CNS Joins MRC Parent In Flip-Flopping On Musk Over Twitter Buy Topic: CNSNews.com
Like the Media Research Center, its "news" division CNSNews.com was critical of Elon Musk -- in particular his ties to Russia and China -- before sharing the big flip-flop with its parent over his plan to buy Twitter. For example, an April 2020 column by Chuck Muth denounced Musk as a "repeated Trump backstabber" who engaged in "political grandstanding" for being named to Trump administration advisory councils then "chose publicly to throw a fit and leave the council by way of a tweet." A June 2020 column by Justin Caruso was headlined "Celebrate the SpaceX Launch, but Don’t Pretend Elon Musk Is a Free Market Hero,"noting that Musk's space company "is ultimately looking for big bucks from the government in the form of federal subsidies." A July 2020 article by Craig Bannister seemed to be upset that "Musk said that government should maximize citizens’ happiness by giving each one of them money to be spent however he or she sees fit."
Christopher Smithmyer ranted against Musk in a June 2021 column:
No stranger to getting in bed with U.S. geopolitical adversaries, it looks like Musk may have a new controversial partnership in his crosshairs: Russia.
In a recent webinar Q&A for Kremlin students, Musk was asked if he had plans to expand his empire to Russia. The Tesla and SpaceX boss answered in the affirmative, saying that he thinks they are “close” to establishing a presence in the country.
Just how far does Musk have to stray before the U.S. starts to place some sort of legal boundaries on him?
It wasn't long after that that CNS stopped being concerned about putting legal boundaries on Musk. A Dec, 1 article by Bannister touted how Musk said that "People should be taught how to debug their brains and purge mental malware," Bannister followed that with a Dec. 15 article cheering how "After Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) accused Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk of “freeloading,” the billionaire who publicly opposes Democrats’ $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better” plan, fired back with a series of barbs and rebuttals," including "liken[ing] Warren to an angry woman who yells at everyone for no reason and applying the pejorative moniker 'Karen' to the senator."
When Musk bought a stake in Twitter in early April, Bannister rushed to approve with an April 7 article featuring fave Republican Rep. Rand Paul claiming that "Musk’s impact will be even more beneficial to free speech if liberal outrage over the news prompts Twitter’s “left-wing crazies” to abandon the social media platform they currently dominate." Susan Jones whined about criticism of Musk's offer to buy all of Twitter in an April 15 article:
"Morning Joe" anchor Mika Brzezinski on Friday left no doubt about where she stands on speech she doesn't like.
She not only slammed Twitter as "Donald Trump's playground to be...cruel toward people," but she also called Elon Musk's attempted takeover of Twitter a "very dangerous precedent."
To help Brzezinski buttress the Musk-bashing, MSNBC brought on a little-known columnist who slammed Musk as a "petulant billionaire" and -- yes, of course -- a "racist."
Jones buried in a transcript how the "little-known columnist" -- Linette Lopez of Business Insider -- pointed out inconvenient facts such as Tesla being sued for discrimination and needing at "Twitter sitter" because 'He's not allowed to tweet things about Tesla without legal review because he used Twitter to commit fraud" (though Jones did link to outside items proving Lopez correct). Jones never explained why she denigrated Lopez as a "little-known columnist" when she was actually fact-checking and verifying the things Lopez said.
An April 18 article by Bannister promoted former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt giving Twitter's handling of Musk's bid for purportedly ignoring their responsibility to act in the best interests of the company’s shareholders. And managing editor Michael W. Chapman used an April 20 article to detail a non-Twitter-related pontification from Musk: "Although some climate change activists claim overpopulation is a serious problem that contributes to global warming and must be curtailed, investor and business giant Elon Musk said it is a "false impression" that there are too many people in the world, and added that the 'Earth could maintain a population many times the current level.'"
Bannister followd up with an April 22 article forwarding an implied threat to Twitter's board: "A letter sent Friday and signed by a group of 18 House Republicans, headlined by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), calls on Twitter’s board members to prepare to provide information about their efforts to prevent billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk from buying the social media platform." Bannister went on to gush that "Musk is seeking to buy the social media giant in order to rid it of its partisan censorship practices," as if any proof existed to back up Musk's words.
When the Twitter board accepted Musk's offer on April 25, the editorial floodgates opened at CNS as if it was working for Musk directly:
CNS' columnists were in a gushing mood as well. Ryan McMaken wrote an April 26 column headlined "Is Musk's Twitter Buyout the First Counteroffensive Against 'Woke CEOs'?" while Ben Shapiro proclaimed that "Musk may be just the man to help restore institutional trust to social media. But that will require him to bulldoze those who helped undermine that trust in the first place."
Needless to say, there was no mention of Musk's real-life record on free-speech issues; as Judd Legum detailed, Musk is all too eager to censor speech by trying to shut down critics, firing Tesla workers for union advocacy, and asking the Chinese governmen to silence Tesla critics in that country.
MRC's Doocy Defense Committee Activates Again Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center acts as the Peter Doocy Protection Center, attacking anyone who dares criticize its favorite biased Fox News reporter, particularly after President Biden got caught calling him a "stupid son of a bitch.". Well, Doocy got besmirched again, and PDPC leader (and chief Doocy man-crusher) Curtis Houck snapped into defense mode yet again in an April 15 post:
Thursday night during a taping of the Obama bros podcast Pod Save America, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki implicitly doubled down on President Biden’s insistence that Fox News reporter Peter Doocy is a “stupid son of a bitch,”arguing he works for a network that “provides questions that...might make anyone sound like” one.
Psaki also weighed in on her tenure at the Briefing Room podium, danced around questions of when she’ll move to MSNBC. And seeing as how the press corps have decided it’s not an issue (other than a few questions on April 1) to take a taxpayer-funded salary while negotiating with an outlet that’s supposed to hold her to account, she’s clearly felt empowered to say things like that.
Co-host and former Psaki colleague Dan Pfeiffer brought up Doocy (to the groan and laughter of the live audience) as a way of asking: Given the show’s audience and the voting demographics of Washington D.C., the crowd went wild in applause and laughter.
Psaki found a back-handed way of answering in the affirmative: “[H]e works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.”
Both the crowd and co-hosts went ballistic in laughter, which gave Psaki the chance to pivot to a more diplomatic answer with a retelling of what happened on January 24 between Biden and Doocy because it was “a nice Peter Doocy story” even if it’s not “popular in this crowd.”
Houck went on to gushabout how Doocy "took the high road when talking about" Biden's comment, though he grudgingly conceded that "Psaki added it 'was a moment of grace' by Doocy and one could say that without 'lik[ing] everything [he] says and does.'"
A couple hours later, Houck lashed out at designated MRC villain Brian Stelter of CNN for refusing to be the top-level Doocy-fluffer he is:
Like the quisling that he is, CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter defended White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday afternoon after she said “sound[s] like a stupid son of a bitch” by working at Fox News, arguing “she didn’t really criticize him” and was “relaxing” in her final moments before leaving for MSNBC.
The liberal media janitor appeared on CNN Newsroom and was proceeded by co-host Victor Blackwell characterizing Psaki’s remarks as “choice words for her frequent press room rival, Peter Doocy during a taping of Pod Save America podcast.”
After co-host Alisyn Camerota asked whether Psaki should know the tough questions and Doocy being “a thorn in the side...come[s] with the territory,” Stelter conceded the last part, but quickly went into spin mode sucking up to Psaki.
“I think the point she's trying to say there is that Fox pushes storylines that are sometimes nonsense. Doocy does that in the briefing room,” Stelter boasted, fretting that her comments “to a liberal audience” will “cause a lot of outrage from Fox” lasting a “few days.”
[...]
Stelter added another shameless defense by claiming Psaki “didn’t really criticize him directly” but instead “Fox News as an organization.”
At no point did Houck dispute Stelter's contention that Doocy's job is to "advance right-wing talking points" on behalf of his employer -- after all, that's exactly why Houck has such a man-crush on the guy. Houck concluded by sneering that Stelter expressed "virulent hatred for Fox" -- which is a lie. Stelter simply told the truth, which, again, Houc, did not dispute; the only "virulent hatred" we see is from Houck against anyone who offers a truthful assessment of Doocy.
Of course, Houck is personally invested in pushing every narrative Doocy and Fox News forward, no matter how bogus, because he is a true right-wing believer who believes they are above all criticism. To him, Psaki and Stelter are subhuman for daring to criticize them.
UPDATE: Newsmax host Eric Bolling also got into the act, saying on his April 19 show that Russians see Carlson “as their ally,” and referred to him as “the guy across the ocean who’s helping their cause,” and that Carlson's failure to condemn Russian war crimes puts him on "the wrong side of history."
Newsmax's Morris Still Hammering Tucker Carlson For Supporting Putin Topic: Newsmax
Dick Morris has been notoriously wrong about many things, but his stopped-clock example of hammeringTucker Carlson and Fox News for effectively supporting Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine has been surprisingly persistent and on point. He served up even more in an April 17 article:
Russia's Vladimir Putin has snagged Fox News and host Tucker Carlson hook, line, and sinker by his propaganda machine, sharing an "anti-American" narrative to conservatives, according to political strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax.
"Putin's strategy is, essentially what the Russians have always done, which is when they do something wrong: They take the copy and they turn it around on its head and blame us for it, even though it's something that they, and not we, have done," Morris, a former adviser to both former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump, told Saturday's "The Count."
"It's shocking to see Tucker Carlson doing this, and it's outrageous to see Fox News going along. This is not just pro-Russia, this is not anti-Ukraine, this anti-American."
[...]
Russia is even using Fox News and Carlson clips to justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine and continued escalations, Morris lamented.
"To see the Russian state media, the propaganda machine, quoting the leading talk television host in the United States is outrageous," he added.
Siding with Russia as it invades Ukraine is not only a bad look, but it is spreading disinformation to Americans, according to Morris.
"I think it's absurd and really shocking that Tucker Carlson in particular and Fox News in general really appear to be siding with Russia in this war," he said. "We have Tucker's overt statements saying, 'I side with Russia or I prefer Russia.'"
"And every night Tucker spews a monologue that basically says that the United States and our allies caused this invasion by provoking it by flirting with the idea of Ukraine joining NATO."
Morris said he spent a night this week watching Fox News and "found absolutely no coverage of what's really happening in Ukraine."
"No coverage of Putin's war crimes; no coverage of the atrocities – sometimes they pass it off with, 'We all know that Putin's not a great guy, but,' and then you go on," Morris noted.
[...]
Fox News is just not sharing the total truth, Morris concluded.
"Every night we see real images, not phony ones, of unbelievable havoc and hell being wrought upon the people of Ukraine by Russia – and yet we turn to Fox News and we see this stuff denied, downplayed," Morris said.
Morris used a May 17 column to lash out at Republican Sen. Rand Paul for obstructing U.S. aid to Ukraine, taking another shot at Carlson and Fox News in the process:
Rand Paul and a small band of Republican congressmen are using the same arguments and the same phony construct to oppose aid to Ukraine.
It is a message that Fox News' Tucker Carlson has been pushing for weeks: Why are we spending money on Ukraine when we need money for cancer research, roads and bridges, border security -- and as we struggle to keep gas prices down and fight inflation.
Carlson has long been a Kremlin apologist. And Fox News has been abetting his position with little or no coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine during its prime-time hours.
Fox's audience is becoming increasingly blind to the reality of this war, opening the door for Rand Paul and others.
Thankfully most Americans see the real danger Vladimir Putin poses to all of us.
Morris isn't the only person at Newsmax serving up stopped-clock takes, however. The hard-right David Horowitz and Daniel Greenfield took their own shots at Carlson and Fox News in a May 19 column, though he did make sure to blame Democrats for doing things that led up to this and President Biden for not doing anything effective:
Tucker and the conservative patriots who have joined him are wrong — wrong in their analyses, wrong in their priorities, and wrong in their opposition to a war that the West (led by the United States) must win.
Tucker has argued that Ukraine is a remote European country, and the U.S. has no security interest there that is worth the cost or the risks involved in defending it.
But in today’s world there are no remote countries.
[...]
What is happening in Ukraine is like 40 Guernicas or Coventrys rolled into one; it is also a spectacle of inspiring human heroism and courage with few parallels in our time or any other.
America can not turn our backs on the ordinary Ukrainian people who have risen so nobly to defend their homes.
[...]
Under President Trump, this crisis would not have occurred. There’s a reason that both of Putin’s invasions of Ukraine took place under White House Democrats.
That’s also why Russia’s Alaska incursions flared up under Obama and Biden.
Weakness is much more likely to bring on a war.
Abandoning the Ukrainians would be a sign of crippling weakness.
Biden badly mishandled the Ukraine crisis.
But we should not let the corruption in the White House or other political institutions, here and abroad, blind us to the human suffering or the bigger issues at stake for our national security.
If Russia’s efforts in Ukraine fall apart, it will not be due to Biden or the European Union, but the resilience of ordinary people in the face of war.
Horowitz and Greenfield can't quite concede that the billions in aid and weapons the U.S. and Europe are sending to Ukraine might be playing a major role, presumably because Democrats and liberals are behind them.
WND Writer Can't Stop Defending The (Dubious) Honor Of Ivermectin Topic: WorldNetDaily
Art Moore has been WorldNetDaioly's biggestpromoter of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID -- and biggest censor of the fact that legitimate testing has shown that the drug doesn't actually work in treating COVID. So whenever someone besmirches the drug (read: accurately report on it), Moore is there to defend its good name. He complained in an April 22 article:
Dr. Anthony Fauci says that to preserve his "integrity," he had to publicly "correct" President Trump on the validity of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19.
[...]
He complained of "the people who were talking about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and the virus is going to go away, it’s going to disappear."
"I had to maintain my integrity as well as my responsibility to the public to tell them the truth. That clearly alienated a lot of people," Fauci said.
Then Moore's defense brigade kicked in:
In fact, when the pandemic began, mass vaccination to quell a pandemic was an unproven novel therapy while physicians and medical scientists around the world were finding success using anti-viral drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Esteemed epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch of Yale Medical School was among scientists and physicians who said in Senate testimony that thousands of lives could have been saved if the treatments had not been suppressed.
One major problem for the promoters of the experimental vaccines was that they could not be granted emergency use authorization – shrinking the approval time from less give to 10 years to less than one year – if a viable alternative treatment of COVID-19 was available.
Under Fauci's leadership, physicians were punished, including losing their licenses, for legally treating COVID patients with the drugs off-label.
From 10% to 20% of all prescribed drugs are used off-label. Ivermectin has been shown to be effective as a preventative and early- and late-stage in at least 82 controlled studies. Researchers have demonstrated its ability to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 as well as its strong anti-inflammatory properties.
Risch is an anti-vaccine activist, so he's much less "esteemed" in real life than Moore would like you to believe. Also, mass vaccination is has proven quite successful in the past to quell or eradicate diseases, smallpox and polio among them. And again, Moore linked to the anonymous website that claims to document ivermectin studies, which may be secretly run by WND's favorite fringe-right medical group, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
The defense continued:
One of the physicians punished for treating patients off-label is Dr. Meryl Nass, a Maine clinician and scientist. She points to a 2005 paper published by the CDC showing chloroquine – the stronger form of hydroxychloroquine – was an effective drug against SARS coronaviruses, exhibiting "strong antiviral effects."
In 2014, scientists at Fauci's NIAID came to the same conclusion.
In fact, Nass is an anti-vaxx extremist whose medical license was suspended because she lied to get an ivermectin prescription by falsely claiming a patient had Lyme disease.
Moore sent on to hype "prominent cardiologist and epidemiologist" Peter McCullough -- a major COVID miosinformer -- for praising the South Carolina attorney general for issuing a legal opinion that permitted medicationslike ivermectin to be used for"off-label" uses.
IN an April 26 article, Moore repeated last fall's defense of ivermectin fronm those who (accurately) point out that its main purposethese days is treating horses and livestock:
Noticing that the word ivermectin is trending on the newly liberated Twitterverse under Elon Musk, the FDA has reprised its disingenuous "horse dewormer" smear of the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
"Hold your horses, y'all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn't authorized or approved to treat COVID-19," said a post on the FDA's Twitter account.
The reference to horses played on the explosion last fall of media articles and social media posts mocking people who treated COVID-19 with the drug as ignorant rubes who were sneaking into farms or patronizing Tractor Supply stores in quest of "horse dewormer."
During the pandemic, Twitter and other social media platforms censored positive mention of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine despite the countless testimonies and dozens of studies from around the world showing the drugs to be effective in treating COVID-19.
Dr. Pierre Kory, who has testified to the Senate of the effectiveness of ivermectin against COVID-19, fired back.
"You are not a horse, you are not a cow, you are Big Pharma's ass," he tweeted.
The FDA, he wrote, was "messaging BS" by citing "one corrupt study" while ignoring 82 trials, including 33 randomized controlled trials with 129,000 patients from 27 countries that show "massive benefits" of ivermectin in treating COVID-19.
"Stop lying man, people are dying," he wrote, adding the hashtag "earlytreatmentworks."
Moore also gave space to Kory to complain about a trial in Brazil that found ivermectin had no effect on COVID hospitalizations, insisting that "The dosage of the trial was far lower than everyday Brazilian clinicians were prescribing patients at the time to match the strength of the strain."
NEW ARTICLE: Hans Bader Goes Racial Topic: CNSNews.com
The CNSNews.com columnist is concerned that non-white people might get access to a COVID vaccine or treatment before he does -- and that there may be too many black people on the Supreme Court. Read more >>
MRC Completes Flip-Flop, Defends Musk Against Criticism Of China Ties Topic: Media Research Center
Remember when the Media Research Center soured on Elon Musk when it was pointed out he's quite cozy with China so he can sell Teslas there, which it totally forgot about when Musk got interested in buying Twitter? well, the flip-flop became complete in an April 26 post by Kyle Drennen, who criticized media outlets for reminding people of that fact:
On Tuesday, both NBC’s Today show and ABC’s Good Morning America hyped a suggestion from Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos that fellow billionaire and new Twitter owner Elon Musk might be under the influence of China’s authoritarian regime given the amount of business the Tesla CEO does in the country. However, neither network mentioned that in a follow-up tweet, Bezos admitted that Musk was “probably not” beholden to China.
“Sold. After weeks of watching and waiting, Elon Musk reaches a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion,” co-host Hoda Kotb announced at the start of NBC’s Today show. She then was quick to sound the alarm: “This morning, inside the world’s richest man’s plans to change the popular platform, the critics who call the move dangerous, and the looming battle of the billionaires as Jeff Bezos raises his own questions about the deal.”
[...]
Bezos initially quote-tweeted someone pointing out Musk’s business interests in China, speculating: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”
However, in a second tweet in the thread, Bezos promptly dismissed the notion: “My own answer to this question is probably not. The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.”
In the final tweet in the thread, Bezos neutrally observed: “But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.”
Bezos conceding that Musk is "probably not" under Chinese influence is not the ringing endorsement that Drennen wants you to think it is. Drennen also failed to remind readers that just three and a half months earlier, MRC sports blogger Jay Maxson was cheering then-NBA player Enes Freedom Kanter for calling out Musk because heopened a Tesla showroom in Xinjiang, "the province which contains what many view as modern-day concentration camps," adding that "Fanboy Musk also credited China with its people’s happiness, indicating he must have a warped sense of what constitutes that human emotion."
Instead, Drennen played whataboutism with Bezos, complaining that the media reports lacked "an examination of the significant business ties Bezos has with China. That includes the Chinese state-run publication China Daily paying millions to run an insert in the Post for years that spewed regime propaganda."
It will not surprise you to learn that the MRC has never menttioned Musk's coziness with China again.
That wasn't the only flip-flop the MRC performed in service of Musk, however. An April 30 item by Autumn Johnson stated:
Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen said she was “cautiously optimistic” about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Haugen alleged last year that Facebook prioritized its own profits over public safety and encouraged content moderation in her testimony to Congress.
Fox News reported that she said that Mark Zuckerberg has too many people around him who “tell him what he wants to hear.” She said that Musk handled feedback better.
"I have a feeling that Facebook is going to rationalize to itself that it can't really do anything different than it already does because of the demands of the market," Haugen said, according to Fox. "I think there's a huge opportunity here for Elon to really demonstrate that there's another way forward."
Last fall, the MRC was trashing Haugen for her whistleblowing -- a script that just happened to be supplied to it by Facebook itself. Johnson didn't mention any of that or concede her employer was acting as a Facebook tool; instead, she uncritically quoted Haugen saying that "maintained her stance about the issues at Facebook."
Meanwhile, the MRC was still busy gushing over his planned Twitter purchase and whatever else he says:
Needless to say, the MRC made no mention of the fact that, as we've noted, Musk's real-life commitment to "free speech" pales in comparison to the flowery language the MRC has heaped upon him.
WND Twists Obama's Words To Portray COVID Vaccines As A Failure Topic: WorldNetDaily
Barack Obama hasn't been president for years, but there's still a raging case of Obama Derangement Syndrome at WorldNetDaily. Read how Art Moore twists Obama's words to conform to WND's COVID vaccine conspiracy theories in an April 21 article:
In a direct appeal to the Silicon Valley tech giants to censor "misinformation" on social media, former President Obama on Thursday unwittingly affirmed the contention of critics of the COVID-19 vaccines that the fact that clinical trials have not been completed makes the people who have received the shots part of an experiment.
"Despite the fact that we have now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk, and put their families at risk, rather than get vaccinated," he said in a speech at Stanford University.
"People are dying because of misinformation."
The former president's remarks illustrate the danger of censoring "misinformation," if only because one person's misinformation might well be another person's evidence-based opinion or eventually become common knowledge.
Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms notoriously have censored the voices of some of the world's most highly qualified medical scientists because their views don't align with the ever-evolving government and establishment media position on the pandemic and related issues.
President Biden and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, for example, assured Americans when the vaccines were rolled out that if you get vaccinated – for a disease that the CDC says has a survival rate of nearly 100% for people without chronic comorbidities – you won't get infected and you won't transmit the virus.
That hasn't turned out to be true, confirming the censored warnings of scientists such as Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough, who in January observed the "crumbling" establishment narrative that included "false statements regarding asymptomatic spread, reliance on lockdown and masks – which obviously didn't work – the suppression of early treatment, the mass promotion of vaccines that failed."
Both Malone and McCullough are COVID misinformers who have been repeatedly proven wrong, so maybe they're not the best example Moore could be citing. It's also a lie to portray the COVID vaccines as still experimental -- but the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been fully approved by the FDA -- as a "failure" because they weren't 100% effective in preventing COVID infection with zero side effects -- no vaccine meets that extremely high bar.In fact, the vacciners have been credited with preventing millions of deaths and hospitalizations.
The rest of the article is largely a rehash of dubious claims aout the vaccine WND has previously published. WND has a badhabit of publishing false and misleading claims about the vaccines.
Newsmax's Hirsen: You Lose Your Soul If You Get Microchipped Topic: Newsmax
Last year, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen embraced extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for pushing the idea of COVID vaccination passports as the mark of the beast. Hirsen went that direction again in his May 2 column that declared getting an implantable chip that could be used for making financial transactions would also be the mark of the beast under the dire headline "Submitting to Microchip Means Forfeiting Your Soul":
Bible adherents who are Christian believe that The Word of God contains prophecies within the Books of Revelation and Daniel, which provide a description of a future time in which a single global government will assert control over a world economy.
Not all Bible believers view prophecy in a literal sense, but a sizable number do. Such individuals give greater weight to the Scripture passage in which a malevolent world leader forces “…all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads.”
The Bible passage goes on to state that the people oppressed by this evil leader would be unable to “… buy or sell unless they had the mark …”
The demand that one's hand or forehead be marked in order to purchase or otherwise engage in trade is commonly referred to by Scripture scholars and Bible adherents alike as “The Mark of the Beast.”
In order to conform to Biblical predictions, the above described hand implant technology would have to be implemented through coercion. This is not nearly as far-fetched as it used to seem; that power hungry elites would actually force individuals to be microchipped.
The notion of our economy being transformed into a cashless society, where governing authorities have power over the operation of individual microchips, is a nightmare scenario. Freedom itself would be snuffed out.
[...]
When you think about it, if all of your personal data were to be stored in your hand, it would be way too easy for that information to be misused.
Bottom line: If you allow yourself to be chipped, you may find that you have handed over your life to the powers that be. And possibly even your soul.
Hirsen himself seems to be on a journey of trying to reclaim his soul after selling it in the form of enthusiasticallyembracing Donald Trump's lies about election fraud, which culminated in the Capitol riot -- though he's never confessed to being taken in by Trump's fraud.
CNS Censors Donohue, Greene Duking It Out Over Catholic Stuff Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves far-right extremrist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It also loves dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue. So you'd think a controversy involving both of them would be splashed all over CNS, right? Well, think again.
In an interview with the right-wing Catholic outlet Church Militant, Greene lashed out at the Catholic Church's longtime support for undocumented immigrants, calling it "Satan controlling the church" and adding (wihtout offering evidence for her claim): “The church is not doing its job, and it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ and it’s not adhering to what the Word of God says we’re supposed to do.” Donohue retorted: :"She needs to apologize to Catholics immediately. She is a disgrace. We are contacting House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy about this matter. He’s got a loose cannon on his hands."
Greene then posted a lengthy response to Twitter claiming to be a "cradle Catholic" who left the church over the clergy sexual abuse scandals, going on to huff of bishops she claimed she was referring to in her claim about "Satan controlling the church": "The Catholic Church must throw out these monsters instead of lecturing the people its own bishops have driven away. I refuse to use kinder, gentler language as Bill Donohue might prefer when I talk about his disgusting and corrupt friends, who have made him rich with the donations from ordinary churchgoing Catholics." She also called out Donohue for making "a million dollars a year, partly from sending out emails to defend corrupt bishops" and having "breezily claimed on television recently that the abuse crisis was 'over,' relying on the same biships who rake in taxpayer money in the name of our Heavenly Father yet have still, somehow, bankrupted theChurch, and who spend donations on lawsuits to silence their victims."
Donohue did not respond to Greene's criticism of him; instead he posted a letter he sent to the House Ethics Committee demanding that Greene be "sanctioned" and complaining that she said "that her sweeping condemnation of the entire Catholic Church was meant only to apply to the bishops, as if that makes her hate speech acceptable. Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her." He issued another statement commenting "on the fallout from our dispute with Marjorie Taylor Greene" in which he again refused to address Greene's criticisms of him but instead calling her an "angry ex-Catholic" whose views of the church are akin to "radical Muslims":
Angry ex-Catholics and militant secularists within the Jewish community are consumed with hostility over the Church’s sexual ethics. Practicing Catholics and observant Jews are not the problem—it is those who have lost their way.
When radical Muslims lash out at Catholics, it is usually the result of some twisted understanding of their own religion. Similarly, there is a strain of anti-Catholicism among Protestants, more commonly exhibited by extremists within the evangelical community.
Marjorie Taylor Greene belongs to two of these groups: she is an angry ex-Catholic and an extreme evangelical.
CNS was completely silent about this kerfuffle. It did, however, find the time and space while this was going on to write and publish an article headlined "WATCH: Biden Chokes on the Word 'Kleptocracy'."
CNS sure has some funny ideas about what it considers "news."
As Musk Buys Twitter, MRC Goes Orgasmic Again Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center went from squeeing like a teenage girl when Elon Musk announced he had become the Twitter's largest shareholder to going pretty much orgasmic when Musk launched a hostile takeover bid for the company. After that, the MRC went into defense mode on behalf of Musk.
An April 17 post by Autumn Johnson unuronically quoted the guy who wants to spend billions to gain sole control of Twitter criticizing Mark Zuckerburg for allegedly having too much control over Facebook and its owner Meta. That was followed by various attacks on people criticizing Musk:
In an April 20 so-called "study" attacking the Washington Post for covering Musk's attempt to buy Twitter, Joseph Vazquez huffed:
The leftist newspaper owned by the second richest man in the world is obsessed with smearing his main competitor’s $43 billion Twitter takeover bid. It was willing to spend over 17,000 words to do it.
An MRC Business study of The Washington Post archives found that the newspaper published at least 15 articles between Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s April 14 Twitter announcement and April 17 alone criticizing him over his mission to turn Twitter into a platform that upholds free speech. That’s just four days worth of articles making up news items and op-eds.
The articles included made up a whopping 17,046 words, all of which attempted to smear Musk. One columnist claimed that if Musk succeeds, “we’re all doomed.”
Vazquez offered no evidence that 1) the Post is "leftist, 2) Post owner Jeff Bezos demanded that editors and reporters attack Musk over the purchase, or 3) that Musk genuinely believes in free speech.
Johnson excitedly wrote in an April 24 post that "Twitter is reportedly reconsidering Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the platform for $43 billion." The next day, it was time for Joseph Vazquez to go orgasmic after Twitter decided to accept Musk's offer, under the headline "Musk Wins":
The world’s richest man is set to complete his hostile takeover of Twitter for $43 billion, according to news reports.
Reuters released an exclusive saying that Twitter is “nearing a deal to sell” itself to Tesla CEO Elon Musk for “$54.20 per share in cash.” That was the original price Musk offered when he launched his bid to own the company. Twitter may announce the deal “later on Monday once its board has met to recommend the transaction to Twitter shareholders, the sources said.”
[...]
Musk slammed the platform on March 26 for its censorship-heavy environment: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines his bid was successful.
Then, under the headline "VICTORY!", Alexander Hall cheered that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal "broke his silence to share the news that free speech advocate and billionaire Elon Musk successfully bought Twitter," going to tout Musk's tweet that "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means." By contrast, the MRC didn't mention how, according to Judd Legum, in real life Musk is all too eager to censor speech by trying to censor critics, firing Tesla workers for union advocacy, and asking the Chinese government (which is communist, as the MRC loves to remind us) to silence Tesla critics in that country.
Then it was defense mode again, as the MRC was offended by the (arguably accurate) suggestion that Musk really doesn't care about free speech and is more interested in self-promotion and creating chaos:
Of course, the MRC continued to act as Musk's PR agent as well. An article by Johnson hyped Twitter Jack Dorsey cheering Musk's purchase, followed by a repurprosed CNSNews.com article noting MRC favorite Mark Levin's return to Twitter because of Musk even though Musk had not actually completed the purchase at this point. Then the boss got his sycophantic say, courtesy of a lovingly transcribed (and anonymously written) Fox Business appearance:
Billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter was totally about protecting the First Amendment, and had little to do with labor considerations or investing for financial gain. MRC President and founder Brent Bozell made those remarks during an appearance on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. on Tuesday.
“Today’s a great day for freedom,” he said. “This entire debate has been over free speech, with the left saying that this ought not to be allowed. Let’s understand this very clearly: This has nothing to do about economics, nothing having to do about work practices. It’s all about Elon Musk saying, ‘I’m buying this company because we have to have free speech in America to have a functioning democracy.’”
[...]
“This is a totalitarian institution, Silicon Valley, and along comes Elon Musk and he’s tipped over the apple cart, just like [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis tipped over the applecart with Disney in Florida,” Bozell said. “The American people have had enough of this totalitarianism.”
Musk said in a statement that he wants to enhance Twitter by launching unnamed new features, open-sourcing algorithms to improve public trust, defeating spam bots, and “authenticating all humans.” The last statement was a nod to free speech.
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk stated. “Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
Again: All this overblown MRC praise for Musk's fealty to "free speech" belies his actual record. The MRC doesn't want you to know that, however.
WND Still Dishonestly Presenting Promos For Employee's Book As 'News' Topic: WorldNetDaily
In February, we reported how WorldNetDaily has promoted employee Joe Kovacs' new book through weekly ads disguised as "news" articles and with no disclosure that Kovacs is a WND employee. Three months later, WND and Kovacs are still dishonestly promoting his book -- ironic, since it's about finding the Bible in pretty much anything and we're pretty sure that the Bible admonishes people not to engage in deception.
Here are the articles WND has published to promote Kovacs' book -- they carry no byline, but we can assume Kovacs himself wrote them, another little piece of deception -- since we last checked in:
WND even tried to tie Kovacs' book to recent events that occurred after the book's publication. A March 13 article used the Russian attack on Ukraine to shill for the book:
The events in the daily news can be catastrophic and unnerving at times, with huge numbers of lives lost and incredible suffering taking place, as is evident by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And sometimes, as is the case now, there seems to no good reason for the disturbing mayhem taking place.
"In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing," said Pope Francis. "This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery."
But is there something unseen at work amid the horror of this war? Is there a hidden cause for nightmarish disasters that people are forgetting or ignoring?
"The answer to these questions is an obvious yes," says author Joe Kovacs, who digs deeply into this subject in his brand-new best-seller, "Reaching God Speed: Unlocking the Secret Broadcast Revealing the Mystery of Everything."
"Catastrophes and disasters such as military conflict are not just happenstance. There is an underlying cause, and it's spelled out quite clearly in the Bible."
"The simple truth right out of Holy Scripture is that God Himself is causing disasters. Read it for yourself in your own Bible:"
But all this biblical pontificating ultimately comes off as Kovacs suggesting that Ukraine deserved to be destroyed and subjugated by Russia:
The "Reaching God Speed" author says "the bad news taking place in our world is not just some random, haphazard mayhem."
"The catastrophes, calamities, and disasters of all stripes are attention-getters, reminding people that we're all going to perish, to be dead forever, unless we get our act together and get with the program."
"The bottom line is that bad news can be likened to an attention-getting spanking that a parent gives his or her child. But God does not like spanking His kids."
"Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep on rebelling?" (Isaiah 1:5 CSB).
"He creates the bad news with an intention: to prompt us all to do some inward reflection and make drastic changes to how we think and act, to put an end to our ludicrous, wicked ways and get on the path of everlasting life. And painless life without end is truly Good News."
WND also tried to shoehorn Kovacs into articles that more closely resemble "news." A Feb. 27 article (unblylined, of course) repeated a Jerusalem Post article that is also effectively a promotion for Kovacs' book and is keyed on an earlier WND promotion of it: "An apparent biblical 'dilemma' regarding the precise location where Jesus was crucified has caught the attention of a major newspaper in Israel." The article then evolved into the usual WND promo for the book.
An April 24 WND article on the vandalism of Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank was also used to promote Kovacs' book as well. The article even called on an old friend, Aaron Klein, who was described only as "WND's former Jerusalem bureau chief," with no mention of the fact he quit years ago to work for Breitbart, then as an adviser for corrupt former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
WND also devoted an article to promoting the audiobook version of the book.
Despite all this shilling, however, Kovacs' book is not being sold through WND's online store. All links for the book in WND articles go to a website dedicated to the book (presumably set up by Kovacs himself), which in turn links to Amazon. WND's online store hasn't added new books or other significant things since its current downward spiral began a few years back. Kovacs may be deceitful, but he's not dumb, and he knows where to sell his books to make some money.
MRC Parroted Secret Facebook Attacks On TikTok Topic: Media Research Center
In March, the Washington Post reported that Facebook's owner, Meta, paid a Republican consulting firm called Targeted Victory to manufacture fear about competitor TikTok as a Chinese-owned app that is endangering teenage users, which included "placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor," as well as emphasizing TikTok's foreign ownership.
The Media Research Center didn't tell its readers about this developement -- probably because it was dancing to Facebook's tune. Here are some of the attacks on TikTok that the MRC issued in the months and years before the Post story came out -- stories that hewed close to Facebook's anti-TikTok narrative:
The MRC also enthusiastically shilled for the Trump administration'sattempts to ban TikTok in the U.S. or force its sale to a non-Chinese firm., which apaprently came in response to a campaign organized by TikTok users to snap up free tickets to a Trump rally in Oklahoma, which ended up being sparsely attended (which the MRC hated):
When a federal judge blocked Trump's TikTok ban in September 2020, Kayla Sargent lamented it but optimistically claimed it was "thankfully, only temporarily." The Trump administration abandoned the ban completely after the presidential election Trump lost, Sargent returned to complain that it did so despite "serious national security concerns."
The MRC, by the way, is not unfamiliar with Targeted Victory. Both MRC chief Brent Bozell and Targeted Victory co-founder Zac Moffatt were among the attendees at a 2016 meeting between consercvative activists and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, which took place after allegations that Facebook's news feed was biased against conservatives (which turned out to be overblown). But bozell and his right-wingers got what they wanted: to have Facebook afraid of doing anything that might anger them, even if it harmed Facebook's overall quality.
The MRC has never told is readers about how Facebook fed TikTok attacks to a GOP strategy firm, but it did keep up the attacks. An April 17 item by Autumn Johnson hyped how "The Department of Homeland Security reportedly investigated how TikTok handled material that detailed the sexual abuse of children," making sure to add that "The platform is designed to be popular among teenagers." Johnson failed to mention the Facebook smear campaign against TikTok.
This is the second time the MRC has been caught playing both sides of the war on "big tech" and secretly promoting Facebook talking points. We've already documented how the MRC attacked Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen at the same time that Facebook as a purported liberal activist (whose criticism of Facebook, not coincientially, got a lot more traction that the MRC's war on Facebook has) as Facebook was working behind the scenes to feed thosevery same attacks on Haugen to conservative groups.
The MRC has never public admitted that Facebook wrote its anti-Haugen script -- and it's certainly not going to admit that it was taking dictation from Facebook in attacking TikTok -- but the parallels are too obvious to dismiss.
NEW ARTICLE -- WND Profiles In COVID Misinformation: Robert Malone Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily not only loves to amplify Malone's misinformation about COVID vaccines, it also likes to inflate his role in developing the technology behind the mRNA vaccines. Read more >>
MRC Got Mad When Truth Was Told About Double Standard For Ukraine Refugees Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center really hates it when it'spointed out that the white and Christian refugees of Ukraine are getting much more love in the U.S, particularly from conservatives, than brown-skinned ones from elsewhere. Kevin Tober huffed in a March 7 post:
On Monday night's The ReidOut on MSNBC, host Joy Reid used the last segment of her prime-time show to exploit the war in Ukraine in order to play racial politics. Reid claimed that the reason the United States and the rest of the world care so much about Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that their population is "white and largely Christian."
Reid started off by stating the obvious that "what we’re seeing in Ukraine is absolutely the worst humanitarian crisis that Europe has seen in decades." Of course, with Reid there is always a catch: "but we haven't witnessed the same type of solidarity for the Yeminies as we do for the Ukrainians," Reid whined.
Tober went on to misleadingly defend the disparity:
Contrary to Reid's hate-fueled ranting, we do see an outpouring of support and compassion for the Uyghurs (a group that is neither white nor Christian) in China as they have a genocide carried out against them. Although, the economic entanglements here are more serious than with Russia, thus making them harder to break.
But Reid didn't mention the Uyghurs (or at least did not quote her doing so), and Tober said nothing about the Yemeni refugees that Reid did reference.
Curtis Houck kept up the whine, with his own version of defense, the next day:
On Tuesday’s CBS Mornings, co-host and Democratic Party donor Gayle King channeled MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid by playing the race card concerning the ongoing plight of the millions of Ukrainian refugees, lamenting that those who’ve come to the United States from El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras “were not welcome” nor “received very well.”
In other words, the west has shown its racist bones by showing unity for displaced white people while scoffing at similarly innocent black and brown people.
King conveniently ignored the facts separating the two with Ukrainians given permission to cross the border to neighboring countries due to Russia’s unprovoked war while the latter group has flooded and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Houck wasn't done reframing right-wing discrimination against refugees:
In essence, what Reid did was what RedState referred to as “whataboutism with the ongoing brutality against the Ukrainian people,” while ignoring what Ian Miles Cheong pointed out as a long track record of the west being “the most compassionate donors of developing nations in their times of need,” including earthquakes in Haiti.
We could restate the point about how flooding the U.S. southern border and expecting amnesty and welfare is entirely different from Ukrainians being shot at and shelled as part of a war by a nuclear state, but it’s safe to say it wouldn’t make a difference for King.
Houck didn't explain why, exactly, one class of refugee deserves to be treated worse than another simply because they're not "being shot at and shelled." And Ukrainian refugees are technically "illegal" too.
Meanwhile, Scott Whitlock whined in another March 8 post that Rep. Ilhan Omar -- who right-wingers like the MRC love to hate for being an outspoken liberal who's not a Christian -- pointed out the disparity:
Radical Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is at it again. The Democrat on Sunday called the U.S. hypocritical in terms how it deals with Ukrainian refugees vs. countries like Syria and Central America. She also appeared way out of step with most Republicans and Democrats, decrying “disastrous” military aide to Ukraine.
Yet on the networks? Crickets from them as they ignore the potentially embarrassing comments from the hard-left Democrat. But this is a pattern for ABC, CBS and NBC. Omar’s past hateful, bigoted and anti-Semitic comments get buried by the same journalists who initially promoted her.
Indeed, most of Whitlock's post is about attacking her for previous thing she said and nothing about rebutting the comments that prompted his little screed.
Alex Christy took up the complaint baton in a March 12 post:
As ordinary Ukrainians flee the country in order to escape from the Russian invaders, CBS Saturday Morning declared that, unlike other refugees, they benefit from their race.
As part of a video report, anchor Jericka Duncan interviewed historian Kimberly St. Julian Varnon on the racial aspect of the evacuations. St. Julian Varnon declared, “You know, it's—it’s-- one of those things where if you are a person of color and you work in Eastern Europe and research Eastern Europe, racism isn't new. I mean, the racial discrimination is not new, but to see it on display and being exacerbated by war, it was just really heart-wrenching.”
Christy had his own defense as well, regarding the claim about Syrian refugees at the border were treated:
While there were Syrians at the border in November and December, it is wrong to claim that crisis was a refugee crisis. There were also several non-refugee economic migrants from Iraq and they were victimized and all used as political pawns by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who lied to them by promising they would be granted asylum there, to destabilize the E.U.
Tober returned on March 15 to parrot Christy blaming Lukashenko for creating a Syrian refugee crisis in Europe in criticizing MSNBC's Chris Hayes for bringing up Poland disparate treatment of refugees:
Hayes seemed to bemoan the fact that " Poland's right-wing Prime Minister along with the PMs from Slovenia and the Czech Republic met with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Kyiv" as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. The leftist host seemed stunned that Hungary and Poland who believe in strong borders and opposed "Syrian refugees are together accepting millions of people displaced from Ukraine."
This also ignored the fact that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko manufactured the latest migrant crisis by lying to desperate refugees about them being allowed to enter those countries in an effort to destabilize the region. Hayes also didn't have the honesty to ask why other Middle Eastern countries didn't take in those refugees.
Ending his race-obsessed rant, he claimed that "there's a lingering question that’s been surrounding this war pushed by bad faith actors on the American right. You know why should I care? Who cares what happens in Ukraine? What do I have to do with Vladimir Putin?"
Aside from Hayes' usual knee-jerk reaction to make everything about race, it is clear that he needs to understand that Poland and Hungary are eager to help Ukrainians because they know what it is like to be victimized by Russian aggression. It should also be noted that Ukraine neighbors Poland. Neighbors help neighbors.
Clay Waters used an April 24 post to complaing that the New York Times published an article about Republicans' anti-immigrant strategy that includes demonizing (non-white and non-Christian) refugees, complaining that the reporters "were unable to make the obvious distinctions between war refugees flying in from Ukraine and random people crossing the southern border." And Ukrainian refugees aren't "random"?
Of course, one doesn't even need to leave the MRC headquarters for examples of disparate treatment. As we've documented, the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com hasn't fretted a bit about Ukrainian refugees coming to the U.S. even though it complained loudly that refugees coming to the U.S. from Afghanistan were supposed not sufficiently vetted.
The double standard is real, but the MRC wants you to think either that it doesn't exist or that it's completely justified.
CNSNews.com columnists have been hidingtheirsupport for Russia's invasion of Ukraine by disguising it as anti-NATO, pro-isolationism sentiment. Let's see how they have been doing lately, shall we?
Doug Bandow devoted a May 3 column to complaining about U.S. financial support for Ukraine and demanded that Europeans do it instead:
Why the U.S.? Americans have spent nearly eight decades protecting Europe. European governments, after shamelessly leeching off U.S. taxpayers for the entire Cold War and beyond, should take the lead on underwriting their neighbor under assault from Russia.
[...]
Aid to Ukraine is a worthy cause, but the U.S. already has provided some $3.5 billion in military assistance to Kyiv and another $1 billion for nervous NATO members. More important, Washington is not the only rich industrialized country in the world. It is not the industrialized nation with the most at stake in Ukraine’s defense. And it has not spent decades relying on other nations to protect it. The Europeans are all those and should step up.
Bandow went on to go fully into isolationism:
For America, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a human tragedy, not a military threat. Through most of U.S. history, Ukraine was ruled by someone else, which bothered Americans not at all. Washington treated Ukraine as a "captive nation" for propaganda purposes during the Cold War, but President George H.W. Bush discouraged Ukrainian independence. Ironically, over the last decade, Russia’s Vladimir Putin did more than anyone else to spur a sense of Ukrainian nationhood.
As a victim of unjustified aggression, Kyiv warrants U.S. support, but the U.S. role should be secondary. Washington’s highest duty remains to the American people. That especially means avoiding pressure to escalate militarily and risk war with Russia, which has become an increasing possibility. Treating Ukraine as a proxy war against Moscow increases the cost to Ukrainians and risks accidentally triggering World War III.
[...]
Europe should take the lead in dealing with both Ukraine and Russia. The U.S. government is broke, while European governments have more reason to give. After decades of defending so many other countries and peoples, Americans deserve a break. Now.
Ted Galen Carpenter's April 28 column dismissed Ukraine as "an appalling corrupt and increasingly authoritarian country" and insisted that it is "utterly irresponsible" for the U.S. to aid it, adding: "Corrupt and increasingly authoritarian Ukraine is not worth the life of a single American. Risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia that could take the lives of millions of Americans is beyond shameful. The Biden Administration needs to take several firm steps back from the abyss."
In his May 4 column, Carpenter blamed Russia's invasion on NATO and not, you know, Russia:
In one of the great foreign policy blunders of modern times, U.S. and European leaders repeatedly disregarded Vladimir Putin’s warnings that Russia would never tolerate Ukraine becoming a NATO military asset. Because of resistance from the French and German governments (which had as much to do with Ukraine’s chronic corruption as with concerns about Russia’s reaction), the Alliance delayed offering Kyiv a Membership Action Plan – an essential step toward membership. Nevertheless, at the 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO’s existing members ostentatiously insisted that "someday" Ukraine would join the Alliance, and they repeated that pledge on numerous occasions thereafter.
[...]
Western officials implicitly assumed that Russia could be intimidated and eventually compelled to accept Ukraine as part of NATO. They dismissed the Kremlin’s increasingly pointed warnings that efforts to make Kyiv an Alliance asset would cross a red line that violated Russia’s security. Their assumption that Moscow would tamely accept a NATO presence inside Russia’s core security zone proved to be spectacularly wrong, and Ukraine is now paying a very high price in treasure and blood for their miscalculation.
One might hope that NATO leaders would have learned an important lesson from such a costly mistake. However, they are stubbornly ignoring a new set of ominous warnings from Moscow, and this time, the price of such tone-deaf arrogance could be utterly catastrophic. Indeed, it is creating the risk of a nuclear clash between Russia and the United States.
[...]
Western officials and members of the foreign policy establishments in the United States and Europe speak openly of helping Ukraine win its war and inflict a humiliating defeat on Russia. What such individuals do not seem to comprehend is that Ukraine is a vital Russian security interest, and the Kremlin will do whatever is necessary – probably even the use of tactical nuclear weapons – to prevent a defeat. The failure to understand just how important Ukraine is to Russia caused Western leaders to disregard Moscow’s warnings over more than a decade against making Kyiv a military ally.
Ryan McMaken used a March 21 column to insisting that the "lesson of 1938" learned about trying to appease Hitler does not apply to Russia: "But it is not, in fact, the case that every act of diplomacy or compromise designed to avoid war is appeasement. Moreover, we can find countless examples in which nonintervention and a refusal to escalate a situation was — or would have been — the better choice." He claimed that the "lesson of 1914," in which countries decided to "rush to war, immediately escalate, and confront "enemies" with military force in the name of countering aggression" is the proper lesson to apply, though nobody but Russia is escalating things.
Meanwhile, CNS edidtor Terry Jeffrey's pet columnist, Pat Buchanan, continued to serve up calls for U.S. isolationismm that benefits Russia:
On April 22, he endorsed letting Ukraine be dstroyed by Russia if it meant keeping U.S. troops out: "To avoid war with Russia, President Harry Truman refused to breach Joseph Stalin's Berlin Blockade. Eisenhower let the Hungarian revolution be drowned in blood and told the Brits, French and Israelis to get out of Egypt. President John F. Kennedy let the Berlin Wall go up. President Lyndon B. Johnson let the Prague Spring be crushed by the Warsaw Pact. The sooner this war ends, the better for all."
He used his April 29 column to complain that "the new, or newly revealed, goal of U.S. policy in Ukraine is not just the defeat and retreat of the invading Russian army but the crippling of Russia as a world power," insisting that "the more we destroy Russian conventional power, the more we force Moscow to fall back onto its ace in the hole — nuclear weapons" and adding: "When he warns of military action, Putin has some credibility."
He fretted on May 10: "By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III."
He spent his May 17 column huffing that Finland might be allowed to join NATO : "But why would the United States consent to go to war with Russia, the largest nuclear power on earth, for violating Finland's frontiers? ... By welcoming Finland into NATO, Biden is offering Helsinki the kind of war guarantee Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave to Poland in the spring of 1939, which led to Britain's having to declare war on Sept. 3, 1939, two days after Germany invaded Poland. How did that work out for Britain and the empire?
He gushed inhis May 20 column that even with its failures in Ukraine, "Russia today remains a great power. The largest nation on earth with twice the territory of the U.S., Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal and exceeds the U.S. and China in tactical nuclear weapons. It has vast tracks of land and sits on huge deposits of minerals, coal, oil and gas." He did graciously concede that "Russia also has glaring weaknesses and growing vulnerabilities, though he didn't identify the invasion of Ukraine as one of them. He ended on an isolationist note: "In 230 years, the United States has never gone to war with Russia. Not with the Romanovs nor with the Stalinists, not with the Cold War Communists nor with the Putinists. U.S. vital interests dictate that we maintain that tradition."
Buchanan offered no solution beyond apparent appeasement.
Like the Media Research Center, its "news" division CNSNews.com was critical of Elon Musk -- in particular his ties to Russia and China -- before sharing the big flip-flop with its parent over his plan to buy Twitter. For example, an April 2020 column by Chuck Muth denounced Musk as a "repeated Trump backstabber" who engaged in "political grandstanding" for being named to Trump administration advisory councils then "chose publicly to throw a fit and leave the council by way of a tweet." A June 2020 column by Justin Caruso was headlined "Celebrate the SpaceX Launch, but Don’t Pretend Elon Musk Is a Free Market Hero,"noting that Musk's space company "is ultimately looking for big bucks from the government in the form of federal subsidies." A July 2020 article by Craig Bannister seemed to be upset that "Musk said that government should maximize citizens’ happiness by giving each one of them money to be spent however he or she sees fit."
We've documented
Dick Morris has been notoriously wrong about many things, but his stopped-clock example of 
Art Moore has been WorldNetDaioly's 
Remember when the Media Research Center 
Barack Obama hasn't been president for years, but there's still a raging case of Obama Derangement Syndrome at WorldNetDaily. Read how Art Moore twists Obama's words to conform to WND's COVID vaccine conspiracy theories in an April 21 
Last year, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen 
CNSNews.com loves far-right extremrist Rep. 
The Media Research Center went from 
In February, we 
In March, the Washington Post 
The Media Research Center really hates it when it'spointed out that the white and Christian refugees of Ukraine are getting much more love in the U.S, particularly from conservatives, than brown-skinned ones from elsewhere. Kevin Tober huffed in a March 7 
CNSNews.com columnists have been 
