WND's Moore Falsely Reports On Yet Another Vaccine Study To Fearmonger About It
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's chief COVID misinformer, particularly loves to misinform about COVID-related studies  that can be twisted to pushWND's anti-vaccine agenda. He did it again in a June 21 article, under the screaming headline "Study: COVID vax INCREASES risk of infection":

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the mRNA vaccines increased the risk of COVID-19 infection during the omicron wave.

And researchers further confirmed that those infected without having been vaccinated for COVID-19 acquired natural immunity from infection, the Epoch Times reported.

he study, published June 15, examined the omicron wave in Qatar from about December 2021 to February 2022. It compared vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 omicron infected and non-infected individuals.

The results support a recent study from Israel finding natural immunity waned much more slowly than immunity from vaccination.

The new Qatar study found unvaccinated people with prior infection had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the omicron variant. But those with no previous infection who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine had negative immunity against both subvariants, meaning their risk of contracting COVID-19 was higher than an average person.

Moore's first mistake here was to trust the Epoch Times, the right-wing Falun Gong-run newspaper that is a firehose of COVID misinformation. The article Moore is cribbing from is behind a paywall, but we're not going to give the Epoch Times money or an email address to unlock it.it's clear that Moore did no fact-checking of the article before copying-and-pasting out of it to make his own, because what Moore wrote is wildly misleading. The key results as reported in the study are these:

The effectiveness of previous infection alone against symptomatic BA.2 infection was 46.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39.5 to 51.9). The effectiveness of vaccination with two doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was negligible (−1.1%; 95% CI, −7.1 to 4.6), but nearly all persons had received their second dose more than 6 months earlier. The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2% (95% CI, 48.1 to 55.9). The effectiveness of previous infection and two doses of BNT162b2 was 55.1% (95% CI, 50.9 to 58.9), and the effectiveness of previous infection and three doses of BNT162b2 was 77.3% (95% CI, 72.4 to 81.4). Previous infection alone, BNT162b2 vaccination alone, and hybrid immunity all showed strong effectiveness (>70%) against severe, critical, or fatal Covid-19 due to BA.2 infection. Similar results were observed in analyses of effectiveness against BA.1 infection and of vaccination with mRNA-1273.

BNT162b2 is the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine, mRNA-1273 is the Moderna vaccine.

Translation, which Moore didn't make clear at all: The risk of infection by Omicron variant BA.2 is effectively the same for someone who only got the initial two-vaccine series as someone who had gotten no vaccine or previous infection -- -1.1% is efffectively the same as zero, so it's deceitful for Moore to portray it as a significantly higher risk. This isn't surprising because Omicron has mutated to evade the protection of the original vaccines, which were best attuned to the original strain -- something Moore failed to explain to his readers; all the better to fearmonger about vaccines.

Moore also censored other results that don't fit into his anti-vaccine narrative. The results also stated that the highest rate of effectiveness against infection was for those who had a previous infection and were fully vaccinated. The study also stated that vaccination alone offered similar protection as prior infection and infection/vaccination against severe, critical, or fatal COVID due to BA.2, which Moore also censored.

Moore's article was published while WND was still begging for money to stay alive for a while longer. Do those who donated to WND's campaign really feel they're Being truthfully and accurately informed? Because the record says no.

Newsmax's Reagan Shows Some Gun Restraint In His Post-Massacre Rants
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax columnist Michael Reagan spent a lot of time ranting after May's spate of mass shootings -- not about the prominent role guns played in them, of course, but about others talking about that role and other things that clash with right-wing narratives. When President Biden pointed out that the perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre, Reagan used his May 20 column to play whataboutism by hyping masscares committed by non-white people:

But as usual he was very selective when pointing out recent examples of racially motivated mass murders. No mention of the angry "Black supremacist" who plowed through a parade of white men, women and children at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last year, killing six and injuring 60.

No mention of the mentally troubled Black man — another racist "Black supremacist" who openly hated whites, Asians and even some Blacks —< who shot up a New York City subway train last month and injured 10 people.

 

No mention of another apparently mentally troubled Black man who’s accused of shooting but not killing three Korean women in a Dallas hair salon last week.

And you know the Bidens won’t be visiting the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods in Southern California to show their sympathy for the deadly shooting that happened there earlier this week.

The Asian shooter — an American citizen born in Taiwan — planned to kill many members of the congregation, who are Taiwanese, because he doesn’t think Taiwan should be independent of China.

Like the other shootings, that potential mass shooting, which was stopped when members of the church overpowered the shooter, did not fit the Biden-media narrative that the only kind of racism in America is white and that mass murderers come in only one color and one kind of politics.

The reaction to the Buffalo tragedy by Biden, the Democrats and the liberal media was the usual "We need more, more, still more gun laws."

But how about enforcing the d**n gun laws we’ve already got?

How about putting some teeth in so-called "Red Flag" laws?

After the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, Reagan rushed to defend guns again in his May 28 column, invoking some of his earlier COVID insanity for good measure:

In his vile speech just after the Uvalde murders, Biden yelled, "Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake."

Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, the Second Amendment isn’t a hunting amendment. It’s a freedom amendment.

Regardless of what they say, the assurances they give and the fake sincerity with which the announcement is made, we can’t trust the government when it comes to our basic God-given rights.

COVID-19 proved that.

Twitter pundit Peachy Keenan explained the situation in only 240 characters: "The trouble with 'common sense gun legislation' is that the people who turned '15 days to stop the spread' into 'get the vaccine or we take you off the organ transplant list' are the same ones who swear they don’t want to take all our guns."

And, yes, liberals were somehow to blame for this massacre:

What no one on the left wants to discuss is the cultural sickness discussed earlier that is currently plaguing America. A sickness the left has done much to create.

The Uvalde, Texas shooter, like the Parkland, Florida shooter, like the Sandy Hook, (in Newton Connecticut) shooter and so many more had no father in his life.

None of them had a positive male role model in their lives to teach them how to live.

What they did have was dope-smoking and a poisonous social media and online gaming culture producing violent results.

Instead of looking at the motivation of these murderers, the left focuses on the tool used.

Reagan didn't mention that the perpetrator would not have been able to murder so many children if he didn't have that gun. He did, sprurpsingly, diverge from right-wing dogma and appear to endorse red-flag laws in his June 4 column -- though, weirdly, of the do-it-yourself variety, not if the government is involved:

We also learned that the 18-year-old killer, as is so often the case, was known by his family, the authorities and his schoolmates to be a mentally unstable and scary gun nut, yet no one "red-flagged" him as a potential threat to himself or others.

And how many times have we heard stories about how the parents of future mass murderers continued to let them have access to guns even after it had become obvious to them that their children were dangerously disturbed?

What we’ve seen over and over again in these mass shootings is that everyone’s waiting for someone else to do the right things, but then no one does the right things.

[...]

No one expects Biden to know what he’s talking about when he talks about guns, and the dishonest major media are too much on the gun-control team to discuss other sensible, doable ways of preventing future school shootings.

Putting well-armed security guards in our schools is extremely important, obviously, but it is parents who are the first line of defense.

If you realize your kid is out of control and truly dangerous, take their guns away.

Give them to a neighbor. Lock them in a safe.

And please don’t wait for the government, the school principal or anyone else to red flag your child as a threat to themselves or others.

Do the right thing. Throw the red flag yourself.

Despite his own status as a right-wing celebrity prop for Reagan acolytes, he mocked Matthew McCouaughey for being one in speaking out against guns in his June 10 column -- while, again surprisingly, agreeing with much of what he said:

McConaughey got — and deserved — praise for much of what he said in the White House briefing room on Tuesday.

Sure, he was a celebrity prop being exploited by President Biden and House Democrats to sell their hysterical and unconstitutional gun control ideas to the American public.

But while McConaughey is definitely no closet conservative Republican, he owns and shoots guns and is not a stereotypical Hollywood liberal who wants to disarm every American citizen — except their own bodyguards, of course.

In a city full of Democrats exploiting the latest national tragedy for their own political gain, McConaughey came across as refreshingly reasonable, sensible and bipartisan on several gun-control issues.

Most Americans would agree with him that you should be 21 before you are allowed to buy an AR-15.

Most Americans would agree with him that there should be a cooling off period between the time you buy a handgun and the time you get it.

And most Americans would also favor his call for the increased use of “red flag” laws that allow authorities to take guns away from mentally disturbed persons who are a threat to themselves or the rest of us.

McConaughey’s rational approach to solving a highly contentious and seemingly unsolvable political issue reminded me of another movie actor I knew pretty well – Ronald Reagan.

Reagan then went on to claim that his father would have supported such restrictions -- but he didn't mention that his fellow right-wingers and even the gun lobby oppose red-flag laws, and they also object to raising the age to buy an AR-15. So much for common-sense solutions.

NEW ARTICLE: Meet The Replacements
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center went all in on insisting that the conspiratorial replacement theory -- peddled by Tucker Carlson and embraced by the racist perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre -- is totally true and isn't racist at all. Read more >>

MRC Sports Blogger Spews Anti-LGBT Hate During Pride Month
Topic: Media Research Center

We've highlighted the anti-LGBT hatred Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons spewed earlier in the year. When Pride Month hit in June, Simmons ramped up the hate. He started things off on June 1 with a massive whine setting up the rest of the month for him:

It’s June 1st, which means that sports leagues across the nation can officially gush about celebrating Pride Month.

Predictably, the MLB and NHL have changed the logos on their social media pages to include all the colors of the LGBT flag (because no made-up community should be left behind).

Surprisingly, the NBA has yet to follow the MLB and NHL’s example. But what the NBA lacked in showing support for the LGBT community, the NFL made up for in spades.

Not wanting anyone to forget just how much they adore the gay agenda, the NFL posted this on all their social media platforms.

[...]

Prepare for more of this in the upcoming days, not just from sports leagues, but from countless businesses, celebrities, politicians, and others for the next 29 days.

Simmons never explained what this "gay agenda" is that he finds so offensive. On June 6, Simmons cheered that a group of baseball players were as hateful and homophobic as he is:

Because we are in the midst of Pride Month, it's unfortunately normal to see professional sports teams hold their annual Pride Nights. On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays had theirs, in which they included LGBT people in pregame events and handed out pride flags to the 19,000+ fans in attendance. In addition, the “TB” and sunburst logos on the Rays uniforms were rainbow-colored to show an added level of support.

However, several Rays pitchers decided not to participate in this gesture in order to stay true to their beliefs.

"So it's a hard decision…But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it's just a lifestyle that maybe -- not that they look down on anybody or think differently -- it's just that maybe we don't want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who's encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior,” Adam, the chosen spokesperson for this group of pitchers, said.

Notice how Adam worded this. He never said that he thinks he or his teammates are better than anyone in the LGBT community, because true and honest Christians would agree that everyone has “sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the truly remarkable part of his response was that he and his teammates unwaveringly commit to their faith in a culture and time where it is incredibly easy to forsake it so you do not face backlash.

Simmons tried to further justify the hate by quoting the Bible himself: "Romans 1:26-27 states that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful and should not be condoned in any way by followers of Christ. Wearing pride flags or pride logos does just that." Simmons didn't explain why LGBT people must have hate spewed upon them everywhere at all times, which is what he seems to be advocating.

The same day, Simmons had a separate meltdown:

Carolina Panthers fans will have quite the surprise on the sideline during the upcoming season.

The Panthers became the first NFL team to hire an openly transgender athlete to it’s cheerleading team. The TopCats announced that Justine Lindsay, a man masquerading as a woman, will be on the sidelines performing on Sundays starting in the fall.

Lindsay came out as transgender in March, but TopCats director Chandalae Lanouette said that her decision to bring Lindsay on board has nothing to do with that.

When Lindsay posted a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption "“Understand that we are all Gods children, that he is an awesome God from sun up to sun down. I live through him. Negative hate stay away," Simmons took served up all the negative hate he could muster and hurled more Bible verses:

It’s funny that Lindsay mentions he lives through God, because nowhere in Scripture do we see that God condones or approves of anyone that changes their gender. God created all people to either be male or female (Genesis 1:27) and any attempt to switch your gender based on how you feel is an act of rebellion against his created order. So Lindsay isn’t doing something that pleases God, and his attempt to get others to empathize with him and his actions further adds to the twisted nature of his actions.

It’s disgusting that the NFL just continues to make a fool of itself by doing stuff like this.

But spewing hate at somone just because they're different from you isn't eve more disgusting, John?

In a June 7 post, Simmons touted the notoriously homophobic (his denials to the contrary notwithstanding) Franklin Graham as supporting those Tampa Bay pitchers who petulantly refused to wear the LGBT jerseys, going on to huff: "If anyone is offended by the gracious, humble, and truthful response these men gave, then that is on them for having an immature and unhealthy response. What these men have done is praiseworthy, something Graham recognized and we should too." Of course, hate delivered in a "gracious" and "humble" manner is still hate, and Simmons is cool with that.

On June 23, Simmons lashed out at yet another sports league for not hating LGBT people as much as he does:

The National Hockey League (NHL) was the last bastion for non-woke sports entertainment in America, but now, even they have gone completely off the deep end.

With Pride Month celebrations being over in eight days - which can't come soon enough - the NHL is using its influence to make sure that everyone continues to make LGBT members feel “safe.”

In a graphic titled “How To Be An Ally,” the NHL listed several ways to support LGBT members in their fight to be loved and supported - which they already are, but apparently not enough.

It’s funny that the tweet mentions them as a “marginalized” people, when all of corporate America, hundreds of “Christian” churches and millions of citizens support them through all the ways the graphic says to support them.

Calls to action like this fall short and mean nothing because everyone knows that the LGBT community is widely supported. Plus, who would want to support a community that belittles you if you show even a hint of what they would deem as hatred and rejection?

July 1st can’t come soon enough.

Not the scare quotes around "Christian," as if you're not a real Christian if you don't viciously hate LGBT people the way he does.

While the mere thought that there might be someone, somewhere who doesn't hate LGBT people might make Simmons a little itchy, you'd think he wouldn't want Pride Month to ever end because it gives him so much hateful copy that the MRC presumably pays him well to write. His hate is his paycheck!

WND Columnist Pretends 'Jane Roe' Never Recanted Her Anti-Abortion Activism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerry Newcombe spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily column criticing the group Jane's Revenge for alleged vandalism of "crisis pregnancy centers, then defended the group's alleged namesake:

And this damage is being done in the name of Jane Roe? As the record shows, Jane Roe's identity was revealed in 1987, and her name was Norma McCorvey. It turns out McCorvey had not been raped (as claimed in the case). She had gotten pregnant from her boyfriend, and she just wanted an abortion.

ACLU attorney Sarah Weddington lied to her as she assured McCorvey she could get an abortion. But what Weddington really wanted was McCorvey's participation in what became Roe v. Wade.

Then in the late 1990s, something amazing happened. Norma McCorvey made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and came to oppose abortion. Thus, Roe came to agree with Wade. Henry Wade had been the District Attorney of Dallas County, and Roe v. Wade challenged Texas's pro-life law.

Norma McCorvey wrote her story in her 1997 book "Won By Love" (with co-author Gary Thomas). The subtitle of that book is "Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade Speaks Out for the Unborn as She Shares Her New Conviction for Life."

And now, in the name of Jane Roe, anarchists and Antifa-types are carrying out acts of vandalism and damage of pregnancy centers that simply exist to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

Just one problem: McCorvey recanted pretty much all of her anti-abortion activism before her death, saying that she did it for the money. As we documented, the ConWeb attacked the film in which McCorvey recanted her anti-abortion leanings and its director, claiming without evidence that she was being manipulated. Newcombe knows all this because he wrote a column bashing the film and calling on Operation Rescue's Cheryl Sullenger -- who was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting to blow up an abortion clinic in the 1980s -- to handwave McCorvey's more damaging claims.

Nevertherless, Newcombe called on another anti-abortion activist to vouch for McCorvey:

One man who knew McCorvey, who died in 2017, is Father Frank Pavone, the president of Priests for Life. He even baptized her and spent time sharing Scriptures and church teaching with her.

I asked him for a comment on the former "Jane Roe" since these groups are doing damage to try and disrupt pro-life work in her name.

Father Pavone told me: "As for Norma McCorvey, hers was a life of repentance, not of revenge. She wouldn't have needed to take 'revenge' on pro-life people anyway, because she was one of us. She would have abhorred the way the pro-abortion people are acting now. In fact, she didn't like them even when she was on their side. She thought they were arrogant and disrespectful of her."

Pavone was quoted as attacking the McCorvey film in a CNSNews.com column by Alveda King, insisting that the filmmakers took her out of context. Newcombe didn't mention that either.

It seems that Newcombe is trying to memory-hole the McCorvey film because she's much more valuable as an anti-abortion token, even in death. It's a somewhat slightly less bad take than the last one we noted.

Newsmax Hosts COVID Misinformer McCullough
Topic: Newsmax

WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet who has given an uncritical platform to COVID misinformer Peter McCullough. Jay Clemons uncritically wrote in a June 19 article:

Dr. Peter McCullough doesn't see the necessity in a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 and under.

He also doesn't understand the government's supposed haste in touting such an "experimental" vaccine, given how the vast majority of children have proven to be resilient against the coronavirus.

"I think it was a mistake for the FDA to approve it," McCullough told Newsmaxhost Amanda Brilhante Sunday morning, while serving a guest on the "Wake Up America" program. "And clearly the CDC recommendation probably won't be followed by a lot of the parents."

McCullough, the chief medical adviser to the Truth For Health Foundation, has devoted much of the last two-plus years studying the coronavirus, and its effect on small children and infants.

"Children have a very mild syndrome [relative to COVID]. It's not like our senior citizens, who are at risk," says McCullough, while adding the coronavirus is "easily managed" by children, especially those who get "an early start on treatment."

As we've documented, the Truth for Health Foundation is filled with dubious "experts" who similarly spread COVID misinformation, and it's headed by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a medical misinformer in her own right who is affiliated with the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He (and Clemons) also hid the fact that more than 460 have died of COVID, and that the rate of hospialization for children has surged with the Omicron strain and its variants becoming the preeminent strain in the U.S. The vaccines also have a significant level of effectiveness in young children.

Rather than report any of these facts, Clemons and Brilhante let McCullough falsely fearmonger about the vaccine without being challenged on the issue:

"Parents should be wise" about companies or governmental agencies that over-promise on the vaccine's efficacy, said McCullough. "I think many parents will conclude, 'it's experimental, it's genetic code for the spiked protein that was devised in a lab in Wuhan, China.' This is just going too far."

McCullough was also allowed to engage in baseless speculation that the COVID virus was intentionally created, claiming that "We know that the spike protein looks like it was genetically modified to make the virus more infectious and more lethal." McCullough offered no evidence to back up that assertion. In reality, most legitimate scientists dispute the main right-wing conspiracy theory on the subject (which McCullough was hinting at), that the COVID virus was created in a Chinese lab.

CNS Continues To Blame Biden For High Gas Prices
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has been a reliable arm of the Republican Party, especially when it comes to promoting GOP talking points about gas and oil -- for instance, pushing the fiction that building the Keystone XL pipeline would lower U.S. prices now and uncritically quoting oil and gas lobbying organizations to attack Biden energy policies that are seen is not sufficiently friendly to gas and oil and pretending that right-wing activists are "climate experts."

It has also labored to push the GOP narrative that Biden's policies are solely to blame for high gas prices -- despite not identifying any specific Biden policy that it can directly link to a specific increase in prices. A Feb. 14 article by editor Terry Jeffrey played built by association in declaring that "Between January 2021 and January 2022--President Joe Biden’s first year in office--the price of unleaded gasoline increased 40.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Jeffrey did the same thing in a March 10 article stating that "The price of gasoline increased 38.0 percent from February 2021 to February 2022, which marked President Joe Biden’s first full year in office, according to the Consumer Price Index numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite all this implicit blame, Jeffrey cited no Biden policy as responsible for that increase in either article -- just like his counterparts at CNS owner the Media Research Center failed to do.

Managing editor played politics with gas prices in California in a March 28 article (which followed up from a similar March 10 article):

Although some gas stations in Los Angeles are charging more than $7 for one gallon of regular gasoline, the national average (on March 28) for a gallon of regular is $4.246, according to AAA.

[...]

California, a state run by a Democrat-dominant [sic] legislature and a Democrat [sic] governor, has a gas excise tax of 51.1 cents per gallon. The tax is scheduled to increase to 53.9 cents per gallon in July.

When President Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline (all grades, formulations) was $2.464, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Chapman censored the fact that one main reason gas is always higher in California is because the state uses a special blend of gas not used elsewhere that is designed to reduce pollution. (A couple months later, CNS columnist Hans Bader hyped wildly overpriced gas at a single price-gouging station in California.)

Craig Bannister served as stenographer for the oil industry in order to attack Biden in a March 31 article:

After President Joe Biden delivered a speech Thursday outlining his plan to reduce gas prices, energy groups called the plan short-sighted and said Biden’s speech was a desperate attempt to shift blame away from the administration.

“The American people deserve real solutions,” American Petroleum (API) President Mike Sommers said in a statement, criticizing Biden for releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), rather than addressing the fundamental forces causing gas prices to skyrocket:

“There are many factors behind rising energy costs, from geopolitical volatility and supply chain constraints to policy uncertainty, and the American people deserve real solutions.

[...]

In a statement to CNSNews.com, Western Energy Alliance (WEA) President Kathleen Sgamma said that Biden’s speech is evidence that the administration is panicking because Americans realize the president’s policies are to blame for skyrocketing gas prices:

The same day, Melanie Arter complained about Biden in an article headlined "Biden’s Plan to Reduce Gas Prices Singles Out Oil Companies Who Don’t Ramp Up Oil Production."

Jeffrey returned for an April 12 article hyping that "The price of gasoline rose by 48.0 percent from March 2021 to March 2022, according to numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics." He didn't mention Biden by name, but the implication was there in the accompanying photo of Biden shaking hands with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

A May 9 article by Chapman hyped a biased poll from Rasmussen Reports and the right-wing Heartland Institute claiming that "52% of voters want Congress and President Joe Biden to focus on expanded oil and gas drilling while only 34% want them to focus on battling climate change."

In a June 14 article, Bannister complained that "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sole reason that gas prices are up, President Joe Biden claimed Tuesday," adding that "As president, Biden has taken steps to thwart domestic oil production, such as canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and ending the sale of new oil leases" but not offering any evidence that any of those are to blame for gas price increases.

Susan Jones served up a June 22 complaint that Biden wants a gas tax holiday and the fact sheet the White House issued in support of one:

Notably, the fact sheet specifically mentions/blames "Putin" for gasoline price hikes four times, neglecting to mention that gasoline prices began rising as soon as Biden took office -- shutting down the Keystone Pipeline, canceling oil and gas leases, and pressing ahead with his green energy plans.

Again, no proof was offered to link any of those actions with any specific increase in gas prices.

CNS was also cranking out the usual stenographical attacks from Republican members of Congress:

• Sen. Cruz: High Gas Prices Are the 'Intended Effect' of Biden's Green Energy Agenda
• Scalise: ‘If Anybody's Going to Be Sued for Gouging, It Should Be the Gouger-in-Chief,’ Who Caused Record Gas Prices
• Sen. Rick Scott: Biden Is Doing Everything He Can to Make Gas Prices Go Up
• Rep. Kat Cammack: ‘Nancy Pelosi Hasn’t Filled Up a Gas Tank in 20 Years, Let Alone Joe Biden’
• Rep. Scalise: When It Comes to High Gas Prices, Pres. Biden Is ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Walls, But Nobody Is Buying It’

These were all presented without criticism or allowing the White House to respond, let alone any fact-checking.

CNS' opinion side (well, the opinion side explicitly labeled as such) was  busy as well. For instance, a June 10 column by Gary Bauer ranted:

June 9, 2022 – a day that will live in infamy. That’s the day that the national average for gasoline officially broke $5.00 a gallon. And, yes, Joe Biden did that!

[...]

But here’s what you must understand and what you must help your friends and family members to understand: Your pain at the pump isn’t an accident. It’s all part of Joe Biden’s plan. 

High energy prices are the predictable, desired, and deliberate result of the Democrat jihad against the American energy industry. They are an essential element of their “climate change” agenda. But don't take my word for it. The left has been very open about it.

But like the other CNS writers, Bauer failed to explain how a specific Biden policy resulted in a specific increase in gas prices. And the role of Russia -- whose supply of oil Biden cut off after that country's invasion of Ukraine, causing prices to spike -- was completely censored.

MRC's Attempt To Discredit 1/6 Hearing Witness' Testimony Doesn't Age Well
Topic: Media Research Center

How devastating was former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony at the June 28 hearing of the House committee looking into the Capitol riot, particularly her account of Donald Trump lunging at the steering wheel of a presidential vehicle driven by a Secret Service officer when told he was being taken back to the White House instead of to the Capitol to egg on rioters? The Media Research Center -- which had been vociferously denying that the hearings even qualified as news in order to conform with mandated Republican narratives -- saw fit to attack Hutchinson. Kevin Tober led the attack:

On Tuesday, it was revealed that former President Trump had allegedly lunged at his Secret Service limo driver and attempted to grab the steering wheel on the morning of January 6, 2021, when he was told he wouldn’t be allowed to go to the Capitol after his speech at the White House Ellipse. 

This was made public by former top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson during Tuesday’s congressional hearing into the January 6 Capitol riots. 

Predictably all three evening news broadcasts led with the allegations against former President Trump. Six minutes before the three networks went live, NBC’s chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander tweeted that both Secret Service agents involved “are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”

CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane were quick to hype the now false allegations[.]

[...]

While ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News both reported on the testimony given by Hutchinson but each noted that the Secret Service denies it and both agents are willing to testify under oath. 

On World News Tonight, chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas reported that “a source close to the Secret Service just told me to expect that the Secret Service will push back against any allegation of an assault against an agent or President Trump reaching for the steering wheel.”

Note that Tober immediately labeled Hutchinson's testimony "false" despite having no evidence in hand to prove it. And doesn't the MRC repeatedly warn us about the "liberal media" citing anonymous sources -- no alleged Secret Service agent purportedly willing to testify against Hutchinson was identified by name -- as being self-serving and designed for ratings? Nevertheless, Tober self-satisfyingly ranted: "All three networks have spent the entire duration of the Pelosi-picked January 6 hearings hyping every allegation that it spewed. With the fact that none of these hearings allow for any cross-examination of witnesses, a blunder like this was only a matter of time."

Tober's post has not aged well, because as of this writing, the Secret Service agents who declared they would testify to the committee that Hutchinson was lying have yet to do so nearly a month later; instead, they have lawyered up and refused to testify and they have been identified as Trump loyalists and yes men.Meanwhile, other witnesses have corroborated key parts of Hutchinson's testimony.

A June 29 post by interns Wallace White and Michael Ippolito compiled right-wing tweets attacking Hutchinson, none of which prove her wrong. Curtis Houck did a time-count follow-up later in the day:

With the liberal media all-in on Tuesday’s January 6 Committee hearing featuring former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, it wasn’t a surprise Wednesday morning to see the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC downplay the strong pushback from the Secret Service regarding Hutchinson’s tall tale that President Trump assaulted a Secret Service agent and tried to seize the steering wheel of his presidential SUV on January 6.

A NewsBusters analysis found that ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA), CBS Mornings, and NBC’s Today spent four minutes and 42 seconds on Hutchinson’s claim, but only two minutes and 33 seconds on the pushback from her colleagues and the Secret Service, including offers from the latter to have the agents involved testify under oath that none of that was true.

[...]

The liberal media have harped on the January 6 Committee and its members as harbingers of truth. But if they’re unwilling to firmly call out and push to correct the record on a claim that’s on rapidly thinning ice, it should serve as a reminder that they continue to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

Yeah, that one's not aging well either.

Mark Finkelstein served up some serious whining in a July 2 post:

Never pass up an opportunity to plug your book—even when discussing what you consider to have been a grave national crisis!That would appear to be Mika Brzezinski's credo. On Wednesday's Morning Joe, Brzezinski managed to work the title of her book into her praise of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide who testified before the House January 6 committee hearing on Tuesday.

The praise for the anti-Trump witness was extravagant. Joe Scarborough called it "some of the most compelling testimony on Capitol Hill since Watergate." Willie Geist touted "a White House aide became the conscience of the nation! She's a couple years out of college, and she was the adult in the room, surrounded by those ostensible adults and ostensible leaders of our country who stood by and let it happen."

Aside from a couple passing references, the MRC hasn't touched Hutchinson's testimony since. And it has offered nothing so far beyond passing references to new revelations that the Secret Service deleted text messages from its agents that day. Remember, the MRC's mission is to protect Trump and Republicans, not to do "media research," so don't expect them to correct the record.

CNS' Jones Defends The Honor Of Yachts (And Shills For The Oil Industry)
Topic: CNSNews.com

In case you were wondering who CNSNews.com's core audience really is, Susan Jones answered it in a June 21 article in which she defended the honor of yachts and the super-rich people who buy them as job creators:

President Joe Biden made another pitch to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans on Monday, telling reporters gathered on a Delaware beach: "If you're going out and buying a yacht, it doesn't help the economy a whole lot."

People who buy yachts, of course, keep yacht-sellers and yacht builders in business. And the yacht owners need to hire crews to run their ships, so job-creation is also part of the yacht-buying experience.

But, if yacht-buying doesn't help the economy, Biden does believe that lowering the price of insulin -- and buying expensive electric cars -- will help.

Talking down electric cars, however, harms a different CNS constituency: Tesla chief Elon Musk, whom it has cheered for his efforts to buy Twitter and touted his opinions on various and sundry sujbects.

But Jones wasn't done. When Biden pointed out that oil companies are sitting on 9.000 leases to drill on public lands and that they've "they’ve cut back on refining," Jones went into oil industry PR mode and copy-and-pasted talking points from the American Petroleum Institute offering "seven realities" that supposedly explain "what is happening in global energy markets and (provided) concrete and practicable solutions for addressing today’s high-price environment" -- none of which address the fact that oil companies are sitting on 9.000 leases to drill on public lands.

Jones uncritically repeated the API's narrative on refining -- which blamed "conversions to renewable fuel production" for decreases in refining capacity but then insisted that "ExxonMobil is expanding the capacity at its Beaumont, TX refinery and Valero at its Port Arthur, TX refinery for a combined total of 300,000 barrels per day" -- while ignoring the fact that U.S. refining capacity dropped more than 900,000 barrels per day just in the past two years, while worldwide refining capacity has dropped by 3.3 million barrels a day since 2020.

Jones did not give Biden or the White House an opportunity to respond to API's talking points. Then again, CNS loves shilling for the oil industry.

UPDATE: Jones ran to the oil industry's defense again in a June 22 article:

President Joe Biden is no fan of oil companies, and his sarcasm was on full display Tuesday, when a reporter asked the president about a letter the Chevron CEO wrote to Biden.

Michael Wirth, the Chevron's chairman of the Board and CEO, noted that "your Administration has largely sought to criticize, and at times vilify, our industry. These actions are not beneficial to meeting the challenges we face and are not what the American people deserve."

Asked for his reaction, Biden sneered: "He's mildly sensitive. I didn't know they'd get their feelings hurt that quickly.

When Biden again referenced the 9,000 leases on public lands the oil companies are sitting on, Jones again resorted to copy-and-paste PR From API:

Biden's stock response regarding the "9,000 leases" is misleading because it suggests that oil companies can just put a straw in the ground and suck up the oil waiting below.

First, not all leases are productive. And second, establishing a working oil well takes considerable time and bureaucratic effort.

According to the American Petroleum Institute:

"The (Biden) administration discouraged production of natural gas and oil starting with its first moments in power. On Day One, the President signed an executive order to impose a temporary moratorium on oil and gas leasing activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); withdrew offshore areas in Arctic waters and the Bering Sea from oil and gas drilling; and revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

"Days later, the administration acted to indefinitely pause all new oil and gas lease sales on federal lands and offshore waters, immediately restricting the industry’s opportunities to explore and invest in new areas.

"Even where the administration hasn’t blocked federal leases, it has been an unwilling partner, openly admitting the sales are not aligned with their policies."

Further, API notes that wells and leases -- those 9,000 leases -- "are not like faucets and spigots. It takes months for new wells to start producing and it can take more than five years for some fields to go from discovery to production, thanks in part to regulatory and legal hurdles along the way.”

Nowhere in that copy-and-paste PR did the API reveal what, exactly, they are doing will all of those 9,000 oil leases besides sitting on them. Hopefully the API is sending a little money Jones' way for being such a loyal stenographer (well, copy-and-paster).

MRC's Double Standard On Graphic Photos Of Dead Children
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Alex Christy loudly complained in a June 2 post about the idea that graphic images of the victims of gun massacres should be made public as a way to move people into doing something aboaut them:

On Thursday’s CNN Newsroom, host Ana Cabrera and pediatric trauma surgeon Dr. Chethan Sathya claimed the country needs “an Emmett Till moment” in order to do something about “these automatic weapons.”

The Till reference comes from an op-ed in the Washington Post from former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, which Cabrera read from, “in order for change to happen, we need an Emmett Till moment. Johnson writes in part this -- and I'm quoting here – ‘I lack the moral standing to tell a parent to accept and approve for the greater good the public display of photos of his or her dead child, nor do I suggest the release of any images in particular, but something graphic is required to awaken the public to the real horror of these repeated tragedies.’”

Till was brutally membered and dismembered in a racist attack while his body was left to sink in a river. Here, Johnson and CNN are talking about punishing innocent people for someone else’s crimes.

Cabrera then introduced Sathya and declared “This is such an important discussion” and asked “What do you think about what the secretary there wrote about this idea of people seeing with their own eyes what it looks like, a gunshot wound in a child? Do people need to see what you see?”

Sathya did agree, “One hundred percent. This has been something that we’ve been seeing as physicians, trauma surgeons for decades, right? You know, we are talking right now about mass shootings. We're talking about children being killed. This is something we see on a daily basis.”

Mark Finkelstein similarly whined in a post the next day:

Pro-abortion liberals rage against laws requiring ultrasounds before women can get an abortion. But whereas liberals oppose having people see living babies, many liberals are now clamoring to force people to view dead babies and children—the victims of mass shootings.

On Thursday's Nicolle Wallace Deadline: White House show on MSNBC, substitute host John Heilemann led the charge on the issue.

[...]

Heilemann's guest, Dave Cullen, a gun-control advocate and author, heartily agreed: "I think we desperately need some new, fresh tactics and creative thinking. And, I like this!"

So, should we look for gun-control extremists to call on MSNBC, CNN, and other liberal outlets to implement their ghoulish proposal, and begin displaying the bodies of children killed in mass shootings? 

Note: Heilemann isn't the first liberal TV host to promote the viewing of dead bodies to promote his cause. Back during the Iraq War, Walter Cronkite proposed showing the dead bodies of American soldiers in order to turn people against the war.

Finkelstein didn't that that right-wingers have pushed graphic images to be displayed in public -- those of abortions, as a ploy to gain sympathy for the anti-abortion cause. Indeed, one of Finkelstein and Christy's co-workers, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, not only demanded that be done, she stuck graphic images in her April 20 post:

It’s Episode 34 of CensorTrack with TR. This week we talked about how Big Tech is hiding the truth about the biggest tragedy our world faces today — abortion.

A group of pro-life activists discoverd the remains of 110 babies, five of which may have been killed illegally, according to National Review. “The Five” children were found on March 25th and were suspected to be around the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy when they died. This is a story that needs to break the news cycle. The world needs to see these images and know about the true tragedy of abortion. But apparently, Big Tech doesn’t think so. 

A pro-life group called LifeNews tweeted out a picture of one of the five babies. The group told MRC in an email that they explicitly added a sensitive warning over their post to alert users that the content was sensitive in hopes of avoiding Twitter’s censorship. Unfortunately, Twitter disagreed. Twitter told LifeNews to delete the tweet, locked LifeNews out of its account and threatened a permanent ban. 

Why? Because it showed the truth of abortion?

LifeNews told the MRC, “That's what makes Twitter's decision to force us to remove the tweet and potentially ban our account even more absurd, as we followed their own policies to ensure that a sensitive image was marked sensitive before posting it. We didn't just post it willy nilly with no warning like thousands of images of porn and violence are posted on Twitter every day with no action taken against those accounts.” 

It's a pretty good bet that Mandelburg will never do an episode of "CensorTrack With TR" demanding that graphic photos of gun massacre victims be allowed on social media so that people can see "the truth" of gun violence. And she's never going call her fellow activists "ghouls" for obsessively trying to inject those photos into public spaces.

NEW ARTICLE: The Bogus Mule Team At WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily went all in to promote the dubious election-fraud film "2000 Mules" -- then tried to ignore how the film was repeatedly being discredited. Read more >>

From Honoring To Heathering: The MRC Turns On Alyssa Farah
Topic: Media Research Center

We're almost starting to feel bad for Alyssa Farah. We've noted the rift between her and her father, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah (who says he wasn't invited her to her wedding earlier this year), presumably stemming from his continued embrace of Donald Trump and his false election fraud conspiracy theories even after he incited the Capitol riot, actions that caused Alyssa -- who at one time was the Trump White House communications director -- to break with him.

In a December 2020 post, Curtis Houck was happy to tout her White House job as a retort to incoming President Biden having the first all-female White House communications staff. In October 2021, Kristine Marsh came to Farah's defense during a guest-host stint on "The View" when the other co-hosts "badgered and berated her for working for the Trump White House at all"; Marsh noted that Farah "explained that Trump’s rhetoric around denying the election results was what caused her to resign and told the View hosts she didn’t vote for him in 2016, which was a small relief to them."

But Farah's refusal to defend Trump not matter what and to not hate Democrats and President Biden as much as right-wing dogma demands -- not to mention her apparent desire to be a permanent host on "The View" -- has made the MRC slowly flip-flop and turn her into a victim of its Heathering process, in which it attacks fellow right-wingers for straying ever so slightly straying from that dogma because no dissent is tolerated. In a Jan. 16 post, Tim  Graham complained that Farah -- now Alyssa Farah Griffin after her marriage -- didn't spew hat at Biden during an appearance on Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources": "At least Stelter asked Alyssa Farah Griffin about the lack of press conferences. She didn't exactly attack the White House for hiding Biden."

Marsh did praise Farah Griffin for bashing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a Feb. 8 post, though she did make a point of noting that she "now works for CNN." The next day, Marsh praised her again for defending the notorious Florida "don't say gay"bill. In a March 14 post, however, Nicholas Fondacaro criticzed Farah Griffin for advocating a no-fly zone over Ukraine, delcaring that would be an "escalation" of the conflict there; he did praise her on March 17 for arguing with co-host Whoopi Goldberg in a way that when Goldberg responded, she "refus[ed] to look Farah in the eye."

Fondacaro's hostility to Farah Griffin increased after that. When Biden's sister appeared n the show to promote her book, Fondacaro sneered in an April 12 post that "self-proclaimed Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin couldn’t think up an original question and essentially asked Hostin’s again." Translation: Farah Griffin wouldn't spew hate her at the woman for the sin of being a Biden. The next day, Fondacaro ranted against the co-hosts favored sensible gun regulation and that  Farah Griffin "didn’t push back on any of this nonsense."

Fondacaro seemed to be complaining that Farah Griffin wasn't an obnoxious enough right-winger in a May 10 post on the show's co-hosts discussing abortion in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade: "As self-described Republican and guest co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin was trying to bring up how “there was an anti-abortion clinic that was targeted violently,” Goldberg interrupted to wave off any mention of the topic." The next day, Fondacaro whined that she has "honestly been rather squishy with defending conservative and Republican policies." He was still Heathering Farah Griffin will agreeing with her in a May 13 post noting that "self-described conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin got to the heart of the debate and why the pro-life side was so adamant about their position."

Fondacaro set the tone for the MRC's rage at Farah Griffin in a May 24 post:

During a contentious appearance on ABC’s The View on Tuesday, former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway frazzled the cast in the way only she can. There to promote her new book, Here’s the Deal, Conway confronted the liberals with President Biden’s failures and blasted the liberal media for targeting her family. She also called out sell-out conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin for abandoning conservative principles for her selfish interests.

[...]

The sparks really flew when Griffin tried to portray herself as a defender of America and democracy citing her exit from the administration after the 2020 election. “I left three months before you did, for my children. I have four of them. And I said less drama, more mama,” Conway shot back. “I think you stayed a whole month after the election that you were having a problem with.”

Griffin rudely interrupted Conway to proclaim she supposedly stayed in order “to help my junior staff get jobs.” She then took a cheap shot at Conway by suggesting she took an oath to support Trump and not the Constitution.

Building off that false premise, Griffin tried to suggest Conway was for the Capitol Riot but Conway had receipts showing her opposition. Conway then called out Griffin’s self-serving actions of abandoning conservative principles in an attempt to be a media staple for bashing Republicans:

Alyssa, if you're saying that somehow you think we're supposed to think that you've seen the light and not just see your name in lights, that's not fair.

“That’s such a cheap shot,” Griffin whined at the truth.

Given that neither Conway nor Fondacaro describe exactly how Farah Griffin supposedly "abandoning conservative principles" or described the "selfish interests" for which they were purportedly abandoned -- or even for what, exactly, she "sold out," that truly was a cheap shot.

Again: The only criticism the MRC has ever laid on Farah Griffin has been not loving Trump enough and not hating Biden enough. That's Heathering at its finest -- and, apparently, reason enough to try and destroy her for no longer being part of the cool kids club.

Interestingly, there was no mention whatsoever by the MRC of Farah Griffin's pedigree as the daughter of the operator of one of the most virulent fake-news conspiracy websites out there. So it hasn't thrown her completely under the bus (yet).

CNS' Jones Gets Annoyed When Oil Industry Profits Are Brought Up
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com serves as reliable stenographers for the oil industry, so it's no surprise that it's a bit sensitive about folks pointing out oil industry profiteering. Susan Jones grumbled in a June 6 article:

President Joe Biden and his administration continue to blame Russia's war on Ukraine for spiking gasoline prices. But some administration officials also blame oil industry profiteering.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told ABC's "This Week" that "the price of gasoline is not set by a dial in the Oval Office."

"And when an oil company is deciding, hour by hour, how much to charge you for a gallon of gas, they're not calling the administration to ask what they should do; they're doing it based on their goal of maximizing their profits.

"It's been very striking right now to see these oil companies, who have become almost ridiculously profitable, and you hear these oil executives on the record talking about how they're not going to increase production. Why would they? They're doing great right now.

As we've previously noted -- and Jones didn't -- the Dallas Federal Reserve office surveyed 139 oil and gas companies in March about trends in the industry, and one of the questions asked, "Which of the following is the primary reason that publicly traded oil producers are restraining growth despite high oil prices?" Nearly 60 percent responded, "Investor pressure to maintain capital discipline"-- i.e., investors want prices high so they can make money.

Still, Jones complained every time oil industry profits are brought up. In a June 10 article blandly headlined "Biden: ‘Every Once in a While Something You Learn Makes You Viscerally Angry’ " -- that thing was the exhorbitant rates foreign shipping companies charge -- Jones later noted:

At the end of his speech, a reporter asked the president if he planned to go after Exxon’s profits.

“We are going to make sure that everybody knows Exxon's profits. Why don’t you tell them what the profits were this quarter? Exxon made more money than God this year. And by the way, nothing has changed. And by the way, one thing I want to say about the oil companies. You talk about how they have 9,000 permits to drill. They are not drilling,” Biden said.  

“Why aren't they drilling? Because they make more money not producing more oil, the price goes up, number one. And number two, the reason they’re not drilling is they are buying back their own stock, which should be taxed, quite frankly, buying back their own stock and making no new investments, so I always thought Republicans were for investment. Exxon, start investing, start paying your taxes,” he said.

Again, Jones didn't dispute it. Jones expanded that into a larger complaint in a June 15 article:

President Joe Biden reportedly has sent a letter to various U.S. oil and gas executives, "talking about record high profit margins, saying you need to raise your output, raise your refining capacity as well," CNBC's Brian Sullivan reported early Wednesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Reading from the letter he'd just obtained, Sullivan said, quoting the president: "You and your companies have an opportunity to take immediate action to increase supply of gas, diesel, other refined products."

This time, though, she did give a platform to the industry to respond, stating that "Forbes magazine reporter David Blackmon asked ExxonMobil for a response to Biden's criticism and received this reply," which was largely a non-answer answer justifying the record profits because of losses early in the pandemic:

"We reported losses of more than $20 billion in 2020, and we borrowed more than $30 billion in 2019 and 2020 to support our investments in production around the world. In 2021, total taxes on the company’s income statement were $40.6 billion, an increase of $17.8 billion from 2020."

Actually,that pandemic-driven loss was driven mostly by writing down the value of $19 billion in assets, not by an actual loss of that amount of money.

Jones served up a similar complaint in a June 23 article:

President Joe Biden "wants to do everything" he can to lower gasoline prices because "he understands the importance of it," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

But doing "everything" does not include attending today's meeting with oil company executives, whom Biden continually vilifies as profiteers.

This time, Jones didn't dispute the characterization.

The MRC-Fox News Pipeline Grows (And One MRCer Quietly Disappears)
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center pipeline to Fox News continues, as two more MRC staffers have followed in the footsteps of Lindsay Kornick and Gabriel Hays to peddle their right-wing bias at a presumably more lucrative employer.

Alexander Hall, the MRC's chief crier of "censorship" by "big tech" and its one of its Elon Musk fanboys, left the MRC at the end of May to become and "associate editor" for Fox News Digital, where he started in mid-June. interstingly, the MRC has disabled Hall's archive in an apparent attempt to keep people like us from perusing them for even more examples of bias.His Fox archive, however, doesn't disclose that he used to work for the MRC -- all the better to maintain the "fair and balanced" fiction, it seems.

Around the same time, Kyle Drennen similarly decamped for Fox News to become an editor at Fox News Digital. His departure could be considered something of a surprise because he had been at the MRC since 2007, where h  was associate editor of NewsBusters and had the title of "senior news analyst" at one point; his association with the MRC actually began in 2005, when he was an intern. Drennen's MRC archive hasn't been disabled, so the bias he brings to Fox News is available for all to see. One his main jobs at the MRC before his departure was choosing daily "Editor's Picks" of media ttacks from other website; it may or may not be coincidence that in the month or so before he left the MRC, three of those picks were from Fox News.

That's quite a pipeline. No wonder the MRC so vociferously defends Fox News from any criticism -- can't afford to offend a future employer, after all. The pipeline is such, however, that the MRC really should disclose the conflict of interest of so many Fox News employees being former MRC workers, and that Fox News can't claim to be "news" with the hiring of so many obviously biased "editors."

Meanwhile, another longtime MRC employee also went away -- but under more mysterious circumstances. Dan Gainor was a loyal MRC apparatchik who who was also a vice president who ran its Free Speech America operation that was dedicated to crying "censorship" whenever right-wing extremists were held accountable for their words. Just a year ago was the beneficiary of a fluffy profile from the right-wing Washington Examiner, and as recently as April he was appearing on Fox News shilling whatever MRC "study" had been released. But sometime in May, Gainor and the MRC parted ways; he describes himself on his Twitter page only as a "freelance opinion editor for Fox," which we suspect is not a full-time job, and an occasional Fox News columnist. HHis Fox News archive has the same new bio, while his MRC archive, like that of Hall, has been disabled.

It's unclear what happened -- neither Gainor nor the MRC are talking. Gainor clearly did not leave for a more lucrative opportunity, and he also did not retire, since he didn't get the same fawning treatment Rich Noyes got. But it seems Gainor's loyalty has gone for naught if he can be disappeared from the MRC so quickly and quietly. He has a lot more time to spend on Twitter, though, judging by his feed.

WND Columnist Complains About Modern Art
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerry Newcombe complained in a June 7 WorldNetDaily column:

A recent visit to a museum of modern art got me thinking about how much of it is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes begins with these famous words: "Vanity of vanities … All is vanity." All is meaningless.

As a book in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is a terrific precursor to the Gospel of Christ. It shows us how life apart from God has no ultimate purpose. Ecclesiastes shows our great need for Jesus, who by His broken body and shed blood has purchased peace with God and everlasting life, which He has made available to all who believe.

But, alas, much of modern art today reflects a nihilistic worldview. Much of art today is just "vanity of vanities."

Some modern art is interesting, but how is a painting with an eye over here and a leg over there and a grotesque uglifying of the human form "art"?

Every time I see eyesores that pass for modern art – for instance, the weird sculptures prominently displayed at some airports – I think, "That artist must be laughing all the way to the bank." My wife adds, "Why should they call it art when a 3-year-old could create it?"

Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, which teaches a Christian worldview to youth, has written an upcoming book, "Truth Changes Everything." For this article, he gave me a sneak peek of the art chapter and permission to quote him.

Myers writes: "I appreciate many works of modern art, but often I'm left wondering what it was about that previous age that give us Michelangelo's David, while our age's 'famous' works include Marcel Duchamp's 1917 display of a urinal, entitled 'Fountain,' symbolizing that everything is waste to be flushed away. It is impossible not to notice the difference. Today's attention-getting art exhibits often feature blank canvases or galleries scattered with random objects. According to postmodern author Glenn Ward, this is not a lack of skill, but an intentional effort to 'disrupt bourgeois fantasies about art.'"

Because our elite class has rejected God, they are left with a purposeless, absurd universe – and their art and writings reek of despair. Such a worldview isn't creative – it's anti-creative.

Newcombe then seemed to be arguing for directly representational art:

The New England Primer sold 120 million copies and was used as a textbook for several decades. This little book taught many of our Founding Fathers how to read and even taught them theology. It included the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which is used to this day in many Presbyterian and Reformed churches.

The opening of that catechism famously says: "Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Life with God has meaning. Life without God is meaningless.

Newcombe seems to have forgotten what happened the last time a leader openly despised modern art ("degenerate art," one might call it) and championed classical representations of the human form.