einstein has proven Holdren's 40-year-old questions about sustainability wrong. Because you cannot see all the stars in the sky as Einstein claimed, Jeffrey theorizes that this somehow also means the Earth is infinitely sustainable:
Would it have been better, as Obama's future science adviser argued, to halt such net additional human beings from coming into existence in the first place?
Did God truly fail to provide sufficient material resources for the human beings He created and to whom He gave sovereignty over the material world?
The answer to the second question is found in the stars above: We cannot count them all yet, let alone survey them, so we have no idea how vast are the material resources our Creator has put within our potential reach.
The answer to the former question is found by looking back across the extraordinary and sometimes unanticipated improvements in the material well-being of the human race that have occurred just since Obama's science adviser called for inducing "the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population."
Jeffrey seems to have missed the famines throughout history (Somalia, for example) that were at least in part the result of insufficient material resources for a given area.
Jeffrey has been so obessed with Holdren's purported views from 40 years ago -- from books he co-authored that may or may not reflect his actual views -- that he nor anyone else at CNS has ever bothered to ask Holdren in a thoughtful manner about whether he still holds those views. Instead, CNS cared only about ambushing Holdren with gotcha questions -- something that generates lots of clicks to the CNS website but does nothing for journalism or civilized debate.
But then, getting clicks and attacking anyone who doesn't adhere to the Media Research Center's right-wing views -- not engaging in journalism or civilized debate -- is how CNS rolls.
The president has been catching flak for having honored Freddie Gray by sending three White House representatives to his funeral, and similarly honoring Michael Brown last year, while neglecting to send anyone to the funerals of several police officers killed in the line of duty in recent months. One would have to be profoundly gullible to believe that these instances of “careless disregard” were oversights.
So, the White House loves thugs, hates cops, and no one seems to care. What else is new, right?
Well, now I’m wondering precisely what the Obama White House working protocol is relating to these funerals: Is it four White House representatives if you were a real bada– black thug, three if you were an “average” black thug, maybe two for a dead white thug of some repute, one for a black cop, whereas white cops slain in the line of duty get nothing?
[...]
I’ll have to admit that First Sasquatch Michelle Obama outdid her husband concerning racialist gaffes in one fell swoop over the weekend, when she bloviated at length before a lectern at Tuskegee University. Her so-called commencement address was largely a stream of self-pitying, self-righteous, bitter, paranoid racialist propaganda.
The MRC's 'Affirmative Action' Hypocrisy Topic: Media Research Center
Last week, the Media Research Center's Ken Shepherd got all huffy when MSNBC pundit Michelle Bernard "savaged newly-announced GOP presidential aspirant Dr. Ben Carson tonight by alleging his success is all owed to 'affirmative action.'"
Fast forward to this week, when Fox News guest Angela McGlowan asserted that Michelle Obama owed her entry into Princeton and her job at a prestigious law firm to "affirmative action."
The reaction from Shepherd and the MRC? Crickets.
If Shepherd and the MRC want to be taken seriously as an actual media watchdog, they might want to try being offended at all baseless attacks on blacks instead of just the ones on conservatives.
WND Whitewashes Another Troubled Homeschool Family Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a sad tradition of defending homeschoolers no matter how horrible and dysfunctional they are, and of hiding the reality of that horribleness from its readers.
That tradition continues in a May 10 WND article by Leo Hohmann, who does his whitewashing best to kick things off:
A homeschooling couple was arrested and had all 10 of their children taken by the state Thursday after a local sheriff acted on a tip about alleged poor living conditions at their 26-acre homestead where they live “off the grid.”
The Naugler family lives a “back to basics” lifestyle that few would choose, but it makes them happy, says a family friend. The couple has been married almost 20 years and are expecting their 11th child in four months. They have six dogs, two cats and a few farm animals on their “Blessed Little Homestead” in rural southwest Kentucky, according to their Facebook site.
But the Breckinridge County Sheriff’s Office has charged homeschool dad Joe Naugler with the misdemeanor crime of “menacing” and child welfare agents are investigating allegations of unfit living conditions for the couple’s children.
Hohmann then ups the drama:
Sheriff Todd Pate showed up at the homestead Wednesday evening with at least one other deputy. When Naugler’s wife, Nicole, saw the police cars she got in her vehicle and drove off with her two oldest sons. The other eight children were off site with their dad. Nicole, who is five months pregnant, was stopped not far from the homestead and reported being slammed belly-first against the police cruiser. She suffered bruises to both arms, according to her account and photos placed on the family’s Facebook page.
[...]
Sheriff Todd Pate showed up at the homestead Wednesday evening with at least one other deputy. When Naugler’s wife, Nicole, saw the police cars she got in her vehicle and drove off with her two oldest sons. The other eight children were off site with their dad. Nicole, who is five months pregnant, was stopped not far from the homestead and reported being slammed belly-first against the police cruiser. She suffered bruises to both arms, according to her account and photos placed on the family’s Facebook page.
Hohmann leaves out the part where audio recordings show that Nicole Naugler did, in fact, resist arrest, ultimately resulting the woman daring police to shoot her.
Hohmann then does his best to romanticize the Naugler's "off-the-grid" lifestyle:
The family’s Facebook page, shows a small, wood-frame shack of 280 square feet with an extended porch area covered by a tarp. They have a generator for power and are in the process of seeking donated materials to enlarge the wood cabin, according to their Facebook site.
A family friend, Pace Ellsworth, told WND the Nauglers and their 10 children were a happy family that chose to live outside of modern systems.
The family subscribed to a method of homeschooling called “unschooling” in which children learn through experience rather than from textbooks and they focus on subjects that interest them. “They chose to live off grid and chose to live as homeschoolers with no curriculum, and they just chose to live that way and to have their children have a more eclectic experience, a way of life that most people don’t experience anymore,” Ellsworth said. “It’s become sort of a thing in the world to go off grid. And going off grid doesn’t mean Davy Crockett anymore, it means having solar panels, or a wind farm and having a little more freedom, more freedom as opposed to living with a corporation, or the state.”
The Nauglers’ tiny cabin has no running water. They use an outhouse with a latrine and have a working septic system, Ellsworth said. They cook on a wood stove.
Hohmann doesn't mention the implications of two parents and 10 children living in a shack of a mere 280 square feet. Also, the facts are a little different than the story Hohmann tells.
The Nauglers posted the state Child Protective Services report to their Facebook page (which seems to belie the whole off-the-grid thing), and it reports questionable aspects of the Nauglers' poperty -- “numerous piles of garbage, broken glass and nails were also scattered about the property,” while the family lived in “two makeshift tents,” and a shed (also of the “makeshift” variety) housed several animals; the report also noted that the property had no running water or septic system.
Hohmann also didn't report the fact that, as Nicole Naugler admitted on Facebook, at least some of her children don't have birth certificates or Social Security numbers.
Hohmann also ignored the fact that even other homeschoolers disapprove of the Nauglers' lifestyle. Raw Story highlighted one homeschooling parent writing, "I home school my children, (and) my children are taught the things they need to know to be successful. What the Naugler’s (sic) do is simply call it home schooling when in fact they are too lazy to actually home school them.”
It appears Hohmann is either a lazy reporter who can't be bothered to seek all the facts before reporting a story, or he knows the facts but is dishonestly hiding those inconvenient to the Nauglers and WND's homeschooling agenda.
WND's Klayman Likens McCain To His North Vietnamese Captors Topic: WorldNetDaily
Oh, Larry Klayman. It's a good thing nobody takes you or your publisher, WorldNetDaily, seriously these days, or otherwise someone would care about the enormously stupid thing you said about John McCain in your May 8 WND column about Republicans who support NSA metadata collection:
It is thus clear that the problem today is not just the self-described Emperor Obama, who like King George III, governs by executive fiat and not the will of the people, but also those establishment Republican leaders, like McCain, Graham, Rubio, Christie and other lackies of omni-powerful government who believe in the words of their now-deceased soul brother, Alexander Hamilton, that the people are a great beast. These disgraceful and compromised politicians think that they can decide for the rest of us what is necessary and right – in this case wholesale violation of privacy rights in what Judge Leon calls in his 2013 order “almost Orwellian.” (See www.freedomwatchusa.org.)
Well, I have news for McCain and the establishment wing of the Republican Party: If he thinks that what the NSA (and also the CIA) have been doing is peachy keen, then perhaps he has more kinship to Ho Chi Minh and the senator’s dictatorial former North Vietnamese jailers at the Hanoi Hilton than our Founding Fathers.
But since you are a failed lawyer associated with an extremist website with no credibility, you will continue to be ignored. As you should be.
The April unemployment numbers were good enough that CNSNews.com's Ali Meyer had to at least acknowledge them before burying them in cherry-picked bad news, as is the CNS mandate.
Meyer's May 8 CNS article grumbled that "The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5 percent in March to 5.4 percent in April even as the number of people in the labor force increased from 156,906,000 to 157,072,000 and the labor force participation rate increased from 62.7 percent to 62.8 percent."
Mayer complained that unemployment rates for blacks "showed little or no change in April," but she's downplaying the situation. In fact, black unemployment dropped 0.5 percent, falling under 10 percent for the first time in nearly seven years.
Even though CNS has previously highlighted higher African American unemployment rates, this decrease did not merit its own article from Meyer. Instead, she cherry-picked a different number more favorable to CNS' anti-Obama agenda and dedicated an entire article to how "A record 56,167,000 women, age 16 years and over, were not in the labor force in April."
Just another reminder that CNS isn't really into "news" -- it has fully become the propaganda arm of the Media Research Center.
CNS' Chapman Finds A Franklin Graham Utterance He Won't Repeat Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how CNSNews.com managing editor Michael Chapman has a peculiar obsession with documenting every last word right-wing evangelical Franklin Graham says. But it turns out Chapman's fixation with Graham has its limits -- when his words conflict with the agenda of Chapman's employer.
On the May 6 edition of "Fox & Friends," Graham denounced the Muhamma-cartoon exhibit in Texas where two would-be gunmen were killed, saying the attendees "were wrong" to mock Muslims:
"As a Christian, I don’t like it when people mock my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and what this event in Garland, Texas, was doing was mocking the Muslims. And I disagree with Islam, I don’t believe in Islam, but I’m not going to mock them and make fun of them," Graham said on "Fox and Friends."
Graham said that the cartoon contest, organized by Pam Geller's anti-Islam group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, was offensive.
"I’m discouraged that people would do this. We live in a society now where there’s no civility, there’s no respect, we don’t honor people who have differences. We only attack each other. And so I agree that the folks in Garland, Texas, were wrong," he said. "They had the right to speak. I have free speech, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go around and cuss people just because I have the freedom to do that."
He later added that even though he did not approve of the event, responding with violence was "wrong."
Even though Chapman has devoted dozens of articles in the past several months to Graham's various utterings over the past several months, he has yet to report this one, according to his article archive.
Why? Presumably because it runs counter to the expressed agenda of the Media Resarch Center, which own CNS, to support Geller.
The same day Graham made his remarks, CNS published a column by Chapman's boss, Brent Bozell, and Tim Graham expressing their support for the "exercise of free speech" at the Muhammad cartoon contest, insisting that while it was "provocative... it wasn't meant to result in two Islamic extremists showing up with assault rifles."
They don't know that, of course; it's entirely possible Geller wanted to provoke a violent response in order to justify her anti-Muslim agenda. Instead, Bozell and Graham complain that some in the media described Geller as "relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam." They don't dispute the accuracy of the claim, however.
Bozell and Graham go on to blame the Southern Poverty Law Center for an "assassin using their "hate map" to go to FRC's building and open fire, seriously wounding a security guard, with the intent to kill as many staff as possible, before being subdued." They add: "The leftist media know that. And still use SPLC as their source."
Funny, we don't recall Bozell or Graham running away from the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue after Scott Roeder had contacts with the group and later murdered abortion doctor George Tiller. In fact, the MRC has pretended there was no link at all between Roeder and the anti-abortion movement, and Bozell himself effectively endorsed Tiller's murder, calling him "a monster who personally murdered 60,000 babies."
If the MRC can't be bothered to unequivocally denounce a group for its links to a murder, Chapman certainly isn't going to challenge that sort of agenda.
UPDATE: Chapman added a post quoting Graham bashing ISIS. He's still ignoring Graham's statement denouncing Geller.
WND Columnist Pushes Obama-Baltimore Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember how WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah was nattering on about how his website employs "the most rigorous standards of fact-checking, multiple sourcing, the seeking out of primary sources and old-fashioned reporting and editing techniques," despite all the evidence WND does the exact opposite?
There is no evidence that WND columnist Morgan Brittany employed any of the rigorous standards Farah purports to advocate to come to her conclusion in her May 5 column that the unrest in Baltimore is part of President Obama's grand plan to institute martial law and cancel the 2016 elections:
Ever since the election of Barack Obama, racial tensions have ramped up. He was supposed to be the one to unite all Americans and heal the divide, but instead, he did everything he could to turn the heat up and make sure the divide became wider. He surrounded himself with racially divisive people in his administration like Attorney General Eric Holder. He inserted himself into every controversy that had a racial component, like the incident in July of 2009 with the Cambridge police, the Trayvon Martin case, Ferguson and more. And whether right or wrong, even before evidence was presented, he always took the side of the African-American. It became obvious that his concern was not for all Americans but a select few. In an attempt to show “African-Americans” that he cared, he instead succeeded in tearing off the scab of old wounds from the 1960s and fanning the flames of hate for the police.
Once the seeds were planted again, he teamed up with Al Sharpton who became a regular at the White House. Certainly their meetings were not about how to heal the divide after each racial crisis, because the rhetoric Sharpton spewed was a call to war!
[...]
From now until the verdict in this trial, the agitators will continue to travel and communicate city to city, town to town, stirring up unrest and hate, keeping people on edge waiting to see the result of this cliff-hanger. If the verdict is not what they want, perhaps Obama will have to institute martial law to preserve order, form a national police force and postpone the 2016 elections.
Crazy? Maybe, but we are on the edge in this country. Attacks are coming from all sides, from inside and outside of our borders, and we are becoming overwhelmed. What happens when Baltimore spreads across the country and our television screens show four or five cities burning at once? Who will we turn to at that point? “One Nation under God” – we need Him now more than ever.
Good luck, Mr. Farah, trying to convince the world that, against all evidence, WND is the "reputable and responsible journalism venture" you would have us think it is.
WND Marks 18th Birthday By Telling Lies, Pretending It's A Real News Organization Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been spending the past several days celebrating its 18th birthday -- a number more appropriate for a teenager attaining new age-related privileges, not a "news" organization. As can be expected, much of it is self-aggrandizing and circular self-promotion, i.e., the people quoted as saying nice things about WND in an April 30 article are mosly WND columnists.
But there are other clues that point to an ulterior motive behind this odd-anniversary promotion. For instance, an April 27 article by Cheryl Chumley recounting WND's self-proclaimed "firsts," which she insists proves that WND is "a reputable and responsible journalism venture."
WND editor Joseph Farah followed that up with a May 3 column that at first engaged in his usual manhood-measuring by insisting that "no other founder of any other online news agency boasts that kind of resume" that he has (he did this to us in 2008 when we dared point out WND's many faults, as a way to deflect any criticism of his work). Farah then states this:
In an Internet environment heavy on commentary, unedited blogging and unverified claims, WND stands virtually alone in pioneering the most rigorous standards of fact-checking, multiple sourcing, the seeking out of primary sources and old-fashioned reporting and editing techniques.
That, as ConWebWatch readers know all too well, is a a huge sack of lying crap. To name just one example proving Farah a liar: Jerome Corsi's utterly discredited claim that President Obama wears a ring that reads in Arabic "There is no god except Allah." Corsi sought no "primary sources" for this claim; he regurgitated from the even more discredited anti-Obama filmmaker Joel Gilbert. Corsi and Gilbert's story was so wrong that Corsi's fellow birthers were moved to push back.
Yet Corsi's ringstories remain live on the WND website, intact and uncorrected, as does Farah's column insisting that this was "an important story – maybe one of the biggest of the presidential election year."
On top of that, a few days before Farah's nattering about how WND employs "most rigorous standards of fact-checking," it ran a story repeating a claim we first corrected seven years ago -- that Obama's reference to a "civilian national security force" in a speech meant that he wanted to create a police state.
And we haven't even gotten to WND's fact-free birther crusade, about which it has yet to admit fault, let along correct the reams of false reporting it engaged in.
But Farah wasn't done lying, adding this things he claims WND engages in:
While WND strives for “fair and balanced” news coverage, it believes a higher value not emphasized strongly enough by competitors is the pursuit of the truth.
In our work, WND reporters and editors are always encouraged and required to seek out multiple sources and contrary viewpoints in news articles.
More lies. Just take a look at the work of WND news editor Bob Unruh, which frequently tells only one side of the story and lets that side misleadingly frame the argument of the other side, which often never even bothering to contact anyone from that other side.
What makes Farah's declared commitment to telling the truth even more of a laugher is that a few years back, he proudly admitted that WND publishes misinformation.
Farah can't even keep logically consistent. He claims "WND is truly independent from party lines, pressure groups and political entanglements," then a few paragraphs later boasts about "the Judeo-Christian worldview we bring to our mission." Farah seems not to be aware that if a certain "worldview" is imposed as editorial policy, you are no longer "fair and balanced" or "truly independent from party lines, pressure groups and political entanglements."
All of this self-aggrandizing appears to be the result of WND finally realizing that its hypocritical birther crusade -- it won't hold Ted Cruz to the same "eligibility" standards it held Obama, which is why WND has gone almost completely silent on the issue -- and its singleminded zeal to destroy Obama has utterly destroyed any claim WND might have to be taken seriously as a "news" organization.
If WND genuinely wants to be taken seriously, it needs to walk the walk, not just engage in empty boasting. Here's a list of handy tips that Farah isn't apparently aware of despite all the media experience he likes to beat his critics with:
Act like the "fair and balanced" news org you claim you are. Present both sides of the story, and don't present one side as the "correct" one.
Correct your errors.
Tell your readers the truth you've hidden from them all these years -- that the birther crusade was never based in reality and was nothing more than pandering to the anti-Obama base.
Don't be spiteful to your critics. We've been blocked from following Farah and WND on Twitter, which shows just how thin-skinned they are.
That's just for starters. Any basic journalism textbook will have more. Farah professes to follow them, but his fruits tell a much different story.
Perhaps WND made a point of celebrating its 18th anniversary because it's in an adolescent state of mind -- defying authority and rules, paying lip service to tradition and Christianity but doing the exact opposite in reality.
If Farah wants to be taken seriously ever again, he needs to stop BSing WND's readers and start acting like a real journalist. That means telling the truth -- something with which he has so far been shockinglyunfamiliar.
Back in 2008, ConWebWatch dismantled WorldNetDaily's claim that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's reference to a "civilian national security force" in a speech meant that he wanted to create a police state. In fact, Obama explained at the time he was referring to "soft power" diplomacy through the State Department and the Agency for International Development, not any further militarization.
It's now 2015, and guess what WND is writing about now? Take it away, Bob Unruh:
Back in 2008, Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, called for a “civilian national security force.” And he wanted it wanted it as big as all of the nation’s military branches.
Combined.
Now black activist Al Sharpton is suggesting a path that probably would accomplish that: nationalize America’s police forces.
Obama never advocated nationalizing the police, and WND knows it. But why should the facts get in the way of a good story?
Unruh even rehashes how his WND boss, Joseph Farah, "raised the obvious questions about Obama’s plans for a civilian army after the [2008] speech." Of course, Farah never bothered to tell the truth about Obama's statement -- which is why it continues to flog this story to this day despite the utter lack of factual basis behind it.
Just consider another one of the many, many reasons why nobody believes WND.
That's abundantly clear in Graham and Bozell's May 1 column. When it starts "The last year could be described as The Year of Transgender Propaganda," you know it's straight from Graham, who has a lengthy history of transgender freakouts. And freak out he does:
The Hollywood and news media push on the latest frontier of "gender fluidity" demonstrates the libertine left's absolute arrogance that the LGBT revolution is an unstoppable juggernaut.
Time placed Laverne Cox on a "Transgender Tipping Point" cover last June, and the aggressive culture tipping took off. Amazon created a series around a retiree and father of three deciding he was a woman in "Transparent," and won Golden Globes. Fox's "Glee" had their female football coach grow a beard and be celebrated by a "historic" 200-member transgender choir.
The cherry on this vomit is Bruce Jenner.
Yep, it seems Graham thinks the existence of transgender people in the media is nothing but vomit.
Graham whines about the "the mainstream-the-fringe media" but has to admit that the Jenner interview on ABC drew 17 million intervies. He whines further that no anti-transgender views have been allowed to counter Jenner.
Graham concludes by lamenting "the decline and fall of our culture and our common sense." Then again, Graham thinks any mention of transgenders in the media is equivalent to "vomit," so he's not exactly an avatar of common sense himself. Or basic humanity, for that matter.
Maybe we’ve had avaricious, corrupt, ill-intended and even anti-American presidents before. We never “felt” them. Their evils and infirmities didn’t count. They didn’t interfere with our pride in being Americans. Do you gather what I’m gathering from Washington these days? The state of Oregon receiving a multi-million-buck bonus for enrolling the most residents per capita onto food stamps; Obama’s ham-handed attempt in 2009 to hand Egypt over to the Muslim Brotherhood, the same year he went voluntarily deaf to the pleas of freedom-loving Iranians for a word of moral support against the Islamic dictatorship; refusal to arm the Kurds, who’ve proven their ability to stand up against ISIS; and now we have the first fumes of an administration manipulating the handover of American uranium to Russia.
Benedict Arnold may have run West Point, but he never betrayed us from the White House!
The operatives in Baltimore are but one contingent of Obama’s Revolutionary Army; illegal immigration and amnesty activists are another, as are various other entitled and protected class groups the political left has cultivated over many years. Effective manipulation of these demographics will be integral in determining whether or not he can successfully turn us all against one another at the appointed time.
Social justice? Level playing field? Equal opportunity? Income inequality? Everyone should play by the same rules?
Cue the cheeky cherubs breaking through the pillowy clouds blowing sweet trumpet music in the heavenly skies.
Our embarrassing president and all the cult-of-denial goons that chant the above nonsense have clearly lost all sense of reason, logic, common sense and honesty, not to mention a basic grasp of human history.
Like everyone else who can’t wait for the Obamas to vacate the White House, I want to tell 2017 not to dawdle. No stopping to smell the roses while the rest of us are sniffing the swamp gas emanating from what has come to be known over the past six years as the Offal Office.
I’m not sure anyone could demean and cheapen the White House more than Bill and Hillary Clinton did in the 1990s.
There was a general sense the whole place needed to be fumigated after they left – carpets shampooed or replaced, linens replaced, but most of all our national psyche needed to be scrubbed to rid ourselves of the mental images the place conjured after reports of the debauchery that took place there.
But eventually the Obamas showed up.
There was Barack Obama waxing eloquent in a comedy sketch last week during the White House Correspondents dinner. He seemed disturbingly more at home telling jokes than discussing national policy. If he used a Teleprompter, he did it effectively.
MRC Defends Tony Perkins, CNS Gives His Lie A Pass Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell signed onto a letter with other conservative leaders attacking CBS' Bob Schieffer interview with Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, so it's allover MRC sites.
The letter, issued under something called the Conservative Action Project, rants that Schieffer issued "an assault against Judeo-Christian people of faith" by making simple statements of fact: that he was "inundated" with request to disinvite Perkins because he doesn't "speak for Christians," and noting that the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the FRC as a "hate group" because of its anti-gay stance.
The letter then attacks the SPLC by bringing up Floyd Corkins, the man who attempted to shoot up the FRC headquarters, because the "homicidal SPLC supporter" Corkins said he found his target on the SPLC website. It claims the SPLC is "discredited" and "disgraced" but offers no evidence it has provided any false information or that it ever expressed any support for Corkins' crime.
That attack is irrelevant to the issue at hand. We doubt that conservatives like Bozell consider Operation Rescue to be "discredited" because Operation Rescue supporter Scott Roeder had contact with members of the group and later went on to murder abortion doctor George Tiller.
The MRC and NewsBusters sites reprint an MRC press release, but CNSNews.com serves up an unbylined "news" article on the letter that is also press release-like, but also takes a stab at looking like journalism with statements like this:
Schieffer also accused Perkins of saying that justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage should be impeached, an accusation Perkins denied.
“I didn't say anything about impeachment of the judges. What I said was that they're not the final say on this issue,” Perkins corrected him.
But Perkins' "correction" is a lie. As Right Wing Watch points out, Perkins appeared last week on the radio show of Iowa conservative Jan Mickelson, who ranted that Congress should attempt to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction on marriage and “impeach [their] sorry keisters,” to which Perkins responded: “I don’t disagree with you, I think you are absolutely right.”
So, yes, Perkins did endorse the idea of impeaching SCOTUS justices who voted to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. It's a little inconvenient while the MRC and other conservatives are defending Perkins, so it will go down the memory hole.
Annals of Random Coverage Comparisons At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to compare coverage of its favorite hobby horses to other random things. The apex (or new low, if you prefer) of this randomness came in an April 24 MRC item by Dan Gainor headlined "Priorities: Networks Cover First Dog Bo 28 Times More Than Armenian Genocide." Yes, he really does go there:
The horrific mass murder has been mentioned in just four network stories since Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama took office. But all three networks found ample time to discuss other important Armenian issues – an Armenian company making a chocolate bar 18 feet long by 9 feet wide; Armenian brandy and Armenian Lula Kebabs.
All three networks also made room for other filler stories, such as the White House dog. Reporters spent story after story, oohing and aahing over the presidential pet, the Portuguese Water Dog Bo. Bo has been featured in at least 112 stories and briefs during the Obama presidency, 28 times more than the Armenian genocide.
[...]
Journalists on ABC, CBS and NBC had no problem finding time to talk about the important things – such as first dog Bo. Bo was everywhere on the networks – at least 112 times. That’s 28 more times than any mention of a genocide that killed 1.5 million people.
Bo was apparently more important. The networks focused on him doing just about everything. Bo during the Christmas holidays. Bo not joining the presidential family in Hawaii. Bo being taken to Petco by First Lady Michelle Obama. Bo barked when the first lady spoke and was worth $1,600 according to financial disclosure forms.
ABC showed viewers an image of Bo with bunny ears on for Easter 2012. On Aug. 20, 2013, then-White House correspondent Peter Alexander told Today viewers that Bo had company. “Move over Bo, there's a new dog in town, Sunny. And for her inaugural play date, the White House released its own music video. A pair of presidential pets frolicking on the South Lawn, that'll get tails wagging.”
At Christmas, more than a year later, White House correspondent Kristen Welker told about how the White House was decorated, adding, “There are even robotic versions of Sunny and Bo, the first family’s dogs.”
Americans learned enough about the first dog to fill several books. But barely enough about a horrendous genocide to fill a page in one of the worst chapters in human history.
Gainor seems to have missed the fact that the Armenian genocide occurred a century ago and, thus, is not "news." The debate over whether to call it a genocide is also not news -- it's been going on for decades.
Gainor should perhaps study the definition of "news" and get back to us on whether he thinks his genocide-Bo coverage comparison is still legitimate.
Bill Federer has a thing he does called the "American Minute," which his website tells us is "broadcast daily across America and by the Internet." WorldNetDaily republishes his "American Minute" things, which is why we have gotten involved.
For years, CNSNews.com has been 
The president has been catching flak for having honored Freddie Gray by sending three White House representatives to his funeral, and similarly honoring Michael Brown last year, while neglecting to send anyone to the funerals of several police officers killed in the line of duty in recent months. One would have to be profoundly gullible to believe that these instances of “careless disregard” were oversights.
Last week, the Media Research Center's Ken Shepherd 
WorldNetDaily has a 
Oh, Larry Klayman. It's a good thing nobody takes you or your publisher, WorldNetDaily, seriously these days, or otherwise someone would care about the enormously stupid thing you said about John McCain in your May 8 WND 
The April unemployment numbers were good enough that CNSNews.com's Ali Meyer had to at least acknowledge them before burying them in cherry-picked bad news, as is 
We've
Remember how WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah was 
WorldNetDaily has been spending the past several days celebrating its 18th birthday -- a number more appropriate for a teenager attaining new age-related privileges, not a "news" organization. As can be expected, much of it is self-aggrandizing and circular self-promotion, i.e., the people quoted as saying nice things about WND in an April 30 
Back in 2008, ConWebWatch 
Now that we know Tim Graham 
Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell signed onto a 
The Media Research Center loves to compare coverage of its favorite hobby horses to other random things. The apex (or new low, if you prefer) of this randomness came in an April 24 MRC 
