Who's Supporting Ed Martin's Congress Run?

Given that, as Jake Wagman tweeted, "Observation from Ed's kick-off: No signs, words about anything GOP," I wonder who was the voice in Ed's ear telling him to run. Who could it be?
Whooooo could it be?
Oh, I don't know, I guess I'll just have to take a stab in the dark. Could it be....

SATAN!?!

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Gateway Pundit Pretends Online Surveys are Equivalent to Scientific Research

Gateway Pundit, the top blogger listed on Ed Martin's website, claimed on his website that "78% of Physicians Say Public Option Would Negatively Impact Health Care."  He suggested that this number represented "physicians polled in a recent survey."  Of course, he forgets to mention that this is a survey of an online community whose founder and CEO has written opinion articles against the public option, so in no way can be taken to be representative of physicians as a whole.  In fact, the CEO of the group that conducted the survey said, of a similar online survey, "We don't in any way, shape or form argue or portray that this research is a replacement for conventional scientific inquiry"  .

Gateway Pundit also forgets to mention that a real scientific survey by the New England Journal of Medicine using a random sample of doctors found that 63% support a public option and 10 % (in addition to the 63%, not part of it) support a single payer system.

Deliberately misleading his readers is par for the course for Jim Hoft.  But hey, he should be commended for not linking to a white supremacist site this time.  

Taking on the Education-Industrial Complex

I was originally content just to tweet this, but then figured I might as well document it in case some future scholars ever want to address the question, "Why did the average St. Louis IQ drop 50 points between 2009 and 2015?"  Anyway, it's real short.

Loesch did some impressive wikipedia research and  concluded that "We spend more on education than most anything else - and more on education than defense spending." 

Sorry, not even close to being correct.

Dana Loesch: Because I'm too uninformed to know about it, and too lazy to research it, it must not be real

Sometimes local radio host Dana Loesch knowingly misinforms her followers.  But most of the time she really just doesn't have any clue what she's talking about.  In the latest nonsense to splat out from her warped brain, Loesch rails against the Southern Poverty Law Center for "attacking tea parties," alleging that the SPLC is making up claims that there has been an increase in threats against the president since Obama took office.  Where to begin?

First of all, the SPLC's memo was actually about the increase in far-right militia activity, and not about the tea parties.  The tea parties are mentioned, but only to note the undeniable fact that some of the extremists have attended tea party events.  The "tea parties" are literally mentioned in only 1 out of the 50 paragraphs in the article.  Nevertheless, Loesch takes the article as a direct attack on tea parties.  I wonder why that might be.   Perhaps the descriptions of far-right extremists sound like some of the people she's seen at rallies?

More amazing, however, is the fact that Loesch claims that there is, "no evidence that threats to the President have increased."  This is quite a remarkable claim, considering that Obama recieved more threats than any other President elect before taking office, and there has been a 400 percent increase in threats against the president after Obama took office.

And of course numerous incidents of domestic terrorism are mentioned in the SPLC's report.  But c'mon, Loesch is a busy person.  We can't expect her to actually read the entire articles she complains about!  And we certainly can't expect her to do actual research on the claims.  She's got better things to do with her time, like putting the word "ACORN" into every search engine she can find.

Dana Loesch is really, really not smart

Sorry, I know the title sounds mean, and I honestly would be all too happy to ignore Loesch if she weren't aggressively misleading people, but this is too ridiculous not to comment on. 

First of all, Loesch and Bill Hennessy, who are both regularly handed a megaphone by the local media, both claim to literally believe that Obama has sent an "operative" to St. Louis to start a riot.  I have no idea how warped your mind would have to believe this, but it gets worse.  Even though Hennessy has suggested that this "operative" (my guess is that they heard something about a political consultant or something and then expanded this to their "riot" theory) might be in town because Nancy Pelosi will be speaking here on Oct. 3, Loesch somehow got it into her head that "the operative" was actually here for yesterday's HCAN/MoveOn/etc rally outside of a local insurance giant's headquarters .   So here's the real kicker: today Loesch posts the following video showing that it proves that yesterday's rally was "astroturf":

She writes, "This is the protest about which I wrote earlier" with a link to her riot conspiracy theory post.  Only problem?  The video was from a Organizing For America rally on August 30, as you can see in this video from a DailyKos post:

Umm, yeah, they do hand out Obama signs at Obama events.  

It's really quite amazing that Loesch just makes such hyperbolic claims without bothering to even attempt to check if the claims are true.  My guess is that just like her blatant lie about serve.gov, she will continue to repeat her clearly false claim even after learning that it's false.

More Race-Baiting from Gateway Pundit

Gateway Pundit, after recently being exposed for linking to white supremacist groups on multiple occasions, continued his never-ending race baiting campaign today. The title of today's post was, "Belleville Attacker Flashed Gang Signs After Beating Kid On Bus" and linked to the oh-so-important political news that prosecutors said that one of the attackers flashed a gang sign. GrandDragon Pundit's reaction to this? He says, "Where's Al Sharpton?"

Now granted, the attackers are ridiculous bullies who deserve to have the book thrown at them (and I'm sure that it will be), but what on Earth do gang signs have to do with racism? If someone flashes a gang sign, that might suggest he is part of a gang, but it doesn't suggest anything at all about whether he is racist.

Given that the content of his post provides absolutely no reason to think that the attacks were racially motivated, it seems like the only explanation for why Hoft posted it was that he was trying to rile up his Council of Conservative Citizens base by making reference to gangs.

Comeback of the Year: Catching Lies Wastes Time

Dana Loesch is a rad blogger who uses hip expressions like "Durrrr" and "Just....wow" to send a powerful message: "Hey kids, it's like totally cool to be a right-wing extremist!"  So I really stepped in it when I made the fateful mistake of catching her in a giant lie.  I thought she might actually care that she was misleading all of her blog readers and thousands of people who watch Fox News, but instead she had this totally badass comeback via Twitter:

Enjoying watching local lefties limited to reacting to me and others instead of generating own worthwhile content. Mission accomplished.

Oh snap!  Loesch like totally tricked me!  I thought she was actually trying to get people to believe the garbage she says with a straight face, but actually it was just her secret plan to trick me into wasting time showing that what she said was complete bs.  And I could have been finished the 4th chapter of my book on killing grandparents!  I guess that's what happens when you try to take on the biting wit of the freshy fresh NEO-neo-conservatives.

Jim Hoft links to race-baiting video from white supremacist, anti-semitic group- UPDATED 3X

Jim Hoft, also known as Gateway Pundit, has amazingly descended to a new, despicable low. After trumping up the school bus beatings in Belleville as "vicious racist attacks" (even though students, the mayor, and prosecutors said the attack was not racially motivated), he now links to a youtube channel from a white supremacist group with the video title, "2nd White kid attacked by blacks on school bus, racial slur used": (note: old link here)

Despite the claim in the title of the video, nothing is said in any of the news reports about the attackers' skin color. In the KMOV interview, the victim emphasizes only that they were "too older kids in eighth grade." He did mention that they called him a "white N", but that name seems just as likely to come from white racists as anyone else. In fact, Hoft even admits in an update, "I do not have a reliable source for the race of the attackers."

Yet that does not stop Hoft from playing the race-baiting card by linking to the youtube channel from the white supremicist group The Council of Conservative Citizens, who are the direct offshoot of the White Citizen's Council. You can see on the bottom right of the following screen the link the council from the host channel:

Among other videos featured on the channel, you can see such titles as, "Liberals chimpout after White Pride stickers appear, "Jim Traficant talks about Jewish control of America," and, "Indians want to be White!"

And it's not like Hoft doesn't know better. He is warned repeatedly in the comments that he is linking to a racist organization:

Jim Hoft clearly saw the comments, since he decided to update the post. In fact, you can see from the web address of the blog post (check the http in the first picture below) and his original twitter announcement that he changed the name of the post from "2nd White Boy Beaten on St. Louis School Bus" to "2nd Boy Beaten on St. Louis School Bus":

But apparently he is fine continuing to link to a racist organization. And I'm sure it's just completely a coincidence that Hoft has nothing but pure hatred for Obama and Van Jones.

Update: Jim Hoft is now deleting comments that call him out on his racism. I posted this earlier today and it is now gone:


Update #2: Apparently, Jim Hoft originally posted a link directly to the white supremacist site! Under pressure from fellow conservatives, he moved that link to a new place. Still under pressure, he got rid of it. Yet he still is fine linking to a video on a white supremacist youtube channel that deliberately misrepresents what is known and attempts to portray this as a racially motivated crime despite the fact that no news outlets have reported the skin color of the assailants or suggested anything about such a motive.

Also, a quick google search revealed that this is not the first time Jim Hoft has linked to the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. Note that shortly after linking to the "St. Louis C of CC" blog, Hoft writes, "Barack Obama Attacked White People!"

Update #3: Even though Hoft wouldn't take down the link, youtube has now removed the user and the youtube video with it.

Local Scammer Dana Loesch Creates New Fake Controversy for Fox News

Dana Loesch, who used to be a normal person but now is intent on getting rich off of extravagant lies (like her recent "Obama is brainwashing your children by talking about hard work" campaign), has added a new chapter to her pattern of making up ridiculous stories in order to get on Fox News.  This time, she goes after the White House Service Project website www.Serve.gov that was created to help people to volunteer in their communities! Loesch's story is as follows.  She went to the website and typed in "ACORN" under "What interests you?"  She then came up with results that included advertisements for being a health care activist for the community group ACORN.  Loesch's implication is that the "Taxpayer Funded" website was directing people to an advocacy group.

The only problem with Loesch's brilliant piece of investigative "journalism" is that the government is not filtering what results show up in the searches.  The whole point of the site is that people can enter their own events, which you can see here:

So for example, if you do a search for "ACORN," you also come up with a list of clearly anti-ACORN events (see A and B):

Quite a government conspiracy, eh?  Or if that's not enough for you, you can do a search for "Tea Party" and get this (check out C and D):

In other words, people can enter any events they want into the system, and those events will show up in the search.  You can even be directed to anti-Obama events!  So there is absolutely nothing interesting going on!  

But that didn't stop Loesch from going on Neil Cavuto's show to spew her completely made up b.s.  Once again she profits from making people stupider.  Remind me again why the local news stations feel a need to interview her when kids are beat up on a school bus?

Update: Apparently Rush "I think school buses should be segregated" Limbaugh read Loesch's piece on his radio program.  It is now officially wingnut gold.

Dana Loesch and Adam Sharp go out of their way to make fun of veterans

We all remember how right-wing leaders wrapped themselves in the flag as they tried to stifle any dissent regarding the reckless war in Iraq.  They of course always claimed to be doing this out of their deep love for U.S. soldiers, and used to suggest that anyone who criticized the war was secretly opposed to our armed forces.  But their rhetoric was as hollow as it was thoughtless, and their concern for soldiers reached only as far as those soldiers could be used as pawns in their political agenda.  Nothing can be better evidence of this than seeing how the leaders of the tea party movement treat soldiers who disagree with their political ideology.

The always classy Adam Sharp went out of his way recently to mock two veterans who were part of a total of three people who showed up to counter-protest the 2,000 teabaggers in Quincy, IL on Sept. 12.  Their protest was obviously small and not part of any organized effort, and nobody would have even heard about them if Sharp didn't decide to vindictively attack them.  Though aware that they were veterans, he first put up a post mocking the size of their rally, and a seeming spelling error on one of their signs.  His deep hatred apparently not satisfied, or else simply moved to do the bidding of Grand Teabagging Daddy Roger Stone, he today decided that he might as well call the veterans LIARS and COMMUNISTS as well, suggesting that they were 'looking for a fight," and (apparently oblivious to the notion of "contradiction") claiming that they "slunk away like cowards."  

And Dana Loesch, whom I'm told used to be a somewhat normal and maybe even decent person, apparently suggested that they make faces mocking the veterans as they were being interviewed.  

It's quite amazing that these veterans simply showed up as citizens to express their point of view, and end up getting mercilessly mocked by the leaders of the tea party movement.  The head teabaggers often like to pretend that they're fighting a big oppressive government, because that makes it easier for their blind hatred for anyone who disagrees to seem more justified.  But in moments like this their true motivations are exposed.  They don't care about fighting "big government."  They care only about trying to destroy anyone who disagrees with them, even people who risked their lives fighting for the country.  

As even national right-wingers back off, local teabaggers continue to lie to their readers

Let's get this straight. Even right-wing mouthpiece Drudge and Fox News, who has been promoting this event with daily infomercials for the past 6 months, only reported that tens of thousands of people attended the September 12 teabagger rallies. Even Michelle Malkin, who started the initial rumors, backed off the claim that 2 million people attended and called out the head of FreedomWorks for lying. The only official estimate, which came from the D.C. fire department, was that 50-70,000 people attended.

Despite all this, local teabloggers Dana Loesch, Gateway Pundit, and Adam Sharp continue to lie about the 2 million people number. You have to wonder why they're so intent on misleading their audience? Is it because they've realized that their crowds are shrinking, their image is tarnished, and their momentum is in the last death swirl down a flushing toilet?