Dept of Justice investigation of IRS scandal exposed as phony

From the Washington Times:

The Justice Department selected an avowed political supporter of President Obama to lead the criminal probe into the IRS targeting of tea party groups, according to top Republicans who said Wednesday that the move has ruined the entire investigation.

Not surprisingly, the MSM is ignoring this:

So far ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to mention what Darrell Issa called “a startling conflict of interest.” In fact the Big Three networks have almost completely stopped covering the IRS scandal investigation altogether.

 For comparison:

In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they've allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service controversy

The Second Anniversary of the Fukushima Disaster: how bad was it?

From the left-wing Democracy Now, Amy Goodman introduces her report on the 2nd anniversary of Fukushima as follows:

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Japan, which is marking the second anniversary of one of the world’s worst atomic disasters. It was March 11, 2011, when a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that struck Japan’s northeast coast. It left more than 20,000 dead or missing. [Emph. added]

So, Fukushima was the "world's worst atomic disaster" and left "20,000 dead or missing."  Not quite.  Did you catch the verbal slight of hand?  Ms.  Goodman is pulling a fast one.  The 20,000 dead are due to the all-natural Gaia-approved tsunami and earthquake.

How many people actually died because of the "world's worst atomic disaster"?

Zero.

SF Examiner's misleading reporting

If you get your news from the San Francisco Examiner, you would reasonably infer from their article (screen capture below) that there was merely "a single protester" representing the Tea Party at the Obama fundraiser yesterday (clock on image to enlarge): 

Check the photos in the post below and you will see how wildly inaccurate that is.

The legacy news media has a lousy reputation for accuracy and it is well-deserved.

If the news media is so biased, why did they turn on Obama?

Pres. Obama's performance in the debate last Wednesday received uniformly negative reviews.  In response, some liberals ask, reasonably, how come, if the news media is as biased as non-liberals say, they turned on Obama?  There are three factors at work:

First, while the news media routinely lie, they can't lie easily about a debate if you just saw it, unedited, on live TV.  Further, they knew from the focus groups and instant polls that it was obvious to viewers that Obama failed.  This limits the journalists' options.

Secondly, and, I think, more importantly in this case, liberal journalists and commentators were  themselves shocked by Obama's poor performance.  They had believed their own spin.  They had demonized Clint Eastwood for his empty chair comedy routine.  Now, they saw, along with the rest of the country, that Eastwood was right.  They were in shock.  Anti-Obama rants, like the one from Chris Matthews, were the result.

Thirdly, a key feature of liberal news bias is that the journalists are loyal first and foremost to the liberal world view.  Journalists will abandon a politician the moment that he does not serve the cause.  You may remember that happening to John Kerry.  They are loyal to the message, not the messenger.  If it starts to look like Obama is making liberalism look bad, they will abandon him too.  Most of the media has not gotten to this point with Obama but the new New Yorker cover (above) indicates that this may change.

How liberals think about taxes

Norah O'Donnell

Norah O'Donnell is the Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News.  On tonight's newscast, she explained her view of tax cuts:

President Obama is calling on Congress to pass a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000 a year and individuals earning less than $200,000. Those tax cuts expire at the end of December and the cost to taxpayers for the year: $150 billion.…

But Republicans -- including Mitt Romney -- want to make permanent all of the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for households earning over $250,000. The cost to taxpayers? An additional $850 billion over the next ten years.… [Emph. added]

Yes, that is right:  She thinks that "tax cuts" occur at a "cost to taxpayers."  This doesn't appear to be a misspeak: she said it twice, once with respect to Obama's proposal and again with respect to Romney's.

Of course, as liberals are wont to do, she is confusing "taxpayers" with the government.  The tax cuts reduce government revenues and thus the government might, in some twisted accounting, think of them as a cost.

I expect that she thinks of herself as an "unbiased reporter" but, with thinking such as this, she illustrates why liberals cannot be "unbiased" even if they try.

More at NewsBusters.

San Franciscans protest against Obama

Barack Obama, America's Fundraiser-in-Chief, visited San Francisco today in search of still more campaign cash. Because San Francisco, home to Nancy Pelosi, has a reputation as America's most liberal city, one might think that The One would be safe from criticism here. It is not so. As he arrived for lunch at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in the historic Merchants Exchange Building on California Street, the San Francisco Tea Party was there to greet him (click on any photo to enlarge):

Just a couple years ago, the local SF news media ignored tea parties. Now, they will take a few pictures of tea parties and sometimes their reports are even accurate. Below, KRON interviews Sally Zelikovsky, the founder of the Bay Area Patriots:

After the rally, Sally commented that the media interest in the Tea Party seemed to be at an all-time high. Could it be that the Wisconsin results have finally convinced them that the Tea Party is not going away? [Update: Fund47 has more on the press coverage. Sally writes on the press coverage here.]

Breitbart was here also and celebrating the victory in Wisconsin:

More people with messages:

The sign below reads "POTUS: we hope the winds of change blow you away!!":

I

There is always a lot of security for the President but, in my observation, this was a first: to protect The One, dump trucks were used to block off the streets:

Naturally, this prompted the crowd to burst out in a chorus of "Dump Obama."

At another moment, a dog was seen being walked toward the Merchants Exchange Building. Concerned that Obama might think it appetizing, the crowd shouted chants of "poor little pup" and "save the dog."

The number of vehicles requires to protect the President is always impressive. Here is an array of San Francisco Police motorcycles that arrived as part of the Presidential protection detail:

Does this make the SFPD California's largest biker gang? Regardless, the use of so many vehicles, replicated along every step of the way, shows just a small piece of how carbon-intensive Obama's travel really is.

The left also appeared. Apparently in sympathy with polar bears (but not with consumers), this crowd wanted to stop arctic drilling:

There was also a contingent of left-wing anti-war protesters such as this woman:

It was just four years ago that there was much Hope for all the Change that America's new messiah would bring. It must be very disappointing to the left that Gitmo is still open and that they still need their venerable "peace" signs. Reality is tough.

Larry from SF was at today's rally. Expect to see more tea party photos at his blog, Fund47. [Update: the permalink to Larry's photos is here.]

UPDATE: Zombie followed Obama every step along the way yesterday and has photos.

WELCOME to readers of Instapundit, FoxNews, GatewayPundit, Memeorandum, Fund47, Moonbattery, Zombie, AmericanThinker, The Examiner, BeforeItsNews, MyMyMy, IOwnTheWorld, PatDollard, AllPatriotsMedia, FreeNorthCarolina, WhatBubbaKnows, and NoMossHere.

PREVIOUSLY on recent SF Bay Area events:

•Obama visits the San Francisco Peninsula and a Tea Party breaks out
•Global warming provokes laughter, even in the San Francisco Bay Area
•OccupyFail: the "general strike" that wasn't
•San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party
•San Francisco: inmates run asylum
•SF Churches rally: has a second front opened in the war for freedom?
•Reluctant California bureaucrats are shamed into saying the Pledge of Allegiance

Obama visits the San Francisco Peninsula and a Tea Party breaks out

Pres. Obama had another busy day of fundraising today. First he went to the Atherton home of heirs of the Levi Strauss fortune where he had dinner with supporters who paid $35,800 per plate. He then went to Fox Theatre (where he missed his entrance cue) in Redwood City to mix with supporters who paid from $1,000 to $12,500 per person to attend. Outside the Fox, the San Francisco Tea Party assembled to protest Obama (click photos to enlarge):
Don't get confused by the "Hope-Change" signs above: they read "Hope you like the Change November 6, 2012." There are also signs supporting Romney, opposing "Obama Debt," as well as several of San Francisco's red Nobama 2012 fingers. Here are some more views:





The San Jose Mercury News has a story on this event that manages to miss the story. Their report features Obama supporters and mentions critics of Obama only if they criticize him from the anti-war left. By count of signs, as you can see above, the crowd was overwhelmingly from the Tea Party but the Mercury didn't mention 'tea party' in the story at all. Print newspapers deserve their financial troubles.

This is San Francisco's third Tea Party this year. The first protested outside an Obama fundraiser on Nob Hill. The second was the traditional tax day Tea Party.

Liberal minds think alike?

Deadline.com reports (hat tip: Instapundit):

Another Miami-area TV journalist has been fired as a result of a local NBC affiliate’s broadcast of a misleading edited version of George Zimmerman’s 911 call the night Trayvon Martin was killed. Local TV station WTVJ veteran Jeff Burnside was fired Friday following an investigation of the station’s separate airing of the conversation that was edited in much the same way as the Today show’s broadcast that resulted in the firing of an unidentified NBC News producer based in Miami. Several other employees were disciplined in that incident. The NBC affiliate acknowledged the station independently made the same questionable edits to Zimmerman’s call to police that were widely denounced when the network’s Today show aired its version of the clip last month.

I see two possibilities: (1) there is a replacement for JournoList that tells reporters what to do; or (2) due to both their personal biases and the pressure to produce "newsworthy" stories, dishonesty is second nature to journalists. I don't rule out the former but I lean toward the latter.

UPDATE: A third NBC employee has been fired from the network after yet another misleadingly edited George Zimmerman 911 tape surfaced from the Trayvon Martin shooting.

PREVIOUSLY on news bias:
•How reporters see the tea party vs. the occupiers
•How reporters see the tea party
•ABC news: 14 years of liberalism reviewed
•CNN's anti-semite
•At Cox Newspapers, they took this story seriously
•How reporters avoid reality
•News reporters and the liberal echo chamber in action
•Salon has a sexual fantasy about Palin as a dominatrix
•If only hate could change false to true
•Ignorance at McClatchy Newspapers
•Faking the news
•University study finds Fox more fair and balanced than ABC/CBS/NBC
•News media credibility at lowest level since polling began
•Living in a Fantasy World, II
•17% of US voters claim news media unbiased
•Unbiased MSM gets its "truth" from Media Matters for America

San Francisco anti-war rally attracts 15 people

A.N.S.W.E.R., Code Pink, and OccupySF joined forces for an "emergency protest" of the Afghan War. Larry from SF was there, took photos, and he reports that 15 people showed up, not counting the fawning news media. He watched as the KTVU Channel 2 "news" crew took instructions from Code Pink on where to set up and what to photograph.

Giving credit when undue

The LA Times story on US domestic oil production reaching a new high features a photo of a smiling Pres. Obama under the headling "Oil imports down, domestic production highest since 2003":
The visual composition would lead a casual reader to think that increased domestic production was the result of Pres. Obama's kind and caring policies implemented with the goal of helping cash-strapped consumers as they struggle to pay for a tank of gas. To its credit, the LA Times does admit, if you read to the eighth paragraph, that maybe Obama shouldn't get the credit:

But independent analysts attribute much of the fall in oil imports to slack U.S. demand in a still-anemic economy. And to a certain degree, they say, the boost in domestic oil and gas production is the result of decisions energy companies made during the George W. Bush administration to develop key reservoirs.

A more honest article would point out the Obama administration's hostility to oil develop, fracking, and the Keystone pipeline, as well as a general intransigence on oil exploration permits. But, the paragraph above is the most one can expect from the liberals at the LA Times.

PREVIOUSLY on oil:
•News reporter hypocrisy on gas pump prices
•Federal judge finds Obama administration contemptible
•The Keystone pipeline: Obama sows economic chaos
•Instead of permitting oil exploration, Obama supports "green" failures
•"Expert": By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’
•Obama ignores oil, supports "green" energy
•Obama only pretended to lift ban on deepwater oil exploration
•Obama uses faked science to ban oil drilling
•Obama subsidizes Brazil's offshore drilling
•Study: gas savings from driving a hybrid failed to make up for the higher initial price:
•While Obama bans US exploration, Russia, China negotiate with Cuba to drill for oil off Florida coast
•Ethanol subsidies are more expensive than BP oil spill
•"Peak oil" theory discredited.

The absurdity of modern newspapers

From the (New York) Amsterdam News:

Calling Andrew Breitbart "anti-black" is hateful and wrong. The body of the article is so sloppy that it even (since corrected) confused Mr. Breitbart with James O'Keefe.

Liberal journalists can also be just downright ridiculous as this headline from Adelaide Now (since modified) shows:
They seem to have lost track of the meaning of words.

Hat tips to NewsBusters and WattUpWithThat.

$6 gas

After three years of Obama's publicly attacking, delaying, and denying permits for oil projects, whether drilling or pipelines, gas prices are way up. CBS, however, does not see fit to mention Obama at all in its article (screen grab above) on $6/gallon gas.

If you have a long memory (that is, if you are not a liberal), then you remember when every rise in gas prices was the fault of the evil-Bush-Cheney-Haliburton conspiracy as, for example, in this Bloomberg article from 2004:

Curiously, when gas prices fluctuated down under Pres. Bush, the MSM did not see that as reason to cast doubt on the evil-conspiracy theories.

Newsbusters reports that there were four times more stories on gas price rises under Bush than Obama and the MSM was 15 times more likely to mention Bush in such as story then than they are to mention Obama in a gas-price story now.

The MSM is what it is.

FLASHBACK: DNC Chief Wasserman Schultz Rails Against Bush For $3-Gallon Gas… But then, consistency is merely for little minds.

Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!

The online newsmagazine Gawker reports that conservatives are racists:

The reporter writes that he "can't understand the lyrics" but that doesn't stop him from hurling accusations of racism.

The video in questions was done by comedian Steven Crowder working with Chris Loesch. Steven Crowder, in revolutionary garb, points to his pants as he uses the word "knickers":

As the election approaches this fall, we can expect the MSM to produce an unending stream of such baseless accusations of racism.

Hat tip: Instapundit and BigJournalism.

Media hypocrite of the day: Brian Williams

Hat tip: Instapundit.

4.5 Billion to die this year, or maybe not

In 2007, The Canadian, which bills itself as a "socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper," warned of a possible global warming disaster to occur by 2012:Since the world population in 2007 was only 6.6 billion, the claim that 4.5 billion of us would die by 2012 is non-trivial.

In science, hypotheses ("theories") are tested against experiment. Hypotheses which fail to agree with experiment are to be discarded.

Newspaper reporters operate by a different standard: if something is scary and attention grabbing, then it should be printed before anyone has a chance to refute it. In John Stokes case, he has been promoted to National Co-Managing Editor at The Canadian.

Hat tip: WattsUpWithThat.

PREVIOUSLY on global warming:
•More ethics problems among Global Warming "scientists"
•Global warmists propose mass killing of animals
•Democrat: Global Warming will destroy Washington DC by the year 2000
•Earth Day: environmentalism and the test of science
•The collapse of the UN IPCC's credibility
•Yet another UN IPCC Glacier-gate scandal
•UN IPCC claims of melting Himalayan glaciers exposed as fraud
•Environmentalists at war with environmentalists over green energy
•EPA's new global warming rules, illustrated
•California global warming rules backfire
• France's carbon tax ruled unconstitutional
•UN IPCC responds to Climategate with wild accusations
•Surprise: EU's carbon trading riddled with fraud
•Global warming and the test of science, III
•Global warming and the test of science, II
•Global warming and the test of science, I
•141 scientists wrote letter to UN challenging global warming hysteria.
•Ma'am Sen. Boxer for and against climate whistleblowers.
•BBC propaganda on global warming
•Climate alarmist Phil Jones to step down pending review
•Why Penn State's investigation of its global warmist will go nowhere
•Former boss calls James Hansen call an embarrassment to NASA
•NASA's global warming scientists caught hyping false data
•The resemblance of global warming true-believers to Islamists
•James Hansen "muzzled" by Bush White House?

The "unbiased" news media, illustrated

Hat tip: LegalInsurrection, @MichelleMalkin, Jim Treacher

Related news, as summarized by GatewayPundit, on the Occupy movement:
Dead man in Salt Lake City…
Tuberculosis in Atlanta…
‘Zuccotti Lung’ on Wall Street…
Suicide in Vermont…
Murder in Oakland…
Occupy death toll mounts

Liberals are religious. Who knew?

Jill Abramson has just been promoted to Executive Editor of the New York Times. In an interview with the New York Times, she explains her view of "absolute truth":

Ms. Abramson, 57, said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of The Times to be like "ascending to Valhalla."

"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth." [Emph. added]

That seems like an unlikely article of faith, but it is one shared by many liberals.

UPDATE: Jay Nordlinger (hat tip: Instapundit) points out that the New York Times has now re-written the article removing most of the above quote. What is one to think when "the absolute truth" changes?

PREVIOUSLY on liberals getting religion:
•Pew study: Democrats believe in ghosts
•Obama declares he is on a mission from God
•Keith Olberman professes belief in God!
•Democrats declare that God directs the weather
•Obama campaign becomes a "transcendent" "religious" movement
•Atheism is a belief shared by Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Democrats
•Obama supporters tell of spiritual conversion

Two examples of reporters rewriting history

1. NY Times attributes Birther theories to "right-wing radio" instead of the Hillary Clinton supporters who started the rumors in 2008
2. CBS and MSNBC both falsely claim Obama is the first president to have his citizenship questioned

Reporters don't seem to appreciate that Democratic party spin is not the same thing as truth.

RELATED: Study shows MSNBC and CNN both covered 'Birther' issue far more than Fox News

Gitmo: cluelessness at at the Washington Post

In Today's Washington Post, two reporters, Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut, write a report struggling to reconcile what liberals see, on one hand, as the overwhelming righteousness of closing the Guantanamo detention center with, on the other hand, Pres. Obama's disappointing failure to close it as promised. Ultimately they conclude that it was the failure of Obama to stand up to the Republican spin machine:

In hindsight, officials said, they should have taken the budding Republican narrative more seriously. “We weren’t very effective at rebutting it,” one senior official said.

Finn and Kornblut acknowledge the pain that the failure to rebut the Republicans caused among the liberal true-believers in Obama's cabinet. For example, they write:

[O]n the the day Obama announced that he would seek reelection, a clearly crestfallen Holder took to the lectern at the Justice Department to scuttle the federal prosecution of Mohammed, which he once expected would be the “defining event” of his time at the helm of the department.

In their lengthy article, Finn and Kornblut fail to acknowledge, however, the two obvious truths that have emerged from the past two years of debate on Gitmo:

• Americans, Democrat and Republican alike as evidenced by a 90-6 vote in the Senate, do not want the world's worst terrorists transferred to US soil.
• The rest of the countries around the world do not want them either.

That pretty much dooms the liberal dream of closing Gitmo. Of course, if you work at the Washington Post, you can ignore that and instead blame the petty politics of partisan Republicans.

Teacher charged with making 16 death threats

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that teacher Katherine Windels was charged today in Dane County Criminal Court with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making sixteen death threats against Wisconsin Republicans

According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).

The subject line of the second email was: "Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!" In that email, she purportedly wrote, "Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks."

Hat tip: GatewayPundit.

The criminal complaint is here (PDF).

RELATED: Unions are threatening boycotts of small businesses unless they actively support the unions.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, no major newspaper outside Wisconsin has carried this story.

RELATED: Liberal thug issues a death threat against Dutch Koch, president of a Des Moines office supply firm, in the mistaken belief that he was related to the billionares Charles and David Koch.

PREVIOUSLY on the Wisconsin showdown between public employees and taxpayers:
•Wisconsin Tea Party leader threatened
•Left allegedly does $7.5 Million in damage to Wisconsin Capitol Building