The employment numbers for May were good, so needless to say, CNSNews.com wasted no time in pegging the pro-Trump rah-rah-meter.
Susan Jones cheered that "The number of employed Americans, 155,474,000, has broken another record -- for the ninth time since President Trump took office, in fact. At the same time, the number of unemployed Americans dropped to 6,065,000, a low not seen since January 2001." Jones did go on to concede that the labor force participation rate has not changed much, which she attributed to "the increasing number of Baby Boom retirees" -- a fact that was largely missing when Jones reported on the labor force participation rate under Obama.
CNS then took a partisan hit at Nancy Pelosi in an anonymously written article, framing her as being critical of "record employment" when she was pointing out that poorer Americans face higher health care costs because of Republicans' dismantling of the Affordable Care Act and tax cuts that favored the rich.
WND Columnist Too Busy Spewing Hate To Get His Facts Straight Topic: WorldNetDaily
The last time we saw John Griffing at WorldNetDaily, it was as a highly biased reporter. Now, Griffing is writing as a columnist, and he's even more biased and shaky with the facts.
Griffing's May 22 WND column is based on the faulty premise that anyone who criticizes vicious right-wing attacks on Muslims is somehow anti-Semitic -- in particular, Facebook trying to put a lid on anti-Muslim extremism. At one point, Griffing bizarrely calls Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a "Jewish anti-Semite criminal mastermind" and "Darth Vader to George Soros’ Emperor Palpatine" because "The George Soros-funded Poynter Institute was hired by Facebook last year to censor 'fake news.'" Actually, Poynter itself received no Soros-linked funding; a separate Poynter division, the International Fact-Checking Network, received money from Soros' Open Society Foundation.
And here's where Griffing's relationship with the truth breaks down considerably. He adds that "there’s another important fact about Soros that indisputably colors his worldview: He’s a Nazi, and not metaphorically. He’s an actual historical Nazi. Soros helped confiscate the property of Jews during World War II."
Wrong. Soros was a 14-year-old Jew in trying to hide his identity in Nazi-occupied Hungary by posing as the godson of his Christian protector, who had been tasked with inventorying property already confiscated from a Jew who had fled the country.
Griffing also huffed that "1,000 Muslim refugees raped hundreds of women on NYE in Cologne," Germany. In fact, desite that number being accepted as gospel by anti-Muslim activists like Griffing, the truth is that no more than "several dozen men" were involved.
Griffing also defended at length anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller with disclosing he has published several articles at Geller's website.
Griffing is apparently promoting himself these days as a media consultant; his LinkedIn page declares: "When objectivity and intellectual freedom are increasingly under attack & harder to find in traditional media outlets, it is essential that those who are carrying the torch of freedom are equipped for the task. I equip them." It's clear from his column, though, that Griffing wouldn't know objectivity and fact-checking if they bit him.
MRC's Graham Goes On Heathering Rant Against George Will Topic: Media Research Center
A column sharply critical of Vice President Mike Pence -- for overall toadyism and, in particular, sucking up to the likes of Joe Arpaio -- was all that it took for the Media Research Center's Tim Graham to go on a Heathering rant against Washington Post columnist George Will.
At no point in his May 10 post does Graham dispute anything Will wrote about Graham -- he's upset it was written at all, and he's even moremad that CNN's Jake Tapper featured it. Let the rant begin:
Tapper put a different quote on screen in the 4 pm hour, including the headline “Trump Is No Longer the Worst Person in Government” and the line “Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure.”
Tapper at least noted that flattering presidents is what vice presidents do. So why didn’t CNN explore whether George Will wrote a column like this about oh, Vice President Biden? Here’s what they would find: “conservative” Will has never written a critical column about Biden over the last ten years. In fact, he’s never written about Biden at all in that period.
This raises a different question, as Tapper protested he wouldn’t read this column if Will wasn’t a “conservative.” Has anti-“lickspittle” George Will ever written a column criticizing his bosses at The Washington Post? Or any of his TV-network paymasters over the years? Good luck finding one.
As far as not criticizing TV paymasters goes, Graham might want to check with his boss, Brent Bozell, who set the pace for that by oozing upon the death of Roger Ailes -- longtime operator of the MRC's preferred media outlet, Fox News -- that "The good Roger did for America is immeasurable" and staying silent about the fact that Ailes lost his job for serial sexual harassment, which we would argue was not good for America.
Newsmax's Kerik Serves Up More Right-Wing Ranting Topic: Newsmax
We'venoted how disgraced ex-New York City police chief Bernard Kerik is trying to reinvent himself as a right-wing-ranting Newsmax columnist (the place that has done more than a little image rehab on him over the years). The ranting hasn't really stopped.
Kerik served up more pro-Trump huffing in an April column, declaring that the search warrants served up dubious Trump attorney Michael Cohen "should scare the hell out of every American in our country," adding that "Like an out of control locomotive, it appears by all reports that these prosecutors are extremely dangerous and acting with impunity, and unfortunately, with their actions against Michael Cohen, they just drove that locomotive smack into the scales of justice — and shattered the Constitution and what it stands for."
In another April column, Kerik attacked former FBI director James Comey, alleging that he was "leaking classified information" and that he should receive "the same treatment as Matt Bissonette, General Michael Flynn, and so many others that have dedicated their lives to the service of our country, only to be targeted by the very government they worked for, for selective and political reasons." Kerik has apparently not considered the possibility that Trump is targeting Comey for selective and political reasons."
Kerik's May 1 column attacks Democrats for allegedly abandoning blacks in favor of undocumented immigrants, going on to tout how "Blacks like [Candace] Owens, Ben Carson, retired Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Trump supporter Joy Villa, a black female singer and song writer, have been taking their message to America’s black communities." In fact, Clarke didn't "retire"; he abruptly resigned amid growing questions about his mismanagement of the county jail.
Then, on May 7, Kerik penned a screed against the purportedly "corrupt" FBI and Department of Justice, painting himself as a victim in the process:
For any American that has ever been the subject or target of a federal criminal investigation, there are three things that become abundantly clear to you — and your family — as you are dragged into a nightmare intended to bankrupt you, as well as destroy you personally, financially, and professionally.
First, that the good guys are not always good guys. Second, you do not have the constitutional rights you believe you have, especially if you don’t have the money to fight for those rights. Third, it’s not always about truth or justice for U.S. prosecutors — it’s about winning at all costs.
[...]
Having run two of the largest law enforcement agencies in the nation, the NYPD, and New York City jail system — including Rikers Island — I was completely oblivious to these tactics and injustices by federal prosecutors. Then I was targeted.
In the last two years however, things have changed, and unless you’re hiding under a rock, the American public has gotten to see firsthand how the FBI and Justice Department selectively violates U.S. law and their own policies with impunity.
Irony: Anti-Gay Columnist Demands That Gays Respect Christians Topic: CNSNews.com
Bill Donohue huffs in a May 17 CNSNews.com column:
Gay rights activists have been on a collision course with traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Mormons for some time.
All of these religious groups, and others, hold to the traditional understanding of marriage: it is the union of a man and a woman. Moreover, they believe that children need a father and a mother to serve as role models. They don't need, nor deserve, two members of the same sex as parents.
LGBT activists disagree. That is their right. But they have no right to portray these religious persons—they include tens of millions of Americans—as bigots for simply practicing their faith.
[...]
Individual rights cannot always be allowed to trump what is in the best interest of society. A free society needs to be undergirded by more than just democratic institutions—it requires social stability and the wellbeing of its citizens. Those attributes are best met when the only two people who can procreate, a man and a woman, are granted the exclusive right to marry, and where the intact family of father, mother, and children is awarded a privileged position.
Donohue might have had a point if he didn't have his ownlengthy history of demonizing the LGBT community.
As we've documented, Donohue dishonestly misinterprets the John Jay report on child abuse by priests in the Catholic Church, insisting on blaming homosexuality when the report actually found no connection between homosexual identity and sexual abuse and the report's authors cautioned against linking identity and behavior.
A couple years back, Donohue -- in a horrified reaction to Pope Francis' call for Christians to apologize to gays -- demanded that gays apologize to him because "I've been assaulted by gays." How about you stop lying about them first, Bill?
Respect has to be earned. Donohue hasn't earned it.
WND Columnist's Hot Take: Martial Law In Cities Run By Democrats Topic: WorldNetDaily
I’ve been hesitant to ask, but I will no longer resist: Is it time for martial law in many (perhaps all) midsize and big cities that have been ruled by Democrats for decade upon decade?
[...]
The Democrats have ruled Chicago for longer than Stalin ruled the USSR, the Castros in Cuba and the Kims in North Korea, and for longer than slavery was legal in the U.S.
These are America’s top 10 most violent cities, according to FBI data. Violent crimes include homicides, gun violence, gangs, pedophilia and robberies. Every city is majority Democrat-controlled. Several of the cities on the FBI’s list also appear on the aforementioned murder and non-fatal shootings lists. Because the FBI’s ranking is per capita, cities such as Chicago and Newark (only Democratic mayors; 90 percent Democratic city council; 23,000 days) are absent.
[...]
We’re witness to the single most treasonous and egregious cover up within the DMIC: the Democrat Media Industrial Complex.
At what point do law-abiding residents in these cities and their suburbs decide the breaking point has been reached? At what point do law-abiding Americans who have been casual observers start noticing? Is it as simple as asking, “why do you live there?”; or, “that’s who you voted for”? It’s not that simple; if it were, the pendulum would have swung to somewhat normalcy. Instead the breadth and frequency of violent crime in these municipalities have worsened over the years, not improved.
[...]
I’m loathe to speak for our national forefathers, but is it not within reason to suggest that they might deem the conditions in Democratic municipal hegemonies as justification for the suspension of habeas corpus? I do not know the answer; the question and the answer are complex.
What I do know, however, is that the cities governed by the same political party for tens of thousands of consecutive days have forced me to wonder aloud whether Congress must seriously consider the unprecedented step of declaring martial law. If declared, there’s no going back, and none of us know what the aftermath would look like.
How many more must die? When will we unequivocally draw the line in the sand that juveniles committing violent crime in Baltimore is unacceptable? When will Americans have enough of career criminality? If martial law isn’t an, or the, answer or solution, then what is? The majority of residents in these cities are law-abiding and have a right not to die simply because of where they live.
Our Revolutionaries lived under King George III for 37 years, and then decided upon the last resort of waging war; 37 years is but a pittance of time to Democrats in their cities. The king would marvel at how effectively the Democrats have maintained their stranglehold; the British monarchs ain’t got nothin’ on them.
MRC's Utterly Lame 'Reality Check' On CNN's Acosta Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes writes in a May 17 post:
In the past 18 months, CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta has suggested President Trump is a “racist,” while whining that Trump’s complaints about press bias were doing “real damage to the First Amendment,” speculating that some day we might see “a dead journalist on the side of the highway, because of the rhetoric coming out of the White House.”
Then on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Acosta said this about his Trump coverage: “Listen, when I covered Barack Obama, I was just as tough on him. People might not believe that.”
As tough on Obama as he’s been on Trump? Let’s investigate.
OK. For most legitimate researchers an "investigation" being presented as a "reality check" (per Noyes' headline) woudl involve some sort of comprehensive analysis of eight years of Acosta's reporting.
But this is the MRC we're talking about here, where shoddy, biased research is the norm. Instead, Noyes cherry-picks a handful of cherry-picked, Acosta-bashing posts out the MRC's own archive and baselessly presents them as fully represenatative of Acosta's work during the Obama years. Of course, the MRC never clipped anything from Acosta that didn't reinforce its anti-media agenda, so any Acosta work that was critical of Obama never made it into the MRC's archive.
In other words, this is the laziest "reality check" ever, designed only to further the MRC's agenda and not to enlighten anyone with facts.
WND's Farah: It's All About The (Tax-Deductible) Benjamins To Get My Book Published Topic: WorldNetDaily
If WorldNetDaily was going through the trouble to set up a thus-far-murky deal with a nonprofit group to raise tax-deductible donations to publish editor Joseph Farah's upcoming book, it was eventually going to lean into that hard. And Farah does just that in his May 25 column unsubtly headlined "Spread gospel, get tax-deduction" (it's a sign of WND's current diminished state that it apparently doesn't have a copy editor who would have caught that unnecessary hyphen).
In it, Farah touts how "from now until its release in September, Gospel for All Nations, a missions organization that takes the message of redemption and restoration to some of the most hostile parts of the world, has offered to accept tax-deductible donations on behalf of the book." Again, Farah can't be bothered to explain how this deal works.
Farah also dramatically hikes the amount of money he's seeking. He had previously claimed that it would cost "over $200,000" to print the book in the numbers he claims he needs to meet alleged demand (he doesn't explain how he knows that), he now claims he needs more than $400,000:
Why do we need financial support for a book that promise to be one of the biggest-selling Christian books of 2018?
Because WND is still reeling from the attacks by the Google-Facebook-YouTube-Amazon online cartel I have been telling you about since January of this year. These attacks are real, specific, content-oriented and existential in nature, having dried up 50 percent of our revenues from 2016 through 2017, with no end in sight.
In fact, without support for this book totaling at least $400,000 between now and August, we will not be able to meet the demand for an estimated 100,000 first-printing copies from bookstores and ministries.
That would be a shame, because this book does more than provide a great resource for pastors, Bible study groups, foreign missionaries and others through a systematic book-by-book exploration of the Gospel in all 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures. It also reveals the absolute cohesive and integrated nature of the Bible. It explains the Gospel that Jesus preached – the Gospel of the Kingdom. It shows the common thread of redemption and restoration through all 66 books of the Bible. And it’s sure to stimulate new interest by believers in the Old Testament.
I’m not asking you to come up with $400,000. I’m asking you to come up with $100, if possible. For that, I have arranged to send you an autographed Advance VIP Reader Copy and an early e-book version of the book. Patrons who give a minimum of $5,000 or more will be eligible to be listed as such in all editions of the breakthrough Bible book in September.
The only comment on Farah's column is from a reader who's calling BS on this whole enterprise: "Why would you sell advance reader copies that are cheap unproofed versions of the book. Better to give signed finished copies when they come out to the donors. But why, if there really is such great demand isn't another publishing company picking this up? Why not partner with a company or foundation? Why keep asking us for money?"
Indeed. We'll let you know if Farah deigns to answer those important questions.
The Jewish Bradlee Dean has struck again, and CNSNews.com has him.
We've documented how loopy right-wing Rabbi Aryeh Spero has previously embraced equally loopy anti-Obama conspiracy theories a la Mr. Dean, the onetime WorldNetDaily columnist, failed evangelist (and current crazy guy ranting on the internet). Well, CNS insists on giving him a forum, so we've been treated to more Spero loopiness.
In his May 10 column, Spero is further emulating WND by going the Divine Donald route under the headline "President Trump Is Fulfilling Prophecies":
In a few moments ancient prophecies will be fulfilled and veritable truths realized when the United States moves its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. It will also be a day when we will remember the strength and courage of the man who made it happen: President Donald Trump.
[...]
Many good-willed American presidents pledged to move our embassy to Jerusalem, but out of fear of Arab riots and backlash, they allowed themselves to put off the decision for a later date. The United Nations and virtually all of the countries of the world were either afraid to relocate their embassies, or in their ultimate negation of the right for Israel to exist as a Jewish state, never even considered moving their embassy to Jerusalem. They were either afraid or were rejectionists. Many organizations spoke the proper words, but when push-came-to-shove, they chose to accept the delays and kick-the-can down the road. What makes President Trump different from all previous presidents is that beyond speaking positively about the move, he actually is doing it.
Trump is a man of action. And he is a man of conviction and fortitude who acts upon what he knows to be right. He is refreshingly fearless. He believes in Israel, indeed seems to love the country. He knows the centrality of Jerusalem in the scheme of Zion and is making truth happen. He understands symbolism and knows there is no greater sign of support and symbol of friendship than moving America’s embassy to Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. He will not be cowed by threats of jihad.
Spero even pulls a full WND and likens Trump favorably to biblical hero King Cyrus.
Then, in his May 16 column, Spero actually defends waterboarding as necessary and totally not torture, with a little of that old-time Obama derangement:
Unlike what is happening in the Islamic and Palestinian world, we Americans do not torture for sheer barbaric enjoyment, or as a means of revenge, nor even as a way of frightening foes. We employ momentary and isolated acts of physical or psychological coercion for the exclusive purpose of eliciting information we are convinced will save lives, thousands of lives. These are important distinctions. Our enemy’s torture incapacitates and causes excruciating pain for the remainder of that person's life. Water boarding is far from that. It is momentarily frightening, but does not fall within the historic category of torture.
Beyond our duty to prioritize on behalf of innocent life over momentary pain,self-defense is a biblical and moral duty, necessary for the sustainability of any society. Individuals as well as nations must be able to defend themselves from aggressors, from those pursuing them. Self-defense is a right. We calibrate our interrogation to a level we feel needed to secure that self-defense.
Former President Obama disapproved of the technique and often moralized to us about doing that which “reflects our values and who we are as a nation.” He used to intone: “That’s not who we are.” Most often he meant we should sacrifice our basic needs and forfeit our rights to fulfill certain social and political agendas he considered more important than our right to self-protection, nationhood, or selfhood. Mr. Obama seemed to forget that protecting our women and children, as well as all innocent Americans, is one of our values and indeed constitutes “who we are.”
Apparently, Spero didn't get the memo that the jury is still out on whether waterboarding suspects post-9/11 resulted in actionable intelligence, and a Senate investigation found that it did not.
WND Portrays Its Gay-Bashing To Stop 4-H Inclusivity Policy As Hard-Hitting Reporting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last month, we documented how WorldNetdaily let gutless, anti-gay 4-H leaders in Idaho hide behind anonymity to spew hatred at proposed guidelines by rural youth group 4-H to be more inclusive and welcoming toward all children. The freakouts at WND haven't stopped yet.
An April 16 article approvingly cited -- so much so that it's in the headline -- a supporter of the proposed inclusivity changes in Iowa's 4-H program saying he's been attacked by someone who said the "wrath of God will fall upon you" if the policy in implemented. The article then complains that reporting by an actual news organization wasn't as anti-gay as WND's, letting WND managing editor David Kupelian voice the petty attack:
The Des Moines Register article, strongly sympathetic to the LGBTQ side of the debate, was punctuated with three different transgender slide-shows and video features. This year, Iowa’s largest daily newspaper, which was founded before the Civil War, has also been nominated for an award for “Outstanding Newspaper Overall Coverage” from the LGBTQ media-monitoring organization GLAAD.
“Although the Des Moines Register frames the issue as 4-H ‘reaching out to LGBTQ kids,'” comments WND’s Kupelian, “a more accurate assessment would be that LGBTQ activists are attempting to impose, with as little fanfare as possible, an extremely controversial and divisive agenda – the same agenda that has already caused multiple 4-H leaders in Idaho to quit – on Iowa’s 4-H.” Kupelian didn't explain why WND granted those cowardly, homophobic Idaho leaders anonymity.
A radical change is taking place in America’s beloved, century-old 4-H youth organization – one that promises to create a schism as deep and damaging as the one endured by another beloved, century-old youth organization, the Boy Scouts, which many have recently declared “dead.”
“The Mormon Church has pulled out of the Boy Scouts because of their departure from their original mission,” Mary McAlister, senior litigation counsel for the Christian law firm Liberty Counsel, tells WND, “and 4-H’s core constituency could do likewise if 4-H insists on social activism that puts children at risk.”
“Social activism?” “Children at risk”?
McAlister is referring to a largely unpublicized, multi-pronged, state-by-state movement to impose highly controversial transgender policies – including the admission of biological males into female restrooms, locker rooms and showers and mandatory use of exotic transgender pronouns – on the nation’s 4-H rural youth organizations.
After WND’s exclusive reporting on this below-the-radar movement – first in Idaho, and then more recently in Iowa – the public interest law firm Liberty Counsel sent a strongly worded 2,600-word letter demanding, on multiple legal grounds, the Iowa State University Extension Service administering the state’s 4-H program immediately cease its planned imminent adoption of the radical LGBTQ agenda.
Neither Kupelian nor Liberty Counsel explain how treating all people equally is a "radical" agenda. Nevertheless, Kupelian huffs about the guidance "about to be forced on 4-H children as young as 5 throughout the state of Iowa (and other states)" and bizarrely portrays the issuance of the guidance as a "coup."
On May 24, Kupelian cheered when the Iowa 4-H reportedly decided not to adopt the inclusive guidance. He went on to tout how "WND’s investigative efforts<" via "a series of exclusive reports on this below-the-radar movement" got the right-wing Liberty Counsel involved , adding, "The WND reports reveal a largely unpublicized, multi-pronged, state-by-state movement to impose highly contentious transgender policies on the nation’s 4-H rural youth organizations – policies similar to those that have caused major battles over their implementation in the U.S. military and which directly led to a national boycott of Target Corp."
This is what Kupelian and WND are reduced to following its near-death experience -- touting gay-bashing as hard-hitting reporting.
MRC's Graham Decrees Mueller Must Obtain Convictions To Avoid 'Witch Hunt' Label Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Tim Graham huffs in a May 17 post:
On Thursday's The View, the liberal majority fulminated against Rudy Giuliani suggesting on Fox's The Ingraham Angle that the Mueller probe has accomplished nothing and should wrap it up. Sunny Hostin lamented "He says this is a witch hunt, and it's caught a lot of witches and warlocks! There’s been 75 charges already, 22 people have been indicted so, the suggestion somehow that the Mueller investigation isn't finding anything is nonsense." So Mueller doesn't actually have to convict anyone of anything?
Gotta love the goalpost-moving Graham is doing here. Apparently, all those indictments aren't an accomplishment, yet he wants to shut down the whole thing before convictions can actually be obtained. Oh, and Graham forgets that there have been five guilty pleas so far, so Mueller is definitely finding something.
Graham then tried a bit of very lame whataboutism, whining: "It's like this panel never heard of Fusion GPS and how the Clinton campaign paid them to hire a British spy to dig up dirt from the Russians." Needless to say, Graham didn't explain how any of that is illegal, and he conveniently fails to mention that his fellow conservatives were the first to hire Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump.
WND's Dream Of Impeaching Obama Still Lives, Never Mind That He's No Longer President Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has always had a fixation on trying to impeach Barack Obama. In 2010, for example, it teamed with the right-wing (and Joseph Farah-founded) Western Journalism Center to publish a ridiculous "Case for Impeachment" rife with bias and factual errors. WND also demanded the impeachment of Hillary Clinton a year and a half before the 2016 election -- then unironically complained of alleged efforts to impeach Trump before he was "even inaugurated into office."
That lack of irony continues in a May 21 WND article by Art Moore, who pushes the idea -- with the help of right-wing legal group Judicial Watch -- that Obama can and should be impeached even though he's been out of the presidency for more than a year:
If Congress is considering impeachment charges related to the 2016 election, they should center not on President Trump but on former President Obama “and his Nixonian use of various agencies to target candidate Trump,” contends Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“If there is anyone who needs to be on the dock, it would be President Obama,” he said in an interview Monday with WND.
Fitton’s organization, with 30 lawsuits already in motion, has relentlessly pursued documents and communications related to the Obama administration’s investigation of alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign through Freedom of Information Act requests.
[...]
Fitton explained that his tweet Sunday, saying “Obama, btw, can still be impeached,” was to generate discussion about holding Obama accountable, not to suggest that impeachment necessarily would be the best course of action if evidence warranted prosecution. He wanted to emphasize, amid all the impeachment talk by Democrats on Capitol Hill, that if anybody should be impeached, the evidence indicates it should be Obama. William Murphy, a professor of American history at State University of New York at Oswego, confirmed that Congress could impeach a former president, noting the penalties of conviction including a ban from holding future office.
Moore waited until the final few paragraphs to include the more rational view that impeaching someone who's no longer in office may be legally permissible but also a waste of time, and that any actual alleged crimes would be better off being pursued through the legal system.
Still, it's comforting to know that WND's Obama Derangement Syndrome continues unabated.
NEW ARTICLE: Another Member of CNS' Trump Stenography Brigade Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Arter is too busy dutifully transcribing what comes out of the White House press office to be concerned about things like fact-checking. Read more >>
WND Columnist Gets It Wrong On Effectiveness of Waterboarding Topic: WorldNetDaily
Patrick Brady's May 15 WorldNetDaily column is all about how he's "fed up"with John McCain: "I am sick of his hero stuff and McCain being the gold standard of torture and those who demonize Gina Haspel in his name. The moral preening of those questioning Haspel on the fact that she obeyed the law is nauseating, as is McCain’s slandering of this good woman. Elect these people, and watch the swamp turn into a sewer." Brady goes on to write:
As for torture, it works. Ask a POW. But we don’t torture.
Waterboarding is part of the training for some of our troops; perhaps some members of SEAL Team Six endured it. Would we torture our own troops? Torture is often in the eye of the victim (being locked up and forced to listen to today’s music would make me cave immediately), but pain is indispensable. I am told waterboarding doesn’t involve pain but induces panic and may be the most effective non-torture method of interrogation. It got us Osama bin Laden.
I am with Bud [Day], who said, “Hurrah for the guy who poured the water.”
In fact, waterboarding did not get us Osama bin Laden. A Senate investigation found that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for bin Laden; the key piece of evidence 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided came only months after he had been waterboarded 183 times.
Fox News afternoon anchor Shepard Smith boasted to Time magazine a few weeks ago “I think we have to make the wall between news and opinion as high and as thick and as impenetrable as possible. And I try to do that.”
Then he goes on television daily and makes a mockery of his own pledge not to spew opinions.
On Wednesday, the Internet lit up when Smith accused his own network of a conspiracy to put a group of voices on television counseling President Trump to avoid an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller, now that potential Mueller questions to the president were leaked to the newspapers.
Graham doesn't mention that there is truth to Smith's claim -- Fox News host Sean Hannity, for one, has denounced the questions as "crap,"and Fox News as a whole is all but begging Trump to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation (therefore precluding an interview).
Instead, Graham huffed that "Smith isn't relaying facts on a Fox News Channel. Like the other cable 'news' operations, he's sitting in a political playground he could call the Fox Imagination Channel. " Of course, if Graham doesn't think Fox's hosts are trying to influence Trump's behavior regarding the Mueller investigation, he's the one living in fantasy land.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier appeared on ABC's The View on Thursday to promote his new book Three Days in Moscow about Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. But the ABC crew peppered him with questions about their favorite topic -- the White House aide who insulted John McCain -- and whether Fox News is the "administration's mouthpiece," since it's reported Sean Hannity talks to the president nightly after his show. Baier replied "There may be opinion shows that have a direct relationship with the president, and Sean is not calling me and giving me a download of the call."
[...]
But then Sunny Hostin, who routinely reminds viewers of her days as a legal analyst at CNN, threw shade at Fox, as CNN people do: "People do see Fox News as the administration’s mouthpiece. I don’t know if it helped that it’s been reported that your colleague Sean Hannity talks to the president nightly before bed, about the day’s musings. Do you think that’s appropriate? I understand Sean is on the opinion side of the network. But as a representative of the network, that Sean is, is that appropriate?”
“First of all, the network overall is not a mouthpiece,” Baier responded. “There may be opinion shows that have a direct relationship with the president, and Sean is not calling me and giving me a download of the call.”
He added “I was on his show the other night, and he said to me, how much problem do I cause the news division, scale of one to 10? And I said, you know, a solid six. But it depends on the day.” He said he tries to do it straight: "I have horse blinders on from six to seven."
Graham ignored another salient fact -- that in reality, blinders really aren't Baier's thing. Certainly he remembers the bogus story Baier reported -- and the MRC heravily promoted -- before the 2016 election claiming that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent. Baier had to retract that story a few days later, but Graham and the rest of the MRC never told their readers that, despite Brent Boizell declaring that "We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out." Apparently, the fact that the story was fake news wasn't a development worth reporting.
And then there's that book Baier was on "The View" to promote. Judging by the promotion for it on Baier's personal website, it's on the hagiographic side, touting how the book "reveals as never before President Ronald Reagan’s battle to end the Cold War" and lovingly recounts how "In 1980, Reagan represented a new spirit of optimism—a remedy for the sense of malaise the nation was experiencing."
Does this sound like a guy who's wearing ideological blinders? To Graham, it does, apparently.
To sum up: Graham is gashing the straight-news Fox guy for saying something he can't be bothered to disprove, and he defends the Fox guy who's on record as promoting fake news. That's the way things work at the MRC these days.
The employment numbers for May were good, so needless to say, CNSNews.com wasted no time in pegging the pro-Trump rah-rah-meter.
The last time we saw John Griffing at WorldNetDaily, it was as a 
A 
We've
Bill Donohue huffs in a May 17 CNSNews.com 
I’ve been hesitant to ask, but I will no longer resist: Is it time for martial law in many (perhaps all) midsize and big cities that have been ruled by Democrats for decade upon decade?
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes writes in a May 17 
If WorldNetDaily was going through the trouble to set up a 
The Jewish Bradlee Dean has struck again, and CNSNews.com has him.
Last month, we 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham huffs in a May 17 
WorldNetDaily has always had a fixation on trying to impeach Barack Obama. In 2010, for example, it teamed with the right-wing (and Joseph Farah-founded) Western Journalism Center to publish a 
Patrick Brady's May 15 WorldNetDaily 
Just one of the many reasons the Media Research Center's Tim Graham is such a 
