Wash. Times Touts First-Ever Profit, Silent About Who Kept It Afloat For 30 Years Before That Topic: The ConWeb
A few years back, we detailed how conservative newspapers lose massive amounts of money, staying in business only through the good graces of their deep-pocketed benefactors who made their money elsewhere. At the top of that list is the Washington Times, funded as a plaything for self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon to have entree to conservative Washington circles.
Well, last month the Times reported that "it achieved in September the first profitable month in its 33-year history, successfully transforming a traditional money-losing print publication into a leaner multimedia company with diverse revenue streams and a growing national audience."
Of course, print publications haven't been "traditionally money-losing" -- only the conservative ones have.
The Times plays rather coy about its historic financial situation, admitting that it piled up "losses that far exceeded $1 billion since its inception in 1982" and quoting Times president and CEO Larry Beasley quipping, "I know the owners can’t wait for us to pay them back."
Actually, the losses likely surpass $2 billion, a number forwarded by experts a decade ago. And there was never any expectation of a payback.
Article author Jennifer Harper also writes this:
The media landscape has been particularly unforgiving in recent years. Cutbacks, job losses and “newspaper death watches” have been the norm since 2009 as the Internet proved to be a profound game-changer in the news business. The Times went into reinvention mode, but never abandoned its original calling as a credible news source with a conservative backbone.
Harper avoids the actual history of the past few years at the Times that had little to do with the overall "media landscape" -- namely, that members of Moon's family got tired of paying the $35 million or so it took to keep the Times in business, setting off a power struggle in the Moon family and its Unification Church-linked business enterprises (not that the Times was actually run like a business, of course) that resulted in the paper being put up for sale in 2010. Ultimately, Moon himself bought the paper for $1.
Harper goes on to quote Beasley touting how the Times is "a digital-first business," but its website is so cluttered with ads and browser-clogging pop-ups that it's almost impossible to read.
Harper notes that the paper is now only by the nebulously, blandly named Operations Holdings, which appears to be a holding company for the business interests held by Moon himself when he died in 2012, an odd conglomeration of things besides the Times that include a fleet of fishing trawlers, New York's Hammerstein Ballroom and the New York TV studios where Al Jazeera -- longtime target of conservatives like the ones who run the Times for its purported closeness to Islamic terrorists -- has its New York headquarters.
Harper also repeatedly notes how "credible" a news source the Times is but she doesn't mention Moon's involvement in the paper until the 19th paragraph -- and she doesn't mention it was Moon's subsidies that kept the newspaper from feeling the effects of the free market it championed for nearly three decades.
Will WND Retract Its Now-False Exploiting Of Dead Policeman To Attack Black Lives Matter? Topic: WorldNetDaily
When Fox Lake, Ill., police officer Joseph Gliniewicz was found dead of a gunshot wound in September, WorldNetDaily wasted little time in exploiting his death to blame blacks in general and Black Lives Matter in particular.
WND columnist Ilana Mercer invoked Gliniewicz's name to rail against a “Racial-Industrial Complex” that has been "schooling Americans in the fiction of systemic black oppression by white America."
Columnist Pat Buchanan similarly invoked Gliniewicz to complain that "Among liberal elites and the Black Lives Matter crowd, an old notion is regaining ascendancy – cops are the problem and police are all too often the oppressors."
A Sept. 6 WND article cited how Gliniewicz was "the latest law enforcement officer to become a murder victim this year," then quoted Jesse Lee Peterson claiming that he "blames much of the [anti-police] violence on Black Lives Matter itself" and asserting that Black Lives Matter is "akin to the KKK and the skinheads.” And a Sept. 8 WND article played this bit of guilt by association:
Black Lives Matter activists at the Minnesota State Fair chanted “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon” two days before Fox Lake, Illinois police officer Lt. Joe Gliniewicz was shot to death.
“They’re putting the lives of police officers at risk by encouraging other angry people to hate the police and target them,” said Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a civil-rights leader, WND columnist and author of the new book “The Antidote.” “This is an evil group.”
“I haven’t seen such hate since the New Black Panther Party started going after whites several years ago,” he told WND.
Except, as it turns out, none of that is true. Investigators have found that Gliniewicz's death was a "carefully staged suicide" designed to obscure the fact that he had been stealing money from a police mentoring program for several years, and that he tried to hire a hit man to kill a village administrator who was looking into his financial improprieties.
Will WND publicly retract its attempts to blame Gliniewicz's death on Black Lives Matter? Will Peterson publicly apologize as well for his false attacks?
Don't count on it.
Not only has WND failed so far to report that Gliniewicz's death was a staged suicide by a corrupt officer, his name remains at the top of WND's "big list" of "deadly attacks on America's law-enforcement officers in 2015."
MRC Doesn't Deny Transgender 'Bathroom Myth' Is A Myth, Is Mad Truth Was Told About It Topic: Media Research Center
Kristine Marsh writes in a Nov. 5 NewsBusters post:
Since Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected the “transgender bathroom rights” law known as “HERO” Tuesday night, the media have been frantically trying to spin the story as a case of anti-LGBT, religious extremists getting their way.
NBC’sLate Night with Seth Meyers was no different, and, in a rant, the host found a way to bash both Houston voters and GOP candidate Mike Huckabee.
Seth Meyers opened the segment by boasting of the high-profile support for the ordinance from President Obama and major companies like Apple, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard. Meyers then proceeded to trash opponents’ argument that this law would open the door for a biological male to enter a women’s restroom or locker room.
“That’s right,” Meyers scoffed. “Opponents of the law claimedfalsely that the bill would allow anyone of any gender to walk into any bathroom they wanted,” he argued. “The idea is known as the ‘bathroom myth’ and the anti-HERO ads focused heavily on it,” Meyers lectured.
Interestingly, Marsh makes no effort to counter Meyers' assertion that the bill's opponents falsely portrayed it or that the "bathroom myth" is exactly that. Perhaps because she knows she can't.
Marsh then complained that "Meyers played the silliest ad he could find by opponents to mock Houston voters as fear-mongers instead of using an ad, like the one below, from FRC Action." But that ad invokes the "bathroom myth" -- which, again, Marsh refuses to prove is not a myth.
Still, Marsh pressed on:
Meyers insisted again that the majority of Houston voters were wrong. “So the ads focused exclusively on the bathroom issue even though the law had nothing to do with that,” he claimed. “There's also no evidence that this has ever been a problem in places that do have these laws,” he argued.
Apparently Meyers hasn’t heard of Hillsboro High School, where students complained and led a protest because girls had been exposed to a transgender male student in the women’s locker rooms and restrooms. Or of Springfield, MO, where voters rejected a similar bill to HERO after the city council had signed it into law.
But Marsh is just repeating objection to the idea instead of citing any problems with implementation. In the Hillsboro case, the transgender student did nothing to make the "bathroom myth" reality be engaging in anything approaching lewd behavior. The students who walked out, CNN reported, had their parents' support, which raises questions about just how spontaneous and genuine it was. Similarly, those who opposed the Springfield HERO law also pushed the "bathroom myth."
If Marsh can't defend the "bathroom myth," she has no basis for criticizing Meyers for pointing it out. Which means Marsh is simply mad that he told the truth -- hardly a compelling bit of "media research."
Lying Preacher Bradlee Dean Lies Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's favorite lying preacher, Bradlee Dean, has struck again in his Oct. 29 column:
As another self-incriminating video has been released exposing Planned Parenthood’s crimes against humanity (1 John 3:12), one has only to ask himself, why is the Department of (In)Justice appointed to hunt down those who are filming the crimes of Planned Parenthood rather than arrest those who are committing the crimes? There is no coercion. The truth is coming out of the abundance of their wicked hearts (Matthew 12:34), and furthermore, Planned Parenthood has made its murderous position very clear through the group’s founder, Margaret Sanger.
Suggested Sanger: “The most merciful thing that a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
On blacks, immigrants and indigents, Sanger said that they are “human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning … human beings who should never been born.”
On the extermination of blacks, she said, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
She then went on to say, “The minister’s work is also important and should be trained, perhaps by the Federation, as to our ideals and the goal we hope to reach.”
As we've documented, most of the Sanger statements Dean uses are either ripped out of context or, in the case of the "human weeds" statement, a complete lie.
But Dean's not done. He goes on to write:
Even Supreme Court injustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was complicit in the murder of the innocent: “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
As we've noted, this statement is also ripped out of context; in the original New York Times interview, Ginsburg said shortly after that statement that she "realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong."
Dean returns to full-blown lying by claiming that the Southern Poverty Law Center "helped defend the Ku Klux Klan back in the 1960s." In fact, the SPLC wasn't founded until 1971.
As "evidence" for the above claim, he links to an entry on his own "Sons of Liberty" in which he claims that "Morris Dees, SPLC’s founder, did legal work for the KKK (an arm of the Democratic Party) in 1961." That's at least somewhat close to the truth; Dees did defend a KKK member who assaulted a TV cameraman at a Freedom Riders gathering in 1961, but he has said that he was more into making money than the civil rights movement at the time, and that he had an epiphany after being confronted on his defense of the KKK member that ultimately led him to focus on civil rights.
Dean's column is littered with cites of Bible verses, which seems to be intended to distract readers from seeing what an utterly dishonest and amoral man he is.
MRC's Bozell & Graham Lie About Democrats and Tough Debate Questions Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center just can't stop perpetuating the idea that the CNBC Republican presidential debate was filled with "liberal bias," despite the fact that it's unable to objectively prove it.
In thair Nov. 4 column, Tim Graham and Brent Bozell whined that "liberal journalists asked one too many deliberately snide and hostile “gotcha” questions attacking the GOP candidates and the candidates exploded in anger," declaring that "The RNC’s action to drop NBC and Telemundo and whole Comcast brand from debates is long, long overdue."
Then they write this:
You have to go back to April 2008 to find a debate where Democrats were faced with hostile questions, when ABC hosts George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson dared to ask Barack Obama one question about his ties to ex-terrorist Bill Ayers.
Actually, that's a complete lie -- Anderson Cooper asked tough questions at the Oct. 13 CNN-hosted Democratic presidential debate. How do we know? Because Bozell himself said so. And he even sent out a press release praising Cooper's "tough, probing questions":
During last night's Democratic debate, Anderson Cooper in large measure did exactly what a debate moderator is supposed to do. He asked tough, probing questions of all the candidates. Better yet, he did what most moderators won't do: when given an evasive or untrue answer, he pounced in a follow-up question, exposing the evasion or untruth. It was a breath of fresh air to see such professionalism. Give him an A- for a job well done.
Yeah, we know the "liberal bias" mantra is how the MRC makes its bread and butter, but are Graham and Bozell really so stupid as to forget a statement Bozell made just three weeks ago?
WND To Republish David Barton's Discredited Book on Jefferson Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've documented how WorldNetDaily continues to sell David Barton's book "The Jefferson Lies" -- presumably from the stash of 17,000 books Barton himself bought from the publisher after it removed the book from the market for its numerous factual inaccuracies, all the while blatantly lying that the book was pulled because it was "so hot and so politically incorrect."
Well, WND is going one better in helping out the so-called historian Barton: It's publishing a new edition of "The Jefferson Lies."
The new edition is posted on WND Books' website, with release set for Jan. 12. WND's promotional copy for the book sounds a little defensive:
In 2012 prominent historian David Barton set out to correct the distorted image of the once-beloved Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in the best-selling book The Jefferson Lies. Despite the wildly popular success of the original hardcover edition, a few dedicated liberal individuals and academics campaigned to discredit Barton’s scholarship and credibility, but to no avail.
Barton responds to his critics in a lengthy preface to this new paperback edition in which he takes to task his former publisher and directly answers with thorough documentation the main issues his detractors registered, while also providing numerous academic endorsements of his work. This paperback version, to be released by WND Books on January 12, 2016, certifies that Barton’s research is sound and his premises are true as he tackles seven myths about Thomas Jefferson head-on and answers pressing questions about this incredible statesman including:
Did Thomas Jefferson really have a child by his young slave girl, Sally Hemings?
Did he write his own Bible, excluding the parts of Christianity with which he disagreed?
Was he a racist who opposed civil rights and equality for black Americans?
Did he, in his pursuit of separation of church and state, advocate the secularizing of public life?
Actually, Barton's "scholarship and credibility" have been thoroughly discredited. It's been more than three years since Barton's book was pulled from the market (everywhere except WND, anyway), and the long gap, along with Barton's silence on the issue in the interim, is suspcious.
WND has a long road ahead in promoting a new edition of a discredited book. It will have to do much more than empty PR blather to sell it to anyone beyond its usual clientele of gullible WND readers. For starters, how about making that "thorough documentation" widely available for all to see?
P.S. We couldn't help but notice that the promotional blurb on the cover of the WND edition of Barton's book is from Glenn Beck, who's not exactly a paragon of truth himself.
Gutless MRC Blogger Hides Behind A Fake Name Topic: NewsBusters
An Oct. 30 NewsBusters post by someone named Bruce Bookter on ESPN's shuttering of Grantland predictably degenerated into an anti-liberal rant:
Make no mistake, ESPN likely, no, ESPN definitely supports and stands behind every wack-a-doo leftist take from every one of their leftist wack-a-doo personalities. Trust me on this.
Case in point, ESPN has still not suspended Tony Kornheiser for comparing Tea Party Republicans to ISIS. Why? Because they see conservatives the same way Kornheiser does.
But you can get rid of Grantland without making declarative statements like “We’re getting out of the pop culture business.” Saying that signals a much deeper meaning than saying “Bill Simmons was a real tool, and he’s basically stealing all of our writers. So we’re shutting this puppy down.”
Look, I’m not saying conservative backlash against ESPN resulted in the network’s decision to stop trying to be MSNBC with highlight reels. Though, it could have played a part. But, do conservatives have to have caused this in order for it to be a conservative victory?
Then we get to the end and see the Bookter's bio: "Bruce Bookter is a sports journalist. This is a pen name."
That's right -- "Bookter" is a coward hiding behind a fake name, which means there's no reason to trust him.
Nevertheless, the Media Research Center thinks this fake "Bookter" guy is worth publishing (which is apparently defined by the intensity of his liberal-bashing). He's written five posts since mid-October, including the above-referenced attack on Kornheiser, and another whining that a sports website made a gay joke mocking a baseball player's anti-gay views.
At least Kornheiser and the other targets of "Bookter's" rants put their names out there. "Bookter," meanwhile, hides behind a fake name and hurls his poo. And the MRC encourages him to be a gutless coward.
A profile in courage he isn't. Put your real name on your blog post, Bookter, and maybe we can talk.
Farah Forgets There Was A Reason Romney Shunned WND In 2012 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah devoted his Oct. 30 WorldNetDaily column to complain about Mitt Romney highlighting how the partisan media has created a confirmation bias in which news consumers are "not seeing the other side" and "not even getting the same facts." AS he is want to do, Farah made it about himself by complaining that Romney wouldn't advertise on WND in the 2012 presidential election:
Did you know that during the 2012 election, the Romney campaign prohibited any advertising dollars to be spent on WND? On the other hand, as many of you noted with chagrin, the Obama campaign flooded WND with advertising messages.
What does that show?
Romney didn’t covet WND visitors as voters. Perhaps he felt it was a lost cause. Obama wanted them.
It shows the difference between the Democratic Party establishment and the Republican establishment. The Democrats compete for every vote. The Republicans don’t.
It also shows that the Republican establishment is actually more hostile to independent, Constitution-minded voters than is the Democratic establishment.
Farah seems to have forgotten how extreme his "news" operation was in 2012, so extreme Romney would justifiably shun it:
WND was heavilypushing its Obama birther lies and censoring the fact that they have been discredited.
WND's Jerome Corsi, on top of his birther activism, was spewing lies about Obama so egregious that his fellow birthers felt compelled to correct him.
WND's columnists were frothing at the mouth with anti-Obama hate, none so frothed as Larry Klayman and Mychal Massie.
WND had started its own anti-Obama super PAC, which turned out to be a total scam.
By the end of the campaign, WND had completely destroyed what little credibility it had, and Farah himself declared that Obama's re-election is nothing short of "God's judgment" against America.
Why would any sentient being associate himself with an organization known for such extreme attacks and rhetoric? It seems that Romney was just acting prudently.
Of course, Farah could have blocked Obama's ads if he so chose, but
Farah laughably pretends WND represents "independent" voters when, in reality, it peddled some of the sleaziest so-called journalism of the campaign. The fact that Farah refuses to repent for his sins tells us Romney was correct to shun WND.
At The MRC, White People Pass Judgment On 'Black-ish' Topic: Media Research Center
ABC's show "Black-ish" is about a black father who questions whether his success has brought "too much assimilation," so he seeks to "establish a sense of cultural identity for his family that honors their past while embracing the future."
Who has the Media Research Center chosen to pass judgment on "Black-ish" for violations of right-wing orthodoxy? White people, of course, people who -- ideology aside -- are not the show's target audience.
The earliest mention of "Black-ish" at the MRC is a December 2014 piece by Tianna DiMartino (not black), who complained about the "racist jokes" in a Christmas-themed episode. In April, Scott Whitlock (not black) may have been amused by an episode with a "blink-and-you'll-miss-it Sarah Palin joke." In May, Kyle Drennen (not black) huffed that the show "treated Reublican African Americans as an abnormality that could not be tolerated."
This fall, "Black-ish" has gotten its own dedicated MRC show reviewer in the person of Dylan Gwinn, who in addition to not being black is actually more of a sports guy and, as we'vedocumented, not the sharpest knife in the right-wing-media-bias drawer. All of which, apparently, makes him the ideal critic of a black-oriented show for the MRC instead of someone who is predisposed to hate-watch the thing.
We've already noted Gwinn's rant about the season opener's use of the N-word and his inability to distinguish between a fictional character using it in a Quentin Tarantino movie and Paula Deen using it in real life about real people.
In an Oct. 10 episode, Gwinn critiques references to the Tuskegee Experiment in a episode about a doctor visit. Gwinn was upset that the characters suggested that the blacks who took part in the experiment were deliberately injected with syphillis, complaining that this "is exactly the impression activists want you to have."
He then weirdly soft-pedals the experiments: he avers that it "was clearly not a 'Blue Star' moment in the history of American medicine" and that it was not "cool" that blacks with syphillis were untreated and misled about their actual condition, and he makes sure we know that the experiment's victims "had syphillis prior to the study taking place." As if that somehow makes the government's behavior less atrocious and the victims somewhat deserved what they got.
In an Oct. 15 post, Gwinn grumbled that "Blackish is not the type of show to let a little thing like the pesky network programming schedule get in the way of taking a belated shot at Columbus Day," then ranted about the show calling Columbus Day racist, insisting that the holiday's origin as a way to counter prejudice against Italian-Americans is some kind of counter to that narrative to "the left" portraying the day as a "symbol of racial genocide."
he concludes by ranting: "So, in their pursuit of taking the one holiday Italian-Americans are allowed away because it’s “racist,” the supposedly immigration-friendly and anti-racist left is continuing the traditions of 20th century anti-immigrant groups by singling out a group of people who were trying to defend themselves against racism. Progress? Not so much."
I must admit, when it dawned on me that ABC’s Blackish was about to tackle the issue of religion on Wednesday night’s episode, fresh off of dealing with guns, the Tuskegee experiment, and generalized racism, part of me cried on the inside.
However, I’m happy to report that my internal sadness was quite out of order. Blackish actually did a great job dealing with not only racial differences between whites and blacks, and the different kinds of churches they attend, but also just the drama and guilt that surrounds normal people and prevents them from getting to church on Sunday.
The following week, however, Gwinn was back to hate-watching, ranting again about Columbus Day and sneering that a couple dressing up as the Obamas for Halloween was "the scariest couple I have ever seen in my life."
It's almost as if Gwinn and the MRC are deliberately trying to be as culturally clueless as possible.
WND's Klein Grants Anonymity To Another Terrorist Topic: WorldNetDaily
In one of his many, many lies, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah once claimed that his reporter Aaron Klein "doesn’t use anonymous sources when he quotes senior terrorist leaders in Gaza and many of the most prominent Islamists in the world." In fact, Klein frequently grants anonymity to his alleged sources -- even when they'reterrorists, whom you wouldn't think would be deserving to be cloaked in anonymity.
Nevertheless, Klein has found another terrorist whose identity he intends to protect. He writes in a Nov. 1 WND article:
Insiders in the group that represents ISIS in the Gaza Strip claimed to WND Sunday that the global jihadist group will soon release information purporting to show how it helped to bring down the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.
Salafist jihadists in the Gaza Strip who operate under the ISIS banner in the territory said the global jihad group was indeed involved in the downing of the aircraft Saturday morning.
They claimed it was not a missile that brought the plane down and that supposed evidence will soon be released by ISIS.
One ISIS leader in Gaza told WND that “in the Russian plane operation our brothers used their brains more than their bullets or their explosives. It was part of a brains war.”
The ISIS leader hinted to similarities with the 9/11 attacks as far as what he described as the level of sophistication of the claimed attack on the Russian jet.
Never mind that a terrorist taking credit for any given act of violence is even more rampant than the violence itself; ISIS has taken credit for lots of things it had no apparent involvement with, which makes this claim highly dubious at best, especially when no investigation of the crash has taken place.
Read the above again: Klein is granting anonymity to an operative for ISIS. The very same ISIS that is one of the most vicious terrorist groups on the planet.
Why is Klein doing this: He doesn't want to get the operative in trouble with his ISIS overlords. No, really. This is what Klein writes:
The ISIS leader spoke on condition of anonymity, citing specific ISIS instructions for all members of the global jihad group to refrain from putting out information concerning the attack for the time being.
Really, what else is there to say about a reporter who grants anonymity to terrorists just so he can selfishly have a big scoop, no matter how factually dubious? Or a "news" operation that makes such borderline-traitorous dishonesty possible?
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones touted how "The audience at Wednesday's Republican debate booed moderator Carl Quintanilla when he suggested that Ben Carson had some sort of inappropriate involvement with a nutritional supplement company."
What Jones failed to report: Carson lied to Quintanilla in denying having any relationship with the firm.
Jones included a transcript excerpt of the exchanged in which Quintanilla noted that Carson has had "a 10-year relationship" with the supplement company Mannatech, which has been accused of shady marketing practices and paid millions in fines for false advertising. Carson responded: "Well, that’s easy to answer. I didn’t have an involvement with them. That is total propaganda, and this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda. I did a couple of speeches for them, I do speeches for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of a relationship with them."
In fact, conservative National Review writer Jim Geraghty pointed out that Carson's denials are "bald-faced lies":
Mannatech wanted to improve its image and happily paid Carson, one of the country’s greatest neurosurgeons, the man Cuba Gooding Jr. played in the HBO movie – to appear at their events and to appear in the company videos. They put his face all over their web site (sometime between my story and now, those images were taken down). Carson’s lack of due diligence before working with the company is forgivable. His blatant lying about it now is much harder to forgive.
Further, Carson's business manager, Armstrong Williams (who, interestingly, has his own history of shady business practices), has admitted that Carson had a business relationship with Mannatech, complete with contract that he negotiated for Carson.
Jones' story appeared on the CNS front page, an Associated Press fact-check of the debate that noted Carson's misleading statements regarding Mannatech did not warrant front-page coverage. No original CNS article covers the Carson-Mannatech issue.
So it seems that CNS is giving Carson a pass on his falsehood, even though its mission statement states that it will "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." Apparently, pointing out a Republican presidential candidate's lies is not "legitimate," but that same candidate's anti-media attacks are.
Brent Bozell, head of CNS parent the Media Research Center, similarly gave Carson's lies a pass by dismissing the exchange as Quintanilla "asking Ben Carson about his face on somebody's website." We've also noted that the MRC gave Carson a pass on his conducting research on fetal tissue.
WND: Obey Authority! (Unless You Hate Gays, Then Feel Free To Not Obey.) Topic: WorldNetDaily
I would like to obliterate the obscenity of political correctness yet once again by offering a huge Nuge thank you and SALUTE to Columbia, South Carolina, Senior Deputy Ben Fields. You know, that master of “improvise, adapt and overcome” good citizen cop all good Americans have come to admire and respect, who yanked the Spring Valley High School defiant brat out of her classroom desk and dragged her kicking and squealing like the disobedient punk she is.
[...]
Here's a basic principle of life for anybody with a soul: obey!
[...]
But if you have been allowed to disrespect and ignore authority your entire, pathetic, unruly, undisciplined life, you have been tragically trained to be a troublemaker, and at some point you will hit a dead-end brick wall, and you will deserve it.
Obey and everything will go smoothly.
Obey and you won't get beat.
Obey and you won't get maced.
Obey and they won't stun gun you.
Obey and you won't get shot.
Obey and you won't get ripped from your desk and put under control.
When five of the U.S. Supreme Court justices last summer created a constitutional right to “same-sex marriage,” they overturned a bunch of state constitutional and statutory provisions against that status.
And they crushed the will of tens of millions of voters who had across dozens of states thought about “same-sex marriage,” and decided against allowing it.
Some of those voters now are strategizing ways to simply nullify the ruling from the lawyers on high.
[...]
[Attorney Jeff] Cobble explained to WND that he’s discussed the issue with dozens of lawmakers, a multitude of local officials, and state residents by the thousand through email chains and other social media.
The sentiment is that something needs to be done, and the most likely avenue is simply nullification.
That, he explained, is simply making the court decision of no account.
[...]
“Today’s nullification movement is revolutionary because it offers the hope of smashing the established political order; an alternative to ‘voting the bums out’ – a way to support the Constitution and liberty whether the federal government wants us to or not,” said Tenth Amendment Center Executive Director Michael Boldin.
MRC's Debate 'Study' Confirms Nothing, And Certainly Not The 'Bias' It Claims Occurred Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been found beating the "liberal bias" drum following the CNBC Republican debate, even though CNBC, as a financial news network, is not a "liberal" outlet by any stretch of the imagination. MRC chief Brent Bozell even asserted that the debate was "an encyclopedic example of liberal media bias." But neither Bozell nor any of his MRC employees ever bothered to provide that "encyclopedia" in support of the claim.
Now, finally, the MRC has issued what it claims is a "study" on the subject. The unsubtle headline: "MRC Study Proves It: CNBC Agenda Was to Undermine GOP Candidates." The unbylined "study" asserts:
A Media Research Center analysis of the questions posed by moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick at CNBC's Republican presidential debate found nearly two-thirds (65%) hit the candidates with negative spin, personal insults or ad hominem attacks.
In contrast, all of the questions posed by CNBC personalities Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli and Sharon Epperson focused on policy matters and were phrased in a constructive, respectful tone.
The MRC analysis examined the 43 unique questions posed by one of the three moderators. Nearly two-thirds of those (28, or 65%) included negative spin, personal insult or attack, such as Harwood's question to Donald Trump asking if his was a "comic book version of a presidential campaign," or Quintanilla's question to Ted Cruz asking if his opposition to a just-passed spending bill showed he was "not the kind of problem-solver American voters want?"
What you won't find: anything that resembles an actual study. The MRC provides no methodology for making such a determination about the questions, or any objective definition of what it considered "negative spin."
The MRC did not even provide a list of the questions to show how it categorized them.
The "study" went on to complain:
The remaining moderator questions involved personal questions without a negative slant, or policy questions that were phrased in a non-insulting way. While not outright disrespectful, many of these policy questions, such as Quick's question to Cruz claiming a large pay gap between men and women, or Quintanilla's question to Kasich about legalizing marijuana, were framed from a liberal perspective.
Again, the MRC did not provide a methodology for determining political "perspective" or explain why a "liberal perspective" in a question is problematic.
The only supplemental material provided with this "study" is a video compilation of "the most insulting questions posed."
Let's face it: This is not a "study," it's a political statement pretending to be "research." The MRC's goal was partisan and it makes no attempt whatsoever to be objective. It seems that whatever personally offended MRC staffers was determined to be "negative" or an "insult."
The MRC hammered the partisan intent of its so-called "study" by replacing all that methodology stuff with a rant from Bozell:
The three main moderators, and in particular John Harwood, acted like petulant children trying to pick fights with the candidates. When nearly two-thirds of your questions are comprised of negative spin, personal insults or ad hominem attacks, your agenda is clear: undermine the Republican candidates at all costs. These CNBC "journalists" exposed themselves to the world as left-wing stooges jockeying for a position in Hillary Clinton’s campaign press shop. It was embarrassing.
Who's really being the petulant one? It looks like it's Bozell and the MRC for crying "bias" over questions it doesn't like and ginning up a bogus "study" as purported proof.
Contrary to the headline, the MRC's "study" does not prove an "agenda" -- or anything else it has been asserting about the debate. It does prove, however, that the MRC is little more than a group of hacks dedicated to churning out right-wing talking points without regard to the facts.
By contrast, the MRC did no such "study" on the questions regarding the GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox News, despite Donald Trump's loud complaining about their bias, nor does it make the effort to compare the questions in the CNBC debate with those of the Fox debate. Heck, even MRC friend Ann Coulter (whose anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic rantings the MRC is studiously ignoring) has argued that the questions in the debates were no different.
In fact, the MRC -- whose Bozell has a weekly spot on Sean Hannity's Fox News show -- ignored Trump's complaints of bias in the Fox debate.
We previously asked the MRC to do the "research" the organization's middle name suggests it's capable of. It still hasn't done any. This study has as much scientific legitimacy as Hannity's assertion that the debate was "the single worst example of media bias in a debate in like intergalactic history" -- a nonsensical assertion MRC "news" division CNSNews.com decided was worthy of repeating on its front page.
MRC Ignores Evidence, Denies NY Times Has A Grudge Against Hillary Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock writes in an Oct. 15 NewsBusters post:
According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, it’s shocking that the liberal New York Times would praise the liberal Hillary Clinton. While recapping the Democratic presidential debate, host Maddow seriously claimed, “... The New York Times has its knives out for Hillary Clinton more so than any other mainstream media outlet in the country.”
Speaking of the paper that hasn’t endorsed a Republican for president since 1956, the anchor accused the Times of having an “inclination to look for the worst in Hillary Clinton in every instance and to advance every negative story line they can get their hands on whether or not it's comporting with the facts, even so.”
Whitlock curiously edited out the part of Maddow's statement -- left intact in the video clip accompanying his post -- in which she conceded that the Times is "mostly liberal on its op-ed page" but the knives are out for Hillary "on its news pages." Which is very much true if one looks at the history of the Times' coverage of her.
Maddow is hardly alone in pointing this out. Media critic James Fallows observes that the Times has a "vendetta" out for Hillary, and a new book by David Brock (disclosure: my former employer) on the right-wing war against Hillary has an entire chapter on the New York Times' history of antagonistic coverage of Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Even Times public editor Margaret Sullivan concedes the Times has a particular obsession with Hillary:
Since 2013, a Times reporter has been assigned to cover the Clintons as a full-time beat. Other candidates were spared that particular blessing, and at times the whole thing has seemed excessive. For Mrs. Clinton, it has meant that her every move is tracked, often to a fault. Separately, readers objected last April to the way The Times, touting an “exclusive agreement” with the author, reported on aspects of a highly critical book, “Clinton Cash.”
Nevertheless, Whitlock chose to make an exceedingly narrow interpretration of Maddow's remarks:
Maddow’s complaints about the Times undoubtedly refer to the paper's decision to actually investigate Clinton’s e-mail scandal, though timidly. In July, the Times reported on a criminal inquiry into the controversy. After the Clinton campaign complained, the editors altered their reporting for the website.
Hardly a paper with the “knives” out for Hillary Clinton.
Again, Whitlock censors important information. There was, in fact, no "criminal inquiry," and the Times "altered their reporting" because their reporting was wrong.
We've previously noted that the MRC actually complained that the Hillary camp tried to correct this false story -- which, as the Times' Sullivan admitted, involved "too much speed in publishing the story, and too little transparency in correcting and revising it, and for the all-too-familiar reliance on anonymous government sources."
As Whitlock's post shows, the MRC is sticking with the false story and refusing to admit it's false. After all, it has a grudge against Hillary too.
Humorless MRC Writer Complains About 'Satire Smear' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder finds absolutely no humor, it seems, in anything even tangentally related to abortion. Yoder grumps in an Oct. 16 NewsBusters post:
Sometimes things aren’t as funny as they seem.
ClickHole, a satirical site owned by the Onion, joked in an Oct. 13 piece that “Dunkin’ Donuts Has Just Announced That It Will Perform One Abortion.” To support a woman’s “right to choose,” the chain would offer a “complimentary abortion” at one of their locations. While media outlets readily shared the piece, Dunkin’ Donuts and business site Entrepreneur responded to the claim seriously.
Owned by the Onion, the year-old site, “strive[s] to make sure that all of our content panders to and misleads our readers just enough to make it go viral.”
The site attempted to do just that on Monday – by joking about abortion and smearing a business in the process.
Yoder seems to miss that the entire point of the ClickHole satire was to mock the idea of corporate involvement in political causes, or that ClickHole itself is a parody of the clickbait-y BuzzFeed style.
Yoder also makes sure we know that "Dunkin’ Donuts is neutral on life issues." Well, duh, that's part of the joke -- there's no reason for Dunkin' Donuts to get involved in the issue, let alone perform an abortion in one of its stores, which should have been a pretty obvious sign that this was satire. Still, she fretted that "Some Twitter users appeared to take the story seriously," again ignoring that the story is absurd on its face, hence its existence as a satire.
But what's Yoder's complaint about "smearing a business," which she identifies in the headline as a "Satire Smear"? Including a real-life business (or person) in a satirical pice is a "smear"? Perhaps someone should remind Yoder that her employer engages in a "satire smear" on a regular basis called "NewsBusted" (a name the MRC totally stole from us).
The main difference between the two is that Clickhole has actual humor. But Yoder and "NewsBusted" could take a few lessons in funny from professionals.
A few years back, we detailed how conservative newspapers lose massive amounts of money, staying in business only through the good graces of their deep-pocketed benefactors who made their money elsewhere. At the top of that list is the Washington Times, funded as a plaything for self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon to have entree to conservative Washington circles. 
When Fox Lake, Ill., police officer Joseph Gliniewicz was found dead of a gunshot wound in September, WorldNetDaily wasted little time in exploiting his death to blame blacks in general and Black Lives Matter in particular.
WorldNetDaily's favorite lying preacher, 
The Media Research Center just can't stop perpetuating the idea that the CNBC Republican presidential debate was filled with "liberal bias," despite the fact that it's unable to objectively prove it.
We've documented how WorldNetDaily 
An Oct. 30 NewsBusters 
Joseph Farah devoted his Oct. 30 WorldNetDaily 
ABC's show "Black-ish" is 
In one of his 
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com 
I would like to obliterate the obscenity of political correctness yet once again by offering a huge Nuge thank you and SALUTE to Columbia, South Carolina, Senior Deputy Ben Fields. You know, that master of “improvise, adapt and overcome” good citizen cop all good Americans have come to admire and respect, who yanked the Spring Valley High School defiant brat out of her classroom desk and dragged her kicking and squealing like the disobedient punk she is.
The Media Research Center has been found 
By contrast, the MRC did no such "study" on the questions regarding the GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox News, despite Donald Trump's loud complaining about their bias, nor does it make the effort to compare the questions in the CNBC debate with those of the Fox debate. Heck, even MRC friend Ann Coulter (whose anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic rantings the MRC is 
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock writes in an Oct. 15 NewsBusters 
The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder finds absolutely no humor, it seems, in anything even tangentally related to abortion. Yoder grumps in an Oct. 16 NewsBusters 
