CNS Moving Back To Defending Israel Over Death Of U.S.-Palestinian Journalist Topic: CNSNews.com
A while back, we noted how CNSNews.com was actually publishing articles that were a bit critical of Israel, whom it has long praised as part of right-wing orthodoxy. Apparently it got the message it was falling out of step because it's reeled that in a bit.
One Israel-related story CNS has been following has been the death of Palestinian-American journlalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed covering a protest in the West Bank. It was immediately suspected that Abu Aleh was shot by someone in the Israeli Defense Force, and even Israel-friendly CNS reporter Patrick Goodenough seemed to concede that. In a May 12 article, he noted the "widespread criticism" of Israel over Abu Aleh's death and repeated Israeli officials claiming that they would conduct a thorough investigation. A July 6 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman noted U.S. findings that an IDF bullet killed her:
On July 4, the U.S. State Department announced that after extensive investigations by several parties, overseen by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC), it was concluded that the gunfire which killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a U.S.-Palestinian citizen and journalist, likely came from Israeli Defense Forces.
Akleh, who had worked for Al Jazeera since 1997, was shot in the head and killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other reporters when she was shot.
Al Jazeera journalist Ali al-Samoudi, who was at the scene, was hit in his back with a bullet. He survived.
[...]
National Public Radio reported that Israel "has strongly denied she [Akleh] was deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have hit her by mistake during an exchange of fire with a militant."
Journalist Al-Samoudi told Al Jazeera there were no Palestinian militants at the scene when Akleh was killed.
This was followed by a July 19 article by Chapman noting that "In his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) last week, President Joe Biden raised the issue of the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by Saudi officials. In response, MBS reminded Biden of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and also asked what the U.S. was doing about the recent killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh allegedly by Israeli forces."
Chapman started to return to pro-Israel form in a Sept. 7 article:
Although the Israeli military admitted on Monday there was a "high probability" that one of its soldiers shot dead U.S.-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh back in May, Israel's prime minister, Yair Lapid, rejected any suggestion that the U.S. would influence its rules of engagement for soldiers dealing with violent conflicts.
The U.S. announced on Tuesday, Sept. 6, that it would "press Israel" to "review its policies and practices" in such instances because of Akleh's death.
"[N]o one will dictate open fire regulations to us when we are fighting for our lives," said Prime Minister Lapid on Sept. 7, as reported in Haaretz.
He added that he would "not allow them to put an IDF soldier on trial who defended himself against fire from terrorists, just to receive a round of applause from the world."
[...]
On Sept. 5, the Israel military report stated there was a "high probability" that one of its soldiers accidentally shot Akhel. The report further said no one would be punished for the shooting, reported the Associated Press.
Chapman also exhibited sloppiness in repeatedly misspelling Abu Akleh's name in his article.
Apparently, though, it has been decided that nobody is to make Israel feel bad about killing Abu Akleh, and as a Nov. 17 article by Goodenough documents, that order came from none other than the guy who employs the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey:
Anyone involved the decision to launch an FBI investigation into the death of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli security operation “should be fired or impeached,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said this week, responding to a move that sparked strong pushback in Jerusalem.
“This administration has spent its time in office weaponizing the DOJ to target their political enemies as a matter of policy, and now they have allowed that tactic to bleed into their obsession with undermining our Israeli allies,” Cruz said in a statement.
While the news of an FBI probe into the shooting of the Al-Jazeera journalist – evidently by an Israeli soldier – is being welcomed by some Democratic lawmakers, Israel’s outgoing government says the Israeli Defense Forces will not cooperate.
“IDF soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI nor by any foreign body or state, friendly as it may be,” caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid told lawmakers in the Knesset on Tuesday. “We will not abandon IDF soldiers to foreign investigations, and we expressed our strong protest to the Americans at the appropriate levels.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz in an earlier statement called the investigation “a serious mistake.”
“The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the case details were shared,” Gantz said. “I have delivered a message to U.S. representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers and that we will not cooperate with an external investigation.”
[...]
In his statement, Cruz accused the Biden administration of “unleashing the FBI” on Israel and Netanyahu, whom it views “as political enemies.”
“Our Israeli allies have, since the very beginning, cooperated closely with the United States in investigating this incident, and the State Department and Defense Departments had already drawn their conclusions,” he said.
“This outrage underscores how corrupt and blatantly politicized the Justice Department has become, and how entirely beholden to the radical left-wing Squad Democrats really are.”
“Everyone involved with this debacle should be fired or impeached – all the way up to Attorney General Garland.”
Goodenough didn't explain why Cruz did not make the same demand of the IDF forces involved in Abu Akleh's death, and Goodenough cited no consequences anyone in the IDF has faced as a result of killing a journalist.
MRC Bashes Pelosi Again, Lashes Out At Anyone Saying Nice Things About Her Topic: Media Research Center
Fresh off trying to deny that the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband could possibly have been inspired by right-wing vitriol toward her, the Media Research Center greeted Pelosi stepping down from House leadership as her stint as House majority leader end with, unsurprisingly, more right-wing vitriol. Alex Christy complained in a Nov. 17 post:
From Nancy Pelosi herself to her white suit to her relationship with former President Trump, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and her Thursday guests could not stop gushing over Pelosi before and after her speech announcing she step down from House Democratic leadership in the next Congress.
Before the speech, Mitchell had a difficult time keeping it together as she declared, “And [Capitol Hill correspondent] Ali Vitali, we've heard all these scenarios that, you know, there was one report Jon Meacham had contributed to the speech—speeches we should say because they’re were different options, but eventually, she was rewriting herself because she knows herself better than anyone, of course.”
[...]
After the speech, Vitali also fawned over Pelosi and her clothes, “Pelosi making a nod to all of those as she stood there in that iconic white pantsuit that we have seen her wear time and again at these momentous, historical inflection points, a nod to the suffragettes and the women’s movement.”
After touching on Pelosi’s role in passing Obamacare, Vitali also hyped her relationship with Trump, “And then, of course, the work that she's done over the course of the pandemic, the work that she did on accountability around Donald Trump during the era of his government.”
“Accountability” is now less than two months away from being redefined as “obstructionist” or “partisan witch hunts.”
Just as MSNBC couldn’t contain its adoration Thursday for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as she announced she wouldn’t be seeking reelection to House Democratic leadership, CNN was also on Team Pelosi and nowhere near Chris Licht’s model of delivering the news as hosts and other supposed journalists swooned over the “spunky grandmother” as akin to “great performer on the stage or a great athlete” walking away.
And despite her being radically pro-abortion, CNN had the gall to insist she’s dedicated her “career” to helping “children.” That is, the ones she’s allowing to live, of course.
[...]
King had more eyebrow-raising moments as he argued “the connective tissue in her career is children and China in the sense that she has always pushed programs to help children, whether education programs, health programs” (minus the whole abortion thing) as well as being “a fierce critic of China.”
Cornish stepped in moments later and not content with that. Instead he boasted she’s more than “a spunky grandma,” but someone who “was there for the most consequential moments of the last 15 years legislatively.” Obviously, King seconded her on the “spunky grandmother” line.
Kevin Tober served up more attacks on anyone who committed the offense of saying something nice about Pelosi:
With the news Thursday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be stepping down from Democratic House leadership, ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News spent time gushing over Pelosi’s “historic” tenure as speaker of the House and highlighted her publicized fights with former President Trump and her infamous temper tantrum after his 2020 State of the Union address where she tore up a copy of his address in anger.
On ABC, Capitol Hill correspondent Rachel Scott dramatically announced Pelosi’s “historic passing of the torch.” Scott could barely contain herself when she drooled that “Pelosi is a singular figure in American history.”
Scott even praised Pelosi’s petulant fights with former President Trump: “Pelosi worked with four Presidents, often going toe to toe with Donald Trump.”
Tober didn't explain why Trump wasn't the petulant one. Christy returned to whine some more the next day:
The never-ending worship of Nancy Pelosi continued on Friday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC as host Mika Brzezinski repeatedly asked House Republicans “who raised you?” in response to the lack of praise from the GOP and demanded they make their mothers proud by reversing course.
Brzezinski’s angry rant was in response to reading Sen. Mitch McConnell’s statement on Pelosi’s decision to step down from leadership and wondered why other Republicans couldn’t do the same, “End of an era, first woman to serve as speaker, an amazing career, a mother of five, and by the way, her husband was just attacked as a result of political violence. This would have been the moment to step up and show some grace.”
[...]
Pelosi didn’t die and contrary to what USA Today Washington bureau chief and Pelosi biographer Susan Page said at the beginning of Brzezinski’s diatribe, she isn’t even retiring from Congress. She simply decided to become a backbencher. The demand that you praise a hyper-partisan figure for that is one that only goes one way.
Following suit from Thursday night, the flagship Friday morning broadcast network news shows were bursting with adulation for the “end of an era” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced she wouldn’t seek reelection to House Democratic leadership. On ABC and NBC, they called her a “hero” and “icon” “went toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful men in the world” and whose “reign...was legendary.”
ABC’s Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos said his piece, lamenting her absence at the top “marks a seismic shift” before giving way to congressional correspondent Rachel Scott boasting of Pelosi as “the most powerful woman in Washington for decades.”
[...]
On NBC’s Today, congressional correspondent (and former CNNer) Ryan Nobles couldn’t hide his feelings. He told co-host Hoda Kot[b] that “Pelosi's reign over the Democratic caucus was legendary” and that she “went toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful men in the world and rarely backed down, making her a hero in her party and enemy number one for Republicans.”
Nobles reiterated moments later that Pelosi was “[a]n icon to Democrats and a villain to Republicans” and, as part of her farewell to leadership, she “paid homage to the presidents she worked with” even though she only touched on three of them.
[...]
And over on CBS Mornings, they too joined in on the “end of an era” laments with co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King boasting Pelosi was “winning rare praise from both sides of the aisle and I understand there were a lot of tears in the room yesterday.”
Christy even attacked a historian for issuing a judgment on Pelosi:
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley joined CNN Inside Politics John King on Friday to talk about Nancy Pelosi’s place in history. As Brinkley tells it, Pelosi is the most significant Speaker in American history because she helped pass liberal legislation, mainly Obamacare.
King began by asking, “Nancy Pelosi's place in history will be what?,” Brinkley got straight to the point, “It's large. I think she's maybe the most important Speaker of the House in American history.”
After running through some of the other contenders, Brinkley gave his reasoning, “Nancy Pelosi has a legacy that is so large not just for shattering the glass ceiling of being a woman but I think the Affordable Care Act.”
Brinkley was not content to just label Obamacare as a significant piece of legislation, but had to qualify that it was good legislation as well, “I mean, that really has provided so many people with the ability to pay for operations, surgical procedures, saved lives, and Obama and Harry Reid say it couldn't be done without Nancy Pelosi. That's a big feather in her cap and John, I don't think she's going away.”
Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) second and final stint as Speaker of the House is over, and the establishment media are waxing sentimental. Since she announced her retirement from Democratic leadership, media types have heaped praise and adoration on the Congresswoman: “legendary!” “incredible!” “a towering figure!”
On Thursday, the Washington Post ran a goopy love letter to the Speaker from purple prose enthusiast Eugene Robinson, who went with the subtle headline, “Nancy Pelosi was the most consequential speaker of our time.”
[...]
But the grand prize for excessive Pelosi praise goes to MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski. On Friday, theMorning Joeco-host gushed: “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, it’s sort of hard not to be in awe of what she has accomplished. Unless you’re in a cult.”
Of course, journalists slobbering all over Democratic politicians is fairly unremarkable. But given the Republicans’ rather lackluster performance in the recent midterm elections, now more than ever it’s worth noting just how subservient the media are to Democrats.
Says a guy who just demonstrated how subservient he and his employer are to Republicans. And Tierin-Rose Mandelburg didn't want to feel left out, so she contributed her own whinefest:
Boo hoo!
Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she will not seek reelection as the Democratic House Leader. Though essentially Pelosi was forced to step down due to the fact that Republicans took back the house and she'll be 127 yrs old any day now, Hollywood celebs and blue check elitists used the opportunity to fawn over her success in office.
Singer Barbara Streisend claimed that the world is going to miss having Pelosi as our speaker … I guess I’m not part of this world then.
[...]
The hashtags #ThankYouMadamSpeaker and #ThankYouSpeakerPelosi also began trending on twitter in honor of her exit.
Legacy media also praised Pelosi likening her to an "icon," "legendary," and "the most important" speaker "in American history." Eat it, Henry Clay!
The fact that blue checks praise Pelosi's every movement and motive is honestly, embarrassing.
More embarrassing than Mandelburg and her co-workers reflexively denigrating Pelosi and lashing out at anyone who dared to say something nice about her just for the sake of a paycheck?
Newsmax Takes More Shots At Tucker Carlson For Supporting Russia Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax may be pro-Trump right-wing hacks, but they are not afraid to take shots atFox News' Tucker Carlson over his support of Russia over its unprovoked war against Ukraine. (It's one of thre ways it differentiates itself from its Fox News competition.) Eric Mack reported in a Sept. 25 article:
Russia's state media are using clips of Fox News' Tucker Carlson to support Vladimir Putin's war efforts in Ukraine, according to multiple reports, including from Newsweek.
As Russian protests are being waged on Moscow streets, a social media video posted by Russian Media Monitor's Julia Davis shows war propaganda using video clips of Fox's Carlson.
"Meanwhile in Russia: see for yourself how clips of Tucker Carlson are being used on Kremlin-controlled state TV for their war propaganda, as well as anti-American and genocidal anti-Ukrainian messaging," Davis tweeted Saturday.
Last Thursday night, Carlson took to his top-rated Fox show to say Russia would inevitably win its war against Ukraine, claiming the size of its military and population would overcome its smaller neighbor.
Carlson did not address that the Ukraine military had forced Russian troops to give up its northern offensive against Kyiv and had taken back more than 3,000 square miles of Russian-occupied territory in the east.
Without evidence, Carlson, whom Russian TV hailed the "most popular American TV anchor," claimed Biden opposed a settlement to end the war back in April, which allegedly would have had Russia leaving Ukraine for the guarantee Ukraine would not join NATO.
Dick Morris followed up with a column the next day:
Vladimir Putin is desperate.
And so is Tucker Carlson.
Anyone who caught his Fox News monologue Thursday night could see it firsthand.
Carlson appears to have a lot invested in Russia winning its war against Ukraine.
But Russia is losing that war.
And badly.
[...]
Carlson isn’t bluffing either.
He really is invested in Russia winning this war, even if it’s losing right before our very eyes.
Before the war started Carlson said he would side with Russia if there was ever a war.
He even applauded as Russia moved troops to the Ukraine border. Russia was justified, he claimed.
And since Russia’s February 2022 unprovoked attack on a free, democratic, and sovereign Ukraine, he has used every opportunity to oppose Ukraine.
And he does so oftentimes with exaggerated claims and phony allegations.
[...]
I have many issues with Biden, but the idea he is seeking to engage Russia in a major war is simply not true.
But the facts just don’t matter to Tucker Carlson.
He’s on a mission.
The U.S. should continue to support the underdog, Ukraine. The U.S. supports Taiwan and Israel, both small nations facing giant adversaries.
And our resolve with Ukraine is already paying big dividends.
China is clearly reluctant now to invade Taiwan, and Iran has to think twice about striking Israel or other U.S. allies.
Fortunately, we are not giving in to Putin’s blackmail.
And as long as good sense prevails, we never will.
Even former Fox News host Eric Bolling got into the act, as recounted in a Dec. 9 article:
Newsmax host Eric Bolling delivered a stinging rebuke Thursday night of Tucker Carlson, calling the Fox News host a tool of Russian propaganda after Carlson made recent criticisms of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Bolling used the opening monologue on his show to slam Carlson for charges he made Wednesday on his show, falsely claiming, among other matters, Zelenskyy was persecuting Christians.
Carlson has claimed Zelenskyy is shutting down churches, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Bolling said Carlson did not share with his audience crucial information, including the fact Zelenskyy is not persecuting Christians or shutting churches down indiscriminately.
The Newsmax host said Ukraine did ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church because of its direct ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[...]
Bolling said Ukraine has two Orthodox churches, both independently governed, the Independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, whose leader Patriarch Kirill has been an unabashed supporter of Putin's.
"On March 6, Kirill preached holy war against Ukraine," Bolling said.
"Kirill's reputed wealth in the billions is thanks to his ties to Putin and long-suspected ties to Russia's spy outfits. So Kirill routinely urges his flock of millions to support Putin's war effort."
Bolling said Zelenskyy was simply suppressing an enemy faction in his country.
"He's banning a Putin mouthpiece, a blatant propagandist and someone who has validated Putin's killing spree since he moment of the invasion," Bolling said.
Supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression isn't a high bar, but it is something Newsmax does better than Fox News.
And he's still in the tank for Russia. His Sept. 8 column went after President Biden's speech calling out extremist MAGA Republicans (as many in the ConWeb did) but with the twist of complaining that the speech was targeting Russia and singing Vladimir Putin's praise for how well the war is purportedly going for Russia:
Could OBiden's Nazi-themed speech of Sept. 1 have been subtle psychological preparation of the American people for imminent war with Russia and a not-so subtle taunt and mockery of Vladimir Putin's pledge to de-Nazify Ukraine (and the West)?
[...]
Trump's greatest sin per Obama/Clinton propaganda is his "treasonous collusion with Russia." No amount of hard-proof debunking will ever kill that accusation: It is the Hitlerian Big Lie of our time and the essential cornerstone of the defense strategy of the criminal conspirators behind the political enslavement of Ukraine and the plundering of its vast riches. Only Russia has the power to break the propagandists' stranglehold and expose their crimes, and that is the main reason for the unprecedented flood of U.S. money and weaponry into Ukraine, even to the point of drawing down our own arsenal, and the heartbreaking, needless sacrifice of countless Ukrainian lives.
Of course, much of that treasure is to buy the silence and cooperation of their Ukrainian oligarch co-conspirators, whom they rightfully fear will flip on them if they believe criminal prosecutions by a victorious Russia are inevitable. And that prospect looms larger every day because, contrary to U.S. war propaganda, Russian has been handily winning the war all along and has just crushed the best of the best of the remainder of the U.S. trained Ukrainian army in its long-awaited counter-offensive along the Donbass front. Truth be told, it was a humiliating disaster.
At this point, the only hope of a Ukrainian victory, and a continuation of the cover-up of the Ukrainian crime scene, is direct U.S. military involvement. That would mean WWIII (which may have been the plan all along, in furtherance of the already-unfolding global great collapse before the Great Reset, framing Putin as the scapegoat for all of it). How it starts is an open question, but some sort of false-flag here or there is likely. When? Perhaps on 9/11, just like their Benghazi debacle – a do-over on a grander scale.
[Sept. 10 update: Yesterday's significant Ukrainian breakthrough against Lugansk People's Republic forces on the northern Donbass front appears to be a very thinly veiled U.S./NATO-led operation, in coordination with western media suddenly bragging about calling Putin's bluff on outside interference. Obama's playbook since the 2014 Maidan coup has always been to force Russia to take action through un-ignorable provocations and then accuse Russia of unprovoked aggression. This pivotal battle, especially if it causes Russia to strike NATO in retaliation (or a false flag is staged to make it look like Russia did), could be the trigger to WWIII. Is the timing of this battle on the weekend of the 9/11 anniversary just coincidence?]
For his Sept. 26 column, Lively spent a lot of time in a homophobic tirade against Elton John before he got around to recounting a previous visit to Ukraine to spread even more homophobia:
This brings me to my wartime mission to Ukraine. I'm, of course, not talking about the current Ukraine/Russia war. Under the current wartime dictatorship of the LGBT zealot and former TV drag performer Volodymyr Zelensky, a world-renowned "homophobe" like me likely wouldn't survive long there. In fact, the only speaking invitation I have ever turned down in my life due to a Holy Spirit "check" in my spirit was a request to do some pro-family seminars in Ukraine in (I think) 2018. It reminded me of what the Apostle Paul described in Acts 16:6. I knew in my spirit if I went Ukraine on that trip I would be killed or otherwise incapacitated by the Obama/Soros/Clinton/Biden agents already running the country by then from the shadows.
When Zelensky (the Jewish Barack Obama) says he wants to fundamentally transform Ukraine into a European Israel he doesn't mean the Orthodox Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem; he means Tel Aviv, which advertises itself as the "Gay Capital of the World." And to show just how much this is a priority for him, he has taken time to push for "gay marriage" even during the war! [Warning: highly offensive graphic at link.]
No, MY war has always been the culture war, and my mission to Ukraine was in June of 2007 – when the early groundwork for the current kinetic war was only just being prepared by Sen. Barack Obama, George W. Bush's point man for setting up the network of bioweapons labs across Ukraine.
It will come as no surprise that the claim of a "network of bioweapons labs across Ukraine" is Russian disinformation. The whining continued:
Shortly afterward, I was in Ukraine at the same time Elton John was there to normalize the LGBT agenda and lifestyles to the formerly morally conservative Ukrainian people by giving a free concert in Kyiv. It was just another of those David and Goliath battles I've been in all my life: The nobody Scott Lively trying to help local believers organize a resistance while the globalists blitzkreig'd the culture with a super-star reprobate.
But God will have the last word in this war, and I'm happy to be on His side no matter how badly it looks like it's going through worldly eyes.
Lively kept shilling for Putin in his Oct. 3 column:
Preface: I've been monitoring the Russia/Ukraine war very closely since the beginning and comparing the non-stop shamefully dishonest propaganda of the OBiden-controlled media with news from independent, mostly pro-Russian sources. What matters to me is truth, and that is coming almost exclusively from the pro-Russian side: It's almost exactly the reverse of the U.S./USSR contest of the Cold War, with America now taking the old Soviet role and the Russian Federation taking the ethical higher ground formerly held by the U.S.
Everything done by Putin in this conflict is reasoned, rational and either clearly legal under international law or clearly defensible by comparison to U.S. interventions in foreign nations, which our government insist are legal.
If you don't share that view, it's likely the fault of your "news" sources. Tag-teaming propaganda by the leftist and neocon (RINO) media (which includes huge swaths of Christian media controlled by neocons like Pence, Romney and Ryan) is the only reason so many Americans are backing OBiden on this war. If the average American knew what I know from my independent research, there would never even have been a Russian incursion into Ukraine because we would all recognize that our government has nefariously orchestrated every single step of this conflict since at least 2014.
That orchestration includes especially the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, which the lying media has the audacity to call "unprovoked" after deliberately covering up the very serious provocations. The psyops campaign against our own people regarding Ukraine has been done at a John 8:44, Father-of-Lies level of deception, particularly regarding the media-created "war crimes" to stir public outrage and keep the cash flowing into the war machine. (Never forget what these exact same propagandists did and are still doing to Donald Trump! They. can. not. be. trusted. about. anything.)
This was capped off by Lively calling Secretary of State Antony Blinken "the Obergruppenfuhrer of the CIA." (Um, doesn't WND hate it when people are likened to Nazis?) Still, Lively insisted on blaming everyone but Russia for Russia's aggression:
Frankly, every death in Ukraine since as least April (when OBiden sent Boris Johnson to kill the peace deal that Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France had brought within inches of adoption) has been the fault of our government. And realistically, the death toll going back all the way to the 2014 Obama/Soros Maidan coup, including the 14,000 people killed in the Donbass by Ukrainian shelling through February 2022, is "our" fault, too.
Looking at it all from the highest level of geopolitical pragmatism, there would be a reasonably strong argument to be made for preserving U.S. global hegemony and discouraging Russia from building a multi-polar alternative IF American values and vision reflected the altruistic Christian heritage of our past. But American "values" today are the most corrupt and perverse of any nation on earth, and the future our leaders envision is a dystopian transhumanist freak show of woke tyrants and sexual deviants.
NEW ARTICLE: Plotting Against Paul Pelosi Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had been targeting Nancy Pelosi's husband for months. When a man broke into their house and attacked him with a hammer, the MRC feigned outrage that others were suggesting right-wing animus that might have provoked it. Read more >>
MRC Whines That Misinformation About Slow Ariz. Vote Count Got Called Out Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Jeffrey Clark spent a post on Nov. 8, the day of the midterm elections, whining that "The liberal media cranked the propaganda meter up to 100 before and during the midterm elections, warning that Big Tech was acting as a conduit for 'election misinformation' and not censoring enough people for pushing 'conspiracy theories,'" citing as an example how "The New York Times rebuked 'right-wing fraud claims' spreading online about Maricopa County, Ariz., in a Nov. 8 story." Clark didn't explain how all that stuff wasn't misinformation.
And indeed, after the election the MRC spread right-wing misinformation about vote counting in Maricopa County and in Arizona as a whole, darkly hinting that the slow count meant election fraud was going on. Curtis Houck pushed it in a Nov. 11 post:
During Friday’s Good Morning America, ABC’s senior national correspondent Terry Moran made it clear he’s not going to tolerant anyone who decries the reality that it’s unclear when the final votes will be tallied in states like Arizona. Why? Because, according to Moran, offering such gripes makes you a conspiracy theory calling into question a “normal” and “ordinary” process we should all accept.
Moran explained in a report from Phoenix that “[t]he counting here continues and there still hundreds of thousands of ballots left to go and officials here tell us that, despite what you might read on social media, that is not evidence of suspicious activity or any incompetence.”
As our Bill D’Agostino showed, Moran was one of many liberal journalists smearing Americans who, at a minimum, have wondered why some states can report votes in a few hours while others might need weeks.
Since election night on Tuesday, the talking heads on broadcast and cable news networks have been pedantically scolding their viewers that “counting votes takes time,” “this is normal,” and everyone needs to please “calm down.”
It’s hard to say whether they sound more like exasperated kindergarten teachers or preachy DMV employees, but either way, it’s incredibly obnoxious.
P.J. Gladnick got similarly huffy in a Nov. 12 post when the Washington Post pointed out how rightwingers were spreading conspiratorial disinformation about the slow Maricopa vote count:
Are you among the increasing number of people wondering why Maricopa County, Arizona can't count their votes on time? As of this writing, three days after the midterm elections, there are still over 400,000 ballots yet to be counted in Maricopa County. In fact, most of the votes might not even be counted until after the weekend according to KTAR-News radio in Phoenix, "Maricopa County now says most ballots won’t be counted by Friday: ‘The goalposts have changed.’"
If you dare to criticize the apparent incompetence of the pathetically delayed ballot counting, you could be guilty of "disinformation" according to a Washington Post editorial published on Wednesday, "Here’s the sad truth about election-related disinformation."
Gladnick followed that with a post the next day bashing an Arizona Republic columnist for calling out Fox News and losing Republican candidate Kari Lake (and even the New York Times) for spreading misinformation about the slow vote.
What Houck and Gladnick couldn't be bothered to do, however, was tell their readers the reason why the vote count in Maricopa County was slow. Meanwhile, an actual news organization did look into it -- and found that right-wing conspiracy-mongerers are in part responsinble, quoting former Maricopa County election official Tammy Patrick:
For one, Patrick says she thinks voters in Arizona have changed their voting behavior in response to all the misinformation that has been circulating about mail-in ballots.
"There has been this narrative around voting by mail that it is ripe with fraud and ... you shouldn't trust it," she says.
This distrust, Patrick says, could be why more voters decided to drop off their ballot at a polling site on Election Day, as opposed to mailing it days in advance.
"It's typical for Maricopa County to see about 180,000 ballots be turned in on Election Day," she says. "When I was there for that decade that was kind of the standard number."
This year, though, local election officials reported a whopping 290,000 ballots were dropped off at polling locations on Election Day.
Patrick added that all those mail-in ballots delivered in person have to be manually opened and have their signatures verified by bipartisan teams, which also takes time.
But facts don't matter when a bogus narrative is so much easier to spread, so Kevin Tober was on narrative patrol in a Nov. 14 post:
On Monday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, anchor Andrea Mitchell said with a straight face that the wildly dysfunctional election board in Maricopa County, Arizona has "some of the best vote-counting processes" despite the fact that it's been nearly a week since the election and we still don't have the complete election results reported. Apparently, Mitchell thinks this is normal behavior in a functioning democracy.
Turning to NBC's senior political editor Mark Murray, Mitchell turned the discussion to what's left to be counted in Maricopa County. "What's left out there in terms of how the vote keeps, you know, coming in," she asked.
[...]
At the time of publication, NBC and other networks have called the race for Hobbs, so it appears Murray was right in terms of who was the favorite to win.
This doesn't take away from the fact that Maricopa County appears incapable of running elections and tabulating the results. Mitchell is obviously delusional if she thinks the county "has some of the best vote-counting processes."
As multiple videos and reports emerged of “printer issues ” and other technical problems in Maricopa, The New York Times scolded Americans for exercising their free speech rights and sharing election-related concerns online.
The Times rebuked “right-wing fraud claims” spreading online about Maricopa County in a November 8th story. Another skewed Election Day article by Bloomberg News framed “Arizona Republicans” as “election deniers” airing “baseless fraud claims over Arizona glitches.”
The Times even claimed that Americans who raised concerns on social media were just paranoid and guilty of the supposed offense of peddling dangerous views in “right-wing media.”
Bloomberg News parroted a similar angle, claiming that “Arizona Republicans are seizing on technical problems with ballot tabulation machines in the state’s largest county to make unsubstantiated claims about the validity of Tuesday’s elections.”
Even after the election, NBC Philadelphia fear-mongered that “Maricopa County remained the epicenter of election misinformation.”
It would seem that legacy media’s M.O. is to aid leftists by parroting their hive-mind narrative and denouncing every other opinion that disagrees with it as so-called “misinformation.”
Not that Iselin exhibited any interest in dispelling such misinformation, of course. the "printer issues" in Maricopa did not keep anyone from lawfully casting their votes, and it appears the cause of the issues was the thickness of the paper and the high volume of in-person voting -- and nothing nefarious.
But why report the facts when conspiracy theories and whining about getting called out for spreading them get so many more clicks? That's the path the MRC chose.
WND Columnist Wants More White Babies, Fewer From Poor, 'Lower-Intelligent' Immigrants Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Master set up his Nov. 22 WorldNetDaily column this way:
On Nov. 16, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stated that the United States needed more immigrants to offset the low birth rate of Americans. He added that because of the low birth rate, the U.S. needed to provide a path to citizenship for illegal aliens (somewhere between 11 and 40 million of them now in the country) and for "Dreamers."
Bloomberg Business Week pointed out Nov. 7 how the birth rate in America is too low to sustain and grow the population and that the poorest and least-educated countries have the higher birth rates. The countries that can afford children have the lowest birth rates, while those countries that can least afford them have the highest.
In "The Demographic Cliff," Harry Dent pointed out almost 20 years ago that the low birth rates in Caucasian countries, industrialized countries, would cause tremendous problems. The Caucasian portion of the world's population fell from 25% to 10% in just 30 years.
In "The Bell Curve" from 1996, the authors proved that the low birth rates in industrial countries vs. the high birth rates in Third World countries was hurting the world in multiple ways.
We can all see where he's going with this: racial eugenics. And go there he does, though he tries to hide it by blaming low white birth rates on liberals who force too much education on women:
So what caused this low birth rate among Caucasians and with industrialized nations? As pointed out by Virginia Raines and Sue Sarkis in different email exchange groups, the birth rate falls as a population becomes more educated and more affluent. Intellectuals brainwash our children into believing that careers are hindered by children and that motherhood is slavery – so birth rates fall as wealth and careers become more important than bringing life into the world.
Therefore, the lower-intelligent and poorer populations becomes a larger percentage of humanity as the population of educated, affluent people falls.
Master never explains how dumbed-down white women need to be to have more babies while being not as "lower-intelligent" as those swarthy poor immigrants. Yet somehow he wants to accomplish this by imposing a right-wing political agenda on the country, claiming that "encouraging more child birth right here in America" woiuld involve things like a flat tax, a universal draft, "placing religion back in the public eye in education, entertainment and every aspect of American life," "glorifying the job of mothers" and "changing funding to public schools (especially state colleges and high schools) so that any schools that push woke agendas are penalized."
So, right-wing indoctrination, then. Got it, Mike.
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy spent a Nov. 29 column complaining that Republicans' poor performance in the midterm elections was being blamed on Donald Trump and right-wing positions on abortion:
Since Election Day 2022, almost everyone has been playing Monday morning quarterback.
Today, it’s my turn.
Republicans seriously underperformed and the establishment/media points the finger at two big factors: Donald Trump and abortion.
Specifically, voters were turned off by former President Trump and they reacted negatively to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
If you look at election results across the nation, neither holds up as the real culprit.
Ruddy went on to cherry-pick elections where candidates who were both pro-Trump and anti-abortion either won or came close to winning (which is not the same thing as winning). Instead, he blamed Republicans for bad messaging:
So, what really happened on Election Day?
I believe the Republicans completely misread the electorate.
The GOP actually believed their own press releases (and yes, polls) and thought voters were just as furious as they were with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and their friends.
Republicans thought everyone was shocked by Biden’s spending policies, outraged over his border crisis, frightful of woke policies like defunding police, and were really angry over inflation.
But they weren’t.
They weren’t because on Election Day the economy was much stronger than the GOP admitted to.
Unemployment is at historic lows of 3.7%. Practically everyone who wants a job has one.
And yes, while the first two negative quarters of 2022 appeared recessionary, the GDP surged in the third quarter by 2.6%.
Inflation isn’t good, but its flipside is that there is a tremendous amount of cash in the economy.
Before COVID-19 started, the Fed reported $1.8 trillion in Americans’ checking accounts. Today, the amount stands at a record $2.3 trillion.
In my book, Biden’s massive COVID-19 stimulus and infrastructure bills ignited inflation. But Republicans did a poor job connecting the dots for voters.
Ruddy ultimately blamed Republican wedge issues like immigration that didn't resonate with voters as usual because the economy isn's as bad as Republicans insisted it was:
All across the nation incumbents—Democrats and Republicans—fared well on Election Day because voters generally liked the status quo.
So, here’s my takeaway from all of this: Republicans who lost the presidential popular vote by 3 million in 2016, by 7 million in 2020, and who saw few sparkles in 2022, need to go back to the drawing board.
The old GOP game plan of playing to a dwindling base of older white voters is a train wreck in progress.
Census data shows 2 million whites over age 50 die every year. These dying voters are being replaced by young millennials who are both multiethnic and progressively left.
Demographics mean pure and simple that Republicans need to offer independent and swing Democrat voters a positive reason to make the switch to them.
If they do that, they will be an unstoppable force in 2024 and beyond.
If they don’t, they risk oblivion.
Of course, abortion is a wedge issue too, but it still works well enough for it to escape blame. Trump, meanwhile, is a walking wedge issue, and while he had a good record of endorsements in Republican primaries (which Newsmax made sure to tell us all about), his endorsement record in the general election was much worse. And given that Ruddy has tied Newsmax's fortunes to being a pro-Trump sycophant, he certainly was not going to blame any election failures on the guy.
UPDATE: Ruddy's assessment that abortion didn't hurt Republican candidates was an echo of a Nov. 13 column by John Gizzi, who similarly cherry-picked races where Republicans won to assert that "abortion was not the deciding factor in the election." He went on to claim that "Republicans clearly underperformed in the 2022 midterms due to such factors as having poor candidates, being outspent by Democrats and running with an economy that is still strong with low unemployment," but did not discuss Trump as a factor.
CNS Takes Shots At Pelosi As She Leaves House Speakership Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, it seems, just can't stop taking shots at Nancy Pelosi -- even as she prepared to step aside as House speaker.
A Nov. 10 article by Craig Bannister complained that Pelosi said that Democrats “never intended” their January 6 Select Committee to be political and “it was never planned as a political tactic,” citing in response "Constitution Scholar Mark Levin" to rant that "the “illegitimate” hearings are an unconstitutional effort to indict and smear former President Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues" and "denied those accused of even the most basic rights of defendants in any criminal proceeding" (never mind that nobody has claimed that congressional hearings are criminal proceedings)
A Nov. 14 article by Susan Jones noted Pelosi praising Democratic performance in the midterm elections (which CNS had troubleadmitting), going on to add: "Pelosi said anecdotally, she's heard that the violent attack on her husband by a deranged man did influence the way people voted, and she called the Republican reaction to the attack 'disgraceful.' (In fact, many Republicans condemned the attack and offered condolences to the Pelosi family.)" (Actually, CNS played its usual game of whataboutism and whining to deflect from the attack.) This was followed by another article from Jones quoting her saying that "I don't have any plans to step away from Congress."
When Pelosi announced she would step aside as House speaker, Melanie Arter gave her the stenographic treatment in a Nov. 17 article:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Thursday that while she will continue to serve in Congress, she will not seek a leadership role next year.
“Scripture teaches us that for everything, there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. My friends, no matter what title you all my colleagues have bestowed upon me - speaker, leader, whip, there is no greater official honor for me than to stand on this floor and to speak for the people of San Francisco,” Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor.
Arter preceded that, however, with an article featuring Republican leader Kevin McCarthy gloating that "we have fired Nancy Pelosi" with Republican control of the House.
Quoting Pelosi making religious references became a bit of an obsession. An anonymously written article that day highlighted another Scripture reference -- then complained about its authorship:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) announced in a speech on the House floor this afternoon that she will not be seeking a leadership role in the newly elected House of Representatives—and quoted from the Prayer of St. Francis as she did so.
“And, again, for those who’ve sent me here, for the people of San Francisco, for entrusting me with the high honor of being their voice in Congress,” said Pelosi.
“In this continued work, I will strive to honor the call of the patron saint of our city, St. Francis: Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”
Scholars have not attributed the authorship of this prayer to St. Francis himself but trace its history only as far back as the early 20th century,
Another anonymously written article complained that Pelosi described herself as a “devout Catholic” and a “patriotic American.”
The faux respect for Pelosi stopped soon after that with a Nov. 18 article by Craig Bannister parroting Fox News host Tucker Carlson's attack on her, with some added Mark Levin whining that Pelosi was "angry, nasty ... no class to the end."
Pelosi didn't stop bringing the heat, though -- especailly in support of LGBTQ people -- and the CNS still complained about it. An anonymously written Nov. 21 article huffed:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) put out a statement on Sunday, honoring “Transgender Day of Remembrance” and attacking Republicans for “undermining the safety and well-being” of transgender individuals.
“As our nation marks Transgender Day of Remembrance, the House Democratic Caucus mourns the countless Americans stolen away by the scourge of transphobic violence, a crisis that continues to disproportionately harm trans people of color,” said Pelosi.
“Whether spouting dangerous rhetoric from cable news desks or openly bullying schoolchildren from the halls of power, MAGA Republicans are cruelly undermining the safety and well-being of our transgender community,” she said.
A Nov. 23 article, also anonymously written, was taken from the same statement and repeated some of the same remarks:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) put out a statement on Sunday in honor of the “Transgender Day of Remembrance” in which she vowed to fight to protect the rights of transgenders from, among others, “MAGA Republicans” and those “spouting dangerous rhetoric from cable news desks.”
“As our nation marks Transgender Day of Remembrance, the House Democratic Caucus mourns the countless Americans stolen away by the scourge of transphobic violence, a crisis that continues to disproportionately harm trans people of color,” said Pelosi. “Today, and every day, let us offer comfort to grieving loved ones, honor the memory of those killed and continue fighting to save lives from the wicked forces of hate.
“That fight remains more urgent than ever, as right-wing extremists target transgender Americans’ most fundamental rights and freedoms,” she said.
“Whether spouting dangerous rhetoric from cable news desks or openly bullying schoolchildren from the halls of power, MAGA Republicans are cruelly undermining the safety and well-being of our transgender community,” said Pelosi.
CNS did not explain why it felt the need to do two separate articles from the same relatively short statement when one would have worked just fine -- though CNS has done this before regarding pro-transgender remarks by Pelosi.
An anonymously written Nov. 25 article accused Pelosi of making a Thanksgiving message political:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) sent a “Dear Colleague letter” to her House Democrats—not House Republicans—on Thanksgiving Day in which she gave thanks to God.
“Each year on Thanksgiving, we pause to cherish the many blessings that God has bestowed upon us and upon our nation,” Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues.
On this all-American holiday, we break bread with family and friends and spend time in our communities,” she said.
“Personally, I am endlessly grateful for all of life’s blessings: for my dear husband Paul and for our beautiful family,” said Pelosi.
The anonymous writer didn't say whether Pelosi directing her Thanksgiving message only to her Democratic colleagues was a new thing or if it's something House speakers have always done. Otherwise, there was no need to make a big deal out of it.
MRC Has Yet Another Fit of Obama Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
Six years after leaving the presidency, Barack and Michelle Obama continue to live rent-free in the collective heads of the Media Research Center. In yetanotherone of its fits of Obama Derangement Syndrome, the MRC is now mad that Michelle Obama has a new book out. Alex Christy ranted in a Nov. 12 post:
The Saturday edition of Good Morning America on ABC previewed an upcoming 20/20 interview with former First Lady Michelle Obama. If the preview is anything to go buy [sic], it is more of a fan experience for Robin Roberts than an actual interview as she hyped “the saying she made famous.”
Host Janai Norman set the table, “Now to an ABC News exclusive. Our Robin Roberts sitting down with Michelle Obama for a 20/20 primetime special. The former first lady about to release her new book, The Light We Carry, and first on GMA we have a sneak peek of their conversation where Ms. Obama talks about the motto that became her rallying cry. Check it out.”
In the clip, Roberts not only echoed those sentiments, she took the fawning to another level, “For nearly two decades the world has watched Michele Obama campaign for her husband, make history as the first black family in the White House and motivate many through the saying she made famous.”
Ben Shapiro was blunt on Twitter. He had discovered “The most sycophantic book review ever written.” The book was the second tome from multi-millionaire author and advice guru Michelle Obama. The review appeared in The New York Times,from the paper’s “Help Desk” columnist Judith Newman. She’s “the help,” all right.
Ed Morrissey tweeted back to Shapiro: “The secret to success in life: Find someone who loves you as unconditionally and fiercely as the mainstream media loves the Obamas.”
Except they’re not “mainstream” at all. These “objective newspapers” are blatantly leftist partisan rags, as they demonstrate on a daily basis.
In addition to failing to label Shapiro and Morrissey as partisan right-wingers, Graham seems to have forgotten about the gooey softball interview he and Curtis Houck did with onetime Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier this year.
Jason Cohen ranted further in another post that day:
Michelle Obama put up with a lot from a “downright mean” country she never could be proud of until it elected her husband POTUS. But we’re still learning how hellish her eight years in the White House really was.
In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres about her new book The Light We Carry, Michelle Obama said, “As black women we deal with it, the whole thing about do you show up with your natural hair? ... As First Lady, I did not wear braids. Being the first – yeah, we had to ease up on the people ... I was like, it would be easier. Nope, nope. They’re not ready.”
In CNN’s coverage, Don Lemon said, “The former First Lady says that she kept her hair straight so her husband’s administration could focus on other issues and not her hair.”
Poor woman. Ben Shapiro joked about this, tweeting, “She is a modern-day Job.”
As if Obama wearing her hair in braids would have caused a media hellstorm and colossal controversy.
Actually, given that Barack Obama wearing a tan suit caused a media controversy -- which Cohen has apparently even forgotten about or is too young to remember -- Michelle Obama wearing braids would have absolutely caused one.
Speaking of Barack, he popped up on "The Daily Show," and Alex Christy was there to whine about it:
Former President Barack Obama swung by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central on Wednesday to promote his foundation’s “Democracy Forum.” With the state of democracy being the prime focus of the conversation, Noah asked why the state of political discourse is so bad. Proving that some things never change, Obama blamed Fox News.
Noah’s approach to interview was to lob softballs Obama’s way and let him ramble, “When you look at the discourse in the country as well, and around the world but again, I think you're correct in that America is the leader in what’s happening right now, the discourse has become so toxic and I wonder what you make of that where do you think it’s coming from? Do you think it is social media? Do you think it’s a tenor of politicians in the Capitol?”
Christy went on to blame Obama for polarization while deflecting against Fox News:
Fox is one network; the left has all the rest. If Obama is truly concerned about the state of political discourse, he should’ve spent more time on that progressive echo chamber he only briefly mentioned or not used the bully pulpit to go after the one network that was critical of him during his presidency and Noah and his late night colleagues should take Obama’s advice and break out of their progressive bubbles.
Just like a resident of the right-wing media bubble to refuse to acknowledge it doesn't exist, or that Fox News plays a major role in manufacturing political polarization.
Graham then spent his Nov. 18 podcast rehashing the anti-Obama antipathy he and his subordinates have been spewing:
Now that the election season is over, it's that special time on the political calendar when the Obamas come out of their mansion and bless their adoring media with the joy of their presence. Barack Obama lowered himself to The Daily Show on Comedy Central with Trevor Noah, and they discussed how Fox News has turbocharged divisions, and now the tone is so toxic.
Whether it's People magazine or National Public Radio, Michelle Obama is running around selling a new advice-guru book titled The Light We Carry. She's calling herself "honest and vulnerable." They're honestly super-wealthy elites. Between their multi-book deals and their production company's deal with Netflix, they've probably worth more than $100 million, but the pro-Obama media never wants to put a number together. They know somehow that Trump is lying if he calls himself a billionaire, but they want everyone to remain incurious about how rich the Obamas have become.
Mrs. Obama tried to tell the NPR audience that when she says "we go high" doesn't mean that the Left can't hold on their rage, but it needs to be harnessed to reason. You can somehow be civil and filled with rage. That doesn't make any sense, except this lady wants everyone to embrace the contradiction and just love her.
Like we said: rent-free. And that's not all -- the MRC has to attack anyone in the media close to them. A Nov. 21 post by Curtis Houck raged at CBS host Gayle King for being friends with Obama:
CBS Mornings (and its predecessor CBS This Morning) has lacked serious journalistic ethics since its inception as, somehow, CBS has seen zero problems with co-host Gayle King, who’s had a past of not only donating to the Democratic Party but vacationed with the Obama family. This lack of ethics was on display Monday as King gushed over her time with Michelle Obama on Friday as part of the latter’s book tour that included Obama gifting her a jacket with her initials “G.K.”
And Houck know about all this? Because she has dicclosed it. Also, she's a morning show host, not a hard-news reporters. By contrast, neither Houck nore anyone else at the MRC complained about a lack of ethics when numerous Fox News hosts secretly advised Donald Trump during his presidency and frequently communicated with him and his advisers while refusing to disclose it to their viewers.
UPDATE: There was also an Oct. 25 post by John Simmons, who freaked out when Barack Obama appeared on ESPN's "Manningcast" of an NFL game to urge people to vote, and even though he didn't make a political statement about what party to vote for, this was all somehow about "influencing viewers to become progressive disciples." He then embedded a tweet from the Manning brothers' production company containing a vote-encouraging link -- which apparently wasn't even mentioned during the broadcast -- ranting that this was more evidence of this purported bias:
The link embedded in this tweet above was to a DNC-backed website, so while Obama refrained from specifically mentioning any Democratic candidates, the link’s origins and the fact that one of the most liberal presidents in history was invited on the show speaks volumes as to what ESPN and its employees want Americans to do come Nov. 9.
For the sake of all of us ESPN, stop the political pandering.
Simmons also accused Obama of being someone who "regularly advocates for censoring conservative voices on social media" -- thought the link he provided to supposedly prove this show Obama speaking out about online disinformation, not advocating "censorship," and he did not mention conservatives at all. (Is Simmons admitting that spreading disinformation is a conservative goal?) He also complained that America "saw a worsening of race relations than an improvement," though one could argue that right-wingers being triggered by a black man being president played no small role in that, and he did not explain what Obama could possibly have done to change things when his opponents were (and are) so desperate to lash out at anything he does.
CNS Publishes Incoherent Defense of Private Property Topic: CNSNews.com
A Dec. 1 CNSNews.com column by Keith Knight of the Libertarian Institute regarding property rights included this bizarre rant:
Remember January 6th, 2021?
We explicitly saw the government forcibly excluding people from the Capitol building, an officer even murdered an unarmed woman, Ashli Babbitt. I’m sure that trial will begin any day now.
Try walking into a government school and taking computers, printers, textbooks, projectors, and the wallet of the professor.
Imagine walking into a government police station and taking the property including the bullets, cars, guns, documents, badges, etc. Would you be met with exclusion or a kind round of applause?
The government excludes us from massive amounts of “state property” all the time and yet the socialist claims exclusion is unique to the voluntary sector. They print or steal trillions every single year and the socialist still claims ‘if only they taxed MORE everyone would have yada yada yada’.
In a nutshell: Socialist institutions forcibly exclude people from property yet the socialist pretends only capitalists do this to tarnish them as greedy people who value property over human life.
No, Keith, Babbitt was not "murdered" -- she was a domestic terrorist who was killed by police while committing a crime. Beyond that, we're not sure what point Knight was trying to make here. The fact that governmental entities have belongings that help them perform governmental duties like education and law enforcement does not make them "socialist." And he seems to be advocating communism when he complains that the government won't simply give that property to citizens.
Knight also appears to be endorsing discrimination by writing: "There is no principled difference between excluding someone from a car, a computer, a house, or if you start selling things out of the house and it’s now a 'business' involving a web of voluntary contracts" (bolding in original).
Somehow, all this prompted Knight to conclude that "more private property has increased the productive capacity of the people and the land making virtually everyone better off with more choices and opportunities in 2022 than they would have had in 22 AD," adding, "Jacobin Magazine once asked 'How did private property start?' – the answer is when the first person resisted enslavement."
Drag Queen Dance Contestant Makes MRC Writer's Hateful Head Explode Topic: Media Research Center
Last year, the Media Research Center raged at the "Bachelor" franchise for giving into the "woke mob" (who discovered the racist past of one contestant, followed by the dismissal of the host who supported her). This year, the MRC has targeted a different reality show for alleged woke-related reasons. Tierin-Rose Mandelburg spewed the MRC's usual hatred for drag queens (and thte invented "woke mob" bogeyman) in a Sept. 8 post:
The 31st season of the popular celebrity dance competition “Dancing With The Stars” is set to air September 19, and will break history again with its inclusion of...a drag queen. Because God forbid a TV show air without shoving progressive gender and sexual ideologies.
D.J. “Shangela” Pierce, a 40-year-old man who performed as a singer in “RuPaul’s Drag Race, will be paired with professional dancer Gleb Savencho. I certainly hope he'll be in ballgowns and not mini-skirts.
We're apparently in for a treat, as this is the first-ever drag queen competitor for "Dancing With The Stars." Can’t wait to sit on the edge of my seat worrying about this man’s junk falling out of his leotard.
[...]
The show’s executive producer, Conrad Black, called the casting “a step for the show” that’s “reflecting the world of entertainment and the modern world.” He also called Shangela a “fantastically engaging personality,” USA Today reported.
The only thing this “fantastically engaging personality” is reflecting is that DWTS is just another group that allowed the woke mob to infiltrate its show quality.
Mandelberg concluded by sneering: "I don’t know what my plans are for September 19, but I sure as heck know it won’t include watching this. " That was a lie, of course -- the MRC is paying her to hate-watch this show, so hate-watch she did. The hateful results were put in a Sept. 20 post:
I told you not to watch the Dancing With The Stars premiere back in early September. I should have taken my own advice.
D.J. “Shangela” Pierce, has graced the world with “her” presence on this season'sDWTS. Shangela, a drag queen, received roaring reviews for her performance last night … for her status as a drag queen however not for the dancing itself.
The premise of a dancing show should be, well, dancing but this year the show focused more on the dramatics and less on the skill.
Last night’s premiere featured Shangela with “her” partner, Gleb Savencho dancing to “When I Grow Up” by the Pussycat Dolls. Interesting song choice for a 40-year-old man who still plays dress-up.
The judges LOVED the performance and each scored the couple with a seven and used the show, which was streamed live on Disney+, to push the progressive narrative.
On the episode, Shangela said: “Out of drag, I’m pronouns he/him, and in drag, she/her.” Again, I thought we stopped playing dress-up by age ten.
[...]
I understand that TV shows need to dramatize storylines to keep people entertained, but this show is about dancing, not progressivism. Not to mention, DWTS switched over to air on Disney+ which is geared for younger people. Shangela doesn’t present as the best role model for kids to have.
On Instagram, the DWTS page commented “we want to be you.”
I think I speak for us all when I say, no, no we don’t.
No, dear, you don't "speak for us" because The vast majority of the country does not have the same irrational level of hatred to non-heterosexual things as you do, ane even fewer of us are being paid to spew that hate.
When Shangela's partner also dressed in drag for one episode, Mandelburg's head was an explosion of hate in a Nov. 23 post:
One drag queen was one too many. Now they’ve gotta give us TWO!?
For the 31st season ofDancing With the Stars, history was made when a drag queen was cast. Somehow said drag queen made it to the finale episode where he danced with Gleb Schevancok who, for the finale, also dressed in drag.
Didn’t know I was going to see men in tights when I flipped on DWTS Monday evening.
The male to male pair transformed into the shows first ever (and hopefully last ever) queen to queen pair. Savchenko danced in a white and pink sparkly bodysuit and looked like he was performing in the Broadway show Cats.
He also had on a blonde wig, high heels and a full face of makeup. The pair danced on a mock set of RuPaul’s Drag Race Werk Room, and two other queens from that show joined in on the performance. Let's just say Gleb or as he was introduced, “Natasha,” was NOT a sight for sore eyes.
Mandelburg's drag queen phobia continued:
Shangela used the opportunity on DWTS to exclaim that “drag belongs everywhere.”
Uh … no.
I can name about a billion places where drag does NOT belong. For one, anywhere that children exist or have a place to be at.
Such as on Disney+.
But, as most of you know, DWTS airs on none other than Disney+. This isn’t something only accessible for adults. In fact, with it’s existence on Disney+, it serves as something to encourage kids to watch.
This performance and drag being “everywhere” is just another sick attempt by the left to create an army of woke progressivism.
Count me OUT!
Of course, she won't be out. Hating drag queens is her current meal ticket, so she will hate-watch this show every week to keep that manufactured outrage machine (and her paycheck) going.
NEW ARTICLE: New Election, Same Old Conspiracies Topic: WorldNetDaily
The fact that nobody has ever found any significant election fraud in the 2020 election didn't keep WorldNetDaily from covering this year's midterm elections through the lens of election fraud. Read more >>
MRC's Musk-Fluffing Campaign Continues Apace Topic: Media Research Center
Autumn Johnson kept up her pro-Elon Musk stenography -- and the right-wing victimhood narrative -- in a Nov. 25 post:
Elon Musk wrote that Twitter will offer “general amnesty” to censored accounts as long as they do not break the law or engage in “egregious” spam.
He first asked Twitter users to vote in a poll about “general amnesty:”
“Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” he asked via tweet.
Approximately 72% of voters answered “yes.” Over 3 million people voted in the poll. In response to the final results of the poll, Musk tweeted that the “general amnesty” policy will begin next week.
“The people have spoken,” he added. “Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
The change in policy is monumental, as conservative accounts have long faced unfair censorship and arbitrary suspensions.
While Musk has restored the Twitter accounts of QAnon cultists and actual Nazis, ConWebWatch's Twitter account has yet to be restored as of this writing after been suspended in April 2021 for using the same language the MRC does.
Another post by Johnson that day gushed that Musk was advancing that victimhood narrative:
Elon Musk says Twitter helped progressive candidates win their elections.
Musk was responding to a tweet discussing the censorship of conservative candidates on the platform in order to boost liberal ones. He promised that the company would be more transparent under his leadership.
“The more I learn, the worse it gets. The world should know the truth of what has been happening at Twitter,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “Transparency will earn the trust of the people.”
Musk added that the accounts of conservative candidates were “objectively” censored more than progressive ones.
Johnson repeated her employer's conspiracy theory that "Facebook and Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post stories covering the Hunter Biden laptop scandal helped sway the 2020 presidential election for Biden." As we've documented, that finding is based on biased polls the MRC bought from Trump's election pollster and the polling firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, making such a conclusion specious at best.
Catherine Salgado cheered Musk advancing the victimhood narrative as well:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed that it’s been conservatives, not leftists, who overwhelmingly bore the brunt of Twitter’s Orwellian censorship operation.
Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza tweeted Nov. 21, “We don’t hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter. Why? Because they were never kicked off in the first place. Their lies and misinformation simply escaped all scrutiny. Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives @elonmusk.” The new owner of Twitter agreed with that assessment, responding the next day, “Correct.” D’Souza then tweeted, “Nice to get validated here by Twitter’s senior fact checker.”
Musk has been slowly reinstating some of the high profile conservatives banned by Twitter.
In contradiction to both Salgado and Johnson, pre-Musk Twitter admitted that its algorithm already had a right-wing bias -- something sure to grow as Musk lets more right-wingers back on the platform.
Yet another Nov. 25 post by Johnson whined that the Washington Post called out Musk's chaotic management and gutting of content moderation, which she unsurprisingly and dishonestly framed as "pro-free speech changes":
Writers at the Washington Post are outraged that Elon Musk is making pro-free speech changes to Twitter.
Technology reporters at The Post wrote an article Tuesday blasting Musk’s decisions that have monumentally changed the platform’s content moderation policies. The article says Musk’s “reign” has been “marked by chaos.”
[...]
The writers also complained that Musk has personally “stoked” the culture war.
“Amid the turmoil, Musk has stoked the culture-war issues that helped inspire him to purchase the company in the first place,” the article reads. “A fierce advocate for the right “to speak freely within the bounds of the law,” Musk has moved rapidly — at times erratically — to undermine a regime built over a decade to define dangerous language on the site and protect vulnerable communities, replacing it with his own more impulsive style of ad hoc decision-making.”
[...]
For The Post, it seems that censorship is more important than democracy.
Johnson continued to crank out the pro-Musk propaganda in a trio of Nov. 26 posts. The first touted his tantrum that "he will create a new cell phone if Twitter gets booted from Apple and Google’s app stores because of its new pro-free speech policies," while the second howled that "Liberal activists have lost their minds over Elon Musk’s so-called 'amnesty' plan for Twitter." The third relayed that "Elon Musk said in a series of tweets that Twitter’s decision to permanently ban former President Donald J. Trump was a big mistake" and that "'Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America,' he wrote."
Johnson launched a Nov. 27 attack on a CNN commentator, falsely accusing him of "disturbingly slamming free speech as 'nonsense'" when he was actually pointing out the indisputable fact that free speech has limits:
On Friday afternoon's CNN Newsroom, CNN intelligence and security analyst and former CIA official Robert Baer responded to Elon Musk’s new pro-free speech policies on Twitter by disturbingly slamming free speech as “nonsense.”
Our friends at The Blaze reported on Saturday that Baer bizarrely accused Musk of promoting free speech online to benefit Russia in its war against Ukraine.
"Well, Boris, I can tell you one thing, Putin will be all over Twitter if there's no regulations on this,” he said of reinstated censored accounts. “Fake accounts, spoofed accounts, the rest of it, this is a great opportunity for him."
Baer then went on to suggest that Musk was personally colluding with Russian intelligence officials against the United States.
[...]
Baer’s comments became even more unhinged as claimed that free speech as “nonsense.”
“[Y]ou know, this freedom of speech is just nonsense because you can't go in a movie theater and yell 'fire.' It's against the law,” Baer continued, incorrectly labeling legally protected speech illegal.
While the example Baer cited is a longtime example of the limits of free speech, it has been superceded by other court decisions that don't make it illegal but also don't make it "protected speech" as Johnson claimed.
Jason Cohen -- the guy who tried to defend Kanye West's anti-Semitism -- rushed to Musk's defense after he faced blowback for lashing out at a critic in a way that appeared anti-Semitic in a Nov. 28 post:
May we criticize an individual without being assumed to be prejudiced against their entire ethnic group?
Evidently not. Especially if you are an enemy of the left like Elon Musk is.
Retired United States Army lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman happened to be the most prominent account posting a copypasta (text that is copied, pasted, and shared on the Internet) that said, “Kinda weird that @elonmusk gets to decide how like a half-billion people communicate. Way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don’t you think?”
Elon Musk criticized Vindman, tweeting, “Vindman is both puppet & puppeteer. Question is who pulls his strings … ?”
In the aftermath, Musk was slandered as an antisemite, despite it being unclear whether he even knew Vindman was Jewish.
This tweet was copied, pasted, and posted by many Twitter users. So in that sense, Vindman is the puppeteer. In another, he is a puppet for tweeting a sentiment that aligns perfectly with the mainstream narrative.
None of this has anything to do with Vindman's ethnicity/religion.
[...]
People in politics are called puppets/puppeteers all the time, Jewish and not. Vindman has entered the political arena, and it is reasonable to expect he will face those labels. Being a specific religion/ethnicity should not make him exempt from it.
Contrary to Cohen's proestations, the "puppetmaster" slur is very much an anti-Semitic trope that his own employer has used to smear people of Jewish heritage like George Soros and Jeff Zucker. Also, cohen's headlline called Vindman a "resistance hack" while providing no evidence to support the attack.
Tim Graham whined about criticism of the biased amnesty program in his Nov. 28 podcast:
On MSNBC on Sunday, weekend host Katie Phang sounded furious about Elon Musk offering a Twitter "amnesty" to some banned users. She asked Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt about how the Left should "get the reins" on Twitter. They can't stand this "free speech" business. He said freedom of speech isn't freedom to slander.
Last week, Greenblatt offered the same routine on CNN, as anchor Erica Hill noted the ADL was partnering with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). These groups use their "defamation" branding to pressure the social-media giants to punish and curb conservatives. The Left employs Orwellian lingo about "diversity and inclusion" to exclude their opponents.
Catherine Salgado served up more stenography for Musk in another Nov. 28 post:
Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that files on “free speech suppression” at Twitter will soon be made public, which could include information related to the platform’s sordid censorship of the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
A Twitter user tweeted Nov. 23, “Raise your hand if you think @ElonMusk should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.” Musk responded, “This is necessary to restore public trust.”
Musk then tweeted Nov. 28, “The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened.”
Salgado again rehashed her employer's bogus, biased "research" on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Johnson, meanwhile, was back on the servile-stenography beat for a Nov. 29 post:
Twitter owner Elon Musk said the fight for free speech against one-sided censorship is “a battle for the future of civilization.”
If civilization is to survive, Musk said that free speech must be a top priority not just for the United States, but for all countries around the world.
“This is a battle for the future of civilization,” he tweeted >Monday. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”
The declaration came after he announced that internal files detailing Twitter’s intentional suppression of free speech will soon be made public. The files could potentially include information on the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Johnson had another Musk-defending stenographic piece later that day, dutifully writing that "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the White House’s plans to monitor Elon Musk’s pro-free speech policy changes at Twitter are 'offensive.'" That's a reference to a statement by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that the MRC's Gabriela Pariseau tried to dishonestly frame as a threat.
CNS Complained About House Passage of Respect for Marriage Act Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews' coverage of the Respect for Marriage Act hasemphasized right-wing anti-LGBTQ attacks, and its coverage of Senate passage of the bill went the same way. On Nov. 30, the day of the vote, Susan Jones continued CNS' weird obsession with Chuck Schumer and his gay daughter, as well as its insistence on calling out Republicans by name who are insufficiently hateful of gay people:
"As you know, this is personal to me," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said shortly before the Senate passed the "Respect for Marriage Act," codifying homosexual marriage (and, incidentally, interracial marriage).
Schumer told a news conference on Tuesday that after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, "we were at a family dinner. And my daughter and her wife were distraught and asked me, 'Could our marriage be undone?'
“Today, a new day has come for them. In -- and in the new year, they'll be welcoming their first child, my third grandchild, God willing, in a few months.
"With the passage of this bill, though, I think not just about them and the millions of Americans it'll impact, but about my future grandchild. That child will now grow up in a more accepting, inclusive, and loving world, a world that will honor their mothers' marriage and give it the dignity it deserves."
To clear a filibuster, the Respect for Marriage Act needed ten Republicans to join Democrats in voting to advance the bill. In the end, twelve Republicans voted for final passage, including Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Shelley Capito (R-W.V.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).
Jones then larded up her article with attacks on the bill from right-wing anti-LGBTQ groups like the Family Research Council and Americans Defending Freedom while refusing to offer balance from those who support the bill.
An anonymously written article then complained while using the denigrating "homosexual marraige" term:
Dr. Barry Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate, was called to the podium at the front of the chamber on Nov. 28 to say a prayer, as is the customary practice before the Senate begins its daily sessions.
The major business the Senate then dealt with was voting to approve the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act,” which effectively approves homosexual marriage nationwide.
“Lord, give us the grace to stay on the road of virtuous and godly living,” Dr. Black said in this prayer.
[...]
Having heard this prayer, the Senate went on during that day’s session to approve the Respect for Marriage Act—and, thus, extend nationwide recognition to homosexual marriage—by a vote of 61 to 36. (Three senators did not vote.)
Not coincidentally, this was followed by another anonymously written article informing us that "The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes 'homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity' that are 'intrinsically disordered' and 'contrary to natural law,'" while providing no news-related reason for the article's existence.
Yet another anonymously written article served up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's praise for Senate passage of the bill. That stab at balance was undone by a Dec. 2 article by Lauren Shank quoting numerous right-wing and anti-LGBTQ activists purporting to be "worried about the future of religious liberty, for individuals and institutions, since the Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act by a vote of 61-36 -- legislation that President Joe Biden has indicated he will sign into law." The article followed the same structure as her Nov. 21 article quoting some of the same critics and, like that article, omitted any semblence of balance by censoring activists who support the bill.
A while back, we noted how CNSNews.com was actually publishing articles that were a bit critical of Israel, whom it has long praised as part of right-wing orthodoxy. Apparently it got the message it was falling out of step because it's reeled that in a bit.
Fresh off 
Newsmax may be pro-Trump right-wing hacks, but they are not afraid to 
If there's a WorldNetDaily columnist who manages to be on an even wronger side of history than 
The Media Research Center's Jeffrey Clark spent a 
Michael Master set up his Nov. 22 WorldNetDaily 
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy spent a Nov. 29 
CNSNews.com, it seems, just can't stop taking shots at Nancy Pelosi -- even as she prepared to step aside as House speaker. 
Six years after leaving the presidency, Barack and Michelle Obama continue to live rent-free in the collective heads of the Media Research Center. In 
A Dec. 1 CNSNews.com 
Last year, the Media Research Center raged at the "Bachelor" franchise for giving into the "woke mob" (who discovered 
Autumn Johnson kept up her pro-Elon Musk stenography -- and the right-wing victimhood narrative -- in a Nov. 25 
CNSNews' coverage of the Respect for Marriage Act 
