WND Whines That Terrorists Are Treated As Mentally Ill
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has a weird thing for complaining about people who argue that radicalized Islamists who commit terrorist acts might be mentally ill instead of mainstream Muslims. This happens again in a June 8 article by Art Moore:

While police continue to investigate the Manchester and London Bridge jihadist attacks, several incidents this week conducted in the name of Allah by Muslims in Europe have gained considerably less attention, dismissed as irrational acts of the mentally ill.

In London, a man roamed a heavily Jewish area Thursday morning shouting “Allah Allah” and “I’m going to kill you all,” and, in another part of the city Thursday, a nursery worker suffered broken ribs and was slashed with a knife by three women chanting “Allah will get you.”

Meanwhile, in Paris, the nephew of Farid Ikken, who attacked a police officer with a hammer Tuesday outside the Notre Dame Cathedral, expressed disbelief that his uncle — “a progressive, not an extremist” — would declare allegiance to ISIS and perpetrate a violent act, noting the whole family is “in shock.”

Ikken’s former boss, Algerian journalist Kamel Medjoub, suggested, the London Express reported: “Maybe he lost it that day and attacked a police officer in a moment of madness. But I refuse to believe he would pledge allegiance to ISIS.”

However, a video of Ikken pledging allegiance to ISIS was found in his apartment in a counter-terrorism raid.

[...]

David Kupelian, author of “The Marketing of Evil, “How Evil Works” and his latest, “The Snapping of the American Mind,” said in a WND story last August that in response to all of the cases of jihad-type assaults that have been labeled “mental illness,” the question should be asked: “Where does ‘radical Islam’ end and ‘mental illness’ begin? And what if they are the same thing?”

For more than 150 years, the legal standard for claiming innocence by reason of insanity has been the M’Naghten rule, noted Kupelian, WND vice president and managing editor, stipulating the perpetrator was unaware his criminal actions were wrong at the time he committed them, Kupelian noted.

“But by that definition, every Islamic terrorist in the world is innocent, since his religious delusions persuade him that not only is it right and moral to massacre innocent men, women and children, but it is mandatory, required by their god as a prerequisite for salvation,” he said.

Yet, as we've noted, WND didn't want to discuss the political motivation of Charleston masacre perpetrator Dylann Roof, presumably because he shared the same obsession with painting blacks as criminals and lament for apartheid-era South Africa as WND writers have.

As per WND's anti-Muslim editorial agenda, Moore lets anti-Muslim activists opine at length while failing to speak to any qualified mental health professional.

MRC Still Denying That Scalise Spoke To David Duke Group (For Which He Has Apologized)
Topic: Media Research Center

In a June 15 Media Research Center post, Brad Wilmouth complains that "CNN correspondent Randi Kaye repeated a discredited claim that Republican Rep. Steve Scalise 15 years ago spoke to a group founded by white supremacist and former KKK leader David Duke." He continues:

Kaye began the report by recalling that the Republican congressman has a well known love of baseball, and then moved to recounting his history in Congress. The CNN correspondent soon got to the claims about him speaking to white supremacists as she continued: "In 2014, after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary, Scalise jumped into the race. But during that campaign, questions were raised about a speech he gave to a group led by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke back in 2002."

She then added: "Scalise told reporters, 'I detest any kind of hate group. For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous.'"

Not mentioned was that back in 2015 it was already reported that the man who invited Scalise to speak in 2002 disputed the account that the congressman spoke to Duke's group. The man who booked hotel space for the group's convention, Kenny Knight, has claimed the event Scalise spoke to was a separate event for his local community group which he held in the same hotel as Duke's group to take advantage of the available space. Additionally, a flyer for the convention shows no sign that Scalise was one of the scheduled speakers.

As we pointed out the last time Wilmouth made this claim, he's completely ignoring the fact that Scalise issued an apology for speaking to Duke's group:

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Scalise called his appearance before the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) — an extremist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke — a “mistake I regret” and added that he rejected the organization’s racist ideology. 

As he has over the past two days, Scalise said he made the EURO speech only to drum up support for a tax proposal he was then pushing in the state legislature. 

“Twelve years ago, I spoke to many different Louisiana groups as a state representative, trying to build support for legislation that focused on cutting wasteful state spending, eliminating government corruption, and stopping tax hikes,” Scalise said in his latest statement. 

“One of the many groups that I spoke to regarding this critical legislation was a group whose views I wholeheartedly condemn. It was a mistake I regret, and I emphatically oppose the divisive racial and religious views groups like these hold. I am very disappointed that anyone would try to infer otherwise for political gain. As a Catholic, these groups hold views that are vehemently opposed to my own personal faith, and I reject that kind of hateful bigotry. Those who know me best know I have always been passionate about helping, serving, and fighting for every family that I represent. And I will continue to do so.”

That seems like a major omission on Wilmouth's part. Which make the rest of his post as discredited as he claims the CNN reporter is.

WND's Hohmann Finally Finds Middle Eastern Immigrants He Doesn't Want To Deport
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Leo Hohmann's main day job as a reporter for WorldNetDaily consists of demonizing Muslim refugees who want to come to the U.S., basically arguing that all Muslim refugees should be presumed to be terrorists. But Hohmann has finally found some Middle Eastern natives he doesn't want kicked out of the country. Hint: they're not Muslim.

Hohmann laments in a June 15 article:

More than 100 Iraqi Christians were rounded up Sunday evening in federal raids in Michigan and will soon be deported back to their native land, where they face an uncertain fate in a country where Christians are marked for death in a genocide carried out by ISIS and other Islamic groups.

The raids were conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The ICE agents showed up without warning at the homes of Chaldean Christians and at a popular restaurant called Ishtar’s in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Those detained were mostly legal residents of the U.S., some having spent the majority of their lives here, but have had felonies on their records.

Of course, many of the Muslim refugees Hohmann loves to demonize would also face the risk of death if they were sent back to their native countries, but he doesn't mention that -- he's too busy serving up sob stories about the Chaldean Christians aboiut to be deported.

Of particular ironic hilarity is Hohmann lamenting that President Trump won't deport the DREAMers -- people brought illegally as children into the U.S. who were subsequently raised here and have had little contact with their native country or language -- then quoting an activist effectively complaining  that the Chaldean Christians marked for deportation are being treated the way he wishes the DREAMers were:

Kalasho said dropping an Americanized Chaldean Christian into Baghdad is like putting a house-trained cat that has lived its entire life indoors out into the middle of the woods.

“What makes this so puzzling and frustrating is both the last administration and the current one have said these are people who are victims of genocide, but then they turn around and say that, although they are victims of genocide, they are perfectly able to survive if they get dropped off at an airport in Baghdad,” Kalisho said. “I don’t want to speculate on anything, but there are not many Christians currently in Baghdad. And many of these individuals being deported don’t know a lick of Arabic. Many proudly expose the cross. Many have tattoos of the cross or other Christian symbols, which will make them a clear target for someone who is a radicalized Muslim.”

[...]

“None of them had ever committed murder. None of them had ever raped anyone. But when ICE showed up, they had a crime on their record. They didn’t give them any information. They were picked up from their homes or from a restaurant and told they just wanted to ‘ask you a few questions.'”

If this treatment is bad and unfair to the Chaldeans, why isn't similarly unfair and bad for the DREAMers? Hohmann never brings that up.

CNS Exploits Shooting to Push Guns, Bash Left As Violent
Topic: CNSNews.com

While the Media Research Center has been denouncing politicization of the shooting of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise -- while also doing its own politicizing -- its "news" division, CNSNews.com, has been more aggressive about politicizing it.

An anonymously written article -- credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff" -- serves up pro-gun propaganda with the headline "Congressman: ‘By the Grace of God, One of the Folks Here Had a Weapon to Fire Back’."

From there, it was time to impugn liberal rhetoric as the inspiration for the shooting spree. Craig Bannister uncritically touted Newt Gingrich blaming “an increasing intensity of hostility on the left" for the shooting, and Gage Cohen highlighted that the shooter, James Hodgkinson, "'liked' the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Facebook," making sure to add: "On a related note, domestic terrorist Floyd Corkins, who shot up the conservative Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012, told the FBI that he learned about the group on the SPLC’s website, which has a 'Hate Map' that labels the FRC as 'Anti-LGBT.'"

Actually, the two incidents aren't related at all, and Cohen doesn't dispute the SPLC's description of the FRC as "anti-LGBT" -- good for him, since that's pretty much indisputable. But hey, why quibble with facts when there's a tragedy to politicize?

Another Obama Derangement Syndrome Victim At WND Whines About Trump Derangement
Topic: WorldNetDaily

David Kupelian is not the only writer channeling the latent effects of Obama Derangement Syndrome on President Trump's critics. Gina Loudon writes in her June 11 WND column:

The Republicans, and most normal, working people in the world have concerns. They want tax cuts, a thriving economy, national security, and they want the failed Obamacare repealed.

The left is wholly unconcerned about any of that. It will name its issues as equality (a.k.a. socialism), environmentalism (a.k.a another excuse to implement socialism) and Russia (hello? Just one piece of evidence, please?).

Leftists want to torment Trump until he resigns, is impeached or – let’s just be honest about it –they wouldn’t shed a tear and might even celebrate if he died. They are the bullies on the playground shouting, “Russia! Comey! Russia! Comey!”

So why aren’t they having any success? Why can’t they fill a stadium with activists, like the president can? Why can’t they win a special Senate or House election? Why isn’t their torment taken seriously?

• This president is an executive. He is used to juggling many items at once, with fires to put out on every front, and he knows how to stay focused through it.
• They have yelled, “Chicken Little! The sky is falling!” so many times that the American public is having scandal fatigue. Every time they scream “collusion!” or “obstruction!” the American people roll their collective eyes and go back to their jobs, their families, and planning their summer vacation with the extra dollars starting to land in their wallets as this president continues to execute his plan to Make America Great Again.
• They aren’t real. There’s the ghost under your bed, the boogeyman in your closet and the zombie walking the dark alleys at night. And then there is the leftist activist. If George Soros stopped paying them to show up, to tweet, to vote and to spout narrative into microphones on fake news shows, it would be like that moment when you walk out of the theater and realize the zombies were never actually real.

Fantasies on the right that they will stop attacking are just as imaginary. They won’t. They can’t. They have no other skills.

The attacks will continue every day until the end of Trump’s presidency.

Of course, right-wingers like Loudon wanted to torment Obama until he resigned, was impeached or – let’s just be honest about it – they wouldn’t shed a tear and might even celebrate if he died. They were the bullies on the playground shouting, “Benghazi! Emails! Benghazi! Emails!”

Loudon appears to have conveniently forgotten that she has been as unhinged about Obama as she accuses lefties of being toward Trump.

We remember when Loudon made an armchair diagnosis of Obama as a dangerous psychopath like Stalin and Pol Pot, and also, if that weren't enough, the "most vacationing, golfing, tyrannical president in the history of the republic." She hoped Obama's birthday "will be rather dark, like a lot of children’s birthdays around the U.S. for your policies of demise and death" and ranted that Obama "is handing the global community the ability to control our speech, and our technological advances." She insisted that Obama used "ISIL" instead of "ISIS" because he secretly hates Israel, and that he has a father complex that makes him hate America and love Islam.

And Loudon is still in derangement mode:

Remember that cheer from your high-school days? It’s still so applicable when dealing with snowflakes and Peter Pan progressives who refuse to grow up.

When they say Russia, we say it was Hillary who cut her deal to sell uranium to Russia and pad the pockets of the Clinton Foundation. It was Obama who promised in a hot-mic-moment to lay down for the Russians after his re-election. It was the Obama administration that was supposed to protect our election systems from attacks in the last election. Russia is a Democrat problem.

When they say sexist, racist, homophobe, xenophobe, etc., we say our Constitution handles all of that. The Dems and their identity politics have only fomented hate and violence, and we are in the business of fixing that.

When they say environment, we say weather. Their own fatalistic theories have been destroyed, one by one, and their silly Paris climate agreement was nothing more than socialist redistribution of wealth (we call that stealing), and they were caught red-handed when it was ultimately discovered that all the money in the world won’t make a dent in their fantasy of climate change – because it’s weather.

Actually, Hillary Clinton did not sell uranium to Russia, weather is not climate, and she can ask Michael "Get AIDS And Die" Savage and Ted "Suck On My Machine Gun, Obama" Nugent about that whole fomenting-hate-and-violence thing.

Loudon claims to have a doctorate in psychiatry. Perhaps she should look up the idea of projection, because that's exactly what she's doing here.

MRC Tries to Politicize Congressman's Shooting -- As It Bashes Others for Politicizing It
Topic: Media Research Center

If there's one thing that the Media Research Center reliably does in the face of a shooting tragedy, it's complaining that others are politicizing said tragedy by discussing gun control -- and it did just that after yesterday's shooting of a congressman and others in Virginia.

"Shameful: Journalists Immediately Politicize Congressional Shooting With Gun Control Calls" read the headline of a post from Scott Whitlock, i which he huffed, "Apparently, it’s never too soon for liberal journalists to politicize a tragedy."

Madeleine Post followed with a post headlined "Celebs Brazenly Politicize Scalise Shooting, Declare ‘Too Many Guns’," complaining that "celebrities were more concerned with the politics of gun control than the fact that a U.S. congressman was shot."

Of course, the MRC has its own ways of politicizing tragedies, and it did so here as well.

MRC researcher Nicholas Fondacaro rushed to blame the media in a tweet complaining, "Meanwhile, @CBSNews recently complimented a play depicting the assassination of Trump," with the added hashtag #MediaPlayedARole.

Yes, Fondacaro is apparently blaming the shooting on a production of "Julius Caesar" that portrays a Trump-esque titular character.And the last time we checked, Fondacaro's attempt to make #MediaPlayedARole a thing utterly failed -- even his fellow MRC employees weren't picking it up.

Fondacaro was silent -- as was the rest of the MRC -- about a 2012 production of "Julius Caesar" that assassinated an Obama-esque titular character.

But, hey, why let double standards get in the way of a good attack line?

A Tale of Two Mass Shootings At WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As expected, WorldNetDaily was quick to politically exploit today's mass shooting in Virginia that injured Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and others.

An article by Leo Hohmann made sure to highlight that the alleged shooter, James Hodgkinson, was a "supporter and campaign volunteer of Bernie Sanders" who liked "far-left political organizations like, um, Right Wing Watch and Media Matters and was "an admirer of former President Obama."

That was joined by an article by Joe Wilson that focused on how Hodgkinson "apparently was a fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which nearly five years ago was linked to a domestic terror attack at the Washington office of the Family Research Council." Never mind that the two incidents have nothing whatsoever to do with each other and WND is simply playing guilt by association.

Guilt by association, of course, was something WND utterly refused to do regarding Dylann Roof's 2015 massacre of nine blacks in a South Carolina church -- presumably because it would have been the one that looked guilty. As we documented, Roof's views on blacks mirrored that of WND authors like Colin Flaherty and Jack Cashill, and his love of apartheid-era South Africa echoed that of then-WND columnist Ilana Mercer (and, more recently, WND author Alex Newman).

But WND refused to explore that aspect of Roof -- instead, it rushed to dismiss him as a mentally ill drug abuser, and Cashill doubted Roof's ability to write the hateful manifesto attributed to him.

No talk of drugs or mental illness regarding Hodgkinson so far at WND. That would ruin its narrative that he was driven by left-wing ideology.

The MRC vs. Shakespeare
Topic: Media Research Center

Having dispatched Reza Aslan, the revenge machine at the Media Research Center has set its sights on a bigger target: William Shakespeare.

Or, more accurately, a New York City production of "Julius Caesar" in modern dress, in which the titular character -- who gets assasinated at the midpoint of the play -- looks not unlike Donald Trump.

A June 9 column by the MRC's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell rants about the production's "poorly disguised Trump" and about "the play's Trump assassination plot" and the "bloody murder of Trump." Well, no.

Graham and Bozell give no indication that, in addition to any evidence they have ever seen the play they're attacking in any form, the theater company rewrote any of the play's prose to make it a "Trump assassination plot," which means that, staging aside, it's the same play it has been for the past 400 years or so -- in which the point of the entire production is not the assassination but its aftermath.

But it appears Bozell, Graham and the rest of the MRC are as ignorant of classic theater than they are of opera, so it has decided to take down Shakespeare:

• Kristine Marsh whined about "overt depictions of killing our president."
• Tom Blumer declared that the play has a "sick, modernized plot" -- not presenting any evidence that the plot itself was actually "modernized" -- and that the play would not have been ignored "if it had been adapted to show the assassination of Barack Obama while he was in office."
• Bozell weighed in again, huffing that the media "has put aside any semblance of objectivity, any semblance of fairness, any semblance of journalistic ethics" by not immediately condemning a modern interpretation of a classic play.
• Scott Whitlock vaguely described "Julius Caesar" as "a shocking New York play in which a Donald Trump look-alike is stabbed to death."
• Madeline Post attacked "The View's " Whoopi Goldberg for pointing out the obvious -- that the play "is not the story of Donald Trump" -- and went on to assert that "Julius Caesar" has an "unmistakable satirical nature."(Actually, the play is considered a tragedy.)

Over at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, Gage Cohen is also unfamiliar with classic theater, complaining that the theater company offered "free tickets to anyone who wants to see President Trump assassinated" and later describing the play as a production "in which President Trump is portrayed as being brutally stabbed to death." Cohen later complained that the company putting on the play that "depicts PResident Trump stabbed to death, received an average of $976,296 from the government annually between 2010 and 2014."

Despite Tom Blumer's denial of wuch, there was amajor production of "Julius Caesar" in which Obama was depicted at the titular character -- a 2012 production by the storied Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. We found no evidence that Bozell or anyone else at the MRC objected to that production.

In other words, this is just another partisan game by the MRC. If Bozell and Co. didn't speak in 2012, they have no moral authority to speak up now.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Victim Lectures on Trump Derangement Syndrome
Topic: WorldNetDaily

David Kupelian feels the need to devote an entire June 10 column to "understanding Trump Derangement Syndrome." First, he lectures:

Well, what’s “absolutely true” would be one of two opposing propositions: Either Donald Trump is a modern Hitler and his supporters the equivalent of Nazis, slave-owners and Klansmen as depicted in this colorful but basically accurate characterization of the left’s view of Trump’s presidency – or else the people claiming this are not just staggeringly delusional, but reckless as well.

First, let’s agree on what is indisputably true: The left frequently compares Trump to Hitler, and I’m not talking about just Facebook rants and anti-Trump protest signs. The Washington Post, as I documented last October in a pre-election article titled “5 Washington Post writers liken Trump to Hitler,” spent 2016 explicitly and continually comparing Donald J. Trump to one of history’s most evil and universally reviled genocidal monsters.

Specifically, five different Post writers, one after the other, cited Trump’s “Hitlerian thinking,” claimed his rise was “uncannily reminiscent” of Hitler’s, evoked “Nazi sympathizers,” called Trump a Hitler-like “megalomaniacal demagogue,” and, of course, pegged him as a dangerous “sociopathic liar” in the tradition of Hitler.

In reality – and I wish I didn’t have to keep pointing this out – Hitler murdered 11 million innocent people, while Trump, a billionaire New York real estate developer who wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time and got himself elected president, has never killed anyone.

Let's agree on another thing that is indisputably true: WND -- of which Kupelian is managing editor -- frequently compared President Obama to Hitler.

But Kupelian is not in a self-reflective mood, nor is he even remorely self-aware:

But why quibble over details? Those on the left – including the Democratic Party, its propaganda wing (the “mainstream media”) and many in the permanent federal bureaucracy (the “deep state”) – feel so threatened by Trump’s presidency they are engaged in an ongoing do-or-die campaign to destroy him in multiple ways, including by spending almost a year falsely accusing him of being a traitor who colluded with Russia to rig the election.

To accomplish all this, they must seriously demonize him.

But constantly likening Trump to Hitler (and his supporters, administration, policies and political party to Nazis, Klansmen and slave-holders) is not merely totally insane. It’s also extremely dangerous to American society. Not only does it further polarize and divide a once-unified nation, but worse, it gives implicit permission to members of “the resistance” to commit whatever lawless and/or violent acts might occur to their enraged minds in hopes of overturning, at all costs, what they see as America’s new Nazi regime.

And so on. Basically everything Kupelian accuses "the left" of doing to Trump, he and WND did to Obama.

Engaging in "ethnic cleansing"? Check.

Setting up "detention camps"? Check.

Trying to overturn the will of the electorate "in hopes of crippling, imeaching and prosecuting" him? Check.

Kupelian finally compains that the left's "unwilling to face the truth," and that "can easily generate seething hatred and violence." You mean like how mass murderer Anders Breivik's manifesto cited WND six times? And how massacre perpetrator Dylann Roof's white-nationalist rhetoric was reflected in WND columnists' love for apartheid South Africa?

It's also amusing how Kupelian is lecturing us on Trump derangment when he and his website was invected with a virulent case of Obama Derangement Syndrome. As we've documented, Kupelian thinks Obama is an actual Manchurian candidate, falsely accused him of suppressing military votes, seemingly blamed military suicides on Obama and lamented that his re-election meant that "Team Obama would have another four long years to transform and dismantle all that Americans loved, all that we fought for, all that we 'built.'"

We also remember that Kupelian wrote a 2010 column headlined "Obama and the date-rape of America."

So a guy who thinks Obama is date-raping an entire country is going to warn us about Trump derangement? Oh, please. He's just projecting -- and hoping that people don't remember what WND has been publishing the previous eight years.

Terry Jeffrey's Transgender Freakout
Topic: CNSNews.com

Looks like Tim Graham isn't the only Media Research Center employee who's prone to freaking out when the subject of transgenders comes up.

It appears CNSNess.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has found the next target in the MRC's revenge campaign: an independent filmmaker who received federal money that made a film for federally funded public television about a transgender teen, called "Real Boy."

In a June 7 article, Jeffrey rants that the film is a "pro-sex-change documentary," which in right-wing speak means that the filmmakers failed to shame the teen for choosing the gender identity that fits best. Jeffrey takes particular offense to the press kit for the film, which references guidance from GLAAD about moving transgenderism "closer to acceptance."

Jeffrey then shares the hostile, biased questions he fired at the film's producers, the Independent Television Service:

Citing this guidance, CNSNews.com asked ITVS by email: “Is it fair to say that one purpose of the ‘Real Boy’ documentary is to advance the cause of moving transgenderism ‘closer to acceptance’ in America?”

ITVS responded: “ITVS had no participation, funding or otherwise, in the press kit referencing ‘closer to acceptance.’”

CNSNews.com asked: “Does the film not seek to move transgenderism ‘closer to acceptance’ in America?”

ITVS responded again: “ITVS had no participation, funding or otherwise, in the press kit referencing ‘closer to acceptance.’

CNSNews.com asked: “Why should American taxpayers be required to pay for the production and broadcasting of ‘Real Boy’?”

ITVS responded: “Americans broadly support public broadcasting's mission to help inform civil discourse essential to American society.”

CNSNews.com asked: “Why should Congress maintain a law that requires taxpayers to fund a private documentary producer like ITVS?”

ITVS responded: “ITVS supports independent producers from all corners of our country who tell stories about Americans​ representing a range of complex topics. The organization serves as a public pathway for producers and characters untethered to a single public television station, television series, geographic area or set of interests.”

[...]

CNSNews.com also asked PBS: “Why should American taxpayers be forced to pay for the broadcasting of Real Boy?”

The PBS spokesperson responded: “This film represents just one title among the many hours of high-quality programming offered by PBS stations each year spanning genres including news and public affairs, science, history, drama, arts and children’s content. I would refer you to recent statements we’ve made about the importance of federal funding, as well as research that shows strong support across the political spectrum for federal funding for public media.”

Then, in a June 12 article, Jeffrey tried to manufacture further outrage by complaining that "The website of the federally funded Public Broadcasting Service will host a blog posting about transgender dating, which will be advertised on air next Monday evening when PBS broadcasts the transgender documentary 'Real Boy.'" Yes, Jeffrey is complaining that a blog post will appear on a website.Again, Jeffrey showed off his hostile questioning:

CNSNews.com asked ITVS if the blog post about transgender dating would be written by one of ITVS’s regular bloggers and when it would be posted. CNSNews.com also asked ITVS if it would be posted on the regular Independent Lens blog page at pbs.org/independentlens/blog, if the blog post’s Q&A format would feature observations by transgender individuals about their dating experiences and/or advice on dating as a transgender—or, if that were not the blog post’s subject matter, what the subject matter would be.

ITVS did not respond.

CNSNews.com asked PBS about the planned blog post: “Is it acceptable to PBS that ‘Independent Lens’ promote on a PBS broadcast and post on the PBS website a blog about ‘dating when you are trans’?” CNSNews.com also asked PBS: “If so, is there any human behavior that PBS would find unacceptable as the focus of a blog posting based on a Q&A with people who engage in that behavior and that PBS would, therefore, not allow to be posted on its website?”

PBS did not respond.

The MRC would not put up with such biased questions if asked by the "liberal media." Why is it tolerating them from one of its own employees?

WND's Farah Has A New (And Totally Bogus) Conspiracy Theory For You
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah serves up a new and exciting conspiracy theory in his June 2 WorldNetDaily column:

It must be nice to be Jeff Bezos.

How do you become one of the richest men in the world by founding a company that only recently gave a thought to profitability?

[...]

But it was less than three years ago that Amazon began to achieve any profits to speak of. And, even today, you’d be shocked to know how high its revenues are and how relatively low its profits are.

For instance, in 2015, Amazon’s fourth quarter revenues were an astronomical $35.7 billion. But its net income was, by comparison, a measly $482 million. Last year, Amazon’s fourth quarter revenue was up 22 percent to $43.7 billion. It’s net income was $749 million.

Of course, net income is after Jeff Bezos gets his astronomical salary, which has helped him to be a mega-billionaire.

I tell you all this so you don’t think what I’m about to tell you represents chump change for Amazon and Bezos.

The first profitable year for Amazon was 2013. Fourth quarter profits were $239 million and $274 million for the year. The year before, Amazon posted a loss for 2012 of $39 million.

What happened to make 2013 so much better than the year before?

Amazon won a $600 million cloud computer contract from the CIA. That was the difference – more than the difference.

Later that year, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million.

To put that another way, Bezos used less than half the money he got from the CIA to buy the Washington Post.

Do you think that was a sweetheart deal?

I do. And like others, I believe it’s something Americans should know about.

You'd think that someone who has publicly begged for money to keep his website alive, like Farah has, would understand that businesses on the Internet run a little differently than regular businesses.The reason why Amazon didn't show a profit for many years is that profits were reinvested in the company in order to grow it further. Has Farah never heard of reinvesting profits? Has he never done that at WND?

Despite Farah's envious fantasy, Bezos does not make an "astronomical salary" -- it's only $81,480 (as we pointed out the last time someone didn't understand how Bezos gets paid). Even though Bezos received an additional $1.6 million in compensation last year, he still isn't the highest-paid employee at Amazon; that would be the guy who runs Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud services division and the one that the CIA contracted with for cloud computing in 2013. AWS is a $10 billion business, and the CIA is just one of more than 1 million clients who use its services.

Bezos' wealth is driven by the stock price of Amazon, given the fact that he's Amazon's largest shareholder. Which means Bezos didn't need that CIA contract with AWS to buy the Washington Post -- he just had to cash in a little stock.

Also, the CIA-AWS deal appears to be a beneficial one in modernizing the CIA and actually helping it run a little more like a business by outsourcing services, which right-wingers like Farah claim to want government to be like. The Atlantic reported on the deal at the time:

If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency. What’s more, they’ll only pay for what they use.

[...]

“What we were really looking at was time to mission and innovation,” the former intelligence official said. “The goal was, ‘Can we act like a large enterprise in the corporate world and buy the thing that we don’t have, can we catch up to the commercial cycle? Anybody can build a data center, but could we purchase something more?

 “We decided we needed to buy innovation,” the former intelligence official said.

Nevertheless, Farah is demanding "an investigation into the collusion between John Brennan, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, the Washington Post and the CIA."

Farah's conspiracy theory that the CIA gave Bezos the money to buy the Post is another ridiculous, paranoid WND fantasy. One might even call it fake news.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Plots Revenge
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center couldn't save Bill O'Reilly's job, but it's trying to save Sean Hannity's by hiding the truth, and it's lashing out at anyone who dares to criticize President Trump. Read more >>

Dubious WND Doc Opines on Climate Change
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In a June 5 WorldNetDaily column, Jane Orient goes far afield from her stated profession of medicine (though she's not exactly in the mainstream there, either) to opine on President Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. As befits the leader of a group of fringe-right doctors, she approves.

She calls the accord an "economic suicide pact" and claims without evience that "The average U.S. family would have to pay $30,000 more for electricity over the next decade." (That apparently comes from the right-wing Heritage Foundation.)

Orient then finally stumbles upon a health-related angle: "What about heat waves and people perishing from heat-related illnesses? The physicians tout the health benefits of walking and bike-riding, but say nothing about turning off the air conditioning in Miami." She names nobody who has actually demanded that the air conditioning in Miami be turned off.

Orient also complains that supporters of the Paris accords are "leaving out some 31,000 scientists who disagree." That's a reference to a petition promoted by climate denier Art Robinson; as we've pointed out, that number is a tiny fraction of the millions of scientists in America, and the vast majority of those signatories have no confirmed or demonstrated expertise in climatology.

That's the kind of that that happens when opine on things you don't know that much about.

MRC's Double Standard on Typos
Topic: Media Research Center

After President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, the Media Research Center fired off indignant post after indignant post about all the coverage it got:

• Nets Spend 10 Mins on Trump Typo Tweet
• MSNBC’s Katy Tur Lost Sleep Over Trump’s Twitter Typo, Fears Nuclear War
• CNN Journalists Pretend to be Psychiatrists Overanalyzing Trump Typo
• Great Job, Humanity! ‘Covfefe’ Twitter Mentions Over 50 Times Larger Than Griffin

The author of that last post, Curtis Houck, complained: "If people aren’t going to have a serious debate about actual issues, perhaps not obsessing over dumb things like the President’s typo would give the media and their fans more credibility."

Houck seems to have forgotten that he too obsessed of someone's dumb typo. In fact, he devoted an entire April 21 post to it:

Folks, you can’t make this up. Typo of the year? I think so!

In a Tuesday story about a Jewish Republican Congressman responding to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s comments about Adolf Hitler and chemical weapons, The Hill’s Cristina Marcos referred to Spicer as Hitler (yes, you read that right).

Houck did eventually admit that we all make mistakes and the article was corrected 20 minutes after it first was posted.

And a June 8 post by Mike Ciandella needlessly highlighted another quickly corrected typo:

While live tweeting the Senate hearing for former FBI Director James Comey, NBC News Chief Global Correspodent accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of telling Comey to call the Russia investigation a “matter” instead of an “investigation.” Except, Comey had been talking about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch telling him to call the Hillary Clinton email investigation a “matter.”

This tweet has since been deleted, but not before it could be screen captured for posterity.

If Trump's "covfefe" tweet wasn't news to the MRC, tweets from reporters that are quickly corrected shouldn't be either. But nobody has ever claimed the MRC's standards are equally applied to both conservatives and non-conservatives.

WND Clinging to Conspiracy Theories Over Arch Reconstruction
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It appears WorldNetDaily is fully committed to its fake news about the reconstruction of the Arch of Palmyra.

Two days after we published our summary of WND's conspiracy theories about the arch, WND appeared to feel the need to rebut it with a June 3 article headlined "Historic artifact replica, or demonic harbinger?" The anonymous WND writer continues:

It’s back!

The replica of the arch of the Temple of Baal has been on a world tour the past few years, having been put on display in London, New York and then Dubai for a global summit. And it was recently rebuilt for yet another global summit, this time the G7 meeting of the leading industrialized nations held in Florence, Italy.

The arch, a reconstruction of an ancient Roman building destroyed by ISIS in Syria, has been promoted by its creators at the Institute of Digital Technology as a symbol of defiance against terrorism and a tribute to world heritage.

But why is a reconstruction of a gateway to a temple of a pagan god whose rites were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution being so persistently publicized at globally important gatherings?

One rabbi, a member of the nascent Sanhedrin attempting to recreate the ancient Jewish legal body, sees dire implications in the repeated use of the arch. Rabbi Daniel Assur told Breaking Israel News the arch is a harbinger of the “New World Order.” He declared the arch’s repeated appearances at prominent locations indicate “a pattern moving toward a specific goal – Messiah.”

As usual, WND can't be bothered to actually talk to the Institute of Digital Technology for their thoughts about the arch. It once again goes to its coterie of end-times pastors, like birther Carl Gallups:

Gallups also said it is profoundly interesting – and worrying – that the arch always seems to be in a location of deep significance to the elite-driven movement to create a global government.

“It is a heavily documented fact that when the Palmyra arch was reconstructed, the places chosen for the display of the arch, complete with ceremonious activities of dedication and honor, were indisputably centers of globalistic power,” Gallups observed.

“Each of these locations had direct connections to the United Nations, the World Government Summit, the G7 Conference and the major economic engines of the world. And this tour started in London, perhaps the world’s most important financial capital, during the pagan festival of Beltane – during a time specifically dedicated to Baal worship. From there, it went to New York City and then to global governance meetings.

“How could anyone, with any spiritual discernment at all, miss the demonic message being audaciously broadcast to the world?” Gallups asked.

He warned that the global leaders are meddling with dark forces.

“In the spiritual realm, it is as if Satan is ‘marking’ his territory,” the pastor said. “And the leaders of the world are gladly doing his bidding – even summonsing his presence and ‘blessings.’ We are living in extremely prophetic times. The demonic realm is engaged in an unprecedented outpouring, just as the Bible said would happen. We are living in the most prophetic times since the first coming of Jesus Christ.”

Or, you know, sometimes an historical arch is just an historical arch. None of WND's interviewees acknowledge that  the temple to which the arch was an entryway also served as a Christian church and a mosque. Nor do they offer any commentary on ISIS' destruction of the arch and other historical artifacts in the Middle East.

It seems WND has found even more people who have found some behavior by ISIS they can totally get behind.