Tag Archives: Pinocchio

False Statements That Create Division And Unrest

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The mainstream media is not known for unbiased reporting, but every now and then even they have to correct something that is not only false but incendiary.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article on Thursday about a recent lie by two political candidates that could easily be called incendiary.

The article reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) doubled down on her tweet that claimed black teenager Michael Brown was “murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,” saying Wednesday what mattered was an “unarmed man” was shot in the street.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Warren was asked about her inflammatory tweet, which received the harshest “Four-Pinocchio” rating from the Washington Post.

“What matters is that a man was shot, an unarmed man, in the middle of the street, by police officers and left to die,” Warren said. “And I think that’s where our focus should be.”

Warren and fellow presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and Tom Steyer all used the term “murder” to describe Brown’s death in 2014 at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson. The incident set off a debate about police violence and racial injustice. Although the notion that Brown was killed with his hands up and begging Wilson not to shoot was apocryphal, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became a mantra for protesters.

To Senator Warren and Senator Harris the narrative was more important than the truth. Rather than tell the truth, they lied in order to advance the idea that the police involved were racist.

The article concludes:

The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler said for Warren and Harris—he didn’t include Steyer in his story—to dismiss the Justice Department’s findings was “galling.”

“Harris and Warren have ignored the findings of the Justice Department to accuse Wilson of murder, even though the Justice Department found no credible evidence to support that claim,” Kessler wrote. “Instead, the Justice Department found that the popular narrative was wrong, according to witnesses deemed to be credible, some of whom testified reluctantly because of fear of reprisal. The department produced a comprehensive report to determine what happened, making the senators’ dismissal of it even more galling.”

The Massachusetts Police Union ripped Warren as well, saying she had unfairly accused police of harming society.

So what is the impact of these statements? Those Americans who are unaware of the Justice Department findings or the grand jury’s decision are left with the impression that the police in Missouri murdered a man without cause. How does that impact the opinion of law enforcement held by the people who believe this lie? How does this lie impact the amount of respect for law enforcement needed to maintain a civil society? The statements of Senators Harris and Warren are totally irresponsible. Even if they thought they were telling the truth, they owe those people who work in law enforcement an apology.

Games The Media Is Playing

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The media’s job is to report events, investigate questionable actions by those in power, and inform Americans about what their government is doing. It is not to follow Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals number 13. That rule states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That rule is currently controlling the American media, and their target is Donald Trump. If you want to know what is actually causing the division in this country, look no further than the media. They have the power to bring us together. They have chosen not to do that.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about how The Washington Post has put its finger on the scale in the way it fact checks the President.

The article names five ways The Washington Post skews the results of its fact checking:

1. Bias by target selection. Did the Post have a database of President Obama’s false or misleading claims? No. Would the Post have a database of President Hillary’s false or misleading claims if she had won? Don’t be ridiculous. These people parse every sentence in Trump speeches, interviews, and tweets. They’re not doing that for anyone else, especially the Democratic candidates now running for president.

2. Nitpicking. Are they checking facts, or spin? Kessler & Co. fuss that Trump can’t say they’re building a wall at the border. Trump tweeted a picture of a wall being built. It’s clearly a border wall under construction. But Kessler says the money (and the plans) came before Trump, so it’s not “his” wall.  Kessler also cried False when Trump said he had “nothing to hide” from the Russia probe “but refused to testify under oath.” Kessler is spinning, not fact-checking.

3. Bias by multiplying nitpicking times 100. Once the Post throws a Pinocchio rating like the border-wall squabble, every time Trump says “we’re building the wall,” it’s counted as a false statement (160 times). Kessler repeatedly threw the False flag when Trump said there was “no collusion” with Russia. Which side was False on that one?

4. Lack of transparency. The Posties have dramatically increased the rate of the “false claims” they are finding. In announcing their 10,000 number, they claimed the president “racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days,” April 25 to 27.  They admit that’s a bigger number than they used to find in a month.

They claimed it was literally a falsehood a minute. They counted 45 in a 45-minute Sean Hannity interview, 17 falsehoods in a 19-minute Mark Levin interview, and 61 false claims in the president’s Saturday night rally in Green Bay.  But they don’t list them individually, so you can check their work.

5. Pinocchio forgiveness. Kessler also has a weird habit of skipping Pinocchios for Democrats when they call him on the phone and admit they fudged it. They just found Kamala Harris wrongly stated in a CNN town hall that a majority of women earn the minimum wage. Kessler concluded “Regular readers know that we generally do not award Pinocchios when politicians admit error, and we certainly give an allowance for a slip of the tongue during a live event. We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.”

Unless you’re Trump. Then you get 10,000 Gotchas.

Where were these people when President Obama told us that if we liked our doctor we could keep him and that the cost of health insurance would go down under ObamaCare?

I Think We Have Run Out Of Pinocchios

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line today detailing some of the recent lies told by President Obama. Because the press so rarely points out these lies, Mr. Hinderaker listed a few.

President Obama claims that it is undeniable that the planet is getting warmer (tell that to the people in Massachusetts).

Power Line notes:

Far from being undeniable, the claim that “the climate is getting warmer” is false. Satellite measurements show that there has been no warming for around 18 years, a fact that has caused great consternation among climate alarmists:

In 2009, Kevin Trenberth, one of the leading alarmist scientists, wrote in an email: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Global warming has been used as an excuse for various things–including the veto of the Keystone Pipeline. The fact that it is currently  non-existent does not seem to bother the President or the press.

Another lie has to do with justification for gun control.

The article reports:

During the same town hall, Obama lamented his inability to get gun control legislation through Congress:

Increased gun control measures would go a long way toward cutting down on America’s homicide rate, President Obama said during a town-hall event on Friday.

“Our homicide rates are so much larger than other industrialized countries, by like a mile,” he said during a speech at Benedict College in South Carolina.

“Most of that is attributable to the easy, ready availability of firearms, particularly handguns.”

There are two things wrong with Obama’s claims. First, the homicide rate in the United States is relatively low, and falling. The World Bank has compiled homicide rates by country; most are higher than ours, some many times higher. To be sure, some “industrialized” countries have lower rates than we do. Norway, for example, has a murder rate that is only a fraction of ours. But the reasons are entirely demographic: I would wager that the homicide rate among Norwegian-Americans is even lower than Norway’s.

The article at Power Line notes that the homicide rate in America is now half of what it was during the Clinton Administration–despite the fact that many more people own guns now than did then.

The article concludes:

Barack Obama is not the only Pinocchio in political life, but more than any other public figure I can think of, he seems to think he is entitled to make up his own facts. That sense of entitlement probably results from the press’s unwillingness to point out his many errors.

I would love to have a President who did not lie, but if that is not possible, I would at least like to have a press that points out what the truth is.