WND Thinks A Mischievous Wikipedia Edit That Lasted Only 9 Minutes Is 'News' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Treating minor political mischief as "news" is among the laziest thing a so-called journalist can do -- which is probably why WorldNetDaily is no stranger to the practice. For instance, WND once devoted an entire story to a picture of Hillary Clinton's book that somebody placed in the science-fiction section of a bookstore.
That sort of politically motivated lameness resurfaces in an anonymously written July 17 WND article:
John Brennan, who shoved himself into the headlines this week with the wild claim that President Trump’s actions at his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin were “treasonous,” was described in a new way, briefly, at the online site Wikipedia.
“Silly old fart.”
The entry for Brennan, for a few minutes Tuesday, read: “Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the first Obama administration over concerns about his support for transferring terror suspects to countries where they may be tortured while serving under President George W. Bush. Instead Brennan was appointed deputy national security advisor, a position which did not require senate confirmation … is now best known as an irrelevant silly old fart who spends his days in his favourite slippers tweeting furiously about the Trump administration.”
The Washington Examiner explained the page was edited only a day after he lashed out against President Trump for comments at the summit.
The edits were live for about nine minutes before the text was changed back to its original.
So the Wsahington Examiner actually did the reporting on this lameness, and WND is merely repeating it secondhand? That's even more lame than we originally thought.
A July 16 CNSNews.com article by Max Augros is yet another bit of pro-Trump stenography:
When asked about U.S. intelligence claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections and whether he would call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to not interfere again, President Donald Trump said he wants to know why the FBI did not seize the Democratic National Committee’s server, which was allegedly hacked by Russian actors, and he wants to know why the FBI has not tracked down Hillary Clinton’s apparently missing 33,000 emails.
“But I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the sever,” said Trump. “What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC? Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they?”
“What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails?” he said. “33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.”
If Augros had cared more about journalism than stenography, he would have pointed that, as the headline of this Daily Beast article explained, the purportedly missing server Trump is obsessed with is neither missing nor a server:
The “server” Trump is obsessed with is actually 140 servers, most of them cloud-based, which the DNC was forced to decommission in June 2016 while trying to rid its network of the Russian GRU officers working to help Trump win the election, according to the figures in the DNC’s civil lawsuit against Russia and the Trump campaign. Another 180 desktop and laptop computers were also swapped out as the DNC raced to get the organization back on its feet and free of Putin’s surveillance.
But despite Trump’s repeated feverish claims to the contrary, no machines are actually missing.
It’s true that the FBI doesn’t have the DNC’s computer hardware. Agents didn’t sweep into DNC headquarters, load up all the equipment and leave Democrats standing stunned beside empty desks and dangling cables. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with a deep state conspiracy to frame Putin.
Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a basic misapprehension of how computer intrusion investigations work. Investigating a virtual crime isn’t a like investigating a murder. The Russians didn’t leave DNA evidence on the server racks and fingerprints on the keyboards. All the evidence of their comings and goings was on the computer hard drives, and in memory, and in the ephemeral network transmissions to and from the GRU’s command-and-control servers.
[...]
Both the DNC and the security firm Crowdstrike, hired to respond to the breach, have said repeatedly over the years that they gave the FBI a copy of all the DNC images back in 2016. The DNC reiterated that Monday in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“The FBI was given images of servers, forensic copies, as well as a host of other forensic information we collected from our systems,” said Adrienne Watson, the DNC’s deputy communications director. “We were in close contact and worked cooperatively with the FBI and were always responsive to their requests. Any suggestion that they were denied access to what they wanted for their investigation is completely incorrect.”
See, that wasn't so hard -- in fact, a simple Google search would have easily uncovered it, had Augros bothered to do so. But, again, pro-Trump stenography trumps even the most basic explanatory journalism at CNS if explaining things makes Trump look bad.
WND Buys Into Fake-News #WalkAway Campaign Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer enthused in a June 29 article:
It’s “intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and at times blatantly fascistic,” says a new political activist who has created a campaign online to oppose a party that he says he’s leaving.
Naturally, he was a silver-spoon-in-mouth Republican, with corporate executive parents and privilege from morning until night, and he’s fed up, right?
Well. No.
He’s leaving liberalism and the Democrats.
His video is titled “#WalkAway Campaign – Why I left liberalism & the Democratic Party” and is one of those must-see projects.
Brandon Straka explains he’s, “for years,” watched as the “left has devolved” into that list of negatives above.
So now it’s over.
He’s online at Facebook and other social media sites and his campaign is moving in viral leaps and bounds.
Like most things too good to fact-check -- and the latest in the pile of fake news WND has promoted -- the #WalkAway campaign turns out to be a bit on the bogus side.
As the Washington Post reports, a significant portion of those "viral leaps and bounds" were apparently artificially generated by Twitter bots, not real people. And one of themost heavily retweeted #WalkAway tweets is itself apparently fake, with a profile image stolen from a book about making money in penny stocks. And later #WalkAway images simply use stock photos of people and not actual humans who actually are members of the movement.
Even the WND article promoted a tweet that doesn't sound like an actual American human, with the Twitter handle @Zealandian and the name "52-75-73-6b-69," which sure sounds like a Russian bot to us.
All that shadiness, however, didn't keep WND columnist Patrice Lewis from promoting the alleged movement in her July 13 column. She insists it's a real thing and attacks anyone who points out otherwise:
Unable to accept the idea that people loath their hateful message, the left is denying anyone is leaving. FrontPage Magazine notes, “The paranoid leftists at hate site Salon.com claim #WalkAway is a Russian-operated misinformation campaign. Bob Cesca writes that #WalkAway ‘is a likely Kremlin operation’ that is fueled by ‘online trolls.’ It is a myth that ‘real-life Democrats [are] leaving the party in disgust[.]'” Huffington Post makes a similar claim. The Washington Post redefines the definition of “viral.”
That FrontPageMag article is written by the dickish Matthew Vadum, so it too is of dubious descent.
If WND bothered to actually do some basic fact-checking, it wouldn't have to publish so much fake news.
CNS, MRC Keep Up Their Love Affair With Tim Tebow Topic: CNSNews.com
As the baseball season continues, so does the Media Research Center's love for former pro football player and current minor league baseball player Tim Tebow. CNSNews.com writer Michael Morris in particular loves the overtly Christian athlete.
In February, Morris wrote a blog post touting how New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson was "making waves with his prediction that Tebow 'will play in the major leagues' at some point." Morris then listed a bunch of Tebow's minor-league stats, leaving the fact that he hit a miserable .226 for the season for second to last.
The MRC's Jay Maxson wrote his own version of Morris' post on July 1, substituting an ESPN host for Alderson in making the Tebow-will-play-in-the-majors prediction. Maxson largely ignored stats but enthused: "Tebow just made the Eastern League all-star team as a member of the New York Mets' Binghamton Rumble Ponies minor league team. After a sluggish start in April and May, Tebow had a sizzling month of June and gained newfound respect."
CNS followed up with a July 13 column by Eric Metaxas lionizing Tebow for his "unabashed Christian witness and pro-life beliefs" and declaring, "Those who think Tebow has returned to pro sports for glamour and glory do not understand Tim Tebow." This is also a bit of a retread, in this case of a 2017 column by Metaxas' "BreakPoint" colleague John Stonestreet, also published by CNS, in which he gushed that "what has long set Tebow apart, of course, is his Christian faith. It’s drawn millions of people to love him."
Well, it has certainly drawn right-wing writers with an agenda to love him, anyway.
WND's Kupelian: No Collusion! Obama Is The Collusion! Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian has to go deep into his well of Obama derangement to deflect from credible accusations of pro-Trump meddling by the Russians during the 2016 election -- as well as rehash some old, discredited Clinton derangement in the process. Here's how Kupelian starts his July 15 column:
Is it just me, or is everyone missing the biggest, most mind-boggling part of the never-ending “Trump-Russia collusion” drama?
Let’s set aside all the deceit, demagoguery and mass hysteria associated with the left’s ongoing campaign to overturn Trump’s election by endlessly accusing him of “colluding with the Russians,” and consider the biggest scandal of all:
For the past 100 years, it’s the left that has been continually “colluding with the Russians.”
For something like three generations this nation’s most vital institutions, from higher education to Hollywood, have been powerfully influenced, if not entirely dominated, by the Marxist-socialist worldview incubated, nurtured, celebrated, propagandized and exported primarily by Russia.
As I have documented, today’s Democratic Party, pushed radically leftward by President Barack Obama (whom both former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy and ex-New Left leader David Horowitz accurately call a “neocommunist”), has become almost indistinguishable from the Communist Party USA. In case you didn’t know, the CPUSA came into existence as a U.S.-based, Moscow-controlled-and-funded communist party, but has lost most of its influence and support since the Soviet Union collapsed, thanks to President Ronald Reagan. Today, the CPUSA no longer fields its own presidential candidates, but rather, urges voters to support Democrats, having enthusiastically endorsed John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
[...]
Remember also that the Democratic Party’s rapid leftward drift while Obama steered the American ship of state for eight years was characterized by actual “collusion with the Russians,” including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s official agreement to hand over control of one-fifth of America’s strategic uranium reserves to Russia, in return for which millions of dollars flowed from Russia to the Clinton Foundation – not to mention $500,000 to husband Bill for giving a one-hour speech in Moscow. And who can forget President Barack Obama being caught on a hot mic saying to Russian President Medvedev,“This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” (Translation: After I’m re-elected president, I can do things Putin wants, but that the American people would never approve of.) To which comrade Medvedev replied, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.”
In fact, no quid pro quo has ever been found betweenHillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and the deal to let a Russian-owned company control that sliver of U.S. uranium deposits, and Clinton was one of nine Cabinet members who had to sign off on the deal, and she had no power to approve or veto the deal on her own.
Kupelian also huffed: "Barack Obama, in his zeal to influence the outcome of Israel’s 2015 national election, actually spent American taxpayers’ money on a failed attempt to defeat a sitting prime minister and close ally, Benjamin Netanyahu." This is another lie from Kupelian.
Kupelian then called WND's favorite ex-Soviet Bloc spymaster, Ion Mihail Pacepa -- who endorsed Trump despite his cozy ties to Russia and Putin -- who is sounding more like an Obama-deranged pro-Trump shill:
“Mike,” I emailed recently. “How long would you say Russia has been actively trying to influence American society, politics and elections?” I explained the gist of the article I was writing about the American left’s century-long secret “collusion” with Russia.
<>Russia, he said, has been attempting to influence America for more than half a century, adding pointedly: “The leaders of our Democratic Party have known at least for seven decades that Russia was trying to influence the U.S. policies and her elections process – it was an open secret.”
[...]
Interestingly, Pacepa added in his email: “In 2009, the U.S. got its first Marxist president, and in March 2013, the CIA got a director, John O. Brennan, who had voted the Communist ticket.” (That’s right. In the 1976 U.S. presidential election, Brennan voted for Communist Party USA candidate Gus Hall.)
So, what does Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, one of the world’s top experts on genuine “Russian collusion,” think about the leftist Democrats and “mainstream media” daily attacking President Donald Trump for alleged “Russian collusion”?
The left, he said, specializes in fabricating fake news, history and reality, and always has. He recalled, thoughtfully: “In my other life as a Soviet bloc intelligence general, I had a banner posted in my DIE [Romania’s foreign intelligence service] office proclaiming in upper-case letters: ‘CAPITALIST ESPIONAGE REPORTS HISTORY. WE MAKE IT.’ Communist espionage was not designed to predict enemy intentions, as Western espionage services do. Our omniscient rulers knew best,” he said, indicating that communists prefer to rewrite and re-invent history, something the American left is notorious for doing.
And never more ferociously than right now.
“Now,” summarizes Pacepa, “a new generation of Democratic Party leaders who seem to have sawdust in their heads are trying to use Russia as a scarecrow in order to prevent the return of the U.S. to capitalism and freedom.”
Kupelian concluded by grousing: "In the meantime, the same left that demonizes America and capitalism with arguments identical to those learned at the feet of Russian communists, continues to accuse pro-American capitalist Donald Trump of 'colluding with the Russians.' That’s irony for you." No, the irony is that if Obama had done the same things Trump is accusing of doing with Russia, Kupelian would be screaming bloody murder.
MRC Won't Admit It Helped Spread Conspiracy Theories About Arrested Dem IT Staffer Topic: Media Research Center
In a July 5 Media Research Center post complaining that there was insufficient media coverage of former Democratic House IT aide Imran Awan pleading guilty to a bank fraud charge, Bill D'Agostino huffed: "Liberal print media have attempted to spin this finding into a non-story. On Tuesday, The Washington Post published a piece titled, 'Conspiracy theories on ex-congressional IT staffer debunked in plea deal,' which triumphantly mocks the attention that conservative media have given Awan."
What D'Agostino didn't mention: His employer was among the conservative media that promoted those conspiracy theories about Awan.
The Post pointed out that the plea agreement for Awan included a statement that, following a "thorough investigation" of forensic analysis of computer equipment and interview with 40 witnesses, "'The Government has uncovered no evidence that your client violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems,' including stealing equipment or illegally accessing or transferring information." Prosecutors added: "Particularly, the Government has found no evidence that your client illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members’ offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information."
One of those "media children" coordinating with Trump and House Republicans was the MRC. In July 2017, Curtis Houck hyperventilated that Awan's arrest was part of a "disturbing story involving double billing, Hezbollah, smashed hard drives, and possessing the e-mails and files of leading congressional Democrats," citing, yes, Fox News and the Daily Caller. He added: "So, we have a shady I.T. staffer and his family running a firm that possibly compromised the e-mails and files for a number of key congressional Democrats. To the casual observer, that would probably strike them as disturbing." A couple days later, Houck declared that the non-conservative media's failure to cover Awan's arrest to the MRC's satisfaction proves that "the media are aiding and abetting liberals in their nefarious behavior."
Meanwhile, white nationalist-loving NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer huffed that an Associated PRess article on Awan's arrest"spun the news in the most favorable way it could for beleaguered Democrats, making Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz look like the victim as it headlined her spokesman's claim that she fired Awan Tuesday after learning of his arrest. The fact is that Schultz has been involved in obstructing investigations into Awan's activities for months" and that the article "was written to protect [Rep. Debbie] Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic Party."
Charles Dorfeuille cheered how "The Hill reporter Joe Concha put the media on notice"-- though he failed to identify Concha as a writer with a conservative bias -- for ignoring Awan's arrest and "valid questions on what the now-arrested former Dem staffer was doing on the computers of the multiple congressional offices he was working on." Tim Graham got in on the act, whining that newspapers were "ignoring or downplaying the Imran Awan-Debbie Wasserman Schultz scandal."
Blumer returned to get upset that the New York Times accurately reported that President Trump was hyping Awan's arrest to attack Democrsts, then once again to further whine that "the scandal's multi-faceted and outrageous developments" involving the "rogue Democrat IT staffer" weren't being covered in the media to his satisfaction.
Additionally, the MRC published a column by Michelle Malkin touting the "criminal theft and hacking probe of the House Democrats' information security systems" involving Awan and other family members.
To sum up: Instead of apologizing for the false conspiracy theories it spread about Awan, the MRC chose instead to complain that it and the rest of the conservative media were justly "mocked" for putting conspiracies ahead of facts. But then, the MRC is just not not that into correcting the record.
WND Frets Again About Not Enough White People Topic: WorldNetDaily
For years, WorldNetDailyhasfretted about low birth rates among white people, compared with the swarthy, Muslim-y hordes who want to immigrate to Europe and the U.S., which usually takes place under the "demographic winter" euphemism. That fretting pops up yet again in an anonymously written July 12 article that starts off with the usual code words -- the words "white" and "Christian" are absent, instead obliquely referring to "Europe’s native population" -- but ultimately descends into right-wing huffing about "diversity" and "Islamic piety":
Newly released European Union figures show deaths surpassed births in 2017 among Europe’s native population.
The office Eurostat released the report ahead of World Population Day on Wednesday, reported LifeSiteNews.
The EU saw 5.3 million deaths and 5.1 million births in 2017 while the overall population increased from 511.5 million to 512.6 million due to immigration.
The report found Ireland retained the highest birth rate and lowest death rate in the EU, making its natural population growth five times higher than the EU’s average. Births also continued to outnumber deaths in Cyprus, Luxembourg, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Brian Stewart writes at The Federalist that Europe has been “importing a considerable mass of people on the unspoken assumption that more diversity in a society will invariably breed ever more tolerance.”
“Worse, this massive influx has been accompanied by an austere and often fervent Islamic piety; and this has been doubly dangerous,” he said.
That anonymous writer almost let his pro-white agenda out of the bag.
CNS Publishes Article For MRC To Use In Bashing Media It Doesn't Like Topic: Media Research Center
Remember how we noted earlier this month that CNSNews.com suddenly decided to highlight the low unemployment rate among Hispanics among its rah-rah pro-Trump monthly unemployment coverage? Turns out there was a reason for that: so its Media Research Center parent could use the cherry-picked stat to attack media outlets it doesn't like for not reporting it.
And the MRC did indeed get a lot of mileage out of it:
Tom Blumer (a few days before he was fired) played up the number, pointing out that "Craig Bannister at our sister site CNSNews.com noted the record-low Hispanic unemployment rate a half-hour after the jobs report's release" and complaining that "The establishment press's gatekeepers have been ignoring, downplaying, or deeply burying June's record-low Hispanic joblessness."
MRC Latino's Ken Oliver-Mendez wrote a post a couple hours later complaining that Hispanic TV networks Univision and Telemundo failed to report it: "One would think such a historic achievement would be news that night on the nation’s leading Spanish-language television news programs, but that was not the case."
Oliver then appeared on Fox Business to tout his attack on Univision and Telemundo, assering that this somehow "really illustrates the disconnect between the average Hispanic voter in the country and perhaps the average Hispanic viewer of Univision and Telemundo and what they're getting." Interestingly, Oliver-Mendez appeared with Fox Business host Charles Payne, whose travails with sexual harrassment allegations against him the MRC has censored.
And just to bring things full circle, Bannister wrote a blog post at CNS about Oliver's TV appearance promoting his CNS article. Bannister did helpfully include the disclaimer that "MRC Latino, like CNSNews.com, is a division of the Media Research Center (MRC)."
A truly independent news organization -- which the MRC likes to portray CNS as -- would not be writing "news" articles for the apparet sole purpose for use as activism by the parent organization. It's time for the MRC to publicly explain to readers what line -- if any -- exists between the editorial side and the activism side.
CNS Obsesses Over Strzok's Sex Life Topic: CNSNews.com
The testimony of FBI agent Peter Strzok was never going to get fair treatment from the pro-Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com. But what started out as a relatively straightforward accounting oi his House committee testimony ended obsessing about his sex life.
CNS' coverage began with an article by Susan Jones that, shockingly, uncritically presented Strzok's defense of his professional actions regardinghis work in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.This was followed by Melanie Arter taking the lazy way out and simply copying-and-pasting an exchange between Strzok and Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy.
Then it was time for CNS to denigrate Strzok by portraying him as defensive and a weasel about facts.Jones complained in one article that Strzok faced "friendly questioning from a fellow anti-Trumper" under the headline "Strzok: 'I've Done Nothing Wrong. Uh, Let Me Rephrase That'." Another Jones article featured questioning from a committee Republican, but she did not identify him as a "pro-Trumper" offering "hostile questioning" (y'know, just to be fair and balanced). By contrast, Jones cherry-picked a Democratic committee member in order to write dismissively about her statement that Republicans should thank Strzok for not speaking out about pro-Trump Russian influence in the campaign (since FBI agents are not allow to speak publicly about ongoing investigations) because that silence helped Trump get elected.
Tellingly, both of these articles are credited only to "CNSNews.com staff" -- which tells us that no CNS employee wanted their name to be put on its boss' obsession with Strzok's sex life.
Funny, we don't recall CNS ever referring to thrice-married adulterer Donald Trump as such in the headline of any article.
UPDATE: This isn't the first time CNS has fixated on Strzok's love life. A June 28 article -- also by "CNSNews.com Staff" -- highlighted FBI director Christopher Wray being asked whether "engaging in adultery was a “significant vulnerability” for an FBI counterintelligence agent, making sure to note that Strzok was having an "extramarital affair" with Page.
Buzzfeed detailed how anti-Muslim propaganda travels from Europe to the U.S., citing WND as a conduit. For example, an August 2017 article by the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute carried the headline ""Muslims Tell Europe: 'One Day This Will All Be Ours'"-- but the article quotes no Muslim saying that (it game from a French Catholic bishop who was purporting to quote unnamed Muslims). WND republished part of the Gatestone article, complete with false headline.
WND has gotten burned by fake news from Gatestone before; we've documented how it promoted an alarmist Gatestone article about how more mosques than churches were being built in France, ignnoring that Christianity had a centuries-long head start over Islam in the country and has far more churches than Islam has mosques. Gatestone has since deleted its false article, but WND's article, by Alicia Powe (see below), remains live and uncorrected.
Meanwhile, Media Matters reported on the closeness between American conservatives and Macedonian-based fake news operations, noting that one figure in the operations, Trajche Arsov, had recruited Alicia Powe to write for one of those fake-news sites during the 2016 election, and that Powe also shared numerous fake-news stories on her personal Facebook page. Powe joined WND as a reporter in February 2017 -- where one of her beats was perpetuating Seth Rich conspiracy theories -- and stayed for approximately a year; she now writes for the even less credible Gateway Pundit.
Meanwhile, WND still won't admit its dubious editorial policies played a role in leading it to near-death, continuing to whine about Google and Facebook prioritizing other (read: more credlble) content.Until Joseph Farah and crew admit they have a problem and apologize to its readers for essentially lying to them, they can't even begin to fix it, let alone regain the credibility it needs to stay alive.
NewsBusters Blogger Sees Anti-Conservative Conspiracy in ESPN Dropping Comments Section Topic: NewsBusters
Jay Maxson, the mysterious NewsBusters sports blogger, was in ESPN derangement mode for a July 8 post portraying ESPN discontinuing the comments section of its website as a proof of anti-conservative bias:
Progressives from Berkeley to Bristol would rather shut down a debate than stomach opposition views. Fascists at California and other universities have perfected the strategy of shutting down free speech. No longer willing to endure conservative opposition to its progressive social and political posts, ESPN.com has just joined the club by shutting down its comments section.
Hilariously, Maxson quotes someone predicting his freakout: the Awful Announcing website noted that "To some people, predictably, this move is a sign of something much more sinister: censorship of a free-flowing conversation where people weren’t afraid to call out ESPN on their obviously over-the-top liberal agenda."
Surely Maxson is familiar with website comment sections, and how they're not exactly repositories of well-reasoned thought. One has only to look at NewsBusters' own comments section, which is all about taking mean-spirited potshots and nothing about robust debate. Indeed, as we know from experience, NewsBusters makes sure the latter never happens by working to ban anyone who tries to engage in one -- making Maxson's complaint about ESPN utterly hypocritical.
Further, Maxson never proves his/her thesis, that ESPN shut down comments specifically to squelch conservative opinion. He's simply issuing an uninformed opinion that fits better in a comment section instead of a standalone blog post at a major right-wing website. Of course, given the lax editing at NewsBusters, maybe its placement is not a surprise after all.
WND's Mercer Thinks Her Daughter Deserves To Be In America Because She's White Topic: WorldNetDaily
The important thing to remember about WorldNetDaily columnist Ilana Mercer is that she laments the end of apartheid in her native South Africa. That puts her July 5 WND column in context -- not a good one, mind you, but as an indication of where her sense of racial entitlement is coming from.
She starts things off with a fit of immigrant bashing: "America’s immigration policy – driven as it is by policy makers and enforcers – exalts and privileges those of low moral character. It rewards law-breakers, giving them the courtesy and consideration not given to high-value, legal immigrants." The bulk of it, though, of it is complaining that her daughter, who she says was studying in Canada and was "bamboozled at the border-crossing in Blaine, Washington" and "gave the wrong answer to her petty American inquisitor," allegedly causing her green card to be taken away.
Then commenced a rant about how people like her and her daughter deserve to be immigrants while those other, swarthy-looking people "have nothing to offer the commonwealth":
More fundamentally, hers was not an ill-gotten green card.
The principal sponsor, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, had entered the U.S. on an O-1 visa. Unlike the H-1B visa, the O-1 visa doesn’t replace Americans; it adds to them. For it is granted to those with “extraordinary ability in the fields of science, education, business or athletics.” The O-1 necessitates “a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.”
Not by deceit did my child gain her green card. But by deceit is how the swarms on the border will get theirs. The squeaky wheels squatting on the southern border, funneled daily into the interior to create facts on the ground, are not refugees or legitimate asylum seekers. Rather, they are merely from what President Trump has termed “s–thhole countries.” By that criteria, Americans could be forced to welcome the world.
A refugee, conversely, is an individual who is persecuted on the basis “of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion” – like my South-African compatriots, who, every day, are culled like springbok in a hunting safari. But for South Africans, U.S. refugee and immigration authorities reserve their unalloyed prejudice.
Let’s be realistic. Aside from their demands, the hordes on the southern border have nothing to offer the commonwealth.
Back to la bandida. Was my daughter allowed a phone call to her parents? No! What about access to an immigration attorney? No!
A well-behaved, legal resident, who did not enter the United States to cause trouble, this young lady obeyed the laws of the country. She did not defy its enforcers. Timidly, she accepted her lot.
Our daughter had her hard-won green card stripped by state bullies because she gave the wrong answer to a trick bureaucratic question.
Her case, no doubt, was further hindered by the fact that she simply was not a sympathetic “type.” After all, she speaks good English, was attached to productive people, residing lawfully in their own home in the U.S., mere hours away. And she is not of a more exotic persuasion. At least not visibly so.
No, not simpatico at all
So, she was tossed out of the United States of America like so much … white trash.
I hazard that had my daughter spoken in tongues or rendered a “good” Pidgin English; had she cried, created a scene; called for the presstitutes and the immigration advocates – she’d have “passed” with flying colors and would have been sent on her merry way.
It’s as though people of early American probity, to paraphrase writer Mary McGrory, are carefully and purposefully weeded out by contemporary America’s immigration policies and policy makers. (Until Trump.)
Indeed, we South Africans are just not part of the “multicultural noise machine,” now sitting on the southern border seething with rage, poised to make common purpose with America’s professional merchants of racial hatred.
We are not pushy. We do things the right way. And we swallow the pain and indignity.
One would think that being treated like ICE treats everyone else would have aroused in Mercer some sort of sympathy for others. Instead, it seems to have aroused a lingering sense of racial entitlement.
CNS Lets Right-Wing Rabbi Rant Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has given loopy right-wing rabbi Aryeh Spero another platform in the form of a July 3 column in which he rants about a "never-ending blitzkrieg from the media to topple President Trump." After getting the name of the Democratic Party wrong (using the silly right-wing epithet "Democrat Party"), Spero rushes to the defense of the Trump administration on its treatment of refugees at the border, taking particular offense to said treatment being likened to Nazi treatment of Jews:
The Nazis separated families as part of a first phase of forced labor and murder of Jews, an entire race. We, in contrast, are taking care of these children—probably better than they’re normally taken care of—during the days of necessary investigation. No animus is intended on our part, or on the part of President Trump, AG Sessions, or the Department of Homeland Security.
Spero then served up a decidedly political interpretation of the Bible:
Some left-wing organizations calling themselves religious, but who are more so socialist, condemned the President for not “welcoming the stranger.” In fact, years back Barack Obama quoted the Scripture “Thou shall not Afflict the Stranger” as justification for shooting down anyone who disagreed with his borders-as-sieve policy and granting a full basket of entitlements to all who come here, even illegally. But welcoming the stranger refers to individuals, not an invasion of millions, certainly not a calculated importation of millions. It’s about treating decently a stranger temporarily in the land; not about making it easy for would-be terrorists, gangs, and criminals to blithely enter; nor is it about forgetting that newcomers can’t come to feed and live off the sweat of others. It is not “affliction” to require standards.
Welcoming the stranger was not intended by the Bible to be a national suicide program. The Bible itself speaks of the blessing of impenetrable borders. Welcoming the stranger is a directive for not being cruel to people, harassing or torturing them, as was the practice in many ancient societies and still practiced today toward “infidels.” Democrats could take a lesson in decency, and stop harassing Republicans.
Note that Spero references Obama but does not acknowledge that he was president. That's because Spero spent years in a state of hysteria pushing his own Obama-hating blitzkrieg at CNS.
WND Columnist Tries to Defend Ron Paul Over Racist Tweet Topic: WorldNetDaily
When you defend the indefensible, it's best to change the subject. That's what David Gornoski does in a July 4 WorldNetDaily column trying to deflect attention from a tweet attacking "cultural Marxism" using racist caricatures from Ron Paul's Twitter account. After acknowledging it was a bad idea and uncritically swallowing Paul's explanation that a staffer, not he, was responsible, Gronoski then attacks the media for reporting on it and then going far afield to attack both President Obama and Hillary Clinton for their yeasr-ago actions in Libya and Syria ... and then starts ranting about the "mental tomb" the media are purportedly in for not reporting on the good things Paul has done:
Obviously, it was a dumb mistake for a staffer to post an ugly cartoon. But no one of an informed, sound mind thinks Ron Paul approves of racial hatred. Since the 1970s, Paul spent an entire political career denouncing the prison industrial complex, war hysteria and majority rule oppressing minorities. In every appearance, he lectures about the importance of respecting individual personhood over collective group identities: an ethic that rejects racial tribalism completely.
When Ron Paul ran for president, he promised to pardon all nonviolent offenders in prison. He challenged the Bush, Clinton, Obama-status quo of bombing Middle Eastern countries and spying on Muslims, and protested the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, an innocent U.S. citizen. All things an honest press should do but refuse to this day.
[CNN's Chris] Cuomo is right. What we ignore we empower. CNN and most of the major media have continued to ignore and empower all the worst state atrocities Ron Paul has battled. Journalists like Cuomo rage against a cartoon gaffe with righteous fury. But their silence was deafening on Abdulrahman’s execution by Obama.
[...]
CNN did not slam this horror with the righteous zeal they throw at Ron Paul over a stupid cartoon. They did not show the blood-soaked faces of Libyans crying out to God over how such evil wannabe gods can get away with destroying their homes and loved ones’ bodies.
Where was Cuomo’s call for Secretary Clinton to be fired for creating mass chaos in Libya?
[...]
The media desperately wants to blot out Ron Paul’s message of truth and nonviolence from the history books. That is why they parrot the same lies to rewrite his legacy with their own myths that serve state power. But they will fail.
For now, we suffer the statist quo Cuomo and the PC media. They are whitewashed tombs – shiny on the outside for shaming rivals’ politically incorrect speech, but inside hiding the bodies sacrificed by the state they adore.
Come out of your mental tomb, media myth-makers. See our neighbors – flesh and blood victims of war and prison. Who will hide their faces from your viewers? History stands with Ron Paul. The voices of the victims of state violence will be heard.
MRC's Double Standard on Threats to Reporters Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck was in high dudgeon in a July 9 post on Fox News correspondent Shannon Bream feeling threatened at a protest outside the Supreme Court. "This Is The Left," Houck declared in his headline, then argued why the alleged threats against Bream are real, while those against "liberal" jouranlists don't mean squat because it delegitimize the MRC's entire anti-media agenda:
For some time, the CNN media team have tried to delegitimize and squelch any media criticism from outside the liberal media bubble under the guise of it being responsible for triggering death threats and creating a culture of verbal harassment against journalists (most notably at Trump rallies).
Throw in past scenes of harassment against White House officials, Senators, Trump supporters, and anyone not fully onboard with The Resistance and it’s no surprise that the next step for the perpetual leftist, violent mob is to go after conservative reporters or anyone not with, say, CNN or MSNBC.
Funny, we don't recall Houck screaming "This Is The Right" when the crowd at a Trump rally threatens a reporter.
Houck followed up two days later by attacking another reporter at the same protest, ABC's Terry Moran, for saying that he didn't feel threatened. Houck dismissed Moran's statement as "mansplaining," then huffed in yet another sneering attack on CNN: "If Moran did that to, say, Jim Acosta, it would be a five-alarm five at CNN. Because we all know how it goes over there when an old lady at a Trump rally or a man in front of him at a White House event shouts at him."
But Houck and the MRC do not value the lives or safety of "liberal" reporters like Acosta as they do conservative reporters like Bream. For instance, Houck rather deliberately did not quote what that "old lady at a Trump rally" said to Acosta:
Approximately three hours before Trump took the stage in West Columbia, an elderly woman walked right up to me and ordered me to leave the venue. Her language would likely make her grandkids blush.
"Get the f*** out of here," she told me. "Out of here. Out. Out. Out. Out."
As she screamed at me, she was waving a campaign sign for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who would later share the stage with Trump to receive his endorsement for another four years in office. The hundreds of people in the crowd roared with approval.
I tried to shake her hand but she refused.
"No," she said. "Out. Out. Out."
"Ma'am I have every right to be here," I reminded her.
"Out. Out. Out," she continued. "You are scum. Get out of here."
That apparently didn't warrant a screaming "This Is The Right" headline at the MRC -- and Houck would be screaming bloody murder if someone had spewed that to Bream at, say, a Hillary Clinton rally, and he certainly wouldn't be mocking Bream for having her feelings hurt by it.
We've already highlighted how the MRC cheered Trump's verbal attacks on NBC's Katy Tur during the 2016 election -- attacks the MRC likely helped prime -- that have led to Tur being escorted from Trump events under Secret Service protection.
Houck did this again in a July 5 post by mocking the very real idea of verbal attacks on journalists going violent by, again, making the threat about himself and portraying such legitimate concerns as an "insidious ploy" to "mention outside media criticism (like the Website you’re currently visiting) in the same breath as actions and threats of physical harm against journalists."
Houck concluded his "mansplaning" post by declaring, "The arrogance of the liberal media will never grow any less infuriating." But if Bream worked for a media outlet other than Fox News, Houck wouldn't care about her safety either. That's the height of right-wing arrogance.
Treating minor political mischief as "news" is among the laziest thing a so-called journalist can do -- which is probably why WorldNetDaily is no stranger to the practice. For instance, WND once devoted an entire story to a picture of Hillary Clinton's book that somebody placed in the science-fiction section of a bookstore.
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