In the wake of the Komen fiasco, Daily Kos has now fixed its sights on another private charity — Paul’s Pantry of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The leftist website is hurling expletives and encouraging readers to go after the food program for allegedly refusing to send their truck to a Planned Parenthood location to pick up donated food.

Image credit: Corey Wilson, Green Bay Press-Gazette

Let’s shower this POS with our calls. I have left a message. So should all of you. Maybe this is a distraction, but much is at stake-a woman’s right to choose. And not to mention the poor and their hunger are being used as political chips by the callous right. Pro-life. Bullshit.

The Planned Parenthood location posted an item on their Facebook page. A scroll down the page indicates they were very active in the campaign to intimidate Komen over Planned Parenthood funding.

Paul’s Pantry refused our food donations collected by our area health center to help combat local hunger. This level of extremism impeding individual access to essential health care and now food is outrageous and must be stopped.

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It’s bad when national media outlets show bias, but I honestly think it’s worse when your local media shows bias. Last night on Twitter I came across a tweet about thousands at a pro-Walker rally, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said only hundreds were there.

This may not seem like a big deal, but the Associated Press picked it up and didn’t bother to check the facts. Other media outlets reported the original AP article. The MacIver Institute took a screen shot and posted it to their Facebook account:

I looked all over the Associated Press website and couldn’t find their articles. Not shocked at all, but luckily other local outlets used the numerous AP articles on their site. The first one appeared on their ABC website. This article is interesting because it glosses over the pro-Walker protestors, but goes into detail about the anti-Walker protestors. No bias here, right? The AP did post another article that was picked up by Madison.com. This one did get into more detail about the rally and the supporters, including those who spoke. The only article I could find that is any good is from Wauwatosa Patch. The writer, Jim Price, uses accurate numbers. He mentions the organizers were expecting 1,000 people, but 3,000 attended.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear someone say over 1,000 I picture 1,200, maybe even 1,500. I definitely don’t picture 3,000! It doesn’t change the perspective much by updating the articles to say over 1,000 when they will be specific about the number of counter protestors. Matt Batzel, from the original tweet, told me this is unfair because it appears the pro-Walker protestors only outnumbered the anti-Walker protestors 10 to 1.

The local TV stations also repeated the numbers like TMJ-4 and WSAW. Now, the TMJ-4 article says thousands now, but if you look under the by line it will say it was updated. The video of the actual news broadcast shows they changed their mind. The broadcaster says hundreds instead of thousands. Luckily, the MacIver Institute also posted a video on YouTube.

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Last week two political operatives were arrested in separate incidents, one Democrat and one Republican. It certainly isn’t news that political operatives sometimes break the law, but how the different incidents were reported is typical of how the Old Media establishment uses guilt by association to tar Republicans but rarely does the same thing to take swipes at Democrats.

The similarity in the two stories is that both of the accused are former staffers of high profile politicians. The Democrat was an Obama campaign staffer while the Republican was a staffer of the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Neither currently works for those high profile pols, but only the Republican was linked to his former boss. The Democrat’s link to Obama was mostly ignored by the media.

Story One: Some Guy Arrested

We’ll begin with the tale of Iowa Democrat operative Zachary Edwards who tried to steal the identity of a rival Republican in order to use that identity to get the Republican in trouble.

Edwards tried to use the identity of Iowa Secretary of State, Republican Matt Schultz (and/or Schultz’s brother) to illegally obtain some sort of state benefits so that he could then claim that the Republicans were illegally obtaining state benefits. This Edwards fellow hoped he could smear the GOP Sec. of State as engaging in some sort of unethical behavior. (The Iowa Republican blog has more on the fight between Schultz and Iowa Democrats)

Now, as it happens Edwards is not only a member of a politically connected Democrat consulting firm, Link Strategies — a company with long-standing ties to powerful Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin — but Edwards was also a member of Obama’s Iowa team in 2007/08. Edwards’ bio has since been scrubbed from the Link Strategies page but read in part, “In September 2007, Zach joined the Obama New Media department as co-director of the Nevada New Media team and then moved on to direct New Media operations in five other primary states (New Mexico, Texas, North Carolina, and South Dakota).”

For a screen shot of Edwards memory-holed bio from the Link Strategy site, see the Iowa Grounds blog.

So, how was Edwards’ arrest reported? For one thing, it was hard to find Edwards’ Democrat affiliation and his past role as a top Obama campaign staffer in stories of this incident.

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The mainstream media’s glee in reporting that public sector unions have likely succeeded in drumming up enough signatures to force Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to face a recall election betrays their thinly-veiled sympathies for the effort.

The day began with a National Public Radio report that told listeners of the “festive” mood among organizers of the petition drive, contrasting enthusiastic man-on-the-street opposition to Walker with the institutional voice of the embattled state GOP.

Hooray! Recall Walker (Source: NPR/Scott Bauer/AP)

The NPR story was careful to note that “the governor continues to take advantage of a state law that allows recall targets to raise unlimited amounts of money during a recall period.”

Scott Bauer–whose November photograph (above) of a smiling Democrat donor accompanied NPR’s story on its website–followed the same line at the Associated Press, reporting that Walker was out of the state raising money to defeat Democrats’ effort to unseat him. But Bauer added a sinister–and false–insinuation that Walker was raking in federal bailout money: (more…)

As you may have noticed, PolitiFact tried to take the MacIver News Service to task over our reporting of a recent meeting of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB). Specifically, they rated as “Mostly False” our report on the recall signature submission, review, challenge and certification processes as outlined at a GAB hearing earlier this week. Despite PolitiFact’s subjective analysis, I stand by our story.

Go ahead, watch the video and decide for yourself. As you will clearly see, the Mickey Mouse/Hitler signature acceptance question was posed by a member of the GAB and answered by GAB staff at their hearing on December 13th. The GAB staff clearly states that as long as signatures are accompanied by the proper date and a plausible Wisconsin address, they are deemed acceptable, pending the outcome of any possible challenge. All we did was record the sequence and broadcast it to the world.

The GAB explained that unless a successful challenge is mounted, all signatures, including those such as those of Mickey Mouse or Hitler, which are accompanied by an accurate date and a plausible Wisconsin address, WOULD be accepted if admitted by the recallers.

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The mainstream media’s most insidious and deceptive trick is to present something outrageously false using a matter-of-fact tone and approach. The dark art of glossing over the truth as though the falsehood being spread is simply established fact is a ploy propagandists have used since time began.

NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower slipped a matter-of-fact WHOPPER into the top story of today’s ”First Read.” The whopper is so subtle and devious I almost missed it.

See if you can catch it:

COLUMBUS, OH — The best — and most meaningful — statewide race of 2011 wasn’t in West Virginia (where Democrats narrowly won the gubernatorial contest). Or in Louisiana (where Gov. Bobby Jindal cruised to re-election). And it won’t be in Kentucky (where Democrats are poised for a blowout gubernatorial win). Or in Mississippi (where Republicans are expected to hold the governor’s mansion). Rather, the 2011 race with the biggest political implications is taking place here in the Buckeye State, where voters two weeks from today will decide the fate of Gov. John Kasich’s (R) law curbing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers. It will test, once again, organized labor’s strength in the Midwest (after its mixed results in Wisconsin). It will gauge Kasich’s popularity (or unpopularity). It will serve as a trial run of sorts for next year’s presidential contest in this traditional battleground state. And it’s the same fight we’ve seen across the country — about how governments balance their budgets and about the role of the government worker.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the usual-usual bias at work here, where you have leftists disguised as objective journalists gaming the system by telling us which upcoming election is “the most important” and will be a “trial run for next year’s presidential race.” Obviously, what they’re doing here is what the MSM always does — laying the groundwork to craft a narrative in advance. Their hope is that the left will prevail (in this case, that the immoral practice of collective bargaining will be saved) so they can then run around MSNBC and NBC spinning this into a victory for Obama. But like I said, that’s the usual-usual coming from the MSM these days, especially NBC and Chuck Todd.

No, what I’m talking about is ”First Read”’s attempt to memory-hole the absolute beating Big Labor took in Wisconsin with this stinking load of matter-of-fact crap:

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A known liberal activist that has for months been stalking several Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, verbally abusing them, has finally crossed the line into a physical attack. So … where is the Old Media to chronicle this assault? Sadly, no where to be seen.

On Sept. 14 left-wing activist Miles Kirstan entered The Inn at 22 S. Carroll Street in Madison, Wisconsin, began to harass some GOP lawmakers patronizing the establishment, and ultimately attacked them, throwing a mug of beer on them.

The Madison Police Department confirmed to the MacIver Institute that the incident occurred and the group found that Republican State Rep. Robin Voss (Burlington) was the main target. Reps. John Nygren (Marinette) and Scott Suder (Abbotsford) were also a victim of the attack.

Kirstan is a well-known face among the extremists that have been railing against the Walker administration over the budget cuts and other legislative efforts.

He’s well enough known that some halfwitted groupies have excitedly delivered their hosannas to him online.

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He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

Last night the story broke about an Ohio businessman who was shot for being non-union:

With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home.

John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to do is work at something he loves doing and be successful at it—something that most normal Americans would call ‘The American Dream.’

[...]

Since he’s been in business, in addition to the legal battles and verbal abuse, King’s company has been vandalized and threatened on numerous occasions.

“Back then, it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires.” King said during a telephone interview on Tuesday. “The ice pick was the weapon of choice.”

Until Wednesday, the worst of the union attacks on King and his business came in the mid-eighties during the UAW strike at AP Parts. During a lull during the lengthy strike, King’s business was picketed by more than 50 IBEW picketers. This was at a time when he only had eight or nine employees. One of his employees, whose car was trashed by the union picketers, was also beaten up by IBEW thugs.

Unfortunately, the vandalism has never stopped. This year alone, he’s had to report three incidents of damage to police. This doesn’t include the incidents of stalking he and his men have to go through while they’re working.

In one incident earlier this year, rocks were thrown through the front windows of his shop, one of which had the word “kill” written on it.

Last Wednesday, however, the attacks on Mr. King became much more serious when he was awakened late in the evening at his home in Monroe County, Michigan and saw that the motion lights in his driveway had come on.  When he looked out his front window, he saw a figure near his SUV and went outside.

As soon as he got outside his front door, King yelled at the individual who was crouched down by King’s vehicle. As soon as King yelled, the suspect stood and, without hesitation, fired a shot at Mr. King.

Luckily for King, as he yelled, he also stumbled. If it weren’t for that, however, John King’s injuries might have been much, much worse. In fact, he might have been killed.

You would think that the same media who rushed to blame Sarah Palin for her crosshairs map and tea partiers for peacefully protesting would condemn these actions by progressives and criticize the Wisconsin protesters who’ve been threatening people repeatedly since protests began. You’d think they would criticize our President for telling his supporters to “bring a gun to a knife fight” — especially since they went whole hog in their attempt to tie Palin to Tucson. They haven’t.

In fact, they haven’t reported anything.

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New tone alert:

Althouse on the left, moments before she was manhandled in Madison.

Madison – Just when you think things are winding down at the Capitol, something else happens.

Two members of the Solidarity Singers got into an argument with a group of people observing the noontime sing-along, including University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and political blogger Ann Althouse.

The Solidarity Singers normally meet in the center of the Capitol rotunda at noon to sing pro-union protest songs, but they take their sing-along outside on Fridays.

A heated political argument ensued between one of the singers and another man who was observing the sing-along. Meanwhile, another singer confronted Althouse, who was filming the encounter. According to the singer, Kirby Jones, Althouse forced her camera in his face and he pushed it away from him. Althouse denied that she forced her camera, saying Jones tried to grab her camera out of her hands and “swatted” her arm. Althouse’s son struggled with Jones to hold onto the camera, and had a small cut on his wrist after the altercation.

Capitol Police did not cite anyone involved in the incident, and the state Department of Administration could not immediately be reached for comment.

Michael Dickman, the singer involved in the political dispute, was cited for disorderly conduct in June following another sing-along altercation with a Green Bay man, who was arrested for battery after Dickman said the man punched him in the face and chipped one of his teeth.

Althouse doesn’t have a reputation for being an aggressive blogger; in fact, her work documenting the mob in Madison is some of the first field journalism I remember her ever doing. The video footage immediately debunks the narrative from the excitable progressive male that Althouse showed any signs of aggression; the aggression that is visible on camera is the man manhandling her, blowing a horn in her face, and yelling at her friend.

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This is why MSNBC consistently leans forward from behind in cable news ratings. This is also why I found it ludicrous when the network briefly suspended Keith Olbermann after — shockers! — discovering that he donated to … DEMOCRATS! That apparently was a bigger threat to his “objectivity” than Olbermann himself compromising it every single night with stunts like calling conservative women “mashed up bag[s] of meat with lipstick.”

It’s one thing to attend or emcee rallies in your own personal time, as Schultz has done. I don’t have a problem with anyone expressing their free speech, in which I include campaign donations. Just don’t pretend that you’re bipartisan when you return to the air and deliver irrevocably partisan coverage of an election, like Schultz (and every other MSNBC host, including Mr. Resist We Much) did last night:

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“You film videos to slander protesters! THIS MAN HERE IS FILMING!”

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If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book.  Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.”  Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Andrew Breitbart sits down with FOX News’ Sean Hannity on April 18, 2011 to discuss his new book, “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,” released April 15, 2011.  It wasn’t all just book conversation though…you’ll have to watch it and see!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Death threat sent to MADISON legislator

This just out from the Associated Press, another breathtaking but predictable piece of sleight-of-hand dishonesty directed at Sarah Palin’s credibility:

[Palin] said she was proud Wisconsin conservatives prevailed against union “hatred and violence” — even though none of the protests in Madison ever became physically violent and only one person was arrested Saturday, for disorderly conduct, police said.

The AP can “even though” all they want and all day long and pretend that Palin was narrowly referring to “protests in Madison.” But we all know that in order to question her credibility the AP intentionally narrowed  down her statement to the definition they needed it to be. Those of us paying attention, however, know exactly what the Governor was talking about. And I suspect the AP did, as well.

Unfortunately for the liberal media, Palin’s speech was such an unqualified grand slam, this is the kind of games they’re forced to play.

And maybe, just maybe, if the AP and the rest of the corrupt MSM gave public union thuggery a tenth of the scrutiny they do the Tea Party, they would know that Sarah Palin was talking about this….

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From Media Trackers:

The national liberal blog Daily Kos – aided by a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – is raising misleading questions regarding the April 5 Supreme Court election because election results on the website of the Waukesha County clerk for past elections showed more votes than ballots cast.

However, the blog and the newspaper that reported on its propaganda failed to tell readers that the reason for the gap was widely known at the time it occurred – and had nothing to do with failings by Kathy Nickolas or nefariousness that would call the races into question.

Indeed, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel itself reported on the reasoning back in 2006 (two communities’ decisions to use new voting machines that year caused them to not electronically report all votes, although they were counted). Although some were unhappy with slow returns as a result, the election results weren’t questioned, and did get completely reported to the state, meaning the Daily Kos’ “big gap” is a complete non-story, and the Journal Sentinel, missed basic journalism 101 (looking up its own archives) by covering it as such.

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I won’t yet go as far as my friend Jim Hoft and holler “Oh Snap!” but whoa, the schadenfreude.

Media Matters went ballistic when they thought lefty JoAnne Kloppenburg was leading:

Right-wing media reacted to news that Democrat-backed JoAnne Kloppenburg emerged from Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election with a small lead by predictably bringing up baseless allegations of voter fraud. The right-wing media regularly uses voter fraud to respond to elections where a Democrat wins or is winning, especially following a close race.

A bit below that was this thing of beauty:

It’s rare?

Two individuals, one of which is a progressive blogger, were charged with election fraud after trying to get fake tea party candidates on the ballot.

Really? I’m not so sure. I mean, look at all of these examples I’m giving you.

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I was wondering what had happened to the left’s über sensitivity to words following the Tucson tragedy. After raising such hysterics to increase threats to Sarah Palin and gift Trent Humphries a death threat on national television, the left got quiet when they headed to Wisconsin.

There was no mention of the threats against GOP lawmakers, Ann Althouse, no comments when progressives called for violent revolution, nothing.

Mike Huckabee says this:

“I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his [Barton's] tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”

and all hell breaks loose.

Ignore that you heard laughter at the precise point in the video when Huckabee delivers the ‘gun point’ line, exactly the response expected from a joke.When did the left become so stodgy? About the time they became the antithesis of punk rock? That seems about right.

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It figures.

The liberal media wouldn’t report on the violent protesters, the hateful signs or the bomb plots. (More on thathere.) What they did do was sue Governor Scott Walker for emails so that they could prove that voters were with them and the protesters and against Scott Walker’s budget bill.

They were wrong.
62% of the emails sent to Governor Walker supported his budget bill. Only 32% opposed it.

(Politico)

The Wisconsin State Journal reported, via Free Republic:

Gov. Scott Walker was right: The angry crowds in Madison didn’t tell the whole story of how Wisconsinites felt.

In the week after Walker announced his plan to dramatically curtail public employees’ collective bargaining rights in the state budget repair bill, a wide majority of the emails to him expressed support, an analysis of those emails indicates.

But that support was significantly boosted by emails from pro-Walker senders from outside Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analyzed a computer-generated random sample of 1,910 emails from the more than 50,000 that flooded Walker’s office in the week after he unveiled his plan on Feb. 11. Nearly all were related to the bill.

The emails were released Friday as the result of an open records lawsuit brought in Dane County Circuit Court by Isthmus newspaper and the Wisconsin Associated Press. A settlement reached earlier in the week required the governor to produce the emails and pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees, which totaled just over $7,000.

At the request of Isthmus, the Center analyzed the emails. A team of reporters logged each of the emails in the sample as for or against the bill, unclear or unrelated. They also noted the location of the sender when possible.

Of the emails related to the bill, 62 percent supported it, while 32 percent opposed it. The margin of error for the Center’s sample size is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

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Jim Shankman, the Madison-based author of a now notorious, vile Internet screed directed at blogger Ann Althouse and her husband, returned my call late last night and we spoke for approximately 30 – 40 minutes.

WE WILL FUCK YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of shit, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the assholes on your side in real fucking life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath.”

Shankman is currently unemployed, claims to not be a member of a union and says he most often works as a dishwasher when employed. He insists that he does not advocate for violence and in some ways sought to distance himself from his “manifesto,” while also acknowledging authorship. He says he’s done with the issue and was simply giving voice to thoughts and rhetoric he “regularly hears in the street.”

“I’m done with it,” said Shankman, adding that he intends to pull back some from social media. However, he did not back away from the manifesto, claiming he wanted to elevate the idea and that if others in Madison wanted to embrace it, then so much the better.

“Why Ann Althouse,” I asked. Along with Shankman claiming to have felt, or actually been threatened via multiple blog comments on conservative blogs over the years, Shankman said he believes Althouse wields her blog as a “bully pulpit,” telling only one side of the story intentionally designed to portray his friends and associates unfairly. He also believes Fox has been instrumental in elevating Althouse’s reporting, thought not always with attribution. “I see these stories on her blog, first, ” said Shankman, then later he sees them on Fox News, claimed Shankman.

Shankman believes reports of thuggery and other misbehavior by Leftist protesters in Wisconsin is “all over-blown.” He was most particularly offended by the notion that protesters didn’t clean up after themselves and that Tea Party-aligned individuals purportedly removed a “Solidarity” T-shirt from a capitol statue of Hans Christian Heg (video of Heg with shirt here). As an aside, last night John Nolte rounded up “20 Days of Left-Wing Thuggery in Wisconsin. The incident involving the Heg statue seemed to be sort of a last straw for Shankman.

General Hans Christian Heg, a Wisconsin war hero who fell at the Battle of Chickamauga of the Civil War.

Indeed, Shankman’s anti-Althouse manifestoincludes a line referring to Heg.

“You don’t fucking touch Hans Christian. Ever.”

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