WND Keeps Flogging Dead Uranium One Horse Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is still clinging to the discredited Uranium One scandal. Bob Unruh writes in a Feb. 26 WND article:
Members of several congressional committees have been told by an FBI informant that the Russians “bragged” that the Clintons’ influence in the Obama administration would ensure approval of the Uranium One deal, according to the informant’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing.
Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the sale of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves in 2010 to a Russian state-owned company at a time when interested parties were donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton also was paid $500,000 by a bank tied to the Kremlin for a speech.
The FBI informant, William Campbell, said in his statement to Congress, which was obtained by the Hill, that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in position to influence Hillary Clinton.
Dick Morris, a longtime Bill Clinton adviser, writes in a commentary Monday that the Russians sought the Uranium One deal “very aggressively.”
He says Campbell told Congress that in the years before the deal came up before the Committee of Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), of which Hillary Clinton was a member, Russia deployed 10 spies in the United States with a single mission: to get close to Hillary Clinton to get her to approve the Uranium One deal.
CFIUS — a multi-agency board that includes the State Department, the Defense Department and the Justice Department — has the power to block deals that threaten national security.
We've already noted that according to Democratic congressmen who are part of the investigation, the Justice Department considers Campbell to be unreliable. But it appears Campbell can't back up anything regarding purported Russian influnece on Clinton for the Uranium One deal:
In February, staff from three panels — the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Intelligence Committee — interviewed William Douglas Campbell, a confidential informant to the FBI during its investigation and prosecution of former Russian official Vadim Mikerin.
[...]
During the interview, Democratic staff say, Campbell was unable to point to anything to support his claims that the review process had been improperly influenced “other than the fact that the [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)] allowed the deal to go through.”
“When asked whether he had any evidence that Russian influence on the Clintons affected CFIUS’s review of the Uranium One deal, Mr. Campbell stated that ‘that was outside my pay grade’ and that the topic was ‘not my bailiwick,’ ” according to Democrats.
He told investigators that he “looked on Google to see what CFIUS was about” after the deal was approved in 2010.
Asked if he had any evidence to support DeSantis’s claim that the $500,000 speaking fee paid to Clinton was part of a “quid pro quo,” Campbell said he did not recall any individual ever mentioning the fee.
During his testimony, Campbell also said he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to influence the Clintons and U.S. policy and that they expected the firm to provide in-kind support for the Clintons’ Global Initiative.
He said he believed that APCO sought “meetings at Commerce” and other “federal agencies” — but according to Democrats claimed not to know if any of those alleged efforts “ever came to fruition.”
Campbell “conceded that he was unaware of anything APCO had done or whether any specific meetings had occurred, and he did not explain the basis for his believe that APCO sought those meetings,” Democrats wrote.
Of c ourse, don't expect WND to stop flogging this dead horse anytime soon.
CNS' Jones: White House Chaos Is Just a 'Liberal Media' Narrative Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones -- she of the pro-Trump stenography -- has a way to spin away the chaos surrounding the Trump White House: It's nothing but a liberal media narrative.
Yes, she really does claim that in a March 6 article:
Reacting to liberal media claims of "chaos" in the Trump White House, President Trump fired off a tweet Tuesday morning:
"The new Fake News narrative is that there is CHAOS in the White House. Wrong! People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!" he wrote.
The chaos narrative gained traction last week, with the resignation of Trump's communications director and close aide Hope Hicks; Trump's latest criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions; and reports that his son-in-law Jared Kushner has lost his top-secret security clearance; and reports that White House economic adviser Gary Cohn might resign over Trump's decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
The Washington Post titled its "chaos" story as "'Pure Madness': Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages."
On the same day Jones' artifle appeared, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned and Stormy Daniels sued Trump over an affair they allegedly had. Perhaps Jones can enlighten us on how the "liberal media" made both of those things happen.
WND's Klayman Really, Really Wants Be A Special Counsel So He Can Destroy Obama, Clintons Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last October, Larry Klayman wrote a WorldNetDaily column titled "Why I should be named special counsel." In his hate-filled column, he declared that "today we face a much greater threat and crimes by the Clintons and the administration of former President Barack Hussein Obama" and complained that "our current attorney general ... is too cowardly to do his job and prosecute either the Clintons or Obama." He then exhorted his readers to "please go to www.freedomwatchusa.org and sign the petition directed to President Trump and the Justice Department to urge that I be appointed special counsel. I am unafraid and uncompromised, unlike our current attorney general! I will get the job done!"
As of this writing, Klayman's petition claims to have more than 17,800 signatures. It's basically an email-harvesting campaign for his mailing list; there's no apparent verification mechanism, and it's unclear whether duplicate signatures are being counted.
Further, as someone who has expressed a personal dislike of the Clintons for two decades and Obama for the past decade -- to the point that Obama can file multiple libel claims against him should he choose to do so -- Klayman is highly compromised and his judgment cannot be trusted. Plus, he's a terrible lawyer anyway, so no sane politican would dare give him the job.
Still, Klayman continues to embarrass himself by demanding that he be given the chance to railroad politicians he personally despises. So he wrote a Feb. 25 WND column -- also headlined "Why I should be named special counsel" -- and made his case again:
The republic and our freedom hangs in the balance as long as the Clinton and Obama deep state – represented and aided by the corrupt Robert Mueller – is able to continue to wage a jihad on President Trump and his administration, all with the aim to bring it down and destroy it so that a socialist, communist, radical leftist, feminist and atheist country will take the place of the one conceived of at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
The only man who has the courage, fearlessness and determination to root out these vermin in our rat-infested “capital of corruption,” is me, I am sorry but also proud to say.
What good are documents, when nothing ever comes of it? I can and will get documents that will be used as evidence through grand-jury subpoenas once I am named special counsel.
For these reasons, I must be appointed special counsel. In this way, I will, in effect, be your attorney general and have the full powers of law enforcement to investigate, indict and seek convictions of Mueller, Comey, the Clintons, Obama and persons like Brennan and Clapper.
Then I can finally put these criminals behind bars, and by so doing, save the presidency of Donald Trump.
Of course, if you're delcaring you want to be special counsel solely to protect Trump, you are totally compromised. But Klayman's apparently such a bad lawyer he doesn't understand that he's disqualifying himself.
Add a reference to the "self-hating Nazi collaborator Jew George Soros," and Klayman once again demonstrates why he should never be taken seriously.
MRC's Bozell Reduced To Defending Trump's Empathy Notes Topic: Media Research Center
Is there anything Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell won't defend about President Trump? Bozell ran to Fox News to defend Trump's use of notes to remind him to show a little empathy during a meeting with victims of school shootings:
“Who doesn’t use notecards?” MRC President Brent Bozell said in an interview with Fox News’s Trish Regan, who was filling in on Your World With Neil Cavuto. “We all have used notecards. Every president has used a notecard. Barack Obama spent eight years using teleprompters.”
“They don’t care what Donald J Trump, what President Trump thinks about anything,” Bozell noted, a little earlier in the segment. “They don’t care what he does with anything. They care about only attacking Donald J Trump. It’s an obsession that the press corps has with him. You understand now why he has – why 91 percent of the coverage against Donald Trump is negative. Because they’re looking for anything, anything at all to try to attack him on.”
Bozell was referencing an MRC study that demonstrated that 91 percent of evening news coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC regarding President Trump has been negative – a trend that has continued since he first announced his candidacy.
But the MRC repeatedlymocked Obama's teleprompter use, though we don't recall Obama ever having needing notes to remind him to show empathy.
Oh, and Bozell's talking point about "91 percent of the coverage against Donald Trump is negative"? Totally bogus.
It's pretty sad to see a man who just two years ago was denouncing Trump as not being a real conservative reduced to this sad little effort at defense.
James Hirsen was in full outrage mode in his March 5 Newsmax column:
Left-wing hatred, in of all places Nashville, Tennessee has just politicized a country music institution. Rather than learn a lesson from the NFL and Hollywood, a small but highly vocal group of people in Music City has managed to pressure the Country Music Association (CMA) into having former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee withdraw as a board member from the group’s educational arm — the CMA Foundation. Last week the CMA announced two new members of the board of this charitable foundation, Huckabee and singer Chris Young.
Following the announcement, the CMA was the recipient of a hate-filled backlash over its choice of Huckabee because of the former governor’s political and religious views and solid support of President Donald Trump, as well as the fact that he is the proud father of President Trump’s current press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Despite the fact that Huckabee’s appointment to the board was completely separate and apart from his political activity and cultural views, some in the industry for which Nashville is best known targeted their personal animus directly at the former governor.
The most vicious public statement came from country music manager Jason Owen, who happens to own Sandbox, a management company representing Faith Hill, Little Big Town, and Kacey Musgraves. Owen co-owns, along with songwriter-producer Shane McAnally, the record label Monument Records. McAnally has written and produced songs for Musgraves, Kelly Clarkson, Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan, The Band Perry, Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, and Miranda Lambert.
Owen labeled Huckabee’s appointment "grossly offensive" and "a shameful choice" by the CMA and its leaders. The music industry manager withdrew the support of Sandbox and Monument, declaring that the artists he handles would not work on behalf of the CMA Foundation.
[...]
Being the consummate professional and gentleman that he is, Huckabee resigned a mere 24 hours after the announcement of his appointment in order to save the organization from having to deal with any potential turmoil.
Huckabee’s departure occurred a few hours after Owen published his screed on an industry website.
Weirdly, Hirsen never explains exactly what views of Huckabee's are being criticized, preferring instead to dismiss any criticism of Huckabee as "left-wing hatred." As an actual news outlet explains, Owen, who is openly gay, was specifically targeting Huckabee's anti-gay views. In the letter that Hirsen denounced as a "screed," Owen wrote that "This man has made it clear that my family is not welcome in his America. ... Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country."
Hirsen spends the rest of his column sucking up to Huckabee:
Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, has impeccable credentials as a public servant, and his involvement in charitable endeavors is highly commendable. As a former presidential candidate, Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and finished in delegate count just behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. He additionally has to his credit the accomplishment of having hosted a successful television talk show on the Fox News Channel and currently hosts a television show on TBN.
[...]
The small but vociferous group that derailed Huckabee’s appointment to the board of the CMA Foundation has ended up depriving the organization of having a highly qualified member serve with distinction. Since music education is so central to the CMA Foundation mission, losing an individual of Huckabee’s caliber, someone who would have made germane and invaluable contributions to the CMA board’s primary objectives, is an outrage.
Through their actions and rhetoric, certain hate-filled individuals have provided the ugliest of illustrations of exactly what discrimination looks like.
[...]
The truth of the matter is Huckabee’s religious, political, and cultural views are shared by an enormous segment of the American population, many of whom were, up until now, country music consumers.
If only Hirsen had the courage to explain to his readers exactly what views of Huckabee's were offensive instead of penning a mash note to Huckabee.
CNS Whitewashes Far-Right Ties of French Speaker At CPAC Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a new favorite foreign politican: far-right politician Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the similarly far-right granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front and niece of the current National Front leader, Marine Le Pen.
But CNS had to hide Le Pen's extremism in order to favorably write about her appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman did the honors, under the overenthusiastic headline "France's Marion Le Pen at CPAC: 'Just Like You, We Want Our Country Back!' America First and France First!":
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 23, conservative Catholic French politician Marion Marechal-Le Pen said the election of President Donald Trump proves that when "the people are given the opportunity to take their country back, they will seize it," and that she supports a policy of America First for the American people, Britian First for the British people, and France First for the French people.
Marion Le Pen, 28, also defended the family, the nation, natural law, and a common morality. "What do we want?" she asked. "Just like you, we want our country back."
[...]
Marion Le Pen is the niece of Marine Le Pen, who ran for the French presidency on the conservative National Front ticket in 2016-17. Marion Le Pen is also the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front, but who was removed from the party in 2015 by Marine Le Pen who denounced his extreme views. Marion Le Pen is in agreement with her aunt on most issues and she is seen as more traditionally Catholic and pro-family.
Marion Le Pen is a National Front party member and she served in the National Assembly from 2012 to 2017.
See what Chapman did there? He called Marion Le Pen "conservative," not far right, and portrayed Jean-Marie's expulsion from the National Front as evidence the party stopped being "extreme."
But Chapman was too busy gushing over Le Pen's speech to mention the fact that his fellowconservatives were denouncing CPAC for inviting her because of her affiliation with extreme politics.
Later the same day on which Chapman's fawning article appeared, CNS published another article by correspondent Faycal Benhassain in which he too tried to portray Marion Le Pen as merely conservative -- declaring that "In her speech at CPAC, she spoke about a resurgent conservative youth on both sides of the Atlantic" -- but he did use the "far-right populist" label on Marine Le Pen. Ultimately, though, Benhassain does move Marion further to the right:
Some experts argue that Maréchal-Le Pen’s tone and committed ideas could well appeal to the right wing electorate, even as Le Pen struggles to recover from her election defeat.
Alexandre Devecchio, a reporter with conservative newspaperLe Figaro, says he believes Maréchal-Le Pen hopes to see an implosion of the FN, to make way for a large new right-wing party.
Finally, CNS did fully move toward accurate labeling of Le Pen in a March 2 article by Patrick Goodenough stating that "French far-right leader Marine le Pen said Thursday that the bringing of criminal charges for tweeting graphic images of ISIS violence was clearly an attempt to silence her." Still, Goodenough endeavored to portray Le Pen's graphic tweets as reasonable.
Don't want to insult CNS' new darling too much, after all.
WND Columnist Spread Blame For Parkland Massacre (And Not To The Guns) Topic: WorldNetDaily
While we're waiting for WorldNetDaily (and Chuck Norris) to tell their readers the truth that CNN never tried to force a Parkland school massacre survivor to ask a scripted question at a televised forum (spoiler: we'll be waiting a long time for that), let's take a look at who WND is blaming for the massacre. Spoiler: it's not the gun, and they get the facts wrong on who they do blame.
Jane Chastain concedes that maybe President Trump shouldn't have repealed thath Obamap-era law banning the mentally ill from buying weapons -- but she then heaps more blame on the American Civil Liberties Union for somehow making sure the shooter was never institutionalized in the first place:
Trump’s critics rightfully point out that he signed a law that repealed an Obama regulation that would have added an additional 75,000 people who suffer from mental illness to the national background data check. No doubt Trump would like to take that back.
The rule that was repealed specifically required that the Social Security Administration add people who have been deemed incapable of managing their financial affairs to that list. That would include many who receive SSI disability payments due to mental illness. This would not have prevented Nikolas Cruz from obtaining all his guns, but it would have been a small step in the right direction.
The measure was part of a larger group of Obama rules that were reasonably repealed by Congress shortly after Trump took office. Yes, the repeal of the gun measure was supported by the NRA, but another organization that has been largely left out of this discussion, the ACLU, was also to blame.
[...]
Let us not forget that in the ’70s and ’80s the ACLU was at the forefront of patients’ rights legislation and court cases that emptied our mental institutions. These cases raised the bar significantly for anyone to be committed. The courts ultimately ruled that a finding of mental illness alone was not enough to justify a state’s locking a person up against his will and keeping him indefinitely in simple custodial confinement if such persons are dangerous to no one and can live safely in freedom.
What does living safely in freedom mean? Today, for the most part, that means living on the streets. Why? Because most of the mentally ill don’t think they are mentally ill. Once out, they refuse their meds and don’t go for treatment. When that happens many do become dangerous, and their heartbroken families are simply afraid to keep them or take them in. Research suggests that individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are responsible for approximately 10 percent of all homicides in the United States. For mass killings, the percentage is approximately 33 percent.
[...]
It’s an urban legend that we have insane people living on the streets because Ronald Reagan closed the mental hospitals. Most mental hospitals were closed simply because they no longer had any patients. Sadly, liberal organizations like the ACLU that worked to get all these mental patients released largely abandoned society’s most vulnerable.
But Reagan did, in fact, play a role in deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill into group homes without funding or oversight to make sure they were being properly taken care of, both as California governor and as president.
Brent Smith, meanwhile, blamed Obama (as any given WND writer is wont to do for whatever):
This is what has been happening anywhere former President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder had instituted their bribery “Promise Plan.”
The Promise Program was “invented” for reasons of – what else? – diversity. Too many young blacks were being incarcerated. And schools were losing out on federal dollars because of the dropout/incarceration rate. The Promise Program incentivized police departments not to arrest young black men thus making the schools’ retention numbers look better. Unfortunately, they couldn’t be that obvious as to only let the young black ne’er-do-wells skate, so they expanded the “look the other way” service to include most school-age hoodlums.
And Shazam – the arrest/incarceration numbers began to plummet.
But this is precisely why background checks don’t and can’t work – because of the Promise Program. Like the calculator, the database can’t function if criminal data aren’t put into the system. The system, like the calculator, is only as good as the people running it.
It is precisely why Nickolas Cruz passed one after another background check. Like many other Broward County hoodlums, his name was left off the background check database.
Smith characterization of the Promise program as a "look the other way" service is false; it's a diversionary program designed to address root issues with youths accused of misdemeanor school-related offense instead of immediately treating them as criminals.
In fact, the Promise program was started in Florida by a Republican governor, Charlie Crist and had conservative support on the federal level, and the program -- even if Cruz had been involved in it -- doesn't prevent the arrest of a student making felony-level threats.
UPDATE: WND columnist James Zumwalt also falsely blames the Promise program:
But the story all the race-baiters fail to report is the role the NAACP actually played in the high death count Cruz tallied. The reason the four police officers held back, failing immediately to neutralize an active shooter in the school, was due to law enforcement’s adoption of the NAACP’s ill-advised, social-justice “PROMISE” program – a product of then-President Barack Obama’s politically motivated, race-based safer school policy. The policy sought to statistically demonstrate safer schools existed simply by police ignoring crimes committed by students, thus resulting in reports of reduced arrests. One would have thought an active-shooter scenario would have overridden such a policy. It did not; ironically, white students died due to an NAACP policy encouraging police to ignore criminal acts.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Favorite (Dishonest) Catholic Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center -- and in particular its "news" division, CNSNews.com -- gives Bill Donohue of the right-wing Catholic League a free pass to rant, rave and lie. Read more >>
WND Finds Another Irrelvant Movie Image To Mock Transgenders Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily loves to dishonestly reduce the issue of transgender rights iin schools to boys showering with girls, and then illustrating it with insulting and irrelevant images, i.e., the shower scene from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
Well, WND's anti-LGBT bias as struck again and it upped the insulting-image factor.
A Feb. 17 WND article by Bob Unruh began by claiming in highly biased language that "An LGBT activist group claims that when Congress adopted Title IX in 1972, banning sex discrimination in schools, lawmakers had in mind that boys who believe they are girls should be allowed to use girls restrooms and showers." The article is illustrated with an image of ... the shower scene from "Psycho":
This is not the kind of thing that inspires confidence in the credibility of a "news" organization begging readers to rescue it from financial oblivion.
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet reporting false information on the Christopher Steele dossier on Donald Trump.
In one of his rewritten Judical Watch press releases on Feb. 6, CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman wrote:
The intelligence memo released last Friday showed that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had paid a law firm that, in turn, paid a political research group, Fusion GPS, which then paid ex-British spy Christopher Steele who, in turn, paid Russians to provide political "dirt" on Donald Trump -- the false and salacious Trump dossier.
That fake document was then used by the FBI and Justice Department -- James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Sallie Yates, among others -- to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Like WND, Chapman offered no evidence to back up his claim that the Steele dossier is "false" or "fake." (We'll concede "salacious.") Nor does Chapman quote anyone at Judicial Watch making such a claim.
Contrary to Chapman's false assertion, several parts of the Steele dossier have, in fact, been verified. Even the Republican House Intelligence Committee memo concedes that the dossier is at least "minially corroborated."
Nevertheless, Chapman asserted in a Feb. 14 article -- again, another Judicial Watch stenography effort -- that the dossier is "fabricated." He once again failed to offer any evidence of fabrication.
Still, he asserted that "The document has zero credibility and even then-FBI Driector James Comey testified before the Senate in 2017 that the dossier was 'salacious and unverified.'" In fact, Comey stated only that portions of the dossier were "salacious and unverified," not the entire dossier. He did not state that any of it was false or had "zero credibility."
Indeed, between this and his bogus story about Melania Trump ordering that the White House be exorcised before she moved in, the person with zero credibility here is Chapman.
WND Whitewashes Right-Wing Militia Extremism of Oath Keepers Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Feb. 26 WorldNetDaily article states:
Enough is enough, says an armed U.S. Army veteran in Indiana who has decided to take student and teacher protection into his own hands after the horrifying Florida school shooting and threats of school violence rocked his own town.
Mark Cowan says he is keeping watch outside North Side High School in Fort Wayne with his AR-15 and a handgun – at least until added security is in place. Cown told WANE-TV 15 that he’s standing guard to protect students and defend them against anyone who might threaten their safety while they’re in school. He has been in contact with local police and the school resource officer.
“I [decided] to get my butt off the couch and come out here and keep an eye on these kids and teachers. They deserve it,” Cowan told the news station. “They all deserve a right to go home every night without fear of what’s going to happen during the day.”
In addition to being an Army veteran, Cowan is a member of Oath Keepers, an organization of former police officers, first responders and veterans.
Wait, what? Oath Keepers is "an organization of former police officers, first responders and veterans"? Not that we recall.
And not that the Southern Poverty Law Center recalls either:
The Oath Keepers, which claims tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, is one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today. While it claims only to be defending the Constitution, the entire organization is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans.
[...]
The Oath Keepers was formed in 2009 by Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooper Stewart Rhodes in the direct aftermath of the election of the nation’s first black president. Today, it is one of the largest radical antigovernment organizations in the United States. By 2016, the group was claiming an improbable 30,000 members who were said to be mostly current and former military, law enforcement and emergency first responders.
The core idea of the Oath Keepers is that its members vow to forever support the oaths they took on joining law enforcement or the military to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As a practical matter, what that means to the group is suggested most plainly by its list of the 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey” — a compendium of much-feared but entirely imaginary threats from the government, including forcing Americans into detention camps, imposing martial law, and disarming all civilians. Those supposed threats are all key to the central conspiracy theory of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement of which the Oath Keepers is a part. Basically, Patriots believe that the government will at any moment impose martial law, probably with the aid of foreign or United Nations troops; that all guns belonging to normal citizens will then be seized; that resisters will be thrown into concentration camps; and that, in the end, America will be forced into a one-world socialist government, “The New World Order.”
WND has previously whitewashed the Oath Keepers as "a group of veterans who provide security at pro-Trump rallies."
MRC's Latest Fox News-Shaped Blind Spot Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spentalotoftime complaining that media outlets were surprised that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un's sister, who represented the country at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, wasn't an ogre or a terrible person. Nicholas Fondacaro, for instance, whined that "Despite the fact her job entailed censorship and glorifying public executions, numerous outlets had touted her for 'stealing the show,' winning 'diplomatic gold,' being the 'Ivanka Trump of North Korea,' and hyping the extremely creepy North Korean cheerleading group."
But there was one media outlet curiously missing from the MRC's scorn, and we're pretty sure you can figure out what it is.
A Feb. 9 video on the Fox News website carried the headline "Kim Jong Un's sister steals show at Olympic ceremony." Repoter Greg Palkot stated: "Stealing the show today, the sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. She was interacting and very friendly whith South Korean president Moon, especially with a unified Korean team." But that segment never got singled out by the MRC.
In the midst of a Twitter argument with the MRC's Fondacaro and Fox News media reporter Brian Flood, CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy pointed out that both Fox and the MRC omitted the Fox segments fawning over Kim's sister from its attacks on similar coverage elsewhere. In a poor attempt at deflection, Fondacaro wouldn't talk about why the MRC tave Fox News a pass, instead huffing that Darcy was "trying to make it about Fox News," then huffed further, "Quit trying to change the subject." Darcy helpfully added: "I don’t think the MRC is allowed to criticize fox!"
Russia Has Another Comrade at WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Over the past few years, WorldNetDaily has gotten unusuallycozy with Russia and Vladimir Putin. The motherland gained another comrade in Hanne Herland, whose Feb. 22 WND column praises how Christian Russia has become:
The growing tendency to persecute Christians in the West worries many. In an interview after the 2016 meetings between the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis in Cuba, the patriarch stated: “I strongly believe that we should work together in order to save our society from de-Christianization – because, facing increasing atheistic pressure, which has become quite aggressive in some countries, Christians are being squeezed out of public life. In a sense, we may say that Christians are uncomfortable in many developed countries today. Christians are under pressure. All this indicates that we are dealing with a dangerous, critical situation, with regard to Christian reality and Christian presence.”
Many would be amazed, reading these words. It is indeed, to a Westerner, surprising to see that a country such as Russia, which before used to be an atheist state, now is leading the fight for the Christian faith internationally. It illustrates quite well that some of the information given to the public through the mainstream media is not exactly balanced. We hardly ever hear about Russia’s defense of Christianity. In fact, it is hard to find any positive comments about this large nation at all.
[...]
The speech of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, held at the 28th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, 2015, stands out as a relevant illustration. Lavrov is among the non-Western leaders who voices, on a regular basis, concern about the aggressive secularism in the West and the persecution of Christians, as morality and traditional national, cultural and religious identity is eroding in Europe. At the Council, he noted: “Christianity is the world’s largest religion in terms of both the number of its supporters and its worldwide presence. After all, every country has at least one Christian community. … I also have to mention the problems experienced by Christians in a number of Western European states, where for some reason it has become politically incorrect to identify oneself as a Christian, and where people are even starting to become uncomfortable with Christian values that form the foundation of the European civilization.”
History may explain part of the reason for this new Russian approach. After the fall of the Soviet Union, most Russians were weary of the anti-traditionalist, atheist, Communist society they felt had limited them for so long. Many welcomed the new freedoms of religion, and today around 70 percent of the Russian people are Christians. This implies massive movements within society to return to the old, cultural greatness of the Russian state.
How strange it is to see a Russian speak like this, while our own progressive political leaders steadily make the point of omitting references to our religious heritage when they speak. The world is truly changing when one has to look to Russia to find support for Christianity in the West.
Herland doesn't mention that Putin considers the Russian Orthodox Church to be an unofficial arm of the government and part of his propaganda machine -- a merging of church and state not permitted in the U.S.
As a result, there is no real religious freedom in Putin's Russia. Merely protesting the construction of a Russian Orthodox church can get you arrested. In addition, the church is virulently anti-gay and helped to relax laws against domestic violence.
That's not a brand of Christianity Herland ought to feel comfortable defending -- especially if it comes from a country that is trying to meddle in U.S. politics.
Editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is CNSNews.com's go-to guy on federal spending, particularly of the wasteful variety. A couple weeks ago, for instance, Jeffrey penned an entire article about how "The federal government is funding a clown school located in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district that has classes and workshops on 'Precision Idiocy' and how to act like a 'Buffoon,'" as well as another article about food stamp fraud.
Reports have surfaced that Carson attempted to spend $31,000 on a dining set for his office suite, while another HUD oficial reportedly said that "$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair." A HUD employee who complained about the expenses was reportedly demoted and reassigned to a new job.
That's the kind of wasteful spending that should be up Jeffrey's alley. But neither he nor anyone else at CNS has reported a word about this to their readers.
Funny how Jeffrey's only interested in wasteful spending when it involves people or causes he doesn't like. But that's a pattern for the obsequiously pro-Trump CNS under Jeffrey; as we've already documented, CNS was days behind the rest of the media in reporting on HHS Secretary Tom Price's extravagent spending on private charter flights, waiting until literally an hour before he resigned over it to do its very first article.
WND (And Chuck Norris) Still Won't Correct That False 'Scripted Question' Story Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Media Research Center isn't the only ConWeb outlet to hide the truth about a story tied to the Florida school shooting from its readers.
An Anonymously written Feb. 22 WND article recounted how "A teen survivor of the tragic Parkland, Florida, school shooting claims he turned down an invitation to participate in a CNN town hall Wednesday evening because the network gave him a list of 'scripted questions' to ask." WND did note CNN's denial of Haab's claim, then added that "It wouldn’t be the first time CNN has been accused of featuring political plants at its town hall forums."
Progressives are on the warpath to restrict free speech and guns, and they even tried it with Colton Haab. Thank God, Colton was not afraid to stand up to suppressors of free speech. Rather than suppress Colton’s freedoms and solutions, CNN should have elevated and highlighted them.
[...]
Thank God there are still young men like Colton Haab who realize suppression in any form is just a return to life under the British Crown. And if we’re going to protect the children across this land, we’re going to have to call up the reserves and do it ourselves instead of waiting on Washington.
WND also stuck a reference to it into another Feb. 23 article, which noted that Haab "claims CNN wanted to censor his views at a town hall."
Just one problem: Haab's story isn't true.
As we documented when the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro peddled the story, CNN has since released the full email exchange between it and Haab's family, and it revealed that the emails released by Haab's family to the media were altered to make it look like CNN look bad. Haab's father has now conceded that he altered the CNN emails.
But like Fondacaro, WND has refused to report that CNN has been vindicated, apparently out of hatred of CNN. Shouldn't a business that purports to be a "real news" operation, as WND's Joseph Farah claims it is, want to do something about the fact that the story it published three articles about has been discredited? That's not helping to change WND's well-earned reputation for publishing fake news.
Likewise, we could also find no evidence that Norris has retreacted his defense of Haab now that his story has been discredited. C'mon, Chuck, what's the holdup?