Obama's media pals launch the anti-Darrell Issa crusade

Darrell Issa has been a problem for Barack Obama ever since he took over as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He is one of Obama's Public Enemies (he has so many of them now it is hard to identify him as Public Enemy Number One).

Issa has launched investigations and inquires into various policies and actions of the administration (The Department of the Interior, The Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice to name a few). He threatens to embarrass Obama and challenge his competency. The Democrats shoved aside the Democratic member who would normally have been the ranking minority member of the committee and put in his place a more effective Obama protector Elijah Cummings. He seems to have earned the right enemies who seemingly will stop at nothing to derail his efforts to protect Americans.

Therefore, he seems to have drawn the ire of the usual suspects in the Obama camp. Media Matters, the Soros-funded outfit, has attacked Issa for example.

The latest round of attacks come from the New York Times and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and its political action arm Think Progress.

Last week the paper gave Issa the type of treatment it meted out to John McCain during the 2008 campaign: a front-page column calling into question various aspects of Issa's business career. Some of this material was recycled from a previous New Yorker magazine profile on Issa (the New Yorker is also an Obama cheerleader, Koch brothers attacker and Soros-defender). Other material was just speculation and some "facts" were just plain wrong.

The paper is doubling up its efforts. The Times business reporter Floyd Norris is also joining the political lynch mob inquiring about Issa's business practices.

Lest it be left out of the fun, Think Progress has entered the fray with perhaps the silliest sally yet:

"A staffer working for Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee on financial regulation issues has come under scrutiny by ThinkProgress for changing his name after he left his previous position at Goldman Sachs. The story implied that he changed his name three years ago to hide his background with the company," Ryan Reilly writes for Talking Points Memo. "But Peter Haller, formerly known as Peter Simonyi, said in a statement to TPM that he and his sister switched their names a few years back to respect the last wish of his grandfather to carry on his mother's family name. His mother's father, Alfred Haller, was killed by fascists in Budapest in 1944 when he tried to stop children from being conscripted into the military, Haller said. 'As my sister and I became adults, at some point discussions began that we should carry on the name of my mother's family, which had lived in Transylvania, up until it was granted to Romania under the Treaty of Trianon after World War I,' Haller said."

Wow - he changed his name not to protect his identity; not to hide his past with Goldman Sachs (whose officials were big donors to Obama's 2008 campaign but now make convenient targets of opportunity for Obama and company) but to honor his heroic grandfather. The shame! Reilly not only was wrong in his line of attack he did not even know the correct title of Issa's committee.

I have written numerous columns highlighting how important Darrell Issa's efforts to uncover Obama's incompetency (and perhaps worse) are when it comes to protecting American taxpayers. It is part of a campaign - including Obama's attacks on the government's Inspectors General - to shut down any criticism of Barack Obama. I noted that liberal operatives launched early preemptive attacks on Issa. Now it seems those attacks have begun in earnest and they will not stop.

All this highlights the game plan for Obama. He will use his pals in the media and elsewhere to savage anyone who dares to call into question his competency or challenge him during the campaign. He revealed his modus operandi back in 2008 when he said to those that would challenge him that he would bring a gun to a knife fight. The landscape is filled with "journalists" who will focus on defaming anyone who may try to discover the truth of what has been happening in our government while Obama has been President.

This man does not fight fair and will have a lot of money and friends in the media to engage in a scorched earth campaign. Get ready for the Katyushas.