Before Obama became president, Chicago resident Tim O'Brien bought a 2005 Chrysler 300C that Sen. Obama leased. But when he tried to auction if off before the inauguration,  "jokers ran up the price to $100 million," so no sale.

The Washington Post gossips report that now O'Brien is the joker: he's put the Obama-leased car up for auction on eBay for a million dollars. (Insert Dr. Evil pinky to mouth here.) He claims to be serious. Is this a better way for an Obama fan to spend money, rather than helping out someone struggling in Obama's economy? He compares Obama's car to vehicles owned by Pope John Paul, Hitler, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Hoping to capi­tal­ize on the campaign season, O’Boyle got serious again two weeks ago and re-listed the car — with pre-screening and a $2,000 deposit required to bid. ”Please understand that the $1 million dollar starting price is not a joke,” reads the listing, noting that Pope John Paul II’s 1975 Ford Escort sold for $690,000; Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 1977 Peugeot went for more than $2 million, and Adolf Hitler’s Mercedes convertible for $8 million.

The current Blue Book value of the Chrysler is around $14,000. Last year, a Connecticut man paid $26,000 for Obama’s 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The auction ends Wednesday night. As of press time, exactly zero bids.

A few years ago, when FNC's Fox and Friends substitute co-anchor Peter Johnson, Jr., accidentally referred to left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as "Cesar Chavez," the famous American labor and civil rights activist, the flub received attention from some of FNC's left-wing critics, even though the FNC host corrected himself moments later.

But Tuesday's World News on ABC demonstrates that you don't have to be a target of the left to make the same flub. (Video below)

During a report on recent warnings by National Intelligence Director David Clapper that Iran may target the U.S. for a terrorist attack in the near future, correspondent Martha Raddatz recounted:

He pointed specifically to last year's plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and to reports that Iran has been supporting Hezbollah cells in Latin America. Iran's President Ahmadinejad recently traveled there, meeting leaders like Cesar Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro, who have little love for the U.S.

Below is video of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, January 31, World News on ABC

The photograph of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer pointing a finger at President Obama on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport brought out the worst in amateur psychoanalysis from our media elite. No one had an audio tape or videotape of what was said, but just the finger-pointing image somehow was definitive evidence of profound disrespect.

These same journalists were not only unfazed, but actually downright amused back in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist in Baghdad threw two shoes at President Bush’s head. That man, they said, was an “instant hero.” Over and over, they replayed the footage, each time laughing just a bit harder.

Ah, but this is Obama, and no pointing of any kind is allowed. Outrage, you hear? Outrage!

It was an outrage contest. NBC anchor Brian Williams seemed the most offended. "Who have you ever seen talking to the president like this?….The governor of Arizona with her finger in the face of the President of the United States! You don't see that often — or maybe ever." The story that followed included angry MSNBC host Martin Bashir: "I think this is unprecedented!…I don't know of any other instance when someone has been this disrespectful to the president."

Worst ever? Unprecedented? Williams clearly doesn’t feel the need to do any research before making historical claims. He not only left out the Iraqi shoe-tosser in his historical ignorance. He left out…himself.

In 2006, Williams conducted a very hostile interview with President Bush, in which one could isolate a screen image of Williams pointing an accusatory finger at Bush. Believe it or not, after slapping Bush around about whether he was too “patrician” to understand his mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Williams was pestering (or mocking) Bush for reading the French philosopher Albert Camus.

Williams clearly couldn’t believe Bush had the brain power to tackle it, and pointed his finger as he challenged Bush to explain how he was misunderstood. He then threw at him “Still not watchin’ television, huh?” “I watch a good baseball game,” Bush snapped back.

Disrespect was the name of Brian’s game.

On CBS, anchorman Scott Pelley brought in Bob Schieffer to compete with Williams in the Obama-lover outrage. He told Schieffer “it seems like it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue but a question of how the office of the President is treated.” Schieffer complained, “this is just another sign of the growing incivility and really vulgarity of our modern American politics in campaigns.” He, too, had complete amnesia. “I can never recall a President stepping off Air Force One, which is itself a symbol of the presidency in American democracy, and being subjected to such public rudeness. I think really we’re a better people than this little incident illustrates.”

So let’s look at CBS at the end of 2008, only about three years ago. Reporter Elizabeth Palmer quoted Munthazar al-Zaidi’s shoe-tossing words at Bush – “This is your goodbye kiss, you dog!” She added that “By showing the kind of contempt formerly reserved for Saddam Hussein to President Bush, al-Zaidi's become an instant hero.” Palmer snidely concluded "al-Zaidi should do jail time, said the Iraqi bloggers, because he missed." Then-anchor Katie Couric failed to muster any outrage at the disrespect, even if, as Pelley claimed, “it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue but a question of how the President is treated.”

In The New York Times, reporter Helene Cooper found potential political gain for Obama after the Brewer conflict. “Hispanic leaders said that what is being dubbed by some as the ‘dustup in the desert’ could play in the president’s favor given the unfavorable view many Hispanics have of the governor for her advocacy of tough immigration measures.”

By contrast, the Times asserted the Bush shoe-tossing in 2008 only underlined how dramatically unpopular Bush was in the Middle East for all the mayhem he imposed. “The Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war,” wrote Times reporters Timothy Williams and Abeer Mohammed at the time. They found the “instantly mythic moment” had “provided a rare moment of unity in a region often at odds with itself.”

Liberal journalists can insult a governor for challenging Obama, even after they enthusiastically channeled praise for shoe-throwing at Bush’s head. What they can’t plausibly do is claim that they have a firm grip on historical facts, or any shred of a record of nonpartisan respect for presidents.

Even when someone who helped prepare a new guide for gardeners on the coldest temperatures seen annually in different parts of the country says that their output doesn't fit the global warming template, an AP reporter decides that it really does.

In preparing his write-up last week on the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's revised the official guide for gardeners, the Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, the infamous writer of reports claiming that the Climategate scandals were no big deal, buried the following quote from a USDA official at Paragraph 17 of 24:

USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan, who was part of the map team, repeatedly tried to distance the new zones on the map from global warming. She said that while much of the country is in warmer zones, the map "is simply not a good instrument" to demonstrate climate change because it is based on just the coldest days of the year.

Seems pretty clear to me. Something which only addresses "the coldest (few) days" in a year doesn't have much relevance to what temperatures are like during the rest of the year.

But not to good old Seth, whose under-the-breath response to Ms. Kaplan must have been along the lines of "What the heck do you know?" Borenstein almost waxed poetic about the impact of global warming on the gardening guide:

New map for what to plant reflects global warming

Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.

It's the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation's 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.

The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives just as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring.

It reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn't as cold as it used to be, so some plants and trees can now survive farther north.

"People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the wintertime," said Boston University biology professor Richard Primack. "There's a lot of things you can grow now that you couldn't grow before."

… The 1990 map was based on temperatures from 1974 to 1986, the new map from 1976 to 2005. The nation's average temperature from 1976 to 2005 was two-thirds of a degree higher than it was during the old time period, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Wow. A whole two-thirds of a degree. Would somebody break it to poor Seth that there hasn't been any global warming since 1997?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

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