MRC's Graham Hypocritically Lashes Out At 'Incorrect Tweet'
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center executive Tim Graham wrote in an Aug. 17 post:

Anonymous sources can cut both ways. After CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell sloppily tweeted an inaccurate claim that Trump was lying about the FBI taking his passports in the Mar-a-Lago raid, unnamed critics inside CBS pounced in a Tuesday New York Post story. 

[T]he anchor attributed the information to a single source — a big no-no at CBS News, which has a strict two-source protocol, angry CBS sources told The Post. They added that the tweets also made it sound like O’Donnell was calling the former president a “liar.”

“This is an embarrassment for CBS that the face of your network can’t even make a second call to a Justice Department rep,” one livid source said. “It’s Journalism 101.”

The loathing of Trump routinely leads to sloppy, rushed reporting to paint Trump as perennially engulfed in damaging scandal.

In fact, O'Donnell's tweet was not incorrect; she accurately quoted an official stating that the FBI was not in possession of Trump's passports, though it was murky whether it ever actually had possession of them. Trump claimed they were "stolen," but he's also an invetarate liar and there's no real reason to trust anything he or his subordinates have to say about, well, anything -- especially given that the raid was prompted by deception about Trump's unauthorized possession of classified documents.

Of course, Graham is being a total hypocrite about anonymous sources, decrying them when the "liberal media" ues them but gleefully uses them when they serve his partisan agenda -- as he does here in uncritically citing the anonymous source the New York Post used to bash O'Donnell. He will not apply the demands he makes of the "liberal" media to his own right-wing media operation -- that's cowardice and craven politics at work.

Graham is demonstrating another double standard as well: He will never call out erronenous tweets in his right-wing media bubble -- and certainly not ones from his boss, Brent Bozell.

And, throughout all of this, Graham never explained why someone's "incorrect tweet" deserved so much attention -- outside of the MRC's anti-media agenda, that is.

Graham's dishonest behavior is yet another reason why his MRC shouldn't be taken seriously as media critics.

CNS Cheers Liz Cheney's Primary Loss
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com, like its Media Research Center parent, has attacked the House hearings on the Capitol riot, so it was inevitable that it would also lash out at the ranking Republican on that committee, Liz Cheney. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman complained in May following the racially motivated gun massacre in Buffalo (remember, CNS has embraced the racial replacement theory conspiracy spouted by both the shooter and Tucker Carlson), that Cheney -- who he made sure to note was "one of only 10 Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump" -- "denounced the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives, stating it "has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism." Chapman hyped how pro-Trump Republicans like him have rejected her and that he didn't like her response:

In March, Leader McCarthy endorsed Cheney's opponent, Republican Harriet Hageman, for the primary run in Wyoming. In response, Cheney's spokesman issued a statement that said, "A leader with honor would be rejecting -- not protecting -- the pro-Putin, anti-Semitic, white nationalist members of the party, instead of fighting against Liz Cheney for telling the truth."

Susan Jones sneered at an interview with Cheney in a July 5 "news" article:

Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who is working with Democrats to "protect" the nation from Donald Trump, says the January 6 committee on which she sits is not "political," and the committee's goal is not to knock Trump out of the running in 2024.

She told ABC's Jonathan Karl the Republican Party "can't survive if he's our nominee." And Cheney said she has not yet decided whether she will run for president in 2024. Her work with Democrats has put her congressional re-election in jeopardy.

[...]

Cheney said she doesn't intend to lose the August 16th Republican primary in Wyoming, although she faces a significant challenge from the Trump-endorsed candidate.

Cheney said it's important for her to win, "because I will be the best representative that the people of Wyoming can have.

“The single most important thing is protecting the nation from Donald Trump. And I think that that matters to us as Americans more than anything else, and that's why my work on the committee is so important and why it's so important to not just brush this passed, I think it's very important that people know the truth and that there are consequences."

Jones didn't explain why that's a bad thing.

When Cheney did, in fact, lose her Republican primary, Jones happily wrote about that in an Aug. 17 article, hyping her alleged future political ambitions and attacking her role on a "one-sided and politically motivated" committee:

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) lost her primary election to Republican Harriet Hageman by a wide margin Tuesday, getting only about 30 percent of the vote to Hageman's 66 percent.

But in her concession speech, as she thanked her team, Cheney told them, "our work is far from over."

Cheney noted that Abraham Lincoln was defeated in Senate and House elections before winning the presidency. "Lincoln ultimately prevailed," she said. "He saved our union and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history."

[...]

Toward the end of her speech, she hinted that her political future is not over: "This primary election is over. But now the real work begins."

Cheney is rumored to be mulling a run for president, and in her speech, she mentioned not only Abraham Lincoln but also General Ulysses S Grant, who also became president.

As she concluded her speech, Cheney said, "We must be very clear about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office. And I mean it.

"This is a fight for all of us together. I'm a conservative Republican," Cheney said. She's also one of two anti-Trump Republicans joining Democrats on their one-sided and politically motivated "select committee" investigating the events of January 6.

Jones also lovingly wrote about the woman who defeated Cheney in a separate article that added new attacks on Cheney's concession speech:

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), resoundingly defeated in her primary election by fellow Republican Harriet Hageman, spent much of her concession speech doubling down on her vow that Donald Trump must never come near the Oval Office again.

In fact, she mentioned Trump by name at least nine times in her remarks, calling out his "election lies" and promotion of "conspiracies."

"It doesn't surprise me that she would revert to those same old talking points, because that's really in large part what got her defeated," Hageman said:

Jones also noted that Hageman also talked about "accountability," but didn't mention that the House committee Cheney is on is delivering that to Trump and his cronies.

It wouldn't be a complete political attack by CNS if Mark Levin wasn't given space to rant, and Craig Bannister gave him that space in yet another Aug. 17 article:

After losing her primary election by more than a two-to-one margin on Tuesday, anti-Trump January 6 Committee member Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) compared herself to iconic former Republican President Abraham Lincoln – but, that’s not who radio and television host Mark Levin says she resembles.

Responding to Cheney’s remarks, Levin tweeted congratulations to Republican Harriet Hageman, who won the primary with 66% of the vote, and told Cheney she’s more like infamous traitor Benedict Arnold than she is like Lincoln:

“Congratulations, Rep.-elect Hageman!  The better woman won. And no, Liz, you’re not Abraham Lincoln. More like Benedict Arnold. Your speech tonight and the Hollywood film crew you brought with you further underscores that your ambitions and ego are utterly out-of-control.”

Neither Bannister nor Levin explained how the mere act of holding Trump accountable for his actions is the same thing as theactual treason committed by Arnold.

MRC Keeps Up Defense And Deflection Over Mar-a-Lago Raid
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's reaction to the FBI search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound was slow to start, but it continued to find ways to defend him and attack critics. An Aug. 10 post by Alex Christy cheering a right-winger spouting anti-FBI talking points at CNN's S.E. Cupp, who was pointing out that the raid showed the justice system working well, going on to add some talking points of his own: "Cupp and the rest of the media just don’t get it. If Trump were to be treated the same way as Hillary Clinton the raid would never have happened. Such double standards do raise questions that should not be dismissed as 'MAGA World talking points.'"

Another Aug. 10 post by Aidan Moorehouse complained that CNN commentators "were bemused why so many conservatives had such a negative reaction to the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, despite the news that the Bureau had foiled a plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to assassinate former National Security Adviser John Bolton":

Impeccable logic: if an organization does something well, that means it is functioning perfectly in every circumstance and incapable of having parts in need of reform.

After all, this is the FBI we’re talking about. It’s not like this law enforcement agency has ever fabricated evidence to gain a FISA warrant against Carter Page, or collaborated with the media to achieve maximum shock effect, or changed the words “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” to avoid charging Hillary Clinton with a crime.

Moorehouse then threw in a little Clinton Equivocation for good measure:

While it is possible that Trump did something wrong in these situations he’s currently being investigated for, the fact that Trump was raided by the FBI for what appears to be the potential mishandling of classified documents, while Clinton got away scot-free despite 30,000 of her emails being bleached from the face of the earth, ought to tell people like [Alyssa Farah] Griffin why Republicans are so wary of this latest investigation.

Tim Graham ranted on his Aug. 10 podcast that the raid is causing people to think Trump might be a bad person:

Biden's Attorney General approved an unprecedented raid on a former president's home, and we still don't know why. The newscasts are mostly calm, but not so for the Colberts and Scarboroughs. Colbert thinks it's Christmas, and Scarborough thinks the Fascists are having a Fascist fit. 

Some on the Left smelled hypocrisy from the "Lock Her Up" folks on Hillary's deleted government emails. A truly objective media would apply a single standard to these issues of government documents. A truly objective media might also have a distaste for partisans suggesting the other party’s leaders should be in prison. 

This is a fact. We have no precedent for a former president being raided by the FBI. We have no precedent for an attorney general whose Supreme Court nomination was ruined by the former president signing off on such a raid. We can easily predict how furiously the liberal media would have reacted if Trump’s Attorney General approved an FBI raid on the Clinton house in Chappaqua. 

But in this case, we heard Andrea Mitchell condemn House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy for daring to speak ill of Merrick Garland. "Merrick Garland is the most careful, judicious to a fault some would say, you know, attorney general in this case."

A post by Mark Finkelstein complain that a CNN commentator "opined that there was more involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid than looking for evidence regarding classified documents. He suggested that the FBI was also looking for evidence of Trump's involvement with January 6th," and made the "bombshell prognostication" that Trump's arrest was "imminent," while the host "seemed to be insinuating the possibility that the FBI wanted to seize certain documents of a sensitive national-security nature before, e.g., Trump could peddle them to a hostile foreign power!" Finkelstein huffed that the host "offered no evidence in support of his audacious theory" -- but part of it eventually proved true.

In an Aug. 11 post, Margaret Buckley omitted context about a comment MSNBC's Joe Scarborough made while criticizing Republicans for their lemming-like defense of Trump:

Host Joe Scarborough pretended he is interested in helping the fate of the Republican Party, despite having publicly left it years ago. He insisted that GOP candidates are “underperforming” in special elections. 

“They just can’t seem to connect the dots,” Scarborough states, “they keep careening closer and closer to a cliff of political oblivion.” He furthered his “analysis” by immaturely exclaiming this on national television: “They're going 'This is war, this is war! Let's tan our testicles!’" Real professional, Joe.

Actually, Buckley need to bring up those professionalism issues with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who brought up the whole testicle-tanning thing in a special edition of his show a few months ago, positively portraying it as a way to improve one's testosterone levels.

Graham returned for an Aug. 11 post whining that NPR media reporter David Folkenflik pointed out how Republicans and right-wing media (like Graham's MRC) can't stop clinging to Trump. Instead of actually disproving it -- because he clearly can't -- Graham played his usual whataboutism:

It's amazing how credulous liberal journalists can be in assuming the Attorney General told no one in the White House he was going to approve a raid on Trump. Folkenflik would never assume Rupert Murdoch didn't know what was going on in his companies. As for apocalyptic terms, Folkenflik should look at NPR promoting Republicans as a "proto-authoritarian cult."

Graham linked back to a 2020 post he wrote attacking Folkenflik over that statement. He played whataboutism then too.

Finkelstein also returned, this time to complain about the"absolute ecstasy today over Donald Trump's potential legal woes" on "Morning Joe," whining further that "Mika and Joe amused themselves by repeatedly mentioning the many times that Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment during his deposition yesterday with lawyers for New York State Attorney General Letitia James."

Graham's Aug. 12 podcast whined again about Garland not being savaged by non-right-wing media the way he is in Graham's right-wing media bubble:

Attorney General Merrick Garland kept reporters and TV networks waiting (and filling air time) for more than a half-hour before he came out and made a brief statement and took no questions from reporters. It was not a demonstration of transparency after this unprecedented step of the FBI raiding the home of a former president like he was a criminal. 

The networks tried to present Garland as reasonable and nonpartisan -- insisting of course, he must have a good reason for this raid. Then an ABC reporter turned to frighten the public with neo-Nazis ripping Garland on message boards -- he's Jewish -- and seemingly associated all Garland's critics with the worst extremists.

Finkelstein served up anotherwhining post on Aug. 13, this one about a discussion of a Washington Post claiming nuclear-related documents were among the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago:

So the Washington Post, which broke the story, doesn't know what those documents are, or just how classified they might or might not be. It certainly can't say whether the FBI found what their anonymous sources were claiming as justification for this unprecedented don't-call-it-a-raid.

Finkelstein didn't mention that there is no reason for Trump to be possessing sensitive government documents, classified or not, now that is no longer president.

Conrad Black Returns To Newsmax To Defend Trump After Mar-a-Lago Raid
Topic: Newsmax

It's been a while since we've heard from Conrad Black. Following the FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound, Newsmax gave the Trump suck-up (and criminal who was the beneficiary of a Trump pardon) space for the first column it published by him in six months in an Aug. 15 piece:

The conduct of the Justice Department and the FBI in raiding President Trump’s home at Palm Beach on Aug. 8 must rank as among the most dangerous assaults upon the rule of law in the United States since what President Lincoln referred to as an “insurrection” (with a legal precision that has eluded the mountebanks who have so described the events of January 6, 2021).

The New York Times, an unofficial mouthpiece of the regime, disclosed that the raid was caused by a dispute over archives, and their reporter Maggie Haberman conveniently claims to have evidence about Mr. Trump flushing unspecified documents down a White House toilet.

Mr. Trump has been cooperating on this matter, per custom. Archives, after all, have been subject of friction with all former presidents (Richard Nixon’s literary executors litigated successfully over his papers for years after he died 20 years after he retired as president).

Any such complaint should have been civilly litigated. The correct procedure is a subpoena; a warrant is justified only where there is reason to believe that exigible material is apt to be destroyed imminently — impossible given that Mr. Trump was at New York and the records were safely locked up in his Florida home, and the FBI had already gone through the same papers extensively.

It was also improper for the 30 agents to break into the ex-president’s safe. Mr. Trump had been entirely cooperative. If there were any complaint that plausibly justified so immensely sensitive and explosive a step, it should have been referred to a special counsel to give the current partisan attack dog-attorney general, Merrick Garland, a patina of impartiality.

Black could be said to be an unofficial mouthpiece for Trump, and he parrots early pro-Trump talking points here. As it turned out, Trump was not, in fact, cooperating with this matter, which necessitated things to go beyond the civil litigation that authorities had been trying (and failing) to pursue with him.

After diversions toward Hunter Biden and Sandy Berger, Black's complaints continued:

As there was no danger of imminent destruction of anything, there was no excuse for a warrant, especially one executed with such a spectacular excess of force and drama against so eminent a target. Donald Trump was president when the material was moved to Palm Beach from the White House, and the president has the ultimate authority over classified documents.

This is apparently an effort to mouse-trap Mr. Trump in a records violation which might be used to disqualify him from holding a public office again. More than that, it appears to be a lawless effort to strangle the entire democratic process.

No sane person can imagine that this invasion of the former and probable future-president’s home was justified or executed with an acceptable motive.

Given that initial reports that the classified documents Trump absconded with to Mar-a-Lagoincluded nuclear documents turned out to be true, it was quite sane for the government to do what was necessary to get those documents back.

Black went on to rant that "The Democrats and the Fifth Column of anti-Trump nominal Republicans are now shaking in their shoes as Trump supporters reassert his control of the Republican Party and lead the polls toward reelection. Mr. Garland harasses parents who express reasonable opinions about school curriculum and does nothing to help reduce the skyrocketing crime rate." Actually, death threats from parents to school board members are not "reasonable opinions," and that's all Garland focused on, despite right-wing misinformation to the contrary.

As part of this kitchen-sink attack, Black dropped in a George Soros reference:

The American criminal legal system has long since been exposed as completely rotten. The federal criminal conviction rate is 98%, 95% without trial.

Ironically, George Soros had some reason in his hostility to American prosecutors but he made the grave error of promoting soft treatment of repeat violent offenders, instead of lessening penalties against nonviolent first-time offenders, which would be sensible and would be supported. Now the country has omnipotent prosecutors in a stacked system that is led by a seedy claque of Democratic Party Torquemadas.

There is a silver lining in this storm cloud. The Trump-haters must finally have aroused the irrepressible puritanical conscience of America. Obscured and anesthetized though it often is by the shabby venality of much of the system, uneasy though many Americans are about Donald Trump as president, this is an affront to every American who has any desire for an impartially just society.

Black really, desperately wants the raid to be a rallying point for Republicans:

They have made Trump, with all his infelicities, the candidate of lawful democracy. On Monday night, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the Mar-a-Lago police raid was entirely appropriate and then said that we don’t yet know the facts; Republican Senate leader turned Mephistophelean Never-Trumper Mitch McConnell was silent, effectively complicit.

The choice will be clear: the great Democratic Party has descended to mere thuggery. If this disgrace is as malodorous as it now seems, Mr. Trump make a broad appeal to protect the integrity of the system and reject the criminalization of policy differences.

The Republicans should sweep the midterms, and should not hesitate to use the power of impeachment against those who are again attempting a pre-emptive coup d’etat. Each side accuses the other of lawlessness; this is the final escalation and Mr. Trump wins.

The only "malodorous" thing we see here is Black sucking up yet again to the man who pardoned him, as if he feels the need to repeatedly justify that pardon.

Chuck Norris Picked A Bad Time To Embrace Bogus '2000 Mules' Conspiracy Theory
Topic: WorldNetDaily

There's never a good time to embrace a bogus conspiracy theory, but Chuck Norris sure found an especially bad time to do so. He spent his Aug. 15 WorldNetDaily column gushing over admitted criminal Dinesh D'Souza and his "2000 Mules" film, which WND has heavily promoted even as it becomes increasingly discredited. Indeed, Norris himself tried to handwave the errors and gaps in the film:

Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, born in India, has produced a string of amazing documentaries. They include:

• "America: Imagine the World Without Her" (2014)
• "Hillary's America" (the top-grossing documentary of 2016)
• "Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?" (2018)

His latest achievement is called "2000 Mules," which was released back in May.

Critiques like the New York Times accuse "2000 Mules" of simply "repackaging … Trump's election lies." But that is an unfair oversimplification and accusation. Dinesh is a much greater intellectual than to produce a documentary in such regurgitating terms.

What Dinesh did in "2000 Mules" was to examine the evidence for voter fraud in the 2020 election by tracking digital device location data of "mules," or individuals who stuffed voter drop boxes with stacks of completed ballots, especially in swing states.

Before you criticize the premise as impossible, or believe someone else's conclusions (even mine), you should watch the documentary (available online) and examine the evidence for yourself. It contains digital, telecommunication and video evidence of ballot box stuffing occurring by the same individual in multiples areas. As I'll share in a moment, this all makes a huge difference because modern elections are now determined by drop-box and mailed ballots.

Again, though Dinesh's liberal critics have accused him of having "too many gaps" in his evidence, I would say to them that his evidence between the alleged "gaps" is sufficient to make a case for examination. Any fraud is too much fraud, whether it was enough to sway the election or not.

While Norris was promoting this discredited film, the people whose so-called research are at the center of "2000 Mules," Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips of True the Vote, were at a heavily hyped gathering (in far-right circles, anyway) where they promised to "pull the ripcord" and share their evidence. But as the Washington Post reported:

Finally, it was time for Phillips and his colleague Catherine Engelbrecht to prove the doubters wrong. The result? The announcement of a website Open.ink, at which they promised to dump the drop-box surveillance video they obtained from states and documents from various election lawsuits.

“The ‘pulling of the ripcord’ is Open.ink,” Phillips said. There was no announcement that Open.ink would also include the cellphone geolocation data that Phillips claimed showed the existence of all of the mules in the first place. It’s hard to see what is there, since if you visit at this point, you’re quickly redirected to a sign-up sheet that asks you to create an account that must be approved before you can move forward.

[...]

After revealing the site, the True the Vote team put a coda on that boring-old 2020 stuff.

“And that really I think is …” Engelbrecht said, looking at Phillips — her demeanor indicating uncertainty about taking the next step.

“ … the end of ‘mules,’ we’re done!” Phillips replied with affected enthusiasm.

“The end of ‘mules!’ ” Engelbrecht added. “End scene. We’re done.”

No doubt realizing that this is not what the audience expected — RSBN’s lower-third read “The Pit reveals ‘devastating news on 2020’ ” at multiple points in the program — she tried to contextualize the development.

“Honestly, guys,” she said, “ … it’s time to move on. Not to move on to what happened in 2020, because we still have to understand what happened. That is critical. We have to understand that. But we are 90 some days out from midterms” — and so on.

On top of that, Phillips got himself banned from the conference's afterparty at a nearby hotel when he tried to bring a gun with him in violation of hotel policy.

While Norris was blissfully ignorant of the prinicipals behind "2000 Mules" abandoning their own conspiracy theory even as he was promoting it, he still insisted on spouting more bogus election fraud conspiacies:

You can believe or disbelieve in 2020 election fraud; that is your American right. However, the question is: Is it possible that it really occurred in some way, shape, or form? Whether fraud contributed to the win or loss of your favorite candidate's election is secondary compared to whether or not any form of corruption occurred in the national election.

[...]

Election investigation is warranted right now based simply on the fact that Joe Biden received 13 million more votes in 2020 than mega-popular Barack Obama did in 2008, when Obama set a record of votes for any presidential election before and despite Biden is the most unpopular presidential candidate and leader since the founding of our republic.

Is it plausible that the least-popular candidate in history (Biden) could beat one of the most-popular incumbent presidents (Trump) by a record-breaking 7 million votes: Biden with 81,282,916 votes compared to Trump with 74,223,369? Is it also plausible during a global pandemic that there would suddenly be an overall 7% increase in voter turnout across the country in 2020 compared to 2016?

What's also suspect about those 7 million additional 2020 votes for Biden is the fact that the majority were received by mail. Is it a mere coincidence (or "just because of COVID") that, for the first time in 30 years, voting by mail soared across the country while voting in person dropped off the grid? What a convenient, perfectly-timed political pandemic!

[...]

Bottom line: Is the extensive suspicion of election fraud (held by more than 40% of Americans) really far-fetched? Are sheriffs across the country wrong for investigating voter fraud now? Absolutely not.

Gena and I thank, congratulate and commend Dinesh D'Souza in being willing to stand up for the truth, especially in the face of his own personal sacrifices and risks.

You can like or dislike Dinesh or his documentaries, or even call him jaded and a demon, but you can't deny the core of his facts, and the right that Americans have to know the truth.

But they will not get that truth from conspiracy-mongers like Norris who put discredited narrataives ahead of the facts because he refuses to accept that Trump lost re-election fair and square.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Loves Russian Athletes More Than American Ones
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's sports bloggers fretted that Russian athletes were being treated shabbily after Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- but it loves that WNBA star Brittney Griner is rotting in a Russian prison on trumped-up drug charges. Read more >>

Flashback: MRC's Incessant -- And Misdirected -- Whining That Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was 'Censored'
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has spent the past few years suffering a collective outbreak of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome, which focused largely on the the contents of Hunter's laptop, which the MRC repeatedly whined wasn't covered before the 2020 election even though its its pro-Trump promoters never offered independent verification of it at the time.

Let's go back in time to earlier this year and see how the MRC continued to peddle the bogus spin that the story was unjustly "censored" by the media. Geoffrey Dickens wrote in an April 18 post:

It was a bombshell story that could have swayed the 2020 presidential election. 

Just weeks before Election Day, the New York Post printed an explosive story on the morning of October 14, 2020, that alleged Hunter Biden had corrupt business dealings with Ukraine and Joe Biden knew about them.

The Post story was full of stunning revelations. The “No.3 exec” of the Ukrainian firm Burisma (the firm that was paying Hunter $50,000 a month) asked Hunter Biden for to help the company. “The blockbuster correspondence” countered Joe Biden’s assertion that he “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The “correspondence” came from emails found in a laptop dropped off at a Delaware computer store. Also found in the laptop was video evidence of Hunter’s sexual behavior and drug use.

It wasn't until the eight paragraph of his item that Dicken recited the entirely reasonable justifications for downplaying the story:

A deep dive of the coverage shows that when the Big Three networks bother to mention the scandal they do so largely to knock it down, using dismissive verbiage like “dubious” “questionably-sourced story,” “old line of attack” and “unverified.”

But rather than blame the New York Post for not providing independent verification that might have overcome reasaonable accusations that the claims were questionably sourced -- and they arguably were, given the Post's status as a pro-Trump newspaper owned by Fox News' Rupert Murdoch and pro-Trump lackey Rudy Giuliani among its biggest promoters -- Dickesn attacks the non-right-wing media for not running with a clkearly partisan story that could not be verified. Still, Dickens went on to whine:

It all worked. Research conducted by The Polling Company for the Media Research Center after the 2020 election found that the media’s censorship of Biden scandals had a significant impact on the election. The survey found that 45.1% of Biden voters in seven key swing states said they were unaware of the financial scandal enveloping Biden and his son, Hunter. According to our poll, full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, which would have given the former president 311 electoral votes.

That, of course, is the MRC's version of Trump's Big Lie anout the election purportedly being stolen from him. Dickens didn't mention that The Polling Company was founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, raising questions about bias and trustworthiness.

Dickens did not explain why the media is obligated to treat as true a story it cannot verify and for which no verification has been provided.

An April 20 post by Brian Bradley was devoted to whining that "big tech" had "suppressed" the story:

Twitter and Facebook worked in lockstep to restrict the flow of the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 presidential election. These platforms stifled the spread of that story at the same time that Big Media did, as MRC research found.

Facebook’s suppression broke the platform’s own fact-checking policy, and Twitter’s attempt to cancel the story so outrageously violated content moderation norms that it drew criticism from the likes of leftist Poynter Institute fact-checkers. Even then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey criticized his platform after the fact.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone announced the platform had preempted third-party fact-checks on the Hunter Biden story the day it broke on Oct. 14, 2020, and limited its spread moving forward. Stone has a long history working directly for Democrats, and Facebook’s hair-trigger, broad-brush blackout blatantly broke the platform’s content moderation policy.

[...]

Twitter responded to the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden report by disabling the link to the story on the day it was released, and claimed: “Warning: this link may be unsafe.” Twitter then restricted the Post account from Oct. 14 to Oct. 30.

As with Dickens, Bradley's rage is misdirected. He did not demand that the Post offer independent verification of the story. Instead, he continued to whine:

Facebook “fact-checker” Lead Stories released at least 15 so-called “fact-checks” in direct support of Joe and Hunter Biden in the two weeks before the Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day. Those “fact-checks” sought to rebut claims of Hunter’s alleged drug use and alleged sexual misconduct, along with assertions that corporate media didn’t give the Hunter Biden story enough coverage.

Bradley offered no evidence that there was anything inaccurate about Lead Stories' fact-checks -- something you'd think he would want to do if he's accusing Lead Stories of falsely besmirching the story. Also: Fox News is part of a large corporation; why doesn't  Bradly consider it part of the "corporate media"?

Of course, the MRC will never blame its fellow members of the right-wing media bubble for failing to offer independent verification of the story so that it could have been taken more seriously. If the "liberal media" can be blamed, it will be -- even if they were following good journalistic practice by raising questions about a story that lacked verification that its promoters refused to provide.

WND Promotes Bogus Anti-Climate Change Petition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Art Moore wrote in an Aug. 18 article:

Led by a Nobel Prize laureate, more than 1,100 scientists and scholars have signed a document declaring climate science is based more on personal beliefs and political agendas than sound, rigorous science.

The World Climate Declaration states climate science "should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific."

"Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures," the declaration reads.

The declaration was organized by Climate Intelligence, an independent policy foundation founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and Dutch science journalist Marcel Crok.

Unsurprisingly, there's a lot that Moore is not reporting just in these first few paragraphs. As a fact-checker found, the "Nobel Prize laureate" in question, Ivar Giaever -- whom Moore doesn't otherwise refeence in his article -- won for his work on superconductors, not climate science; Beruhout and Crok, meanwhile, have been accused of taking money from fossil-fuel interests, indicated paid bias on their part. Further, most of the signatories to the petition are political activists and scientists who have no connection with climate science. As another commentator noted, "Looking at the list of signatories, there are a lot of engineers, medical doctors, and petroleum geologists and almost no actual climate scientists."

Also note the stealth edit: While the headline originally claimed 1,200 signatories -- as shown by the original front-page promo art and the URL -- it was changed along the line to state there were "more than 1,100," That's because, according to the fact-checker, the actual number of signatories was 1,107. Weird how Moore descided to make that edit for accuracy but clearly never fact-checked anything else in his piece.

Moore continued to uncritically repeat the anti-climate change talking points:

The World Climate Declaration points out that since emerging from the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century, the world has warmed significantly less than predicted by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change's models

"The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change," the WCD states.

The declaration argues Earth’s climate has varied, with cold and warm periods, for as long as the planet has existed, and it is "no surprise that we are experiencing a period of warming."

The climate models "are not remotely plausible as global policy tools," ignoring, for one, the benefits of carbon dioxide, which is "not a pollutant."

"It is essential to all life on Earth," the declaration says. "Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth; additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yield of crops worldwide."

In fact, climate models have proven to be largely accurate; one study examined 17 climate models and found "14 out of the 17 model projections indistinguishable from what actually occurred." Observers also exposed the talking points Moore is mindlessly repeating for the denialist tropes they are:

The World Climate Declaration doesn’t just attack climate modeling. It also rehashes several well-known “climate denial” tropes that have long been used in persuasion campaigns that were often traced back to the fossil fuel industry and other players who benefit from unfettered industrial development, said Brendan DeMelle, executive director of Desmog, an investigative climate research organization.

Those tropes include downplaying the role of humans in causing rapid climate change by suggesting natural causes are as much or more of a factor, sowing unfounded doubt in the sciences and implying researchers are pursuing nefarious motives, suggesting that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere are actually a “good thing” because they help nurture the growth of plants, claiming that global warming doesn’t actually impact the frequency and intensity of natural disasters and suggesting that addressing climate change is incompatible with economic stability.

Moore won't tell you this because it conflicts with WND's right-wing editorial agenda, even though refusal to report all relevant sides of a story means Moore is a propagandist, not a journalist. But then, propaganda and not journalism is pretty much the point of WND these days.

Newsmax Columnist: Non-Reprentational Art That Doesn't Reflect 'Western Heritage' Is 'Bad'
Topic: Newsmax

Earlier this year, WorldNetDaily columnist Jerry Newcombe had a tantrum over art he didn't like. Alexandra York served up her own anti-art-I-don't like rant in an Aug. 29 Newsmax column:

What is "bad" art? In order to answer this question, we must first define what is good art.

Taking this article as a jumping off point, we can understand the values that can be expressed in established western art forms. This is not to infer that eastern art has no value — it most certainly can — but to emphasize how meaningful art in general has the ability to enrich our lives if it is intelligible and communicates life-serving values.

It follows, then, that "bad" art communicates life-harming values. How does it do this? Let us count the ways:

In order to communicate anything the themes or subjects of art forms must be intelligible, so objects rendered in painting and sculpture must be discernable, sounds in music must have tonal development, words in literature must have meaning, and so on.

Splashes of paint on canvas (or worse) and piles of bricks (or worse) communicate nothing intelligible. The same can be said of sounds emitted by the strumming of piano strings which is not music, or the tossing together of useless salad-words which is not literature, so why should these be labeled "bad" art, and why are they "harmful"?

Firstly, non-objective art is not "art" at all. It is not even a valid "craft" like decorative art— tile and rug design, for example — which requires a defined skill set.

But since non-art is presented as art in exhibits, galleries and museums, we need to label it "bad" art because it does not meet the primary criteria of communicative intelligibility.

And lastly, these sorts of "art" presentations are harmful in that — if taken seriously and find acceptance on the part of viewers, listeners, and readers — they can cause sloppy cognitive and psychological habits that, in turn, can inhibit the rational thought processes necessary to live a successful and happily fulfilled life.

In short: abstract art or any other art that is not directly representational is "bad." Shse continued in this vein:

Good art is a perceptually beautiful physical manifestation of life-enriching values, and life-enriching values are selected via reason, and reason entails judgment to determine the validity of values in order to select those that are most beneficial as life-serving principles. Bad art repudiates the very mental processes required to live a fruitful and joyful human life.

Ergo: As we avoid poisoned food to maintain the life and health of our bodies, so we should avoid "art" poisoned by deleterious ideas or lack thereof to enter our minds and pollute our souls.

Good art dramatizes the beauties and complexities of nature and human nature.

It empathizes with our sorrows and celebrates our joys.

It is food for the soul and can nurture our mental wellbeing while, at the same time, confirming our rationally achieved value system and inspiring us onward and upward to the best within us.

Not only is bad art bad for us in the cognitive and psychological ways heretofore delineated, but legitimatizing any so-called "art" that degrades the splendors and the possibilities of humankind becomes an act of spiritual suicide.

The "article" York referred to early was actually her own 2018 Newsmax column in which she explicitly argued that the only"good" art is that which is explictly representational and advances "Western heritage":

Driven underground by academics, critics, and artists of modernist and post-modern art for decades and largely still untaught in learning institutions, the crafts of representationalism in painting and sculpture have continued to be taught by a handful of artist-teachers who refused to let their art forms perish. We owe these men and women — now in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties — a debt of gratitude for safeguarding the techniques passed down from Greece through the Italian Renaissance to nineteenth-century Europe and then on to America in the early twentieth. It is their students — now professional artists and teachers in their own right — who are presently of an age to lead the resurgence of interest in these art forms based in established Western art traditions. Novelists, poets, and composers, too, are consulting the past for techniques to help them contemporize the everlasting verities of life with bracing relevance to our own time and place in history.

So the crafts of the great arts of Western civilization are surfacing again. But what of ideas? Many artists, today, succeed in capturing reality, but how many create a heightened reality that not only brings into sharper focus selected aspects of life through compelling aesthetics but also communicates ideas? Without authentic relevance to the fundamentals of the contemporary human condition, art becomes either decorative or banal. Without ideas informing it, art becomes a pretty pastime.

Most artists are not philosophers; they are, rather, more sensitive souls who intuitively incorporate value premises into their work. Great artists, however, whose work reverberates with lasting significance are fully conscious of the underlying themes expressed through their work; they, in fact, use form and aesthetics for the express purpose of communicating — beautifully — the ideational content of their art. For these superlative artists, nothing is accidental; they select and include in their art only the requisite essentials necessary to communicate inner meaning. Such artists distill the quintessence of one image or one fleeting moment (or in literature and music, one finite time-experience) for their own sake first; they make it “stand still” so they can experience and return at will to the burning center of their creation for rousing renewal. Then they pass their vision on to us for further contemplation of the beauty and values inherent in the work.

[...]

A landscape painting made of morning light arching into the colors of a rainbow that hovers over an apple-green orchard may guide our vision the next time we tarry in the countryside. A flower painting of scintillating colors and luscious textures can whet our senses to appreciate the fragility and translucent wonder of petals soft and fragrant, not to mention give us pause to consider the transience of all life, including our own. A depiction of a hero or heroine can encourage us to rise to our own best self. 

York did acknowledge that "A nude male or female sculpture can cause us to marvel at the inherent splendor of the human body — the temple of our soul," so apparently she's not a total prude.

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch, Lack Of Distortion Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com

In an about-face from the previous month, the headline of Susan Jones' CNS lead story on August's employment statistics actually matches the copy -- and the news was so good that even Jones couldn't quite figure out a way to downplay it:

Heading into Labor Day, the U.S. Labor Department on Friday issued a mostly positive report on the U.S. employment situation -- the unemployment rate rising to 3.7 percent in August from 3.5 percent in July; but the labor force participation rate also rising three-tenths of a point to 62.4 percent, a move in the right direction, as 612,000 people entered the labor force.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the nonfarm economy added 315,000 jobs in August, below above the 526,000 (revised) added in July and in line with the 300,000 estimate for August. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade.

(In a separate report, BLS noted that the number of job openings was little changed at 11,239,000 million on the last business day of July.)

The unemployment rate increased two tenths of a percent, to 3.7 percent from 3.5 percent as the number of unemployed people -- no job but actively looking for one -- increased by 344,000 in August.

Notably, the number of employed Americans also climbed by 442,000 in August to 158,732,000, a Biden-era high and close to the Trump-era high of 158,866,000 set in February 2020, the start of the COVID pandemic.

So to fill out her story, Jones wrote a section on "price stablity" -- a completely separate subject from employment -- highlighting how Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell "warned that inflation reduction -- what the Fed calls 'price stability' -- will be painful."

Either because the numbers came out on a holiday weekend or because CNS didn't want to report any more good news about a Democratic president, this is the only story on August's numbers; editor Terry Jerry couldn't be moved to contributte his usual sidebar on manufacaturing jobs -- perhaps because they increased by 22,000 in August.

The MRC's Hot Drag Queen-Hating Summer
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has done a lot of hating of drag queens this year, partricularly during Pride Month in June. But it spent all summer spewing hate at them as well. Nicholas Fondacaro devoted a July 29 post to complaining that the co-hosts of "The View" don't hate drag queens as much as he and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does:

On Friday’s edition of The View, the show essentially came out in support of exposing kids to sexualized drag shows by decrying Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for filing a complaint against a venue that exposes children. Co-host and “Republican” Ana Navarro was irritated by the move and whined to queer star Billy Porter that this was happening to the place she had her bridal shower.

Porter, who was on the show to promote his new Amazon Prime movie Anything’s Possible (which is about a trans high school student finding love), had some thoughts about Florida but held back saying “I can't say it on daytime!” “Oh, God. Here we go,” he proclaimed in fear as she started her story.

“There seems to be this renewed anti-LGBTQ campaign of wanting to portray LGBTQ as if they were groomers and all this stuff,” she bemoaned.

The MRC has previously attacked Porter for his gender-bending sense of fashion. Also, Fondacaro didn't explain how a man wearing a dress is, in and of itself, "sexualized."

Fondacaro ranted about drag shows again in an Aug. 1 post:

In something of a double-down to a segment from last week, co-host Ana Navarro spent part of Monday’s The View making the totally rational argument (sarcasm) that sexually explicit drag shows weren’t that bad for kids, since they aren't deadly like guns. She also claimed red states were like Cuba and North Korea in that they’re supposedly barring their citizens from leaving their borders.

[...]

Navarro went on to complain that those opposed to kids at drag shows are just “cherry-picking” their outrage. She then made the ridiculous argument that the drag shows weren’t that bad because they don’t kill kids as guns do:

Listen, I looked at the top causes of endangerment for children, of children's death. It's firearm. It's car accidents. It's drownings. It is not drag queens. I've yet to see a kid that dies from being exposed to a drag queen

Again, Fondacaro never explained what, exactly, was "sexually explicit" about the drag show he and DeSantis are attacking.

In another Aug. 1 post, Michel Ippolito screeched about a drag show in a church:

Just when you thought the drag queen shows could not get any worse, they just did. The drag queens have moved on from twerking in front of children to making their home in sacred religious places.

An Episcopal Church invited a drag queen to perform a show in its pride “chapel” in New York City. 

The video showed how religious these degenerate leftists are. But instead of worshiping Jesus, these lunatics worship a burly man dressed like a woman. A man who looks to be in charge of the church introduces the drag performer, Brita Filter, as the main star. “It’s Brita Filter,” the man says, “and she is the queen of New York!” Then the hip-hop music begins to play, and the congregation begins barking like seals as Brita Filter walks down the aisle. The congregation’s cheers get louder, and they stand up like the president is walking by. Finally, Brita Filter makes her way in front of the altar and displays himself for all to see. He happily waves and continues to receive applause from the sheepish audience. The lack of respect from the audience is damming.

Here’s another spot you can mark on your map as an inappropriate place for kids. The left does not care for anything outside of their radical ideologies.

Ippolito didn't explain how drag is an "ideology."

An Aug. 29 post by Matt Philbin was a meltdown over how the Washington Post committed the offense of admitting that drag shows exist:

The Washington Post; (Democracy Dies on Page One) is all in on the trans mania. Last week, education reporter Moriah Balingit dropped a couple thousand words moaning about a Kentucky transgender middle schooler sho can’t play field hockey. Today, dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman fires up her freak finder to recommend “Six drag queens you should be following on YouTube.”

Only The Post gives you this kind of “news you can use.” And Kaufman is an enthusiastic guide to girly boy burlesque. “Watching skilled performers do, say and be whatever they want — that’s exhilarating,” Kaufman writes. And it sure seems to blow wind up her skirt: “After all, not caring much about norms and outdated whispers is what got the queens into their wigs and sparkles in the first place.”

However, now that every minor cable network worthy of its name has drag-themed shows, and gender perversion is as pervasive as disco was in the 70s, it all seems a bit dull. No wonder Drag Queen Story Hour is a thing – let your freak flag fly around toddlers to recapture some of that old “transgressive” magic.

Tierin-Rose Mandelburg had an even bigger meltdown in an Sept. 6 post over a drag show that she got tipped off about from the transphobes at the LibsofTikTok Twitter account (which the MRC disgustingly defended after a Washington Post reporter exposed its proprietor, Chaya Raichik):

Someone get the bleach. I need it for my eyes.

According to Prevo, Utah, back-to-school day this year needed not only a drag queen in attendance, but many drag queens in mini-dresses dancing on stage for, well, everyone. Including kids.

“Jenna Tailia,” whose name when sounded out reads “Genitalia,” was one of the performers featured at the school's “all-ages back to school drag extravaganza,” LibsofTikTok reported.

Speaking of genitalia, “Ms.” Jenna had his own practically hanging out when he did the splits for the audience mid-performance and finished the number on his knees with his crotch taking center stage. 

If you watch the video, you can see what looks like a three-to-four-year-old little girl sitting in the front row, watching the erotic display of junk literally being shoved in her face.  

Other performers included “Ana Lee Kage" (a.k.a., “Anal Leakage") "Peter Pansy," and "Kitty Kitty" - all of whom were dubbed “incredible.”

The event, called “Back to School Pride,” was sponsored by the RaYnbow Collective, a LGBTQ advocacy group for Brigham Young University.

So it was for college students? Funny how Mandelburg waited until the seventh paragraph to mention that fact while suggesting the show was being staged specifically for children. She wenbt on to falsely smear drag performer as "pedophiles" and concluded with a rant:

Though this disturbing and demonic event is still shocking in its display, it isn’t surprising. This is exactly the content that the left's woke mob wants to promote and it's not going to stop until people stop being brainwashed by the true root of things like this: evil. 

Remember, if the MRC doesn't like it, it's obviously "evil.

CNS' Jeffrey Dishonestly Bashes Deficits Under Biden, Gives Trump A Pass
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNS editor Terry Jeffrey's dishonesty about federal government spending continues in his Aug. 17 column:

In the first 18 full months that Joe Biden has been president — February 2021 through July 2022 — the federal government has spent $9,728,646,000,000, according to data published in the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Even when the historical spending numbers are adjusted for inflation into July 2022 dollars (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator), no recent president comes close to having spent that kind of money in their first year and a half in office.

President Donald Trump spent $7,274,266,740,000 in July 2022 dollars in his first 18 full months. President Barack Obama spent $7,166,360,490,000. President George W. Bush spent $4,835,392,120,000. President Bill Clinton spent $4,287,553,940,000. President George H.W. Bush spent $3,705,774,660,000. President Ronald Reagan spent $3,123,980,640,000.

It is true that the United States is a more populous country now than it was in July 1982, when Reagan completed his first 18 full months in office, but federal spending has grown significantly faster than the population.

It's also true that Jeffrey made no mention of mitigating factors that explain the higher early-term spending under Obama and Biden -- there was a recession at the start of Obama's presidential term and a pandemic at the start of Biden's -- and there was no such financial crisis at the start of Trump's term. And picking the first 18 months of a presidency conveniently allows Jeffrey to also omit the pandemic-related spending -- and related deficits -- during the final year of Trump's presidency.

Jeffrey went on to target Biden further:

Biden is the spending champion of American presidents — both in total overall spending and per capita spending.

But that is not his only achievement. He has also been collecting record taxes.

[...]

Yet despite the record taxes the Biden administration is collecting, the administration is still running a deficit.

According to the data published in the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government ran a cumulative deficit of $2,765,962,000,000 from February 2021 through July 2022.

The only president who ran a bigger deficit in his first 18 months was Obama, whose cumulative deficit hit $2,975,995,260,000 in constant July 2022 dollars in the period from February 2009 through July 2010.

The $2,765,962,000,000 deficit that Biden has run in his first year and a half in office equals approximately $8,310 for each of the 332,838,183 people in this country.

Again, Jeffrey failed to mention that much of the deficit Biden started with at the beginning of his presidency came under Trump, who had racked up nearly $8 trillion in deficits during his presidency. Also going unmentioned by Jeffrey is that the federal deficit will be dropping from $3.13 trillion in fiscal year 2020 -- the last year of  Trump's presidency -- to an estimated $1 trillion for the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

But Jeffrey doesn't care about reporting facts -- an odd stance for a guy who runs an alleged "news" organization  -- he merely wants to attack Biden. He concluded by complaining about the the spending toa address climate change in the Inflation  Reduction Act and how the bill "includes the terms "greenhouse gas" and "greenhouse gases" a combined 138 times," going on to sneer: "If there is anything emitting gas these days, it is the man in the Oval Office."

Or the man in the corner office at CNS.

MRC Can't Stop Lashing Out At Beto O'Rourke
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center got mad at Beto O'Rourke for calling out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (whom O'Rourke is running against for the seat) after the Uvalde massacre, and i continues to be triggered by him. Michael Ippolito whined in an Aug. 12 post:

Another day, another leftist politician acting like an unhinged lunatic. This time it's everyone’s favorite non-Mexican furry, Beto O’Rourke. 

[...]

The tweet shows that Beto took the time to go after an Abbott supporter who began laughing while the gubernatorial candidate was talking about the Uvalde Massacre. “It may be funny to you motherf*cker, but its not funny to me, OK?,” Beto says to the cheers of his supporters. Beto seems pretty upset over the man who interrupted his event. Did he forget about the time he interrupted a press conference on the Uvalde shooting? Does he deserve the title of motherf*cker too?

The video reveals that the Abbott supporter was not laughing at the Uvalde shooting, but at Beto’s inaccurate history of the AR-15. Beto claimed these guns were “originally designed for use on the battlefield in Vietnam to penetrate an enemy soldier’s helmet at 500 feet and knock him down dead.”

Actually, the Reason article Ippolito linked to in order to claim that the man was laughing at "Beto’s inaccurate history of the AR-15" offers no actual proof of that. And as we've previously noted, the AR-15 was, in fact, designed for war -- a fact that Ippolito suggested was false.

Ippolito somehow found his manhood threatened by this exchange: "Beto has once again displayed his lack of respect and lack of masculinity. Just another day in leftist fairytale land." To drive that purported lack of masculinity home further, Ippolito headline his post "Beto Male." But Ippolito didn't explain what, exactly, is not "masculine" about O'Rourke defending the honor of children murdered in a gun massacre.

An Aug. 22 item by P.J. Gladnick complained that a Washington Post profile of O'Rourke didn't spend enough time on an issue Gladnick and his fellow Republicans think O'Rourke is vulnerable on:

On Sunday, The Washington Post published a long article online that, in reality, was a loving paean to far-left Democrat and perpetual (losing) candidate Beto O'Rourke.

Although O'Rourke is running for governor of Texas, The Post conveniently skipped any mention of perhaps the Lone Star State's top issue in " Beto O’Rourke’s risky quest for votes in deep-red Texas," which would be the U.S.-Mexico border.

The article by Jade Yuan -- which appeared in Monday's print edition on page one of the Style section -- mentioned the border only twice as geographic reference points:

[...]

And that was it. A grand total of just two mentions of the border despite illegal border crossings and the massive illegal invasions being at the top of the concerns of the deep-red sections of the border state of Texas. Of course, bringing up an issue which O'Rourke would obviously want to avoid while campaigning in the deep red parts of Texas would interfere with what is essentially an Post  tribute to him.

Gladnick did not explain why he thinks a legitimate reporter should be taking journalism advice from a right-wing blogger.

NEW ARTICLE: Cashill's Cornucopia of Obama Conspiracies Continues
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill remains obsessed with the Obamas though they left the White House years ago. Did we mention that he has written yet another anti-Obama book? Read more >>

MRC Smears Businesses Who Cover Abortion (And The Women Themselves) As Serving Moloch
Topic: Media Research Center

In a 2012 Media Research Center post, Paul Wilson was offended that a Washington Post opinion piece after the Sandy Hook gun massacre referenced another opinion piece that described America's gun culture as "our Moloch," whining that teh gun lobby was described as "sacrificing children to a pagan god" and "American gun-owners as idolaters." But Wilson pointed the way to how his fellow right-wingers should properly use the reference: "But the “Moloch” rhetoric might come with more weight from a woman who doesn’t actively defend the murder of thousands of children in the womb each day."

The MRC eventually started leaning into that attack. An October 2021 post by Matt Philbin touted a highly restrictive Texas anti-abortion law: 'The law has all the usual feminists, sexual revolutionaries and Moloch worshipers in a tizzy."

After the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the MRC -- already anti-abortion extremists to the point that it endorses an Orwellian surveillance state for women who might cross state lines to have one -- ran with the narrative that supporting abortion, and having one, was the equivalent of making sacrifices to Moloch. A May 12 post by Matt Philbin invented what he called the "Moloch List" of businesses who would pay travel expenses for employees who have abortions:

Abortion as an employment benefit? If you work for the right companies. Whether the Dobbsdecision reverses Roe v. Wade or not, the left’s meltdown over the draft decision has offered some big corporations a new way to virtue signal. They’re boasting that if employees must travel out of state to obtain legal abortions, the companies will pick up the travel costs. 

So far, they’re mostly the Big Tech usual suspects, but some other industries represented on the Moloch List. The list is probably incomplete and the number of companies subsidizing infanticide will, tragically, grow.

Michael Ippolito bumped up the number to the "Moloch 20" in a June 27 post:

With the left completely melting down over Roe v. Wade, woke corporations have found a new way to virtue signal: Abortion access as a fringe benefit.

MRC Culture is keeping a running tally of companies offering to help employees from states where abortion is illegal to travel to murder their children.

Ippolito ranted in a July 25 post: "The left’s fight for abortion continues to become more desperate than they are willing to work with the billionaires they hate. Glad to see the teamwork done to feed Moloch!"

Philbin devoted an Aug. 19 post to attacking Google for covering abortions:

Yeah, it’s funny to remember the days when Google’s corporate motto was “Don’t be evil.” And yet it seems that a lot of the company’s employees don’t think it’s evil enough. They think Google should be a leader of the Moloch List – companies that lavish time and money on employees to kill their unborn children.

In the antiseptic, NARAL-approved language of The Washington Post, “Google staffers are calling on the tech giant to take greater steps to protect workers’ reproductive health, including by expanding travel benefits for medical services to contractors and halting political donations to antiabortion groups.”

Google gives money to antiabortion groups? Who knew?

Philbin also makes it clear that he thinks women who have abortion are sluts:

You know, those salt-of-the-earth laborers with the powered scooters and $14 coffee drinks? They’re organizing for the right to convenient sex. The capitalist exploiters are already shaking so much they can’t keep their monocles on.

An Aug. 23 post by Philbin lashed out at "Moloch List" member Yelp for putting accurate descriptions of crisis pregnancy centers on its website:

For the abortion-worshipping left, every live baby is a missed opportunity. For every unterminated pregnancy there’s a woman who can no longer have a big powerful career, carefree autonomy and meaningless casual sex. It’s a  feminist nightmare.

So it helps to have tech companies like Yelp on their side. And make no mistake: Yelp has definitely chosen a side. It was an early entrant to the Moloch List, corporations who made a public show of offering to pick up abortion (and “gender affirming”) travel costs for employees who live in less bloodthirsty states. 

Now, as reported by Axios, Yelp is putting warnings on listings for crisis pregnancy centers, lest babies slip through the abortion net.

Philbin didn't explain why accurately identifying crisis pregnancy centers as the anti-abortion activists they are is such a bad thing.

The MRC was also directly attacking women themselves as serving sacrifices to Moloch. Ippolito complained in a July 19 post about a Teen Vogue article on pro-choice men:

The next pundit was Bryan, who portrayed abortion as the savior of his family. Bryan, who forced his girlfriend to have an abortion, was happy that his mom also got an abortion because of his cool stuff. “The many opportunities that [decision] afforded us later in life, things my siblings and I probably took for granted at the time, like organic food, extracurriculars, cultural enrichment, and having our in-state tuition paid for,” he stated. Glad to see Bryan thought his sacrifice to Moloch was worth it. 

Ippolito went on to suggest his manhood was being threatened by this article: "Instead of wanting strong men to raise families, Teen Vogue wants weak men to waive responsibility and encourage the murder of children."

Two days later, Ippolito lashed out at actress Jennifer Grey for having an abortion as a teenager, dismissing her as an "irrelevant Hollywood lefty is coming out of the woods to give another dumb take on abortion" and sneereing, "Once again, another Hollywood leftie decided to have a meltdown over the inability to sacrifice her child to Moloch."

At the MRC, if you don't agree with them, you're not just wrong, you're evil.