CNSNews.com started out the month of March the way it had the first two months of the year -- as the loyal PR division for right-wing radio host Mark Levin. The stenography was plentiful:
That last post was dated April 1 -- but CNS posted no other Levin stenography during the month of April. Why? Perhaps because it lost a couple interns to whom CNS farmed out this busywork. With these seven addtions, that leaves a total of just 21 Levin items for the first four months of 2021, well off its normal pace.
Indeed, it would not be until well into May that CNS posted another piece of Levin stenography. Shortly after that, CNS got some new interns to do that grunt work.
How would Levin feel if he knew his pearls of wisdom were being relegated to CNS interns?
CNS Bizarrely Cares About Biden's Hair, For Some Reason Topic: CNSNews.com
How desperate is CNSNews.com to attack President Biden at every possible opportunity? It ran an article about his hair. No, really.
An anonymous CNS writer (presumably because they didn't want their name associated with this dreck) wrote in an April 30 article headlined "Judge Solely by His Hair: Which Photo of Biden Was Taken in 2012 and Which in 2021?":
One photo of Joe Biden shows him almost completely bald on the top of his head, while two others shows him with a fair amount of hair remaining there.
The question: Which one was taken earlier in his life and which ones were taken later?
One might guess that a man would lose hair as he got older.
Yet, in the three photos below from Getty Images—one from 2012 and two other taken in 2021—Biden appears to have gained hair on the top of his head as time has passed.
The anonymous CNS wreiter never explained the relevance of this story. It's not done as a light item, because CNS has no interest in humanizing Biden. The only possible reason is to mock him -- another double standard since it brooked no mocking of Donald Trump.
The thing is, of course, that this isn't a new thing -- his hair has been discussed since the late 1980s, and Politico did a 2008 article in which a consensus was reached that Biden has received a hair transplant, even if he won't admit it.
Congratulations, CNS -- you're 30 years late to a meaningless story.
CNSNews.com has deeply drunk the right-wing Kool-aid on opposing mask mandates and masks in general, and it's not afraid to play a bizarre form of reverse mask-shaming on President Biden and others in his administration -- aswe'venoted, CNS enjoys taking shots at Biden for even briefly not following their own mask mandates, even though CNS opposes wearing masks -- for example, it has touted Republican Sen. Rand Paul insisting that mask questions are being driven by "emotionalism," and his strange declaration that "If you want more people to get vaccinated, Joe Biden should go on national TV, take his mask off and burn it" (no mention of the fact that Paul refuses to get vaccinated).
Let's look at a few more examples of that reverse mask-shaming. Melanie Arter served up an attempted gotcha in an April 27 article:
President Joe Biden, who is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, wore a mask Tuesday while walking outside by himself to the podium to announce new CDC guidelines that vaccinated people can go without masks outdoors as long as they are not in big crowds.
According to updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if you are fully vaccinated, “You can gather or conduct activities outdoors without wearing a mask except in certain crowded settings and venues.”
Arter deliberately waited until the final two paragraphs of her 14-paragraph to disclose the reason why Biden did that: so he could send a message by "watching me take it off and not put it back on until I get inside." That's dishonest journalism.
Patrick Goodenough tried his hand at mask-shaming in a May 3 article:
Asked why a fully-vaccinated President Biden still wears a mask outdoors despite amended CDC coronavirus precaution guidelines, a senior White House adviser said on Sunday she finds herself doing so too, out of “habit.”
“It’s interesting that you raise this,” Anita Dunn told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I myself found that I was still wearing my mask outdoors this week, because it has become such a matter of habit.”
Goodenough then referenced how "During a visit to Duluth, Georgia on Thursday, Biden – in an outdoor setting – briefly misplaced his mask, leaving the state’s two masked Democratic senators waiting behind him on the drive-in rally stage as he and First Lady Jill Biden, also masked, looked for it" -- which CNS had previously made an issue of.
President Joe Biden, a stickler for mask-wearing, was not masked last week, nor was his wife Jill, when they posed for a cozy, indoor photograph with (maskless) former President Jimmy Carter, 96, and his wife Rosalynn, 93.
Other photos show the Bidens wearing their masks as they walked out of the Carters' home in Plains, Georgia.
Vice President Kamala Harris kissed her husband goodbye before she boarded Air Force Two on Tuesday – both wearing coronavirus masks, even though both have been fully vaccinated.
Harris was departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland as she and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff kept their masks on their faces as they engaged in an on-camera kiss.
Harris and her husband received their first COVID-19 vaccination shots in December, with the vice president using the event as a photo-op. Then, in January, both received their second doses during a press event reported by People magazine[.]
Arter returned to attack Biden anew in a May 13 article:
CNN “New Day” host John Berman asked White House senior advisor for COVID response Andy Slavitt on Monday why President Joe Biden and congressional leaders he met with them at the White House on Wednesday all wore masks despite all being fully vaccinated.
[...]
“Well, look, I think people who have been vaccinated are starting to get a little bit impatient with what can I do? Can I go indoors? Can I take masks off, et cetera? And I think the CDC is getting there step by step. So right now you can do pretty much everything outdoors without a mask, everything indoors if you're around vaccinated people without a mask,” Slavitt said.
“So why were they all wearing masks?” Berman asked.
“I'm not sure the president is the average person. I personally think there's a lot of protections around the president. Why does he need lots of Secret Service agents?” Slavitt said.
That's how hard CNS has to work to continuously crank out negative anti-Biden content -- by turning masks into a political issue.
CNS Offers Negative Coverage Of Another Biden Speech Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com penchant for negative, nitpicky and cherry-picked coverage of President Biden continued with a speech he have in Georgia the day after his address to Congress (which received the same treatment). The big news, as far as Susan Jones was concerned, was Biden misspeaking:
"End detention now! End detention now!" cried protesters who interrupted President Joe Biden's speech in Duluth, Georgia on Thursday.
"Abolish ICE," they shouted, holding up a large orange banner that read, "communities not cages." Biden could not read the banner because it faced the crowd.
Biden, distracted, paused several times to listen to the protesters. He also responded to them:
"I agree with you. I'm working on it, man. Give me another five days," Biden told them. "Folks, y'all know what they're talking about. There should be no private prisons, period. None, period. That's what they're talking about. And private detention centers. They should not exist. And we are working to close all of them."
Jones went on to complain that "his administration ordered ICE and Border agents to change their language as it relates to illegal aliens" -- which, of course, CNS framed as "censorship"; an April 19 article by Craig Bannister summarized in the headline: "Biden Censors ICE, CBP Vocabulary; Bans Words Like ‘Alien’ and ‘Immigrant Assimilation’." Bannister further complained that the new terms suggest that, instead of expecting illegal aliens to 'assimilate' to U.S. laws and culture, American society must change in order to “integrate” and accommodate the newcomers."
After saying hello to the crowd, Joe veered into an (unscripted) wife joke:
"Well, I'm ready to go home, because she never says that to me at home. I was--this was worth the trip, hearing that. I am Jill's husband. It's obvious to everybody. I never get introduced as 'she's my wife.' I'm her husband. And, you know, I'm proud to be..."
Shortly after he started speaking, Biden was interrupted by -- and distracted by -- protesters screaming, "End detention now! Abolish private detention centers!" He tried to mollify them by agreeing with the need to get rid of private prisons.
Jones went on to whine that "Biden then launched into a recitation of his jobs program, his intention to halve child poverty through new tax credits and social programs, his climate change agenda, and his intention to raise taxes on the rich for the benefit of the poor -- and so much more. Biden made the same points he outlined in Wednesday night's speech to a sparsely populated, well-masked, joint session of Congress."
"I'm looking for my mask. I'm in trouble," President Joe Biden explained to a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia on Thursday when he remained at the podium after ending his speech and after introducing Georgia's two senators.
Democrat Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock waited awkwardly behind the president, as he scrambled to find his mask.
Nope, it wasn't in his speech folder. No, it hadn't fallen to the floor. Where could it be?
First Lady Jill Biden walked over to help her husband look, as the music ("Your love keeps lifting me higher") played on.
In a remarkable moment, Biden, helped by Jill, finally found his mask -- whipped it out of his pocket -- just as the song reached the line, "I'm so glad I finally found you."
Watch the video. It's funny.
Jones only thinks it's "funny" because it gives her an opportunity to depict Biden as a doddering old man -- something she would never have done of Trump despite his similar mock-worthy behavior.
Job growth was slower than expected during April, so CNSNews.com was eager to use the occasion to yet again, in Susan Jones' main story, tout how much better the economy was under Trump pre-pandemic:
Friday's jobs report reflects a reopening economy that still has a long way to go to match its Trump-era strength.
Contrary to bullish expectations, the unemployment rate actually ticked up a tenth of a point to 6.1 percent in April, and the economy added 266,000 jobs, far fewer than the 770,000 (revised) added in March and the 536,000 added in February.
Notably, the number of employed Americans increased in April for the 12th consecutive month since the economy tanked under COVID pressure in April 2020. Last month, BLS said 151,176,000 Americans were employed. That is 318,000 more than in March, and 1,145,000 more than when Joe Biden took office in January.
But the number of unemployed American also increased (+102,000) to 9,812,000 last month, boosting the unemployment rate slightly.
Jones concluded by huffing, "President Joe Biden will speak about today's jobs report later on this Friday, no doubt taking another opportunity to promote his American Jobs Plan."
Terry Jeffrey served up his usual sidebar complaint about government jobs, grousing this time that "Federal, state and local governments in the United States increased their employment by a combined 48,000 workers in April." But he knew who to blame; the article was illustrated with a picture of Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi bumping elbows, as if to (falsely) suggest they were celebrating more govenrment unemployment. Jeffrey tried to distort numbers further by comparing them to 20-eary-old numbers: "Even with the significant decline in government employment that occurred when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, government employment is still up 1,020,000 in this century, rising from 20,571,000 in January 2000 to the current 21,591,000."
CNS Offered Biased Coverage of Biden's Speech to Congress Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com served up the biased coverage of President Biden's speech to Congress that anyone with a pulse was expecting -- cherry-picking moments it could portray in a negative light for its right-wing audience whiile failing to cover the speech as a whole.
Things started off with a biased complaint from Patrick Goodenough, who grumbled that Nancy Pelosi was nicer in introducing Biden than she was ayear earlier in introducing then-President Trump:
What a difference a year makes.
As she introduced President Joe Biden ahead of his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not hide her enthusiasm.
“Members of Congress,” she said, in muffled tones through her mask. “I have the high privilege and distinct honor to present to you the president of the United States.”
Moments beforehand, Biden had handed her a copy of his speech, and the two met eyes over their masks, with Biden briefly raising one hand. When Biden finished his address, they bumped elbows.
Almost 15 months earlier, as Pelosi introduced President Trump for what would be his last State of the Union address, she said simply, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.”
CNS then launched into a series of articles target various aspects of Biden's speech:
By contrast, Susan Jones was quite reverential to Rep. Tim Scott's Republican response to Biden, oddly highlight his response to things in Biden's speech that CNS never covered:
Shortly after President Joe Biden urged Americans to seize the opportunity "to root out systemic racism that plagues America," Sen. Tim Scott -- a black man who has experienced discrimination firsthand -- rejected the claim that this is a racist country:
"Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country," Scott said in his response to Biden's speech.
[...]
Scott said he has experienced the pain of discrimination, including from "progressives" who disagree with his conservative views:
"I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I'm shopping...I've also experienced a different kind of intolerance.
"I get called "Uncle Tom" and the N-word -- by "progressives"! By liberals! Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family's poverty was actually privilege because a relative owned land generations before my time. Believe me, I know firsthand our healing is not finished."
(Indeed, "Uncle Tim" began trending on Twitter Wednesday night as Sen. Scott spoke.)
To add insult to bias, Jones contributed an article on former President Trump's reaction to Biden's speech, putting his sneer that "Nancy's mask was the biggest mask I think I've ever seen" right in the headline. She rehashed a good part of that article in a follow-up piece on Pelosi explaining why members of Congress wore masks.
When a masked President Joe Biden entered the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday to deliver his address to a limited number of senators and congressmen—as the video below shows--he fist-pumped the bare knuckles of at least eight people.
Then he patted Chief Justice John Roberts on the arm.
As he then gave his speech—with Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi conspicuously wearing masks behind him--Biden repeatedly put his hand to his face.
Sometimes he wiped his open mouth. Sometimes he rubbed the base of his nose. Then he wiped his eye.
On the way out of the chamber, he had skin-to-skin contact with multiple members—including one who held his fist in her hand and another who shook his hand.
He did this at an event where many members of Congress were denied entry into the chamber in order to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19.
This is what CNS deemed to be more important than a comprehensive, objective overview of Biden's speech.
CNS Embraces Dubious Kerry-Iran-Israel Story Topic: CNSNews.com
Just like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com has embraced the dubious claim that former secretary of state and current climate envoy John Kerry leaked information to Iran about Israeli military strikes against Iranian facilities in Syria.
An April 27 article by Patrick Goodenough surprisingly led with Kerry's denial that he had any such conversation with the Iranian foreign minister, whose conversations were leaked, as well as the likelihood that the attacks were likely already public knowledge -- but also made space for Republican attacks on Kerry. Two days later, Goodenough wrote an article that focused on the Iranian response to the leaked audio, in which he also highlighted that "In the U.S., the most explosive aspect of the leaked recording has been Zarif’s claim that Kerry had informed him about covert Israeli military strikes against Iranian targets in Syria." Goodenough noted Kerry's denial but not the fact that the State Department said the Israeli strikes were already public knowledge.
Despite the story not really going anywhere, Goodenough was determined not to give up on it. In an April 30 article, he effectively took the side of an enemy of the United States by trying to undermine Kerry's defense:
But Kerry dismissed the claim as “unequivocally false,” and the State Department defended him by saying the issue of Israeli operation in Syria was public knowledge at the time, thus implying Kerry was not telling Zarif anything he would not already have known.
However, if Zarif is to be believed, he did not know about the attacks before Kerry enlightened him.
[...]
The first time Israel publicly acknowledged that it had carried out secretive operations against Iranian interests in Syria – with the number 200 mentioned – was in September 2018.
As reported earlier, it’s unclear exactly when the Kerry-Zarif conversation took place – if indeed it did – and, if it did, whether it was during a face-to-face meeting or in some other form of communication.
Kerry has acknowledged having met with Zarif several times between the time he left the State Department (January 2017) and the time President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (May 2018). Their last known meeting, in New York in April 2018, took place five months before Israel’s public admission.
Goodenough went on to claim that this so-called scandal is "being called 'Zarifgate," -- but he doesn't say who, exactly, is calling it that -- and touted how Republican senators are demanding an investigation into Kerry's purported "transactional diplomacy," though the" transaction" was never identified.
CNS Running Out Of Ways To Downplay COVID Deaths Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com spent 2020 downplaying the number of deaths in the U.S. caused by coronavirus in an effort to boost President Trump. With Trump leaving office, CNS took a two-month break before briefly resuming death counts in February. vSusan Jones, the CNS reporter who was in charge of doing those body-count articles, hasn't done one since, however.
But the following month, editor Terry Jeffrey tried his hand at minimizing things, first serving up this bit of spin in his March 17 column:
American children 14 years and younger are more likely to be murdered than to die because of COVID-19, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[...]
These 911 murdered children were not some abstract statistic. They were human beings — at the beginning of their lives. Had the major television networks and newspapers been inclined to treat this pandemic of child murder as a major story, they could have led with it every day — telling the stories of the young and innocent victims, revealing the facts about those who murdered them, and following the actions of the law enforcement officers and prosecutors responsible for bringing those murderers to justice.
It seems, though, that Jeffrey is treating children who died of COVID as abstract statistics and not human beings because there weren't enough of them for him to turn into a cause. Does he think that all of the nearly 600,000 U.S. deaths of all ages from COVID is an abstraction too?
Jeffrey did something similar in a March 27 "news" article:
Of the 526,028 deaths in the United States involving COVID-19, as officially reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 238 have been in children 17 and younger.
That equals 0.04 percent of all COVID-19 deaths reported in the United States.
But Jeffrey gave up on that angle as well, with CNS choosing instead to do things like publish an April 21 rant by anti-vaxxer Michelle Malkin complaining that children "are being bombarded by an inescapable public relations campaign by all the Bigs — Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Tech — to brainwash them about the COVID vaccine," adding, "While children under 18 remain at the lowest risk of COVID-19, peer pressure to get the experimental jabs is enormous."
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Bashes Biden's LGBT Nominees Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com irrelevantly illustrated stories about transportation secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg with photos of he and his husband kissing -- and it went totally transphobic on HHS official nominee Rachel Levine. Read more >>
CNS Columnist Rants About Nonexistent Education Policy Change Topic: CNSNews.com
Hans Bader huffed in his April 26 CNSNews.com column:
"The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system," reports Fox News. It is doing this to promote "equity," reports the Washington Times. The VDOE also& seeks to funnel all Virginia students into classes that focus on vague "concepts" rather than "computation and routine problem practice."
Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin says that “as currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade....All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses.”
A spokesman for the VDOE did not disagree with Mr. Serotkin’s description, while claiming that teachers will be allowed to provide "differentiated instruction" within a single class.
Bader's problem is that he uncritically trusted biased, antipublic education right-wing media that manufactured outrage without bothering to get the whole story -- and Bader couldn't be bothered to do much more in-depthh research. A credible news outlet reported on the whole story:
Facing attacks from right-wing pundits and scrutiny from lawmakers, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction said on Monday that the state is not eliminating advanced high school mathematics courses.
Superintendent James Lane said the Virginia Department of Education is in the early stages of a regularly scheduled revision of its mathematics Standards of Learning, which guide school systems in their course offerings across all areas of instruction. As part of that revision process, which takes place every seven years, state officials recently began workshopping some ideas as to how Virginia could teach mathematics in a way that better prepared children for college and the workforce, Lane said.
[...]
Lane added that these suggestions are still just that — suggestions. The department is currently gathering public feedback and has yet to draft a new version of its mathematics standards. The earliest a draft could come before the Virginia Board of Education is school year 2022-2023, Lane said, and the earliest any Virginia students would begin learning math under the new paradigm is school year 2025-2026.
[...]
In multiple rounds of video calls with reporters Monday, Lane said this assertion [that accelerated math classes would be eliminated] is false. He said the initiative does not propose eliminating accelerated math classes, nor does it require all students in a grade to take the same math class no matter their level of ability. Under the initiative, students would still take higher-level classes tailored to their grasp of mathematics, he said.
Lane also noted that those kinds of decisions — how an advanced student should best progress through middle and high school math classes — would be made by local school officials, not the Virginia Department of Education, as has always been the case. Every school division has vast discretion in how it uses state standards to formulate its curriculum, he said: “Ultimately the school divisions decide what courses look like.”
Serotkin went on to retract his earlier claims, conceding that after seeing the full policy state from the education department, “some parts of this are quite different than their previous messaging and information provided, and alleviates much of my concern.”
Nevertheless, Bader went on to cite more right-wing attacks on the nonexistent policy changes, including a guy named James Bacon, whom he again disingenuously identified as "former publisher of Virginia Business" to obscure the fact that these days he's little mnre than a right-wing blogger.But narrative over facts is what the right-wing media -- which includes Bader -- is all about these days.
On Tuesday, April 27, Democratic President Joe Biden announced that he had nominated Gina Ortiz Jones to be the Undersecretary of the Air Force, the No. 2 position at that military branch. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Jones will be the first openly gay, Filipino woman to serve in that post.
[...]
On Jones's nomination to be Undersecretary of the Air Force, Jennifer Dane, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, which advocates for LGBTQ+ service members and veterans, told the Dallas Morning News, “We are beyond thrilled. She represents diverse intersections of minority groups.... She knows firsthand what damaging effects discriminatory policies like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ have on the health and well-being of the force.”
The LGBTQ Institute tweeted, "The Biden Administration continues to prioritize qualified out voices -- and @GinaOrtizJones record of dedicated public service speaks for itself. We're with you, Gina! Congratulations!"
On May 5, Chapman expressed outrage at other LGBT nominees by highlighting the two LGBT nominees and ignoring the other five nominated at the same time:
In addition to nominating an openly lesbian Filipino woman to serve as the No. 2 at the Air Force, President Biden nominated a transgender "woman" and a lesbian to serve in two other prominent positions at the Department of Defense (DoD).
On Apr. 23, President Biden announced seven nominees, including Brenda Sue Fulton for Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs at DoD, and Shawn Skelly for Assistant Secretary for Readiness at DoD.
Skelly, a transgender "female" (biological male), served as a Naval Flight Officer for 20-plus years flying the S-3 Viking. She retired as a Commander in 2008. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Skelly as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.
[...]
Brenda Sue Fulton, an open lesbian, is a graduate of West Point and a former Army officer. She was honorably discharged as a captain. Felton then spent 25 years working in brand management for Fortune 100 companies.
Chapman's CNS is obsessed with tagging transgender women as "biological males."
CNS' Jeffrey Still Complaing About Deficit, Still Won't Admit Trump's Role In Creating It Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey has a serious double standard about federal spending -- he'll criticize Democrats all day long for running up deficits, but he's loath to bring up the fact that a Republican president and a Re[publican-controlled Sente ran up trillions of dollars in federal deficits over the past four years. And with a new Democratic president, he's back into his pattern of hypocritical Democrat-blaming.
In addition to the usual complaints CNS made against President Biden's coronavirus relief bill, Jeffrey had his usual culture-war attacks on it, as summarized in the headlines of the articles he wrote on it:
In the former, Jeffrey groused that thte National Endowment for the Arts gave $25,000 to a theater group to put on a production calling itself "a groundbreaking trans and queer examination of American masculinity's deep roots in Trouble." Because he clearly has not seen the production and cannot attack it beyond its non-heteronormative subject matter, Jeffrey ranted about whether the NEA should get any money at all: "Did federally funded artists produce any great masterpieces in this period? Did American taxpayers get their money's worth? Should we now use a bill allegedly designed to fight COVID-19 to pay the NEA an additional $135 million?" He went on to suggest the production was "bad 'art'" even though, again, he has never seen it.
In the latter, Jeffrey bashed the NEA again, as well as complaining that "The bill also funds rental assistance and housing vouchers." He didn't explain why helping people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic pay their rant is such a terrible thing.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey returned to his old trick of airbrushing Republicans out of his complaints about spending. He wrote in a March 31 article:
The federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion in the first six months of fiscal 2021, according to the official figures published by the U.S. Treasury.
On Sept. 30, 2020, the last day of fiscal 2020, the federal debt closed at $26,945,391,194,615.15. At the close of business on March 29, it was $27,990,843,257,187.65.
Thus, the federal debt has risen $1,045,452,062,572.50 so far in fiscal 2021.
Jeffrey failed to mention the fact that for the first 3 1/2 months of fiscal 2021, there was a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate, thus making Repubicans responsible for a good part of that debt. But the article is illustrated with a file photo of Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
Federal taxes, spending and the federal deficit all set records in the first six months of fiscal 2021 (October through March), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Federal taxes climbed to a record $1,703,949,000,000 in the October-through-March period, while federal spending climbed to $3,410,194,000,000.
Again, Jeffrey failed to tell readers that there was a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate for the first 3 1/2 months of the fiscal year. Again, he illustrated his article with only Democrats -- this time Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
On May 12, Jeffrey lazily recycled that article but with updated numbers, ominously adding: "This is the first time that federal spending has exceeded $4 trillion in the first seven months of a fiscal year." Once more, he censored the fact that there was a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate for the first 3 1/2 months of the fiscal year, and he again illustrated his article with only Democrats -- this time Biden, Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.
As usual, there's a tag at the end of these articles stating, "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Is Jeffrey really serving Wold's memory with his journalistic deception and dishonesty?
Jeffrey's bias was mirrored by anti-Biden CNS reporter Susan Jones, who complained in an April 28 article about spending under Biden headlined "In His First Hundred Days, Biden Calls for $6.2 Trillion in Taxpayer Spending." She also baselessly implied a quid pro quo to the Obama by claiming that a program to improve nutrition standards in school meals was "a billion-dollar nod to former First Lady Michelle Obama." Jones did not explain why nutritional meals for children are a bad thing.
CNS Feeling The Need To Once Again Exploit Chicago Crime For Political Purposes Topic: CNSNews.com
The last time we checked on CNSNews' sporadic, agenda-driven obsession with violence in Chicago, it had spent last summer touting it. Despite that emphasis -- and despite the need to portray Donald Trump as a law-and-order president and get him re-elected -- CNS didn't do much with Chicago as the election got closer. A Sept. 9 article by Susan Jones touted how an initiative launched under Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr called Operation Legend that "dispatched more than one thousand skilled federal agents to Chicago and eight other cities to fight violent crime" was allegedly a success," with Jones uncritically writing:
"Operation Legend's success is perhaps most dramatic here in Chicago," Barr continued. "When the operation was announced on July 22, homicides in the city were up 51 percent over 2019. Over the previous weekend, more than 60 people had been shot in Chicago with over a dozen fatalities.
"Other violent crime, including looting and rioting, was increasing also. And the signs pointed to the problem getting even worse with the campaign to demonize and defund the police gaining traction, and criminals increasingly believing they could operate with impunity."
Barr said federal agents and grant money, working in partnership with local law enforcement, have now made more than 500 arrests in Chicago, and of those, 124 people face federal charges. "Many of those defendants are now detained pending trial rather than causing harm on the streets."
Barr said in the first five weeks of Operation Legend in Chicago, murders dropped by 50 percent over the previous five weeks. August saw a 45 percent decrease in murders compared to July and a 35 percent decrease compared to June.
"The bottom line is that Operation Legend has played a critical role in cutting Chicago’s murder rate roughly in half since before the operation."
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- the leader of the Chicago obsession -- did only one body-count article before the eleciton, an Oct. 13 article stating that "Although the national media largely ignore the rampant gun violence in the Windy City, the local media in Chicago reported that 53 people were shot, five fatally, over this past weekend (Oct. 9-12)."Chapman did not mention Barr's Operation Legend, which supposedly cut crime in Chicago.
Chicago crime wasn't mentioned again for seven months. Now, with Joe Biden as president, Chapman could implicitly blame him. He wrote an April 13 article:
According to the Chicago Tribune, which maintains an extensive database on homicide and death by gunfire, at least 585 blacks were killed in the last 365 days in the Windy City. These homicides far exceed the number of Hispanics killed (71), whites (43), and Asians (2) in the last 365 days.
In addition, The Tribune reports that 155 blacks have been killed so far in 2021, which is the highest number for the first three months of a year since 2017.
[...]
Also during the last 365 days, there were 203 homicides which involved death by shooting.
On top of that, 585 blacks were homicide victims during the last 365 days. The data show that most of the homicide victims are in their 20s and 30s.
Unsurprisingly, Chapman didn't mention the Trump administration's Operation Legend, which supposedly solved this issue.Also: Isn't the Tribune part of the evil "liberal media" that CNS and its parent, the Media Research Center, trash for a living? Chapman didn't explain why he considers this "liberal media" source to be credible.
Chapman served up more body counts in an April 21 article that began by noting that "Over the weekend in Chicago, at least 27 people were shot, three of whom died, including a 7-year-old girl who was sitting with her father in a car at a McDonald's drive-thru when she was killed." It was again based on Tribune reports. Chapman followed with an April 28 article: "4 people were killed and 21 wounded in shootings. The majority of the homicides in Chicago are the result of gun volence, according to the Chicago Tribune, and the "majority of the victims of homicide in Chicago are young, black men."
Chapman inexplicably took a week off -- perhaps there weren't enough shootings for him to write an article about -- but retuirned on May 11:
Chicago experienced another violent weekend with 26 shootings, 5 of which were fatal, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. As homicide data show, the majority of victims in Chicago are young, black men. In the last 365 days (through May 10), 590 black Chicagoans have been killed, reported the Chicago Tribune.
Isn't the Sun-Times also part of the "liberal media" too? Apparently, if the numbers are right -- and can be exploited for political purposes -- they're suddenly trustworthy too.
CNS Complained About Slow U.S. Sanctions Against Russia -- But Barely Reported On Them When They Happened Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's coverage of Russia has become oddly anti-American under President Biden. Patrick Goodenough served up another example, complaiing in an April 14 article:
The Biden administration has been pledging “costs” and “consequences” for malign Russian behavior for several months but at a time when a large troop buildup on Ukraine’s borders has sent tensions soaring, a senior State Department official on Tuesday called for patience, while suggesting that steps may be coming soon.
“Be patient,” the official told reporters accompanying Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Brussels dominated by the crisis. “Stay tuned.”
On the day of President Biden’s inauguration the White House announced that he had tasked the intelligence community to carry out a review of Russian actions including hacking, election interference, the attempted assassination of dissidents, and allegations of bounties offered on the lives of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Since then administration officials have repeatedly cited the review, asserting that there will be consequences for Moscow’s damaging actions.
The Biden administration announced sanctions against Russia the very next day -- but Goodenough did not see fit to devote a story to that. Instead, it was given only passing mention in an article in which the headline was that the administration admitted “low to moderate confidence” in a claim that Russia had offered terrorists bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan which "Joe Biden repeatedly flayed President Trump over the allegations" during the presidential campaign, hyping how "White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday dodged a question on whether the president now regrets that." OF course, Goodenough didn't mention others have pointed out that "low to moderate confidence" in the story does not necessarily mean it was false, and paying bounties to kill U.S. soldiers is not exactly out of character for Putin's Russia.
In between, Goodenough wrote an article featuring how "Russia is “working actively” to move away from the U.S. dollar and Western payment systems, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to Iran this week" -- thus implicitly blaming Biden for the situation. But later in the artiucle, he admitted that "Russia has been pivoting away the dollar since 2014, when the U.S. and many European governments targeted senior Russian officials and sectors of the Russian economy for sanctions in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine," while also adding that "some economists have argued in recent years that Washington’s sanctions policies could weaken the dollar’s global leadership in the long run."
That's some severe anti-Biden bias happening at the MRC.
CNS' Jones Still Complaining Trump's Mental Health Was Questioned Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has spent thepast year pushing the malicious right-wing narrative that President Biden is purportedly suffering from "cognitive decline." Now that he's president, CNS has been shamelessly pushing that smear every chance it can, making him look as bad and senile as it can by pulling incidents out of context:
And CNS' big headline from Biden's March 25 press conference was that he purportedly suffered a "four-second mental meltdown," whatever that is.
All of which makes an April 19 article by Susan Jones doubly petulant. nShe started by complaining: "At the end of a joint interview with Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Sunday, 'Fox News Sunday' host Chris Wallace cornered Cornyn for questioning whether President Joe Biden is 'really in charge.'" After lamenting that "Cornyn was defensive" in his response by denying he was questioning Biden's mental health, she huffed: "Message to viewers: It's not okay to question Biden's mental competency when it was not only okay -- it was imperative -- for Democrat [sic] partisans to question President Donald Trump's."
By that standard, Jones and her CNS co-workers are Republican partisans because they apparentluy believe it's imperative to question Biden's "cognitive decline," given all the articles they have published on it.
Jones, by the way, is bizarrely sensitive about people questioning Trump's mental health, even though there was ample evidence to do so. In August she groused, "Liberal activists in the media are now focusing in particular on Trump's mispronunciations ("Yosemite") and twisting his words ("It is what it is") to make it look like he doesn't grasp the severity of the pandemic, for example. The intent is to portray Trump as cognitive impaired." And her April 19 article contains a like to a 2017 article she wrote complaining that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough went on an "anti-Trump diatribe" staing thim "to be mentally unfit for office and in the early stages of dementia."
Jones appears to be conceding that, by her own definition, she's a Republican activist, not a reporter, and it's never OK for a CNS employee to question Trump's mental heatlh.
CNSNews.com started out the month of March the way it had the first two months of the year -- as the loyal PR division for right-wing radio host Mark Levin. The stenography was plentiful:
How desperate is CNSNews.com to attack President Biden at every possible opportunity? It ran an article about his hair. No, really.
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