MRC Embraces Chaos At Musk-Led Twitter While Censoring The Worst Of It Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserach Center cheered when Elon Musk finally decided to live up to his word and buy Twitter at the price to which he agreed, alternating between writing PR pieces for him and mocking the critics who pointed out that he's sending the site into chaos. Paiten Iselin served up the former in an Oct. 31 post:
Musk is on the move. In a win for free speech, Twitter removed a warning label from a Just the News ballot harvesting story after self-dubbed “Chief Twit” Elon Musk interceded on the news site’s behalf.
The warning label originally appeared on Just the News (JTN) Editor-in-Chief John Solomon’s account Friday. He shared his report titled “Democrat blows whistle on alleged ballot harvesting scheme, Florida opens criminal probe.” JTN said Twitter applied a warning label to the post, claiming it included “misleading” content that “could lead to real-world harm.”
Solomon and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton challenged Musk about the story’s censorship. “Election censorship returns as @Twitter flags ballot harvesting report,” Fitton tweeted. “@ElonMusk should immediately examine how the company is now interfering in the election on behalf of the Left.”
“I will look into this,” Musk replied Sunday morning. “Twitter should be even-handed, favoring neither side.”
As of Monday morning, the warning had been removed.
Musk seems intent on unraveling the anti-free-speech bias initiated by Twitter's former leadership.
A warning label is not "censorship," of course, but calling it that is designed to advance the MRC victimhood narrative. Iselin offered no evidence to dispute the label's claim that the story was "misleading."
Autumn Johnson served up another Musk PR piece the same day uncritically repeating unproven claims from Musk that "Twitter’s board 'deliberately' hid evidence from the court in its lawsuit against him." Johnson didn't mention that Musk's complaint, even if true, is irrelevant because he waived due diligence in agreeing to purchase Twitter. We've already noted now the MRC gave a pass to Musk for using his Twitter account to spread a sick right-wi9ng conspiracy theory about the vicious hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.
The MRC also made sure to continue to mock liberal criticism of Musk's actions:
Tim Graham even devoted part of his Oct. 31 podcast to the "leftist Twitter meltdown."
A Nov. 4 post by Jason Cohen cheered Musk arbitrarily firing half of Twitter's staff:
Cue the Great Twitter Freakout Phase Two.
Geraldo Rivera reported on Twitter that “Elon Musk has declared All-Out war on his former staff. At 9am Pacific time, Massive Layoffs go into affect at Twitter. With no formal notice and gut-wrenching efficiency, Musk and his inner circle have eliminated about half of its pre-Elon workforce. 3,700 Twitter jobs gone.”
Liberals think they are so clever in responding that billionaires are supposed to create jobs, not get rid of them. A top tweet by GQPHypocricyis “I was told Billionaires need our Tax Money because they're job creators.”
So ignorant. The left thinks CEOs should not lay off employees even if they are inefficient or otherwise unqualified.
Cohen offered no proof that any of the fired employees were "inefficient or otherwise unqualified." Indeed, he mocked a fired employee as "unstable," followed by more sycophantic hero worship of Musk:
Well, if this employee exemplifies Twitter’s culture to any extent then these layoffs are extremely essential. Unstable, overly emotional people should not have control over such a high proportion of speech in our country.
And the left needs to understand that billionaires like Musk do not become so successful for no reason. There is a method to his madness, and it likely makes sense to lay off all these employees. Only time will tell.
In reality, Musk's mass firings were so botched that the company asked some employees to return because they did work essential to keep the platform running.
If you listen to liberal journalists who think Americans need experts like them to sort out the facts, Twitter is going to be a desolate wasteland of misinformation on Election Night because Elon Musk downsized his staff on Friday.
“Hundreds of people are now without a job, including some that work on U.S. elections to help police misinformation and malicious content on Twitter,” ABC’s Reena Roy warned on Saturday’s Good Morning America.
“Bad actors will now try to take advantage, experts say,” NBC’s Jacob Ward predicted onToday. His expert, Joan Donovan from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, blamed “right-wing actors” for what’s about to go down: “The environment on Twitter is going to degrade and erode, especially as we see a lot of motivated far-right actors jumping in, creating hate, harassment and incitement content because they know that it’s not going to be removed.”
Note Noyes' misquote of Donovan here -- he clearly says "far-right actors," not "right-wing actors." He also censored the fact that hate, harassment and incitement content did, in fact, increase after Musk's takeover.
Johnson used a Nov. 6 post to play whataboutism when President Biden pointed out the amount of misinformation on Twitter:
At a campaign event Friday, President Joe Biden complained about upcoming changes to Twitter’s censorship rules.
It seems the president is not happy that Musk plans to implement the platform’s content moderation rules fairly.
Politico reported that Biden said that Twitter is “an outfit that spews lies all across the world.”
Last week, NewsBusters reported Musk’s declaration that Twitter’s new content moderation team would consist of “widely diverse” viewpoints.
“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” Musk tweeted. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
Changes to the platform’s content moderation rules are long overdue.
During the 2020 presidential election, the rules overwhelmingly benefited Biden and other Democrats who ran for election.
In April, MRC Free Speech America published its report of 646 cases in its CensorTrack database of pro-Biden censorship between March 10, 2020, and March 10, 2022.
That "report" didn't fact-check the claims that were supposedly "censored," and it also falsely portrayed filters placed over misleading content as "censorship." Johnson also didn't explain why right-wingers should be allowed to spread misinformation about Biden (or anyone) without facing any consequences whatsoever for doing so.
Johnson returned to PR mode in another post the same day gushing over Musk's claim that “Twitter will not censor accurate information about anything.” Yet another post that day by Johnson gleefully documented Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's groveling:
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey lamented Saturday that he grew the company too fast amid new Twitter head Elon Musk’s sweeping changes, some of which include its censorship rules.
Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion last month and immediately made changes, including layoffs that heavily impacted the content moderation team at Twitter.
Dorsey apologized for growing the company “too quickly” and also encouraged the “resilient” former employees.
[...]
Dorsey previously endorsed Musk’s plan for Twitter to become a pro-free speech platform.
Johnson didn't note how pathetically sycophantic Dorsey's groveling was.
CNS Promotes GOP Attacks On Biden For Using SPR To Reduce Gas Prices Topic: CNSNews.com
The oil industry helpmates at CNSNews.com always made sure to blame President Biden for rising gas prices despite never offering any actual proof that policies like discontinuing the Keystone XL pipeline played any role in that. So when Biden released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a bid to lower prices, CNS attacked him for that too. Susan Jones huffed in an Oct. 6 "news" article:
President Joe Biden has been draining the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a rapid clip, and he's not done yet.
On Wednesday, on the way to Florida, Biden's spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre announced that the president "is determined" to make progress in bringing down gasoline prices:
"At the president's direction, the Department of Energy will deliver another 10 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the market next month as part of the historic 180-million-barrel release the President ordered back in March. And the President will continue to direct SPR releases as necessary," she said.
Whoa, say critics, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
"Well, it's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's not the political petroleum reserve," Cotton told Fox News's Laura Ingraham Wednesday night.
Jones then complained that Biden was inaccurate about how the SPR oil was being released:
On November 23, 2021 -- three months before Russia invaded Ukraine -- President Biden announced that he would release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower "elevated gas prices at the pump" and home-heating bills.
Then, on March 31, 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden announced that he was authorizing the release of 1 million barrels of oil a day -- over 180 million barrels -- from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months.
"This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply until production ramps up later this year," Biden said at the time. "And it is by far the largest release from our national reserve in our history. It will provide a historic amount of supply for a historic amount of time — a six-month bridge to the fall."
The Energy Department said the latest 10 million barrel release is part of Biden's earlier, 180-million barrel announcement. So the SPR was not depleted by a million barrels for 180 days, as Biden said it would be.
The same day, Melanie Arter uncritically quoted Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty repeating the same RNC-assigned talking point: "What is supposed to be the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, what they're calling it now I think is the Strategic Political Reserve, because their eyes are on the November elections. They’re trying to get gas prices down, and that’s what this is all about. They're out pleading with Iran, with Venezuela." Hagerty didn't explain why it's a bad idea to want to lower gas prices.
Jones grumbled in a Oct. 17 article that a Biden administration official pointed out that there's plenty of oil in the SPR:
"There are still 400 million barrels of oil in the Strategic Reserve. It is more than half full," Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told "Fox News Sunday."
"I think people don't quite have the capacity number in their head," Bernstein said. "And the largest draw that we've ever done that President Biden presided over in March is 180 million barrels.
"So, the fact is, there is capacity to use the SPR to deal with some of the energy shocks we're seeing in the world. But I'm not saying we will. That's up to the president to decide; he hasn't made that decision yet," Bernstein said.
[...]
At the end of September, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve had dropped to a 38-year low, with 416,389,000 barrels of oil -- 34.74 percent below the 638,086,000 barrels at the end of January 2021, when Joe Biden became president. The SPR's current maximum capacity is 714,000,000 barrels.
An Oct. 20 article by Jones noted Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm pointing out that the U.S. bveing "on a wartime footing" justified an additional SPR release, then peddled more RNC talking points:
President Biden, in announcing the SPR release on Wednesday, dismissed Republican claims that the move was a politically motivated bid to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm election.
“Look, it’s makes sense,” Biden told reporters after making the announcement at the White House. “I’ve been doing this for how long now? It’s not politically motivated at all.”
Arter followed that with an article the same day on how Biden "denied Wednesday that his decision to release an additional 15 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is politically motivated," and intern Lauren Shank added her own article on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that "the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created for this time, for a moment just like this, when there is a supply disruption that is – has been caused by Putin’s war." But Jones returned to parroting Republican talking points:
"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve exists for national security," former Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News on Wednesday, after President Joe Biden announced another drawdown – 15 million barrels -- in an attempt to bring gasoline prices down before the midterm election.
Biden said the move was not politically motivated.
But Pence said the drawdown "doesn't make any sense."
Patrick Goodenough wrote an article that day headlined "Rubio: ‘Oil Reserves Do Not Exist to Win Midterms; They Exist to Help This Country in an Emergency'" -- even though the first part of the article repeated Biden's stance on releasing more oil from the SPR and the Rubio quote didn't appear until the 11th paragraph of the article.
Goodenough used an Oct. 27 article to tout a Saudi Arabian official taking a swipe at the Biden administration tapping into the SPR as a response to the country reducing oil production:
As the Biden administration ponders the path ahead in its strained relationship with Riyadh over oil production cuts, the Saudi energy minister has warned that decisions by some to use emergency oil stocks “may become painful in the months to come.”
Abdulaziz bin Salman said that “people” were using emergency oil reserves to manipulate markets rather than their intended purpose of mitigating shortages of supply.
In a further apparent swipe at the United States, he insinuated that the U.S. reaction to the October 5 decision by OPEC+ to reduce oil production by two million barrels a day had been an immature one.
The comments by the minister, at a major investment forum in Riyadh with a number of Americans present, are a further sign that the kingdom is not backing down in the dispute with one of its most important and longstanding allies.
Jones fretted again in a Nov. 4 article -- echoing Republican talking points, of course -- that Biden used the SPR to lower gas prices:
Ahead of the midterm election, President Biden often takes credit for reducing gasoline prices, but the reduction comes at the expense of the nation's emergency oil stockpile.
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has just dipped below 400 million barrels, a low not seen since May 1984.
For the week ending October 28, there were 399,792,000 barrels of oil in the SPR, a 37.34 percent decrease from the 638,086,000 barrels in the SPR when Biden took office. The maximum capacity is 714,000,000 barrels.
The chart below shows the Biden drain, which hasn't stopped.
Jones then rushed to the defense of the oil industry, as CNS often does:
President Biden, meanwhile, continues to vilify the U.S. oil industry as greedy, even anti-American.
On the campaign trail in New Mexico Thursday, Biden again threatened to hit oil companies with a windfall profits tax:
"Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices soaring around the world," Biden said.
[...]
Biden came into office vowing to “end fossil fuel, and I am not going to cooperate with them,” he said in 2019.
The American Petroleum Institute this week released a plan to "restore U.S. energy leadership."
CNS has previously done stenography for the API to help it deflect from valid criticism that oil industry profits are obscenely high.
MRC's Graham Gets Ratioed For Trying to Slut-Shame Monica Lewinsky Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham thought he was being cute. After Monica Lewinsky tweeted out a link to an article she wrote for Vanity Fair aboaut the importance of the midterm elections in protecting reprodiuctive rights, issued a tweet that sneered: "Don't be shocked: the intern who has sex with a married president wants the right to abort." Lewinsky responded by linking to his tweet and tweeting a response: "correct." That generated dozens of responses a large number of which supported Lewinsky and called out Graham's lame attempt at slut-shaming.
Being the professional complainer he is, Graham spent part of his Oct. 28 podcast complaining that he got ratioed and lashed out anew at Lewinsky's article, and took more sexist shots at Lewinsky -- yes, he really did call her a "thong-snapper" -- as well as bizarrely accusing Margaret Atwood of being a drug user:
I got ratioed for tweeting over Lewinsky's tweet about her article. I said, Don't be shocked: the intern who has sex with a married president wants the right to abort." Oh, this made theliberals mad. Monica Lewinsky reweeted me and simply said over it "correct" with a check mark. This is what Monica Lewinsky wrote in this article, in part: "It's a bit odd to think about this election, though. I find myself asking, 'Could Tuesday, Nov. 8, be the last election where representative democracy actually works?' (I'm not being melodramatic.)" Uh, yes, you are. Anybody who says this is going to be the last election in America is being melodramatic.
[...]
Monica Lewinsky's article continues: "The sad truth and consequence of the coming election, the most significant midterm in memory" -- people always say that -- "makes it all the more incumbent to make bloody sure we give our consent to be governed." Yes, do use the phrase "make bloody sure" when you're talking about abortion. "One subject above all others is on the ballot: a woman's body. It's the gateway issue. Once our bodily autonomy is gone ,we are on a one-way ticket to the Republic of Gilead. Or in other words, for the 2 percent of you who haven't seen or read 'The Handmaid's Tale': It's the autonomy, stupid."
Yes, I haven't read "The Handmaid's Tale" because it's a pile of crap. I only know of the show because they can't stop talking about it and trying to compare modern-day America to somebody's marijuana-driven imagionations, or whatever it is Margaret Atwood was smoking. Canadian! I guess being Canadian isn't all bad, but we don't want the Canadians lecturing America about what a dystopia we are.
Yes, Monica writes: "This is the first major election after the Trump-led Jasn. 6 insurrection, which rocked our foundation of decency and democracy like a 6.0 earthquake." Yes, Monica, lecture us about or decency, thong-snapper!
[...]
Lewinsky summed up: "We need to vote because representative democracy isn't a right but a privilege, one that can be upended by judicial decisions, by presidential policies, appointees and executive orders, by secretaries of state, attorneys general and governors, and by an extremist Supreme Court." Yes, I would argue the people who passed Roe v. Wade were a extremist Supreme Court, but that's me.
Even though he refused to apologize for his misogynist slut-shaming -- and even added to it in his podcast -- Graham ultimately decided it was a bad look and deleted his tweet. Unfortunately for him, the Internet is forever.
Untrustworthy WND Unironically Promotes Poll On Lack of Trust in Media Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh unironically wrote in an Oct. 18 WorldNetDaily article:
"Disinformation" has been a big player in the media in recent years.
There was that "disinformation" about the Biden family's international business deals, that really wasn't disinformation, but it likely changed the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Then there was Joe Biden's attempt to set up a government board that would regulate "disinformation."
And there have been all of those social media company attacks on "disinformation" that always seems to go one political direction.
The result?
According to Gallup, nearly 4 in 10 Americans (38%) have "no trust" in America's media, including newspapers, TV and radio.
The political divide is stark. Only 14% of Republicans and 27% of independents trust the media, but 70% of Democrats, whose agenda largely has been adopted by reporters and publishers, trust the media.
Overall, 34% of respondents trust the mass media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly."
Unruh is pegging the irony meter hard here -- after all, his employer is one of the biggest spreaders of disinformation and misinformation in media. From COVIDmisinformation to electionfraudlies, WND discredits itself on a seemingly daily basis. Unruh also doesn't seem to realize when he's talking about the poll showing distrust in the media, WND is also part of the media -- so he's admitting his own work can't be trusted. Given that Unruh amply displayed his right-wing bias by hyping attacks on Biden, there's good reason for that distrust.
MRC Serves Up Even More Whataboutism On Paul Pelosi Attack Topic: Media Research Center
After serving up the usualdistractions in attempting to deny that the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi wasn't inspired by heated right-wing rhetoric against Nancy Pelosi, it was time for the Media Research Center to advance to more formal bouts of whataboutism. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a Nov. 2 post:
With less than a week until Election Day, the liberal media are trying to milk the heinous attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband, Paul Pelosi, for all it’s worth. Despite the fact that political violence has hit both parties, the liberal media show far less concern when conservatives are involved. NewsBusters examined the first five days of the Pelosi attack and found that it was 11 times larger than the amount of coverage on the major broadcast network (ABC, CBS, and NBC morning, evening, and Sunday morning shows had given over the same period to the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
[...]
The liberal media have spent so much time on the Pelosi attack to stoke fear of Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, with the Pelosi attack weaved into segments warning of intimidation and possible attacks at the polls.
Fondacaro didn't mention that there was no genuine "attempted assassination" of Kavanaugh -- the alleged assailant's gun was unloaded and he turned himself in before he actually did anything -- and that inherently makes the story less newsworthy.
That study got repeated on the MRC's podcast that day, guest-hosted by Fondacaro, who wrote:
On this episode of the NewsBusters Podcast, managing editor Curtis Houck and I discuss how the liberal media aren’t letting a good crisis go to waste as they use the heinous attack against Paul Pelosi (Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband as a prop to help Democratic chances in midterm elections.
We break down a new NewsBusters study exposing how the liberal broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have given the Pelosi attack 11 times the airtime of the assassination attempt of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. With the Kavanaugh attack falling out of the cycle in 24 hours.
Kevin Tober tried playing whataboutism with a different incident in a Nov. 3 post:
The leftist media spent most of the past week wringing their hands over an allegedly politically motivated attack against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul but they have been silent on a shooting that took place at the home of Republican North Carolina congressional candidate Pat Harrigan's parents. The shooter fired a gun through the window of the home where his children were sleeping, but thankfully no one was injured or killed.
ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all ignored the incident on their Thursday evening newscasts. Instead of reporting on the latest violent attack against Republicans, the three networks decided local weather reports and a cotton shortage allegedly caused by "climate change" were all more important stories than a Republican candidate's family's home getting shot at.
Tober downplayed the fact that the incident happened on Oct. 18 -- a full two weeks before it was reported in the media -- and there has been no evidence presented thus far that the incident was politically motivated. Still, Tober didn't let that distract him from staying on the message he's being paid to deliver:
If Harrigan was a Democrat, the networks would've reported on this and used it as another example of Republican rhetoric killing "democracy."
We already know the leftist media seeks to downplay violent attacks against conservatives while hyping violence against leftists.
Rich Noyes served up his own unhappy whataboutrism angle in a Nov. 5 "flashback" post:
An exceptionally repulsive feature of journalism these days is when media figures use tragedies to smear their political adversaries as dangerous threats. That’s clearly happening now, in the wake of last week’s savage hammer attack on Paul Pelosi — first thing Monday morning, for example, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski flatly blamed “years of Republican propaganda and Trump-fueled fascism” for the crime.
It also happened in April 1995, after the horrific truck bomb in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including many young children at a day care center. Stung by liberal losses in the 1994 midterms, Democratic politicians and the media smeared conservative talk radio as culpable. “Never do most of the radio hosts encourage outright violence,” NBC’s Bryant Gumbel smarmily suggested, “but the extent to which their attitudes may embolden and encourage some extremists has clearly become an issue.” (Read more here.)
And it happened in January 2011, weeks after Democrats lost control of Congress in midterm elections. Mere minutes after a mentally-ill man shot Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords and 18 other citizens, killing six — and before any actual information was known about the shooter and his motive — irresponsible journalists accused the conservative Tea Party for the bloodbath.
It was disgusting, and utterly without foundation. Yet in the days that followed the attack, the news was filled with accusations that harsh political rhetoric was at fault, and singled out conservatives by an eight-to-one margin. Then as now, liberal journalists exploited a terrible tragedy, perpetrated by a delusional schizophrenic, in order to discredit the wider conservative movement.
The now-retired Noyes didn't mention that his former co-workers heavily hyped the story of a Republican campaign volunteer in Florida being beaten in order to link Democrats to the violence -- before it was discovered that the volunteer was a notorious white supremacist and the attack apparently had nothing to do with politics.
Once again, the MRC is criticizing someone for doing the exact same thing it does.
A newly released video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just as the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was developing reveals the frustration she felt after having failed in her attempt a year earlier to impeach and remove him.
Her dislike for Trump boiled over into a threat in which she promised to "punch" him.
"I hope he comes, I'm going to punch him out. I've been waiting for this, for trespassing on the Capitol grounds. I'm gonna punch him out and I'm gonna go to jail and I'm gonna be happy," she said.
[...]
She earlier had been so enraged at President Trump that she publicly ripped up a copy of his State of the Union address, while standing behind him in the U.S. House.
Unruh is lying. At no point in her statement -- made as a Trump-inflamed right-wing mob was invading the Capitol -- did she reference "frustration" at "having failed" to remove Trump from office. Nor was her ripping up her copy of Trump's 2020 State of theUnion address a sign of her being "enraged" (let alone having any conceivable link to her desire to punch him); it was simply a response to Trump's divisive speech.
It wasn't until the ninth paragraph of his article that Unruh finally got around to reporting the proper context of his remarks -- and even then, he was desperately spinning the violent riot Trump inspired:
Pelosi's threat came as Trump was holding a rally nearby. Trump had said he would join the crowd to march to the Capitol to protest the election processes, but Secret Service objected and the president did not go with the crowd.
A few hundred from that crowd eventually turned to rioting, breaking windows and doors and doing other vandalism at the Capitol. Hundreds of people have since been arrested, many with SWAT raids on their homes in the early morning hours, and they've been charged with offenses like trespassing and parading.
Pelosi's special committee, partisan because she refused to seat GOP members nominated by the minority party, has worked to obtained statements and evidence that suggest Trump's liability for actions that day.
However, there's been no provision for cross-examining any witnesses, who were chosen by anti-Trump members of Congress exclusively. The committee also refused to look into any liability on the part of Pelosi, who as speaker is partly responsible for the security of the Capitol, after she refused Trump's offer of National Guard troops to be on hand that day.
[...]
n fact, Trump pointed out Pelosi's failure to seek protection for the Capitol.
"Why didn’t Crazy Nancy Pelosi call out the ‘troops’ before January 6th, which I strongly recommended that she do. It was her responsibility, but she ‘didn’t like the look.’ Crazy Nancy failed the American People!" Trump wrote Thursday afternoon.
In fact, Trump never signed an order to deploy National Guard troops that day, so Pelosi could not possibly have turned it down.
Unruh then turned this into a kitchen-sink article of Trump's (and, thus, his own) grievances, complete with whining about the purportedly stolen election and how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was criticized for threatening Anthony Fauci, declaring that that someone "needs to grab with little elf and chuck him across the Potomac." Unruh offered no evidence that Fauci ever put DeSantis' life in jeopardy the way Trump put the lives of Pelosi and other members of Congress in danger by formenting a riot.
MRC Whines Durham's Latest Trial Wasn't Being Covered -- But The MRC Largely Ignored It Too Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spentmonths desperately trying to portray special counsel John Durham as the anti-Mueller who was investigating the investigators and doing Donald Trump's dirty work in trying to blame the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign for purpotedly spying on Trump's campaign. Tim Graham played whataboutism with coverage of the House committee looking into the Capitol riot -- which the MRC repeatedly insisted wasn't real news -- in an Oct. 13 post:
ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR are all expected to air live coverage of the last hearing of the Pelosi-picked panel investigating the January 6 riot. This is the ninth hearing (two of them in prime time) that these networks have provided hours of free publicity to Pelosi and the Democrats, who are using today's hearing to raise funds inthe midterms.
Meanwhile, special counsel John Durham is trying Igor Danchenko in federal court, which none of these networks has covered on air this week. To illustrate the lack of network interest, we searched the name "John Durham" in the Nexis search engine from January 20, 2021 through October 12, 2022.
ABC: One story by Pierre Thomas.
CBS: Two anchor briefs.
NBC: Two stories and one brief mention in a February 21 story on the Merrick Garland confirmation.
PBS NewsHour: Two stories and one anchor brief.
NPR: Four stories and one brief mention in its story on the Merrick Garland confirmation.
Contrast that pittance to 18 or more hours of live January 6 Committee television each.
Funny how Graham didn't mention Fox News at all -- presumably because it doing so would show just how far to the right it is in obsessing even more over Durham than the MRC does. But you know who else has been ignoring Durham in recent months? Graham's employer.
Until this post, NewsBusters hadn't mentioned Durham since June 4, when Clay Waters grumbled that the New York Times accurately pointed out that Durham was trading in right-wing conspiracy theories in the wake of his failed prosecution of Michael Sussmann. Yes, Graham whined about that too, with even more whataboutism:
When the networks have reported on Durham, it was to characterize him or conservative media coverage as a failure. In February, PBS brought on an award-winning trash-talker. The New York Times wrote that the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news, and its conclusions based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation." At the same time, NPR's All Things Considered carried the online headline "The John Durham filing that set off conservative media, explained."
In May, ABC's single report focused on Clinton lawyer Michael Sussman being found not guilty of lying to the FBI. Pierre Thomas proclaimed: "It was the first trial of a case brought by the man handpicked by Donald Trump's attorney general to examine the origins of the FBI's investigation into Trump's possible ties to Russia. But tonight, a Washington jury handing special counsel John Durham a stinging defeat, acquitting a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton's campaign of charging that he lied to the FBI."
Liberals could consider the Mueller probe a failure, because it failed to find Trump-Russia collusion or lead to Trump being indicted. Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center found that from January 20, 2017 through July 20, 2019, the evening newscasts at ABC, CBS, and NBC alone devoted an astounding 2,634 minutes to the Trump-Russia narrative.
In fact, the Mueller investigation indicted 37 people, including five Trump associates, many of whom struck plea deals or were found guilty in court. Most people would call that prosecution record a success -- and a far more successful one than Durham's.
So you'd think Graham's whining would indicate that the MRC would serve up its own intensive coverage of Danchenko's trial, right? Wrong. Not only did NewsBusters ignore it, so did its "news" division CNSNews.com (which, like its MRC parent, did parrot right-wing spin after the Sussmann acquittal). The only coverage it provided was an Oct. 12 article by Craig Bannister focused on one witness' testimony that "the FBI had offered ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele a $1 million “incentive” to corroborate the unfounded Steele Dossier allegations against former President Donald Trump." When Dahchenko was acquitted just like Sussmann was, CNS reported nothing.
Meanwhile, the site for which Graham serves as executive editor censored Danchenko's acquittal for five days, and it mentioned Durham just one more time since then, in an Oct. 23 item by Waters whining once again that the Times pointed out Durham's record of failure:
New York Times legal reporter Charlie Savage and the paper’s official fact-checker Linda Qiu teamed up on Wednesday’s front page to cover the acquittal of Igor Danchenko for lying to the FBI in “Russian Analyst for Trump Dossier Acquitted of Lying to the FBI.” (Biden apparently makes no statements the paper finds worthy of fact-checking, judging by how many non-fact check bylines Qiu has shared lately.)
For the Times, it was a golden opportunity to again bash special counsel John Durham’s investigation into how the FBI pursued the alleged Russia ties of former President Trump.
[...]
The Times enthusiastically pushed special investigator Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion that resulted in zero charges against any Trump associate for criminal conspiracy. Now it is reveling in the failure of the Durham inquiry into the very partisan origins of Mueller’s investigation.
Legal reporter Savage saw a politicized case at every turn:
[...]
Savage had the audacity to suggest it was the Durham investigation, not the FBI’s actual deceit, that had possibly “damaged national security” by pursuing charges and thus discouraging people from speaking up in future.
Unsurprisingly, Waters offered no real evidence to back up those claims, nor did he prove that Durham's probe wasn't politicized.
CNS Runs 2 Press Releases On Trump Receiving The Same Award Topic: CNSNews.com
During the Trump years, CNSNews.com had a bad habit of devoting multiiple articles to pushing the same exact pro-Trump talking point. That hasn't stopoed just because Trump is no longer in office. Craig Bannister wrote in an Oct. 19 article:
Former President Donald Trump will be awarded the prestigious Theodor Herzl Medallion by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) at its upcoming gala.
[...]
Trump is being honored for his numerous pro-Israel actions as president, which include moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear agreement, praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, and brokering Middle East peace accords.
Other honorees at the event include U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who will receive a “Defender of Israel” award. The list of distinguished award-presenters includes esteemed Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
Bannister linked to a 2017 article by Patrick Goodenough -- a majorTrump-fluffer on Israel-related things -- who gushed that "Images of President Trump touching the ancient stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem will send a strong signal to the Palestinians and their Muslim allies who have used U.N. forums to contest Jewish claims and heritage at the location of the biblical Temples."
This article, however, was apparently deemed insufficiently fluff-worthy of Trump, so intern Lauren Shank was tasked with writing about this same award again -- with more boilerplate quotes from ZOA officials -- in a Nov. 3 article:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the leading major American Jewish organization defending Israel and the Jewish people, will award former President Donald J. Trump the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for his “unprecedented accomplishments on behalf of Israel and the Jewish-American community” at its Nov. 13 Superstar Gala in New York City.
“ZOA rarely awards the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion,” ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said in a press release. “It has been presented only to other renowned world leaders and dignitaries like Lord Balfour, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, and Sheldon G. Adelson.”
“As a champion of Israel and the Jewish people, President Trump is certainly worthy of being in that company,” said Klein.
Trump’s achievement of forging the Abraham Accords, which established peace between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, would merit the honor alone, ZOA Board Chairman David Schoen said.
CNS has not explained why it felt compelled to devote two press release-esque articles to Trump receiving the same award when one would have more than sufficed.
MRC Finds A New Angle To Distract From Attack on Paul Pelosi Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's mission following the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi was to desperately try to distract from it by pretending the attacker wasn't politically motivated, even though he broke into Pelosi's house shouting, "Where's Nancy?" Kevin Tober found a new distraction in an Oct. 31 post regarding the attacker's alleged immigration status:
Despite spending parts of their respective reports lashing out a Republicans for the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in the middle of the night on Friday, the big three evening news networks managed to ignore the fact that the alleged attacker was an illegal immigrant who overstayed his visa. Only Fox News’s Special Report mentioned this key detail.
Instead of covering the fact that the attacker shouldn’t have been in the country in the first place, ABC’s World News Tonight tried blaming Republicans and claimed the attacker was motivated by politics.
Correspondent Mola Lenghi kicked off the segment for ABC by claiming “DePape allegedly describing the Speaker as the quote leader of the pack of what he said were lies told by the Democratic Party.”
Continuing to describe the intentions of the attacker, Lenghi proclaimed that “DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy's kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into congress, which would show other members of congress there were consequences to actions.”
We've already noted how Tober then leaned into blaming the victim by sneering that Pelosi wouldn't have been attacked if he had been in jail for a DUI conviction as he purportedly should have been.
A Nov. 1 post by Alex Christy complained that right-wingers' viciously anti-Nancy Pelosi rhetoric was beinbg called out as a contributing factor in inciting Pelosi's assailant as he tried to turn that criticism into a conspiracy theory: "Alleging that simply calling Pelosi “crazy” is responsible for the assault is insane and just a not-so clever way to demand that Republicans shut up and stop criticizing Democrats." Christy theorized later in the day that referring to Republicans' "fetishization of violence" was a code word, "MSNBC's way of saying support for the Second Amendment in their campaign ads," going on to whine: "One can hope, but shouldn’t hold their breath, that MSNBC will dial down the rhetoric that accuses the most basic sort of campaigning with a 'fetishization of violence.'"
The MRC then had to ride to the defense of one of its favorite (pre-election, anyway) right-wing darlings, Republican Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake, for making a stupidly insenstive remark about the attack on Pelosi. Curtis Houck huffed:
Like NBC would do, [CNS Mornings co-host] co-host Tony Dokoupil focused on comments from Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) in which she simply noted that, in answering a question about securing schools, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has “apparently, her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.”
The crowd laughed, leaving the media to argue Lake represented the GOP making fun of the attack.
“Many Republicans have condemned the attack on Paul Pelosi, but some others have made light of it, including Kari Lake, who is in a tight race for governor in Arizona. She brought the assault up when replying to a question about safety in schools,” Dokoupil said.
Houck offered no evidence that Lake wasn't making fun of the attack. Meanwhile, Mark Finkelstein similarly complained that CNN's Don Lemon condemned Kari Lake for her comments on the attack, calling them "vile, vile," then attacked Lemon instead of criticizing Lake's insensitivity: "If the goal of Chris Licht, the new CNN honcho, was to move the liberal network toward the center, today was an ominous start."
HOuck got back on track to the main distraction narrative and spouting of talking points -- and stenography for a Republican senator -- in another post:
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) finally put a stop on Tuesday to CBS Mornings’s attempts to blame conservatives and Republicans for the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi by a drug-addicted mentally ill, and former Green Party nudist. During the six-plus-minute interview meant to promote his new book, Cotton calmly beat down the repeated aspersions from co-host Tony Dokoupil by citing the left’s double standard on crime and political violence.
Dokoupil began by wondering what was his “reaction” to the alleged crime seeing as how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is “a fellow elected official.” Cotton immediately sniffed out where Dokoupil was going, stating “it’s a terrible crime against Paul Pelosi” and not only did he “ wish him the very best and a full recovery,” but called for “the book&rdquo to be “throw[n]...at the assailant.”
Adding the suspect is reportedly in the U.S. illegally, Cotton said “throw[ing] the book at” violent criminals should always be the case and regardless of whether it’s Mr. Pelosi, or “any common criminal who attacks someone” regardless of their status.
Dokoupil nonetheless tried to pin Cotton down, insisting crimes against ordinary citizens (i.e. those without means to recover after such an attack) needed to be “separate[d] out” from “what seems to be politically-motivated crime.”
He then asked the Arkansas junior senator “whether the temperature in the country is just too high, the information is just too much, and that we're going to see more, not less political violence going forward.”
Cotton wasn’t having it and implicitly took aim at those suggesting policies and views espoused by the early 2010s Tea Party caused it, arguing “deranged lunatics” have gone after people in both parties and thus he didn’t“think John Boehner 12 years ago pointing out that Nancy Pelosi passed ObamaCare or Kevin McCarthy now pointing out that she passed trillions of dollars in spending that caused...inflation led to this...apparent nudist activist breaking into their home.”
More posts continued to lash out at commentators linking extremist right-wing rhetoric to the attack:
The MRC dabbled in baseless conspiracies as well. A Nov.3 post by Jeffrey Clark uncritically noted that on CNBC,a host and a guest "clashed over Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk’s now deleted comments on the Paul Pelosi controversy. After a reported illegal alien and drug user assaulted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband in their San Francisco home, Musk shared a story that questioned the official narrative of the attack, and asked why the attacker was reportedly in his underwear." Clark didn't mention that there was no evidence whatsoever to support the low-credibility site whose conspiracy theory Musk amplified.
There would be more whataboutism, of course. More soon.
The COVID pandemic has two new forms, in addition to continuing preventable deaths from viral infection – nearly 3,000 a week in the U.S. One is increasing levels of long COVID that does not kill, but ruins quality of life. I have already published articles on this. Here I explore the second new manifestation, namely excess deaths not due to infection but resulting from vaccines. How are vaccines killing large numbers of people? In brief, the vaccines ruin immune systems and damage blood. So people are dying from various ailments and diseases, including cardiac problems.
Government agencies have played many games to hide vaccine-induced excess deaths.
A large body of medical literature continues to evolve on these excess deaths showing death rates in 2021 and 2022 significantly above rates prior to the pandemic. And many studies have linked vaccines to these high excess death rates. Below I cite several sources where details have been published. Though it takes time, reading these sources will enlighten you about vaccine induced deaths.
Mathew Crawford, a great analyst, said that, "Vaccine deaths were seemingly classified as COVID-19 deaths, [and] my estimation of the death toll quickly grew. Now I personally suspect that over 100,000 Americans have been killed by the experimental vaccines. Others I know think the number may be as large as a quarter of a million." Based on my extensive reading I think the latter is likely.
Crawford's claims about excess deaths caused by vaccines were discredited long ago -- which tells his Hirschhorn's standards for a "great analyst" are severely flawed. Hirschhorn also promoted dubious claims from anti-vaxxers like Steve Kirsch and Daniel Horowitz, as well as a bogus poll commissioned by Kirsch claiming that "More than twice as many Americans have lost a household member to a COVID vaccine injury as have lost one to COVID." Hirschhorn concluded by rehashing his conspiracy theories:
In the U.S. and worldwide many people who obeyed public health agencies and got COVID shots are dying from them. This is how the pandemic lives on by killing people from the supposed "solution" to COVID. And authorities are still pushing vaccines. This is tragic. Also tragic is that most excess deaths are of relatively young people, considered working age, not the elderly. Finally, this is what CDC says: "Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare." Keep in mind that the pandemic could have been better addressed by strongly pushing use of high dose vitamin D and even nasal saline sprays. COVID vaccines were always a terrible strategy but a great moneymaker for Pfizer.
For a pre-election column on Nov. 3, Hirschhorn tried to turn his discredited conspiracy theories into a campaign issue:
As someone who closely follows the news, I have found it amazing that no stories about the issues important to midterm voters include pandemic and COVID failures, especially vaccines. They have caused more than 30 million adverse health impacts and deaths; these are far greater than all the harm caused by crime, opioid and fentanyl misuse, and other factors ruining lives. Over a million Americans have died from COVID, and hundreds more die every day because the vaccines do not work and all the wrong, useless protocols still are used in hospitals.
There should be not doubt that the Biden administration and Democrats have totally screwed up pandemic management. If Americans want major changes, then they should vote for Republicans over Democrats.
[...]
Now is the time for all smart, sensible and informed Americans to think about the need to NOT vote for Democrats in House and Senate races. This view may not persuade far-left, radical Democrats and liberals, but I hope that moderate Democrats, independents and others who see pandemic truth will vote for much needed change in our medical and public health system and restore public trust in it.
Nobody is going to find "pandemic truth" by listening to Hirschhorn's conspiratorial rantings.
CNS Is Still (Mostly) Censoring Herschel Walker's Abortion Scandals Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com completely censored the story of Republican Senate candidate (and ontime coverage favorite) Herschel Walker paying for a girlfriend's abortion. It continued to do censor it -- with only a couple brief, passing mentions -- in the runup to the midterm elections.
An Oct. 20 article by Micky Wootten on a debate between Walker and his Democratic incumbent opponent, Raphael Warnock, completely censored any mention of Walker's abortion scandal, even though it was discussed during the debate. Instead, Wootten deceptively kept his story focused on financial issues, noting that they "clashed over student loan debt but apparently agreed that there should not be a federal minimum wage."
An Oct. 27 article by Melanie Arter provided the first mention in a "news" article of Walker's abortion scandal -- which came only after a second woman came forward to say Walker paid her for an abortion. But the main focus of her article was promoting how "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday that the reason why liberals are so intent on defeating Hershel Walker’s bid to become the next senator from Georgia is because if Walker 'becomes a Republican, maybe every other young child in America of color might want to be a Republican.'" It wasn't until the third paragraph that Arter noted that "Walker told Fox News’ 'Hannity' that the latest allegation against him that he pressured a woman into getting an abortion is 'a lie.'"
A Nov. 4 article by Lauren Shank supplied the only other pre-election reference to the scandal. Ity was effectively a press relesase for a so-called study by CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, complaining about supposedly "negative" coverage of Republican candidates, an example of which was "anonymous and unverified allegations that GOP candidate Herschel Walker years ago paid for two women’s abortions, charges that Walker vehemently denied."
An anonymously written Nov. 9 article on the Walker-Warnock race going to a runoff went back to censoring the abortion scandal and offering Walker puffery instead: ">Walker, a Georgia native, played running back for the University of Georgia and won the Heisman Trophy in 1982. He then played professional football in the USFL and the NFL."
CNS' mission statement claims that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." Yet again, it's refusing to live up to its own words.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Loud And Lame War On NewsGuard, Part 3 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has to dip into its Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome and embrace a militia-loving extremist podcaster to keep up its attacks on the website-rating company. Read more >>
MRC Whines WH Press Secretary Didn't Hold Enough Briefings Last Month -- But It Covered Only One Topic: Media Research Center
It's so like Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck to blame others for his own laziness. In an Oct. 18 post, he complained that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had only given four press briefings in the month -- but this was first briefing of the month that he bothered to write about. Apparently, his pet White House reporters from Fox News and other right-wing outlets were sufficiently trashing Jean-Pierre to his satisfaction, nor was he able to make up yet another reason to denigrate her as an incompetent diversity hire. (It's also quite ironic because he never complained at all that one of Donald Trump press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, gave no press briefings at all during her tenure.) Still, Houck gave it the ol' college try in gerating his usual Doocy-fluffing:
In only the fourth White House press briefing this month, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a litany of questions Tuesday about the left’s fixation on abortion (instead of crime or the economy).
As we’ve come to expect, Fox’s Peter Doocy and Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann turned up the heat with Doocy asking if the White House is more concerned about abortions than struggling Americans and Wegmann wondering whether President Biden supports a limit on abortion.
CBS News Radio’s Steven Portnoy set the table by asking Jean-Pierre how many more Senate Democrats Biden needs Roe and, after Jean-Pierre repeatedly ducked, he instead asked if abortion would be Biden’s “top legislative priority in” 2023.
Jean-Pierre ducked, accusing him of engaging in “hypotheticals.” Portnoy pressed one last time by wondering if this abortion focus means it’s already his top issue, Jean-Pierre said Biden has “show[n]...how important Roe is to him, how important reproductive rights is because a majority of Americans believe that this right needs to stand.”
Jean-Pierre promptly stepped in it: “The President’s going to continue to talk about issues that matter to the American people and abortion is one of them. A majority of the American people disagree with the decision that — that the Supreme Court made the Dobbs decision....When it comes to the economy...it is the — his number one economic priority”.
Doocy picked up on Jean-Pierre’s description of inflation only being “his number one economic priority.” And when she suggested Biden has created a roaring economy, Doocy fired off a scorcher on how could that be the case when Bloomberg said a recession is indisputable (click “expand”):
[...]
Predictably, Jean-Pierre blamed oil companies for high prices:“There is no shortage of opportunities or incentive for oil companies to ramp up production. We’ve made that clear. Oil companies are ranking in record profits”.
Predictably, Houck was silent about just how much profit the oil companies are making so he wouldn't have to admit that Jean-Pierre has a point and effectively sound like an oil industrylobbistslike his co-workers at CNSNews.com.
Houck continued his laziness: Even though Jean-Pierre held three more briefings in October (plus several other informal "press gaggles" throughout the month), Houck couldn't be bothered to write about them either. If Houck continues such laziness in his hackery, what are we going to write about?
Newsmax Columnist Hypes Midterm 'Red Wave' -- But Silent Afer His Prediction Failed Topic: Newsmax
Michael Dorstewitz was one of the Newsmax columnists enthusiastically touting a Republican "red wave" in the midterm elections. He blared in his Oct. 21 column, headlined "Mark Nov. 8 Down as a Red Letter Day — As in GOP Red":
It’s 18 days until Election Day and, if anything, it’s looking progressively worse for the Democratic Party.
They realize they have only themselves to blame.
[...]
RealClearPolitics revealed Thursday that voters couldn’t care less about abortion. It compared its Generic Ballot Polling Average of polls before Dobbs vs. Jackson Womens Health Organization (the decision that struck down Roe v. Wade) and after Dobbs.
Prior to Dobbs, Republicans were up 2.8%; After Dobbs, Republicans were up even more — 3.5%.
As one Twitter user quipped, "But I was promised a Roevember."
Nope. No Roevember this year — it’s gonna be a Redvember, so long as everyone who counts votes, and every vote is counted.
Academy award-winning actress Susan Sarandon posted a meme containing a powerful message to social media Monday. It suggested that there was very little difference between the Democratic Party of today and Nazis of pre-World War II Germany.
[...]
Biden’s problem is that he’s got it backwards. He’s not our ruler; the people are his ruler.
Because the United States is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, people like Biden are referred to as public servants who serve at the pleasure of the people.
And the people are not pleased. That’s why the people are abandoning Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
Democrats are losing on nearly every major issue on the ballot this election cycle: inflation, crime, the economy, border security. So they’re pivoting to a new issue: “our democracy is at risk.”
They’re right. It is at risk, but not by the GOP, or even MAGA Republicans. The Democratic Party itself is placing democracy in jeopardy.
[...]
The free will to think, discuss, and work through issues, and ultimately change the world are distinctly God-given human powers — and Biden wants to deny us those powers for “the greater good.”
Censorship is banana republic territory — and Democrats want to take us there.
Some of that bluster went away the day before the election, when Dorstewitz spent his Nov. 7 column fretting that Donald Trump taking shots at fellow Republican and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before the midterms becuase "Until 2024, tomorrow will be the most important election of our lives." He insisted that :="going after your own is a bit much," adding: "There’s no need and little reason to draw the blood of other Republicans. Even primary rivals ultimately want the same thing — a GOP win."
But there was no "Redvember," many Democrats won, and Republicans were unable to take control of the Senate. But Dorstewitz hasn't addressed those dismal results (for his ideology, anyway). Instead, his first post-election column have been about whining that government is "Too Big, Dysfunctional and Un-American."
His Nov. 11 column obliquely referenced how "voters and candidates alike are waiting for election results in various states — especially Nevada and Arizona, as well as a December Senate runoff in Georgia" without mentioning Republican failures, then spent the rest of the column complaining that "the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade (with Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization) in June prompted a number of states to make abortion a right guaranteed under their own state constitution." At no point did he mention that this was also part of right-wing election failures.
Dorstewitz was silent about the failure of his midterm bluster in his Nov. 14 column, instead grumbling that has-been right-winger Ann Coulter was shouted down during a speech on a college campus and that a Democratic senator exposed the mismanagement of Twitter under Elon Musk by showing how easily a potentially malicious parody account designed to mimic actual accounts can be made.
UPDATE: Dorstewitz finally gort around to addressing the midterm results in his Nov. 16 column. Not to apologize for being so wrong about a "red wave," of course -- right-wingers never apologize -- but to complain that "political noise" from Democrats caused Republicans to falter:
2022 had to have been one of the most chaotic election cycles in recent memory, with all the chaos coming from the Biden White House and a compliant press.
Given President Joe Biden's long list of failures, including the economy, crime, border security, COVID response, and a foreign policy that's placing us dangerously close to World War III, it was all Democrats had going into the midterms.
The messaging in each case was that the previous administration was corrupt, as opposed to the steady hand of the current one.
The biggest news in the months leading up to Nov. 8 was the FBI's early morning raid on Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump's Palm Beach, Florida residence.
The raid of a former president's home was unprecedented, and prompted whisperings of nuclear secrets and launch codes for sale.
[...]
As it now stands, the best the GOP can do is to maintain the Democratic-controlled 50-50 chamber, but only if Walker defeats incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock next month.
So all the noise and clatter about bringing Trump and his aides, advisers and followers to justice was just that — noise and clatter. Their single goal was to win on Election Day.
And it worked — at least to the extent that Democrats will maintain control of the Senate.
Dorsetwitz also repeated a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Capitol riot was caused by secret FBI informants "dressed like Trump supporters."
CNS Continues To Shill For Oil Industry Lobbyists Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has been a reliableshill for the oil industry, and it conintues to be one for the puropse of attacking President Biden. Susan Jones served as stenographer for the oil industry's lobbying group in an Oct. 5 article:
News that OPEC+ has cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day is "really bad news for American consumers," an oil industry executive told Fox News on Wednesday.
"Well, no one should be cheering this news," said Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute. "But the truth of the matter is that dependency on foreign countries for American oil and gas is a choice. And it's a choice this administration has made repeatedly, unfortunately, with the policies that they have pursued so far."
News of the OPEC production cut comes just as record releases from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- ordered by President Biden -- have stopped.
[...]
Sommers told Fox News, "We should be looking under our feet for the resources that we have here. We can produce these products here. We can share these products throughout the world during a time of war. We have that choice. And we can do it."
Jones helped API go on the attack against Biden for calling out excessive oil industry profits in a Nov. 1 article:
President Joe Biden, a lifelong politician with no background in running a business, is once again blasting oil companies, even threatening them, for earning large profits.
"I think it's outrageous what their — the — the size of the profit," Biden said on Monday:
[...]
The American Petroleum Industry issued the following statement in response:
"Rather than taking credit for price declines and shifting blame for price increases, the Biden administration should get serious about addressing the supply and demand imbalance that has caused higher gas prices and created long-term energy challenges.
"Today, the President proposed to raise taxes on the U.S. natural gas and oil industry that is competing globally to produce the fuels Americans need every single day. Oil companies do not set prices—global commodities markets do.
"Increasing taxes on American energy discourages investment in new production, which is the exact opposite of what is needed. American families and businesses are looking to lawmakers for solutions, not campaign rhetoric.”
"Analysis of a windfall profits tax established in 1980 have found that it decreased domestic energy production and increased reliance on imported oil. According to the Congressional Research Service, the tax reduced domestic production by as much as 8 percent from 1980 to 1988 when it was repealed in part because “it made the United States more dependent on foreign oil."
What President Biden did not say is that oil companies experienced record losses during the COVID pandemic, when oil prices collapsed.
Jones censored the fact that record oil company profits have far exceeded pandemic-related losses. Rather than lgoing beyond copy-and-pasting a API statement to probe why oil companies aren't keeping the same profit margins they had pre-pandemic -- or even question API's suggestion that Biden is to blame for higher oil prices -- she parroted her employer's anti-Biden partisan agenda again:
President Biden is a green energy/climate change acolyte. Even during his presidential campaign, he declared his intention to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, which discouraged investment by the oil industry.
In a March 2020 debate, before becoming president, Biden said: "Number one, no more subsidies for fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one."
As recently as this past May, President Biden hailed higher gas prices as an "incredible transition."
"When it comes to the gas prices, we're going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over," Biden said.
Putting lobbyists and partisan narratives before good journalism is not a good look.
The Media Reserach Center cheered when Elon Musk finally decided to live up to his word and buy Twitter at the price to which he agreed, alternating between writing PR pieces for him and mocking the critics who pointed out that he's sending the site into chaos. Paiten Iselin served up the former in an Oct. 31 post:
The 
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham thought he was being cute. After Monica Lewinsky tweeted out a link to an 
Bob Unruh unironically wrote in an Oct. 18 WorldNetDaily 
After serving up 
Bob Unruh wrote in an Oct. 14 
The Media Research Center 
During the Trump years, CNSNews.com 
The 
One of WND's 
We've 
It's so like Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck to blame others for his own laziness. In an Oct. 18 
Michael Dorstewitz was one of the Newsmax columnists enthusiastically touting a Republican "red wave" in the midterm elections. He blared in his Oct. 21 
CNSNews.com has been a 
