CNS Flip-Flops On Possible Hatch Act Violations Depending On Who's In Office Topic: CNSNews.com
Just as it's intermittently obsessed with possible violations of the Logan Act (which prohibits unauthorized Americans from negotiating with foreign goverments) depending on which party controls the White House, CNSNews.com has a similar attitude toward the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain political activities by federal employees. Susan Jones complained in an Oct. 27 article:
The White House website is warning that Republicans "plan to increase inflation and costs" for Americans.
On Thursday morning, the top item on the "Briefing Room" web page -- where White House staffers post statements, “fact sheets,” transcripts, and news releases -- reads as follows:
"Congressional Republicans’ Five-Part Plan to Increase Inflation and Costs for American Families."
"Congressional Republicans have laid out their mega MAGA trickle-down economic plan clearly," the news release says. "Their economic plan will raise costs and make inflation worse. Their five part plan includes:
-- "$3 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy";
-- "Raising prescription drug costs for millions of seniors" (by repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is mostly a green energy bill with a few goodies thrown in to make it seem like cost reduction);
-- "Increasing health insurance premiums" (by repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act);
-- "Increasing energy bills in 2023 and beyond (by repealing the clean energy provisions, including tax credits for EVs, provided in the Inflation Reduction Act);
-- "Increasing student loan payments" (by reversing Biden's possibly unconstitutional move to cancel some debt for some students).
(Notably, the news release is not labeled a “fact sheet.”)
According to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, "The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees..."
The OSC does not offer specific guidance on the White House "Briefing Room" webpage. However, it does say that all federal civilian executive branch employees, except for the president and the vice president, are covered by the Hatch Act.
[...]
On Wednesday, as the New York Post reported, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was warned that he violated the Hatch Act by retweeting a message urging people to purchase “Democrats Deliver” merchandise.
That last criticism was reinforced in an article by Melanie Arter the same day:
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was admonished by the Office of Special Counsel on Wednesday for violating the Hatch Act by retweeting a message from his government account from the Democratic group STRIKE PAC that included the statement, “Get your Democrats Deliver merch today.”
The tweet in question, which was posted on May 22, was about delivering infant formula.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the Office of Special Counsel’s finding during a gaggle on board Air Force One en route to Syracuse, N.Y.
The press secretary said that the Biden administration takes the Hatch Act more seriously than the Trump administration did.
You will not be surprised to learn that CNS took Hatch Act violations as unseriously as the Trump administration when Trump was in office. When Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was found by the Office of Special Counsel in 2019 to have repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and recommended her removal, Susan Jones grumbled that the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed her and that "One Republican, Justin Amash, voted with Democrats." She went on to uncritically quote Republican Rep. Jim Jordan reframing her violations by claiming that "a senior adviser to the president of the United States can sure as heck go on cable news shows and answer questions" and that she's being targeted "not just because she's in the Trump administration, but she's being targeted because she's good at what she does."
(Arter didn't mention Conway's repeated Hatch Act violations in her article on Klain.)
When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Israel during the 2020 Republican National Convention, Patrick Goodenough complained that "some Jewish Democrats, who see it as a ploy to politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship" as well as a possible violation of the Hatch Act, while uncritically repeating Trump administration officials' insistence that Pompeo was giving the speech "in his personal capacity." A couple days later, Melanie Arter played stenographer for a Republcian congressman who appeaered on Fox News playing whataboutism to deflect from Pompeo:
Former Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Wednesday that it’s ironic for Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) to call for an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaking at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, given that five cabinet-level Democrats spoke during the Democratic National Convention in 2012.
Castro, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, issued a statement, saying “This action is part of a pattern of politicization of U.S. foreign policy for which President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. That undermines America's standing in the world. The American people deserve a full investigation."
[...]
“So if you're going to investigate noncompliance with the Hatch Act, if you’re going to accuse Mike Pompeo, how many cabinet-level officials spoke at the DNC in 2012? Five. So I will trade the power of incumbency. I think people understand incumbents have power – congressional incumbents do, presidential,” he said.
According to the schedule of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Mills, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius - all members of the Obama administration at the time - spoke at the convention headlines by President Barack Obama.
When Pompeo got dinged again for another possible Hatch Act violation in December 2020 by campaigning for Republican candidates in Georgia, Goodenough again rushed to his defense, delcaring:
A non-exhaustive review of travel by Pompeo’s two Democratic predecessors at the State Department finds that Kerry delivered occasional speeches in Massachusetts (including one at Harvard in 2015 and another at MIT in early 2017) and visited a wind technology testing center in Boston with his British counterpart in 2014.
Clinton took part in numerous events in New York City while serving as secretary of state from Jan. 21, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2013 – not including those relating to the United Nations – delivering speeches at policy institutions, schools, galas, benefits, award dinners, and other events.
Biut as we noted at the time, Goodenough buried the fact that Kerry and Clinton were appearing in their home states but didn't mention that Pompeo is from Kansas and has no connection to Georgia.
That, in turn, is a change from how it treated the Hatch Act during the Obama administraiton. For instance, a 2010 article by Fred Lucas suggested that "strict guidelines for the placement, size, and visibility of signs promoting the $862-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" was a Hatch Act violation. And a 2013 article by Craig Bannister toutred how "U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (O-Okla.) has launched a probe into potential Hatch Act violations by the White House in its climate agenda advocacy."
MRC Flip-Flops On Rigging Polls Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober ranted in an Oct. 31 post:
On Monday night, MSNBC’s Joy Reid went full-blown conspiracy kook during her show The ReidOut. She was apparently wearing her tin foil hat so tight that it was cutting off her circulation because she claimed with a straight face that over half of the midterm election polls published over the last few weeks are Republican polls that are skewed to create a media narrative that a red wave is coming.
Discussing recent media coverage of polls that are trending in the GOP’s direction, Reid snarked that “if you believe the recent headlines, you would think that MAGA fascism is ascendant.”
According to Reid, it’s all an illusion because “if you get past those headlines and dig a little deeper, you uncover an insidious and seemingly intentional campaign by Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates.”
Funny, the MRC didn't think this was a "conspiracy kook" claim two years ago, when it put on its tinfoil hat to make a very similar accusation, if not worse. As we documented, after the 2020 election, MRC chief Brent Bozell accused pollsters of being "deliberately wildly wrong" in their polling before the election -- that is, they were making up polls -- because they purportedly wanted to "suppress the vote" for Trump. The MRC then commissioned its own rigged poll -- from McLaughlin & Associates, the pollster for Trump's campaign -- suggesting that Biden would have lost the election had (then-unverified) reports about Hunter Biden's laptop not been "censored" bvy the media.
Tober censored how Reid's complaint mirrored that of his employer. Instead, he ranted some more about Reid:
Despite claiming that you can’t trust partisan pollsters because they spin for their side, Reid quoted from Democrat pollster Simon Rosenberg who she described as “sounding the alarm, and saying “of the roughly 40 polls taken in key battleground states” over half are “from Republican firms or groups.”
To back up her conspiracy theory, Reid pointed to the left-wing rag The New York Times whose polls showed “Democrats either in the lead or tied with their opponent.”
Continuing to quote from the Times, Reid claimed that “most of the polling over the last few weeks is coming from partisan outfits, usually Republican, or auto dial firms. These polls are cheap enough to flood the zone.”
Tober didn't disprove any of that, of course; his goal was to smear Reid as a crackpot because he knew he couldn't. He concluded with onemore attack he didn't back up:
She ended her delusional and conspiratorial rant by falsely claiming that "Real Clear Politics, has become more openly pro-Trump," because during the 2020 presidential election, "their polling averages seemed skewed in Trump’s favor."
In fact, Real Clear Politics' rightward bias is quiteclear, and Rosenberg noted that "A polling aggregator of only independent polls has the election 3.3 pts more Dem than Real Clear."
Tober concluded by huffing: "Make sure to check out NewsBusters on election night and in the days after to see Reid’s reaction when she’s proven wrong." How'd that work out for you, Kev?
Newsmax Hypes Gabbard (Officially) Quitting Democratic Party Topic: Newsmax
Like CNSNews.com, Newsmax got quite a kick of Tulsi Gabbard ceasing her charade of being a Democrat and officially qutting the party. For months, of course, Newsmaxhadbeenpromoting Gabbard's attacks on her purportedly fellow Democrats for months now, so this was less news and more right-wing propaganda.
The uniroinically named Charlie McCarthy used an Oct. 11 article to parrot her words in quitting, but didn't mention she hadn't acted like a real Democrat for years. This was followed by an article the next day by Solange Reyner featuring Gabbard being transphobic on Joe Rogan's podcast -- followed by an article by Luca Cacciatore that effectively blew up any claim that Gabbard was a real Democrat by gushing that "Onetime Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has backed a Donald Trump-endorsed House Republican candidate just one day after leaving the Democratic Party." Another article that day by Eric Mack blew that up even further by touting how Gabbard woudl be going on "a barnstorming campaign tour" for Republican election-denier Senate candidate Don Bolduc.
Meanwhile, Dick Morris tried to ride Gabbard's DINO coattails for his own benefit in an Oct. 11 Newsmax TV appearance:
Dick Morris can relate to former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's high-profile defection from the Democratic Party, since he made a similar exodus from the Democrats a number of years ago.
"[Nearly] all of us were 'boat' people," Morris told Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show" on Tuesday, relaying how the vast majority of American citizens have roots and heritage stories outside the United States. "And very few of us were originally Republicans."
Morris, a best-selling author, TV host, and former adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, says that disenchanted Democrats "didn't shift [their ideals]. The party shifted under our feet. ... The party of [President John F. Kennedy] and Bill Clinton" now aligns with the modern-day Republican agenda.
As for Gabbard's next political move, Morris — the author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" — says, "I'd love her on [the Republicans'] side. I thought she was very good" as a politician.
Morris did more self-aggrandizing exploitation of Gabbard in a TV hit the next day:
Former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard's decision to resign from the Democratic Party is further proof that President Joe Biden has "made America unrecognizable," political strategist Dick Morris, the author of "The Return: Donald Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," said on Newsmax Wednesday.
"It's a phrase I use in my book," the host said on "John Bachman Now." "You wouldn't recognize it if told you this is a country where the government goes after political opponents and baits them and searches their homes.
"Children are told that we are in favor of racism, not against racism, where you look at gender-change surgery for children in the fourth grade … you would say I have no idea what country you're talking about," Morris added. "But you're talking about America, and I think Tulsi is really onto something when she says, 'Look, I haven't changed; the Democratic Party has changed underneath me.'"
An Oct. 18 article by Marisa Herman, hidden behind a paywall for its "Platinum" subscribers, purported to offer "5 Big Reasons Tulsi Gabbard Left the Democrats." An Oct. 26 column by Kenny Cody tried to pretend Gabbard was a real Democrat even as he admitted that she's "a constant on conservative news networks":
While Gabbard has been a constant on conservative news networks, podcasts and media shows, analyzing her background makes it all the more surprising that she left the Democratic Party. Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, was the former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and resides in one of the most Democratic states in Hawaii.
From her stances on foreign policy, criminal justice reform, and populism in Congress, Gabbard was often regarded as a future star who rose from Bernie Sanders' party shift after his candidacies in both 2016 and 2020.
However, for reasons that can only be attributed to Gabbard's bucking of the establishment shills in the Democratic Party, she has been ostracized, mocked, and even called a Russian agent by the party's former nominee, all because she was willing to call out warmongering tyrants like Hillary Clinton and fake progressives such as Kamala Harris.
Cody didn't mention that the whole "Russian agent" thing is not entirely out of line, given how she sided with Putin and against Ukraine, as even Newsmaxdocumented (though Newsmax also pointed out that Gabbard spread falsehoods about purported biological labs in Ukraine). Instead, Cody framer her odious pro-Putin semtiments as being against "interventionist foreign policy" and insisted the Republicans should embrace her because the "national conservative movement within the party" embraces being "anti-war."
A couple days later, though Newsmax was touting how Gabbard was endording right-wing Republicans like Adam Laxalt and Mike Lee.
WND's Moore Cranks Out Even More COVID Vaccine Misinfo Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore served yet another COVID conspiracy in an Oct. 18 article:
An alarming spike in the deaths of young Canadian doctors since the COVID-19 vaccine was mandated for health-care workers demands an investigation, a physician and cancer researcher told the Canadian Medical Association.
Dr. William Makis, a nuclear medicine physician with more than 100 peer-reviewed research publications, also called for an immediate end to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Canadian health care, the Gateway Pundit reported.
"Our analysis shows Canadian doctor deaths under age 50 in 2022 will be 2-fold higher compared to 2019-2020," he wrote. "Shockingly, doctor deaths under age 40 are 5-fold higher, and doctor deaths under age 30 are 8-fold higher."
Makis noted that at the Canadian Medical Association-sponsored International Conference on Physician Health last week, a topic that was not discussed was "young Canadian doctors dying suddenly and unexpectedly after COVID vaccine rollout."
[...]
Addressing CMA leaders Dr. Katharine Smart and Dr. Alika Lafontaine, he said "both of you failed or refused to respond to my letter, and you also failed or refused to respond to inquiries made by American philanthropist Mr.Steve Kirsch, as well as inquiries made by journalists."
"I am now providing you an update with information about 80 young Canadian doctors who died suddenly or unexpectedly since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines," he wrote. "Four more doctors have died since my previous letter, and these unexpected deaths are accelerating. You cannot continue to ignore this."
Makis said he and his team have assembled a database of 1,638 Canadian doctor deaths during the period 2019-2022, with 972 of them from CMA's website. Our preliminary analysis of this extensive data suggests that Canadian doctor deaths under age 50 in 2022 will be 2-fold higher compared to the 2019-2020 average.
In fact, there's no evidence to suggest doctors are dying from the COVID vaccine, and Makis won't provide access to his database. As usual, Moore's pumping up of Makis' credentials in order to lean into the authority fallacy is a tell that he's trying to hide the fact that what's underneath is bogus.
WND columnist Wayne Allyn Root has peddled this bogus conpiracy theory as well.
The next day, Moore brought back a misinformer, complete with a similar appeal to authority:
A top London cardiologist who was one of the first to take the COVID-19 vaccine and promote it on British television is warning his colleagues and the public he has evidence tying the incidences around the world of "unexpected" cardiac events in otherwise healthy people to the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Aseem Malhotra made the statement in a video posted Wednesday on Twitter.
"It is my duty and responsibility as a consultant cardiologist and public health campaigner to urgently inform doctors, patients and members of the public that the COVID mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role of being a primary cause in all unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure since 2021, until proven otherwise," he said.
An internationally renowned expert in the prevention, diagnosis and management of heart disease, Malhotra is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and president of the Scientific Advisory Committee of The Public Health Collaboration. He also is an honorary council member to the Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Late last month, Malhotra called for a suspension of the shots, arguing in a scientific paper that there is evidence the risk of harm is greater than any benefit.
As we documented when Moore publicized that study, Malhorta normally peddles celebrity diets and the study was filled with low-quality data that made it largely worthless.
Moore touted more fearmongering in an Oct. 26 article:
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quietly disclosed it found that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine posed a possible increased risk of four serious heart and cardiovascular conditions in elderly people.
The FDA provided little detail at the time, July 2021, and promised to "share further updates and information with the public as they become available," points out investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi in an article published by the British Medical Journal.
Eighteen days later, the FDA issued a document outlining a planned epidemiological study to investigate the matter. The preliminary estimate of the increased risk of the cardiac adverse events from the vaccine ranged from 42% to 91%.
"More than a year later, however, the status and results of the follow-up study are unknown," wrote Demasi. "The agency has not published a press release, or notified doctors, or published the findings by preprint or the scientific literature or updated the vaccine's product label."
But Moore didn't tell his reader sthat Demasi has a record of shoddy work. In 2018, a medical journal retracted a study by her purporting to link cell phones to cancer due to reuse of images; five dauys before Moore's article was published, an article co-authored buy Demasi was marked with an "expression of concern," again due to the use of duplicated images. So she doesn't seem very trustworthy, even though she managed to get a article published in an actual prestigious medical journal.
MRC Whines That Oprah Endorsed Fetterman Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center beganwagingwar on John Fetterman when it decided it could exploit his stroke for partisan reasons and boost his Democratic opponent for in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Mehmet Oz. The weekend before the election, the MRC attacked Fetterman again, but for more prosaic reasons -- in this case, getting an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey. Alex Christy spent a Nov. 4 post insisting that Oprah's endorsement meant nothing, even though it was a clear rebuke of Oz, whose TV career was launched by her:
Of all the stories that could’ve led off Friday’s CNN This Morning, the one that the cast settled on was Oprah Winfrey endorsing John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s Senate race with co-host Don Lemon desperately trying to suggest it all mattered.
Lemon kicked things off by hyping “Oprah Winfrey, Oprah, snubbing the man she turned into a household name. Endorsing John Fetterman over Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania's very, very tight Senate race.”
After an unrelated clip of former President Trump in Iowa, Lemon continued trying to make the Oprah-Fetterman endorsement a big deal, “Let's start now, Jessica Dean live from Montgomery County, just outside of Philadelphia. So good morning to you. It's interesting because Oprah helped to make Dr. Oz famous but now she's endorsing his opponent, John Fetterman. Do you think it's going to swing any votes?”
Nicholas Fondacaro kicked off his daily two minutes hate of "The View" by only alluding to Oprah's endorsement while bashing the show's interview of Fetterman for not being as hateful as he would be:
The Friday edition of ABC’s The View brought with it one of the more highly anticipated interviews for the show, Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman. If you predicted it would be a cakewalk for him, you’d be correct. They refused to grill him pretty much on anything and instead repeatedly teed him up to go after critics and his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and downplayed his obviously strained health condition.
Wasting her first question asking about his endorsement from Oprah, co-host Joy Behar didn’t push for him to release his medical records but rather for him just to explain what his doctors told him:
[...]
Bringing things back to the debate last week, Hostin suggested “it was an incredibly courageous and brave thing for you to show what healing from a stroke looks like. That's incredibly brave.” She then doubled down on her past assertion that Oz was a “bully” during the debate.
“Does any of this surprise you? A man with a Harvard master's degree, do you think the people of Pennsylvania saw what they needed to see from you to gain their vote?” she teed him up.
Hostin has repeatedly tried to portray Oz as a quack, he too has a degree from Harvard, and while she touts Fetterman’s, he did not receive his post-stroke.
Friday on the “big three” network morning shows from ABC, CBS, and NBC, the trio eagerly touted Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of handicapped Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) over her longtime colleague and Fetterman’s GOP challenger, Dr. Mehmet Oz.
[...]
NBC’s Today went the lightest on the midterms, but heaviest on Oprah Winfrey. Co-host Savannah Guthrie teased “a surprise endorsement from Oprah in one of the nation's closest races,” with co-host Craig Melvin adding a few minutes later that it was “a major endorsement.”
Saturday Today co-anchor Peter Alexander also called it “a surprise endorsement,” noting she “gave Oz his start in TV nearly 20 years before the heart surgeon launched his own talk show in 2009.”
“The Oz campaign responding overnight, writing, ‘Dr. Oz loves Oprah and respects the fact that they have different politics. He believes we need more balance and less extremism in Washington,’” he added.
ABC’s Good Morning America had correspondent Eva Pilgrim briefly mention it during a report on the Pennsylvania Senate race: “And overnight, Oprah, who gave Dr. Oz his start in TV and worked with him for years, endorsing his opponent, Fetterman. Now, Fetterman was previously ahead in the polls here, but we have seen that lead diminish as we head towards election day.”
CBS chief campaign and election correspondent Robert Costa touted it on CBS Mornings as one of the “surprises in the works” and “big news.” With Winfrey’s best friend and Democratic donor Gayle King off, it was left up to her co-hosts to marvel. Co-host Tony Dokoupil interjected with a “wow” while co-host Nate Burleson had an “mmmm.”
That's a lot of complaining about something that supposedly doesn't matter.
And that, four days before the election, was pretty much the last pre-election anti-Fetterman gasp for the MRC. It didn't attack Fetterman or his stroke any more before election day -- whcih suggests that that it may have decided that its stroke obsession may not have worked or even backfired. It also suggests that, despite the MRC's kneejerk protestations to the contrary, Oprah's endorsement may have mattered after all -- enough to prematurely stop the partisan attack machine, anyway.
WND's Farah Mad That Biden Talks About MAGA Extremists Like Farah Talks About Him Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah used his Sept. 26 column to repeat comments by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complaiing about President Biden's speech calling out the extremism of MAGA Republicans:
Pompeo said it's clear Biden misunderstands fights between friends, and fights with enemies.
"As Secretary of State, I battled Chairman Kim, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. These men are our enemies; they want for America only destruction or submission to their whims. These are the kinds of enemies America must defend herself against," he said.
But in working with – or disagreeing with – fellow countrymen, he said, those are "our friends and neighbors."
"We don't fight with our fellow Americans – we disagree, debate, persuade, and convince. And ultimately, we all vote on the way forward for the country. Joe Biden did away with this distinction in Philadelphia."
But Farah also unironically wrote:
Why has the Democratic machine taken on new internal enemies, loyal Americans, the heartbeat of the MAGA movement, who are waking up and taking over the Republican Party? Why do they represent the strongest movement in the country, perhaps the strongest that has ever been? Why have Biden and the Democrats zeroed in on former President Donald Trump and the powerful movement he leads as the No. 1 enemies they vilify?
Because of the coup d'état that took control of this country on Jan. 6, 2021, that installed him, that selected, as opposed to electing, Biden as president. That is why. It's obvious now. It was to most then – before the movie "2000 Mules" was released and kept quiet by Big Tech, censoring, blacklisting and demonizing the film.
It should have been obvious when Biden got the most popular votes in "faux" American history – some 81,000,000! That's more than Trump's 74,000,000 – the largest win in "real" American history.
[...]
Biden is destroying America – deliberately.
All Democrats are part of the process – deliberately.
It's time for the full truth.
They are unspeakably evil – all of them. From the school boards to the U.S. Senate.
There's no other way to frame it.
We have so little time to straighten out our country. That's why everything Democrats do, right now, makes you sick. And RINOs too.
It seems that Farah is mad that Biden uses the same language against right-wing extremists that Farah uses against him, and he doesn't appreciate the turnabout -- to the point where he did exactly that in a column complaining about it, clearly blind to how hypocritical that looks.Then again, that's what WND does; its "midterm election guide" was little more than anti-Biden and anti-Democratic screeds attacking them as literally under the control of "dark psychological and spiritual forces." What happened to the "friends and neighbors" stuff?
(Also: "2000 Mules" has been thoroughly discredited, but Farah is censoring that fact from his readers.)
Farah registered the same complaint about another Biden speech in his Nov. 3 column, under the headline "'Election denier' Joe Biden demonizes the rest of us." He complained that Biden's pointing out MAGA extremism as exeplifited by the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband somehow proved the election was stolen and Trump supporters weren't behind the Capitol riot:
What did that have to do with anything? How does it pertain to anything about the upcoming midterms?
Biden tried to explained a link between the assailant and some words he may or may not have spoken during the horrific crime with the Jan. 6 mob action.
He continued: "All this happened after the assault, and it just – it's hard to even say. It's hard to even say. After the assailant entered the home asking: 'Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy?' Those are the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors hunting for officials and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence."
Did the assailant have anything in common with those people – either the mob responsible or the federal agents or agent provocateurs that initiated it? Did the assailant even utter those convenient words? We don't know. It hasn't been adjudicated yet, nor has the public seen much evidence. We know almost nothing about the attack on Paul Pelosi – yet. However, we do know much about the assailant. He had nothing in common with "MAGA Republicans" – whom Biden had come to demonize at the Democratic National Committee event inside Union Station in Washington, D.C.
From there, Farah spouted old lies about his old lies agout election fraud:
I believe the election of 2020 was stolen. I believe it because I don't think a man who stayed in his basement for the most of the campaign, embarrassed himself further when he made an occasional appearance and couldn't draw flies when he did one, did not get 12 million more votes than Barack Obama got in his first time running, against John McCain. (He got considerably fewer votes his second time.) Donald Trump got 74,216,154 officially – the largest tally ever achieved by a sitting president when millions were probably thrown away, while Biden was credited with an astronomical amount: 81,268,924!
Do you think Biden won? Impossible. I don't believe it. He was too confident that the fix was in.
But so what? I didn't cry about it. I was at the rally Jan. 6 to hear the greatest president of the United States tell us what happened. He did. Little did I know what would happen before he stopped speaking – even before he told over 1 million people listening to him to meet outside of the Capitol to "peacefully protest."
Had his strong warnings been heeded to have enough National Guardsmen in position, or even had the Capitol Police fully mobilized, things would have been different. But Nancy Pelosi, who was in charge of the debacle, didn't listen to Trump. That was the cause of Jan. 6. There were not enough police. At some point they opened the doors. In the mayhem one person died – Ashli Babbitt, a peaceful Trump supporter and military veteran, killed by a policeman's bullet.
What did Farah get wrong here? Trump never ordered the National Guard to be deployed, Nancy Pelosi isn't in charge of the Capitol Police, and there likely weren't a million people at the pre-riot rally, given how Trump loves to lie about crowd size. And while Farah may not have cried, he has definitely lied by spending the past two years making WND promote discredited election fraud conspiracy theories.
Farah concluded with a bit of reverse whataboutism:
In most cases we knew the answer to most races on Election Night. Of course, there were two notable exceptions – Election Night in 2000 and Election Night 2020. Do you remember 2000, Joe? That was the time you were an election denier. Do you remember?
"This man was elected president of the United States of America," Biden said about Al Gore in 2013. "No, no, no. He was elected president of the United States of America. But for the good of the nation, when the bad decision in my view was made, he did the right thing for the nation."
He was still denying a presidential election 13 years later!
Hey Joe! Do you know what that means? You're an election denier! That's not the worst of it. The worst of it is you are an election impostor, a fraudulent "president" and just another liar who doesn't know when to stop talking.
Acually, Gore did win the popular vote over George W. Bush, which in every other type of election determines the winner. We also remember that Farah and WND denounced recounts in Florida and cheered when the Supreme Court stopped them and arbitrarily declared Bush the winner:
Farah complained in one post-election column that overseas ballots were being rejected for technicalities like missing postmarks. Farah wanted those ballots counted because many were from military members who typically vote Republican.
Another column complained about "recounts of recounts of recounts" and conspiratorially declared that rejecting ballots on technicalities "was part of a beliberate strategy to deny overseas servicemen a say in who will be the next commander in chief."
In another column, Farah ranted that a Florida Supreme Court decision to allow recounts to continue was "blatantly political" and "judicial activism," going on to huff: "Never before in American history has there been such an effort by an outgoing administration to hold on to power. This country is renowned throughout the world for smooth transitions of power -- even in the face of bitterly contested elections. This is a particularly ugly chapter in the country's history."
Farah clearly doesn't feel that way about Trump, even though he's engaging in exactly the same behavior -- and arguably much worse -- that Farah denounced in 2000. And stil he whines about his extremism being demonized.
Dick Morris Spouts Right-Wing Talking Points At Newsmax (And Plugs His Newsmax-Published Book) Topic: Newsmax
Throughout the midterm election season, Dick Morris has appeared on Newsmax TV and its website to spouting Republican talking points and dubious predictions designed to adhere to his employer's narratives and appeal to its right-wing audience (as well as promoting his Newsmax-published pro-Trump book):
Meanwhile, Morris turned to his Newsmax column to spread more hot takes. In his Oct. 5 column, Morris warned of an "October surprise" by Biden while plugging his book:
Joe Biden needs an October surprise to survive the coming tsunami Democrats face this November.
His pathetic attempt to shift attention on to Donald Trump with his ant-MAGA speech has failed.
In "The Return," I warned repeatedly that the 2022 mid-terms would be the first real battle of the 2024 presidential election.
Whatever party wins 2022 will be in a superior position to win the White House in 2024.
Biden knows this.
And so does Trump.
[...]
Yes, a Biden October surprise is coming.
With inflation soaring, the housing and stock markets collapsing, oil prices rising, and a border in crisis underway — he and his advisers know only a "wag the dog" event can save him.
In "The Return," I lay out what this "surprise" might be — a military action, an economic one, or another, bigger legal hit on Trump.
Trump is already preparing a massive response.
That's in "The Return" too.
Morris spent his Oct. 24 column huffing that early voting may hurt Republicans and begged Republicans to vote early too:
Can the 2020 nightmare repeat itself this election year?
Well, the Republican Party, in its own inimitable fashion, may be about to blow this election — especially in some tight Senate races.
Remember back in 2020 when the Democrats piled up huge leads among those who voted early, sometimes weeks before Election Day?
Meanwhile Republican operatives actually told GOP voters not to vote early but show up on Election Day.
By the time the Republicans showed up, the Democrats had already piled up leads that were insurmountable — all of this happened through early voting.
[...]
When Democrats ask a voter to cast his ballot two weeks before the election, they can follow up if the person doesn't come through.
But with Election Day voters, there is no margin for error.
If even 5% of Republican voters failed to show up on Election Day — think the kids got sick, things piled up, people got the flu, or just too many things to do — the party risks losing Senate races that are now on razor edge in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio.
The fate of both the Senate and House depends on GOP voters actually voting.
So why are the Republicans living so dangerously?
[...]
Trump pulled out 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016. But, by using early voting, Biden pulled out 15 million more.
Sure we need to stop Democratic voting shenanigans, but let's tell people to vote early!
How like a right-wing operative like Morris to think that the legal act of voting early is "shenanigans."
CNS Knowingly Pushes False GOP Narrative On Harris Remarks On Climate Change Aid Topic: CNSNews.com
Susan Jones wrote in an Oct. 3 CNSNews.com article:
On CBS's "Face the Nation," [FEMA Administrator Deanne] Criswell was asked to respond to Vice President Kamala Harris's comments about "equity" in the rebuilding process.
"It is our lowest-income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and -- and impacted by -- by issues that are not of their own making," Harris told the Democratic National Committee's Women’s Leadership Forum on Friday.
"And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place."
CNS also pushed Republican attacks about Harris' comments the same day:
An article by Melanie Arter hyped that "Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said Sunday that he 'couldn’t disagree more' with Vice President Kamala Harris when she called for giving hurricane aid to communities of color first."
Another article by Arter stated that "Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent comments about giving hurricane aid 'based on equity' is 'the definition of discrimination,' and it’s “incredibly racist,' Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said on Sunday."
But that's not what Harris said -- and CNS knew it. Harris was actually talking about how to react to climate change, not Hurricane Ian, which was hitting Florida around the same time, and numerousfact-checkersagree that right-wingers were taking her remarks out of context to falsely portray them as being about hurricane aid.
How do we know that CNS knowingly misled about Harris' remarks? Because its fourth article of the day on this, also by Arter, blockquoted Harris' full remarks, which do indeed make clear she was talking about climate changed. Unfortunately, Arter started her article by parroting that false narrative yet again:
Vice President Kamala Harris suggested Friday that hurricane relief aid should be given “based on equity,” adding that “not everyone starts out at the same place” and that should be taken into account.
“And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place, and if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work,” Harris said during a DNC chat last week.
The fifth and final article of the day, by Arter once again, seemed to be a bit of an apology devoted to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre correcting the record:
The White House on Monday said it is committed to getting resources to “all communities impacted” by Hurricane Ian, adding that Vice President Kamala Harris was not referring to “hurricane response efforts” but instead to “long-term investment.”
This comes in response to Harris’ comments during a Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum on Friday, in which she was asked about the administration’s hurricane response and addressing “the climate crisis.”
Not only did CNS did not go back and correct its earlier articles , Jones wrote one the next day that contyinued to push the false narrative:
The hurricane that devastated southwest Florida did not aim at any particular group of people. Rich and poor alike have been wiped out, but "they're ready to bounce back" with help from their government and their fellow Americans, Gov. Ron DeSantis told Sean Hannity Monday night.
DeSantis vowed to rebuild Florida's island communities; he supported the Second Amendment right of Floridians to defend themselves and their property; and he criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for politicizing the disaster by saying resources for hurricane victims should be given "based on equity."
"I think she's trying to play identity politics with a -- with a storm and a natural disaster. I think it's ridiculous," DeSantis said:
Even though Jones linked back to Arter's article fully quoting Harris' remarks, she still lied to her readers.
Arter served her own Oct. 4 article that tepidly tried to correct another Republican member of Congress, Kat Cammack, parroting the false narrative yet again:
“She needs to go back to the salad bar and rework her word salad as she has been known to do because she is absolutely out of line to suggest that aid after this disastrous once in 500 year storm is going to be based on equity or race or socio- economic status,” Cammack said.
“We're here for all Americans - not just Republicans or Democrats - all Americans. We're doing what good Americans do. We're responding to our friends and neighbors in need, and it is just disgusting they would try to politicize this just as they tried to do that last Friday when they sent $2 billion of FEMA money to the border. That is ridiculous - on the same day that hurricane Ian smacked my home state. It’s a real shame, Harris,” she said.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday clarified Vice President Kamala Harris’ remarks on hurricane relief aid and the climate crisis, saying, “The vice president was clearly talking about long-term investment, not FEMA aid, for hurricane response efforts.”
But that wasn't the lead of Arter's article -- correcting Republicans doesn't generate right-wing clicks for CNS, after all. That was dedicated to hyping Cammack declaring that "the White House needs to hire Mr. Clean as their spokesperson, 'because clearly all that job entails is cleaning up the mess of the president and the vice president'" -- even though the only actual cleanup that needed to be done was after Repubicans lying about what Harris actually said.
Putting false own-the-libs narratives ahead of reporting facts is a bad look for a website that purports to be a "news" organization.
MRC Still Defending DeSantis' Dubious Election Cops Topic: Media Research Center
Earlier this year, the Media Research Center rushed to the defense of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (again) for his "election cops" initiative to crack down on purported fraudulent voting in the state by former felons who weren't supposed to vote -- even though only a paltry number of alleged cases were found (just 20 in a state where 11 million people voted in the last election), several of the alleged violators thought they had the right to vote and were not stopped from doing so by state election officials, and the showy arrest targets were almost entirely people of color and not, say, white elderly people living in an enclave called the Villages, where people have ben arrested for voter fraud but never touted by DeSantis.
Well, the MRC came to DeSantis' defense once more after the dubiousness of the election-cop program was demonstrated again -- not that Kevin Tober framed it that way in an Oct. 18 post:
On Tuesday, during a segment on CBS Evening News, the leftwing newscast seemed shocked and appalled that in Florida, violent felons are being arrested for committing an act of voter fraud by illegally voting when they had lost their right to cast their ballots after being convicted of felonies.
“In footage obtained by CBS News on August 18, police showed up at the Tampa home of Tony Patterson a registered sex offender who was told he was under arrest for voter fraud,” correspondent Ed O’Keefe announced.
“That same day, Romona Oliver, who served 18 years on a second-degree murder charge was arrested for voting illegally in 2020 even though she’d received a voter I.D. card from the state,” O’Keefe added.
He then reported that “Patterson and 18 others were accused of violating a 2018 state law that allows most former felons to vote after they complete their sentences. But not those convicted of murder or felony sex offenses. As Patterson and Oliver were.”
Then what’s the problem? O’Keefe admitted that they were forbidden from voting because of the crimes they were convicted of. The purpose of running this story is obviously an attempt to smear Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
It wasn't until later in his post that Tober got around to alluding to the real issue: Manyt of these people were not explicitly told they were not eligible to vote, and their voting applications were not rejected by the state, which presumably would have a running list of which former felons are not eligible to vote. But Tober depicted reporting of that relevant context as "whining."
Nicholas Fondacaro echoed this dishonest framing a day later:
Leave it to ABC’s The View to take up the position that murderers, pedophiles, and other sex offenders deserve to vote and commit voter fraud. That was the hill they wanted to die on Wednesday after body-camera video surfaced showing Florida law enforcement officers arresting individuals accused of illegally voting. The cast didn’t seem to know what the law was with one claiming they were illegally arrested and another claiming the Republicans were cheating to win.
It was Whoopi Goldberg who seemed unable to understand the law as she decried “Florida Governor Ron DeSantis imposing his crackdown on so-called ‘voter fraud’ when he sent cops out to arrest people…” She also seemed to suggest DeSantis had a racist motivation, noting the “crackdown wound up with all of 20 arrests in total, 13 of whom were black.”
“Clearly, it's not written anywhere or they would not have allowed him to do this,”Goldberg proclaimed, seemingly saying that the law didn’t really bar murderers and pedophiles from voting. She then started screaming at DeSantis through the camera (using air quotes to describe the voter fraud they allegedly committed):
Fopndacaro also got annoyed when the co-hosts pointed out that DeSantis wasn't sending any police raids to the folks in The Villages:
Hostin went on to declare the law was “racially targeted” (an odd thing to argue since the law does not mention race, just that murderers and sex offenders can’t vote). Assuming only white people are Republican, she angrily demanded elderly folks from a Florida retirement community be arrested in front of cameras:
The Villages. Overwhelmingly they found the amount of voter fraud that, like, 0.006 were Republicans, elderly people from there. Why were they not paraded in front of cameras? Why were they not arrested in front of cameras?
Hostin is a former federal prosecutor but doesn’t understand that video of the arrests was from police body cameras. “Well, I don’t think they were paraded. It was actually body-cam footage,” explained “conservative” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin.
For Farah Griffin’s part, she had the job of trying to explain to the rest of the cast that they were taking “bait” supposedly placed by DeSantis. “This is what he does. He knows how to drive news attention. He wants us all to say, ‘of course, murderers should be able to vote,’” she lamented.
Farah Griffin is right, of course, given that this is the exact framing both Tober and Fondacaro used in their posts -- but Fondacaro irrationally hates her too much to ever admit that.
Tober repeated his dishonest framing again in an Oct. 19 post:
On Wednesday night's edition of MSNBC's The ReidOut, host Joy Reid opened the show by lashing out at Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for daring to enforce the laws of his state and not allow violent felons to illegally vote in elections. Reid who presumably wants violent felons to be allowed to vote melted down and accused Florida of being a Jim Crow state.
[...]
Of course, there's nothing wrong with DeSantis cracking down on voter fraud. Reid knows the only way her Democrat candidates in Florida can win is if violent criminals are allowed to vote. That's why she's melting down over police arresting rapists and murderers for voting illegally.
Tober, of course, censored the issues with DeSantis' election cops.
Two days later, the first defendant arrested by DeSantis' election cops had his case dismissed, albeit due to a jurisdiction issue. The MRC was completely silent about that.
WND's Norris Gets Into The Election Endorsement Business (And Farah Tags Along) Topic: WorldNetDaily
When he's not using his WorldNetDaily column to shill for companies that pay him to do so, Chuck Norris is using his column to shill for right-wingers, handing out numerous election endorsements before the midterms. Norris started his Oct. 17 column this way:
When my wife, Gena, and I heard the political watershed news that Tulsi Gabbard, who served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021, announced this past week that she was stepping away from the Democratic Party, we were thrilled and commend her courage. Actually, I made a very similar shift back in the 1960s.
Actually, Gabbard hasn't been a real Democrat for years -- meaning that courage was hardly a factor here -- and Norris conveniently omitted any mention of Gabbard's propagandizing for Russia. Norris then went on to proclaim his "Chuck Norris Approved" endorsement of right-wing candidates:
America is again at a huge tipping point, maybe the biggest one ever. If we don't stop liberal progressives now by electing more constitutionally conservative leaders, they will continue to lead most Americans (particularly younger generations) down the slippery slope to socialism and Marxism.
So, without further adieu, let me highlight a few of my top choices in the midterm elections about to take place in just three short weeks. Obviously, there are several critical races on the national stage as well as for most local regions, which is why I will also recommend a website that will help you choose the right candidates in your state, too.
[...]
Please, share this column and especially those candidate choices above with everyone you know across the country. We are in the final stretch to what are clearly the most critical midterm elections in years.
Norris' list includes right-wing extremists like Blake Masters and Kari Lake -- who still pushthe lie that there was election fraud in 2020 -- as well as carpetbagger Mehmet Oz and immoral abortion-lover Herschel Walker.
Norris went on to add: "Also, for additional election wisdom, please subscribe to WND's insightful Whistleblower magazine and especially its latest edition: "Stopping the Madness: A Midterm Election Guide for Voters who Love America." As we've documented, this issue of WND's sparsely read magazine is little more than an fearmongering anti-liberal screed designed to demonize anyone who's not as far right as Davie Kupelian and try to scare his fellow right-wingers into voting.
Norris ramped up his own fearmongering -- as WND columnists do -- in his Oct. 24 column, blaming an alleged increase in police officers killed on duty on how " liberals around the nation demanded that cities 'defund the police' and "pushed for a woke anti-police ideology." He repeated his list of endorsements, with a few additons, demanding that "we must elect constitutionally conservative candidates in these next midterm elections ... to rebolster our law enforcement agencies and stop the outrageous levels of violent crime."
Norris switched his fearmongering focus to the border for his Oct. 31 column, uncritically repeating right-wing talking points and unsurprisingly blaming "the completely-do-nothing-open-border policy of the Biden administration is that it is literally killing hundreds of migrants trying to get into the U.S." It weird to see Norris claiming to care about the lives of migrants since most right-wingers do, given how they're described with dehumanizing terms like "illegals." Norris then went on to "re-list my 'Chuck Norris-Approved candidates' who are strong advocates for securing U.S. borders."
In his final pre-election column before the election on Nov. 7, Norris equated himself with the Founding Fathers, baselessly insisting that they were as dogmatically right-wing as he is while also serving up eve more fearmongering (read: parroting right-wing talking points):
America as our founders created it is on life support and desperately needs our help.
Our broken borders have allowed into the U.S. record numbers of criminals and contraband. The last few years, overdoses from fentanyl that was smuggled from Mexico killed over 100,000 Americans (including teens). Cartels have capitalized on the Biden administration's open border policies, making billions of dollars more by increasing human smuggling and child trafficking.
Inside the U.S., violent crime and police killings have soared in every state. Inflation is at a 40-year high. Mortgage rates are at a 20-year high. The fed raised interest rates six times this year alone. The largest shipping mogul just reported that "dark economic clouds are on the horizon." Full-blown recession is imminent. And, most painful of all, as gas, grocery and house prices skyrocket, average middle-class Americans are struggling simply to pay for essentials like food and shelter.
As a result of all the above, the United States of America is more divided than ever. And it doesn't help that U.S. and Russian leaders have recently brought us again to the brink of Armageddon by their nuclear-war rhetoric and pride-filled warmonger actions.
The downfall of the American dream is why Americans are rightly disappointed with Democrat-led local, state and federal governments. The most recent Gallup poll shows that Mr. Biden's job approval has spiraled "back down to 40%." More than 75% of Democrats don't even like him!
[...]
To be frank, the only way your quality of life is going to get better is by getting the liberal Democrats out of office across the country. It starts with these midterm elections and will run to the 2024 presidential campaign.
But rather than just me sharing how powerful your vote is, I want to remind you what America's founders said about it when they created our republic, including their advice about whom to vote for in these upcoming midterm elections.
This is what just eight prominent founders want you to remember as you go to the polls and draw the curtain on that voting booth. (A special thanks goes to historian David Barton from Wallbuilders for providing this information on his website: www.wallbuilders.com.)
The fact that Norris is invoking the notoriously wrong "historian" Barton tells you all you need to know about how seriously he and his endorsements should be taken.And, of course, he fails to consider that one reason "the United States of America is more divided than ever" is because right-wingers like himself insisting on spreading fear and misinformation about anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Norris again repeated his list of endorsements, adding: "Friends, this is a do-or-die midterm election. Please share this column ASAP on your social media and encourage everyone you know to get out to vote, by mail or in person."
Meanwhile, WND editor Joseph Farah attempted to hitch a ride on Norris' endorsement bandwagon, parroting Norris' parroting in his Nov. 2 column:
I love Chuck Norris' political endorsements!
And I'd like add my own because we think so much alike. How do I know?
He told me so. Yes, I have had the pleasure of meeting Chuck, his wife, Gena – even their kids. I've been invited to his house and met him a few times. There are very few people who share my ideas quite so closely.
Farah repeated Norris' endorsements, then added a bunch of his own favorite far-right folks, many of whom are election deniers like Farah.
Note that Farah said "there are very few people who share my ideas quite so closely" as Norris. Farah seems to think that's a good thing, but given that Farah's "ideas" include election denial and spreading COVID lies, it really isn't.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Hypocritical Herschel Embrace Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center labored to deflect from and excuse Herschel Walker's personal baggage before he became a Republican senatorial candidate. When it was revealed he paid for an abortion, the anti-abortion MRC tried to deflect that too. Read more >>
MRC Pushes Narrative That Debate Showed Fetterman Is 'Incapacitated' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has beenattacking Pennsyvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman ever since it decided it could exploit Fetterman's stroke for partisan gain in order to get his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, elected. When Fetterman needed closed captioning during his debate to counter issues with auditory processing afater his stroke -- an issue that usually resolves itself over time -- the MRC quickly pounced to bash Fetterman as severely mentally ill. Kevin Tober was first up, trying to establish the narrative that Fetterman's performance was "disastrous" and that the tsroke has "incapacitated" him:
Hours after Pennsylvania Democrat Senate candidate’s disastrous debate performance Tuesday night, where he was unable to complete a coherent sentence, MSNBC’s The 11th Hourhost Stephanie Ruhle sought to excuse Fetterman is clearly incapacitated by his recent stroke, and played whataboutism by directing attention toward Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
“Given how he performed recovering from his stroke, Michael, some Republicans are out there tonight saying that Fetterman is unfit, he should withdraw,” Ruhle said as if Republicans are the ones who are wrong in this situation.
Tober then complained that the folks on Ruhle's panel pointed out that Oz isn't from Pennsylvania.
Curtis Houck followed with an Oct. 26 post that emphasized Fetterman's "physical and mental incapacitation":
On Wednesday, ABC, CBS and NBC attempted to channel Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars during their morning news shows by telling viewers to move along and dismiss what they saw Tuesday as Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA) showed severe cognitive impairment on a debate stage against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat.
For a news media that so often has demanded we not normalize Donald Trump, they were hellbent on normalizing Fetterman’s inability to offer a string of coherent thoughts and required massive screens displaying the closed captioning.
Alex Christy complained that CNN reported that Fetterman's condition is not permanent and that he did OK despite that, then mixed in a little whataboutism:
CNN senior political analyst joined CNN Newsroom host Erica Hill on Wednesday to recap John Fetterman’s Tuesday debate performance. Avlon tried to reassure viewers that Fetterman’s poor performance was just “a snapshot in time,” that he will recover from his stroke, and that he was “gutsy” to even show up, but also that party label matters. The last point being a complete 180 from Avlon’s commentary on GOP candidates.
Hill began by recalling, “I spoke with former Democratic Governor Ed Rendell and former Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania Charlie Dent. And what I was struck by, I asked the governor out of the gate, do you think that John Fetterman should have debated and he said, no.”
Acknowledging that many Democrats “are feeling that way,” Avlon disagreed and wanted to give Fetterman a participation trophy, “And I think you've got to give credit to Fetterman for showing up. Because it is a risky decision, it's a gutsy decision, knowing how debilitating the stroke was against the backdrop of him saying that doctors have assured him that this is something that can be recovered from.”
[...]
Avlon has repeatedly declared Herschel Walker to be unfit to be a U.S. senator, partly because of the question of whether he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion, but also declaring him to be irredeemably incompetent and anyone who still supports him is putting party over country. Now that the party labels are switched and the Democrat is showing signs of being unfit for office, Avlon has decided to make party labels great again.
Nicholas Fondacaro similarly played Herschel whataboutism while similarly whining about a TV show that wouldn't promote the right-wing anti-Fetterman narrative:
Two weeks ago, the cackling coven of ABC’s The View mocked Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker for how he talks and suggested he had brain damage. Earlier this week, they used the term “stroke” to malign Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s debate performance. But on Wednesday, following the Pennsylvania Senate debate, the cast decried criticism of Democratic candidate John Fetterman as “unempathetic” and accused Republican candidate Mehmet Oz of “bully[ing] a stroke victim.”
Tim Graham pushed this narrative as well in his Oct. 26 podcast, grumbling that "the post-debate coverage lauded Fetterman's 'courage,' downplayed his disabilities (or made them a virtue)." Tober, meanwhile, did some servile stenography for his favorite Fox News host:
Nearly 24 hours since the end of the one and only Pennsylvania Senate debate between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opened his popular primetime show Tucker Carlson Tonight by going after the leftist media for knowingly covering up the extent to which Fetterman is incapacitated. Other than NBC correspondent Dasha Burns, the entire leftist media establishment covered up or downplayed Fetterman's brain damage.
"It's the media who covered John Fetterman who should be the most ashamed. They've known the truth for months," Carlson opened by noting. "With only one exception, that would be NBC reporter Dasha Burns, the media lied to voters about it. We don't know anything about Dasha Burns, but she at least tried to be sort of honest," Carlson added.
Tober returned to whine in yet another Oct. 26 post:
On Wednesday night's edition of MSNBC's The Last Word, host Lawrence O'Donnell went into damage-control mode in the aftermath of Tuesday night's Pennsylvania Senate debate where Democrat candidate John Fetterman proved to everyone watching that he is incapacitated from the stroke he suffered last spring, and is unqualified to serve in the United States Senate. Knowing that, O'Donnell used the opening monologue of his show to compare Fetterman's illness to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
[...]
By tying FDR and Churchill to Fetterman, O'Donnell hopes to lead his viewers to believe that Fetterman is just as capable of performing his duties as Senator as FDR and Churchill were in leading their respective nations in World War II.
The problem is that FDR was stricken by Polio and unable to walk. That didn't affect his ability to speak or make important decisions. Whereas Fetterman is clearly mentally incapacitated.
O'Donnell is so desperate for his party to control the United States Senate that he's willing to lie to his audience.
Poor Mika Brzezinski. With John Fetterman's campaign collapsing around Democrat ears in the wake of his disastrous debate performance, the Morning Joe co-host soldiered on Thursday.
Like a rescuer sifting through the rubble for signs of life after a building collapse, Brzezinski did her brave best on behalf of her fellow Democrat. Even so, she strained credulity well beyond the breaking point with this line:
"Given that he did have a stroke, some might be surprised, [by] how well he did."
Mika must travel in some seriously strange circles if she knows people who thought Fetterman did surprisingly well. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!
Finkelstein then penned another post complaining that Brzezinski repeated Fetterman's claim that “By January I will be much much better, but Oz will still be a fraud,” which quickly devolved into fearmongering about Fetterman's condition:
As per Johns Hopkins Health [emphasis added throughout]:
“The first three months after a stroke are the most important for recovery and when patients will see the most improvement.”
Fetterman's stroke was five months ago.
As Johns Hopkins further notes [emphasis added]:
"The most common long-term effects of stroke include aphasia, the medical term used to describe difficulties with language use. It is the most common long-term effect of strokes. Patients may struggle to find the right words, or have difficulty forming words or making themselves understood. They may also have problems understanding what people are saying, or have difficulty reading."
Anyone who watched the debate saw a textbook example.
Finally, Johns Hopkins also notes:
"It is very difficult to estimate how long a patient will take to recover from a stroke, which symptoms they will experience, and if those symptoms will resolve themselves over time or be permanently disabling."
So for Fetterman to boast that he will be "much, much better by January" is wishful thinking at best. Made even more questionable by his refusal to release his medical records. It could be that what we saw in the debate from Fetterman is basically what we'll get going forward.
Reminder: Finkelstein is not a medical doctor, he's just some guy who did an internet search.
Jeffrey Lord spent his Oct. 29 column spinning a conspiracy theory about Fetterman under the ridiculous headline "What Did the Media Know and When Did They Know It?," in which he declared that "The reason for the collective shock at Fetterman’s performance - by “panicked Democrats” and others - is that once the fact of Fetterman’s stroke was known, the media tried to run cover on the subject of Fetterman’s real condition as a result":
Instead of investigating and doing its due diligence on what was really going on with the stricken candidate and reporting it to Pennsylvania voters and the rest of the nation, the media reflex was to run cover for Fetterman. And when Fetterman finally agreed to that solitary debate with Oz, the intake of breath by debate-watchers in and out of the media was real. Sheer shock at hand. And for one reason and one reason only.
In not digging into Fetterman’s condition, and attacking NBC’s Dasha Burns for simply and objectively reporting what she observed, the media was signaling it was there not to cover Fetterman but to protect him - to cover for him.
Which is to say, yet another self-inflicted blow to liberal media has been had.
Like Its MRC Parent, CNS Has Trouble Criticizing Kanye West's Anti-Semitism Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.comfollowed its Media Research Center parent in moving from loathing Kayne West to loving him for his right-wing rhetoric and bromance with Donald Trump. After nearly a two-year period without mentioning him at all, West resurfaced to spout more right-wing anti-abortion talking points, and Susan Jones eagerly documented it in an Oct. 7 article:
Kanye West, the celebrity rapper, fashion designer, and leader of Sunday church services, recently sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson. West was wearing a badge with an ultrasound photograph of a baby in the womb.
"What does that mean?" Carlson asked West.
"It just represents life, I'm pro-life," West said.
Carlson asked him, "You wear it on a badge, what kind of response do you get?"
"I don't care about people's responses. I care about the fact that there's more black babies being aborted than born in New York City at this point. That fifty percent of black death in America is abortion.
“So I really don't care about people's response, I perform for an audience of one, and that's God.”
West, no stranger to controversy, said he took a lot of grief from his family and everyone around him for supporting Donald Trump and wearing a MAGA hat. West recently stirred things up by wearing a "White Lives Matter" shirt to his fashion show in Paris.
Two days later, West spewed on Twitter that he was "going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE" and bizarrely caiming that "The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew." nAnd like its MRC parent, it had trouble criticizing his anti-Semitism. An Oct. 10 article by Melanie Arter -- the day after West's outburst -- was focused on a Fox News interview with Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and touted that host Shannon Bream "asked Abrams whether she shares the view of rapper Kanye West, who told Fox News that there are more black babies aborted than born in New York City" while making no mention of West's anti-Semitic tweet.
CNS didn't mention West again -- during which time it was revealed that Carlson selectively edited his interview with West to remove parts in which he spouted anti-Semitism and said even more crazy things -- until a week later, when an Oct. 17 article by Arter announcing West' purchase of right-wing soial media site Parler finally mentioned West' anti-Semitism:
Rapper Kanye West, who now goes by the moniker “Ye,” is set to buy conservative social media platform Parler, the company’s CEO announced on Monday.
This comes as West was suspended from Instagram and locked out of Twitter because of an anti-Semetic [sic] tweet.
Much of the article was devoted to a statement by Parler CEO George Farmer -- who, like Arter, was not moved to criticize West's anti-Semitism. And like the MRC, Arter also failed to report that the person selling Parler to West is also a chief funder of her paycheck, Rebekah Mercer, as well as the fact that right-wing activist Candace Owens, who did the "White Lives Matter" shirt stunt with West, is married to Farmer, raising the possibility that she set in motion events that ultimately resulted in Farmer and Mercer unloading Parler on West.
It wasn't until another article later that day by Arter that CNS finally reported criticism of West's anti-Semitism -- albeit from Democrats, not its fellow right-wingers:
The White House on Monday condemned rapper Kanye West’s comments about Jews as news broke that the rapper is set to buy conservative social media platform Parler.
As CNSNews.com reported, Parler CEO George Farmer announced Monday that “Parlement Technologies has entered into an agreement in principle to sell Parler to Ye (formerly known as Kanye West).”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that she couldn’t speak to the purchase agreement of Parler, but she condemned what she called “anti-Semitism” and “hateful” and “insulting rhetoric.”
As a result of his tweet about Jews, West was recently suspended from Instagram and locked out of Twitter.
An Oct. 31 article by Arter finally brought a Republican, Sen. Rick Scott, into the discussion -- but only in a roundabout way, recounting a CNN interview in which Scott was asked to denounce not West's anti-Semitism but, rather, the phrase "Kanye Was Right About the Jews" being projected on a college football stadium.
It seems that CNS promotion of West over the past several years has made it surprisingly shy about condemning his anti-Semitism, espcially since it is so quick to promote right-wing Jewish groups like the Coalition for Jewish Values that frame any criticism of Israel by liberals and Democrats as anti-Semitism. That seems to tell us just how corrupted CNS' "news" product is -- after all, criticizing anti-Semitism wherever it surfaces should be a slam-dunk and one of the things both sides ought to agree on.
Nine Days Later, MRC Finally Criticizes Ye's Anti-Semitism Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spentyears embracing Kanye West as a popular Black entertainer who embraced Trumpism -- to the point that when he started spewing anti-Semitism, it couldn't even be moved to criticize him. The MRC even praised Ye's purchase of social media site Parler (while, of course, hiding the fact that he's purchasing it from the MRC's biggest funder, Rebekah Mercer).
So if was a bit rich to see Nicholas Fondacaro's Oct. 18 post being outraged that someone was arguing that Ye's anti-Semitism is part of mainstream conservatism:
In an appearance with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation on Monday, singer Kanye “Ye” West doubled down on anti-Semitic comments about what he called “the Jewish underground media mafia.” But in the following hour, host Dan Abrams suggested during his eponymous show that West’s disgusting comments and interest in buying the social media company Parler were strategic movies to “create a right-wing brand.”
Abrams set the tone by kicking off the show with this question:
Kanye West or Ye will buy the right-leaning social media platform Parler after being kicked off Twitter and Instagram over anti-Semitic comments. But isn't this more evidence that he is not mentally ill but just trying to create a right-wing brand?
“But from Kanye’s perspective, it appears he's just doubling down on fringe right-wing positions,”Abrams added a little bit later.
Fondacaro's description of Ye's anti-Aemitism as "disgusting" is the first criticism of it in any MRC post -- a full nine days after Ye spouted it. That utter lack of rush to judgment would seem to indicate a certain amount of comfort with such anti-Semitism -- after all, the MRC has used anti-Semitic tropes to attack Geoge Soros and former CNN chief Jeff Zucker.Fondacaro also didn't mention that the main person who funds his paycheck is also the person selling Parler to Ye.
Fondacaro went on to be annoyed that Abrams wasn't dismissing Ye's anti-Semitism as mental illness, which is how he clearly wants to frame it:
Abrams also didn’t put stock in theories that Kanye’s recent actions and outbursts were signs that he was suffering from his diagnosed bipolar disorder.
“Now, many have refused to take Kanye’s comments seriously, expressing sympathy for what they believe are clear symptoms of severe mental illness, which I think is a cop-out,” he said. “And the people who think he's mentally ill, maybe aren't giving him enough credit for believing what he's saying, including his anti-Semitism.”
To him, “[i]t seems too easy and protective of him to just say he's mentally ill” and it was all part of a machination to appeal and profit off of bigotry on the right:
[...]
“To write off this gambit as some sort of manic episode is to completely downplay his business acumen,” Abrams added. “His apparel brand has been valued somewhere between 3.2 billion and 4.7 billion. He also has a deal with The Gap and industry experts value in excess of a billion dollars.”
At no point did Fondacaro prove that anything Abrams said was wrong -- he was just mad it was said. And he certainly did not distance the MRC away from its years of promoting West's alleged right-wing values and Trump bromance.
WND Columnists Fearmonger About Biden, Dems To Scare Right-Wingers Into Voting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root isn't the only WorldNetDaily columnist to engage in extreme rhetoric about Democrats in general and President Biden in pjarticular in order to scare right-wingers into voting. Here are some of the others.
Since January 2022, rapacious politicians, led by the most compromised and destructive president in our lifetimes, have failed us, our Western allies and our nation's future. The hopes and dreams of our progeny have been put at grave risk by the Biden regime's embrace of a far-left, domestic and foreign, globalist agenda.
On his first day in office, Sleepy Joe destroyed our nation's energy independence. Now, with the sabotage of the only undersea pipeline capable of supplying Germany and much of Europe with natural gas to heat homes and businesses in winter, the Biden regime is hoping to consummate a deal with the despotic ayatollahs in Tehran to get fossil fuel for European consumers.
Domestically, the Biden regime's plan to recruit, train and deploy 87,000-plus IRS officials will make biblical tax collectors look like benefactors. His White House has opened our southern border to millions of undocumented immigrants while ignoring an unprecedented nationwide crime wave and horrific overdose deaths from Communist Chinese-concocted fentanyl.
[...]
A far-left troika – Biden, Pelosi and Schumer – has declared war on Christians, conservatives, hardworking Americans, members of our Armed Forces and anyone unwilling to bow to their unfettered authority. Left unchecked, this terrible trio will convert America into a Third World country governed by unelected globalists thousands of miles from our shores. They are a threat to our Constitution and the Judeo-Christian principles upon which the United States of America was founded. Undeterred, their actions will prevent the USA from remaining the freest, most productive, prosperous and generous nation on Earth.
In just 35 days we can stop the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer Troika from destroying our constitutional republic. We the People have the power to end their reign of tyranny. Our founders gave us the weapon we need to avoid a catastrophe. It's called an election.
Biden has already stuffed the federal judiciary with 84 new leftist judges, more than any recent president at this stage, and another 57 Biden nominees are pending before the equally divided Senate. Only a GOP-controlled U.S. Senate can stop Biden's mad dash to change our laws through activist judges, as the GOP did in 2016 when Obama tried to replace Justice Scalia with Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court.
Roe v. Wade could even be reinstated if Biden and Democrats get their way in this election, and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg just gave the ACLU $3 million toward that goal.
Unfortunately, the Constitution does not envision a situation wherein a president, a speaker of the House of Representatives and a Senate majority leader would form a far-left, treasonous cabal to govern the United States of America. Yet that is precisely what we have today in the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer Troika.
This terrible trio is why we forfeited energy independence and why we are in economic free fall with horrendous debt and runaway inflation. It's why we no longer have a southern border and millions of "migrants" have invaded our country. It's why an unprecedented violent crime wave is sweeping our nation. It's why tens of thousands of our countrymen are dying from Communist Chinese fentanyl. And it's why every law enforcement entity in our land is short-handed, reeling from the troika's "defund the police" movement.
[...]
Finally, the questions about how ethically, physically and mentally compromised the head of the troika may be. Have Hunter Biden's dealings with the Communist Chinese made our president vulnerable to blackmail by Xi? Does Joe Biden have the stamina to deal with a collapsing economy here at home, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the possibility of a nuclear exchange in Europe? Is his cognitive disarray so severe he cannot grasp why describing Putin's threats as a potential "Armageddon" is seen as "weakness"?
Strike back! On Nov. 8, take at least five voters with you to the polls.
On Joe Biden's first day in office, he signed an executive order that has become emblematic of his presidency, stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a conduit that would have transported more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada into the U.S. He has since canceled or halted leases for the production of oil in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. These decisions, along with other Biden policies and regulations, have contributed to spiraling energy prices. This past summer, the average price of gasoline hit $5 a gallon. In some parts of California, a gallon of gas has cost $8 a gallon this year.
[...]
This, in turn, has dramatically increased the prices of everything else, including production and transportation of goods.
Wages were rising under the Trump administration, while unemployment continued to decrease. Inflation was low.
In stark contrast, inflation has increased every month since Biden took office, and is now the highest it has been in 40 years, creating what some economists have calculated is an 8.5% reduction in Americans' "real wages."
In the last major election, some sat out. Radicals won out. Now we must vote out those harming our nation before more damage is done.
Remember the words of warning from Thomas Jefferson: "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
I beseech you with all the urgency and fervency I have to join millions of patriotic and principled Americans in what can be the most significant turnaround election in our history.
[...]
Today we face the brutal reality of recession, a tottering stock market, worst inflation in 40 years and the highest gas prices in history; sky-high mortgage interest rates; explosive violent crime in cities; unprecedented border chaos and the accompanying fentanyl deadly epidemic; CRT and radical LGBTQ indoctrination in schools, businesses and military; corruption in the media, Department of Justice and FBI; "woke" and "climate crisis" ideology undermining freedoms and justifying out-of-control spending fueling inflation; transgender mutilation, abortion (until birth), marijuana legalization and student loan absolution; massive government giveaways and underwriting of "illegals'" medical care, transportation, cellphones, food stamps and education; finally, an inept, increasingly incapacitated almost 80-year-old "accidental president" who called out a dead congresswoman in the audience as he regularly bumbles through prepared propaganda on the teleprompter.
Who wants a cuddly, fluffy Biden hand puppet? Impress your friends and neighbors with this official three-letter-agency-crafted, heirloom-quality Biden look alike! Listen to entertaining, official words of folksy Biden family wisdom like, "Oh, come on, man! You know … the thing!"
Get one puppet FREE with each $70 billion taxpayer-sponsored donation to the NATO-Ukraine war effort, which when fully funded will obliterate both Mad Vlad Putin and his evil Russian military!
But what about Russia? Biden is president. It is his duty to guide the nation away from nuclear war, not promote it. Why thrust himself out in front of his own failure? Everyone in America, left or right, knows the Democratic Party has been lashing out at Russia for six years. For Democrats, there is no threat greater than Russia, Russia, Russia.
So why threaten Americans with nuclear annihilation? Biden and his handlers must be convinced they can say and do anything and still sweep to victory on Nov. 8.
[...]
How will Americans react if the secret federal campaign to register people and get out the vote results in an overwhelming win for the people who blew up the economy, destroyed the border, abandoned Afghanistan and then rushed into Ukraine, focused the attention of kindergarteners on their sex organs and declared the United States of America racist to the core?
A Democratic victory would mean those obscenities are a winning strategy, and it also means it is only a matter of time before the nation goes kaput.
Should we reform the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI leadership to ensure our law enforcement agencies provide "equal justice" for all Americans? Shouldn't the shutdown of America's energy independence and use of our Strategic Petroleum Reserves for partisan political purposes be unlawful? Should elitist demands for government to eliminate transportation powered by internal combustion engines be acceptable?
Do polls reflecting parental anger at government and teachers unions' collusion on indoctrinating children with phony, anti-white racism, gender transitions (with proper pronouns!) and revisionist history mean nothing? "Green Weenies" and anti-parent candidates do not represent us.
[...]
Will those we elect next week help make us – and our Asian allies – less vulnerable to perils posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons? Must we face a future where women are gunned down by Tehran's ayatollahs while they acquire nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them?
God-fearing, conservative Americans who want to preserve our constitutional republic know the answers to the questions above. Vote with them next week.
Strike back! On Nov. 8, take at least five voters with you to the polls.
One of our political parties has evolved into a left-leaning entity, excusing mob violence and anarchist conduct, and is unbelievably seducing a less-informed generation. That party has two goals:
1. Retain political power by any means necessary in concert with a corrupt media and politicians lacking any moral code.
2. Remove our Judeo-Christian foundations representing a bulwark to their plans to reconstruct America through a secular vision, embracing a globalist "Green New Deal" and Marxist/socialist way of life.
As we raise our children in today's confused culture, we're faced with politicians and positions that are unbiblical and dangerous. Conservatives are increasingly ostracized because of biblical standards we unapologetically embrace. Explain this to your children.
Voting for wrong candidates will affect ours and our children's future! We're directed by Jesus to be "salt" – not isolated but influential in preserving society from decay.
Just as it's intermittently obsessed with possible violations of the Logan Act (which prohibits unauthorized Americans from negotiating with foreign goverments) depending on which party controls the White House, CNSNews.com has a similar attitude toward the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain political activities by federal employees. Susan Jones complained in an Oct. 27 article:
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober ranted in an Oct. 31 
Like 
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore served yet another COVID conspiracy in an Oct. 18 
The Media Research Center 
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah used his Sept. 26 
Throughout the midterm election season, Dick Morris has appeared on Newsmax TV and its website to spouting Republican talking points and dubious predictions designed to adhere to his employer's narratives and appeal to its right-wing audience (as well as promoting his 
Susan Jones wrote in an Oct. 3 CNSNews.com 
Earlier this year, the Media Research Center 
When he's not using his WorldNetDaily column to 
The Media Research Center 
CNSNews.com
The Media Research Center 
Wayne Allyn Root
