More On Birther Diana West And The Trib

On November 22, The Tribune Review published this piece by Diana West.

We've written about her before.  In that blog post we let you know that she thinks that Rush Limbaugh is reluctant to discuss President Obama's "eligibility" because Rush "has a comfort zone" and (obviously) the birth certificate is outside of it.

Yea.  I know.  That's funny.

The current piece is about how FDR, by "normalizing" relations with the USSR in 1933 opened the door to:

[T]his Soviet war on America, spearheaded by traitors directed by Moscow, would intensify. A veritable army of Stalin's secret agents, agents of influence, fellow travelers and dupes entered the U.S. government and related institutions. They would fight an unceasing stealth war against this country, even — I should say, especially — during World War II.

Blah, blah, blah.  To quote the title of neoconservative historian Ronald Radosh's review of West's book: American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, this is "McCarthy on Steroids." And that's from Frontpage.com which is published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center has received $7.75 million in Scaife foundation money (about 36% of the total foundation money received by DHFC).

So she's not liked by at least one conservative at at least one Scaife-funded media outlet.

And this is where it gets interesting.  If we go onto her website, we find this:

On Wednesday, November 20, I received the Mightier Pen Award from Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy at the Union League Club in Manhattan. It was a truly spectacular event. As I noted in my remarks, in early September when Frank announced the award, which is dedicated to the doctrine of peace through strength, it came not only as a great honor, but also as a welcome missile shield against continuing attacks on me and American Betrayal. I can't thank Frank and CSP enough for their unwavering support and friendship throughout, and now, for this unforgettable celebration.

Hmm...Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy.  We've seen them before, haven't we?

And you do know that the Center for Security Policy has received about $5.9 million in Scaife foundation money over the years, right?  Or that that's about 58% of the CSP's total?

Then there's this from Heritage:

In American Betrayal, Diana West argues that – current policies today notwithstanding – America began to abandon its core ideals and march toward Socialism nearly 75 years ago. Starting in the late 1930s, at the time of FDR, the Soviets were already in a position to take advantage of the many communist sympathizers in the U.S. Not only FDR, but also Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and those in their inner circles played roles in enabling the U.S.S.R. as well as concealing the massive Moscow-directed penetration of American society. West shows that the system of spies designed to denigrate the American way of life was deep and extensive.

And as we all know, the Heritage Foundation's received tens of millions from the various Scaife controlled foundations ($27.944 at last count, or about 25% of the total).

It's astounding (time is fleeting) how much Scaife money is swirling around both sides of this story.

But it's still McCarthy on steroids.  And West's still a birther - that alone should invalidate anything (ANYTHING) she's written since.

The Company Scaife Keeps

It should be but given how badly the conservative noise machine mangles reality it's not surprising that the long debunked birther myth remains alive.

And yet birthers yet thrive and indeed are taken seriously across the conservative universe.

Take yesterday, for example.

Yesterday, the Tribune-Review published this column by Diana West.

And Diana West is a birther.  Take a look at this from her own blog from last April:

Almost exactly one year ago – with Donald Trump on top of presidential polls and author Jerome Corsi on top of Amazon’s best-seller list, both for asking where President Barack Obama’s “real” birth certificate was – Judith Corley, the president’s personal attorney, flew to Hawaii. She went there to pick up two certified copies of the president’s long-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health.

At least, that’s what then-White House Counsel Robert Bauer told us last April 27 at a White House press briefing called to unveil the new, certified document. Multiple copies were passed out to the press, while NBC’s Savannah Guthrie became the one witness I know of to touch the certified document. (She reported she “felt the raised seal.”) A computer image of this Obama long-form birth certificate appeared on the White House website, where now you and I can download it for ourselves as proof of the president’s bona fides.

Or is it?

And (AND) she has an explanation for why big name media conservatives "aren't covering" the story.  In the same blog post, she quotes a conversation she had with a "Famous Conservative" (hereafter: "FC"):

New tack for Famous Conservative: If (the birth certificate story) were true, why hasn't Rush or Hannity taken it on?

Me: They're afraid.

FC: (Scoffs.)

Me: Look, Rush won't talk about a lot of things: Islamization, for one. Sharia. Muslim Brotherood, those kinds of things. He has a comfort zone. [Emphasis added.]

Yea, that's right.  Rush Limbaugh is afraid to raise the Birth Certificate story because it's out of his "comfort zone."  The fact that he's indeed talked about it undermines West's thesis, doesn't it?

It also kind of undermines her overall credibility, doesn't it?  I mean to get something so easy so wrong (about Rush Limbaugh, no less!), one has to wonder why she'd be taken seriously by her Conservative Comrades.

Like Ann Coulter (another columnist who's published by Scaife's Trib).  As she said to Sean Hannity (another one of West's conservatives who are afraid to speak the truth about the birth certificate):

Obama has produced his birth certificate. There were announcements that ran in two contemporaneous Hawaiian newspapers at that time. The head of the Hawaiian medical record has announced I have seen the long-form you all want. I don’t know why the long form is considered more credible than the short form. They are both from the same office. The State Department accepts the short form or as we call it the birth certificate. Hawaii accepts the birth certificate short form. So, I mean, it is a conspiracy theory that won’t die on the Internet, but every responsible, conservative organization to look at it and shot it down...

And yet birther Diana West made her way onto the pages of Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Another embarrassment for Richard Mellon Scaife.