San Francisco Chronicle

Global warming warning! Be on the alert for the attack of the invasive weeds!

This is the latest in a long series of the possible consequences of supposed global warming. The dire scenario is set forth in a San Francisco Chronicle story by Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan:

For educational purposes, the California Invasive Plants Council will sell you bouquets of plastic weeds, including yellow star thistle, tamarisk, leafy spurge and knapweed. Some recent studies suggest that many gardeners need not invest in these because they can expect more of the real thing to arrive as climate change advances.

The San Francisco Chronicle is proving the old bromide true. That's the one that goes: "a lie can be half way 'round the world before the truth can pull its boots on" (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain). Then there is another one Twain didn't originate but aptly fits here, "there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics." The subject of this scoffing is that factoid the Old Media has been promulgating like gospel where "90% of Mexico's confiscated guns are from the U.S."

The problem with this "90%" refrain is that it just isn't true. There is no truth in the claim that 90% of the guns Mexican officials confiscate from drug dealers in Mexico are from the U.S.A. But, true or not, the Old Media use this line as if it were received truth. Suspicions are easily raised that they do so because it fits their ideological matrix perfectly and the truth of the matter does not fit the approved story line.

The reader might be warned that reading this San Francisco Chronicle Father's Day piece serves as a most perfect emetic. In fact, it's a wonder that writer Jennifer Weiss could type with all those stars in her eyes. Her Father's Day adulation of Obama is so over-the-top that Obama suddenly becomes the "father of our country," and is determined to have "super-dad status."

The most offensive part of this piece is, of course, the aforementioned assigning to Obama of the role of "father of our country." There is only one father of our country and that is George Washington, war hero and first president. No other president is the father of our country, nor can they be so even rhetorically. Yet, in its zeal to be an effusive Obamaton, here is the SFChron reassigning the role from the true father of our country to Obama.

Last year columnist Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle turned himself into a national laughingstock with his comical claim that Barack Obama was some sort of "enlightened being," a messianic Lightworker. Here is an excerpt from Morford's "Lightworker" column that gives you a taste of his worshipful unintentional humor:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. 

Although such Obama worship was widely mocked, it now appears that Morford has returned to the comedy stage with yet more praise of the "Lightworker" in today's sanity-challenged column in which he claims that the "Age of Obama" has caused evil to be on the wane. First Morford reminds of the time when evil predominated in the world during the nasty Republican era:

When an editor of one of the nation's most liberal newspapers is disgusted by the media's sycophantic adoration for President Obama, it's a metaphysical certitude the press's behavior has so deviated from anything close to journalism that the entire industry should be put in a time out.

With this in mind, the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Bronstein wrote a piece Monday called "Love or Lust, Obama and the Fawning Press Need to Get a Room."

In it, Bronstein marvelously told inconvenient truths that should be required reading for all Americans especially his lovesick colleagues:

From time to time, I like to highlight when the media do something right, so today I thought I'd give hearty kudos to San Francisco Chronicle's C.W. Nevius for his June 4 column, "Bureaucrat scuffs dream of homeless shoe shiner."

In his page A1 story, the Chronicle columnist informs readers of the plight of a homeless man who, rather than panhandling for spare change, decided to earn his own money by shining shoes.

But it seems the enterprising man is now being punished for his responsibility and entrepreneurial spirit by city bureaucrats shoving red tape in his face:

ABC’s new series "The Goode Family" poking fun at liberalism and political correctness has predictably been greeted with disdain by the establishment media.

The running theme in reviews of the series is that it is unoriginal, flat, and not funny. Not that the folks at the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle are able to laugh at themselves, anyway…

The Times’s Ginia Bellafante said:

But the show feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s, when it was possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed. Who really thinks of wind power — an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show — as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?

The Chronicle’s Tim Goodman said:

So how does the Washington correspondent for Nancy Pelosi's hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, explain away Nancy Pelosi's disastrous news conference on Thursday in which she accused the CIA of lying?

Simple. Blame it all on the evil Republicans and portray the House Speaker as the victim of political gamesmanship.

Such was the laughable premise of Carolyn Lochhead in her Chronicle article:

There's a legitimate debate to be had about the media's coverage of the alleged epidemic of "sexting" -- teenagers sending pornographic or suggestive photos of themselves nude or semi-nude via cell phone.*

After all, the media are well-known to glom onto a few anecdotes and drum up a "growing trend" without the benefit of empirical data to back up the alarming claim. That being said, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford is not the petulant adolescent man to make that point.

Indeed, Morford actually aims at excusing sexting altogether, all while distorting and mocking average Americans' sexual mores in his May 15 column, "You Dirty Kids!":

From Editor & Publisher yesterday (bold is mine):

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest metros continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation -- now at a record rate.

According to ABC, for 395 newspapers reporting this spring, daily circulation fell 7% to 34,439,713 copies, compared with the same March period in 2008. On Sunday, for 557 newspapers, circulation was down 5.3% to 42,082,707. These averages do not include 84 newspapers with circulations below 50,000 due to a change in publishing frequency.

Below is a chart showing the specifics for the top 25, including percentage losses for the past four years and during the past year (current year source: Editor & Publisher):

Want to see the bitterness of media elitism? Take a look at what San Francisco Chronicle's environmental blog, "The Thin Green Line," thinks of the public's attitude about global warming.

According to an April 17 Rasmussen Reports poll, only one out of three voters believes global warming is caused by human activity. For Cameron Scott of the Chronicle's "The Thin Green Line," this isn't due to the public's ability to discern a hoax when they see one, but a so-called "disinformation campaign," as he explained on an April 18 post.

"This is the most successful disinformation campaign in the history of the world (it's largely financed by fossil fuel companies)," Scott wrote. "There is virtual scientific unanimity on the issue: Natural planetary trends alone cannot account for the rapid changes we are currently witnessing."

Back on March 15, Noel Sheppard noted that the San Francisco Chronicle completely ignored the thousands of average Americans that came together in Cincinnati, Ohio to protest Obama's unprecedented take over of the US economy. The Cincinnati Tea Party truly was massive but is just one of the many dozens of Tea Party protests that have occurred -- and are continuing to occur -- all across the country in the last two months. Still, the SF Chronicle didn't see any reason to cover the rally.

But never fear for the Chronicle does enjoy a good protest, nonetheless. As long as it's of a leftist, anti-war flavor, of course. Witness the Chron's coverage of the "Massive anti-war, anti-Wall Street protest in San Francisco" from this weekend, March 21.

This rally was no bigger (and arguably smaller) than the anti-Obama protests in Cincinnati, yet the Chronicle reserves the word "massive" for the anti-war/anti-Wall Street protest while offering no coverage at all for the one in Cincy. If size was the key here, as the Chronicle's headline seems to note, then why ignore the likely bigger protest in Ohio only a week ago?

Despite being in so much financial trouble it could be facing extinction, the San Francisco Chronicle continues to be one of the most disgraceful newspapers in the country.

In a piece dealing with Saturday's anti-war protest held in the City by the Bay, the authors disgustingly felt the need to share with their readers a truly offensive t-shirt that was for sale at the event (file photo):

On March 9, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on one of Barack Obama's latest nominees. This time it was to assess the suitability of Tony West, Obama's nominee for the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Division. Things went "smoothly" according to the San Jose Mercury News, also publishing a nice bio of West. The Washington Post merely mentioned the hearing was "notable." Similarly the East Bay Express simply makes mention of the hearing having occurred. Apparently there was nothing of interest in West’s nomination.

Curiously enough, though, not one of these brief reports mention that Tony West was "American Taliban" terrorist John Walker Lindh's defense lawyer. Another key bit of info left out of these announcements was that Tony West raised $65 million for Obama's presidential campaign. Money well spent if it gets a cushy government job, I suppose.

NBC White House political director Chuck Todd appeared on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" on Monday to dismiss Rush Limbaugh as "looking backward" and deride the radio industry as a "dying medium." Todd (see file photo above), who was talking with co-host Mika Brzezinski about Limbaugh’s role as a leader in the Republican Party, also suggested a linkage between the radio host and far left bomb thrower Michael Moore.  He insisted, "They [Democrats] want to do to the Republican Party what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore and all that stuff."

Speaking of radio, Todd sniffed, "But, it’s that idea that Limbaugh- even the whole- even the venue that he’s on, radio, not the internet.  You know, it’s very ‘90s.  It’s very backwards- is looking backwards." He added, "And, you know, radio is a dying medium, potentially- as it is just in general."

He concluded, "It is a backward-looking technology." Of course, it’s the newspaper industry that many would call a "dying medium." (The San Francisco Chronicle is just one of many papers to face bankruptcy recently.)

Well, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford out does himself with sycophantic, hyperbole over his Obammessiah, today, February 27. He so revels in hero worship for The One, it's amazing that the White House doesn't feel compelled to get an order of protection against this creepy columnist.

No one in the Old Media is more sold on The One and less credible for his girlish crush than Morford. He is a fount of mush as he wonders if he should be scared of today's problems or suffused with lust in his heart for Obama (if you'll remember the Carterism).

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past month, then you must know that the most hated man in America is none other than Stephen Fowler of the ABC reality show, "Wife Swap." To get up to speed on Fowler's antics, check out this video of some of the highlights from that show. Among the many "charming" utterances from this British-born San Francisco character are calling the wife from small town Missouri involved in the swap, Gayla Long, a "dumb redneck" and "lower class." In addition, his attitudes reflect a distinct leftwing anti-Americanism. Fowler finds it "humiliating" and "objectionable" to sing the national anthem. He also mocks Gayla Long because her sons want to someday join the military. And all this is just skimming the surface of Fowler's incredible rudeness which included telling his own kids to not even speak to Long.

All this caused a firestorm of anry reaction on the Web including even a StephenFowlerSucks.com blog. However, despite the immediate notoriety of Fowler in the blogosphere, Fowler's hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, neglected to publish a story about their most "distinguished" citizen for weeks. When an article was finally published, the Chronicle neglected to go into any real detail of Fowler's hideous behavior. Check out their highly abridged version of what happened written by Justin Berton and all you can figure out is that Fowler may have been just a bit impolite:

When University of Washington Professor Eric Steig announced in a news conference and paper published in the January 22 edition of the journal Nature that he and several colleagues removed one of many thorns in the sides of climate alarmists -- in this case, evidence that Antarctica is cooling -- he received extensive worldwide attention in the mainstream press.

But when a noteworthy error was found in Stieg's research less than two weeks after it's publication, of the mainstream press, only an opinion column in the London Telegraph and a blog associated with the Australian Herald Sun carried the news.

The Stieg paper's release was covered by 27 newspapers, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle & Los Angeles Times, by CNN, by the Associated Press, by NPR and quite a few others (see reviews of the coverage at the end of this post).

After independent analyst Steve McIntyre discovered a major error in the data, and released his results on his influential blog Climate Audit beginning on February 1, based on a Nexis search I conducted today, none of these outlets chose to inform their readers.

Here's how the Stieg research showing supposed warming was received by the mainstream press:

Here's something you don't see every day.

A video report about last night's riot in Oakland related to the shooting death of an unarmed man at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer actually calls it .... a riot. What's more, the reporter notes, as is really often the case in situations such as these, how people he characterized as "professional protesters" egged others on and created the atmosphere that led to so much violence and vandalism.

CBS5 reporter Joe Vazquez filed "Inside the Oakland Riot: A First-Hand Account." It's a little too "gee whiz" to me, but it least it gets some usually unreported facts out.

Here is the full text of the video:

In today's "You've Got to be Kidding Me" moment, the San Francisco Chronicle advocated that folks who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth should stop making payments so they can qualify for a government bailout.

I'm not kidding.

Disgustingly titled "Are You an Idiot to Keep Paying Your Mortgage," the article actually instructed readers upside-down in their real estate the ins and outs of how they can transfer responsibility for their own investment mistakes to others (emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy The Economist):

It looks like the type of column that only appears in one of those sleezy freebie sex rags that can be found primarily in beatup newspaper racks. However, this column by Violet Blue (photo right) was published in a  major newspaper, the San Franciso Chronicle. Come to think of it, being that the city is San Francisco, this almost makes sense. Ms. Blue has sort of a kinky sex advice column featured regularly in that periodical called, "Open Source Sex." And now Violet Blue is deeply concerned about repression. Not repression by the EVIL Republicans who are on their way out of power in Washington. Instead, Ms Blue is worried about a leftwing extremist feminist group called "Stop Porn Culture." Let us now watch Violet Blue describe the problem posed by this group and, as you read this stuff, keep reminding yourself that it is actually appearing in the largest San Francisco newspaper, not some side street sleaze sheet:

Appearing on the Election Day eve edition of "Fox & Friends," MRC's Brent Bozell reacted to the how the media, starting with the San Francisco Chronicle, hit the proverbial snooze button with Sen. Barack Obama's remarks about bankrupting the coal industry:

Everyone talks about the need for alternative energy.... The problem is that everytime an alternative comes forward, someone on the Left always shoots it down. That's why you don't have more growth in the coal industry or in the nuclear industry. The reason these things never come to the fore is because on the Left, they're always shot down in the final analysis. And Barack Obama just said it again, he's going to do it.

During the segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade noted that a McCain staffer Rick Davis said simply of the media's coverage of the campaign, "it sucked." Bozell agreed, hitting the media for bias by omission:

On Sunday, my colleague P. J. Gladnick helped break the story about Barack Obama discussing how his carbon cap and trade proposals would bankrupt coal-fired power plants.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey has found a video of that interview with the San Francisco Chronicle (embedded right).

Sunday evening, the Chronicle's Carla Marinucci refuted claims that she and her paper did anything to hide this information from the public.

Morrissey took issue with Marinucci's position:

(Please read update about the San Francisco Chronicle neglecting to mention Obama's willingness to bankrupt the coal industry at bottom of this blog.)

Imagine if John McCain had whispered somewhere that he was willing to bankrupt a major industry? Would this declaration not immediately be front page news? Well, Barack Obama actually flat out told the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Gate) that he was willing to see the coal industry go bankrupt in a January 17, 2008 interview. The result? Nothing. This audio interview has been hidden from the public...until now. Here is the transcript of Obama's statement about bankrupting the coal industry (emphasis mine):

 Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

It appears that Mark Morford, author of the inadvertently hilarious San Francisco Chronicle column about Barack Obama being a "Lightworker," described as a "rare kind of attuned being," is back with yet another column of cultish worship of "The One." You can see where the starry eyed Morford is coming from just from the title of his latest column, "When history spanks: Where were you when that incredible thing happened? How will you respond?" Morford could have just as easily titled his adulatory piece, "The earth moved: I smoked a cigarette afterwards. Was it good for you? It was good for me."

As we have seen before, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the universe when it comes to political smarts. In fact, many blame Newsom's poorly timed push for gay marriages in 2004 for John Kerry's presidential election loss that year. Despite the animosity towards Newsom for his role in causing the Democrats to lose their chance at the White House, San Francisco Chronicle political writers Joe Garofoli and Carla Marinucci gushed over Newsom as a new "hotshot" at the Democrat convention a few weeks ago:

Both Newsom and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris appeared Tuesday at a Time magazine panel on "Hotshots to Watch" panel along with Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala. Obama appeared on the same panel before the 2004 convention.

A former San Francisco Supervisor pleaded guilty Friday to three felonies Friday that go to the fundamental integrity of city operations.

Both the Associated Press's Paul Elias and the San Francisco Chronicle's Wyatt Buchanan did not see fit to name the party of Ed Jew, who is, naturally, a Democrat.

Interesting, Jew attributes his downfall to the examples of others, and, according to Buchanan, "is prepared to name others who he says have engaged in similar actions." Though there's clearly an element of personal responsibility avoidance at play here, it's nonetheless worth noting that AP and Buchanan still had no interest in learning where Jew picked up what Elias described as "lessons taught by other politicians."

Here are the first five paragraphs of the AP story:

Today’s version of our exercise, in which we dissect the media’s attempts at interjecting bias into a simple headline, may stun some of you. The shocking aspect? The Washington Post didn’t partake in the liberal doctoring of the headline. Let’s take a look… The Pentagon just released a report entitled ‘Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,’ which highlights a decline in violence in the country in 2008. Surprisingly enough, the WaPo ran this headline:

Violence Declines Further in Iraq

While positive news in a Post headline is a bit hard to believe, they did include the following sub-headline, managing to interject that ol’ liberal pessimism we’re more accustomed to:

Pentagon Report Cites Factors That Could Rekindle Attacks

That said, we have to give them some credit for combining the positive and negative into one headline, making it less biased than their competitors. Observe…

In his look at the "McCain campaign's end-run around media," San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Joe Garofoli pitted one media insider's defense of McCain campaign strategy on the matter of Gov. Palin's press availability, and that at the end of his 20-paragraph story:

"All politicians go through a stage where they want to minimize how much they are exposed to the media," said Paul Friedman, vice president of news at CBS, the network that scored one of the three major Palin interviews. He shrugged at what could be learned in a news conference that couldn't in a one-on-one interview. "I just don't think it is that cosmic of an issue. We'll see more of the candidates soon. Just wait for the debates."

To counter Friedman, Garofoli cited female journalists and pundits who complain that Palin is being overly sheltered. Aside from PBS's Judy Woodruff and CNN's Campbell Brown, Garofoli noted the complaints of conservative Kathleen Parker, labeling the syndicated columnist, and rightfully so, by her ideological label.

But when it came to labeling a liberal critic of Palin, the chief of a liberal feminist organization was treated as a non-partisan observer, even though her organization was co-founded by Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem:

An affinity for "strap on devices," "swallowing instead of spitting" and a preference for anal sex are some of the key elements San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford uses to identify what makes an "elitist."  Loathing the Bible is on the list too.

Morford, whose columns regularly trash conservatives and Christians, weighed in on dumb American kids last October, and trashed evangelicals with the following line: "and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait."  His September 12 column, ‘Are You an Elitist? 18 Revealing Ways to Know for Sure' makes that attack look like playground fun.