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Monday, March 6, 2023
MRC Targets Transgender TikTok Star For Being Transgender In Public
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center hates transgender people in general, and it particularly hates anyone who commits the offense of being (gasp!) transgender in public. We've noted how lead MRC transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg raged against the Biden White House for inviting "trannie" Dylan Mulvaney, who's documenting her transgender journey on TikTok, for a panel discussion. Jason Cohen -- the since-departed MRC blogger who infamously tried to justify Kayne West's anti-Semitism -- had a freakout over Mulvaney in an Oct. 26 post:

Caitlyn Jenner, Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Donald Trump Jr. all criticized trans Tik Tok star Dylan Mulvaney for an insane video from the 74th day of his famous series called "Days of Girlhood," which documents his determination to pretend he’s a woman.

In the video, Mulvaney showed and talked about how he wore extremely tight leather shorts to go shopping. On his outing, people stared directly at his crotch. He realized, “Oh, I forgot my crotch doesn’t look like other women’s crotches sometimes because mine doesn’t look like a little barbie pocket.”

Gross.

Mulvaney's solution was to declare it was time to "normalize the bulge," which caused Cohen to huff, "Jenner, Blackburn, and Jr. are correct that society should not normalize this":

Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted, “Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal.”

So true. After all, like Jr. said, Mulvaney was invited to the Oval Office to talk to Biden. It cannot get much more normalized than that. 

Powerfully, coming from a trans woman, Caitlyn Jenner thanked Senator Blackburn for speaking out and agreed with her, tweeting, “Let’s not ‘normalize’ any of what this person is doing. This is absurdity!”

It all seems so obvious, but in our upside-down world, it is not acceptable to take these stands. Hopefully, with even Caitlyn Jenner speaking against it, society will collectively conclude they should not normalize this. 

Jenner gets a pass for being transgender because she's a right-winger, which caused the MRC all sorts of confusion when she contemplated a run for California governor as a Republican.

The same day, Mandelburg raged at Mulvaney during a "Woke of the Weak" video for stating that she wants to become a mom someday: "What in the ever-loving heck? Did he -- sorry, let me say Dylan so I don't get censored -- did Dylan just say, 'I want to be a mom one day'? If he can be a mom one day,  then my 5-foot-2 self can be a power forward for the Knicks. It seems like people have forgotten men cannot get pregnant." Mandelburg conveniently ignored the fact that Mulvaney said nothing about being a biological mother, nor did she note that plenty of women who cannot have children (or decide not to have biological ones) adopt them and serve as fine mothers.

The MRC also published an Oct. 27 column by Ben Shapiro declaring that Mulvaney, "cosplaying as a woman," is leading "the collapse of the West" by having taken part in that panel led by "geriatric dotard" Biden.

Mandelburg lashed out at Mulvaney again in a Jan. 4 post for having plastic surgery for make her face more feminine:

An ode to contradiction.

Transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney recently underwent a facial reconstruction surgery to make his male features less prominent, and his effort showed how brutal said surgery looks - and why it’s extremely unnecessary. 

Mulvaney posted a video with bandages covering his face, where the swelling and bruises were very apparent. 

In general, “facial feminization surgeries,” often called "ffts," aim to provide patients with a more feminine facial structure. Procedures often involved include moving the hairline down for a smaller forehead, having one's lips and cheekbones expanded, and/or having the jaw and chin reshaped and resized.

It seems brutal if you ask me. But Mulvaney elected to have the procedure done, and is supposedly thrilled at the results so far.

Nobody asked Mandelburg, of course, but she continued to rant anyway:

I get that if Mulvaney wants to dismember and harm his own body, that's technically his prerogative. But the message that he’s sending to his millions of viewers and followers is that they really can’t be happy in their own skin unless they change it.

[...]

This is the same "transgender" star who was invited by President Joe Biden to the White House, where he encouraged the president to support painful gender-affirmation surgeries - like this one - for both adults and children.

This is what Mulvaney and Biden are in support of.

I really wish that people would stay true to their word. It’s either “embrace who you really are” or “get procedures that change your appearance and harm your body,” but it can't be both.

This is yikes on a whole other level.

Is it on the same level as getting paid to spew hate against people because they are different from you? (Actually, Mulvaney looks just fine after a few weeks of recovery.)


Posted by Terry K. at 1:57 PM EST
NEW ARTICLE: Chuck Norris, Off The Conspiratorial Deep End
Topic: WorldNetDaily
The onetime action star-turned-WorldNetDaily columnist spent 2022 endorsing dubious right-wing Republicans and embracing conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID vaccines. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 10:55 AM EST
Sunday, March 5, 2023
MRC Sticks To Narratives, Censors The Truth About Twitter Hearing
Topic: Media Research Center

House Republicans gave the Musk-fluffers at the Media Research Center the hearing they wanted to attack the pre-Musk management of Twitter over purported censorship. It didn't quite go the way they planned -- but you wouldn't know that from the MRC's coverage of it. Renata Kiss started off the biased coerage by cherry-picking a statement by Republican Rep. to declared that he "own[ed] a former Twitter official:

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said the quiet part out loud at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on The Twitter Files. 

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held its first Twitter Files hearing Wednesday morning. The hearing featured testimony from former Twitter Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde, former Twitter special counsel and ex-FBI agent James Baker and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. Each apparently worked with the FBI to censor the Twitter Files.

“I think you guys got played,” Jordan said after Roth claimed it wasn’t his personal decision to take down the story. Jordan called him out on the alleged narrative and explained that it appears the FBI played Twitter and the company willingly fell in line. “I think you guys wanted it to be taken down. I think you guys got played by the FBI, and that’s the scary part.”

Jordan added that the “real takeaway” is that five days after Twitter took down the Hunter Biden story, “51 former intelligence officials send a letter and say the Hunter Biden story has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

He further emphasized that the FBI apparently deceived Twitter. “The information operation was run on you guys and then by extension run on the American people. And that’s the concern,” Jordan said.

Kiss censored the fact that Roth told Jordan that it was others in the tech industry -- not law enforcement -- who raised warnings about possible misinformation about Hunter Biden, which corroborates an FBI agent who said the same thing.

When CNN pointed out that the FBI no actual role, Alex Christy lashed out in a Feb. 8 post:

House Republicans held their first hearings into Twitter’s handling of the New York Post’s 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s laptop on Wednesday and CNN’s Inside Politics didn’t see what the big deal was. Host John King sarcastically commented that it “sounds quite ominous, right?” while correspondent Donie O’Sullivan claimed “we haven’t seen the smoking gun of alleged collusion between the FBI and Big Tech.”

After introducing the hearing, King played a clip of Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer at the hearing declaring, “Immediately following the story’s publication, America witnessed a coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news, and the intelligence communities to suppress and delegitimize the existence of Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents. That morning, Twitter and other social media companies took extraordinary steps to suppress that story.”

Christy went into spin mode, insisting that "While the FBI’s fingerprints may not be directly on this story, this is real life and smoking guns are not always readily available" and hyped how "over 50 'experts' claimed the Hunter laptop story was disinformation." in fact, as Kiss' earlier article more accurately stated, they said it had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" -- a significant difference, and not an unreasonable conclusion especially given that the story was being pushed by pro-Trump outlets like the New York Post.

Gabriela Pariseau cherry-picked another Republican's questioning: "No one expected former Twitter special counsel and ex-FBI agent Jim baker to have all the answers, but when Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) questioned him on Twitter and “in-kind contributions,” it appeared Baker had none of the answers" -- while in reality, Donalds was asking irrelevant questions about whether Twitter was going to "quantify the amount of in-kind contributions associated with taking down the New York Post story." Pariseau also rehashed the MRC's pet conspiracy theory: "A 2020 MRC poll found that 45 percent of President Joe Biden’s voters weren’t fully aware of the New York Post story precisely because the media and Big Tech whitewashed it. Had Americans been fully aware of the scandal, 9.4 percent of Biden voters would have abandoned him, flipping all six of the swing states he won to former President Donald Trump, giving Trump a victorious 311 electoral votes." As we've documented, that poll was conducted by The Polling Company, which was founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, which raises questions about its accuracy and fairness.

Kevin Tober served up the usual complaint that non-right-wing outlets weren't advancing right-wing narratives -- and that fox News was -- in his own Feb. 8 post:

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee grilled former Twitter executives over their censorship and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, with two of the executives even admitting it was a mistake to have suppressed the story and suspended the New York Post for publishing and posting it on their platform. Predictably the three broadcast networks ignored the story.

Instead of reporting on it, the three broadcast networks spent time covering local weather reports (ABC), and a school bus crashing into a daycare center in Canada (CBS) & (NBC). 

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel’s Special Report had the story and led with it at the top of the broadcast.

Tober went on to huff, "This is an important story with national political implications." But neither Fox News (at least in the report excerpt provided) nor the MRC reported on the biggest news to come out of the hearing: As president, Donald Trump pressured Twitter to delete a tweet by model Chrissy Teigen that called him a "pussy ass bitch."

As more people mocked the hearing for the partisan showboating that it was, the MRC got more incensed. Mark Finkelsteain whined in a Feb. 9 post:

​​​​This was gaslighting at its liberal-media worst. Trashing the Twitter hearing held yesterday by the GOP-led House Oversight committee, Morning Joe would have you believe that far from seeking to suppress Republicans and help Democrats, Twitter— 98.47% of whose donations went to Democrats in 2020 — actually bent over backward to help Donald Trump!

The most egregious example of Twitter's pro-Dem bias was its suppression, in the days leading up to the 2020 election, of the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop. But the panel literally laughed that off.

When Scarborough pointed out that Twitter never stopped Trump from spreading the lie that he murdered an intern when he served as a congressman, Finkelstein huffed that Section 230, which the MRC is trying to get rid of, "prevents him from suing Twitter for having published Trump's accusatory tweets. It doesn't stop Scarborough from suing Trump."

Alex Christy served up his own whine about people noting inconvenient Twitter-related facts:

Podcaster and NYU marketing Professor Scott Galloway joined Thursday’s CNN This Morning where he launched into a wild denunciation of the GOP-led hearing on Twitter, the FBI, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Galloway labeled Republicans as “a conspiracy of dunces” and “idiots” while laughably claiming the fact that Twitter’s previous leadership was full of progressives is evidence they were biased in favor of Republicans.

[...]

Galloway then claimed that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Twitter and “the only real targeted assertion that they really need to defend was that they coordinated with the FBI. They did not coordinate with the FBI.”

Even if that is true, it ignores the indirect pressure they put on Twitter prior to the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story and other installments of the Twitter Files were the FBI did directly pressure Twitter to remove tweets.

Not quite done distributing hot takes, Galloway next claimed Twitter’s was actually biased in favor of conservatives:

If there’s any censoring going on, if there's any bias, it's towards letting the president organize an insurrection on their platform and that they weren't being as diligent as they should have been around censoring certain content. There is a certain both side-ism. I do believe the Twitter executives probably lean progressive and as a result they engage in both side-ism and let content and people on the right get away with things they wouldn't let people on the left, but it's a private company. They get to decide this. 

Really? Twitters suspended The Babylon Bee for a joke about Rachel Levine and if Twitter was biased in favor of conservatives, then why did Galloway ask if Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech was because he wanted to “kill a puppy.”

Christy seemed oblivious to the fact that just a half-hour earlier, his colleague Finkelstein was defending Trump spreading lies that Scarborough committed murder as free speech.

Curtis Houck up a non-coverage update, noting that while ABC and NBC morning shows ignored the story, "CBS Mornings gave viewers two minutes and 35 seconds on the hearing that, while it barely scratched the surface, raised the bar" but also complained that it excerpted far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert's wacky rant: "A sitting president was banned. Who the hell do you think that you are?"

The MRC finally referenced the hearing discussing Trump's attempt at censorship in a Feb. 10 post by Christy, when Seth Meyers brought it up (and other inconvenient facts):

NBC Late Night was not happy with Republicans on Thursday for holding hearings into Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, claiming “no one actually gives a [bleep]” and trying to pretend that Republicans are greatly upset Twitter took down tweets containing nude photographs of Hunter Biden.

After playing a clip of Rep. Byron Reynolds asking why certain tweets were removed and former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth replying that they were non-consensual nudes, Meyers sarcastically claimed, Excuse me, Mr. Roth, but the American people are demanding to see Hunter Biden's nudes.”

Christy didn't mention that the key reason Twitter posts about Hunter Biden were initially censored was because people like right-wing actor James Woods were posting nude pictures of him; nonconsensual nudes are prohibited on Twitter then and now. Christy grudgingly served up the big Trump reveal (and more whining about the nude p[hotos):

In an attempt to prove his point, Meyers declared, “Twitter did field requests from the Trump Administration, the actual government at the time, to remove content that Trump didn't like. In fact, it was reported yesterday by Rolling Stone that Twitter kept an entire database of Republican requests to censor posts and in the hearing, a Democratic member of the committee, Maxwell Frost, brought up one of those examples, which led to some explicit language being read into the Congressional record.”

After playing a clip of Frost speaking about a request from the Trump White House to remove a Chrissy Teigen tweet calling Trump a “pussy ass bitch,” Meyers joked about C-SPAN’s lack of a bleep button before declaring, “Once again, Joe Biden could not have asked for a more flattering contrast. Republicans are using their time in the House to throw tantrums about their Twitter accounts getting suspended and Hunter Biden's nudes.”

It is easy for Meyers to pick at the low-hanging fruit when he jokes about Reynolds’s inquiries into tweets containing nude photos, but Twitter really did suppress the New York Post story, something they never did for a Rolling Stone article about Trump or one of his children and conservative accounts were suspended for “hate speech,” or, more accurately, running afoul of new left-wing rules about gender.

The example of "hate speech" he linked to was about a Babylon Bee post sneering about an imaginary "Man of the Year" award for transgender Biden official Rachel Levine. Referring to Levine as she presents herself is harding a "new left-wing rule about gender" -- it's just common courtesy and n ot being a jerk. And Christy said nothing about the chilling effect Trump's demand on Twitter has on free speech.

Paetin Iselin rehashed all of these talking points, as well as the MRC's election conspiracy theory, in a Feb. 10 podcast, insisting that the story is still relevant. She didn't see any relevance in Trump demanding that Twitter censor Teigen, since she didn't mention that at all.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:16 PM EST
CNS Uses Balloon Incident To Attack China, Bash Biden
Topic: CNSNews.com

When a Chinese spy balloon was found to be flying over the U.S., CNSNews.com's instincts kicked in -- fearmonger about Israel and blame Biden. The first CNS article referencing the balloon, a Feb. 3 piece by Susan Jones, did the former:

As a Chinese spy balloon drifts over the United States, there are growing concerns down below about companies with ties to Communist China buying property and exerting influence all over the USA.

And it's not just American farmland: "Chinese-backed private equity are buying up boarding schools, private schools, and secondary education all over Florida, New York, California, from what we can tell," Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday night.

CNS actually did what could be considered actual news articles on the balloon's progress:

When the balloon was ultimately shot down, CNS did an anonymously written article about it, followed by an article from Patrick Goodenough on China complaining about it as well as a timeline compiled by Jones. After that, it was Biden-bashing time with several articles featuring Republicans spouting off:

That talking point on how there were no Chiese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president was an important one for CNS to promote -- but it didn't age well. When it was revealed that there were, in fact, Chinese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president, A Feb. 7 article by Goodenough made sure to blame anyone but Trump:

The head of the U.S. military command responsible for countering airborne threats to North America said on Monday that it had not detected Chinese spy balloons that reportedly flew over the United States prior to last week’s incident.

Instead, those previous incursions had been discovered “after the fact” by the intelligence community using “additional means of [information] collection,” said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command. He did not elaborate.

According to an official transcript of an off-camera briefing to Pentagon reporters, VanHerck attributed the fact that NORAD had not detected those earlier balloons to “a domain awareness gap.”

A senior defense official asserted at the weekend that, before last week’s incursion, Chinese surveillance balloons had flown briefly over the continental U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration, and at least once at the beginning of the Biden administration.

So important was it for CNS to not blame Trump for any of this that Susan Jones wrote a second version of this very same talking point a few hours later:

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, told reporters on Monday the United States military failed to detect four earlier balloons sent either toward U.S. air space or into it.

"So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsible to -- responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.

"And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go in further detail," VanHerck said at an off-camera briefing.

Oddly, Jones did not name Trump during her article, presumably to avoid having to admit these incidents did, in fact, ocur during his presidency.

An article by Melanie Arter did surprisingly give Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg space to explain that it would have been a bad idea to shoot down the balloon over populated U.S. land since the debris field it acreated when it was shot down off the South Carolina coast was seven miles long. But that was followed by an article from her featuring Ted Cruz (who employs the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey) giving backhanded praise to Biden for shooting the balloon down but having "allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States" before doing so -- with no mention of the debris field it left.

This was followed by more attack articles, some featuring Democrats and some pushing more China-bashing:

The lone direct response to all of this that CNS allowed was an article by Jones quoting Biden saying that "any suggestion that he was derelict in his duty to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon before it traversed the United States is 'a bizarre notion.'"

'CNS opinion pieces -- which are ultimately not that different from its "news" coverage -- also attacked Biden over the balloon incident. James Carafano of the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranted in a Feb. 6 commentary:

What’s next? Could this happen again? Absolutely. I don’t think the Chinese are afraid of this administration.

The problem here, however, is much bigger than balloons. We need to understand what’s behind the balloons—what China is up to—and put a stop to it.

How concerning is this overall? This is a big problem because this is a big signal the Biden administration has no clue how to handle the China threat. It appears about as competent securing our airspace as it does securing our border.

A Feb. 8 column by Jeffrey obsessed over Chinese treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the country, which he called a "genocide," trying to fold the balloon story into it:

President Biden's approach toward the government of Communist Chinese has changed — at least cosmetically — since that regime flew a spy balloon over the United States last week.

Secretary Blinken announced he was canceling his trip to China.

But will Biden now do anything about America's massive and mounting trade deficit with this regime that Biden's own administration says is engaging in genocide?

This is pretty much the only context in which CNS will ever talk about Muslims in a sympathetic way.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:45 AM EST
Updated: Monday, March 6, 2023 12:31 AM EST
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Compare And Contrast, Congressional Lapel Pin Edition
Topic: Media Research Center

I thought y’all claimed you don’t celebrate abortion. 

At the State of the Union address Tuesday night, at least two Democrat lawmakers wore gold pins on their blazers that said “ABORTION.” The “o” in the word was fashioned with a heart. 

Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) tweeted about her accessory in the afternoon, spewing falsehoods like “abortion is healthcare” and that it “saves lives.”

[...]

Other social justice warriors wore pins to interesting pins. Rep. Illhan Omar (D-Minn.) wore a black pin with the number “1870” on it to protest white cops killing black people. Some wore crayons to support federal investment in childcare (judging by who they were I wouldn't be surprised if those investments included pushing woke ideologies to kids). Of course there were also the blue and yellow pins to support Ukraine and one to support the March for Our Lives group that pushes for gun control. But the ab❤️rtion pin is a sick profession of love for infanticide. 

YUCK!

This display was demonic.

-- Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, Feb. 8 Media Research Center post

In the wake of the tragic shooting at Michigan State University earlier this week, the unhinged gaggle of gals on ABC’s The View unleashed some truly crazy takes. Joy Behar was so unhinged that she seriously blamed Republicans wearing gun-shaped lapel pins for causing mass shootings. And of course, the so-called “conservative” on the stage couldn’t be bothered to truly defend the Second Amendment as she was too busy arbitrarily dictating who legitimately needed an AR-15.

[...]

[Behar] then drew attention to Georgia Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde, who owns a gun store. She was irate that he had the audacity to hand out AR-15-shaped lapel pins (which she called “automatic weapon lapel pins”) to his colleagues.

According to her unhinged mind, these pins were directly linked to mass shootings because they were “promoting more and more gun love, love of guns! Love of guns!” “Many of these people don't seem to understand that their actions are causing kids to die!” she shouted.

What was missing from the discussion was the truth that the shooter had a prior felony gun charge dismissed by a progressive prosecutor, which allowed him to remain on the street and commit the shooting. And that he used a handgun, not an AR-15. Then again, The View was not a place for truth and honest discussion.

-- Nicholas Fondacaro, Feb. 15 MRC post


Posted by Terry K. at 10:23 AM EST
Updated: Sunday, March 5, 2023 11:03 AM EST
What's Mychal Massie Melting Down Over Now?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

I argue that our right to worship our God should not have been recognized as a constitutional right, because my right to worship and serve my God is not given to me by man. It's a Natural Right given to me by the God I serve. But, I digress; that's a discussion for another day.

The persecution we're going to face will be directed at Christendom and any church that refuses to recognize homosexuality and all of the assorted debaucherous behaviors associated with same. That specifically includes the mental disorder of transgenderism.

If individuals and churches are persecuted now for refusing to subscribe to the mental illness required to believe a man is a woman and vice versa, with or without the surgical butchering of one's body, what can be expected going forward as states elect more politicians who are openly hostile to our right to follow biblical foundations?

The Second Amendment is being nullified by "wokeness," at the hands of banks and lenders refusing to do business with those who make their living in related industries.

The pressure from behavioral blackmail to comply with deviant behavior that nearly 90 percent of the public disagrees with is real. Otherwise well-intentioned church leaders use the lexiconical assignations used to identify participants in the aberrant lifestyle(s) juxtaposed to identifying them according to their behavior. Homosexuality is not gay in my lexicon, and a person is the gender he or she was born.

-- Mychal Massie, Jan. 2 WorldNetDaily column

The headline on the front page of a local newspaper proclaimed in bold letters: "We Can't Forget," as a testament to honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. I'd say the ship on that lie has long ago sailed.

Today, the people who value being a crayon color more than anything else in their life treat the mention of Dr. King with Pavlovian response, i.e., his name evokes blubbering references to a person's character over the color of his skin. The problem is that everything to them is about the color of their skin, character be damned.

These people are charades and haters fixated upon the myth that they're oppressed and persecuted, supposedly because of their color. That said, the old adage of there being some truth in every lie is applicable.

[...]

These people have forgotten what Dr. King stood for. I'm sure there are people who will remind the public that Dr. King allegedly committed adultery. But, before we go to far down that path, let's not overlook the late President John Kennedy who was legendary for his promiscuity and Bill Clinton who remains an incorrigible philanderer, both of whom are revered by the public including both sides of the political aisle.

-- Mychal Massie, Jan. 16 WND column

"Negro puh-leeze," was a jocular phrase used by young urbanites who considered themselves "colored," lightheartedly tossed at one another during my teenage years. After reading a summary of a Scientific American article by what purports itself to be Black Think Tank @ Duke University, I am forced to say: "Negro puh-leeze!"

The article I reference was written by Dr. Tracie Canada and titled, "Damar Hamlin's Collapse Highlights the Violence Black Men Experience in Football."

[...]

It is time to stop sending these people (like Dr. Canada) to school to get dumb. The hebephrenic absurdity inherent in this baneful polemic cannot be overstated. This is another toxic, viscous substance used to lubricate the flim-flam machine invented and operated by pernicious neo-Leninists. These people would claim that lions and tigers were brought to America because the African slaves feared them back in the jungles, and thus, zoos were created to keep slaves from running away.

-- Mychal Massie, Jan. 30 WND column

I'm talking about the people for whom the NFL played the so-called 'black national anthem.' A photo of Kari Lake, the political candidate from Arizona, seated with her legs crossed during the pathetic attempt by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to pucker up to reprobate haters of America has ignited a firestorm.

There's one national anthem of the United States of America, and it doesn't have a color. As was said referencing Kari Lake's position, it is about: "One Nation, Under God."

Of course, these loathsome creatures are beating a path to bureaus of agitprop that no longer pretend to be impartial. But, as usual, while pretending to be offended by what they claim was a blatant display of racism they showcase cultural amnesia.

Their selective degenerative memories are convenient ways to erase historical facts. Take for instance when the Obamas refused to pledge allegiance to the flag of the Untied States of America – the country he took an oath to protect and honor. A country he was completely comfortable allowing brave military men and women to be brutally slaughtered and raped by Muslims in foreign countries and America.

[...]

The facts speak for themselves. What I have said isn't a pretty picture, but it most certainly isn't untrue. Add to my truth the fact that they curse Jesus Christ as the "white man's god" combined with their penchant for out-of-wedlock children, violence, and supporting Planned Parenthood by giving them money to murder their children, and they have exactly what their handlers want them to have – NOTHING.

Go ahead prove me a liar.

-- Mychal Massie, Feb. 13 WND column

I've concluded that the rage exhibited by these young men is directly attributable to the bitterness, rage and hatred their mothers act out and verbalize every day. I've seen, as have many of you, videos of these women behaving like animals in the jungles their so-called people supposedly come from.

Their mothers transmit rage and aggressive hatred because of the life they live. There are emotional and mental consequences for the over 21 million women for whom being a crayon color is more important than embracing modernity. Bitterness becomes a way of life when they see two or three of the daddies of their children riding around in a car, when they're forced to take a bus or subway. Living in squalor amidst ever-declining levels of crime takes a toll, especially if they're honest enough to realize they could have made something better out of their lives. Poor hygiene, squalid living conditions, nothing to look forward to that remotely resembles success generation after generation, engenders hopelessness and bitterness that metastasizes into rage that must be vented.

These young men and young boys grow up watching and hearing their mothers endless rage-filled outbursts. You don't just shrug off the rage these young men see and experience every day. The same goes for the young girls as they're growing up. Even in quasi-clean neighborhoods, the reality is the same when it comes to hopelessness of life.

We need not be students of Aristotelian mimesis to understand their behavior is the reality of their lives, which simply stated is "pain."

I further argue that the rage embodied and exhibited by these women is nothing short of demonic – and only a fool would argue to the contrary.

When a child, especially a male child, grows up without a father, he takes on the qualities and characteristics of the environment around him. This isn't rocket science. The young men model what they see and emote the disregard for life from abortion to disrespect for life to fathering children out of wedlock, continuing generational absence of propriety and responsible behavior.

-- Mychal Massie, Feb. 27 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 12:54 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 1:01 AM EST
Friday, March 3, 2023
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing Watch, Now With Added Racism
Topic: Media Research Center

The hate from Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre -- and for non-white people in general -- spewed forth again in his writeup of the Jan. 27 press briefing in which he ranted about the idea that a future White House chief of staff might not be a white male:

Friday’s White House press briefing saw more hardballs about President Biden’s documents scandal, but also plenty of eye-rolling questions lobbying for a female person of color to become White House chief of staff, how Biden processes racial tensions, whether “the culture of policing” has “a comfort with violence and” implants inside the minds of police officers “an entitlement to use violence” as was the case in Memphis with Tyre Nichols.

The Associated Press’s Darlene Superville used her pole position to demand that, with the news that current Chief of Staff Ron Klain is stepping down and replaced by former COVID coordinator Jeff Zients, Biden “commit to choosing a chief of staff who is not white and male” as a Zients successor (if one’s needed).

Why? Well, as she explained, this is “one of the more powerful ones in Washington that has never been held by someone who was not white and male.”

Superville’s cockamamie question fit considering the fact that not only is she an ardent leftist for the Bidens, this came a day after her outlet declared that the word “the” is dehumanizing.

With one of the most outstanding examples of why diversity hires are terrible standing in front of her, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the administration as “the most diverse in history” and listing a slew of spots on a diversity bingo card about the percentage of LGBTQ people, racial minorities, and women on staff.

Wow, Houck really does not like people who aren't white.

Houck was less racist (but no less hateful) in his writeup of the Feb. 1 press briefing:

Wednesday afternoon marked the week’s first White House press briefing and, for the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, she must have been ever-thankful for the lighter load as, hours earlier, White House Counsel spokesman Ian Sams offered globs of nothingness on the White House driveway.

In light of another CBS News scoop that the FBI had conducted a search of the Penn Biden Center in November and the FBI spent Wednesday searching President Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware beach house, the questions came aplenty from even the liberal media.

Houck left buried in a transcript the fact that officials had found classified documents in the custody of former Vice President Mike Pence -- the discovery of which caused the MRC to lose interest in the whole Biden classified documents thing.He then wrote a second post on the briefing complaining that a reporter asked a question he didn't like:

Voice of America correspondent Anita Powell provided another example Wednesday of how, using our hard-earned tax dollars, government-run media results in a product heavily tilted to the left. During the White House press briefing, Powell used her time to inform Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that “people both inside the United States and outside are...asking, is the United States a racist society.”

While TV providers make decisions about what channels consumers can and can’t have in their lineup while consumers have a choice of which provider (if any) to do business with, Americans don’t have that choice when it comes to their tax dollars being shipped off to left-wing operations masquerading as news outfits.

[...]

Jean-Pierre offered a milquetoast answer, but didn’t endorse that sort of logic spun by race hustlers and woke educators hellbent on planting that idea in the minds of America’s youth.

Houck didn't explain why simply asking that question makes an entire organization "left-wing" or make a person a "woke" "race hustler." Then again, he clearly believes that non-white people can handle doing jobs that have been traditionally done by white people, as his vicious hatred for Jean-Pierre demonstrates.

The anti-Karine hatefest even spread to Mark Finkelstein, who complained in the midst of a Feb. 2 post that was already complaining that former  White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was allowed on "Morning Joe":

Question: what's an obvious subject that an honest journalist would have raised with former White House spokesman Gibbs? Naturally, it would be Karine Jean-Pierre's pitiful performance, particularly in the context of Biden's classified documents scandal. Trick question! We said "honest" journalist. Scarborough predictably didn't breathe a word with Gibbs about the documents scandal or Jean-Pierre's undeniable incompetence. They needed 12 minutes to praise Obamacare.

In his writeup of the Feb. 6 press briefing, Houck surprisingly praised a non-right-wing outlet for stooping to asking Peter Doocy-like questions of Jean Pierre:

Monday’s White House press briefing largely revolved around President Biden’s State of the Union preparations and, as part of that, The New York Times’s Michael Shear surprisingly trotted out a brutal line of questioning that pressed the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the reality that Democrats didn’t win the midterms because of President Biden but in spite of him.

Shear started by having Jean-Pierre restate her premise: “I think you made the assertion that the reason that there wasn’t a red wave or the reason that the elections and the midterms were more successful than many people thought they would be for Democrats was because of the President. Is that — that’s a fair [assumption]?”

Having walked into his trap, Shear dropped the hammer by citing the findings of an NBC poll last month:

Is Biden honest and trustworthy? 34 percent, yes; 48 percent, no. Ability to handle a crisis: 30 percent — 32 percent, yes; 49 percent, no. Competent and effective: 31 percent, yes; 49 percent, no. Has the necessary mental and physical health to be President: 28 percent, yes; 54 percent, no. Uniting the country: 23 percent, yes; 50 percent, no.

Shear rebutted any notion this was an isolated poll because “versions of that had been repeated in poll after poll, survey after survey since the midterm elections and before.”

Add in the fact that more than half of Democrats don’t want Biden to run for reelection in 2024 and “more Democrats don’t want President Biden...than Republicans don’t want President Trump” and you have an ugly picture.

Houck spewed even more hate at Jean-Pierre in a Feb. 13 post personally attacking her for failing to speak perfect English:

The ever-inept White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre joined MSNBC on Sunday morning for a softball sit-down with leftist Sunday Show host Jonathan Capehart where, despite his gentle questions, Jean-Pierre still struggled to use complete sentences and even made up a new name for Canada.

Capehart harmlessly started by saying he wanted to “talk about the thing that was shot out of the sky over Canada” and if she could both “tell us about it” and state whether they’re things “Americans should be worried about.”

[...]

Capehart followed up about why the U.S. military fired the missile over Canada, which led to Jean-Pierre dubbing Canada as “Canadia”:

As if Houck ever spoke perfect English all the time.

Houck used his writeup of the Feb. 14 briefing to hype a particularly dumb line of questioning from a right-wing reporter (whose ideology he did not identify, though he insists on labeling "liberal" reporters):

Tuesday’s White House press briefing featured some strong questions and softballs (such as one from a Polish radio reporter about President Biden’s Valentines Day plans), but the penultimate exchange was the most intriguing as Newsmax’s James Rosen pressed Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on whether the administration believes certain mediums of communication are weaker than others for Biden and whether he’s “woke.”

Always shrewd, Rosen began by telling her “there is obviously a variety of settings the President can employ: set pieces, impromptu remarks, teleprompter, no teleprompter, et cetera, et cetera” and, since “you work on his communications team,” it was worth asking how she views Biden’s ability to communicate in any and all forums.

[...]

And on wokeism, Rosen stated “[o]ne of the most prominent themes...from both elected Republicans and candidates has to do with what is called ‘wokeism,’” which “reminds me of what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said about obscenity — that he couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it.”

Given the talk of “woke capitalism” and a “woke military,” Rosen said he thought it would be fitting to level “a threshold question” “Is President Biden woke?”

Jean-Pierre refused to answer and instead dropped a word salad about “what the President cares about and what’s important to” him, which doesn’t involve “Republicans...creating political stunts” and ensuring economic growth and the national deficit from the GOP.

Rosen interjected: “So you wouldn’t describe him as ‘woke?’”

Jean-Pierre again refused to answer, claiming he’d “work with Republicans on how we are going to continue to deliver” for the American people, but would fight them tooth and nail on entitlements because “they” as a whole “want to cut Social Security” and “cut Medicare” (even though neither of those things are true).

Apparently, Houck's idea of an "always shrewd" person is one who effectively got fired from his previous employer for sexual misconduct.

Houck then got lazy again and took the rest of the month off from his anti-Karine hate campaign.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:50 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, March 8, 2023 12:47 AM EST
Newsmax DirecTV Victimhood Watch
Topic: Newsmax

Week 5 of Newsmax's massive victimhood campaign over getting dropped by DirecTV continued with more of the same on a slower pace:

This list is a little deceiving because it hides how much things had slowed down in week 5. Of these 15 articles, nine were posted on Feb. 28; the other six were posted on Feb. 25 and 27 (no articles were posted on Feb 26).This brings the total number of "news" articles attacking DirecTV since it dropped Newsmax on Jan. 25 to 228.

Again, Newsmax columnists attempted to help make Newsmax's case.  James Hirsen complained in a Feb. 24 column:

To truly amass power, a would-be autocrat or totalitarian regime will typically suppress any criticism or dissent that might emanate from those who may wish to challenge such authority.

How is the sinister goal of silencing vast numbers of individuals or organizations reached? By controlling and/or eliminating the free flow of news and information within a society.

Examining Newsmax’s removal from DirecTV’s platform is critical in understanding what has happened to the Fourth Estate, what stage in the totalitarian process we are presently in, and what are the means by which we can make our way back to freedom.

[...]

How much ideological discrimination of speech should a free people tolerate?

Here’s the simple answer.

None.

Of course, DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another rightwing channel, The First, meaning there is absolutely no "ideological discrimination of speech" happening here. But Hirsen didn't tell his readers that, because that would have blown up his entire column.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:47 PM EST
CNS Opnion Writers Match Its 'News' Side In Hating Biden State of the Union Address
Topic: CNSNews.com

In addition to its highly biased "news" coverage of President Biden's State of the Union address, CNSNews.com served up some highly biased opinion pieces about it. A Feb. 8 piece by the Heritage Foundation's Jarrett Stepman purported to fact-check a Biden statement:

In his second State of the Union address, President Joe Biden spoke Tuesday night about inflation, which has risen steeply during his presidency.

“Inflation has been a global problem because of the pandemic that disrupted supply chains and Putin’s war that disrupted energy and food supplies,” Biden said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Although it’s true that inflation has hit other nations’ economies, it did not start in the U.S. at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did it begin during Russia’s war on Ukraine. The president’s description of the inflation problem is misleading at best.

Stepman offered no evidence that a specific Biden policy was directly tied to a specific increase in inflation. EJ Antoni, also of Heritage, similarly complained:

For starters, Biden has frequently said that inflation was out of control when he became president, going so far as to say it was one of the reasons he ran for office. But inflation averaged less than 2% during the primary campaign and averaged closer to 1% during the general election campaign. When Biden took office, annual inflation was a mere 1.4%.

Fast-forward a year and a half, and inflation was 1.3%—for a single month.

Prices were rising about as fast in one month as they did in the entire year before Biden took office. The annual inflation rate broke 9% for the first time in four decades.

He too failed to offer evidence that directly links specific Bidenpolicies to specific increases in inflation.

Hans Bader groused that Biden said crime went down during the first year of the COVID pandemic when it actually went up, then rushed to blame the following crime surge on "massive anti-cop riots in cities across the country," not mention that 1) Biden was not president at the time, and 2) the incidents of police brutality, such as the death of George Floyd, that sparked those "anti-cop riots."

Linnea Lueken whined in what read like a press release from the oil industry:

For the sake of my blood pressure and mental health, I did not watch the entire State of the Union Address this year. I did, however, take a look at President Biden’s statements on climate change and energy. Unsurprisingly, Biden’s commentary on those topics was not overly insightful or nuanced.

Biden opined on how climate change is causing more extreme weather events (it’s not), he slammed oil companies for daring to make profits when oil prices skyrocketed last year, and then he went off script and admitted that we still need oil for the next few decades, at least.

Lueken is a researcher with the right-wing Heartland Institute's Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. If that name sounds familiar, it should: Art Robinson is the perpetually failed candidate for a congressional seat in Oregon who is a favorite of WorldNetDaily for a bogus petition denying climate change and developing a homeschool curriculum built in part around a series of century-old adventure books for children whose racial insensitivity and old-school imperialism hasn't exactly held up well.

Yet another Heritage writer, Peter Brookes, grumbled that "Biden made no mention of nuclear proliferation problems Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. Could the issue of nuclear weapons have slipped his mind?"

A different right-wing think-tanker, Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution, spent his Feb. 10 column ranting at Biden:

Biden simply did on Tuesday in his State of the Union address what he always does: misinform, ignore, and attack!

Misinform. After sending inflation, energy, and interest rates to astronomical rates, and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit, Biden declares that he “lowered” these indices that remain far higher than they were when he entered office.

He brags of a low unemployment rate. But Biden never discloses the better indicator of the labor participation rate that has declined under his tenure—or the fact he inherited a growing economy naturally rebounding on autopilot from a disastrous two-year COVID-19 lockdown.

Ignore. Consider what he will never mention. China just violated international law and U.S. airspace. How did Beijing assume rightly that it so easily could get away with it?

There is no southern border. Biden destroyed it. He greenlighted over 5 million illegal aliens to enter the United States without audit or legality—even as smuggled Mexican drugs kill 100,000 Americans each year.

[...]

He never mentions that Russia went into Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin saw no downside after this debacle in Afghanistan, or that Biden’s own inept remarks about not worrying over a Russia invasion of Ukraine if it just proved to be “minor” probably played some role.

Attack! Remember Biden comes to life only when he smears his enemies while calling for “unity” and “bipartisanship.”

Only then his voice rises, his brow furrows, and his face reddens. He claims that “the rich” avoid “paying their fair share,” even as he knows that just 1% of the country pays over 40% of all income taxes.

[...]

In sum, it was the same old, same old dishonest Biden: misinform, ignore, and attack—and then call for “unity,” as the country collectively slides into ruin.

Craig Bannister devoted a Feb. 8 article to another right-wing ranter, Ben Shapiro, under the misleading headline "Ben Shapiro: ‘Last Night Was One of the Worst Events in American Life’." But the article itself makes it clear that Shapiro is raging about State of the Union addresses in general, not specifically Biden's.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:51 PM EST
Updated: Friday, March 3, 2023 1:52 PM EST
NEW ARTICLE: The Mayra Flores Boomlet
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its "news" division CNSNews.com heavily hyped a Latino Republican after she won a special election for a congressional seat in Texas -- but had trouble admitting that she lost the seat in the midterm elections. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 9:26 AM EST
Thursday, March 2, 2023
MRC Defends GOP Response To Biden's State of the Union Addess
Topic: Media Research Center

As part of its lengthy freakout over President Biden's State of the Union address, the Media Research Center also defended the Republican response to it given by former Trump press secretary and current Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Kevin Tober complained in a Feb. 8 post:

During CNN’s State of the Union coverage, the assembled panel of leftists thought it was appropriate to mock Republican Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ story she told while giving the GOP response to Biden’s State of the Union about when she and President Donald Trump visited the troops overseas at Christmas. 

Referring to the moving story Sanders told about her experience, host Anderson Cooper snarked “by the way, hasn't every president visited the troops?”  

Faux conservative and co-host of the circus of clucking Hens commonly known as The View, Alyssa Farah Griffin immaturely admitted “we were all laughing” when Sanders was telling the story. 

Not understanding the point of the story, Cooper remarked that “she [Sanders] seemed to be revealing it as if it was a remarkable achievement.”

Tober didn't mention that Sanders' story was mocked because it sounded not unlike the (almost certainly untrue) stories Trump has repeatedly told of allegedly strong men who cried when they met him. (Also, she didn't actually mention Trump in her telling of this story.)

Autumn Johnson cheered how Sanders inserted right-wing narratives about "big tech" into her address:

The most telling part of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech was what he conveniently did not address–censorship.

Biden droned on about taxes, climate change and infrastructure, but he barely discussed Big Tech in his speech. He called for enhanced enforcement of the U.S. antitrust laws and user privacy protections, but he made no mention of Big Tech's glaring censorship problem.

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed Americans just how much Biden missed the mark when she acknowledged the vicious leftist threats to freedom of speech: 

Tim Graham complained that someone on PBS criticized Sanders: "PBS might be seen as a sleepy avenue for analysis after the State of the Union and the Republican rebuttal, but on Tuesday, new Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders was fiercely critical of President Biden, so Washington Post columnist/MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart uncorked a fit, lying about how Republicans want to abolish most of black history in public schools." Tober served up a similar complaint about historian Michael Beschloss:

Beschloss then went after Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and claimed she “goes on and says, in two years the Democrats have destroyed everything, and woke mobs are running all over the country.”

Mocking Sanders, Beschloss starts looking out his home window and snarked: “I'm here in Washington D.C.. I’ll look out the window for you, Stephanie, and Ali. I don't see any woke mobs tonight. I just don't know what speech she was listening to.” 

Beschloss is a partisan hack and should never be taken seriously for anything. Which is exactly why he’s constantly invited to spew his dribble on MSNBC.

Curtis Houck groused that ABC's Jonathan Karl was "trashing her speech as 'harshly negative, almost a bit of American carnage that we saw from Trump in his inaugural address.'"Houck didn't actually dispute the assessment. He repeated that whine against an NBC correspondent who accuratedly noted that Sanders "lean[ed] into those so-called culture war issues...what she and conservatives see as sort of wokeism on the left, trying to draw the line between what she described as normal and crazy."

The MRC was still grumbling days lster. A Feb. 15 post by Houck on Nikki Haley's announcment of her presidential campaign nicked one CNN analyist who "hilariously tried to argue Haley was socially moderate because she didn’t go the route of Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the GOP’s State of the Union response with themes of 'dark[ness]' and 'critical race theory' like 'you might hear on Newsmax or Fox.'"


Posted by Terry K. at 9:29 PM EST
WND Touts Anti-Vaxxer Lawsuit Against Media, Censors Its Flaws
Topic: WorldNetDaily

L.A. "Tony" Kovach gushed over a newly fiiled lawsuit in a Jan. 30 WorldNetDaily column:

Notable Democrat-supporting liberal Robert F. Kennedy Jr., J.D., (RFK Jr.) is suing corporate media giants. As WND reported, Kennedy said, "Nobody has ever complied their way out of totalitarianism."

Kennedy's lawsuit is significant because it is based on antitrust law.

Unlike some who file suits and never win, Kennedy and his organization have enjoyed several big court victories, including a recent one. The Defender explained, "Federal antitrust law prohibits firms from colluding to deny critical facilities or market access to rivals."

From the complaint itself: "CHD with this lawsuit aims to vindicate the freedom of speech and of the press. The Defendants are the BBC, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Reuters."

Bob Unruh expanded on the lawsuit in a Feb. 7 article:

Robert Kennedy Jr. has joined with several other plaintiffs to sue major media outlets for suppressing competition.

The complaint accuses the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC  and Reuters of infringing on antitrust laws by attacking others' reporting on issues such as COVID-19 and more.

The action alleges the defendants are illegally boycotting some news reports under the guise of a coalition that was intended to crack down on misinformation.

The complaint charges the "Trusted News Initiative," launched by the BBC only years ago, violates the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

That law prohibits industry cartels, price fixing and a variety of other anti-competitive schemes.

Kennedy's complaint accuses the defendants of conspiring to denigrate conservative talking points about COVID, the vaccinations, treatments including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, the Hunter Biden laptop and more.

Neither Kovach nor Unruh mention the relevant fact that Kennedy is an anti-vaxxer who rejects science to peddle his own conspiracy theories (and that, as a result, no Democrat claims him), and that pretty much all of the plaintiffs in his lawsuit are anti-vaxxers. And neither of these people are going to point out the massive holes in logic in this lawsuit.

As one observer noted, no "big tech" companies are listed as defendants, "despite the premise of their lawsuit being that they've been excluded from Big Tech," and the plaintiffs all describe themselves as publishers, "Which is obviously great when you're alleging you've been prevented from publishing by Big Tech." Further, the court case on which the plaintiffs are hanging their antitrust claim against the Trusted News Initiative doesn't really apply here because the TNI was formed to fight disinformation, not make money, and as another observer noted, "social or political boycotts are not a violation of antitrust laws, and are protected by the First Amendment."

Despite the dubiousness of this lawsuit, Kovach -- described in his end-of-column bio as the co-founder of two publications "which are widely acknowledged to be the largest, most-read and evidence-based trade media serving the affordable housing and mobile home/manufactured housing profession and consumers" -- continued:

There are numbers of takeaways from the above. One is that Kennedy, a Democrat, is indirectly exposing the Biden family and Democratic corruption through this litigation. Conservatives should bear in mind that perhaps 65 to 80% of the country largely agree on a range of issues. Strategic thinkers should carefully unpack the information linked here, because bigger audiences – and more supporters – are available.

Kovach offered no list of specific things "65 to 80% of the country largely agree on."


Posted by Terry K. at 6:45 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, March 2, 2023 6:48 PM EST
MRC Still Attacking Google With Dubious 'Media Research'
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center spent part of last year accusing Google of using its Gmail program to send more unsolicited Republican campaign emails than Democratic ones -- while hiding the fact that users adjusting their setting eliminated the problem -- and it even got the Republican National Committee to buy into the bogus narrative. Well, nobody else bought into the bogus narrative outside the right-wing media bubble, and the MRC is mad about that too. Catherine Salgado huffed in a Jan. 19 post:

The Federal Election Commission just dismissed a complaint from several Republican entities saying Google’s Gmail spam filter was biased in favor of Democrats, constituting a potential in-kind contribution to Democrat campaigns. The evidence, including MRC analysis, seems to indicate the FEC is wrong.

The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 17 that the FEC ruled against the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in their complaint.

The Republicans cited an “academic study” from North Carolina State University showing that Gmail sent almost 70 percent of Republican candidates’ emails to spam while it sent only about 8 percent of Democrats’ emails to spam. Republicans said the filtering “amounted to unreported campaign contributions to Democrats,” The Journal explained.

The FEC reportedly downplayed the disparity, citing the same study and arguing that the partisan bias was unintentional and Google’s algorithm simply filters spam, as The Journal wrote. Because Google is always perfectly honest, right FEC? The FEC would seem to be saying that the vast majority of Republican emails are in fact spam, and thus deserve to be filtered out, while almost no Democrat emails are spam. Is that not a partisan bias?

In fact, the NC State researchers pointed out that right-wing partisans like the MRC have misrepresented the study's findings, adding that any blocking occurred only in default settings on newly created accounts and that users are free to tweak their spam settings to receive any email they want. One researcher even said: "Gmail isn’t biased like the way it’s being portrayed. ... I’m not advocating for Gmail or anything. I’m just stating that when we take the observation out of a study, you should take all of the observations, not just cherry-pick a few and then try to use them."

Looks like Salgado has a partisan bias against Google and can't be trusted to be "perfectly honest."

That's not the only bogus Google bias narrative the MRC recently tried to advance. Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a Jan. 20 post:

Looking for information on “pregnancy”? Google’s got just the website for you: America’s largest baby-killing organization, Planned Parenthood.

MRC Free Speech America researchers analyzed Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the word “pregnancy” in a “clean environment.” Researchers performed the analysis the day before the 50th annual national March for Life in Washington, D.C. and found that Bing’s and DuckDuckGo’s search results for the word “pregnancy” stand in stark contrast to Google’s. While both Bing and DuckDuckGo showed more neutral results, displaying Healthline.com’s “overview” of pregnancy, Google showed a Planned Parenthood link as its first result. Planned Parenthood did not show up at all on the first page of results for either Bing or DuckDuckGo.

“Google may not believe it, but life is sacred,” MRC President Brent Bozell said. “Planned Parenthood should not be the first result when searching 'pregnancy' on Google. This is the work of the devil and the progressive left.”

The un-American search engine’s first result leads users to a Planned Parenthood page with an extremely detailed informational video answering “how does pregnancy happen” and the option to learn more. The link is a gateway for promoting abortion and discouraging women from seeking crisis pregnancy centers.

If this approach sounds familiar, that's bcause it is. The MRC has repeatedly accused Google of not prioritizing right-wing narratives in its search results, based on searches no normal human would use, and it refused to explain why the results it demands are supposed to show up in the searches it provides. Note that Pariseau made no effort to prove anything in that Planned Parenthood pregnancy video to be wrong, despite complaining that it was "extremely detailed" -- she simply complained that it was the first result because she hates Planned Parenthood for ideological reasons. She also didn't substantiate her slur that Google is "un-American," or why these particular search results support that slur.

Nevertheless, Pariseau went on to complain:

For example, just underneath the informational link, in the same search result, is a link to a “Pregnancy Options” page that warns users about pro-life clinics: 

“Be careful when looking for a reliable health center. There are fake clinics that say they have pregnancy services. These are called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and they’re run by people who are anti-abortion and don’t believe in telling you the truth about all of your pregnancy options. They may use lies and manipulation to try to scare or shame people out of choosing abortion.”

Pariseau didn't dispute that crisis pregnancy centers mislead or scare women, because the record is quite clear on that. Which means that Pariseau is once again mad that Google is providing accurate information to its users.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:29 PM EST
CNS Covered State Of The Union Speech Through An Anti-Biden Lens
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com prepped for President Biden's State of the Union address with a little pre-speech grousing:

  • A Feb 6 article by Micky Wootten complained that "In preparation for President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union (SOTU) address, security fences have been erected around the perimeter of the U.S. Capitol building, a practice that has become commonplace since the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021."
  • A Feb. 7 article by Susan Jones carried the editorializing headline "White House: 25 Guests 'Personify' Liberal Agenda That Biden Will Address Tonight," but the article itself did not use the word "liberal" at all to describe the guests or the agenda.Jones did, however, insist on referring to same-sex marriage as "homosexual marriage."
  • An article by Craig Bannister hyped that "A gaming site is giving two-to-one (2-1) odds Pres. Joe Biden will say the word 'Trump' during Tuesday night’s State of the Union (SOTU) address – and even greater odds he’ll use less flattering terms to refer to his predecessor."

The main after-speech article, by Patrick Goodenough, carrired the derogatory headline "Biden Inexplicably Shouts About Chinese Leader, in an Address Light on Foreign Policy":

In a State of the Union address that was otherwise almost entirely devoid of foreign policy, President Biden on Tuesday night did devote several hundred words to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to the challenges posed by China.

On the first, he said America had united NATO, confronted Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and stood with the Ukrainian people.

On China, too, Biden touted U.S. leadership on his watch, declaring, “Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was failing in the world.”

“Not anymore,” he added with a small grin.

So talking about Ukraine was "foreign policy"? Weird. That was followed by a raft of Republican and CNS (but we repeat ourselves) attacks on Biden and the speech:

That was followed by a few articles nitpicking the speech, as CNS is prone to do on Biden but didn't for Trump:

And like its Media Research Center parent, CNS threw a fit over Biden pointing out that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Melanie Arter complained:

President Biden claimed Tuesday during his State of the Union address that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, but his words prompted boos and outcry by Republicans during his speech.

“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage. I get it. Unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” Biden said, which prompted outcry from Republicans in the audience.

“I'm not saying it's a majority. Let me give you Anybody who doubts it. Contact my office. I’ll give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the proposal. That means Congress doesn't vote. I'm glad to see you. No, I tell you I enjoy conversion. It means if Congress doesn't keep the programs where they are, they go away,” he said.

“Other Republicans say, I'm not saying it's a majority of you. I don't even think it's even significant— but it's being proposed by individuals. I'm not— politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some of you. Folks. The idea is. That we're not going to be, we're not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don't respond,” Biden said to boos from the GOP. 

Then the president recognized that Republicans don’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Another article by Arter complained that Biden said he got Republicans to agree to not cut Social Security and Medicare by calling them out:

One day after accusing Republicans of trying to cut Medicare and Social Security during his State of the Union address and then relenting, President Biden was at it again during a speech on the economy in DeForest, Wis.

He talked about the Republican outcry to his remarks, then called out Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) for proposing cuts in both programs, but he said the “good news” is that he made a “deal” with Republicans on the House floor not to make cuts to either program.

A Feb. 9 article by Arter quoted Scott -- the very Republican Biden was effectively calling out -- playing whataboutism: "Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) accused President Biden of lying about his intention to sunset Medicare and Social Security, pointing out that it was the president himself that proposed that very thing in 1995 when Biden was a senator." Arter also gave Scott space to explain how hisproposed economic plan doesn't actually advocate for cutting Social Security and Medicare even though it demands that all federal programs be sunsetted in five years.

An article by Bannister the same day let Scott rant:

“You pick the time and the place,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) offered Thursday, challenging Joe Biden to a debate, during the president’s visit to Florida, regarding Biden’s claim that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Scott tweeted the invitation to Biden just before one in the afternoon, saying he wanted an opportunity to dispel Biden’s lies:

Arter also tried to play gotcha in a Feb. 9 article: "President Joe Biden has been accusing Republicans of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it was Biden who proposed that very thing back in 1995 when he was a senator debating the Balanced Budget Amendment." But a Feb. 10 article by Jones featured Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell emphatically making the point that Scott's plan is "not a Republican plan," going on to complain that "The issue of benefit cuts, which came to the fore in the 2022 election (thanks to Rick Scott), looks to be a main argument for Biden and his fellow Democrats in 2024 as well."

(A week later, Scott amended his plan to specifically exclude those programs, a development CNS has yet to tell its readers about.)

Arter went into stenography mode for a couple articles that weren't anti-Biden, repeating statements from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

Bannister devoted a Feb. 9 article to cheering allegedly low ratings from Biden's speech:

State of the Union viewership fell 28% this year, setting the record for the lowest audience for an official State of the Union address in the 30 years Nielsen has been reporting the statistic.

Biden’s 2021 address to Congress was lower, but it wasn’t an official State of the Union address, because he had been in office for only a few months, instead of a full year.

The complaints continued days later, as demonstrated in a Feb. 13 article by Jones:

President Biden continues to insist the Republicans wants to cut Social Security and Medicare programs, pointing to the plan of a single Republican -- Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

Republican leaders in both chambers say there's no way they'll cut those benefit programs, and two Republicans emphasized that on different Sunday talk shows:

"We're not going to cut Social Security or Medicare. We've been very clear about that," Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told ABC's "This Week."

Jones didn't mention that Republicans can be easily found on the record advocating for cutting Social Security and Medicare.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:56 AM EST
Updated: Monday, March 6, 2023 12:36 AM EST
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Assembles Again To Defend His Education Censorship
Topic: Media Research Center

The DeSantis Defense Brigade at the Media Research Center continues to run at full speed, rushing to defend Republican Florida Gov. Ron  DeSantis' efforts to censor what is taught in schools, picking a fight over an advanced placement course on African-American history. Alex Christy complained in a Jan. 19 post:

MSNBC and CNN are not pleased with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ latest attempts to stop woke-ism in Florida with Alex Wagner sarcastically congratulating him for “keeping hockey white” on Wednesday while Wagner and Friday’s CNN This Morning both acted as if Florida will no longer be teaching history.

[...]

Wagner then moved onto DeSantis’s decision to not allow AP African-American Studies to be taught in the state. Courses ending in “studies” are notoriously political, but Wagner did not see it that way, “All of this is bad enough for the people of Florida, but it may concern all of us outside of Florida if DeSantis really is on his way to a presidential run.”

She then introduced Columbia Journalism School dean and The New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb, “Can you give us your thoughts on the moves that the DeSantis administration is making to censor the teaching of history and race in this country?”

For Cobb, it was if DeSantis just banned history class, “they’re trying to eradicate the history of the Civil Rights Movement.”

That’s objectively not true and ridiculous, but Cobb was just getting started, “And so in this march backward to make this heavy-handed diktat about what can be taught and what can't be taught, you’re literally pushing these institutions back into the past.”

As it was on CNN This Morning when Sara Sidner, discussing the same AP African-American Studies controversy and is relates to the wider movement against Critical Race Theory, uttered, “so that's a real problem when you look back at all this because people were oppressed in this country and should that not be taught?”

Sidner then assumed that because Critical Race Theory has “critical” in its name, it must promote critical thinking, “I think we can teach that and people can learn from that and you're supposed to be thinking critically. There's this whole argument that is being made, but this is an Advanced Placement course. So, what if Critical Race Theory is in it? Who cares? Teach kids to think, not what to think.”

Thinking critically means challenging your own assumptions whereas CRT starts with the assumption racism is the answer and then shoehorns evidence to fit a pre-determined conclusion. It is the exact opposite of critical thinking.

Christy offered no evidence to back up any of his attacks on CRT or critical thinking in general.

Kevin tober ranted in another post that day:

On Thursday night's The ReidOut on MSNBC, the vile and venomous Joy Reid threw a temper tantrum over Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis allegedly banning an AP class called "African American Studies" from being taught in Florida public high schools. Instead of making a coherent argument for why a class like that should be taught, Reid accused DeSantis of approving a course that would teach students that former slaves in America were happy and treated well by their "good slave masters." 

"It’s the Daughters of the American revolution, the pro-confederate groups who insisted that we can only teach slavery as happy slaves, good slave masters," Reid claimed. 

Continuing to lash out, Reid shrieked: "I promise you an A.P. class that taught that slavery was good because it seemed at least per his former students, Dr. Gallon that he wanted to teach history of slavery as sort of gallant slave owners who were kind to their happy slaves. He's cool with that. And if the A.P. course said that, he’d be fine with it."

IN a Jan. 21 post, Christy insisted that a right-winger "debunked" concerns about DeSantis' actions:

CNN’s voice of reason Scott Jennings displayed amazing patience on Friday’s CNN Tonight as he calmly debunked self-righteous senior political correspondent John Avlon and condescending former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner on the issue of what exactly Florida requires as part of its history curriculum.

As part of a discussion of Gov. Ron DeSantis disallowing AP African-American Studies, Avlon declared “Well, I think, first of all, what DeSantis is doing with this AP history course is about identifying a political tactic they think is a winner for the Republican base in particular, this war on woke. I think it shows that a lot of the conversations around free speech really fall apart when it's pushing their own ideological agenda.”

Every state, liberal, conservative, and everything in-between has laws regarding curriculum, but only when conservatives enact them is it a threat to “free speech.”

[...]

Jennings then calmly took apart this rant, “Yes. Well, Nina, you ought to be very happy with Governor DeSantis because not only is African-American history under Florida law required to be taught to school children, it has actually been expanded during his governorship… it is an absolute state requirement in Florida that they teach African- American history. And it's gotten more expansive since he came in. So, you sound upset with me, but the fact is Governor DeSantis –”

Turner then interrupted, “The way he wants it taught, Scott, right… The party of free speech is taking away people’s speech.”

Repeating talking points is hardly a "debunking."

Miark Finkelstein took a turn at complaining that DeSantis' activism was being criticized, and dutifully spouting talking points in response, in a Jan. 24 post:

CNN has never been "Facts First." Don Lemon hosted a segment on today's CNN This Morning to discuss Ron DeSantis's decision to uphold the Florida State Department of Education's decision to deny the College Board the opportunity to run a pilot AP (Advanced Placement) course on African American Studies pushing themes like "Intersectionality and Activism."

At one point, CNN's Audie Cornish said "I don't know where he wants to draw the line. Slavery was political at one point."

[...]

Wrong! Don Lemon surely knows that DeSantis is not proposing to ban the teaching of slavery. DeSantis does object, however, to African American history being taught from a hard-left perspective. And examining the curriculum in question, that is exactly what is being proposed. Students wouldn't be taught: they'd be indoctrinated in CRT, BLM, and history according to avowed Communist Party die-hards like Angela Davis.

Tober served up even more whining at Reid for daring to criticize DeSantis:

On Tuesday, MSNBC's ReidOut host Joy Reid launched into a vicious attack again Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis due to his committing the grave sin of protecting public school children in his state from racial and sexual indoctrination. Reid was so incensed that she compared it to the "cultural genocide" that took place in the 1800s against Native Americans. If you needed proof of how demonic and historically illiterate Reid is, this is all the evidence you need.

A Jan. 25 post by Tober smeared a civil rights attorney suing DeSantis over the forced curriculum changes as a "racial ambulance chaser":

Wednesday's NBC Nightly News dedicated an entire segment to a pending lawsuit by racial ambulance chaser Ben Crump and a number of left-wing activist students over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Education banning an AP African American studies course that would've taught public school students content steeped leftist ideology like Critical Race Theory, black queer studies, intersectionality, and other topics that violate state laws. Most of the segment was framed against the educational reforms DeSantis was making, with correspondent Zinhle Essamuah framing the racial indoctrination as simply "African American history."

"Protest and pushback in Florida with a new potential legal battle over race education," Essamuah announced before cutting to a student named Elijah Edward who whined about DeSantis: "I can't believe that this is 2023, and America is talking about censuring education."

"Civil rights attorney Ben Crump announcing his plan to sue Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the state after DeSantis blocked a pilot AP African American studies course in Florida," Essamuah sympathetically reported.

Curtis Houck similarly attacked Crump in a Jan. 26 post:

Thursday’s CBS Mornings opened its “What to Watch” segment with a little over two minutes touting far-left activist and Al Sharpton-wannabe Benjamin Crump’s threat to sue Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over the Florida Department of Education’s decision to reject an AP course on African-American culture and history because it was deemed “a vehicle for a political agenda” with topics such as critical race theory, intersectionality, and queer studies.

“Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is threatening to sue the state of Florida — rather, Governor Ron DeSantis. Here’s the reason: Last week, Florida’s Education Department rejected a proposed Advanced Placement high school course on African-American studies. That is a college prep class,” co-host Vladimir Duthiers began.

[...]

Co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King reacted by defending the class, saying “it’s important to point out it’s an elective class” with other choices out there and thus students “don’t have to take it.”

Houck baselessly attacked another "CNS Mornings" co-host, Tony Dokoupil, as a "socialist" without providing evidence to back it up.

Christy returned to complain in a Jan. 27 post:

If someone really wanted to get the conservative perspective on the news, one of the last places they would turn would be CNN, but that didn’t stop a Thursday CNN Tonight panel from declaring that GOP efforts to stop Critical Race Theory are not conservative.

[...]

Later in the segment, Avlon lamented that they were even having this conversation, “it's just the performative nonsense that we're playing into to some extent. I mean, yeah, Trump is trying to outdo Ron DeSantis and this is all about, you know, play the base and it's not about serious policy. It's not about helping kids. It's not about, you know, uniting the nation.”

Because The 1619 Project and gender theory are about uniting the nation?

Christy went on to insist that "Trump, DeSantis, and others are reacting to a left-wing culture war" and not creating one, even though CRT is nothing if not a right-wing culture war.

The lashing out at any criticism of DeSantis continued:

HOuck used a Feb. 1 post to remind us that this was all about advancing right-wing narratives and buzzwords and boosting DeSantis and nothing about education:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) scored yet another K.O. to wokeism Wednesday when College Board, the company behind Advanced Placement courses for high schoolers, released its revised curriculum for AP African American Studies after the Sunshine State rejected it for its litany of woke principles, including Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and queer theory. But when the head of College Board and the lead adviser joined CBS Mornings, none of that was brought up.

Instead, the course was treated as completely innocuous.

Houck never explained why it wasn't beyond dropping right-wing buzzwords like "woke" and "Critical Race Theory." He followed that up with a Feb. 3 post touting DeSantis' "latest victory over wokeness" and whining that someone else criticized DeSantis.

Tim Graham cranked out his own DeSantis defense in a Feb. 3 column:

Anyone watching leftist cable news channels knows that it’s considered fair commentary to categorize Republicans, individually, or collectively, as “white nationalists” or “white supremacists.” Anyone standing in the way of the Black Lives Matter/Critical Race Theory crusade is dealt the Racist card.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis scored a political win in pressuring the College Board to tone down their proposed Advanced Placement curriculum on “African-American Studies.” Every conservative knows from experience that when you place “studies” in front of a minority group – black studies, queer studies, Native American studies, women’s studies – you can expect a highly ideological journey.

Graham refused to admit that DeSantis is simply imposing his own ideology by force on Florida's educational system. Instead, he gushed that electoral might makes right: "Ron DeSantis was just re-elected with 59 percent of the vote, but CNN and their left-wing guests want to suggest that he’s the one that’s 'outside the mainstream.'" By contrast, the MRC never concedes that Democrats who win elections have a mandate for change according to their views.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:14 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, March 1, 2023 10:36 PM EST

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