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Saturday, November 4, 2023
WND's Farah Can't Stop Complaining That Google Won't Do Business With Him
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In the month before he mysteriously disappeared from day-to-day operations -- with still no explanation why -- WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah felt the need to relitigate yet again his complaints against Google., which he continues to blame for WND's shaky financial situation. He ranted in his Aug. 1 column:

Censored by Google: Back in 2020, that is what happened to Martin Luther King's famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," which had run in The Atlantic's August 1963 issue. I genuinely feel sorry for The Atlantic, but it wasn't censored like all of WND's content – 100% – has been since November two years ago. My colleagues at the Gateway Pundit were also permanently demonetized by Google about the same time.

MLK's letter is one of the most important texts of the civil rights movement.

Google thinks it's foolproof because of artificial intelligence and the like – but it's not. The letter's censoring wasn't intentional, of course. But it was more embarrassing than sticking it to WND, the oldest start-up on the internet (birthed in 1997), because of its reporting and commentary.

Google cost this gritty, conservative, Christian journal tens of millions of dollars because of its virtual monopoly and know-it-all attitude.

[...]

For 24 years we co-existed. Actually, I doubt [Google CEO Sundar] Pichai has been at Google that long. I don't even know if he's old enough. I could call Google evil, which I did often, and yet they were happy to take my money nonetheless. But when I crossed swords with the Southern Poverty Law Center I was doomed – me and most of my employees.

Even Slate, a bona fide leftist site, and many others also have had specific articles demonetized because Google disapproved of them. Yet only two sites have been "permanently demonetized" – for two years and counting.

As we've documented, WND has not been "demonetized" -- Google has simply chosen to stop doing business with a website known for fake news and conspiracy theories by no longer allowing its ads to appear there. In short, Google and WND had a business agreement, and WND repeatedly violated the terms of that agreement.

That was followed by WND's usual (and false) rebuttals to the Google standards WND broke -- guidelines against hateful content was retorted with how "WND dares to report honestly and forthrightly on the fantastically deranged transgender agenda," guidelines against "demonstrably false" content was rebutted with "the obvious and provable fact that the 2020 election was one of the most corrupt, manipulated and RIGGED elections in American history," and so on. Farah concluded by huffing:

We don't play ball with Google. We know exactly what we believe. One of the most precious things we believe in is the First Amendment to the Constitution. In the past, newspapers and other media never worried about that changing or getting watered down or becoming extinct. The First Amendment has been foundational to this nation for 236 years. It's our heritage, our government's most important statement of who we are.

It reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

May it always stand in word and deed.

Last we checked, the First Amendment doesn't protect lies and hate.

Farah used his Aug. 16 column to praise Robert Kennedy Jr. -- whose campaign for president WND has ironically promoting -- for suing Google for pointing out that he's an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist:

See how easy it is to sue the government and Google for censoring all of us?

All it takes is a little money and the will to do it. Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A federal magistrate judge has set an emergency hearing on Kennedy request for a temporary restraining order barring Google from censoring his speech on YouTube during the 2024 campaign. Kennedy, a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California against Google, LLC and its wholly owned subsidiary YouTube, LLC, last week.

The hearing was to be held this week before Judge Nathanael Cousins in the federal courthouse located in San Jose, California.

Kennedy alleges that Google worked with the federal government to develop and enforce "misinformation" policies to censor the government's political opponents, like RFK Jr., who is running against President Biden in the Democratic primary. Such actions violate the First Amendment when, as here, "they result from a public-private partnership that relies on government sources and when the private party, Google, shares the government's censorship goals."

Farah went on to cheer Kennedy for playing the "censorship" card, then tried to ride his coattails:

Kennedy is absolutely correct. And so was WND when we set out blaze the trail in independent online journalism:

[...]

Two years ago, Google dropped a huge nuclear bomb on WND by permanently demonetizing us.

When Google demonetized WND, the world's second-wealthiest company finally revealed what they considered the three BIG LIES that this news site had been promoting, for which reason they throttled our traffic, advertising revenue and search accessibility. In other words, Google tried to drive us completely out of business.

Farah copy-and-pasted yet again WND's bogus rebuttal to its Google guideline violations After noting how it promoted various COVID conspiracies, he added: "This last one we share in common with Robert Kennedy. It was government under Joe Biden that made this formula lethal to the First Amendment."

Then it was time for a money beg as Farah mixed in a donation drive in his call for prayers:

We've lost more than 90% of our revenues since 2016. We are essentially operating on fumes.

If WND means something special to you, we continue to need your prayers and your financial blessings. While some of our friends in the independent media have billionaire patrons, you should know that we do not, and never have. We've always operated the old-fashioned way, earning our own way. We spend only what we take in through revenues and donations.

We do it because we love it. We always have. But we also love you for remembering us. Truly.

Most of all, we love God and trust Him for our daily bread.

So, please, don't forget to keep us in your prayers. We can feel their effectiveness. They give us great encouragement to keep fighting on.

He even provided a phone number and a special email address "for anyone who is in a position to contribute $5,000 or more."


Posted by Terry K. at 1:04 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, November 4, 2023 1:52 AM EDT
Friday, November 3, 2023
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

In his writeup of the Oct. 2 White House press briefing, the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck served up huge dose of Doocy-fluffing, insisting that only biased right-wing reporters like Peter Doocy were asking "real questions":

Monday’s White House press briefing started on a pathetic note with the first flurry of questions consisted of the press corps sticking up for and asking questions on behalf of the Ukrainians, not the American people. Eventually, there were real questions asked, thanks in part to Fox’s Peter Doocy and wife Hillary Vaughn of the Fox Business Network.

Vaughn came first: “New York Governor Kathy Hochul says the border is too open right now. Does the President think that the border is too open?”

Jean-Pierre launched into a hilarious answer that began with the token point that Biden “put forward a comprehensive piece of legislation to deal with immigration reform” when he took office, but Republicans won’t acquiesce. 

She then added that Biden’s tackled the border through “enforcement,” “detergence,” and “diplomacy.” On the second point, she comically bragged that “we’ve made clear that attempting to cross the border unlawfully will result in prompt removal, a five-year ban on — on reentry, and potential criminal prosecution.”

[...]

A few minutes later, Doocy drew some laughs at the White House when he alluded to Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulling a fire alarm on Saturday that delayed a House vote to keep the government open:“Would President Biden ever try to get out of a meeting by pulling a fire alarm?”

Jean-Pierre jokingly replied: “Are you talking about something specifically?”

Doocy then became more direct: “A Democratic member of Congress pulled a fire alarm around a series of votes. No fire. Is that appropriate?”

Jean-Pierre said she hadn’t “spoken to the President about this and” thus wouldn’t “comment.”

Doocy’s other questions focused on a possible strike of health care workers and riots last week with looters ransacking stores in Philadelphia[.]

In Houck's right-wing bubble, press questions are only "real" if they advance conservative narratives.

Houck's Doocy-fluffing continued the next day:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy wasn’t having it as the ever-inept White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reverted back to a years-long, cartoonish, pants-on-fire fable that Republicans are the true anti-cops, defund-the-police party in light of Monday night’s carjacking of Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in the Navy Yard section of Washington D.C.

It started with a question from The Wall Street Journal’s Catherine Lucey, who was not only the penultimate reporter called on, but shamefully only the first to bring up Cuellar: “[D]oes the White House any comment on the carjacking of Representative Cuellar? Has the President reached out to him? And more broadly, does it say anything about safety and crime in the District?”

After confirming that Biden “did have an opportunity to speak with the congressman today,” that the White House is “grateful and relieved” he was okay, and calling the attack “unacceptable,” she launched into blaming the GOP for cities not being fully staffed with police (click “expand”):

[...]

Doocy went straight to the obvious the left writ large — in or out of office — won’t admit, which is that they run nearly all of these major cities spiraling into lawlessness: “Well, the first follow up would be, how are you going to blame Republicans for this? Isn’t D.C. run by a bunch of Democrats?”

Jean-Pierre doubled down that Biden “has been very, very straightforward about” ensuring “communities are safe” whereas Republicans wouldn’t support giving “communities...funding” to “hire more police officers”.

Doocy hit back with this stinging hypothetical: “So, if President Biden’s policies are helping bring crime down, would he be comfortable with somebody borrowing his Corvette and parking it on the street overnight in Southeast D.C.?”

The Press Secretary refused to go there, saying she’d only “get into the facts about what this President has done” and brought up the gun control legislation from last year.

Apparently for Houck, "stinging hypotheticals" 'are the same as "real questions" when Doocy says them.

Biden's decision to build parts of a border wall gave Houck the chance to spread the right-wing narrative that the president caved and to chortle that Jean-Pierre was asked a lot of questions about it at the Oct. 5 briefing:

Karine Jean-Pierre, the Biden White House’s ever-inept press secretary, had a rough go of things Thursday afternoon as she took a plethora of brutal questions from the left and right over President Biden’s sudden capitulation to sanity and allow for the construction of just over 20 miles of new border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Given it was more than just Fox’s Peter Doocy and Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann pressing, you knew it was a grilling.

He didn't forget his Doocy-fluffing, though:

Doocy Time ended the briefing, starting with: “As a candidate, President Biden didn’t say, ‘there will not be another foot of wall constructed that — except what was appropriated in 2019.’ He said, ‘there will not be another foot of wall constructed [in] my administration.’ So, something changed. What?”

This left Jean-Pierre furious (click “expand”):

[...]

Doocy’s last question was spicy but pertinent: “If you have to build a border wall but you don’t think that it’s going to work, then once it’s done, are you just going to tear it down?”

Of course, Jean-Pierre scoffed at the idea of “getting into hypotheticals”.

Such partisan hackery from Doocy, remember, is what Houck considers to be "real questions" to ask the White House.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:23 PM EDT
Newsmax's Hirsen Cheered Right-Wing Songs of the Summer
Topic: Newsmax

Like the Media Research Center, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen hyped the right-wing songs of the summer. He gushed over Jason Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town" in his July 24 column:

Jason Aldean is a superstar country music singer, with 27 number one hits and several top-selling albums.

He recently released a song that threw him smack in the middle of the cancel culture battle.

Aldean's recent single "Try That In a Small Town" came out in May 2023, but went with little mention in the non-music press.

Then in July the music video was released. That’s when the artist as well as the song came under heavy mainstream media and social media attack.

The video includes footage from the Summer of 2020, where flags were burned, cars were smashed, businesses were vandalized, police were abused, etc.

The left responded in what has become routine fashion, slapping a bigoted label on the art and the artist.

The tragic incidents of 2020 and the brutal crimes that continue to ravage major cities have been minimized and/or completely ignored by dominant left-leaning media outlets.

Aldean’s artistic inclusion of depictions of events seems to have really hit a nerve.

Hirsen let Aldean complain that "this song isn’t promoting violence as some have suggested" and that "There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it" -- but failed to disclose that the video includes footage of Aldean performing in front of a Southern courthouse notorious as the scene of a lynching of a black teenager in 1927. Hirsen noted that a concert crowd unsurprisingly cheered the song, adding:

Aldean’s small town is proving to be mighty big in a lot more ways than one.

The "USA! USA!" chants from the concert crowd were more than just a show of support for the country music artist.

They were a great big "Thank You!" to Jason Aldean from down-home hearts across America and globally.

Hirsen has previously written a 2022 column defending Aldean's wife after she stated in an online video that "I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase," cheering them for trying to bring "our unique and legendary all-American country music back."

Hirsen followed that by hyping Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" in his Aug. 14 column:

Truths, especially those that have been suppressed, often have a way of emerging in the form of a song.

With one finger on an instrument and another on the pulse of a culture, a gifted songwriter is able to capture a moment, compose melody, and pen lyrics.

With the luck of the draw, the creation may even become a musical soundtrack for its times.

This just happened in the life of former factory worker and off-the-grid farmer Oliver Anthony.

He performed an original song for an audience comprised of his dogs.

The instant the video was uploaded to the web, Oliver’s world changed forever.

Just days ago the Virginia singer-songwriter was unknown to the general public. Now he has the number one song on iTunes. It’s called "Rich Men North of Richmond."

[...]

Reflecting the discontent with the present economic reality and the fallout from unjust governmental policies, Oliver goes on to sing, "Lord, it’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to for people like me and people like you."

One of the most compelling lines in the song points to the surreal nature of life these days, with the words, "Wish I could wake up and it not be true, but it is, oh it is. Living in the new world with an old soul."

Hirsen again whined that the song was criticized by non-right-wingers:

Meanwhile, left-leaning media are trying to sully the song.

For example, Rolling Stone published a piece titled "Right-Wing Influencers Just Found Their Favorite New Country Song," characterizing the tune as a "passionate screed against the state of the country."

News bulletin: His song is music to the ears of millions of Americans whose voices have been suppressed and who have simply been suffering in silence.

8.4 million views and counting is the exclamation point, and a fine one at that.

Hirsen hasn't written about the song since, so we don't know how he feels about Anthony distancing himself from the right-wing activists trying to appropriate his song for their purposes and pointing out that it was written about the kind of out-of-touch Republican presidential candidates who touted his song at their first debate. He did, however, name-check both songs in his Aug. 23 column as evidence that "the silent unwoke majority sure seems to have found its voice."


Posted by Terry K. at 5:56 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, November 3, 2023 6:10 PM EDT
WND Promotes Faulty Anti-Biden Claims From Shady Ukrainian Ex-Prosecutor
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh uncritically wrote in an Aug. 25 WorldNetDaily article:

Viktor Shokin is the prosecutor in Ukraine that Joe Biden, as vice president and in charge of Ukraine relations for Barack Obama, demanded be fired.

Biden later bragged about it:

The situation that developed was that the U.S. was working to help Ukraine eliminate corruption, and one of Shokin's targets was Burisma, a gas company that was paying Joe Biden's son, Hunter, $1 million a year, ostensibly to be on its board but, as evidence suggests, allegedly to get rid of investigations.

The U.S. had concluded Shokin was making progress, but Joe Biden abruptly overruled that conclusion, insisting Shokin be removed, and threatened Ukraine with the loss of a billion dollars of American aid if he was not fired.

He was.

Now, in a coming interview reported to be lined up by Fox News this weekend, Shokin charges that Joe and Hunter Biden did take bribes.

Those bribes already have been documented in an FBI report that said a trusted confidential source confirmed they happened, $5 million to Joe and $5 million to Hunter.

A report Friday in the Daily Mail cites the coming interview, and clips that it obtained from that.

The report said Shokin described the Bidens as the ones guilty of "corruption," and said they took "bribes" from Burisma.

"I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed," Shokin explained, according to the Daily Mail report.

In fact, Shokin is not telling the truth -- he was fired in part because he wasn't investigating Burisma, not because he was (and, in fact, Burisma did not want Shokin fired); he also refused to prosecute any members of the government of former Ukranian president Viktor Yankunovych and was widely viewed as not doing his job. And it wasn't just Biden who sought to fire him; much of the internatoinal community, including more than 100 members of the Ukranian parliament, also wanted Shokin fired.

The only attempt Unruh made to present a balanced view of Shokin was a single paragraph in which he noted that  the Daily Mail story reported that "Biden's White House is accusing Fox of 'giving a 'platform to lies'" with the interview.'" But Unruh made no effort to detail those lies.

IUnruh repeated the dubious pro-Shokin narrative again in a Sept. 8 article that hyped how "a memo now has emerged that confirmed the European Union had reached internal consensus that prosecutor Viktor Shokin's office was meeting established goals for fighting corruption and organized crime." Unruh omitted that many other officials wanted Shokin fired for lack of progress against corruption, repeated the falsehood that Shoking was "investigating the Burisma company," and he again failed to detail the lies Shokin told in his Fox News interview.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:16 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, November 3, 2023 2:20 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 15: Carrots And Sticks
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is still serving as Elon Musk's PR agency -- while also taking the occasional whack at him for not giving right-wingers total leeway to spread hate and lies. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 2:29 AM EDT
Thursday, November 2, 2023
MRC Mad That Media Reminded People That MLK Was Liberal
Topic: Media Research Center

The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, drew media attention -- as well as complaints from the the Media Research Center because people were reminded that King was a liberal and that some of the issues he fought against still exist today. Alex Christy complained in an Aug. 26 post:

The Saturday editions of ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and CBS Saturday Morning all focused on the festivities 60th anniversary of the March on Washington not just by recounting Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech, but by assisting today’s organizers in portraying overcoming current progressive grievances as the next chapter in the fight for civil rights.

ABC’s Faith Abubéy was the worst offender. She recalled the events of 1963 and how “organizers say today this fight is in part about voter suppression, housing discrimination, police and racial violence, racial disparities when it comes to employment, education, and other basic civil rights.”

Adding in some commentary of her own, Abubéy took aim at the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, some of which had nothing to do with race, “The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is, of course, happening in the wake of some controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings in which affirmative action, student debt relief, and abortion rights were all gutted in recent terms.”

Apparently Abubéy really believes that not paying back your loans is a civil right or that the demise of affirmative action and abortion is in the same universe as the existence of segregation.

[...]

At no point did anyone on any of the three networks say contemporary voter suppression is a myth meant to scare people or wonder what any of the left’s contemporary culture wars have to do with 1963.

Christy's evidence that voter suppression is a "myth" is a link from Georgia election officials touting record election turnout after the passage of an "election integrity" law, but no evidence was presented to justify passage of the law in the first place given the almost complete lack of election fraud in the 2020 election.

Tim Graham used an Aug. 28 post to compain about a TV segment that reminded people that, yes, King was a liberal:

To mark the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington, the CBS program Sunday Morning aired a commentary by left-wing New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who started out celebrating the speech as "iconic," but then turned on its idealism, touting that King later hardened to the left, focusing on systemic racism. All the leftists prefer the more radical late-Sixties King to the Kumbaya 1963 version.

Blow wanted to sound positive about the early speech: “It is a beautiful speech. It doesn`t so much demand as it encourages. It is a great American speech, perfect for America`s limited appetite for addressing America`s inequities, both racial and economic...It focuses more on the interpersonal and less on the systemic and structural.” But he was happy to explain King saw the error of this approach:

[...]

What this approach doesn't do is make any acknowledgement of racial progress since King's death in 1968. The Left insists that systemic racism has never ended, and America remains a terribly racist country.

Graham made no effort to prove that racism was compeltely eradicated after the 1960s.

Curtis Houck whined that the march and speech anniversary was marked in a post later that day:

From Saturday night through Monday morning, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC got weak knees over the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech that, based on even a cursory view, was no more than a far-left political rally led in part by ethnic and racial arsonist, MSNBC host Al Sharpton. 

Even teachers union head Randi Weingarten was there, shouting like a raging lunatic! How that fit in other than ideology was beyond us. Our Alex Christy set the table by looking at the similarly comical coverage on Saturday morning.

The post-march goo started flowing on ABC’s World News Tonight with senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott playing fill-in anchor and swooning in a tease:“The March on Washington turning 60. A new wave of support. Thousands gathering to walk in those same steps taken decades ago, and there were new demands for social, economic, and racial justice.”

[...]

CBS Weekend News came off as muted, painting the 2023 march was unobjectionable, led by “a new generation gathered to honor the call” of King.

Houck couldn't be bothered to explain what, exactly, was objectionable about this year's march.

In another Aug. 28 post, Brad Wilmouth groused that it was pointed out how Republicans are rewriting curriculam standards for black history were referenced in march anniversary coverage:

On Friday morning, CNN This Morning was again fearmongering about Republican changes to school curricula as the liberal news network gave attention to the 60th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights march in Washington, D.C. After a pre-recorded piece by reporter Jason Carroll, fill-in anchor Victor Blackwell declared that some are trying to "rob" American students of being taught about the Civil Rights Movement and black history.

Carroll's piece focused on veteran civil rights activists Courtland Cox and Edward Flanagan, both of whom took part in the historic 1963 march. Toward the end of the report, the CNN reporter cautioned: "Both agree while much was accomplished that day, the work is not over."

Graham returned to whine about all of this in his Aug. 28 podcast:

Leftists gathered to mark the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington. As usual, the "objective" media picked up the hot talk about the conservatives "gutting" abortion rights, "affirmative action," and "student debt relief." The organizers were leftists, but reporters touted a diverse "spectrum" of activists.

On ABC, reporter Faith Abubey never said anyone was "leftist," or "progressive," or even "liberal." There were no labels. "Organizers say today this fight is in part about voter suppression, housing discrimination, police and racial violence, racial disparitieswhen it comes to employment, education, and other basic civil rights. The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is, of course, happening in the wake of some controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings in which affirmative action, student debt relief, and abortion rights were all gutted in recent terms."

An Aug. 30 post by Wilmouth complained all of this was still being talked about:

The topic was the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington, but it became an unchallenged forum to lie about Governor Ron DeSantis over "banning books" and the teaching of black history in Florida.

Toward the end of the interview, Isaacson brought up the issue of the wealth gap between blacks and whites: "But 60 years later, wealth inequality in America is still as great -- the difference in wealth inequality between black and white. What does that say to you?"

Dyson ripped America for being a "hypocritical" nation and then took his first shot at DeSantis as he began his response:

[...]

"Memory," in their mind, is enacting a leftist agenda, to use the memory of slavery to spur reparation payments and other compensations. It was not mentioned that the anti-police activism supported by BLM and the liberal media led to a sharp increase in violent crime, which should undermine the moral halo networks like PBS always put around the leftist movement.

After this all-too-typical PBS interview concluded, host Christiane Amanpour appeared again and praised Dyson's commentary: "Such a powerful invocation against historical amnesia."

Wilmouth and his fellow MRCers, meanwhile, want us to have historical amnesia about how the (largely Southern) racists and segregationasts who refused to accept that the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement became Republicans.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:59 PM EDT
MRCTV Writer Goes On Conspiratorial Rant Against FDA, COVID Vaccines
Topic: Media Research Center

We typically don't do much with the Media Research Center's video=making operation MRCTV, but we were reminded that it's not just NewsBusters that peddles COVID and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories at the MRC. An Aug. 15 post by the floridly named P. Garner Goldsmith mixed those conspiracy theories with a bizarre hatred of the federal government, ranting that the FDA has no constitutional right to exist:

At one point in George Orwell’s “1984,” protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the truth-hiding “Ministry of Truth,” thinks, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

He wrote eternal words that befit most government agencies, politicians, and their media lackeys -- and they perfectly fit the behavior of that brazen insult to the Constitution known as the “Food and Drug Administration.”

If you have a memory, you might recall that the not-constitutionally-enumerated FDA granted also-unconstitutional “Emergency Use Authorization” to pharma-giant mRNA gene-transfection jabs that the corporations and politicians and media shills erroneously called “COVID vaccines” (but actually always were termed "countermeasures" behind the scenes in DC) and which, by pumping them upon us in this fashion (along with massive federal subsidies for the mRNA development, jab purchases, and military-led distribution) didn’t require “testing” that usually is required for real vaccines before they are “allowed” to be introduced into the market.

It’s important to reiterate that the feds have absolutely no moral or constitutional power to create an FDA in the first place, let alone to artfully craft their arbitrary so-called “rules” about when and how drugs can be sold or used. And it’s also important to note that the only way the mRNA jabs could be put out under that wondrous “Emergency Use Authorization” was if there were no therapeutic medications that patients could use to alleviate the symptoms of their politically over-blown threat, COVID-19.

Enter things like hydroxychloroquine, which, in early February of 2020, I already knew had been tested via funding from the NIH to show that it was a “potent inhibitor” of SARS CoV (1) – a fact that Anthony Fauci had to have known since the study was done in 2005, and which he never, ever mentioned in public.

Strange, that.

Well, not so strange -- as a legitimate news source reported (as opposed to whatever conspiracy site Goldsmith hangs out it), that study was conducted only on animals, the original SARS virus is not COVID-19, and the 2005 study examined chloroquine, which is a different drug than hydroxycloroquine. Also, there's still no solid evidence that hydroxycloroquine is effective in treating or preventing COVID. While on the subject of sketchy drugs, Goldsmith continued:

And enter Ivermectin, on which ignorant preach-meisters in pop media such as Jimmy Kimmel and CNN pounced, deriding it as “horse paste” and “horse dewormer” when the drug long ago was heralded as a breakthrough for humans in the fight against internal organ and skin parasites, elephantiasis, and even head lice, having been credited with saving millions of lives in Africa.

And enter the FDA bureaucrats, who seemingly can’t keep their probing, problematic hands to themselves, and which issued “official” statements to tell people that Ivermectin was NOT approved for parallel use as a therapeutic against the symptoms of COVID-19.

Goldsmith then ranted that American have the right to ingest whatever they want regardless of whether it actually works for the intended purpose:

To which doctors and everyone else should have said, long ago, “WE DO NOT NEED YOUR PERMISSION OR GRANTING OF AUTHORITY.”

This argument, concerning whether the FDA approved, or approves now, should be moot. We are supposed to be free to peacefully trade with others and to ingest what we want. Didn’t the FDA bureaucrats and Jimmy Kimmel learn from the experience and response of the colonials when the Brits imposed the Tea Act on them in 1773?

[...]

Of course, one ought to go deeper, and question the assumption that the FDA has any moral or constitutional authority to “approve” of “not approve” a drug, at all, but, on the level at which they are arguing, even at THAT, the FDA is on slippery legal footing, having explicitly expended tax cash to tell people not to take ivermectin.

It's bizarre that Goldsmith doesn't think anyone should inform Americans that a drug doesn't for a specific purpose, no matter how many right-wing anti-vaxxers say otherwise.

Goldsmith closed with another anti-FDA rant:

The quicker people see the roots of the FDA problem -- which go much deeper than whether it was “giving medical advice” or phrasing things this way or that – the more rapidly they will see what it means to be a free person.

And the sooner they will see that it is utterly imperative to eliminate the FDA.

When you're too crazy to get out of thte MRCTV ghetto at the MRC, you're pretty crazy.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:30 PM EDT
MRC Whines 'Ahsoka' Too Female -- And Not The Right Kind Of Females
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Rsearch Center's Elise Ehrhard spent an Aug. 24 post complaining that the new "Star Wars" TV series "Ahsoka" is led by women she doesn't like, and that the men "don't really factor into the show":

For the past decade, Disney has taken a hatchet to the Star Wars franchise, creating only a few gems. Hopes were high that the new Disney+ series Ahsoka, about a former Jedi knight, could save what was left of the Lucasfilm magic.

Alas, in Disney's latest attempt to prove "the force is female," writers again forgot that characters should also be interesting and multi-layered, whether they're women or men.

The biggest problem in the first two episodes of the new series, titled "Master and Apprentice" and "Toil and Trouble" respectively, is the amount of screen time devoted to a former Padawan named Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Wren smirks a lot, rolls her eyes and is otherwise obnoxious and unlikeable. In Hollywood, this is code for "a strong, independent woman." 

The audience is introduced to Wren after she has skipped out on a ceremony she was supposed to speak at, embarrassing everyone involved. No reason is given for not doing her duty except that she didn't feel like it. She's seen racing away on her speeder as she disobeys reasonable orders. It's hard to believe that she is actually an adult rather than a moody teenager.

Unlike Wren, the other female characters are bearable, but boring. They show little emotion and inner life, as if the only thing that matters about them is that they are in charge. Male characters don't really factor into the show except as villains, incompetents or irrelevancies.

The only acceptable female characters, Ehrhard insisted, are those with a man in her life and who have "maternal instincts":

Hollywood used to be able to create exciting female sci-fi heroes. The late 1970s and 80s produced Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy and other iconic female protagonists in films, like in Alien and Terminator 2. The women in these franchises were tough but interesting, because they could show moments of affection, warmth and vulnerability. Princess Leia was charmed by Han Solo. Maternal instincts drove Ellen Ripley in the Alien series and Terminator 2's Sarah Connor.

Unfortunately, in Hollywood today, maternal instincts are passé and the desire for love or romance is supposedly regressive. So, audiences instead are left with wooden women or smirking girl bosses.

The MRC has long had issues with women who deviate from its rigid traditional ideological models (and may not even be heterosexual!), and it has attacked a new iteration of "Star Wars" character Obi-Wan Kenobi for supposedly being insufficiently manly.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:49 PM EDT
WND Too Busy Drooling Over Trump To Care About First GOP Debate
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's initial reaction to the first Republican presidential debate was cheering that Donald Trump refused to take part. An Aug. 23 article by Joe Kovacs complained that Fox News allegedly wouldn't reference the interview that Trump was doing with disgraced ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson instead of the debate:

Even as 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls battle it out on Fox News in the first presidential primary debate Wednesday evening, the network is purportedly banning its talent from mentioning Tucker Carlson's interview with President Donald Trump that airs at the same time.

Chadwick Moore, the biographer of Carlson, tweeted: "A current Fox News employee tells me everyone on Fox, including guests, are explicitly banned from mentioning tonight's Tucker/Trump interview, even in the context of the debate."

"All shows are banned from even acknowledging that Trump will appear on this [Tucker Carlson Twitter] show," Moore told the Benny Show.

Carlson was booted by Fox News earlier this year despite dominating the cable-news ratings.

And rather than offer any original coverage of the debate -- the only debate-related piece it did was an Aug. 22 item by Kovacs that gave a platform for Larry Elder to complain he wasn't invited -- WND instead slobbered over Trump. It linked to his interview with Carlson, joined by outside article listing "6 highlights of Trump's debate-disrupting interview with Tucker Carlson." An Aug. 24 article by Bob Unruh served up more Trump rah-rah:

President Donald Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson, prerecorded and released Wednesday night just as the first GOP primary debate was airing, is being called a "blockbuster" and its traffic blew through the 200 million mark and was approaching a quarter of a billion at close of day Thursday.

It is the Daily Mail that pointed out Trump was celebrating the "blockbuster" event, and a little more than 15 hours after being released, the official Twitter count for views was at 194.1 million. Meanwhile, the GOP debate was assessed to have 12 million watchers.

Unruh surprisingly injected a little reality into the proceedings: "Trump's detractors immediately pointed out that the metrics on the social media program count those who watched only a little of the video, however." But it's not being a "detractor" to point out the fact that Twitter's view metrics are utterly meaningless and that, in reality, the number of people who watched the debate likely outnumbered those who watched the entirety of the Trump-Carlson interview.

WND's opinion writers stuck to the narrative as well. Joseph Farah proclaimed Trump the winner of the debate even though he refused to take part, repeating those bogus Twitter view numbers:

Who won the Republican debate Wednesday night?

President Donald J. Trump, hands down.

Trump's blockbuster interview with Tucker Carlson reached over 100 million views on X less than four hours after premiering on the platform.

That's more people than watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see the British band's first live performance on U.S. soil. The television rating was a record-setting 45.3, meaning that 45.3% of households with televisions were watching.

Trump's interview garnered more than 124,400 reposts and over 439,500 likes – completely overshadowing all of television programming.

And how many viewed the Republican debate on Fox News Network? We're not sure yet. But no Trump fans, that's for sure. Maybe Fox execs were forced to watch it.

As he is prone to do, however, Farah's Trump fanboyism quickly descended into election denialism:

You have to be a real dummy to believe Joe Biden actually won 81,284,666 votes, a statistic even Wikipedia is embarrassed to print, in the COVID-19 tainted 2020 election cheating debacle against Trump. Trump is credited with an astounding 74,224,319 votes and probably a lot more – which would make his total the highest ever achieved by any president in history. Why do you think the Democrats can never have him run again – preferring to indict him multiple times in an election year?

Farah concluded by ranting that "Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Wednesday night sent out a fundraising appeal for the eight elves who debated. The list didn't include Trump – as I said, the only guy to break a sweat so far in the primary season. She must stop this charade. The race is over."

Mike Pottage similarly cheered Trump for purportedly destroying the debate format:

Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Wednesday obliterated seven decades of "made for television" presidential debates. The next day the Tucker interview had 210 million views and counting, while a paltry few million folks witnessed the GOP presidential debate on Fox News.

The comparison, for those who watched both events from beginning to end, was substance verses fluff and zingers.

Future presidential candidates will have a different take on media driven and orchestrated televised debates versus individual interviews in which the candidate has time to develop an idea and advocate for it. The substantive discussions will be delivered via the internet.

These TV debates, since the 1950s, have been sold to the public as "must see" TV when in fact they are tightly controlled campaign events with the media making up the rules and controlling the content of the conversation. That is why American politics has drifted left of left for decades.

[...]

Clearly, Donald Trump made the correct decision to skip the media-orchestrated fray for a real conversation with America, thanks to Tucker Carlson. He presented himself. Conservatives were pleased. Marxists were aghast. What say you, Mr. and Mrs. Voter?

Wayne Allyn Root unsurprisingly declared Trump the winner as well (and, yes, he cited those bogus Twitter view numbers as well):

We learned several things from the GOP debate Wednesday night.

Former President Donald J. Trump was the biggest winner – by a mile.

First, he won by not showing up and having to lower himself to fight the entire gang of also-rans who want his old job.

econd, by not participating, Trump won by taking all the attention away from the competition – thereby depriving anyone on that stage of gaining ground on Trump's huge 40-point lead.

Third, I predicted days before the debate that "Trump on Twitter" would destroy the GOP debate ratings. Trump did not disappoint. Over 240 million viewed Tucker interview Trump on Twitter – the most to ever watch an interview online. More people watched Trump than voted in the 2020 election.

Fourth, Trump won the biggest prize of all: He got revenge on Fox News. Trump on Twitter defeated the most powerful cable TV news network in America. Or at least it used to be. Now it's a shell of its former pro-Trump, pro-Tucker self.

Trump and Tucker together have destroyed Fox News. Stick a fork in Fox. This story will be studied in business school for decades to come: How two spoiled brats from Europe ran daddy's American dynasty into the ground in record time with "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

Of the candidates who actually took part in the debate, Root appeared to like Vivek Ramaswamy for being Trump-esque: "The GOP desperately needs an enthusiastic, MAGA, America First, conservative, capitalist version of Obama. That makes Ramaswamy 'our Obama.' So far, he appears to be on the right side of most every issue for conservatives and patriots. Although more vetting is required." He concluded: "The winner was Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump. With an assist to Vivek."


Posted by Terry K. at 12:46 AM EDT
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
MRC Tried To Blame Biden For U.S. Credit Downgrade
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has long tried to blame President Biden for everything bad that's happening with the economy while talking down  When the U.S. saw a credit downgrade amid Republican efforts to shut down the federal government, the MRC tried to blame that on Biden too. Kevin Tober huffed in an Aug. 1 post:

On Tuesday, the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the United States' credit score for the first time since 2011 due to the mounting debt and federal government disfunction that has occurred during the first two years of the Biden administration. Of the "big three" evening news broadcasts, only NBC Nightly News bothered to cover the credit downgrade. 

Instead, ABC's World News Tonight & CBS Evening News were more preoccupied with a group of pedestrians getting hit by a car in NYC (ABC), and the U.S. Women's soccer team playing their first World Cup with "equal pay" (CBS). This is in addition to their obsessive coverage of Tuesday's indictment of former President Donald Trump in which ABC spent 11 minutes and 56 seconds harping on the news.

Tober wouldn't admit that Republicans are playing a big role in creating that "disfunction" (or that he should have run a spell-check on his item before posting it).

In an Aug. 3 post, Alex Christy whined that one outlet did point out Republican blame:

During a discussion on former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment related to January 6, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle went on a bit of a digression on Wednesday’s The 11th Hour to discuss Fitch downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating, which according to her was caused by “was the chaos created by the GOP” including January 6. Of course, Fitch’s own explanation was a little bit more complicated.

Ruhle was joined by former Reps. Tim Ryan and Charlie Dent, a progressive Democrat and moderate-to-liberal Republican respectively, and addressing Ryan she wondered:

The power of our democracy, the power of our economy, Tim, just yesterday, Fitch, the rating agency, downgraded U.S. credit. And one of the factors was what happened on January 6th, was the gridlock, was the chaos created by the GOP, by these falsehoods and the misinformation getting pushed. Do people realize this, and how fragile things are? And do they care enough?

[...]

With Ruhle nodding in agreement, Ryan continued, “but it's also, you know, huge tax cuts, and me and Charlie may have a conversation about, this but the huge tax cuts that blew a huge hole in the deficit after two wars and after the Bush tax cuts, yeah, of course, you know, we're running deficits that are huge.”

In their “rating action commentary”, Fitch does not use the word “wars” even once. While, it does mention tax cuts, it also mentions “new spending initiatives” and the lack of entitlement reform, “Additionally, there has been only limited progress in tackling medium-term challenges related to rising social security and Medicare costs due to an aging population.”

Fitch also mentions that a significant rise to deficit-to-GDP ratio and while citing debt-limit brinkmanship, laments that the deal that was reach was only “a modest improvement to the medium-term fiscal outlook.”

Christy censored the fact that theFitch commentary also referenced "erosion of governance ... that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions" -- which is Republican-generated.

Keter Kotara issued a similar complaint later in the day:

Thursday’s Morning Joe featured a defensive segment where host Joe Scarborough and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass teamed up to shove blame on Republicans for the recent credit downgrade of the United States received from Fitch.

Seeking to promote the lie that national debt doesn’t matter and that “Bidenomics” was working, Haass and Scarborough sought out a way to blame the “dysfunctional” state of American politics and name Republicans for that dysfunction, while leaving out any mention of Democratic responsibility.

[...]

Haass thought he could just skirt over the fact that the US has an unprecedented, massive amount of debt that Biden and the Democrats recently added to with their infrastructure legislation and pandemic spending spree. Credit rating is an assessment of whether or not someone can pay back their debt, and the biggest factor into that was the size of the debt.

[...]

So even if political instability was the reason why the credit was downgraded, it was Democrats’ fault.

They spent the money. They forced the debt limit to be raised. They put America in a situation where it couldn’t pay its debts, then called it “Bidenomics” and gaslighted the country into thinking the economy was great. And now, America has begun to pay the price of their financial recklessness and irresponsibility. But you won’t hear that from the media, just finger-pointing and pandering to the far left.

Is that like how Kotara is finger-pointing and pandering to the far right?

Cassandra DeVries served up her own version of the approved partisan spin in another Aug. 3 post:

On Thursday, CNN News Central discussed President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the even lower approval rating of his management of the economy. They subsequently covered Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S.’s credit score from an AAA to an AA+ on Tuesday because of “deterioration in governance.” Instead of linking the troubling economic conditions to Biden’s policies, CNN quoted Biden’s administration and blamed the previous Trump administration.

[...]

Like most Americans, Fitch disapproved of how Biden handled the economy and the government’s constant increase in borrowing. They distinguished between the economy's condition and how the economy was handled and subsequently lowered the U.S.’s debt rating.

Nicholas Fondacaro brought the narrative to his hate-watching of "The View" in an Aug. 4 post:

In the same week that credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the United States’ credit from AAA to AA+, partially because President Biden refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling with Republicans until the 11th hour, multimillionaire and co-host of ABC’s The View, Joy Behar whined that Biden was not getting “credit” for a “booming” economy. She falsely suggested that “inflation is down” and that average Americans were “having an easier time putting bread on the table.”

Fondacaro offered no evidence that the previous shutdown threat was solely because of Democratic refusal to negoatiate. Hasn't he heard that one is not supposed to negotiate with terrorists (economic ones in this case)?


Posted by Terry K. at 10:19 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 10:33 PM EDT
Newsmax Still Touting All (Well, Most) Things Rudy, Including The Defense Fund It Runs For Him
Topic: Newsmax

We're reported that Newsmax has started, and is managing, a legal defense fund for frequent guest Rudy Giuliani, who is facing numerous legal actions in regard to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. On Sept. 28, Newsmax sent out an email to subscribers containing "A Letter from Rudy Giuliani to You" thanking readers for their support -- and of course, begging for more money (boldface in original):

But the far left was not finished with President Trump or me.

Since President Trump left office, they have launched wide-ranging legal attacks against him with four indictments in four jurisdictions, including 91 counts!

At the same time he has faced multiple criminal and civil charges in New York State.

I have been indicted – along with President Trump and others -- in Georgia after simply exercising my constitutional right to challenge an election result.

I am facing other legal cases across the United States. The left uses this “lawfare” to stop conservatives like me from speaking out.

Well, I can assure you, they will never stop me from speaking out.

America is too important to give up.

I want to thank you for your support – it means so much to me and my family.

President Trump has also thanked Americans for supporting my Legal Defense Fund.

Just this past week, I was sued again.

This time by Hunter Biden!

He is actually claiming I misused his laptop. The very same laptop he denied owning.

Yes, the same laptop his father said was not his son’s, but a product of Russian disinformation.

As I said, I will continue to fight against the forces of darkness in this country.

But I need your help.

Consider again a donation to my Legal Defense Fund.

There was no disclosure of the fact that Newsmax is running the legal fund.

Newsmax did a basic article on Hunter Biden's lawsuit against Giuliani. It defoted more attention, however, to Giuliani suing President Biden over being called a "Russian pawn" during the 2020 campaign. First up was an Oct. 4 article by Nicole Wells:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sued President Joe Biden for defamation on Wednesday, taking aim at two comments from 2020 that branded Giuliani a "Russian pawn."

Filed in New Hampshire state court, the 16-page lawsuit names Biden, his campaign, and four fundraising committees as defendants. According to the complaint, Biden made the statements on Oct. 22, 2020, during the final presidential debate against former President Donald Trump.

Biden initially linked Giuliani to Russia while answering a question about foreign election interference, the lawsuit claims.

Then, of course, came the inevitable Newsmax TV hit, summarized in an Oct. 5 article by Sandy Fitzgerald:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, calling President Joe Biden the "biggest liar we've ever had in the White House" insisted on Newsmax that he must pay damages for referring to him as a "Russian pawn" during remarks made in the final 2020 presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump.

"I can calculate, honestly, millions of dollars in damage," Giuliani told Newsmax's Greg Kelly on Wednesday night about the lawsuit he filed against the president earlier in the day.

[...]

"What he just said was that I was a Russian spy, a Russian operative, a dishonest person supplying dishonest information ... many, many things," Giuliani told Kelly. "You could go as far as to say a traitor, right? A Russian pawn."

And that, Giuliani claimed, "Did great damage to my law practice and my consulting business. My podcast was canceled in certain places. I can calculate millions of dollars in damage as a result of that."

Giuliani added that "roughly half the people" believed Biden, and "those half of the people turned out to be a lot of the corporate captains and leaders in the country. I was doing security work for many of them, and I had a beginning podcast that was up to a million people on YouTube. So it was not insubstantial, and I lost a lot of that."

Newsmax didn't ask why Giuliani filed his defamation lawsuit in New Hampshire though Biden's comments were made in Tennessee. (New Hampshire has a longer statute of limitations on defamation, it turns out.)

Surprisingly, Newsmax published an article on another of Giuliani's legal woes. An Aug. 30 wire article noted that Giuliani "is liable for defaming two Georgia election workers who were the target of vote-rigging conspiracy accusations following the 2020 U.S. presidential election," adding that the federal judge overseeing the trial "found Giuliani refused to comply with a process for producing records, known as discovery, and rejected the former New York mayor's argument that the election workers used the lawsuit to harass him. Giuliani will have to pay legal fees and interest of $89,172.50 and $43,684 for a total of $132,856.50." A few days later, Giuliani appeared on Newsmax to reframe the judgment as a desire to "to move on to the legal aspects of the case. I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to get a fair trial in front of her in the District of Columbia."

In between all this, Newsmax continued to repeatedly host Giuliani and promote his other legal efforts:

Newsmax did publish a wire article on Giuliani pleading not guilty to the Georgia charges he faces, but it also published an article featuring sleazy Republican operative Roger Stone denouncing the charges -- not exactly the kind of character witness the guy needs. But it was silent about Giuliani's other legal foibles , among them a New York Times piece detailing his apparent drinking problem and a former lawyer suing him for $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills. It has also been silent about the judge in the defamation suit by the Georgia election workers ruling that jurors can be told that Giuliani intentionally hid his financial records (after lying about the two workers again).


Posted by Terry K. at 7:44 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 11:27 PM EST
WND Relies On Far-Right Writer To Dishonestly Defend Trump's Lawyers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh leaned on right-wing "investigative reporter" Julie Kelly -- who has bizarrely claimed that the Capitol riot "was probably the biggest instance of police brutality that this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement" -- to defend Donald Trump's allegedly overworked attorneys in an Aug. 29 article:

Now Kelly is out with a new report about a hearing before Chutkan, and "it's worse than reported."

[Judge Tanya] Chutkan is trying to run Trump into a trial in record short time, only a few months, and she's now claiming that defense lawyers for Trump "should have begun going through the evidence … against him even before the indictment was handed down," the Post-Millennial reported.

Kelly reported, "Chutkan marveled at [prosecutor} Jack Smith's rapid 'discovery' production while downplaying fact DOJ could not name a single case in DC District that went from indictment to trial in 5 months."

Defense lawyers have proposed a 2026 start date, but prosecutors in the Joe Biden-supervised Department of Justice say they want it much earlier.

That's even though there are tens of millions of pages of evidence to review.

The report explained Chutkan told Trump's lawyer, John Lauro, he didn't need any time past March 4 to review the millions of pages.

She claimed Trump's "lawyers" had seen the material, even if Lauro hadn't.

"For a federal prosecutor to suggest that we could go to trial in four months is not only absurd, it’s a violation of the oath of justice," Lauro said, the New York Times reported.

"We cannot do this in the time frame the government has outlined."

Chutkan charged that defense counsel should have been reviewing documents for a year already.

In fact, Chutkan is not being unreasonable. As a pair of lawyers reported in The Atlantic:

Contemporary trials, civil and criminal, routinely involve the tsunami of data people create day in and day out, resulting in millions of pages of documents produced during discovery. As the government’s reply highlights, Trump’s argument, resting principally on the more than 11.5 million pages of evidence the government produced as an excuse for significant delay, is without merit. Based on our experience in this field, it is simply disingenuous to use 19th- and 20th-century standards for paper cases in the modern era. The chart that Trump’s lawyers produced in their brief—visualizing a tower of physical paper they would have to review in a six-month span—is misleading. We—attorneys both—would be laughed out of court if we suggested delays for our side because a page-by-page document review of all discovery would take three years. Under that approach, no major civil or criminal case would ever be tried for years and years—which may be the Trump team’s actual goal.

Unruh also censored the fact that many of those documents were already available to Trump's lawyers. As USA Today reported, Smith pointed out that "3 million pages of the documents came from Trump entities; a million pages were already publicly available from the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021; and hundreds of thousands of other pages came from the National Archives where they were already available. Prosecutors said they loaded electronic records, such as 3 million pages from the Secret Service, in easily searchable form." Additionally, Smith noted that "The Government provided these materials in load-ready files so that the defense can review them quickly in the same manner as the Government did — through targeted keyword searches and electronic sorting," so there's no need to individually review every single page.

In other words, there's no reason that, given that  a competent defense team should not have already been reviewing those documents well before indictments were handed down. Then again, few people have accused Trump's legal team of competence.

The fact that Unruh chose to rely on such a wilidly dishonest and biased "investigative reporter" shows how desperate WND is to generate right-wing clickbait, no matter how dubious amd misleading.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:51 PM EDT
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
MRC Continued To Hate Transgender People During Pride Month
Topic: Media Research Center

When we last checked in, the Media Research Center was ringing in Pride Month with lots of nasty hatred of transgender people, and as the month continued, so did the hate. R. Emmett Tyrrell wrote a June 9 column with the headline "My Plan for the Transgenders" -- yes, he thinks "transgender" is a noun -- in which he demanded that there be "a third and, for that matter, a fourth category for the gender-revised athletes" and mocked transgender male athletes:

The guys may be bold enough to show up at a girls’ athletic events wearing a girls’ frilly competitive outfit. Think of the feminine frills worn by female tennis stars or the tattoos worn by women boxers. Yet even the toughest transgender guy has got to be shaken after one of the burly girls snickers at him/her or offers to hold his/her towel. There are dozens of ways to bully a transgender athlete, and no matter how aloof or calloused he or she might be, still every slight has its affect.

In a June 13 post, Kevin Tober was outraged that "a transgender TikTok influencer went completely topless" during a Pride Month event at the White House, which he claimed "sparked outrage at the lack of decorum at the White House." While he conceded that "Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemning the activist for stripping on White House grounds and informing them that they will not be allowed back," he whined that "big three evening news broadcasts continued ignoring the incident in order to minimize the embarrassment for the Biden administration" -- while of course crowing that Fox News gave the incident ample coverage -- going on to huff:

Regardless of who you are or what your sexual orientation is, it is thoroughly inappropriate to take off your clothes on White House property. It seems everyone from all sides of the political spectrum is in agreement except for the big three evening news broadcasts.

In another June 13 post, Alex Christy complained that PBS interviewed a woman "who compared giving hormones to 8-year olds to treatment for an earache," asserting that the claim "should earn a 'pants-on-fire' rating" (but without explaining why). Then again, Christy thinks that small breasts in teenage girls is a "birth defect" that must be fixed by plastic surgery, so he may not be the best person to ask for medical advice. (Or maybe he's just turned on by large-breasted teen girls.)

Christy complained that there wasn't unanimous hatred of the topless transgender person at the White House in a June 15 post:

Rolling Stone’s Jay Michaelson spoke for all of CNN Tonight’s Wednesday panel when asked if it was wrong of a transgender activist to go topless at the White House with “yes, but” as he and his fellow panelists would equivocate on the “inappropriate” “act of joy.” Taking the top spot for outrageousness was The Root’s Jessica Washington who lamented the “oppressed have to be perfect 24/7.”

[...]

Michaelson also lamented that this story is even a story at all, “I don't want this to distract from what is really happening, which is tragic war on trans people in this country. A new study just came out that said 41 percent of LGBTQ young people between the ages of 13 and 22 have seriously considered suicide in the last year. That number is even higher for transgender people. And so, while this was a misguided act of celebration, it was one in the context of a community that is under siege right now.”

Camerota then tossed the conversation to 2022 New York GOP Senate candidate Joe Pinion who butchered the conservative position, “I think most Republicans that I know would agree that trans people do have to live in fear. Most people who are Republican, who are conservative believe you should be able to love who you want to love, define yourself on your own terms. That is a thing that most people agree with.”

Legally being able to identify how you want and expecting to be taken seriously or demanding the law acknowledge it as true are two very different things, but Pinion continued, “Certainly, there are people who are bigoted, who have always used the urge to protect the children or to follow the faith, to justify some of the darkest chapters in American history.”

Christy didn't explain how, exactly, Pinion "butchered the conservative position" on transgender people -- which does, in fact, have as a key component spewing hate at them and denying their rights.

A June 15 post by chief MRC transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg cheered a right-wing congressmasn for playing gotcha on a witness at a hearing about gender-affirming treatment:

Oh really? I wonder why?

During a House hearing Wednesday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) debated witness Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. When Crenshaw asked McNamara about benefits of trans procedures for kids, she couldn’t name a single study that pointed them out.

Crenshaw recently proposed provisions that would remove federal funding from hospitals who provide transgender procedures for minors. Said procedures would include things like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgeries.

As reported by the "Washington Examiner," Crenshaw’s resolution would “remove federal dollars from facilities that perform these controversial treatment therapies in a similar manner as the Hyde Amendment removes funding for abortion procedures.” Essentially, training hospitals who teach about how to treat trans kids would be denied funding from the federal government. Presently, 58 hospitals receive that funding but if Crenshaw's proposal is instated, its highly likely that number would go down. 

As a matter of fact, 70 percent of taxpayers opposed the “barbaric treatment” on minors, as Crenshaw mentioned to assist his point that these treatments shouldn't receive federal funding.

[...]

Of course, McNamara couldn’t name any of the benefits of trans surgeries for kids because - well, there are none. There’s nothing positive about chemically or surgically castrating anyone, nevermind a child. There’s nothing beneficial about mutilating an innocent, God-designed body to fulfill a complete and utter delusion. There’s no perks of training doctors on how to provide life threatening and life changing procedures to kids that frankly, do not need said procedures at all. 

Crenshaw’s argument pointed that out clearly while squashing McNamara’s,  so-called "rebuttals."

But Mandelburg offered no evidence Crenshaw allowed McNamara to answer his questions; her excerpts of the exchange largely involved Crenshaw interrupting and talking over her.

Tober returend for a June 15 post whining that an actual medical professional criticized right-wing anti-transgender laws:

On Thursday’s edition of CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell had a sitdown interview with Doctor Jesse Ehrenfeld, the president of the American Medical Association who grumbled that doctors and other medical professionals were struggling in their professions due to states banning chemical castration and other transgender surgeries. 

After introducing Ehrenfeld, O’Donnell asked him what he thinks was “the top issue facing physicians today.” Ehrenfeld responded that the United States has a “twin-endemic, a pandemic of the disease, plus a pandemic of misinformation and bad information.”

Narrating to the audience, O’Donnell bemoaned that “Dr. Ehrenfeld is taking over at a difficult time. Doctors are facing burnout, soaring medical costs, medicare payment issues, and new legislation targeting the LGBTQ community and reproductive rights.”

“We have a healthcare system in crisis,” Ehrenfeld proclaimed. When asked to clarify, he said, “In at least six states now, if I practice evidence-based care, I can go to jail. It's frightening. When a patient shows up in my office, if I do the right thing from a scientific, from an ethical perspective, to know that that care is no longer legal, criminalized, and could wind me in prison.”

There was no scientific evidence to support chopping off the healthy body parts of a young boy or girl in order to make them look like the opposite sex. Yet, O’Donnell never corrected him or challenged him in any way. 

Even worse, she accepted his anti-scientific narrative by referring to it as “criminalizing of doctor care.”

Christy didn't explain why a doctor's care must be criminalized.

Tim Graham spent a June 18 post huffing about a story on a pregnant transgender man :

On Saturday, NPR exploited Father's Day to push "pregnant dads" with our taxpayer subsidies. The headline was "Americans celebrate dads this weekend. Three tell us about being a father in 2023." They pushed the "he was pregnant" pronoun inanity hard in their celebration:

[...]

The only tiny hint of interesting opposition allowed in this propaganda is that allegedly a lot of people wanted this woman to abort. Then we had to be told "what people get wrong" with their opposition to upside-down gender-denying madness:

Graham didn't explain how adding right-wing anti-transgender hate to this story improved it any, given that we are all quite aware that right-wingers like him passionately despise the mere existence of transgender people.

A June 18 post by Tober assumed without evidene that children recieving gender-affirming care are being "abused" and, thus, create the need for right-wing transphobes to interfere in and override the opinion of parents, whom conservatives otherwise claim to believe know best for their chidlren:

On CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent Susan Spencer was once again wearing her leftist bias on her sleeve when she began arguing with American Principles Project president Terry Schilling over sex change procedures for children. The interview came during a segment on the growing fight between conservatives and leftists on whether children should be allowed to receive puberty blocking and cross sex hormones if they believe they’re the opposite sex. 

Spencer kicked her biased questioning into high gear when she wailed at Schilling: "the parents of some of these children would look at you and say if you want to protect kids, leave us alone." This of course is absurd even for Spencer. Why would conservatives who believe children are being abused simply look the other way?

Schilling responded to her asinine question by noting "We are leaving your kids alone. We are the ones that are protecting them from getting sex change procedures and puberty blocking and cross sex hormones."

"I would tell them they don't," Schilling added. To which Spencer interrupted again: "who are you to say that?"

Schilling retorted by educating the Democrat CBS News activist: "I am an American citizen that gets to vote and organize people in politics. When we both disagree, then we go to the American people and make our cases to them and we see who can pass the most laws and right now we’re starting to win."

Tober then huffed, "Spencer would never grill a Democrat like this." It's telling that he has chosen to portray asking reasonable questions of a right-wing activist as "hostile" and an example of "leftist bias."


Posted by Terry K. at 9:11 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, October 31, 2023 9:21 PM EDT
Newsmax Does Cleanup Over Trump Gun Goof
Topic: Newsmax

Last month, Donald Trump went to South Carolina gun store and admired a gun with his face on it. Both a right-wing reporter and a member of Trump's staff reported that he bought the gun. Just one problem with that: As someone who has been indicted on a felony charge, he is not allowed to buy a gun, and it would violate the conditions of his release to do so. Cue the backpedaling by both the reporter and the campaign. Also cue the Trump-fluffers at Newsmax trying to play cleanup, and that's what Eric Mack did in a Sept. 26 article:

Former President Donald Trump admired a special edition Glock pistol Monday that featured his likeness, but he did not buy one, according to reports.

"I want to buy one," Trump said Monday in Summerville, South Carolina. "Isn't a Glock a great gun?"

Trump posed for pictures with the Glock, along with members of his campaign tour, which included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

While Cheung initially posted "President Trump buys a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!" on social media platform X, according to multiple news outlets, that post was deleted.

"President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm," the campaign later told USA Today in a statement. "He simply indicated that he wanted one."

Trump would not be barred from buying the Glock under 18 USC 922, but the sale of the firearm to him is illegal due to myriad indictments against him.

[...]

The gun store told The New York Times it did not sell a gun to the former president Monday.

While Mack noted Cheung's backpedaling, he failed to note that Brian Glenn of the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting Network asserted on-air that “We can confirm that President Trump got that gun today," only to furiously backpedal in an all-caps tweet: "PRESIDENT TRUMP DID NOT BUY A FIREARM. I WAS THERE. MOVE ALONG FAKE PRESS."

While Newsmax apparently did not promote the original claim that Trump bought the gun, doing a story emphasizing that he didn't looks like cleanup for a preferred candidate instead of "news."


Posted by Terry K. at 6:16 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, October 31, 2023 6:27 PM EDT
MRC Launches More Partisan Attacks On Google Over Purportedly Biased Search Results
Topic: Media Research Center

In the runup to last year's midterm elections and runoffs afterward, the Media Research Center tried to play gotcha with Google by accusing it of bias against Republians because a certain search term didn't put Republican candidates at the top -- even though it never explain why that particular search term should have returned the results it demanded. It's playing the same bogus search-result gambit again, this time framing it as so-called "election interference." Gabriela Pariseau and Michael Morris wrote in an Aug. 24 post:

Google’s election interference is just getting warmed up as we head into 2024. 

MRC Free Speech America researchers searched Google for “presidential campaign websites,” but the search engine did not display a single Republican candidate on its first page of results the day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate on Wednesday. President Joe Biden’s campaign website, of course, showed up as the second search result along with a Democratic Party challenger Marianne Williamson’s campaign website, which came up as the fifth result. 

Google even displayed results for past failed Democratic Party presidential candidates who aren’t even running this cycle, including: Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) website, which showed up as the ninth result; Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) campaign website, which came in twelfth; and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, which appeared twenty-ninth in the results.

Notably, 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., did not appear in Google’s search results even though he is, at present, the biggest threat to President Joe Biden's nomination. 

“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “We know that Google pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and it has continued to interfere in our elections ever since. Compared to other social media platforms, it is harder to document what Google does in secret, but we at MRC Free Speech America have caught them red-handed again.”

Schneider continued, “Google has consistently stood apart from all other search engines, and not in a good way. We have repeatedly seen Google and Big Tech social media platforms treat Republican candidates harshly compared to their Democrat [sic] opponents.”

Weirdly, Pariseau and Morris did not state how Republican candidates ranked in the search findings, even though this "study" was specifically done before the first GOP debate. As before, they also failed to explain why that particular search term should have delivered the results it demanded, or even what normal human would use that search term. And their fretting over Kennedy not appearing in the results is merely part of the MRC's ironic promotion of his campaign -- not because they actually want him to win, but in the hope that it might hurt Biden's re-election chances.

Pariseau repeated the same trick for a Sept. 27 post, under the headline "More Election Interference!":

Is Google shilling for Biden? It appears so, as its search engine once again buried Republican “presidential campaign websites.” 

Google's search engine failed to produce even-handed results in multiple searches performed by MRC Free Speech America over the course of a week prior to today's Republican presidential primary debate. Researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as two additional searches specifying the party affiliation of the candidates. When MRC searched for “republican presidential campaign websites,” only two candidates’ websites appeared on the first page in the search results — a Democrat candidate and a Republican who is polling at less than half a percent. 

Democratic Party candidate Marianne Williamson’s website somehow found its way onto the first page. So did Will Hurd, who has yet to garner enough support to make it to the debate stage. His website was the only Republican candidate’s website to appear in the search results. His website came up as the third result while the campaign websites of former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Strive Asset Management co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy, Former Vice President Mike Pence, Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were nowhere to be found on the first page of results.

The search did include a link to a Library of Congress page that referenced Trump’s 2020 campaign website but even the link referenced was dead.

“These results are so outrageous,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “Google is either the most incompetent search engine on the planet, or it’s intentional. This is not a coincidence.”

But the MRC undermined itself by injecting partsan terminology into its "study." One of the terms used was "democrat presidential campaign websites"; right-wing activists like those at the MRC have spent years trying to rename the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party" for the lulz. Speaking of ironic lulz, Pariseau added that "Biden’s most formidable challenger in the primary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s website was notably missing." In fact, Biden was ahead of Kennedy by about 50 points at the time Pariseau's item was posted, making her use of "formidable" at least as ironic as the MRC's support for Kennedy itself.

Pariseau went on to complain that factual information about Republican candidates was noted in the results:

Each of the liberal outlets made clear their bias against GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump, primarily listing controversial flashpoints of his administration in their respective write-ups. 

CNN, for example, characterized Trump’s criticisms of how the 2020 election was conducted as “conspiracy theories.” Meanwhile, Politico touted Trump’s alleged “numerous scandals,” while NBC and AP seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges brought against the former president. CNN and Politico also touted Biden as the presumed Democrat nominee the GOP will face in 2024, not even acknowledging his two Democrat challengers.

Yes, Pariseau used "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" twice, further demonstrating teh partisanship that marks the MRC's so-called studies. She also didn't dispute the accuracy of the reporting she criticized, and she purported to read the mind of non-right-wing news organizations by claiming without evidence that they "seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges" against Trump.

Parisau's injection of partianship into this so-called study shows the underlying bias in what she does -- it's clear that these search terms were chosen specifically to make Google look bad and, thus, to have clickbait talking points to spread throughout right-wing media. It's the way a partisan organization acts -- and certainly not one that purports to care about "media research."


Posted by Terry K. at 2:30 PM EDT

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