NEW ARTICLE: The MRC vs. Jeff Zucker Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center regularly hurled the anti-Semitic "puppetmaster" slur at the (Jewish) former CNN chief -- then childishly gloated when a personal scandal cost him his job, despite having given Roger Ailes a pass for his behavior. Read more >>
MRC Still Raging That Liz Cheney Got Praise For Standing Up To Trump Topic: Media Research Center
Even as Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming House seat in the primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent, the Media Research Center continued to be upset she was being portrayed as standing up for the principle of holding Donald Trump accountable (something the MRC has no interest in doing). Mark Finkelstein complained in an Aug. 17 post:
Not exactly the people you need to win a Republican presidential primary . . .
Given Liz Cheney's overwhelming defeat in yesterday's Wyoming Republican congressional primary, it would be a very uphill slog for her to win a national GOP presidential primary, should that be her goal for 2024. In a mark of just how steep that climb would be, on today's New Day, CNN cast the two legs of Cheney's base of support as . . . Democrats, and the Beltway media!
Scott Whitlock similarly complained in a post later that day:
NBC on Wednesday repeatedly lobbied Liz Cheney to run for president after she lost her renomination bid for Congress. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie also repeated the media-created comparison that Cheney is Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars and Trump is Darth Vader.
Guthrie deemed “64 percent” of Republicans to be election deniers (without citing a source) and then lobbied for Cheney to outright call for Democratic victory in 2022: “That is your red line. That is who is coming to Congress if Republicans prevail and get control of Congress. Given that state of affairs, do you think it would be better for the country if Democrats retained control?”
Neither Whitlock nor Finkelstein didn't explain where the nobility is in defending Trump's attempted insurrection.
Graham whined about this yet again in his Aug. 17 podcast:
Rep. Liz Cheney was clobbered by 37 points in her Wyoming Republican primary, but the media broke out their praises as she gaudily compared herself to Lincoln and Ulysses Grant. She's a savior of the Republic!
[...]
After the landslide, they asked Cheney if she would run for president in 2024, ignoring all proof that she drove her political car off a cliff. Savannah Guthrie repeatedly pressured Cheney to proclaim the Democrats should keep their majority power in Congress. They want her to sound fully like a Democrat. Democracy is only authentic and safe when Democrats win.
None of them seemed to figure out Republicans don't want to vote for Cheney when she's being painted as a hero by Dan Rather.
He too failed to explain why it's preferable to take Trump's side of corruption over Cheney's side of accountability.
Kevin Tober took up the complaining about praise of Cheney in an Aug. 18 post:
In news that will shock nobody, MSNBC’s The ReidOut turned into another Republican bashing segment where a guest referred to the GOP as supporters of Fascism and the Democrats as supporters of democracy. Never mind the fact that the network spent much of Wednesday and Thursday wringing their hands over the defeat of Never Trump Republican Liz Cheney’s landslide defeat for renomination. The leftist media only reveres democracy so long as their preferred candidates win.
Graham whined in an Aug. 20 post that it was pointed out that Cheney was effectively "disappeared" Soviet-style by her fellow Republicans for the sin of not loving Trump enough:
We know that liberal journalists have descended into a nasty habit of associating the Democrats with democracy and the Republicans with authoritarianism. But Time magazine took it its illogical dead end: Liz Cheney getting trounced in an election was some sort of Stalinist liquidation.
The headline was "The GOP Just Borrowed a Soviet Skill and Disappeared Liz Cheney." If you've been around a while, you know why this spin is funny. Time magazine made Mikhail Gorbachev the "Man of the Decade" and honored him as the "communist Pope and the Soviet Martin Luther." So maybe Liz Cheney is their Gorbachev now. Don't send her to Lithuania.
[...]
Except she wasn't executed! She didn't actually disappear! The liberals can't stop spotlighting her! Trump has a Politburo, like America is a one-party state. At least Elliott acknowledged "Her performance made her a darling of liberals who not that long ago thought the Cheney clan to be some of the worst people in America."
Graham again failed to explain why Republicans must jettison Cheney to cling to the corrupt Trump.
Days after recently ousted anti-Trump Congresswoman Liz Cheney laughably compared herself to former Republican President Abraham Lincoln, ABC’s This Week co-moderator Jonathan Karl took it a step further and compared Cheney to former President Theodore Roosevelt. The ahistorical idol worship didn’t end there, USA Today bureau chief Susan Page suggested Cheney could have the same long-term ideological impact on the GOP that socialist Senator Bernie Sanders had on the Democrat Party [sic].
After first declaring Cheney the face of the “opposition to Donald Trump in this country,” Karl turned to Page who happily noted how Cheney told Karl during an exclusive interview that “she’ll be campaigning for some Democrats, who are running against election deniers” and gushed that Cheney “has the statute and the ability to raise money to have an influence on some of those races.”
Grham spent his Aug. 24 column contradictorally whining that Cheney was being lionized for her crusade to hold Trump accountable while also insisting that Trump doesn't have a death grip onthe Republican Party:
Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming primary election by 37 points. But the concession speech didn't so much concede as announce a new crusade, a quixotic campaign to drag down Donald Trump in any way possible before the 2024 election.
When she lost, CNN analyst Nia-Malika Henderson accurately explained that her base was no longer in Wyoming. It's the “Beltway media.” It's more than that — it inspires the Left from New York to Hollywood. They want to portray it as both impossible and irresistible.
Cheney's been raising millions from Democrats who want to stir up this campaign as another goad to Trump. Many Republicans would like to try a different flavor than Trump the next time around, but it's time to imagine that just as they've been doing in the midterm primaries, the Democrats deeply desire another run by Trump -- this time, the Trump that goaded on a riot and refused to concede defeat. They want him, damaged and angry.
The Democrats and their media partners like the narrative that Trump has a “death grip” on the Republican Party, because death is what they seek. They boast about how they are the saviors of democracy when what they really want is to shut the “ignorant” half of America up.
[...]
Cheney's defeat did not underline that Trump has full control of the Republican Party. It did show that Republicans have control of the Republican Party, no matter how much the liberal media and the Democrats want to run it.
Note that Graham isn't exactly running away from Trump -- his criticism is tepid at best because he knows that Trump does, in fact, control the Republican Party. He will sheepishly go with the GOP crowd and continue to support Trump, making a full public break only if his boss, Brent Bozell, orders him and the rest of the MRC to do so -- his paycheck depends on it, after all. But that's not coming anytime soon because Trump serves the MRC as a victim and because his views are those of the conservative movement.
Cheney has guts. Graham doesn't, nor does the rest of the MRC. And they know it.
WND's Kupelian Warns Of Liberals Redefining Things -- As He Insists 1/6 Insurrection Was A 'Demonstration' Topic: WorldNetDaily
The August issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is themed "Newspeak 2022," which dedicated to complaining that liberals are redefining evil things to make them good. As usual, it's based around a rant-filled essay by managing editor David Kupelian:
The elites are changing America’s language itself, so that people’s words – and therefore, their very thoughts – inevitably come under the control of the ruling class. It’s a way of bending reality in real time, so that what is actually illusion appears to be true, while what is real and true can readily be discredited as lies, misinformation, “extremist rhetoric” and “conspiracy theories.”
Thus, the unprecedented, banana-republic-style raid on the home of former President Donald Trump by dozens of armed FBI agents was not, you see, a raid at all, insists the Ministry of Truth (i.e., virtually the entire elite media). “The execution of a search warrant isn’t a raid,” Americans were told condescendingly. “It’s a judicially overseen process!”
Oh. So the massive, unannounced, armed police raid on a U.S. president’s home wasn’t a “raid.” But the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration in the U.S. Capitol by that same president’s supporters, who had every reason to suspect the 2020 election had been stolen – was an “armed insurrection,” even though not one protestor was armed nor did their actions in any way amount to an “insurrection.” Nevertheless, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted the Jan. 6 “insurrection” was every bit as infamous and awful as the raid on Pearl Harbor and the 9-11 terror attacks, each of which killed thousands of Americans. Change the definitions of words and you change everything.
Of course, Kupelian's the one redefining things, pretending that an attempt to overthrow the government because Donald Trump can't mentally handle the fact that he lost an election -- in which numerous law enforcement officers were injured, some so badly they cojmmitted suicide later -- was just a "demonstration."
There's a COVID rant too:
Well, at least the COVID pandemic seems to be waning, thanks to the vaccines, right? Wrong. In reality, the experimental shots the government forced on virtually everyone in the country do not work, as even its key salespeople like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx now openly admit. But wait: All vaccines prevent people from contracting and transmitting a particular disease – that’s literally what vaccines have always done! How, then, can these shots, which we now know do not work as vaccines, and which have become irrefutably associated with many deaths and serious side effects, possibly be called “vaccines”? That’s easy: The CDC quietly changed its official definition of “vaccine”! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you turn an untested, unproven, experimental gene therapy into a "vaccine"; simply change the definition of something everybody in the world has trusted and revered for more than two centuries, since the first smallpox vaccine, and re-tool the "official" definition of that almost sacred word to apply to whatever your flawed, unproven shot actually does.
Needless to say, Kupelian is lying. As we've previously noted, the vaccines do work; while the previous generation of COVID vaccines offered less protection from catching COVID as the virus mutated into the Omicron variant, they do reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, even among those who have previously caught COVID -- hardly "unreliable." And the new generation of vaccines should do a better job of catching the Omicron variant.
Kupelian had one mnore rant of note:
All of this Orwellian tampering with language might not be quite as necessary in a nation that has never known freedom. But in the United States of America, where tens of millions of citizens are very well acquainted with genuine, God-blessed liberty – indeed, where so many have fought, bled and died to preserve it – the ruling elites find it necessary to redefine, and thereby corrupt the meaning of, everything in order to enable actual violent extremists, domestic terrorists, racists and fascists to implement the real insurrection. Theirs.
Says the guy who spreads lies and misinformation to WND readers on a daily basis. No wonder legitimate businesses want nothing to do with WND and Joseph Farah was continually beg for money to keep his dishonest website alive.
MRC Refuses To Blame Trump For Census Errors Under His Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino huffed in an Aug. 24 post:
There has been near-total silence across leftwing broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable (CNN, MSNBC) networks about a 2020 post-enumeration survey by the Census Bureau, which found errors made in the 2020 census heavily benefited Democrats and hurt Republicans. As of August 23, the only coverage any of these networks any of these networks have given the report was a fleeting 4 a.m. mention on CBS.
The post-enumeration survey on undercount and overcount rates, which the Census Bureau conducts to measure the accuracy of their initial count, found that errors made in 2020 resulted in the misallocation of at least six congressional seats and billions of dollars in federal funding. This incorrect apportionment of House seats uniformly benefited Democrats.
[...]
One can only imagine the bloodcurdling shrieks we’d be hearing on CNN and MSNBC if census errors had set Democrats back by even a single congressional seat, let alone six. Instead, neither they nor ABC or CBS have spent even a second of airtime on this disastrous mishap by Census Bureau.
D'Agostino, of course, went on to cheer how Fox News covered this story. But he did forget to mention one pertinent fact: the census that contained all these alleged undercounts and overcounts took place during the Trump administration -- meaning that it happened under Republican oversight -- and that Trump cut the census short, which may have hindered accurate counting. He also failed to mention how the census was also hindered by the COVID pandemic.
Later that day, Nicholas Fondacaro and Curtis Houck rehashed this story on the MRC podcast -- but like D'Agostino, they didn't mention that the census took place iunder Trump so that's where the blame for the errors ought to be placed, though Houck did concede that the census "was a huge challenge because of COVID." He didn't lay any blame at Trump's feet, of course.
CNS Cherry-Picks More Biden Statements To Mock Him Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reverted to an old, dishonest trick to maximize negative coverage of President Biden: cherry-picking out-of-context statements by him that look weird or ridiculous when isolated in order to further its narrative that Biden is cognitively challenged.
Instead of making the core of a Aug. 30 speech Biden gave in Pennsylvania that one CNS writer did concede was about "his plan for increased police funding, training and accountability," CNS made sure not to put that in the headlines of any of the five articles it churned out on the speech, and when the points of the speech do get reported, they are undercut with partisan attacks, something CNS rarely did whwen reporting on remarks by the previous president, Donald Trump. Here are the stories:
President Joe Biden laid out his plan for increased police funding, training and accountability in a speech Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and he denounced calls by Democrats to defund the police.
“There’s bad in everything,” the president said, adding that there are “lousy senators” and “lousy presidents.”
President Biden on Tuesday called for the hiring of more police officers as part of his "Safer America Plan."
"And as we hire more police officers, there should be more training, more help, and more accountability. Without public trust, law enforcement can’t do its job serving and protecting all the communities," Biden said in his speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Then the president went off-script, describing "tough" neighborhoods, "where the best basketball in the state is." Making his point clear, Biden added that "I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down in that area," and he even mentioned “gangs” and the “liquor store.”
[...]
Since Biden became president, crime has moved to the forefront of Americans’ concerns, with brazen attacks and carjackings at all times of the day in the nation’s big cities, and thieves clearing out store shelves with impunity.
And while Biden advocated more policing as a way to reduce crime, he did not address the poverty and living conditions that give rise to crime.
President Joe Biden told an audience in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on Tuesday that his crime fighting plan "does something else really important: It addresses the opioid epidemic," he said.
"You notice how many people are dying of opioid overdoses now?" the president asked. "And by the way, laced with fentanyl."
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mexico and China are the primary source countries for fentanyl trafficked directly into the United States.
That drug, and others, are smuggled across the porous southwest border daily.
After a child in the audience professed her love for him, President Joe Biden called her “Baby” and asked her age during an event at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania on Friday.
“How are you, baby? How old are you? How old are you?,” Biden asked after the child screamed “I love you!”
After she said she was nine years old, Biden joked that she was “almost double figures.”anonymously written by "CNSNews.com Staff"
President Joe Biden delivered a speech at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Tuesday in which he insisted nine times that what he had just said was “not a joke” or that he was “not joking."
“I want to thank your outstanding governor, Tom Wolf. Tom and I have been friends a long time,” said Biden. “He’s truly one of the best governors in the United States of America. Not a joke. Not a joke.”
I mean, we expect you [police officers] to do everything,” Biden said. “I’m not joking. Everything.”
“My dad used to love to hunt in the Poconos when we lived in Scranton,” Biden said. “How many deer or bear are wearing Kevlar vests, huh? Not a joke.”
“When we disagreed, we disagreed on principle, but we then went and had lunch together,” Biden said. “Not a joke.”
“And for those brave, right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America—keeping America as independent and safe: If you want to fight against a country, you need an F-15. You need something a little more than a gun,” said Biden. “No, I’m not joking.
“DNA to say, ‘That’s my baby.’ What the hell is the matter with us?” said Biden. “No, I’m not joking.”
“Folks, when it comes to fighting crime, we know what works: officers on the street who know the neighborhood—not a joke,”said Biden.
“And the crime rate began to drop,” said Biden. “For real. Not a joke.”
None of these CNS writers explained why they decided that taking partisan and personal shots at the president was more newsworthy than fairly reporting the subject of his speech.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:17 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 29, 2022 10:30 AM EDT
MRC Rages That Non-Right-Wing Media Doesn't Hate Liz Cheney Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center raged that a House committee was seeking accountability for the Capitol riot and the events leading up to it, so it's unsurprising that the MRC made a particular target of Republican Rep. Liz Cheney for serving as the committee's vice chairman -- because Republicans are apparently supposed to ride and die with Donald Trump and the MRC will tolerate no criticism of him, especially from a fellow Republican.
Last year, the MRC tried to insist that Cheney's ouster from House leadership for being insufficiently pro-Trump wasn't news at all and demanded that non-right-wing media stop covering it. In a September 2021 post, Nicholas Fondacaro complained that a CBS report on partisan Republican hearings on the U.S. withdrawal on Afghanistan noted that Cheney came to the defense of Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley. Her presence on the 1/6 committee drew specific attacks from the MRC:
An April 11 post by Tim Graham grumbled that Cheney did an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, who "ended the interview by tossing a softball. Tell us, Liz, how much has House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy failed democracy?" Graham went on to whine that "Tapper is demonstrating again that he favors "CNN's kind of Republican" instead of any Republican who would dare to criticize the partisanship of the 1/6 Committee." And Graham is demonstrating again that theMRC is little more than an arm of the Republican Party that tries to keep their fellow partisans in ideological lockstep.
A June 7 video by Bill D'Agostino served up "a little guessing game for viewers to see how well they can distinguish between two prominent committee members from opposing parties: Nancy Pelosi, and Liz Cheney (R-WY)." D'Agostino didn't explain why Republicans should automatically support an attempted insurrection if Pelosi and Cheney oppose it.
A June 10 item by Curtis Houck grumbled that an ABC report on the hearings "went full shill when talking about Cheney, boasting she was made for this."
Elizabeth Buckley whined in a June 11 post that "Morning Joe" "glorified Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as the new Winston Churchill of our time," and that "Joe Scarborough thought that it would be a fantastic move to compare Congresswoman Cheney to the likes of Sir Winston Churchill and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy."
But as Cheney faced a Republican primary challenge for her Wyoming seat from a Trump-endorsed opponent, the MRC was happy to make her a target.In a June 30 post, Kevin Tober complained that CNNM's Don Lemon "ma[d]e his case for why Democrats should vote for Liz Cheney in a Republican primary for the sole reason that she hates former President Donald Trump just as much as they do," going the whataboutism route:
Lemon is now using CNN's airwaves to lobby for Democrats to sabotage the Republican primaries in Wyoming. Keep in mind the leftist media melted down when conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh launched "Operation Chaos" and encouraged his listeners to switch parties and vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Primaries to prolong the process.
Tober didn't mention that the MRC had no problem with "Operation Chaos," making him a hypocrite trying to deny the same opportunity with the political stakes reversed.
Graham spent his July 25 podcast whining that the non-right-wing media doesn't hate Cheney -- who he tried to loosely tie to Al Gore -- as much as he does:
Then there were the Liz Cheney interviews. On CNN, Jake Tapper offered a series of softball questions about how the Pelosi-picked January 6 panel would proceed, and then in a second segment, underlined how Cheney would probably lose her congressional primary in Wyoming because she's for "the truth." Then Tapper asked her if she would run for president. As with Al Gore, this was more a compliment than a serious question. Which state would Liz Cheney win when she's dramatically unpopular among Republicans?
Graham whined further in an Aug. 7 post about non-right-wing non-hatred of Cheney:
On Friday's PBS NewsHour, liberal MSNBC Sunday host andWashington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart made a Star Warsanalogy, comparing Liz Cheney to Obi-Wan Kenobi (and Trump to Darth Vader).
Anchor Judy Woodruff played a Liz Cheney campaign ad, with her dad, former vice president Dick Cheney, attacking Trump as a “coward.” Woodruff said “They don't come much more conservative than Dick Cheney.”
Graham's Aug. 10 column groused that Cheney was getting praise for likely losing her seat because she stood up for principle:
As the Wyoming primaries approach, The New York Times is already preparing the post-election spin boosting the post-congressional exploits of Liz Cheney. The August 8 front-page headline was “Cheney Ready to Lose a Race, But Not a Fight.”
Times reporter Jonathan Martin laid it on thick: “She has used the Aug. 16 contest as a sort of a high-profile stage for her martyrdom – and a proving ground for her new crusade.” Martyrdom? She’s not being burned at the stake like Joan of Arc, even if that’s the kind of moral high ground the liberal media coverage suggests.
She’s losing her race “in part because of death threats, her office said.”
Her new crusade is the media’s old crusade. The pull quote on the back of the front section read: “If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.” Martin also insisted “she has become arguably the most consequential rank-and-file member of Congress in modern times.”
She will be “consequential” if the January 6 Committee somehow helps ruin Donald Trump before 2024. Cheney is only “rank-and-file” because she was tossed out of the House Republican leadership for seeking an entirely new constituency: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the alphabet of liberal TV networks.
[...]
Liz Cheney proves that no politician can be both the biggest darling of the liberal media and a viable candidate for Republican leadership.
Graham didn't epxlain why holding those responsible for the Capitol riot accountable for their actions is a principle no Republican should embrace.
Scott Whitlock then served up a series of flashback whataboutism posts:
Now that journalists see Liz Cheney as a heroic Joan of Arc, willing to be burned at the political stake, it’s good to sometimes remind everyone of the seething hatred many in the liberal media had for the daughter of Dick Cheney. -- Aug. 13
NBC journalists need to decide who Darth Vader is in their tortured political analogies. On Tuesday’s Today, Hallie Jackson said to an on-screen colleague, “[Let me] raise you a Star Wars analogy.” But back in 2011, Dick Cheney was the evil Vader. -- Aug. 16
Journalists have been eagerly cheering Cheney 2.0 as the GOP’s Joan of Arc, willing to be burned at the political stake for principles. ... But a simple look into history shows that journalistic love for a Republican is entirely dependent on how useful that person is to liberal press. In the past, the news and entertainment media despised the “toxic” “daughter of Dracula,” freely using sexist language to mock the child of Dick Cheney. -- Aug. 17
Whitlock didn't tell his readers that Cheney has ceased to be useful to Republicans because she is holding Trump accountable for his actions or why the GOP should put party before honor and responsibility. And he's done this before; he complainined in a May 2021 post that "While NBC’s Today show was eager to hail Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney for bashing fellow Republicans during an exclusive interview on Thursday, back in 2012, the broadcast questioned whether her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, deserved a life-saving heart transplant."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:04 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 28, 2022 9:08 PM EDT
Newsmax Continued Massive Pro-Trump Defense After Mar-a-Lago Raid Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's blanketdefense of Donald Trump following the raid on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the classified documents he took from the White House continued apace well beyond a week after the raid took place -- and largely devoid of any balancing viewpoint from law enforcement. Let's look at how Newsmax did that since we last checked.
To sum up: From Aug. 8, the day of the raid, through Aug. 20, Newsmax published by our count a whopping 92 articles defending Trump -- and there are likely a few we didn't catch. The number of article Newsmax published offering balanced viewpoints was much lower. Then again, Newsmax has positioned itself as a pro-Trump channel, so the bias is baked in.
WND Keeps Giving Platforms To COVID Misinformers Topic: WorldNetDaily
Chief WorldNetDaily COVID misinformer Art Moore found a new COVID misinformer to promote in a July 20 article:
A video PSA by the Health and Human Services Department suggesting loving parents will want to get their young children vaccinated with the experimental COVID-19 MRNA shot amounts to "shameless propaganda," says a prominent epidemiologist at the University of California at San Francisco.
Dr. Vinay Prasad argues there is "no randomized data, nor even a single observational study that has shown a reduction in severe disease in this age group," referring to children from 6 months to 4 years old.
HHS posted the PSA with the message: "Nothing matters more than keeping them safe. If your child is 6 months or older, you can now help protect them from severe COVID illness by getting them a COVID vaccine. Talk to your child’s doctor about vaccines and visit http://vaccines.gov."
But Prasad, writing on Twitter, said the Food and Drug Administration "should fine HHS for false advertising."
"It's really shameless propaganda to disguise the cold reality that there will be very poor uptake for this vaccine that was pushed through for political purposes," he said.
Prasad called the ad "government-sponsored misinformation from the administration seeking to police misinformation."
Actually, Moore's the one pushing misinformation. Prasad is not an epidemiologist; he's an oncologist and hematologist with no demonstrated expertise in virology (or pediatrics). The Science-Based Medicine blog has documented Prasad spreading confusion about the efficacy of masks and falsely accusing credible medical and government authorities of irrationally scaring [people about COVID, among other things. He has also likened reasonable efforts to contain the spread of COVID to Nazi Germany in a way considered by some to be anti-Semitic, which earned him a rebuke from a college where he spoke.Prasad is also tied to the Brownstone Institute, created by the folks behind the highly dubious Great Barrington Declaration.
Moore used an Aug. 29 article to give a platform to another COVID misinformer:
Alleging fraudulent data was used to create COVID-19 guidance, a student is suing Massachusetts officials after he was kicked out of law school for refusing to be vaccinated for the disease.
John Paul Beaudoin Sr. has named Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, the state public health commissioner and medical examiners in his suit, charging they submitted fraudulent data to the federal government, which then devised COVID guidance that was adopted by his school, the private Massachusetts School of Law.
Significantly, Just the News reported, Beaudoin alleges that many Massachusetts death certificates "wrongly list 'COVID-19' as a cause of death."
One of the examples he cites is that of 7-year-old Cassidy Baracka, whose Jan. 18 death was blamed on COVID complications. Beaudoin points, however, to a Jan. 15 report in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, or VAERS, which is run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The VAERS report states the child first became seriously ill "5 min post vaccination," or five minutes after receiving a COVID-19 shot.
The complaint states that the "fraudulent misrepresentations aggregate to support a false narrative" that has harmed Beaudoin and society by "convincing institutions to coerce people under color of law to take an experimental biological product."
Actually, there's more to the story of Baracka's death. The cause of the girl's apparently had not been officially determined at the time of her death -- making Beaudoin's citing of her more than a little dishonest -- but one week before her death, a Massachusetts Department of Children and Families representative visited her house and found "unsanitary and unsafe hoarding conditions,: bu the child died before a DCF social worker could visit the house. Also, our litigant appears to be using the ol' anti-vaxxer strategy of plucking numbers from the VAERS database while censoring the fact that nothing in it has been verified.
Speaking of our litigant: calling him merely a "student" is a touch misleading. Beaudoin is actually well into middle age; the ruling tossing out a previous lawsuit he filed to stop mask mandates in Massachusetts noted that he "purportedly suffers from a hearing impairment caused by an adverse reaction to a prophylactic treatment he received during the 'Hong Kong flu' outbreak in 1968." Moore didn't mention that one of his demands in the lawsuit is "a workspace in a state office and a robust computer with Excel" so he can rummage through state records and spend who knows how much time figuring out who actually died of COVID.
In short, a nuisance lawsuit filed by a right-wing crank -- you know, WND's readership.
NEW ARTICLE: Accountability Makes The MRC Mad Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent the summer raging against the House committee hearings on the events leading up to the Capitol riot and parroting right-wing talking points, attacks and distractions. Read more >>
MRC Keeps Up The Musk-Fluffing, Embrances Anti-Twitter Whistleblower Topic: Media Research Center
The last time we checked in on the Media Research Center's hero worship of Elon Musk for trying to buy Twitter, it was getting over its disappointment over Musk pulling out of the Twitter deal and parroting his narrative that Twitter is lying about the number of bot accounts it has. But it has sinced found a new ally to champion in the form of a former Twitter employee. Joseph Vazquez gushed in an Aug. 23 post:
A former Twitter executive just blew the whistle against the Big Tech platform for allegedly ignoring serious cybersecurity problems and apparently misleading prospective owner Elon Musk on spam bots.
Both CNN and The Washington Post released stories documenting explosive allegations by former Twitter head of security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.
Zatko’s whistleblower complaint, which both outlets reported was sent to Congress and other federal agencies, warned about “‘extreme, egregious deficiencies’ in its defenses against hackers, as well as its meager efforts to fight spam,” The Post summarized.
The complaint itself alleges that Twitter was “Lying about Bots to Elon Musk.” The Tesla CEO has been in a back-and-forth legal battle with Twitter over his announced intent to abandon his $44 billion acquisition bid after claiming the platform misled him about the amount of spam bots on the platform.
Unusually for the MRC, Vazquez did surprisingly report both sides of the story:
A Twitter spokesperson lashed back at Zatko in comments to CNN, in an apparent attempt to cover the company by painting him as an incompetent employee. “‘Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter for poor performance and ineffective leadership over six months ago,” the spokesperson said.
The company also added Zatko’s complaint was part of a “‘false narrative’” and was “‘riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and lacks important context.’”
The same day, a post by Jeffrey Clark cheered that "Tesla CEO Elon Musk subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, intensifying his ongoing legal battle with the social media giant over his intent to bail on his initial $44 billion acquisition offer," touting the whistleblower as"another possible boon for Musk’s case against Twitter" and gushing that "Musk seemingly referencedthe whistleblower news with a photo of Disney character Jiminy Cricket whistling: 'Give a Little Whistle.'"
Clark returned for an Aug. 26 item complaining that CNBC wasn't taking Zatko seriouesly enough for purposes of Musk and its own right-wing anti-"big tech" narratives:
Just one day after whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko made bombshell claims that Twitter has been “lying” about its security practices, CNBC appeared to downplay Zatko’s complaint in an interview. The outlet gave a platform to a law professor who absurdly claimed Zatko “basically” agreed with Twitter on how it counts users.
Squawk Box co-anchor Andrew Sorkin framed Zatko’s Twitter bashing as an inflated crisis: “This, in some ways, seemed like a bombshell,” Sorkin hedged. “Do we need to look at the bots the way Elon Musk is asking, or don’t we?”
Sorkin editorialized despite Zatko making several apparent revelations earlier this week about how Twitter calculates the percentage of spam accounts versus regular accounts on its platform. Zatko directly stated in a letter to Congress that Twitter was “Lying about Bots to Elon Musk.”
Sorkin’s guest, Tulane law professor Ann Lipton, argued on the Aug. 24 Squawk Box that Zatko’s Twitter bashing was actually “good for Twitter.”
Lipton seems to have cherry-picked a single phrase from Zatko’s redacted whistleblower complaint: “Twitter is already doing a decent job excluding spam bots and other worthless accounts from its calculation of mDAU.” But Lipton omitted the fact that Twitter’s mDAU calculation is designed to exclude spam bots.
Then it was time for more hero worship; an Aug. 29 post by Clark drooled over how Musk "called for more oil and gas production in order to maintain stability around the world as Europe and the United States suffer through the worst energy crisis in years" and how they "buck an ongoing liberal media obsession over climate change and Biden’s war against fossil fuels."
An Aug. 30 post by Autumn Johnson hyped that Musk "sent yet another letter giving Twitter notice that he intends to cancel the deal," adding that "Musk has long questioned the accuracy of the number of 'bot' accounts disclosed by Twitter."
A Sept. 13 post by Brian Bradley hyped Zatko's "BOMBSHELL Testimony!" befor a Senate committee, in which he alleged that "Twitter may have employed at least three foreign intelligence agents and kept Chinese Communist Party-linked advertising accounts on the platform despite employee objections." Bradley also made sure to note that "The whistleblower hearing comes amid increased outside scrutiny over the percentage of bots on the platform, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has moved to exit a planned $44 billion acquisition of the company."
Johnson took Musk's side yet again in a Sept. 14 post on Twitter shareholders approving the deal whether Musk wants to or not:
Despite contentious legal battles, Twitter’s shareholders approved Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the platform for $44 billion.
The Verge reported Tuesday that the company confirmed it has enough votes to approve the purchase. Musk, however, shows no signs of backing down amid a protracted legal battle with Twitter.
NewsBusters reported in August that the Tesla CEO said the deal will go through if Twitter provides proof that its reported numbers of “real” accounts on the platform are accurate.
“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms," Musk tweeted. "However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
The next day, Vazquez cheered a right-wing author who praised Musk:
Woke Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t mince words about the impact the world’s richest man had in giving shareholders a voice to fight the censors at Twitter.
The Strive Asset Management executive chairman joined the Sept. 14 edition of Fox News’s America’s Newsroom and said that even if Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter doesn’t go through, his bid opened new ground for Americans to fight back against Big Tech censorship.
“He has paved the way for shareholders exercising their voice in the boardrooms of these companies,” Ramswamy told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer.
“Most of the owners of these public companies, including Twitter, are the everyday citizens of this country through other funds managed by [left-wing hedge funds] BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard that together, historically, have exercised the vote.”
Johnson returend for a Sept. 20 post on Dorsey's deposition, calling it "the latest news in the contentious legal battle that will determine whether the Tesla CEO will be forced to go through with the original $44 billion deal." She then rehashed a lot of anti-Twitter content the MRC has previously published.
No, Really: WND Used Stock Photo Of Watermelons To Illustrate Story On Black Farmers Topic: WorldNetDaily
Doesn't anyone double-check anything at WorldNetDaily?
WND republished a Sept. 26 Daily Caller News Foundation story on how "The Democrats’ massive climate spending and tax bill gave the Department of Agriculture (USDA) $2.2 billion in loans to pay farmers, many of whom are black, who have previously been denied USDA loans due to discrimination." That's not an issue: The issue is that WND chose to illustrate the story with a stock phot of watermelons. No, really -- here's a screenshot:
Tying black people to watermelons to black people is, of course, a horribly racist stereotype. And you can't blame the Daily Caller for this; there is no photo linked to the story on its website and the story itself does not even mention watermelons, let alone black farmers growing them.
That's the kind of unforeced error that keeps people from taking WND seriously as a "news" organization, no matter how fervently Joseph Farah wants us to believe otherwise.
Newsmax Columnists Rage Against Mar-a-Lago Raid Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's coverage of the FBI raid at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago has been relentlesslypro-Trump and anti-authority, so it stands to reason that its commentary about the raid would be even more so. Michael Grimm used his Aug. 9 column to call for the death of the FBI:
When I became an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, more than 31 years ago, I was overjoyed. I was proud to have graduated from Quantico, becoming a newly appointed special agent — that was in 1995.
Sadly, over the years and decades, I have witnessed (first-hand) what amounts to the death of the FBI. My sadness now overshadows the treasured, fond memories of working good cases with fellow patriots, as most street agents were.
Now as I write this (and for quite some time) I can’t help but be embarrassed about my association with the agency. The bureau of today has morphed — and degenerated into — nothing more than a political cudgel to bludgeon opponents, deceive the American public, and win elections.
Jumping to the present day, when the FBI/Department of Justice (DOJ) executed the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, the home of former President Trump and his family, it was a death-knell for any and all credibility barely remaining in both institutions.
It was one small step for liberals that fear Trump’s return and one giant leap for the banana republic America is very rapidly transforming itself into.
[...]
To be certain, there are still some great, brave field agents, but the bureau, as a whole, is no more.
May it rest in peace.
Grimm's defense of Trump is that his hoarding of classified documents and refusal to return them to their rightful owners, the U.S. government, was a "technicality."
The unbridled abuse of power by the Justice Department, coming just three months before a midterm election is unlikely to have the effect on voters that Democrats and the Biden administration think it will.
The intention may be to demonstrate to voters that Trump and Republicans are corrupt. But voters will see where the real corruption lies — in the White House, the Democratic Party, and the Justice Department headed by Attorney General Garland.
As Thomas Jefferson noted, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
Dorstewitz also repeated the right-wing lie that the DOJ was "Labeling concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings as domestic terrorists." As we've documented,only parents who threatened school board members were labeled as such. Is Dorstewitz saying that violent threats are protected speech?
Larry Bell ranted about the purportedly "weaponized" FBI in an Aug. 11 column, going on to play the ol' Clinton Equivocation:
Launching a police state assault on a leading political figure just three months before critical midterm elections is a politically partisan outrage of third world banana republic proportions which will discredit public trust in the FBI for decades to come.
[...]
There was also no comparable DOJ or FBI interest in pursuing clear evidence that Hillary Clinton had deleted 33,000 emails — many containing national security-sensitive classified information subpoenaed by Congress following her term as Secretary of State — going so far as having some records “wiped with BleachBit,&rdquo and cellphones destroyed with hammers.
Any thought of the FBI invading the Clinton’s Chappaqua home to seize documents would have been unthinkable, even though they might possibly also have investigated any Clinton Foundation influence in a 2010 deal which allowed the Russian nuclear energy agency Rosatom to acquire a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with mining operations in the Western United States.
First: Hillary's classified email controversy was much different than Trump's hoarding of classified documents. Second: There's no credible evidence that Hillary ever engaged in such a scheme, and a total of nine federal agencies signed off on the Rosatom-Uranium One deal, not just Hillary.
Bell returned for an Aug. 15 column to whine some more about the raid ahd portray it as a distraction from Hunter Biden:
Many have legitimate reasons to suspect that political and media pressures on Merrick Garland to indict Donald Trump on anything ahead of 2024 presidential elections may tie the raid on his quarters as part of a House committee investigation fishing expedition for evidence.
Unless Trump’s charged offense is proven to present a serious risk to national security, at least half of the nation is likely to see the raid only as blatant proof of unequal two-tier justice.
The Mar-a-Lago invasion came at a particularly perilous political time for Joe Biden and his administration as the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware reportedly nears a decision on whether to charge Hunter Biden with alleged criminal tax evasion and money laundering.
In his Aug. 19 column, Dorstewitz declared that "there’s no evidence to suggest that either the former president or his lawyers were in any manner uncooperative with federal authorities." That didn't age well; it was revealed a couple weeks later that Trump's lawyers claimed -- falsely, it appears -- that they had returned all classified documents ac ouple months before the raid. He continued to rant, spouting the right-wing talking points du jour:
The search warrant was executed by the same FBI that lied on four applications for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. This was also the same FBI that pushed the legitimacy of the Steele dossier, knowing full well that it was little more than a work of fiction.
DOJ lawyers argued Thursday that release of the affidavit would compromise the investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified material.
Would that be the same “ mishandling of classified material,” for example, as using a private, nonsecure email server to send and receive classified State Department information and deleting 33,000 emails?
Dorstewitz's Aug. 22 column brought up the completely unrelated case of how "In 2012 the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit to compel the National Archives and Records Administration to seize hours of audio tapes former President Bill Clinton kept in his sock drawer." Dorstewitz obscured the fact that the tapes were made by historian Taylor Branch, not Clinton, and that they have largely been in Branch's c ustody ever sincel.
CNS' Coverage Of Biden Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Laden With Right-Wing Attacks Topic: CNSNews.com
As talk of President Biden possibly forgiving student loans heated up over the summer, CNSNews.com cranked out articles repeating right-wing attacks on the idea:
It wasn't until an Aug. 25 article that Jones got around to quoting Biden himself talking about it -- and, as usual, she included editorial comments despite claiming to be a reporter. After mentioning the income limits, she parentheticallysnarked; "But note the income levels above -- $125,000 or $250,000 – the new 'working class'?"
Craig Bannister complained that Biden's plan caused hated Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "to post a celebratory tweet and flashback video" stating that "“Student loan debt is immoral." He added "While Biden’s move frees some Americans from their student loan debt, it forces American taxpayers to pick up the hefty tab, Fox News notes."
Another article by Jones groused that Biden adviser Susan Rice congratulated people who paid off their student loans and won't give a number on how much the forgiveness plan would cost. That was followed by another article simiarly grousing that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona "said the 'targeted' relief will help everyone, including those who have repaid their loans."
Jones went on to play gotcha with Pelosi, rehashing the earlier "flashback" article:
In a statement on Wednesday following President Biden's announcement on student debt relief, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the move by the executive branch:
“President Biden’s bold action is a strong step in Democrats’ fight to expand access to higher education and empower every American to reach fulfillment," she wrote:
[...]
Contrast her approval of Biden's announcement with what Pelosi said last year.
CNS then served up more right-wing attacks on both the "news" and editorial side:
Jones snarked some more in an Aug. 26 "news" article: "No one knows for sure how much President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan will cost. But reporters keep on asking." She then rehashed a column by her boss, Terry Jeffrey, accusing Biden of spending toomuch money; as we've documented, Jeffrey's metricsconveniently omitted the trillions of dollars in debt racked up under Donald Trump.
Jones worked to put the "liberal" stamp on student loan forgiveness in an Aug. 29 article, hyping that "Both Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) say debt forgiveness was the right thing to do, and they both advocate making public colleges and universities tuition-free."
Jeffrey returned with an Aug. 31 column falsely accusing Biden's plan of" transferring wealth from people who earn less to people who earn more." In fact, most of the debt relief will be seen by lower-income Americans. Nevertheless, he ranted:
It is not an act of compassion, but of theft.
It unjustly transfers wealth from Americans who did not go to college to those who did, and from Americans (and their families) who did pay for their college and gives it to colleges that charge too much and to former students who will now pay less than they owe.
It is an elitist expansion of the welfare state.
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman belatedly served up an Aug. 30 article summarizing how "Many conservatives and Republicans denounced President Joe Biden's plan to transfer student loan to the U.S. taxpayers, an action that could cost over $600 billion." Chapman simply served up lazy stenography and made no effort to verify or fact-check the claims of his fellow ideologues.
MRC's Sports Bloggers Continue Their Anti-Vaxxer Stances Topic: Media Research Center
The COVID pandemic may be starting to fade, but the Media Research Center's sports bloggers kept up their factually deficientanti-vaccinestances over the summer and cheered athletes who selfishly refused to get one.
In a July 29 post, John Simmons cheered the selfishness of a Boston Red Sox pitcher who may have cost his team a win because he refused ot get vaccinated and, thus, could not join his team when they played in Toronto because Canada requires visitors to be vaccinated:
Last night, the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Boston Red Sox, 6-5, thanks to a walk-off single by first baseman Valdimir Guerrero Jr in the bottom of the ninth. The close loss itself was frustrating for Sox fans and media, but Boston sports reporters are furious at the outcome for another reason.
Pitcher Tanner Houck has earned the role of closer for the Red Sox in recent weeks, and currently has six saves on the season. But he was not available to close out the tight game for the Red Sox on Tuesday because he is unvaccinated, and Canada still has strict vaccination laws in place. Houck has not traveled with the team to Canada this year and cannot until he is vaccinated or Canada comes to its senses.
Houck has made his choice in the name of personal freedom -- something all Americans should do -- and is currently not violating any MLB regulations regarding the vaccine (the MLB required coaching personnel to be up to date with booster shots at the start of the season but did not require that for players). But even that wasn’t good enough for the infamously ruthless Boston sports media, who viciously tore apart Houck on Twitter for “forsaking his team” and ended up blaming the loss on him.
[...]
So the media can blame Houck all they want and try to make him feel guilty for his decision, but it’s not his fault and he should be respected for how he is carrying himself. The Red Sox will simply have to find a way to win without him in Toronto.
Simmons offered no valid reason why it's some sort of bold and principled stance for Houck to refuse to get vaccinated, especially given that his teammates did the responsible thing and got vaccinated without any apparent ill effects-- and, no "personal freedom" is not an excuse, especially when Simmons attacks other athletes who express their personal freedom via political views (that he opposes) that have no effect whatsoever on what happens on the field or court.
Simmons defended another selfish baseball player who couldn't play in Toronto in a July 14 post:
The Philadelphia Phillies will conclude their two-game series in Toronto against the Blue Jays tonight, but they've done so without four of their top players. Catcher J.T. Realmuto is one of them, but he doesn't regret his decision to remain unvaccinated.
"I'm a healthy 31-year-old professional athlete, and I just didn't feel a need to get [the vaccine]," he said. "I've had COVID a couple of times [with] super-mild symptoms back when it first came out, and when it came time to decide whether I needed the vaccine or not, I talked with doctors that I knew and told them my story and just really decided I didn't think I needed it. I wasn't gonna take it just 'cause I was told to, basically."
Realmuto’s logic echoes that of Boston Red Sox pitcher Tanner Houck, who was also barred from crossing into Canada in recent weeks due to his unvaccinated status.
Like Houck, Realmuto has been subject to the media trying to frame him as a disloyal teammate. Thankfully, those within the Phillies clubhouse are coming to the aid of their catcher, whose opinions are the only ones that Realmuto should concern himself with.
Again, Simmons cited no evidence that any other responsibly vaccinated Phillies player has suffered any ill effects from the vaccine, which undercuts any argument Realmuto is making.
Simmons spent an Aug. 31 post whining that the NBA will keep some COVID testing protocols:
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is run by idiots.
The league released a memo stating that all unvaccinated players and team personnel will have to ndergo weekly testing, although there is some nuance to the mandate. The announcement tracks with what commissioner Adam Silver said at a meeting in July in which he expected the league to do before the season kicks off in October.
“It looks like we’ll be on our normal track in terms of when the season starts, in terms of our protocols around the game, particularly around the health and safety of our players,” Silver said at the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting in mid-July. “I have learned over the last 2 1/2 years not to make any predictions when it comes to COVID, but only to say we’ll be prepared for anything that comes our way.”
Anything, that is, except for the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) announcement earlier this month.
Despite lying to the American public for nearly three years about the “benefits” of getting vaccinated and the “risk” of not doing so, the CDC announced that there is no difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals with regard to the coronavirus.
[...]
Mind you, this is the same league that made Kyrie Irving an outcast because he did not want to get vaccinated, and that ridiculed anyone who did not hop on board with the social justice bandwagon they unashamedly support. So it makes sense that the league would take this step even though there is absolutely no need for it anymore.
It’s commonplace for the NBA to make stupid decisions these days, but even this is quite ridiculous for a league led by morons.
Only in thehfevered, hateful brain of Simmons is trying to protect people from a pandemic that has killed more than1 million Americans be considered ridiculous and moronic.
By contrast, Simmons cheered in a Sept. 21 post that "Reports suggest that Canada will likely drop its vaccine requirements for people entering the country by the end of the month. Should this become official, it will undoubtedly be great news for unvaccinated athletes that, to this point, have been prevented from playing games in Canada."
Fellow sports blogger Jay Maxson -- who wrote a post earlier this year filled with falsehoods about athletes purportedly dying because of the COVID vaccine, a post that remains live and uncorrected at this writing-- also worked to portray unvaccinated athletes as victims instead of the selfish players they are. He (or she) complained in a May 15 post that NBA star Kyrie Irving is paying the price for his selfishness:
Unvaccinated and politically incorrect, Brooklyn Nets basketball star Kyrie Irving is on the verge of losing his lucrative Nike contract. ESPN reported that Nike is unlikely to extend Irving’s signature shoe deal beyond the 2022-23 season due to “uncertainties surrounding his NBA future.” Also, the Nets are non-committal on giving the seven-time all-star a long-term contract.
Irving has a long history with Nike, and his basketball shoes are one of the top-selling Swoosh products. The talented guard ran afoul of woke vaccination nuts in New York and Canada during the 2021-22 NBA season and he was only allowed to play in road and playoff games. He and Nike appear headed for a divorce.
[...]
Who caused COVID-related turbulence in America’s workplaces? The government and corporations threatening the livelihoods of many employees by taking a vaccination-or-get lost attitude. This despite a 98.8-percent survival rate of COVID sufferers.
Maxson unsprisingly didn't mention that nearly one in five Amercians who have contracted COVID have lingering symptoms for weeks or months -- known as long COVID -- or that vaccines can reduce the risk of long COVID.
Another consequence of being unvaccinated is people making less-than- charitable remarks about it, and Maxson was upset in an Aug. 8 post when NFL star Aaron Rodgers -- whom Maxson defended after he lied to American about his vaccination status -- got humorously called out for it to his face:
It’s been a year since Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers told the world he had been inoculated – but not vaccinated – against COVID. When he contracted the coronavirus in November, media ganged up on him en masse and cancelled him. Based on Rodgers’ remarks today he’s still smarting from that attack and is in no joking mood about the firestorm that surrounded him last year.
Rodgers appeared today on the Barstool Sports podcast Pardon My Take, hosted by Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Eric Sollenberger. They made a joke about the extremes the media went to in canceling him.:
How many people do you think you killed? What’s your count?
How many grandmothers? Let’s just do grandmothers.
Those questions struck a very raw nerve, and Rodgers shot back, “I mean, I know you guys are fucking around but I don’t find that part funny. I really don’t.”
Upon hearing Rodgers’ reaction, Katz responded, “Oh shit. It actually is one of my favorite things I was able to do off of that whole immunization thing is tweet that you should be in jail.
“I would have people who’d get the joke and then there would be like a ton of people who’d be like, ‘Oh, you like — you think COVID is so real, he should be in jail.’ And it was just, my mentions would just be a mess!”
Rodgers recalled the vitriol of last year when he was practically branded a public enemy for exposing people to COVID, quipping, “And probably a lot of people said, ‘Fuck, yeah, put him in jail — Get that liar in jail.'”
Note how Maxson downplayed the fact that Rodgers lied to people about his vaccination status with the dishonest claim that he was :"inoculated," which he wasn't. Maxson simply repeated that "Rodgers said he was allergic to the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, and he did not trust the Johnson & Johnson vaccine either" -- though no proof was ever offered to support his claim.Maxson then touted how Rodgers owned the libs by 0checks notes] catching COVID:
Rodgers got the last laugh on the media cancel mob. He contracted the coronavirus in November, missed a game, but eventually won the NFL’s 2021 Most Valuable Player award. The Packers won their division and made the playoffs, disproving he was an unvaccinated super-spreader.
Of course, if Rodgers had gotten properly vaccinated, there's a good chance he would not have caught COVID and he wouldn't have missed a game.
Maxson served up more vaccine misinformation in an Aug. 23 post:
The YES Network broadcasts New York Yankees baseball games, but its public brand looks like a big fat NOOOOOO. This is the television outfit which has confined broadcaster and Yankees’ legend Paul O’Neill to his Ohio home since COVID hit 2 ½ years ago. He’s not vaccinated, and that’s still considered a problem by his neanderthal employer. ;
When O’Neill appeared Sunday at Yankee Stadium to have his No. 21 retired, the unenlightened NO folks and the team refused to allow him to approach the players. They could just as well have colored his shirt number and Yankee logo scarlet red.
Vaccines have proven unreliable, and if you don’t believe so, just ask President Joe Biden, who’s been vaccinated and boostered to the hilt, but still caught COVID twice. Or the CDC, which says unvaccinated people now have the same guidance as vaccinated people.
In fact, while the previous generation of COVID vaccines offered less protection from catching COVID as the virus mutated into the Omicron variant, they do reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, even among those who have previously caught COVID -- hardly "unreliable." And the new generation of vaccines should do a better job of catching the Omicron variant.
Then again, Maxson is a proven COVID vaccine misinformer and has amply demonstrated that he )or she) shouldn't be trusted on medical issues and should perhaps stick to ranting about sports.
How Is Michael Brown Hating LGBT People Now? Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown loves to pretend that he really doesn't hate LGBT people, even though pretty much every action he takes reinforces the fact that he does. The hate has unsurprisingly continued over the summer. In his July 11 column following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, Brown rooted for it to be followed by the banning of same-sex marriage as right-wing Justice Clarence Thomas advocated (and yet again falsely denying he hates LGBT people):
Before the Supreme Court's official decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was released, President Biden was already warning that same-sex "marriage" would be next. As he said in May, "It's not just the brutality of taking away a woman's right to her body ... but it also, if you read the opinion ... basically says there's no such thing as the right to privacy. If that holds ... mark my words: They are going to go after the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage." Was he right?
[...]
Personally, regardless of whose legal argument is right (in terms of Alito or Thomas), I do hope that the Court revisits the Obergefell ruling. But that is not because of animus I have toward gays and lesbians. It is simply because the Court had no business redefining marriage.
That decision should never have been in the hands of nine justices, nor is there any way under the sun our founders would have countenanced such a thing. Could you even imagine how the signers of the Constitution would react to such a scenario?
"Gentlemen, are you comfortable with the idea that, based on the division of powers you have outlined, the Supreme Court could one day redefine marriage so that two men or two women could marry each other?"
The question itself would not have even qualified as a poor joke. It would have been too ridiculous (and, plainly, distasteful) even to draw a smile.
[...]
As for the argument that "love is love," that is not the issue here, since it's not up to the court to determine what is and is not loving. Plus, most all of us would agree that some relationships should not be recognized by the courts or by society, no matter how loving they might be. (Included in this list would be adult, consensual, incestuous relationships, such as two gay brothers or a father and his adult daughter.)
And as far as loving relationships go, I have no doubt that there are thousands of gay couples who love each other dearly and deeply, even sacrificially. In fact, the Obergefell case itself involves a very touching story.
I am also acutely aware of how much the Court's ruling meant to same-sex couples throughout America, giving them a feeling of legitimization and respect.
I do not minimize any of this, especially as a follower of Jesus who genuinely cares about those who identify as LGBTQ+. They hurt and suffer pain and feel rejection like anyone else, and I don't relish the fact that my words seem hateful to them on the most visceral level.
But I am even more committed to honoring the God who created us male and female and who never intended for men to be with men and women to be with women. And I am sure that the Court's ruling in 2015 was a massive step in the wrong direction.
My hope is that it will not take almost 50 years to reverse Obergefell and, more fundamentally, that, just as America has shifted radically towards LGBTQ+ activism in recent years, the tide will turn here as well.
Brown is, in fact, minimizing gay marriage by demanding that their relationships must not be legally recognized.
Brown used his July 20 column to rant against transgender people and mocking how to describe them (while, again falsely claiming compassion for them):
On the other hand, the mainstreaming of this societal craziness is particularly shocking, especially when we think of the devastatingly destructive impact it has had on impressionable children. (For my recent article on this, see here.) How could so many people accept as normative something that is so very bizarre? (I say this with compassion for those who struggle with their gender identity while at the same time being convinced that hormone therapy and sex-change surgery are not the way to go.)
[...]
For example, the Cleveland Clinic website notes that, "While Afib can affect anyone, it's more common among people of European descent. However, Black people who have Afib are more likely to have serious complications such as stroke or heart failure. People assigned female at birth (AFAB) are more commonly diagnosed than people assigned male at birth (AMAB)."
So, there are even acronyms for these terms now, AFAB and AMAB. (I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that these acronyms will not replace female and male in the long term.)
Couple these acronyms with the discussion about Afib, and the whole thing almost sounds like an Abbott and Costello parody.
"Doctor, do I have Afib?"
"First I need to know if you're an AFAB or an AMAB. This way I can tell you if you're an AFAB with Afib or an AMAB with Afib."
"But what if I don't have Afib?"
"Then you're an AFAB without Afib or an AMAB without Afib. But first tell me if you're AFAB or AMAB and then we'll discuss Afib."
Sarcasm aside, the very fact that doctors need to distinguish between "AFAB" and "AMAB" is because there is a difference between females and males, and that difference directly affects many health outcomes and treatments. Of course biology matters!
Brown ranted against same-sex marriage again -- and that some Republicans don't hate it as much as he does -- in his July 22 column:
As reported by Fox News on July 19, "A vote to codify same-sex marriage into federal law split House Republicans on Tuesday, with roughly a third of the GOP conference voting with Democrats in favor and the rest opposing.
"In a 267-157 vote, the House passed legislation repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and enshrining protections for gay marriage into federal law. Overall, 47 House Republicans voted with nearly every single Democrat to back the measure, dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act."
Let that sink in for a moment.
It is bad enough that this bill is called the "Respect for Marriage Act," seeing that the "marriage" of which it speaks represents a radical and fundamental redefining of the institution of marriage.
And it is to the shame of the Democratic Party that "nearly every single Democrat" voted in favor of the measure.
But it is no surprise that the Democrats voted this way, seeing that they are overtly and proudly pro-LGBTQ+. Perhaps the only surprise is that there were any who did not toe the line.
But for 47 Republicans to vote this way, representing almost 25% of all Republicans in the House, is both surprising and shameful.
That's because the Republican Party is supposed to be the pro-life, pro-family party, the party that upholds traditional Judeo-Christian values. Why else do so many conservative Christians vote Republican if not for these core moral and social values?
And, yes, he played his bogus compassion card:
Again, as I have said many times, by saying this, I do not mean that gay couples do not love each other deeply. And I do not deny that many of them are incredibly devoted parents. I simply mean that marriage throughout history, with the rarest and slightest exceptions (like Nero marrying a man who took on female characteristics), has always been the union of a male and female. And from a biblical perspective, the idea of two men or two women marrying would be utterly abhorrent.
For 47 House Republicans to vote to protect this new version of "marriage" is deplorable (in the worst sense of the word), regardless of what Republican senators decide to do.
Brown began his Aug. 19 column by huffing: "Just as we should have compassion on those who truly struggle with their gender identity, we should stand firmly against transgender activism. Thankfully, there are more and more signs that the tide is turning against this latest example of sociological contagion." Needless to say, the column contains much more transphobia than it does the "compassion" he falsely claims to have.HE continued to huff:
Thank God for a moment of sanity in the midst of today's cultural madness. And how telling it is that the school leadership was shocked by the response of the parents. Moms and dads, keep raising your voices!
[...]
The bad news is that some cultural commentators have been sounding the alarm about transgender radicalism for many years.
The good news is that society is waking up to reality.
The bad news is that many young lives have already been irreparably destroyed, at least physically.
Let us, then, do our best to hasten the societal turn by continuing to get the truth out. The time for doing that is now.
Brown is too consumed by anti-LGBT hate to be considered a credible source of "truth."
Brown spent his Sept. 19 column reminding readers that all non-heterosexuals must be hated, not just the transgender ones:
Whatever the cause, the fact is that, as much as opposition to transgender activism has increased, opposition to LGB activism has decreased.
This is a serious error, theologically, morally and practically, since the transgender movement is just the logical extension of the homosexual movement, the inevitable next step on the LGBQ trajectory.
[...]
Without any possible doubt, if we do not reaffirm our position that homosexual practice and same-sex relationships are sinful in God's sight and detrimental to society, we will lose the moral battle for our nation. If we do not reaffirm our belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, we will see a continued downward spiral into sexual and gender confusion.
There is nothing more fundamental to a society than the institution of marriage, and once you redefine that, you redefine everything. Once you say that biology does not matter when it comes to marriage, it's a small jump to say that biology doesn't matter when it comes to gender identity, and from there, it's an even smaller jump to putting children on puberty blockers and subjecting them to mutilating surgery. And once kids are raised in a same-sex environment with two mommies or two daddies, no matter how loving and caring those parents might be, it will bring confusion on the next generation.
[...]
Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that by opposing radical transgender activism, we can stem the larger decline into sexual confusion, which itself is the natural fruit of the sexual revolution, which quickly went from hetero to homo to beyond.
By all means, let us truly love our neighbors as ourselves and practice decency and civility. But we can do that without affirming that which violates God's fundamental order and plan. To ignore the LGB while opposing the T is a shortsighted counsel of despair.
Brown didn't mention any of the purported compassion he has for the LGBT community -- perhaps he's finally understanding that he's lying to himself, and his readers, by claiming he has any.
Even as Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming House seat in the primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent, the Media Research Center 
The 
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino huffed in an Aug. 24 
CNSNews.com reverted to 
The Media Research Center raged
Newsmax's 
Chief WorldNetDaily COVID misinformer Art Moore found a new COVID misinformer to promote in a July 20 
The 
As talk of President Biden possibly forgiving student loans heated up over the summer, CNSNews.com cranked out articles repeating right-wing attacks on the idea:
The COVID pandemic may be starting to fade, but the Media Research Center's sports bloggers kept up their 
WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown 