John Hinderaker

NY Times Critic Holden: 'Truth' Is 'Beautifully Executed Journalistic Thriller'
By Tom Blumer | October 16, 2015 | 7:44 PM EDT

The New York Times has not merely climbed aboard the bandwagon of Truth, which exalts the fraudulent September 2004 CBS 60 Minutes report about President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service. It's now serving as the film's de facto lead apologist.

The most recent example demonstrating how deeply in the tank the Old Gray Lady has gone is Stephen Holden's Thursday film review published in Friday's print edition. Holden's praise comes from an alternative universe where genuine "truth" clearly doesn't matter, and uses a tortured analogy which in reality disproves his attempt at making a point (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Megan McArdle: 'A Marshmallow Planet' More Likely Than Finding Truth in 'Truth'
By Tom Blumer | October 16, 2015 | 12:50 AM EDT

The disgraceful determination of Hollywood to rewrite history not favorable to the left, its causes and its personalities has perhaps reached its nadir with the laughably misnamed movie Truth.

The film is about Dan Rather's September 2004 60 Minutes report on President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service during the 1970s. In Rather's words, "The nuanced, not preachy, script makes clear our report was true." The script may say that, but the historical record doesn't. On October 2, John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson's writeup detailing how bogus that report was from top to bottom appeared online at The Weekly Standard. Reading that essay in its entirely is undoubtedly important; but in this case, so is ridicule. Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View supplied that back in July.

AP Predictably Distorts Coverage of DOJ's Decision Not to Charge Zimmerman
By Tom Blumer | February 25, 2015 | 9:09 AM EST

In an almost completely expected decision, the Department of Justice yesterday announced that it "found insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012."

In reporting on the announcement, Jennifer Kay and Eric Tucker at the Associated Press were predictably selective in recounting the details of the case while ignoring or downplaying others.

'Elitist' Fail: Profane 'Girls' Episode Insults Iowa, Fails Geography
By Tom Blumer | February 10, 2015 | 6:05 PM EST

John Hinderaker at Powerline is certainly correct when he notes that the media elites love "Girls," the HBO show starring sister-abusing, rapist-misidentifying Lena Dunham.

Critics rave about how great the show and its main characters are, frequently employing complimentary adjectives descriptive of or synonymous with "smart." Hinderaker was brave enough to peruse the script of the show's Season 4 episode which aired on Sunday. What he found instead fit the categories of "insulting" and "stunningly ignorant":

Ed Schultz Parrots Left-Wing Lie of Koch Brothers as 'Main Beneficiary' of Keystone Pipeline
By Jack Coleman | April 8, 2014 | 7:36 PM EDT

"Koke adds life where there isn't any," warned the Clash about cocaine back in 1980, a year that shook the ground under American politics. The Koch -- pronounced "Koke" -- brothers, David and Charles (though not sibling Bill, for the time being) serve a comparably stimulative role for liberals in 2014, another election year with seismic potential.

In recent weeks, self-proclaimed working-class hero Ed Schultz has shown he can barely pass a waking hour without vilifying the cursed Kochs. Yesterday Schultz regurgitated a persistent leftist falsehood about them and did so in a way that showed he wasn't even sure about the claim. (Audio after the jump)

Oh Brother, I Mean Mother: Dem Mom and Daughter Pose as 'Republican Women for Obama,' Get Caught
By Tom Blumer | August 26, 2012 | 11:12 PM EDT

It seems that that the Obama campaign and the left in general doesn't even care if they get caught in these kinds of deceptions any more, but they nonetheless need to be noted. A mother and daughter claiming in this Obama For America video to be examples of "Republican Women for Obama" are really far-left Democrats, and have been for many years.

Here's the capsule version built with excerpts from the Saturday post by John Hinderaker at Powerline which first documented the deception noted by the left-leaning BuzzFeed, which apparently hit its tolerance threshold in this instance, and then found more:

NYT's Lipton Teed Up, Hit Out of Park by Powerline over Cooked AFP-Koch Quote
By Tom Blumer | March 1, 2011 | 3:19 PM EST

The Left has been making quite a bit of conspiratorial hay over the following paragraph Eric Lipton wrote at the New York Times on February 21 ("Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute") about the alleged degree of involvement Koch family members have allegedly had in the Wisconsin public-sector union showdown:

Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.

Notice something missing? How about quotation marks? Their absence is not an accident.

Noted Palin-Trig Conspiracy Loon Andrew Sullivan Piles on Anti-Levin Bandwagon
By Jeff Poor | September 15, 2010 | 4:34 PM EDT

Want to make friends in "elite" political blogosphere? Don't dare be outspoken on behalf of Delaware Republican U.S. Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

In a Sept. 15 post on his The Atlantic blog, "The Daily Dish," Sullivan takes a break from gossiping about political figures' genitalia to take on conservative talker Mark Levin's response to those who were seemingly hell-bent on O'Donnell not being the Delaware GOP nominee within the conservative media intelligentsia.

After going through a litany of Levin's alleged indiscretions against O'Donnell detractors, Sullivan argues that his so-called "conservative" counterparts had it coming since Levin had been so critical of the pseudo-intellectuals that have masqueraded as conservatives over the years.

Tirelessly Pro-Obama: MSM Ignore Dumb Obama Comment
By Ken Shepherd | July 31, 2008 | 5:51 PM EDT

There's Ludacris, and then there's ludicrous.:

"There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy," Obama said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated - simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling - if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You'd actually save just as much!"

Yes, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) actually suggested on the campaign trail that inflating your tires will save as much oil as can be procured by expanding domestic oil drilling, a suggestion that is downright laughable and mathematically impossible (see below the page break for more on that).

So where are the mainstream media on this?

Delegate Counts vs. Media Hype; McCain Has But 10, Obama One More Than Clinton
By Ken Shepherd | January 9, 2008 | 10:54 AM EST

The horserace coverage and media spin about Clinton's comeback notwithstanding, she actually trails Barack Obama right now where it really counts, in the number of delegates (her 24 to his 25) to the Democratic Convention.John Hinderaker at Powerline notes the delegate count, numbers that the media rarely discuss when the dust settles on hyped primaries:

New Hampshire was a big win for John McCain and a serious setback for Mitt Romney. But do last night's results mean that Romney is finished? Not at all. In fact, he is the current leader on the Republican side in delegates, as tabulated by CNN.

Turns out on the Republican side, McCain has a meager 10 delegates compared to Huckabee's 18 and Romney's 24.Given that and the fact that McCain was helped by crossover votes from liberal independents that he cannot count on in closed primary states, the media would do well to note McCain's challenge to run to the right in order to sew up the nomination, rather than take his victory in New Hampshire as a sign that's he's the new front-runner.

MSNBC, CNBC Refuse Ads Urging Victory In Iraq
By Ken Shepherd | August 28, 2007 | 5:46 PM EDT

John Hinderaker at Powerline has an item about how CNBC and MSNBC are refusing to sell ad time to a group called Freedom Watch which is supportive of winning the war in Iraq:

We wrote here about the television commercials that Freedom's Watch has produced, featuring veterans and their families, that urge Congress and the public to continue supporting the Iraq war. The commercials are well done, and convey the simple message that the Iraq war is important and winnable, and that we should allow our troops to see the mission through. The ads are appearing in the context of a blizzard of anti-war ads by left-wing groups, intended to pressure Senators and Congressmen into pulling the plug on the Iraq effort.