WND Tried To Scare Its Readers One More Time Before Midterms Topic: WorldNetDaily
Scaring its dwindling right-wing audience into voting for Repubicans and against Democrats is one thing WorldNetDaily just loves to do, so it's not surprising that the fearmongering form WND columnists crested the evening before the midterms, the final pre-election columns readers would see. Let's review how that went.
We've waited a long time for this.
I suggest there are two things to do today without fail – VOTE AND PRAY!
Voting has never been more important. It's a matter of saving our country – nothing short of that. This could be a pivotal election. It must be. It's deadly serious. There is no excuse for not voting this time. It has never before been more important.
I cannot promise you a fair election. I cannot promise you some of it will not be rigged. I cannot promise you that the Democrats will not try to fix it. I cannot promise you that we will win all of the races we deserve to win. I CAN promise you there will be shenanigans. One side has demonstrated its willingness to cheat in election after election.
But there is no question we must try. We must succeed. We must bring about the expected RED WAVE to save this nation as best we can – peacefully, under the law.
[...]
Today is the day to vote like we never have needed to do before in the United States of America. Our lives, our posterity, our fortunes depend on it. It's a somber day – full of anxious moments.
Pray to God like you have never done before. May God help us!
Once upon a time in the fabled Land of Georgia, a diabolical Wicked Witch and a demonic Evil Warlock joined forced to overthrow the powers of truth and justice in order to subjugate The People of the Kingdom.
Through their cunning, lies, deceit, debauchery and treachery, the Wicked Witch and the Evil Warlock succeeded in deceiving the people, ousting the true rulers and assuming control of the throne.
The result was to bring a frozen eternal winter to the Land of Georgia and the surrounding Land of Freedom subjugated by their evil relatives – and there was no Christmas.
Because of the Witch and the Warlock's diabolical and malignant schemes, the people of Georgia were left impoverished as inflation soared, making prices for energy, goods and services so astronomical they could barely afford to feed and care for their families.
After taking power, the Wicked Witch and the Evil Warlock even began to torture, dismember and murder babies through their campaign of terror. Human sacrifices for their demonic and perverse pagan religious rituals were both performed and encouraged.
[...]
Joining with the Lion, the people of Georgia fought in a mighty war against the Witch and the Warlock culminating in The Battle of the Eighth of November and even beyond as the Witch and Warlock sought to defeat the Lion in one last gasp through fraud, stealth and deceit – but to no avail.
As the Lion restored power back to the people of the Land of Georgia, the Witch and the Warlock were banished in disgrace never to be heard from again.
Soon the winter ice began to melt, and springtime once again returned to Georgia – and the people cheered and thanked God for sending the Lion to deliver them from the evil that had come upon them.
So does the D or the R matter at the end of a politician's name? You had better believe that it does. So how do I decide for whom to vote? Well, I think a good idea is to spend a few minutes and look at the two very different platforms. Again, this platform is a covenant the parties have put together that represents their beliefs and ideals. This platform, this covenant, is like a table each party is laying out before us loaded with all their beliefs, ideals, aims and standards. Our vote chooses of which table we have decided to partake. As for my family and myself, we compare these distinctly different tables to the Word of God. The Bible says:
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." (Psalm 23:5)
So God has prepared a table, a covenant – a platform – before us through His Word, the Bible. We have to take God's table with His beliefs, ideals, aims and standards and compare it to the table the Democrats have prepared and the table the Republicans have prepared. We then choose to sit at the covenant table with the political party that most aligns itself with the table of the LORD. That is how we vote. That is how we choose. That is how we judge and discern the righteous from wickedness. We use the authoritative Word of God. The Bible clearly says: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils." (I Corinthians 10:21)
As you vote, remember you are choosing at which table you are going to sit and with which governing group you are choosing to covenant. I hope you choose one most aligned with God, so that He can "Bless Us, Every One!"
Stacey Abrams is trying win the highest elected position in her state – the state and people, mind you, she disparages and viciously vilifies at every opportunity.
That's the mentality and the reality of the worldview they must espouse if they want a seat at the Democratic table. Democrats do not permit nor suffer individuality. Why else would those who claim they're being victimized, hunted down and murdered by police and treated with monumental contempt, support abortion?
These emotionally indentured people are willing to promote paying to have their children brutally murdered by Planned Parenthood, the most evil agency in American history, one that celebrates its so-called whiteness.
They're willing to be mistreated, disrespected, insulted, treated like chattel and allowed to speak only as directed. But, these people know who butters their bread, as the saying goes.
To be treated as I've just shown and be expected to show gratitude is the height of servitude. No wonder those such as myself are hated and feared by them.
The problem with inflation is spending. An increase in spending will not repair that. The problem with immigration is a porous border. Further opening the border will not fix it. Fake news will not be solved by more lies. Drug abuse will not be solved by more legalization of dangerous drugs. Crime will not be solved by letting criminals off the hook. And, if anyone is crazy enough to want World War III, I can tell you the best way to achieve that goal – appease those who threaten World War III. Weakness draws aggression like sugar draws flies.
A moral freefall underlies all these problems. Breaking down even more of our moral foundation will only make matters worse. Yet, that's what our society continues to do.
As always, we find our hope in the grace of Jesus Christ. The United States can have another Great Awakening. Millions can still turn to Jesus. I believe that would hold off America's fall until after the rapture. Better yet, all those millions get to go to heaven! So, don't give up on the United States. Don't stop hoping, and don't stop praying. Work to make things better. Have faith that as you do His will, God is always on your side.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Sports Squad of COVID Fearmongerers and Misinformers Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center sports bloggers Jay Maxson and John Simmons spent much of 2022 peddling misinformation, fear, and outright lies about COVID vaccines, as well as continuing to champion selfish athletes who won't get vaccinated. Read more >>
Positive GDP Forced Narrative Shift At MRC So It Could Still Blame Biden Topic: Media Research Center
We'vedocumented how the Media Research Center rushed to declare that U.S. was in a full-blown recession -- largely so it could push right-wing narratives by blaming President Biden for it -- and attacked anyone to dared to suggest that two straight quarters of a (slightly) negative gross domestic product is not the only possbile definiton of what a recession is (and it even found a way to blame George Soros as well). Kevin Tober was still harping on the negative GDP numberds in a Sept. 29 post:
On Thursday morning, The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their third and final revision on the nation’s GDP growth for the second quarter and it wasn’t good. The BEA found that the economy shrank 0.6 percent for the second straight quarter which means the United States economy is in a recession. Knowing this news is bad for the Biden administration and the Democrat Party [sic], the evening newscasts made sure to cover it up.
ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News both ignored the news entirely, while CBS Evening News allowed a scant 22 seconds to the story while avoiding the word “recession” or tying Biden and his disastrous economic policies to this in any way.
While CBS at least covered the negative GDP growth revision, ABC & NBC decided Queen Elizabeth’s autopsy report showing she died of old age, or Ginni Thomas’s beliefs on the validity of the 2020 elections were more important than the nation’s economy.
Tober offered no evidence that network newscasts have ever covered GDP revisions. Curtis Houck whined in a post the next day:
Amid their non-Hurricane Ian coverage on Friday, NBC’s Today and the 3rd Hour of Today returned to a recent liberal media trend in defending the Biden administration by dismissing the reality that the country’s in a recession. This time, they wondered if it “matter[s] when everything you buy everyday is more expensive” and “it doesn’t feel good out there.”
Of course, nowhere in either news show did the Biden administration come up or be assigned blame.
Of course, neither Tober nor Houck provided any evidence that specifically links any Biden policy to the decline in GDP.
In another Sept. 30 post, Joseph Vazquez hyped "the economy’s poor performance under Biden," adding that "following new third estimate data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showing that U.S. GDP contracted for the second straight quarter in a row to meet the technical definition of a recession, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 550 points on Thursday; the S&P 500 dropped 2.4 percent and the Nasdaq sank 3 percent." Vazquez cited only partisan right-wing sources like the New York Post and the Washington Examiner as purported proof that Biden was to blame.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the MRC's narrative manufacturing plant: GDP increased in the third quarter. That blew up the MRC's narrative, so it was forced to reverse direction. An Oct. 27 post by Tober demanded that we look beyond the numbers to argue that the GDP growth doesn't actually mean anything:
On Thursday morning, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released the third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers which reportedly showed that the United States economy grew 2.6 percent in the third quarter. Predictably the three evening news networks hyped the supposedly good news for their friends in the Biden administration and ignored the real reason for the positive economic growth despite the two past quarters being negative. The 3rd quarter numbers were almost entirely due to U.S. trade exports, not due to the health of the economy at large.
World News Tonight anchor David Muir began carrying water for the Biden administration and embattled Democrats running in this year's midterm elections by spinning the seemingly good numbers: "President Biden in Syracuse, New York, celebrating the new numbers on the economy today," Muir noted.
Hyping the numbers, Muir went on to report that "the gross domestic product, of course, a measure of goods and services produced increasing 2.6 percent this last quarter." Later on in the segment, he spoke to correspondent Terry Moran and gushed that "these were encouraging GDP numbers today."
Tober made sure to praise his favorite cable news channel for making the partisan narrative flip-flop along with the MRC:
Back in reality, on Fox News Channel's Special Report, Jacqui Heinrich told viewers the truth about the state of the economy: "At first glance, today's GDP Report suggests the U.S. Economy is turning around after two consecutive quarters of negative growth," Heinrich prefaced. "But a closer look shows the 2.6 percent growth was driven by fluctuations in international trade, not reflecting the underlying health of the economy and increased government spending."
Tober didn't explain why it suddenly became "reality" to look beyond the GDP numbers when it had criticized those who previously did so.
Despite having to explain away that inconenient number, the MRC continued to cling to the old narrative as well. A Nov. 1 post by Jeffrey Clark huffed that "the U.S. entered a recession roughly three months ago. A July Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report revealed that GDP fell for a second quarter in a row, which meets the definition of a recession, according to American Institute for Economic Research economist Phillip Magness."Clark rehashed the obsolete talking point again in a Nov. 14 post:
For the “past century,” as economist Phillip Magness explained in August, a recession has primarily been defined as GDP falling for two consecutive quarters. That’s precisely what happened in July, per a Bureau of Economic Analysis report, but President Joe Biden’s media cronies have been crusading to redefine the meaning of the word “recession” in an attempt to stem political backlash from President Joe Biden’s economic disaster.
In both posts, Clark censored the fact that GDP increased in the most recent quarter -- which would have undermined his narrative. And narrative is more important than the truth at the MRC.
WND Trots Out Anti-Google Reseracher Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
What's a good sign that you're a right-wing hack who likes to peddle dubious claims and outright falsehoods and wants to get your views out without having to answer challenging questions about them? You choose to sit down for an interview with WorldNetDaily.
Which brings us to anti-Google obsessive Robert Epstein. WND has beena fan of his (as has the Media Research Center) because he fed the right-wing anti-"big tech" narrative by accusing Google of skewing search results toward Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election through some highly dubious "research." Since pushing falselhoods about election fraud (along with COVID vaccine misinformation) is the WND's main function these days, it needs to keep up that narrative. So WND's Art Moore did an interview for a Nov. 4 article, making sure to play up Epstein's purported Democratic credentials (despite sounding just like a right-wing conspiracy theorist) under the headline "Democrat researcher: Google shifting votes in my party's favor":
Empirical research shows Google affected the outcome of the 2016 and 2020 elections in favor of Democrats, and the tech giant "has its digital thumb on the scale" of the current midterms, says Robert Epstein, a Democratic Party voter who was famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner's last PhD student at Harvard.
In a WND video interview (embedded below), Epstein contended, however, that his ever-growing, unique "Nielsen rating-type" system of monitoring Google's manipulation of search results provides the solid evidence needed to stop the Big Tech behemoth in its tracks.
In the meantime, he said, the novel "Brave New World" has come to life.
"This is power that's never existed before in human history. This is power that the worst dictators in history could have only dreamt of," Epstein told WND.
"But this is real. This is occurring now."
[...]
By the end of 2023, he plans to have a "massive monitoring system" – a "digital shield" – in place with at least 20,000 field agents across 50 states.
"We will be monitoring in real time, and we will be exposing every single anomaly that we find," he said, adding that "sunlight is the best disinfect."
At no point did Epstein say "my party" or even describe himself as an active Democrat -- that's just a false headline. Moore then moved on to pumping up Epstein's credentials:
Epstein, a research psychologist for four decades, has served in various editorial positions at Psychology Today magazine and Scientific American MIND. He's the author of 15 books and more than 300 scientific and mainstream articles on artificial intelligence and other topics. He currently is a research psychologist at the non-profit American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in Vista, California. His work can be seen at MyGoogleResearch.com.
After that, it was more conspiracy-mongering:
Epstein doubts that lawmakers will make a serious attempt to take on Big Tech, with Democrats "lavishly" supplied with Google cash – 95% of Big Tech donations go to Democrats – and Republicans having a distaste for regulation.
In any case, regulation moves at a snail's pace, he said, arguing tech needs to be fought with tech, and his scientific evidence can be used in lawsuits.
"I'm in touch with some state AGs and some other officials who are champing at the bit," he said. "They’re just waiting to use the kind of data that we are collecting to go after these people."
Then victimhood was added to the conspiracy mix:
The personal cost of his work – which he sees as an effort to preserve free and fair elections and ultimately the republic itself – has included the loss of friendships and some family members who "think I'm crazy." But he's also been warned that his safety is at risk.
After presenting his Google findings to the Senate in 2019 and drawing the attention of Hillary Clinton, Epstein gave a private briefing to state attorneys general. After the briefing, one of the state AGs took Epstein aside and shared his concern that Epstein might "die in an accident in the next few months."
Shortly after that, Epstein's wife was killed in a car accident under what he described as suspicious circumstances. A couple of months ago, there was a knife attack on a key staff member and her husband. And recently, a reporter told him of a conversation with a woman in Google's PR department who "screamed" at the reporter regarding Epstein.
The reporter told Epstein there were two things he learned from that interaction. One is that "you have their attention." And the second is, "I would take precautions."
Needless to say, Moore didn't seek substantiation of Epstein's claim, nor did he mention that Epstein's original anti-Google "research" has been discredited.
Morris Quiet After Red Wave Midterm Prediction Failed Topic: Newsmax
We've noted how Newsmax pundit Dick Morris confidently predicted a red wave in the midterm elections, with Republicans seizing both the House and the Senate and Democrats losing all 60 close congressional races. Well, that didn't happen, making this yet another failed Morris prognostication. Perhaps he saw this a bit on election day, when he played the election-fraud card in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearances:
Former adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Dick Morris, joined Newsmax on Election Day to weigh in with his take. Morris told Newsmax that it would be "horrific" if the election were to be "stolen" by election officials; alluding to Arizona's current secretary of state and Democratic candidate for governor, Katie Hobbs.
Speaking with "American Agenda" Tuesday, Morris said, "'It's deja-vu all over again,' as Yogi Berra said. Maricopa County, Philadelphia, that has a certain ring to it."
"It would be horrific if this election was lost or was stolen by election officials: particularly horrific when the democratic candidate for governor is the former secretary of state; to whatever extent anyone was at fault in 2020 in Arizona, it was Katie Hobbs, the democratic candidate for governor."
If Morris appeared on Newsmax TV elsewhere that night there's no record of it on the website; Newsmax didn't see to memorialize them with a stenography piece. But in a Nov. 9 appearance, Morris insisted there really was a red wave because Republicans didn't lose as badly as they could have:
The mainstream media is performing "ultimate acts of obfuscation" concerning Tuesday's midterm elections, but as the week moves on, it will be clear that there was a red wave, Dick Morris, the author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" said on Newsmax Wednesday.
"This morning, they'll all tell you there was no red wave," Morris said on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now." "Wake them up tomorrow morning or the morning after, and they'll have to say maybe there was one because Republicans took the House and the Senate and came very close in a number of states and advanced their vote totals."
"I think this is like 'The Hunt for Red October,'" Morris added. "This is a red wave rising."
His comments come after Ric Grenell told Newsmax that same-day ballots will deliver wins in vital Arizona GOP races, including the one for the U.S. Senate pitting GOP contender Blake Masters against incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly, who as of Tuesday afternoon was holding a five-point lead in the race.
The next TV appearance Newsmax sought to document came on Nov. 12, when Morris talked a lot more about Trump than about the midterms:
Former President Donald Trump won't only officially announce his 2024 presidential race Tuesday, but he'll surround himself with his "success stories" from the 2022 midterm races, Dick Morris, author of the bestselling "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" said on Newsmax Saturday.
"The Democrats are launching an anti-Trump disinformation campaign saying he lost everything, and he didn't," Morris said on Newsmax's "Saturday Report," adding that there are several GOP candidates who would not have won their senatorial races, including J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma, Eric Schmitt in Missouri, and Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
He also said Kari Lake will likely pull out her win for governor in Arizona, once the ballots are counted, and she'll be part of his announcement celebration Tuesday to kick off a "very good, very strong campaign that, as I predicted in my book, will result in his big 2024 comeback."
Morris also played the bogus election-fraud card again:
Fewer than 1,000 votes now separate Laxalt and incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and Morris pushed back at suggestions that the elections system in Nevada might simply be "dysfunctional.'
"It's dysfunctional in one direction, which is toward the Democrats," said Morris.
Morris continued the Trump suck-up work in a Nov. 14 appearance in which he insisted that Trump wasn't to blame for the red-wave failure due to his extremist candidates:
"Those who blame Trump for this, it's just wrong," Morris said during "American Agenda."
"Mitch McConnell, the [minority] leader of the senate, absolutely failed to fund the Republican Senate candidates who were backed by Trump. Anybody who won the primary, who is trump's endorsed candidate, was shut out of money from the Senate committee, or from McConnell's PAC. The Democrats spent an aggregated $360 million Republicans spent only $190 million in specific races," Morris added.
Morris said that Trump's endorsement picks won in nine of the 15 "tough" races, including Senator-elect JD Vance in Ohio, Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rep. Ted Budd's GOP Senate win in North Carolina.
Morris apparently didn't reference his own failed midterm predictions.
That was followed by a Nov. 16 appearance in which Morris bragged that a GOP-controlled Senate will grind the Biden administration to a halt:
Dick Morris, author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," told Newsmax that a GOP-controlled House could stop President Joe Biden's agenda and investigate his White House.
During a Tuesday interview with John Bachman, the political insider pointed out that Republicans still won last week's midterm elections after garnering 53 million votes and beating Democrats by five points in the generic ballot.
"We took the House back. Of the 15 tough Senate races, we won nine of the 15. So, explain to me how this is a defeat," Morris stated, adding that with the lower chamber, Republicans can accomplish a litany of tasks that they sought to do.
"Once we have the House, we can stop him from passing bills, and we can get a gavel and investigate this cesspool of corruption that Joe Biden calls an administration," he continued. "We can put Hunter [Biden] under oath. We can put his people under oath. We can really get somewhere."
Meanwhile, Morris wrote no Newsmax columns explaining how he predicted so badly yet again.
By contrast to its uncritical stenography of Republican attacks on Democrats before the midterm elections, CNS articles on Democrats who criticize Republicans -- and especially articles quoting President Biden -- tended to include criticism and fact-checking. It's something that, as we've noted, CNS rarely did to Donald Trump when he was president.
A good example of how this works is an Oct. 27 article by Susan Jones. First came the complaining:
Who's lying? Republicans are, according to President Joe Biden, who -- according to the Democrat-friendly New York Times -- "spins yarns that often unravel."
In a teleconference fund-raiser on Thursday, Biden said the midterm election is "not a referendum" on Democrat leadership -- "it's a choice," he insisted.
"And this is not your father’s Republican Party," Biden said, according to the White House transcript.
When Biden noted the MAGA extremists "who were breaking down the doors — literally, the doors and the windows of the Congress and two cops ended up dying," Jones did a selective fact-check:
The only person killed on January 6 was a protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer as she climbed through a window. Four other people died of natural causes, including one police officer.
The D.C. Medical Examiner says Capitol Police Office Brian Sicknick died of natural causes following the riot. And press reports say four police officers who were at the Capitol on January 6 committed suicide much later.
Jones ignored that the medical examiner looking into Sicknick's death said that “all that transpired played a role in his condition,” or that at least two Capitol Police officers who died by suicide had their deaths declared to be in the line of duty.
Then came the whataboutism:
According to a New York Times article published on Oct. 10, 2022, "President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."
[...]
The article adds that Biden’s “stories” have been “repeatedly and publicly challenged, as far back as his 1987 campaign for president, when his attempts to adopt someone else’s life story as his own, and his false claims about his academic record, forced him to withdraw.”
Funny how Jones suddenly considers the Times to be a credible source when it criticizes a Democrat -- even though doing so undermines the agenda of CNS and its Media Research Center parent to portray the Times and other outlets as having a hopelessly liberal bias.
In contrast to CNS' uncritically repeating GOP talking points attacking Democrats, Jones spent a Nov. 3 article whining about the attacks Biden issued against "extreme MAGA Republicans:
In a speech that bounced from warnings about political violence, to warnings about "autocrats," to warnings about election deniers, to warnings about “extreme MAGA Republicans” and to the premise that "democracy" is on the ballot, President Joe Biden seemed to be telling the country Wednesday night that unless they vote for Democrats, they can kiss the republic goodbye.
He echoed Abraham Lincoln; he slammed Donald Trump; and he urged Americans to prioritize "democracy" over "policy."
Biden also contradicted himself on the topic of voter suppression -- giving a nod to the "record" turnout in early voting, but also warning that "extreme MAGA Republicans" are "denying your right to vote."
"Once again we’re seeing record turnout all over the country," Biden said in his speech.
Jones then whined that Biden invoked the Constitution and Abraham Lincoln:
Biden also contradicted himself on the topic of voter suppression -- giving a nod to the "record" turnout in early voting, but also warning that "extreme MAGA Republicans" are "denying your right to vote."
"Once again we’re seeing record turnout all over the country," Biden said in his speech.
Abraham Lincoln also used the phrase in his First Inaugural Address, noting that "in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect Union.'”
Lincoln was making the point that no state can lawfully get out of the Union -- "that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary..."
Biden also echoed Lincoln by saying, "What we’re doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure."
(Speaking at Gettysburg in November 1863, President Lincoln said: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.")
Unlike with the attacks from Republicans CNS uncritically presented, Jones gave space to a Republican responding to Biden:
In response to Biden's partisan speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted: "President Biden is desperate to change the subject from inflation, crime, and open borders. Now he's claiming that democracy only works if his party wins. What nonsense. Americans aren't buying it. Ask how the last two years have affected your family, and then get out and vote!"
Jones used a Nov. 7 article to hype Biden's response to a question in which he called for "no more drilling" and replacing coal plants with wind and solar. She then blockquoted Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's "blistering response to Biden's remarks about coal," then added that "As with many of Biden's remarks, the White House tried to walk back the one about coal plants." We don't recall CNS ever promoting walkbacks of remarks made by Donald Trump. We've already noted how Craig Bannister used a diferent Nov. 7 article to criticize Biden denouncing the violent attack on Paul Pelosi by claiming that he was "ignoring times in recent years when prominent Democrats have been criticized" for glorifying violence.
Jones adopted a whining tone in reporting more remarks from Biden in a Nov. 8 article:
Speaking to a group of Democrat [sic] Party officials by teleconference Monday night, President Joe Biden explained what "being a Democrat is all about."
He said Democrats want "power" only to "help people," and he described the opposition as "some of the darkest forces we've ever seen in our history."
"You know, you guys represent everything that’s good about our party, the reason why we got into politics in the first place," Biden told the Democrat National Committee [sic] National Finance Committee, according to the White House transcript:
[...]
Biden then quoted "my dad," as he does so often: "As my dad used to say, 'I don’t expect the government to solve my problem, but I ex- — I just expect them to understand my problem.'"
Jones somehow refrained from adding her usual huffy commentary to what is supposed to be a "news" article. But she did so stealthily by deliberately getting the name of both the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee wrong. It's sad that CNS employs someone who deliberately misspells words to advance a political agenda.
MRC Gives The Same Pass To Kyrie Irving's Anti-Semitism It Gave To Kanye Topic: Media Research Center
As with Kanye West, the Media Research Center hated NBA star Kyrie Irving before it loved him. It was, however, for a much briefer time than the MRC hated Ye: The only early criticism of Irving we found was a June 2020 post by Jay Maxson complaining that Irving was among NBA players considering boycotting the rest of the 2020 season (which would eventually be played in a bubble in Florida to protect against COVID infections) over social justice concerns following the death of George Floyd.
Then Irving became an anti-vaxxer, and the MRC loved him, with its two sports bloggers, Maxson and John Simmons, gushing over his supposedly prinicipled stance.It has continued to lionize Irving's anti-vaxxer attitudes: An Aug. 31 post by Simmons whined that the NBA "made Kyrie Irving an outcast because he did not want to get vaccinated," while a Sept. 10 post by Simmons helped Irving play victim because no team would give him a long-term contract over his anti-vaxx selfishness:
Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving claimed that he turned down a massive contract extension before the 2021-22 season in large part to remain unvaccinated.
Irving said that the Nets offered him a contract of four years and roughly $100 million in salary, but that his decision to be unvaccinated was a strong factor in him and the organization not being able to come to terms with the new contract.
"I gave up four years, 100-and-something million deciding to be unvaccinated and that was the decision," Irving said on Monday. "[Get this] contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated and there's a level of uncertainty of your future, whether you're going to be in this league, whether you're going to be on this team, so I had to deal with that real-life circumstance of losing my job for this decision."
[...]
Sure, Irving has made enough money in his excellent NBA career to last him for a long time, but he likely could have easily cashed in on a big payday and the sides likely could have reached an agreement without any hiccups had New York not been so adamant about implementing a pointless, harmful, and costly mandate.
So when Irving indulged in Kanye-esque anti-Semitism by posting a link to an anti-Semitic film on his Instagram account, then wouldn't apologize until after the NBA suspended him, he built up enough anti-vaxx goodwill at the MRC that it came to his defense instead of criticizing his anti-Semitism. A Nov. 10 post by Clay Waters whined that the New York Times reported on both Irving's and West's anti-Semitism and that they were being "blamed on Trump and Republicans." Waters did at least call the anti-Semitism "rancid" -- which is the only word of criticism the MRC has expressed toward Irving's anti-Semitism. (Just like with Kanye.)
The next day, however, Maxson wouldn't criticize Irving at all, instead going into full whataboutism mode:
On Thursday, Nike co-founder Phil Knight said the Swoosh is done with Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving because the star guard “stepped over the line” by posting a social media link to an anti-Semitic movie. Boston Celtics’ all-star Jaylen Brown was having none of this, as he tagged Nike for hypocrisy over the issue of China.
“Since when did Nike care about ethics?,” Brown tweeted in response.
The same can be said of Brown and the NBA. He has worn Nike shoes in some games this season. Nike sources products from a factory in Qingdao, China, where Uyghur laborers are brutalized and forced to produce basketball shoes. The NBA pacifies China to protect income from its largest market.
[...]
Nike and the NBA will continue to rake in their Chinese windfalls, while giving meaningless lip service to social justice. Shame on both of them. They deserve zero respect and none of our consumer dollars.
Speaking of meaningless lip service, the MRC used to criticize Elon Musk for his close ties to China -- until he started spouting right-wing rhwtoric and got interested in buying Twitter.
It took both Jason Cohen -- the guy who wrote a post that tried so hard to justify Kanye's anti-Semitism that the MRC eventuially deleted it -- and Matt Philbin to write a Nov. 17 post that played whataboutism with both Irving's and Ye's anti-Semitism:
Say what you want about Kanye West and Kyrie Irving – their antisemitism doesn’t come with a body count. Then there’s Al Sharpton.
Race hustling MSNBC host was inciting riots and deadly arson against New York Jews before Irving was born. So the timing of a positive new documentary about Sharpton is … ironic. And for John Legend to executive produce it and Joe Scarborough to promote it is flat-out hypocritical.
So what is the deal here?
Al long ago laundered his image, losing weight and trading in the shiny tracksuit and gold chains for a tie, an MSNBC job and close ties to left-wing politicians. Had it had one, MSNBC’s reputation would have taken a hit. The English language certainly did.
Conversely, Ye has recently shown himself to be quite conservative and even sinned greatly by supporting Trump. While Kyrie’s politics are less clear-cut, he refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, which undoubtedly alienated him from the mainstream left.
So are progressives proponents of canceling antisemites, or is it only when convenient?
Al Sharpton’s antisemitism was more virulent and harmful than anything Ye or Irving said. His race hoaxes ruined lives and he’s never shown any contrition.
[...]
The evidence is clear that Sharpton was a dangerous antisemite at a level much more severe than Ye and Irving. Yet Ye and Irving have been completely canceled while Sharpton has been embraced.
At no point do Cohen and Philbin actually condemn Irving's or Ye's anti-Semitism -- they simply argue it wasn't allegedly as bad as Sharpton's.
It seems that Cohen and Philbin only want to cancel anti-Semites when its convenient to their right-wing agenda -- and Irving and Kanye have been too convenient to their agenda for these two to offer even the slightest criticism of their anti-Semitism, let alone go into cancel mode.
How do you know the employment numbers were good under a Democratic president? CNSNews.com's lead story focusesinstead on a different number than the unemployment rate. Susan Jones' lead story on October's employment numbers again put the labor force participation rate in the headline and buried the good news:
In the final jobs report before Election Day, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the October employment situation weakened from the prior month.
In October, the unemployment rate increased two-tenths of a point to 3.7 percent; and the labor force participation rate declined a tenth of a point to 62.2 percent.
The number of employed Americans -- 158,608,000 in October -- dropped by 328,000 from September's all-time high of 158,936,000. At the same time, the number of unemployed Americans increased by 306,000 to 6,059,000, and the combination of that unemployed up/employed down produced the higher unemployment rate.
The nonfarm economy added 261,000 jobs last month, well above the consensus estimate of 200,000. Notable job gains occurred in health care, professional and technical services, and manufacturing.
And as before, Jones was still touting how great the economy was under Donald Trump:
The labor force participation rate reflects the active workforce -- the percentage of civilian, non-institutionalized workers available for the production of goods and services, so the higher, the better.
The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.2 percent, is still more than a point below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent recorded in February 2020, just before COVID shut things down.
Editor Terry Jeffrey served up his usual sidebar about government employment, complaining that it increased "despite the fact that state government employment actually declined during the month." Jeffrey didn't explain why he doesn't think government jobs are real jobs.
For the first time in a while, there was a second sidebar in the form of an anonymously written piece:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) put out a statement expressing her satisfaction with the October jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and arguing that Republicans are not happy with good economic news.
[...]
“The October jobs numbers are the latest evidence that, under President Biden and the Democratic Congress, America continues to create jobs at a strong, steady, sustainable pace,” Pelosi said.
“While Republicans want to send costs soaring and make working families pay the price, Democrats will always put People Over Politics: lower costs, better-paying jobs and safer communities for all,” she said.
The anonymous author offered no evidence that Pelosi was wrong.
MRC Freaks Out Over Twitter Whistleblower Who Didn't Follow Pro-Musk Narrative Topic: Media Research Center
At the Media Research Center, you're only a good whistleblower if you advance right-wing narratives, like Peiter “Mudge” Zatko did in bolstering Elon Musk's pre-purchase attacks on Twitter and like Frances Haugen did in criticizing Facebook (at least until Facebook started working behind the scenes with right-wing media outlets to attack her, at which point the MRC flipped as well).
When a whistleblower emerged that countered right-wing anti-Twitter narratives, the MRC was quick to attack by playing the Soros card in an attempt to discredit him. Joseph Vazquez threw a massive tantrum in a Sept. 23 post, whining that this whistleblower was distracting from Zatko's pro-Musk narrative:
The Washington Post found a so-called “whistleblower” connected to liberal billionaire George Soros to stoke hysteria about how former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account threatened the planet.
In a so-called “exclusive,” The Post found a Twitter truther to steal former Twitter executive Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s thunder and make the issue about Trump rather than the Big Tech platform. “ Jan. 6 Twitter witness: Failure to curb Trump spurred ‘terrifying’ choice,” was The Postheadline.
The leftist whistleblower — now identified by The Post as Anika Collier Navaroli — was reportedly a “former policy official on the team designing Twitter’s content-moderation rules,” meaning the “rules” that made Twitter a bloated censorship operation to silence conservative speech. But nowhere in the article did The Post mention Navaroli's ties to Soros.
Navaroli reportedly overcame the “terror she felt” about coming forward due to her so-called “worry” that Trumpian “extremism and political disinformation on social media pose an ‘imminent threat not just to American democracy, but to the societal fabric of our planet.’” [Emphasis added.]
The story fawned how a previously “unidentified former Twitter employee” testified before the Soviet-style House Jan. 6 committee to slam the company for ignoring “false and rule-breaking tweets from Donald Trump for years because executives knew their service was his ‘favorite and most-used … and enjoyed having that sort of power.’” Twitter banned Trump two days after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Navaroli “worked on media and internet privacy campaigns for” the nutty, Soros-funded defund-the-police group Color of Change — founded by CNN commentator and former Obama appointee, Van Jones. Soros has donated millions to the group. The leftist organization proclaims itself as the “nation’s largest online racial justice organization.”
[...]
While disingenuously painting Navaroli as having a “strong bias for protecting speech,” The Post championed how she “grew fascinated with how” online censorship rules “were helping shape real-world social movements, from the inequality campaigns of Occupy Wall Street to the protests over racial justice and police brutality.”
At no point did Vazquez disprove anything Navaroli said, and he didn't even prove Navaroli is a "leftist" -- he was just mad that his preferred narratives were getting ignored by someone with at least as much credibility as Zatko offering a different story that was just as credible.
NEW ARTICLE: Selective Honesty At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah claims he's being honest about WorldNetDaily's seemingly perpetual financial crises -- but he's not. Farah also attacked Google for (temporarily) blocking WND due to malware on its website -- which WND ultimately admitted was true. Read more >>
MRC Cheers Musk Firing Twitter Employees For Being 'Woke' (Whatever That Is) Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how pleased the Media Research Center was at reports that Elon Musk would fire much of Twitter's staff if he did what he agreed to do months before and buy the company. Well, when the firings became imminent, an anonymous Nov. 6 post was positively orgasmic at the prospect of Musk ruining people's lives:
You’re fired! That’s not only a famous shout from Donald Trump’s TV celebrity days, it’s a sentence that woke Twitter employees are hearing in increasing numbers as Elon Musk takes over the platform. And The Washington Post is furious.
In the article “Musk’s Trump-style management rattles Twitter workers awaiting layoffs,” The Washington Post whined about the scraps of gossip Twitter employees have collected to discover if massive layoffs are indeed imminent.
“Workers follow new boss’s tweets and share rumors on anonymous apps amid silence from leadership on firings, staff cuts and product changes,” The Post reported. Twitter employees have reportedly started panicking about reductions in force based on the Google Calendar of “one of their new bosses” as well as through Slack chats and anonymous workplace “gossip” site Blind.
Woke pro-censorship Twitter employees were Blind, indeed, when they targeted any alternative voices on the platform.
The anonymous writer didn't explain when being "woke" was just cause for termination (or even what "woke" means). And, as we've noted, Musk's mass firings were so botched that Twitter had to ask some fired people to return because they did essential work.
A Nov. 8 post by Autumn Johnson sought to blame "left-wing activists" for advertisers pulling their ads from Twitter instead of the more likely cause that Musk has created too much chaos on the platform for advertisers to feel comfortable there:
Several companies have caved to the demands of liberal activists and pulled their ads from Twitter after Elon Musk announced the platform would no longer unfairly censor conservatives.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Audi, General Motors, General Mills, and Pfizer paused ads on the platform after Musk said significant changes would be made to the company’s content moderation standards.
General Motors told CNN that it is “monitoring” Twitter’s “new direction” under Musk and will potentially re-evaluate its decision to remove ads from the platform.
“We have paused advertising on Twitter,” General Mills spokesperson Kelsey Roemhildt told CNN in a statement. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend.”
Several leftist advocacy groups appear to be leading the ad suspension effort. Among them is one called Accountable Tech.
Johnson censored the fact that Musk threatened to "thermonuclear name and shame" advertisers who paused their Twitter spending -- which doesn't seem like a good way to encourage the advertisers who provide the biggest share of Twitter's revenue.
Johnson penned another press release for Musk in a Nov. 9 post:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk reaffirmed his commitment to free speech in a meeting with advertisers Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported that Musk discussed some of his plans for Twitter in an effort to attract advertisers to the platform. The public broadcast was viewed by over 100,000 people online:
“Musk took questions over the course of roughly an hour from two of his executives and a representative of the advertising industry during a Twitter Spaces meeting, which was broadcast live on the site midday. More than 100,000 people listened live.”
Musk suggested that while the platform’s content moderation standards have not changed yet, supporting free speech is not the same as amplifying so-called “hate speech.”
“We have to be tolerant of views we don’t agree with, but those views don’t need to be amplified,” he said, according to The Post.
Johnson somehow forgot to mention that Musk had spent the previous few days suspending Twitter accounts that made fun of him, strongly suggesting that his purported tolerance for differing views has clear limits.
The MRC even spun one of Musk's failures -- selling blue check marks for $8 a month without considering that people would buy them and masquerade as genuinely certified accounts -- because it helped make one of the MRC's enemies look bad. A Nov. 10 post by John Simmons insisted that Musk had "good intentions" in starting the feature, it was used for "mischievous purposes," one of which was an account masquerading as NBA star LeBron James demanding to be traded. Simmons declared: "hile it is humorous that someone created this headline to cause a stir, it isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility that this could happen."
Jeffrey Clark helped Musk play the victim in a Nov. 10 post:
The pro-China outlet Bloomberg News attempted to defame Twitter CEO Elon Musk by portraying him as a threat to the United States.
“Mister President, do you think Elon Musk is a threat to U.S. national security?” Bloomberg White House reporter Jenny Leonard asked President Joe Biden during a Nov. 9 press conference at the White House.
But she didn’t stop there, also pressing Biden on whether the president should use government power to “investigate” Musk’s lawful purchase of Twitter. Musk is a self-described “free-speech absolutist” who has taken flack for tweeting in March that “[f]ree speech is essential to a functioning democracy.”
But Leonard framed Musk’s Twitter deal as a shady partnership with “foreign governments, which include the Saudis.”
MRC Free Speech America President Dan Schneider slammed the liberal media for ignoring the obvious question: What about TikTok?
Clark's description of Bloomberg News as "pro-china" is laughable (not to mention unsupported by any actual evidence) because the MRC itself was accusing Musk of being pro-China less than a year ago. Clark was silent about that, of course. And the MRC's TikTok whataboutism lacks credibility because its attacks on the platform are clearly doing the bidding of Facebook, which hired a conservative PR firm to help spread anti-TikTok talking points in right-wing media. Clark went on to grumble:
The liberal media have repeatedly alleged connections between Musk and the Saudis, laying the groundwork for Leonard’s pointed question. Axios, Newsweek, CNN Business — and yes — even Bloomberg News all gave sensational coverage to reputed ties between Musk and the Saudi royal family.
Clark didn't even bother to disprove any of that reporting, which tells us he's complaining simply in an effort to distract from it (even though, again, the MRC itself was criticizing Musk's foreign entanglements before he showed interest in buying Twitter).
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg helped Musk slag Twitter employeees in a Nov. 11 post:
Work from home option is ELIMINATED.
ABC News somehow obtained an audio from a Twitter meeting where Elon Musk told his staff that if they don’t return to the office full-time, he’ll consider their absence their resignation. AKA, COVID-19 is over, get out of your pajamas and off the couch and get your ass to work.
"Let me be crystal clear, if people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office -- they cannot remain at the company. End of story," Musk told an employee who asked about the company's new expectations.
[...]
Twitter employes are probably like the rest of the world who got used to working from home and are mad that they can no longer half-ass their jobs.
As usual, Mandelburg provided no evidence to prove that was the case. She concluded with the slavishly loyal Musk hero-worship the MRC has become known for:
Why is it “ridiculous” for fully capable employees to — ya know — go to work? Firefighters can’t “work from home,” surgeons can’t operate from their couches, police officers can’t catch criminals virtually. They go into work because that’s what workers are supposed to do!
Musk realizes this and is not going to take any bs regarding people who simply “want” to work from their homes.
Nobody has ever accused software engineers of being surgeons or firefighters -- which is why most normal companies, especailly in the wake of the COVID pandemic, allow at least some workers to work from home. This tells us Mandelburg is much more interested in doing PR for Musk than trying to understand how the working world works outside her right-wing media bubble.
CNS Peddled GOP Narratives Before Midterms Topic: CNSNews.com
As the midterm elections approached, CNSNews.com endeavored to be a Repuiblian Party mouthpiece by giving Republican politicians and partisans a platform to peddle partisan talking points unencumbered by such inconvenient things like balance or fact-checking. For example:
CNS even tried to clean up and spin away after Republican foibles, like in this Nov. 2 article by Jones:
President Biden and his fellow Democrats claim that Sen. Rick Scott -- and by extension, the entire Republican Party -- want to cut or end the Social Security and Medicare programs.
Biden said it on Tuesday while campaigning in Florida: "You’ve been paying into Social Security your whole life. You earned it. Now these guys want to take it away. Who in the hell do they think they are? Excuse my language," the president said.
"I think the heat of South Florida's gotten to the guy, all right?" Sen. Scott told "Mornings With Maria" on Wednesday.
[...]
Biden on Tuesday pointed to the plan floated by Scott -- not by the Republican Party.
Scott has proposed the following: "All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again." And: "Force Congress to issue a report every year telling the public what they plan to do when Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt."
Biden told his audience, correctly, that under Rick Scott's plan, "every five years, the Congress will have to vote to reauthorize Social Security — reauthorize it or else it goes away. Would have to vote to reauthorize Medicare, reauthorize veterans benefits, and I go down the list."
But Biden then translated "reauthorizing" as "cutting."
[...]
Asked if it was a mistake to float a plan that lends itself to misrepresentation by Democrats, Sen. Scott said Democrats "do the same thing" every election cycle:
"They say Republicans are going to cut Medicare and Social Security. They do it whether you put out a plan or not. I do believe that when you run for office you ought to tell people what you're going to do. I'm a business guy. I went and raised money when I was running businesses. Nobody gave me money and said I don't know how I'm going to spend it, just give me the money.
"If you want somebody's vote you should tell them exactly what you're going to do do... We ought to be very specific, how are we going to preserve Medicare; how are we going to preserve Social Security. We have to talk about it. Because what's happening right now, it's going away and nobody wants to talk about it."
As election day neared, CNS was eager to peddle Republican talking points on "election integrity" straight from the source (and, of course, without fact-checking or added commentary). A Nov. 7 article by Jones cheered how RNC chair Ronna McDaniel refused to give a straight answer to the question of whether Republicans would follow in Donald Trump's footsteps and scream "election fraud!" in every election Republicans lose:
Dana Bash, host of CNN's "State of the Union," asked Republican Party Chairwoman Rona McDaniel on Sunday for a "simple yes or no" answer -- "Should Republican candidates, Ron Johnson, all of them, accept the election results?"
McDaniel took the question and ran with it, concluding that Democrats talk a lot about "election deniers," but Democrats themselves are "crime deniers, inflation deniers and education deniers."
The exchange left Bash flustered, as McDaniel turned the "denier" label on Democrats. You can watch the entire exchange in the video below, complete with crosstalk, but here are the highlights.
In response to Bash's question, should Republicans accept the election results, McDaniel replied:
"Well, I would say the same to Stacey Abrams, right, or Hillary Clinton, who's already saying, in 2024, we are going to rig the election. That's not helpful.
"Listen, you should have a recount. You should have a canvass. And it'll go to the courts, and then everybody should accept the results. That's what it should be.
"But I'm also not going to say, if there's problems, that we shouldn't be able to address that. If there's real problems, everyone should be able to address that. And I think Ron Johnson and Stacey Abrams, in the end, once all their avenues are exhausted, right, they will -- they will accept the results."
Another article that day, by Melanie Arter, uncritically let McDaniel spin away reports of right-wing activists intimidating voters by keeping occasionally armed watch on drop boxes by declaring that "nobody should be intimidating or breaking the law. Nobody should, but poll watching is not intimidating. ...This isn't happening from the RNC." A Nov. 8 article by Craig Bannister, however, cheered McDaniel touting how Republicans have lawyered up to fight election results they don't like:
“We’re going to make sure it’s fair,” Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel reassured Americans Tuesday as they went out to vote in this year’s midterm elections.
“Everybody needs to be calm,” because Republicans are hard at work throughout the country to ensure voter integrity, McDaniel promised in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” conducted in a Pennsylvania diner:
"We have poll watchers everywhere. We have 100% coverage. And in Pennsylvania, we have poll workers. We have lawyers everywhere and we're going to make sure, if we see anything wrong, we're going to protect everybody's vote, and we're going to make sure it's fair.”
“But some of these states have wacky laws, and we're just going to have to deal with it and be patient. It may take some time," McDaniel cautioned.
Bannister also uncritically hyped that, in his words, "Democrats are to blame for delays in vote-counting and the erosion of trust in the integrity of the country’s elections."
MRC Downplays Racist Attacks On 'Rings Of Power,' Whines It Wasn't Masculine Enough Topic: Media Research Center
A Sept. 7 post by Stephanie Hamill began by whining:
Not a fan of the new Lord of the Rings TV series? Well then, you might just be a racist or a bigot according to some on the left.
Apparently, you can’t give an honest review about Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power without being called a racist or bigot because of Middle-earth’s new more "diverse and gender-balanced characters."
You see, movies and shows that have the right amount of diversity appear to be off limits when it comes to critiques about the quality and content, or at least that’s what it seems like these days.
After citing someone calling out right-wing trolls for launching vicious attacks on the series because some of the dwarves were not white -- even though J.R.R. Tolkien put implied racial undertones into his Middle-Earth that would make a depiction of some underclasses very much true to canon -- Hamill tried to frame these racist attacks as mere concern about "integrity":
So what some J.R.R Tolkien fans were concerned about was whether or not the new series on Prime Video would respect the integrity of his legendary work. Which is a legitimate concern considering many of us have noticed how Hollywood producers tend to ruin sequels and remakes when they focus on skin color and woke messages rather than the story and production value, among other things.
So being against racism is being "woke" instead of a commonsense position every sentient being should have?
Hamill then tried to downplay the idea that racist trolls were spamming review sites with bad reviews, insisting they were really concerned about content:
But the release of the episodes clearly didn’t get the reaction and reviews Amazon was hoping for. So much so that Amazon halted reviews to prevent trolling. According to the Hollywood Reporter an Amazon source told it that reviews are being held for 72 hours to "help weed out trolls and to ensure each review is legitimate."
It’s very possible that this is a sincere effort to combat internet trolls, but this also could just be a ploy by Amazon to hide bad reviews.
Now over at Rotten Tomatoes the situation isn’t much better for Amazon, as The Rings of Power has an average audience score of 39 percent, which is rather interesting considering the TV critics gave it a score of 85 Percent.
As for what some viewers aren’t liking about the show? Well, the reviews and responses on social media vary.
Now we move on to the narrative Hamill really wants to push: the show's males aren't masculine enough. She uncritically quotes Elon Musk tweeting that "Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice," as well as her own tweet calling the show "wokified" without offering any examples beyong an accompanying picture of a black character. (The MRC has a bit ofa thing about masculinity.) She continued to insist this, and not racism, was the real issue the trolls have:
These were just a few examples, if you go through social media and read the reviews you will find that the majority of people didn't actually take issue with the new diverse characters. Those who weighed in were complaining a lot about the plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the list goes on.
Either way, the series drew more that 25 million viewers according to Amazon, making it the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video.
Hamill touted those review-bombed low ratings again in a Sept. 19 post:
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power's fourth episode, 'The Great Wave,' was released on Friday, September 16, which means we are now halfway through the new Lord of the Rings series' first season (of a reported five), and it doesn’t look like things are getting much better when it comes to the reviews of Amazon’s latest high profile show.
Things have gotten so bad that The Rings of Power is comparable in low user ratings to the Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law on not only movie and TV review site Rotten Tomatoes, but also Metacritic.
But not so much, Metacritic users are giving the series an unfavorable user score of 2.4 out of 10. And over at Rotten Tomatoes, the audience reviews are still hovering in the upper 30's (out of 100), which hasn't changed since the release of the first two episodes.
If you compare the numbers to She-Hulk, you will notice the two series have strikingly similar marks, high critic scores and low audience reviews.
The Disney+ series has been described as a "woke, feminist mess" by Newsbusters contributing writer Elise Ehrhard, and I couldn't agree more.
Yes, the MRC did heavily whine about "She-Hulk" being "woke," whatever that is.
Hamill was also still insisting that it's not racist for online trolls to complain that the existence of non-white races in the show, and you're part of the "woke mob" for even pointing that out:
Some in the media and the "woke mob" have been labeling those with legitimate critiques about the series as "racists," including some of the hosts over at The View who went off on those who weren't gushing over the 'The Rings of Power' and other new shows with diverse casts.
You see, no one is allowed to have a negative opinion about the series because of Middle-earth’s new more diverse and gender-balanced characters - or at least that's what is seems like.
The problem with this idea is that it's intellectually dishonest. You're not by default an angry racist because you don't like the new series. Those who are going along with this notion clearly aren't listening to what viewers are complaining about in regards to the new Lord of the Rings series, which Kain perfectly describes in his article.
The problem with Hamill's line of logic is that complaining about the show's "diverse and gender-balanced characters" is very much a racist and sexist criticism -- something to which Hamill is (perhaps deliberately) oblivious.
Hamill spun again in an Oct. 16 post, whining that the "beta male" characters was really the most "common" criticism of the show"
The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power has come to an end, with the eighth episode titled, ‘Alloyed,’ airing on Friday, October 14. I must say it's been a long journey filled with disappointment and too many cringeworthy moments to count.
Now one of the most common complaints among J.R.R Tolkien fans and popular critics was that male characters were portrayed as ‘weak’ and ‘cowardly’ throughout the series, among other things.
[...]
I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t take issue with strong female characters in shows - I certainly don’t. That being said, it would be nice if there was a little balance, right?
The key to good fiction is believability, and one could argue that the writers of Rings of Power focused on cramming in the woke feminist agenda, in turn, throwing plausibility out the window.
In this Amazon series you get the sense that the writers wanted you to know that women are stronger, smarter and better than men. It felt forced to say the least, which lead to a plethora of cringy, awkward, and unrealistic looking scenes — filled with beta males.
Hamill once again insisted that none of the criticism of the show could possibly have been racist:
You see, no one is allowed to have a negative opinion about the series because of Middle Earth’s new more diverse and gender-balanced characters - or at least that's what is seems like.
Those who are accusing critics of 'racism' are dishonest and lazy. Want proof? Take a look at the difference between audience scores for The Rings of PowerandHouse of Dragon.
The House of Dragon is also a high-profile, fantasy TV show with a diverse cast, and it happens to be hugely successful, with an average audience score of 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
So it appears the so called 'racist backlash' against Rings of Power actually had nothing to do with the new diverse cast and more to do with the plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the list goes on.
Note to Hamill: Complaining about the show's "diverse and gender-balanced characters" is an inherently racist criticism, and if you're still whining about that, all the attempts to distract from said racism by huffing about "beta males" and citing reviews of a completely different show (in which she assumes without proof that the two shows appeal to exactly the same audience) doesn't change its racist nature.
WND's Root Predicted 'Red Tsunami' In Midterms -- Then Claimed Dems Stole Election When It Didn't Happen Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root confidently (and self-aggrandizingly) predicted a Republican midterm landslide in his Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily column, headlined "Bet the House on a GOP landslide":
I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so.
I'm not just a political radio and TV talk-show host. I'm also a Vegas oddsmaker and professional sports handicapper – and I've got the 180-pound granite star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars to prove it. Before I ever got into politics, I spent 30 years as the top sports oddsmaker in America. The national media dubbed me "America's Oddsmaker" and "The King of Vegas Sports Gambling." I understand the odds.
I've used those skills to pick political winners too. After seven years on national radio and TV, and thousands of predictions about politics, my record is the most accurate in the media – by a mile. I'm not perfect, but I'm batting .999.
I called this one a long time ago. This election was always going to be about inflation, inflation, inflation. But clueless Democrats bet the house on abortion, abortion, abortion.
Have you seen the polls? The GOP is surging. Key races all over the country are moving to the GOP. Polls that I trust give the GOP a 4- to 7-point lead in the generic congressional poll, which translates to a historic landslide similar to GOP victories in 2010 and 2014.
[...]
Independent women have moved to the GOP by a remarkable, unheard of, unimaginable 32 points in one month. Why? Simple: inflation and crime have been raging out of control in the past month. The chickens have come home to roost.
It's all because Democrats bet on the wrong horse. They decided to gamble the whole election on abortion. I told the GOP to bet the house on inflation. Inflation trumps abortion every time.
"It's the economy and the women, stupid."
Root added vaccine fearmongering to his prediction in his Oct. 28 column:
The issues of inflation and crime worked like magic. A massive red wave landslide is upon us. As of days ago, I predicted a 50-seat GOP victory in the House and a 3- to 5-seat GOP victory in the Senate.
But then something happened that was so shocking that I believe it pushed even inflation and crime out of first place. This is the final blow that destroys the Democratic Party. This is so big that we don't have just a red wave coming on Nov. 8. We have a red tsunami.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just became the "Child Death Cult."
Last week the CDC voted unanimously to recommend every school district in the country mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for every child, or they can't go to public school. They recommend the COVID-19 vaccine be added to the "vaccine schedule." We know that most politicians, bureaucrats and schools – especially in blue states and cities – will comply.
This just became a life-or-death election. This just became the civil rights issue of the 21st century. This just became the parental rights issue of the millennium.
I believe this CDC decision is child abuse, reckless endangerment, negligence, medical malpractice, fraud, insanity, conspiracy, coverup and crimes against humanity, all rolled into one.
[...]
Every parent in America – especially mama bears – now has a life-or-death reason to vote 100% straight-ticket Republican for the midterms: to protect your precious, innocent children from an experimental, emergency-use-only, rushed-to-production vaccine that has proven dangerous and deadly all over the world.
Because if you live in a blue state, every child will be force-vaccinated, and all parental rights will be nullified.
[...]
Every parent in America who loves their children, who has no interest in turning them into a combination of guinea pig and crash-test dummy, has only one choice on Nov. 8 ...
VOTE REPUBLICAN.
This isn't a red wave anymore. This will be a Republican red tsunami.
Root spent his Nov. 5 column boast that even purported Democratic attempts to steal the election won't stop the "red tsunami":
The final sad days of desperation and depression are setting in for Democrats. They know a disaster is upon them. They know this coming Tuesday is a "disaster-level event" for the Democratic Party. For all intents and purposes, Democrats may cease to exist as a major party after Tuesday. The red wave landslide is that big.
It's now morphed into a red tsunami.
There's nothing left for Democrats to do now but try to rig and cheat ... and after the fact, claim the GOP stole the election. Classic Saul Alinsky strategy. Look in the mirror and whatever you see, blame your opposition for what you are and what you do.
But even their best rigging and election fraud won't work this time. Democrats can affect about 6 to 8 points. Maybe 10 points in a best-case scenario. That's the most they can get away with. But this GOP landslide is so big that nothing can stop it. It's a tsunami that will overwhelm the usual 6- to 8-point Democrat effect. Democrats are powerless to stop a double-digit GOP win. This one may be 15 to 20 points.
[...]
The final sad days of the Democrats are about a confused and hated president with dementia; an ex-president (Obama) despised by middle America; a House speaker (Nancy Pelosi) whose self-destructive husband gets himself in life-or-death trouble every time Nancy leaves the mansion; abortion, abortion and abortion.
But the gang who couldn't shoot straight forgot inflation, gas, groceries, rent and the economy, stupid.
On Tuesday they will find out what matters to America. Even the usual Democrat attempts at rigging and stealing won't be able to overcome the tens of millions of angry middle-class Americans coming with pitchforks to take back this country.
But the "red tsunami" didn't happen.Which means Root did exactly what you'd expect -- which, of course, was not apologizing for being so wrong. In his Nov. 11 column, he declared that the election was stolen again:
When something is so obvious, if the outcome makes no sense, if the outcome is literally impossible, then it is what it is. Forget "proof." You know it. You saw it. You felt it. You experienced it. It happened. It's real.
It seems the 2022 midterm was just stolen. Just like 2020.
If you disagree, you're delusional, or terribly naive, or brain-dead. Or you're in on the fix.
It's time to admit we're all part of a massive experiment in fraud, theft, brainwashing and gaslighting to a degree never seen in world history.
Think of all the times in just the past few years you've been gaslighted. I believe they lied to you about open borders … they lied about Hillary's 30,000 deleted emails … they lied about spying on former President Donald Trump … they lied about Russian collusion … they lied about a perfectly fine Ukrainian phone call … they lied about massive Biden corruption in Ukraine and China … they lied about the Hunter Biden laptop … they lied about the origins of COVID-19 … they lied about the need for lockdowns and masks … they lied about the need for COVID-19 vaccines … they lied about the vaccines being "safe and effective" … they lied and covered up all the deaths and injuries from the vaccine … they lied about the success of miracle drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin … they lied about the 2020 election.
You've been the victims of nonstop, severe gaslighting for a decade now. You're all part of a human psychology experiment in the limits that government and media can go in propaganda and brainwashing – while you can see they're lying right in front of your eyes.
And these are the exact same people now telling you Democrats just over-performed, and stopped a GOP red landslide, against all odds, without cheating and stealing the midterm election.
[...]
In this environment where Americans can't afford gas, groceries or rent, with the economy failing, inflation raging, scared to death of losing their jobs, living in cities plagued by violent crime, mass shoplifting, homelessness everywhere, streets lined with human waste and drug needles and failing schools intent on teaching your children to become masked transgender people.
In this environment, they all voted for Biden and the Democrats? Does that make sense to you?
That they looked around at the disaster one man has created in only two years, and they defied a century of historic midterm defeats for the party in power ... and voted for Democrats? Folks, you've been gaslighted.
Root provided no actual evidence of a stolen election, of course; instead, he claimed that Republicans should have done as well in the rest of the country as they did in Florida, which has "strict voter ID requirements, strict laws against voter fraud, severe prison terms for anyone caught trying to commit voter fraud, no mail-in ballots sent to every voter, no ballot drop boxes, no ballot harvesting, no ballots accepted for days after Election Day and no counting for days until the desired result is achieved by the Democratic Party." Root didn't see the opposite end of that argument, that all those restrictions suppressed non-Republican votes in the state, meaning that Republicans actually "stole" the election there.
MRC Complains Again That Coverage Of GOP Candidates Was 'Negative' (Read: Accurately Reported) Topic: Media Research Center
Rich Noyes was roused out of retirement to crank out one of his usual highly subjective coverage "studies" for the midterm elections, which got featured in a Nov. 1 post:
Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press. This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the President — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.
And another favor for Team Blue: the dominant topics within these campaign stories — GOP candidate controversies, abortion rights and the danger of “election deniers” — perfectly match the topmost items in Democrats’ campaign playbook. Our study shows discussion of these issues within campaign stories far eclipsed that of the economy and inflation, issues that voters deem most important.
This year’s study looked at the same period of time as we did in 2018, from September 1 to October 26. This year, the Big Three evening newscasts aired 115 stories which mentioned or discussed the midterm elections during, with a total airtime of 213 minutes, or about 60 percent more than the 130 minutes we tallied four years ago.
It focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media. Fox News was not evaluated at all.
The study explicitly rejects the idea of neutral coverage -- even though that's arguably the bulk of news coverage -- dishonestly counting only "clearly positive and negative statements."
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC's work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn't it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
Indeed, Noyes whined:
Most of this year’s discussion centered on four candidates: Republicans Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz and Kari Lake, and Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman’s bad press (81% negative, mostly comments panning his dreadful debate performance) was the worst of any Democrat, but it was better than any of the top Republicans. His Senate rival, Oz, was hit with 82 percent negative press, while Georgia’s Herschel Walker was slammed with 50 negative statements vs. six positive ones, an 89 percent negative spin.
That’s still better than Arizona’s Kari Lake, who was on the receiving end of nine evaluative comments, all negative, giving her a 100 percent negative press score.
While no Democratic candidate other than Fetterman received heavy coverage, there were occasional positive features for several of them, contributing to the Democrats’ more positive press. Alaska House candidate Mary Peltola, for example, was profiled in a glowing September 24 CBS Evening News story about her “milestone” status as the first native Alaskan in Congress.
Of course, the MRC hurlednothingbutnegativity at Fetterman and played defense for Walker over the abortion allegations. Noyes offered no advice on Walker's abortion scandal should have been covered in a "positive" manner (read: framed in right-wing talking points).
Noyes dishonestly whined further:
Viewers and voters seeking election news have more choices than ever, but even today, the Big Three remain uniquely powerful, with relatively large audiences (collectively, about 20 million viewers per night) of citizens who are not as ideologically-established as the fans of wall-to-wall cable news.
So while the establishment media fret about dangers to democracy, there’s a danger in a powerful partisan media passing itself off as objective or centrist, when the reality is that the networks are now open advocates for the success of one party over the other.
Meanwhile, the MRC refuses to admit that right-wing outlets like Fox News have an ideological bias, let alone spend some of its "media research" evaluating just how biased they are. That's because it depends on those outlets to advance its partisan talking points, and exposing their bias would be counterproductive to an ally.
Scaring its dwindling right-wing audience into voting for Repubicans and against Democrats is one thing WorldNetDaily just loves to do, so it's not surprising that the fearmongering form WND columnists crested the evening before the midterms, the final pre-election columns readers would see. Let's review how that went.
We've
What's a good sign that you're a right-wing hack who likes to peddle dubious claims and outright falsehoods and wants to get your views out without having to answer challenging questions about them? You choose to sit down for an interview with WorldNetDaily. 
We've noted
By contrast to its 
As with 
How do you know the employment numbers were good under a Democratic president? CNSNews.com's lead story 
At the Media Research Center, you're only a good whistleblower if you advance right-wing narratives, like 
We've noted
As the midterm elections approached, CNSNews.com endeavored to be a Repuiblian Party mouthpiece by giving Republican politicians and partisans a platform to peddle partisan talking points unencumbered by such inconvenient things like balance or fact-checking. For example:
A Sept. 7 
Wayne Allyn Root confidently (and self-aggrandizingly) predicted a Republican midterm landslide in his Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily 
Rich Noyes was roused out of retirement to crank out one of his usual highly subjective coverage "studies" for the midterm elections, which got featured in a Nov. 1 
