St. Louis Pushes Back

Burns is Back and As Hilarious as Ever

2010-06-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

John Burns, the brilliant strategist hailed as the next William F. Buckley by St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy, who managed to only be able to get 37% of the St. Louis County population to vote against a tax increase, is back sharing his cutting political insights. Apparently, leading a campaign that manages to change a population from beating an identical initiative to only getting 37% qualifies John Burns to explain exactly how future historians are going to talk about the tea party movement. And, according to him, the tea party will be remembered as having two phases: the Stand Around and Yell Phase, and the new Creep Out Your Neighbors Phase, pioneered by him.

And he's off to a fantastic start to his new movement, explaining to the readers of Hoft's blog how they can get involved on "Titter":

Let's hope Burn's endeavor is exactly as successful as his last one. It certainly looks like he's headed in that direction.

Dana Loesch Links to Birther YouTube Channel that Repeatedly Refers to "Obama Animals"

2010-06-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

Dana Loesch thought she was very clever for typing captions on screenshots of a recent preview for an MSNBC special. But, as you might guess from the title of the video she used, she got her information from a very strange place:

The title refers to "Obama-animals." A quick glance at the youtube user, AmericasNewsTodayDotCom shows that the person uses the expression "Obama-animals" quite often:

And a further glance at the America News Today Twitter feed reveals that the person is also a committed birther:

Hmm, she sure knows how to show how rational those tea partiers are. But there was another thing about Loesch's post that seemed bizarre: check out the text she added to this photo:

Whaa? Did Dana Loesch just totally invent a black person at a tea party rally? Because that sure looks just like a middle aged white lady to me.

It does explain one thing though. This must be why Dana Loesch is so convinced that the tea party is really diverse.

Great Moments in Durrr

2010-05-23T12:21:00.001-07:00

Actually, Scott Brown is in the Senate, and doesn't have a vote for "House Speaker."

Gateway Pundit Uses Death Threat Against Pelosi as Argument Against Health Care Reform

2010-04-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

Jim Hoft, fresh off whining about how the mean old "liberal media" interpreted the tea party burning a photo of Carnahan and bringing a coffin to his house as a threat, today cited a death threat against Pelosi as evidence that the health care reform bill is bad. Hoft refers to Pelosi saying that people are "thrilled" about the healthcare bill, then quotes an article reporting on a death threat against Pelosi. Concludes Hoft:

It’s a thrilling piece of legislation.

I wonder how those durn libruls will interpret this not-in-any-way-completely-creepy statement.

Gateway Pundit Misrepresents Poll Numbers

2010-03-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

Gateway Pundit claimed yesterday that a CNN poll showed that 59% of Americans opposed the health care bill and only 39% supported it. However, as Media Matters pointed out, 13% of the people thought that the bill was "not liberal enough," which means that a majority of Americans either support the bill or wish it was more liberal.

Gateway Pundit also claimed that Pelosi's favorable rating was only 11% and Reid's was only 8%. But again, this was a completely misleading representation, since the polls offered a number of options. Pelosi's unfavorable rating was only 37% and Reid's was only 27%, far below any serious danger areas.

Loesch Burns the Phone Lines

2010-03-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

10 seconds left. The Tyrannical Union Hippies are leading the Great American Patriots by a single point in the Ultimate Battle for Liberty of ALL TIME. Dana Loesch gets the ball. She's been practicing her whole life for this moment. She stuns one defender by making a loud shrieking noise. Adam Sharp trips another defender, giving Loesch a wide open path to the basket. She drives the lane, goes up for the shot and....CLUNK!

Aww, too bad. In the moment of America's Greatest Peril, Loesch directed her followers to "melt the phone lines" of the wrong person. Yesterday, Loesch told her followers to scream and yell at Representative Jo Ann Emerson: Hmmm, that sure sounds strange for anyone who's been paying attention to the Missouri delegation. Ryan Witt asked her where she heard that: Not to worry! Dana heard it from a TOTALLY reliable source: a Dana listener: Except, after telling all of her people to "burn Emerson's phone lines," it turns out that Loesch hadn't even bothered to call Emerson's office. And, of course, she was completely wrong: Well, that about seals it. In a couple months, union stormtroopers will be in the streets enforcing the new mandatory marijuana-smoking laws. If only they had melted the phone lines of the right person..

Worst "Citizen Journalism" Evah!

2010-03-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

The St. Louis Tea Party loves to talk about how they're "the future of journalism." If they're right, we will all be reduced to drooling vegetables a couple decades from now. Check out this amazingly lame "journalism" from Loesch:

Let's see, we have an inaudible tape of a guy that we don't know allegedly saying something that's not really that big of a deal... followed by a dramatic zoom in on an Obama button! Ooooh, so tech savvy! And to top it all off, Loesch co-opts Pink Floyd for her video. Yeah, I'm pretty sure The Wall was all about how awesome mindless patriotism and war-mongering are!

The Ultimate Hipsters

2010-03-11T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hey kids, do you want be the coolest dudes on the scene?

(photo from Darin Morley)

You can be in it for the money, but still be legit!
You can work to oppress poor people, and still be punk!
You can dress up in costumes from 1776 while wearing tatoos!
You can even talk about Reagan...with a piercing!

Fight back against the people who oppress the oppressors. Join the Tea Party today.

Adam Sharp says to "Keep your eyes on those moonbat neighbors of yours"

2010-03-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

Recently crowned ass clown of the week Adam Sharp (who, by the way, won by the greatest margin in the award's history) is warning fellow conservatives to keep an eye on their "moonbat neighbors." Sharp amazingly claims that Joseph Stack, the man who crashed his plane into an IRS building, and John Bidell, the man who opened fire on the Pentagon, were "lefty nutjobs."

Apparently Sharp doesn't recognize the irony of claiming that two government-hating conspiracy theorists who attacked government institutions are "lefties" while simultaneously suggesting that the problem with the country is that the Left "owns the government."

CBT: YOU'RE HELP MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE!!!

2010-03-08T15:46:00.000-08:00

The tea-party spawned astroturf group that calls itself Citizens for Better Transit is apparently neither for Better Transit nor for Better Spelling. Here's an exciting message from them on Facebook:

The Loudons sure know how to pick em!

MOPNS now reduced to sad little pranks

2010-02-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

MOPNS, which calls itself a "news service" has been reduced to publicizing childish pranks and potty humor. Someone hacked into MO Senate Candidate Don Calloway's old campaign website and put "free porn clips for all," on the header of the site. MOPNS, showing itself to be a completely non-credible source of information, posted several stories ridiculously implying that Calloway himself was responsible for the message. MOPNS claims that they heard about this through their "tip line." Funny how no other news outlets published a story this dumb from their tiplines.

What's next for MOPNS? Video footage of someone putting a whoopee cushion underneath Jay Nixon's chair?

Is Ed Martin Trying to Commit Political Suicide?

2010-02-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

Ed Martin is positioning himself at the front of the line for local extremists trying to destroy public transportation in the St. Louis region. Martin was one of the first people to follow the anti-transit group on Twitter, and yesterday he retweeted the following from Jim Durbin:

Durbin's post, unsurprisingly, is completely misinformed. Durbin claims that the public transportation ad is a "lie" because it says, "Some of us use it, all of us need it." He suggests that the money raised if Proposition A passes will only be used for expansion, and that Citizens for Better Transit is "lying" by suggesting that it's needed for Metro.

First of all, perhaps Durbin didn't notice, but the commercial run by CBT does not even mention the Proposition A campaign. So his suggestion that they're "lying" about the campaign is incoherent. But more importantly, Durbin does not even have the most basic understanding of what the stakes are for Proposition A. Metro had to cut funding last year after Proposition M did not pass. They were bailed out by the state and able to restore some (but not all) services, but they can't keep these services running unless their revenue is increased. The reality is that if Proposition A does not pass, Metro will have to make significant cuts in services, including light rail schedules, bus service, and call-a-ride. So I could perhaps say that Durbin is lying, but that would assume that he actually had some idea what he was talking about.

Back to Ed Martin. Why in the world would a candidate for office in the St. Louis region get behind a campaign that would cripple any future hope for quality public transportation in the city? I'm hopeful that Proposition A will pass, but who knows, maybe Martin, Durbin and other extremists will successfully misinform voters enough to beat the campaign. If so, any hope Martin had of running a competitive campaign will be completely ruined.

Why do I say this? Because just like last time, if funding is cut for public transportation, thousands of people will be left without ways to get to work. The elderly and disabled who rely on call-a-ride will be seriously inconvenienced. It will be a disaster, just like it was last year. And everyone will know that Ed Martin, as a local political personality with a big microphone, is one of the reasons the campaign failed. Does he seriously think anyone in St. Louis would vote for him after he tries to take out a crucial part of St. Louis infrastructure?

Gateway Pundit Extremely Concerned About Sex Lives of Local Undergraduates

2010-02-24T16:43:00.000-08:00

Champion of Virginal Purity and All Things Good in the World Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, was forced to write a post today going into detail about a Washington University undergraduate's sex column in the independent student newspaper Student Life. Hoft, with only pure and good intentions, was so intent on warning his readers about this den of sin that he even decided to post three full paragraphs from the column on "how to give a textbook blowjob." Hoft's fellow middle aged male commenters then took turns alternately wagging their wrinkled old fingers at the downfall of society and calling Wash U undergraduates "sluts."

I'm sure undergraduates around the world will sleep much better knowing that Jim Hoft is keeping a watchful eye on their sex lives.

Gateway Pundit Thinks Yoo Deserves Medal for Saying President Can Massacre Civilians

2010-02-24T08:52:00.001-08:00

Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, today claims that John Yoo, designer of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" of the Bush era, deserves "the Presidential Medal of Freedom, not Presidential Disdain." Yoo's legal philosophy, of course, is based on the absurd idea that the President can basically do whatever he wants, and a recently released legal document showed just how debased this philosophy is. When asked if the President can legally order the massacre of a civilians "massacred," Yoo replied "sure."

Apparently, Hoft is trying to compete with Glenn Beck for the Presidential Medal of Ridiculousness.

Adam Sharp Doesn't Understand Multiplication

2010-02-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Adam Sharp today said the following:

Maher is pretty good at spreading Barry's propaganda. But if you take a closer look at that "taxcut for 95% of Americans," it's not a tax cut at all. Those 95% of people who's taxes went down saw an average of $20 extra dollars per week in their paycheck.

Now, finally, I'm starting to realize why Sharp spends so much time arguing with 8-year olds: they have acquired a skill set that allows them to think in ways that Sharp can't imagine. For example, using the mathmatical operation known as mul-ti-pli-ca-tion, 8-year olds would be able to determine that $20 a week multiplied by 52 weeks works out to over $1000 dollars.
A thousand dollars is actually quite a good sum of money for anyone who's actually struggling to make ends meet. Sharp apparently wouldn't understand this since he is able to spend his abundant amount of leisure time traveling around St. Louis harassing everyone he doesn't like (i.e. everyone who doesn't think Obama is a socialist). Come to think of it: maybe Sharp's upset because Bill Maher so perfectly nailed the fact that people like Sharp are willing to blame Obama for all of their problems.

Is Conservatives of America Website a Birther Haven?

2010-02-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

Dana Loesch and Jamie Allman's site Conservatives of America isn't growing very fast, but it does seem to be attracting some interesting people. Marketing Guy, who is regularly the featured post on the site, posted a video questioning whether Obama was born in Hawaii:

The video also suggested that Barack Obama might not be his real name:
The entire video is crazy: if you've got the stomach, you can watch the whole think here.
The post was also featured on the Conservatives of America facebook page, meaning that it definitely had official approval:
So why did Dana Loesch and Jamie Allman go out of their way to start up a birther website? And could this be the reason that the site is doing so poorly? And what in the world are they doing with all the money they're raising?

KTRS "Analyst" Proudly Displays 2nd Revolution Flag

2010-02-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I mentioned that KTRS's political "analyst" Gina Loudon thought Joseph Basel was a hero for tampering with phone lines in a New Orleans office. In that same post, Loudon also posted a picture of the "2nd Revolution Flag":

(picture from teh analyst's blog)
Think Progress had previously reported on 2nd Revolution flags being at a Scott Brown Rally. Of course, in that case, the right could just say that Brown is not responsible for the flags at his rally. But Loudon proudly posted a picture on her blog.
So what's the flag about? Think Progress quotes the creator of the flag, Jeff McQueen, as saying that it could either of two meanings: the 2nd American Revolution or the 2nd Amendment. McQueen further calls for spitting the country in half (via Think Progress):

We are now as divided as America was in the 1860s. When two people find they can no longer communicate, while living under the same roof, they often split apart and go there seperate ways. So what if . . . we took the United States and just split it in half . . . 24 states become The United States of the Democrats and 24 states become The United States of the Republicans (including Ron Paul supporters and Libertarians etc . . .). California and New York can be split in half and go the the side they choose.

Apparently, the first step in Gina Loudon's march towards a new revolution is to attempt to destroy public transportation in St. Louis.

PS For wingers keeping track at home, this post is covered under the fair use doctrine.

As first misreported...

2010-02-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

Jim Durbin, the right wing blogger who thought that the Animal Control Department was involved in a Massive Government Conspiracy and seems to think that editing LinkedIn profiles is a clear indication of membership in the Illuminati, has now taken to starting his blog posts with "As first reported on 24th State..." Durbin apparently fancies himself as the Last True Journalist and regularly taunts the Post-Dispatch for not reporting his conspiracy theories, and he wants to make sure that he's given his due credit.

Unfortunately, the new tag has not changed anything about Durbin's reporting style: he still takes a tiny sliver of truth and then stretches it to fit an absurd right-wing narrative that turns out to be completely false. Last week Durbin scored a media scoop by reporting that Obama was going to be in St. Louis. Unfortunately, however, he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by claiming that Obama was only coming for McCaskill and that this was a clear sign that Robin Carnahan was trying to distance herself from the President. But, as Jake Wagman reported today, Obama is actually coming to raise money for both McCaskill and Carnahan.

Maybe this is just my own bias speaking, but it seems to me that if you're going to hype up the fact that you "first reported" something, you might want to actually get your story right.

Member of Original St. Louis Tea Party says Group has been "Co-opted by Neocons"

2010-02-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

Interesting quote from Steven S. Hoffman on a StudLife article titled "Why tea and politics shouldn't mix":

As one who was present at the very beginning of the modern Tea Party movement, which was hatched in 2006-2007 by libertarians (who were trying to elect Ron Paul) as a protest against the BUSH ADMINISTRATION, and who has watched the movement be polluted and co-opted by Neocons, I feel fairly ambivalent about Tea Partiers (or if you prefer the vulgar Tea Baggers).

Anti-Transit Group Pwns Itself (with help from St. Louis Urban Workshop)

2010-02-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

The astroturf, anti-St. Louis City group CBT (Crazypeople for Bulldozing Transit) continues to embarrass itself. Yesterday, they posted on their blog that pro-transit group Citizens for Modern Transit was "lying" because it claimed that the Metrolink delivered 20% of fans to the Cardinals games. The web site stated, "fortunately they allow reader comments," implying that the reader comments proved their assertion.

However, if you look at the comments, you'll see that St. Louis Urban Workshop actually completely dismantled the talking points of the astroturfers. Here's the relevant quote:

Nick – perhaps you should include your math when making an assertion that someone is lying. I did – and I welcome anyone to correct what I’ve figured:
2009 average attendance = 41,000
20% of 41,000 = 8,200
MetroLink 2-car train capacity = 356 x 2 (for one train in each direction) = 712 (and there are likely quite a few more than that, but this is official stated capacity)
8,200 passengers / 712 passengers per train = 11.5 trains needed
2 trains every 15min = 86.25 minutes to transport 8,200 passengers.
Again, I’m sure that there are more people on those trains than the stated capacity. Even so, I calculate 1hr 26min. And this would be 57.5 minutes with the old 10min schedule. With fans leaving the stadium across a time period of 30 minutes or more, depending on the score/weather/etc. it’s seems easy enough to transport that many passengers. Plus, quite a few go downtown early to eat, or stay downtown afterward, further spreading out demand.

So CBT throws out the ridiculous assertion that Citizens for Modern Transit is lying, and then links to a site that disproves their own argument. Nice!

Dana Loesch Attacked a Women Who Recently Died of Breast Cancer Last Week

2010-02-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

Several days ago, right-wing radio host Dana Loesch tweeted the following:

The link takes you to a post by Gateway Pundit titled "Obama: St. Louis Campaign Supporter Died of Breast Cancer - Says She Couldn't Afford Exam - But Breast Exams are Free to Poor in St. Louis." As detailed on the St. Louis Activist Hub Blog, the post is a typical right-wing blame-the-victim screed directed at a women they know nothing about without bothering do any basic research.
You can hear more of Melanie Shouse's story here:

So the next time you hear Dana Loesch whine about how she is being "personally attacked" when people point out how she is factually wrong or hypocritical, keep in mind that she is willing to viciously attack a women who just died of breast cancer without knowing the smallest detail about her life, and she does so simply because the woman asked to be buried in an Obama shirt.

Ed Martin Links to Fanboy Blog to Claim he "Got Some Press"

2010-02-12T14:31:00.001-08:00

Ed Martin claimed today on facebook and twitter that he got some press on his recent campaign video:

The Globe-Democrat is a right-wing online "newspaper," so the statement sounds believable. But what Martin linked to wasn't press at all, but rather a user-generated blog on the website from someone called "the Unablogger." In other words, anyone can log on the newspaper and write anything they want. Kinda like this post: Ed Martin Abuses St. Louisans Trust.

The Loudons' Role in the Anti-Transit Campaign

2010-02-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

The Post-Dispatch ran a story today about the new I Love Transit advertisement featuring a wide range of leaders from the St. Louis region speaking out in favor of public transit. The story included criticism of Proposition A from John Loudon, but said that Loudon, "isn't involved in the formal campaign to defeat it." I'd like to examine this claim in more detail, especially given that yesterday, I suggested that it was pretty clear that well-known right-wing politicians John and Gina Loudon are behind the campaign to gut funding for public transit in the St. Louis region.

First of all, as I posted yesterday, there were only three people following the anti-public transit (and anti-St. Louis) Twitter page (misleadingly named "better transit" despite the fact that they don't actually propose any "better transit"): John Loudon, Gina Loudon, and Save Our Secret Ballots, which is an account created by John Loudon:

Hmmm, kinda funny that John and Gina Loudon had heard of the campaign before everyone else, if they weren't involved in it. But there's a lot more evidence than that, much of which was kindly provided by the tea party.
First, in Gina Loudon's post on her blog, she featured a picture of the anti-transit campaign "spokesperson" John Burns at the recent tea party convention:

She listed John Burns as one of her "heros" in the post. Furthermore, she described an incident where "her group" confronted some "liberal protesters" at the convention. From one of Bill Hennessy's posts, we can see who was in the group with her:

The guys in suits: John Burns, Bill Hennessy, and Joseph Basel, one of the teabuggers charged with tampering with phonelines in New Orleans.
This is what Gina Loudon wrote about the incident:

Then there were the “protesters.” They make for great sport, too! Our group was having lunch when we got word that the “Protestors” were in the convention hall. We dropped our forks and moved straight out to give them some fun. The only problem was, they met their match in protestors.

In other words, Burns was clearly in Hennessy and Loudon's "group." Loudon also goes on to describe how every night at the convention her core group would "retire to watering holes" and discuss strategy. Gee, I wonder what the Loudons and Hennessy would be discussing with Burns every night? Perhaps the anti-transit campaign which started the Thursday of the next week which was promoted only by Bill Hennessy? John Loudon was already on record criticizing public transit in the Post-Dispatch as recently as January 12.
Not only that, but Gina also described strategizing the weekend before last in Dallas, TX, and included this picture of her St. Louis group, again with John Burns in the picture (in the back, to the right of Bill Hennessy)

Wouldn't it be a pretty remarkable coincidence if John Burns just happened to be strategizing with John Loudon at conservative conferences two weekends in a row, and then miraculously decides to start a new group on Loudon's pet issue the week after? Yes, it sure would. Which means its pretty obvious that John Loudon and tea party leader Bill Hennessy are behind this campaign. The only question is, why are they trying to hide Loudon's invovlement?

"Political Analyst" Gina Loudon Thinks Basel is Hero for Teabugging

2010-02-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

KTRS's resident "political analyst" (i.e. promoter of right-wing propaganda) Gina Loudon wrote recently that Joseph Basel was a "hero":

The weekend was filled with heroes, and none of them were politicians or party bosses. They were people like Joe Basel, who was arrested with James O’Keefe for his phone prank on Senator Mary Landrieu when she refused to speak with constituents who PAY for those phones, and the office she uses every day!

Huh? Basel's a hero for trying to tamper with a congressperson's phone line? I could understand why some right-wing conspiracy theorist would think that James O'Keefe was a hero, since he successfully damaged ACORN's reputation with his highly-edited videos, but Basel doesn't have any similar claim to fame. Loudon thinks Basel's a hero simply for apparently committing a crime.

Or maybe Loudon was referring to Basel's previous history, detailed in the beautifully-titled piece Portrait of a Con Artist as a Young Douche. Apparently Basel, while he was at the University of Minnesota, posted fliers that said "End Racism Now: Kill All the White Males" and managed to offend people enough to get the entire black student union to walk out from a presentation he was forced to give.

Quite a "hero," no? And that makes Loudon quite the "political analyst."

Tea Party's Anti-St. Louis Rally was a huge failure

2010-02-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

The St. Louis Tea Party, who have apparently decided that they hate jobs, the Cardinals, and the St. Louis region in general, held a rally today to protest a ballot initiative that would prevent the Metro from cutting services and pave the way for future public-transit expansion.

The good news is that the rally was a huge failure. Only a handful of people showed up, and no legitimate media outlets covered the event (although the right-wing propaganda outlet Globe-Democrat cut-and-pasted the press release without bothering to check any of the facts). You can see how sad the "rally" was from the Globe-Democrat picture.

Other interesting facts: the spokesperson for the group, John Burns, is the same person who organized multiple St. Louis actions with two of the four teabuggers who were charged with tampering with Senator Landrieu's phone lines. Burns' behavior at those events would be quite damaging to any campaign, and I will be all-too-happy to go into in more detail in future posts.

Also, there appears to be good evidence that familiar right-wing extremists Gina and John Loudon are behind the group:

Why do the Tea Partiers hate the St. Louis Cardinals?

2010-02-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

Question: what do the people in the following commercial have in common?

If you answered, "They're all radical communists trying to destroy the American way of life," sorry, wrong, please resume posting borderline racist comments on the Post-Dispatch website and leave this blog alone.

What all of these leaders actually have in common is that they all have a vested interest in the success of the St. Louis region. The President of the St. Louis Convention and Visitor's Commission and the President of Ameren UE are not doing commercials for public transit because they are flaming Marxists who love "big government." They know that if St. Louis is going to succeed as a city, it needs to have a viable public transit service that can help people get to work and take cars off the road.

Which is why, though I'm one of the least sympathetic people to the local tea party, even I was surprised to see that the local tea party has actually founded a new astroturf group to oppose Proposition A, the ballot initiative in St. Louis County to raise the sales tax 00.5 % in order to fund transit. The tea party site is full of misleading talking points and distractions, and is completely indifferent to the fact that failing to pass Proposition A would not only prevent the expansion of public transit, it would actually lead to massive cuts in service similar to what we saw last year before the state of Missouri helped St. Louis out (which would not happen again). In other words, hundreds of people would lose their jobs if Prop A doesn't pass, thousands would not be able to get to work, and Call-A-Ride services for people with disabilities would be massively scaled back. And yes, as the title of this post alludes to, failing to fund public transit will make it more difficult for people to get to Cardinals games in the future. Yet this new astroturf group proposes gutting the funding of Metro in the name of "better transit" without even explaining where any additional funding would come from. It's complete nonesense.

And, by the way, the head of this new organization is listed as John Burns. Is it this John Burns? Because, if so, that would be hilarious.

How to argue like Dana Loesch

2010-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

For any aspiring Fox News and Pajamas Media TV contributors out there, I've assembled a handy five-step guide for how to respond to criticism exactly like Dana Loesch in every possible situation:

1. See if the criticism is merely pointing out things you were completely factually wrong about. If so, ignore, because who really cares about that? If not, proceed to step 2.

2. Check Big Government to see if if Andrew Breitbart wrote something on the subject. If so, link to his article and pretend like that's sufficient proof. If not, proceed to step 3.

3. See if there's any possible story you can invent to claim that the person is racist or sexist. If so, state that this proves that really it has been liberals who are responsible for all of the racism and sexism in the country. If not, proceed to step 4.

4. Check for any typos or punctuation mistakes, like a missing apostrophe. If so, pretend that this invalidates the entire argument. Now would be a good time to use a phrase that shows how hip and relevant you are. If not, proceed to step 5.

5. Proceed to incoherent name-calling. Phrases like "stalker" or "troll" are empty enough that you can use them on anyone who criticizes you. Or, if you'd like to get really creative, you can invent new expressions like "rattling the specter" that will be sure to confuse your readers.

And there you go! Just follow these simple steps and you'll be well on your way to a lucrative career spreading propaganda for the noble corporations that as we all know are not responsible for any of the world's problems.

Dana Loesch Insanely Jealous of Meghan McCain

2010-02-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Dana Loesch has a habit of trying to pick fights with people who have more Twitter followers than her to try to build up an audience. One of her favorite targets for this is Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, who has 82,000+ followers on Twitter compared to Loesch's 7,000+. Far right-wingers hate Meghan McCain because she has the audacity to suggest that maybe the Republican Party shouldn't be homophobic, she believes that climate change is real, and she has suggested that the tea party is too extreme. So naturally Loesch freaked out in jealous rage after McCain recieved recent media attention:

Notice how Loesch immediately suggests that McCain, who has reasonable ideas that certainly are worthy of actual debate, is somehow ditsy or shallow. But of course if anyone said something like that about someone Loesch likes, Sarah Palin for example, Loesch would immediately brand them as sexist.
But who knows? Maybe if Loesch continues to spend every waking second on self-promotion as she has been, she will someday be as popular as Meghan McCain is now.

Bill Hennessy Excited By New Future of Middle-Aged White People

2010-02-08T23:14:00.001-08:00

Bill Hennessy went to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend marked by birtherism, homophobia, and racial paranoia and was very excited by the 600 mostly white, middle-aged people who he thinks represent the future of America.

Check out Hennessy's fired up tweets:

Hennessy then goes on to say in a blog post about the convention:

Standing near the door that opened to a parking lot, you could almost feel the wind blow out the flame on the candle of liberalism. The torch wasn’t passed. It was extinguished.

Wow, who knew that 600 mostly middle-aged white people willing to shell out $500 to hear Sarah Palin speak could so perfectly represent the entire USA?

St. Louis Tea Party Blog Now Features Articles on Bathroom Sex

2010-02-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Adam Sharp, who's favorite insult of people who are schooling him is a sarcastic intonation of "classy," has decided to class up the St. Louis Tea Party site:

Sadly, this is probably the highest quality journalism to ever grace the pages of the blog.

Yesterday's Funniest Headline

2010-02-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

Gateway Pundit as of about 10 PM last night:
Tea party favorite Adam Andrezejewski finished 5th out of five candidates.
We all knew Gateway Pundit was completely disconnected from reality on national politics, but it's still impressive to see how wildly delusional he is about his own state.

Gateway Pundit Misleads on SOTU

2010-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

Gateway Pundit kept up his usual absurdity today, creatively interpreting his handed-down right wing talking points to attack Obama. First, he claims that the blog Think Progress, "caught the president's dishonest attack on Bush," referring to Obama noting that he inherited a financial disaster from the Bush administration. But actually Think Progress defended Obama, writing, "stating facts is not blaming Bush," and linking to this explanation of the deficit claim.

Furthermore, Gateway Pundit suggested that this was, "the worst state of the union address sin history." But in fact a CBS poll showed that 83% of speech watchers approved of the proposals Obama made in his speech, and 70% thought that Obama shares the same priorities for the country as they do.

And in the update to this post, GP and his friend Darin Morely from Reboot Congress apparently approve of calling Obama a ratf***** and "hating" him.

Fringe of the fringe.

Great Moments of St. Louis Tea Party FAIL - The Counterprotest

2010-01-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

Bill Hennessy put out a call for a counter-protest to yesterday's MoveOn rally:

Only two people showed up, conservative bloggers Adam Sharp and Doug Edelman, and they were successfully kept in line by a high school principle, who as Sarah Jo pointed out, knows how to deal with children.

But there was some good news for the tea party. They coined a new motto that perfectly sums up their ideology: "even lies are free speech."

Adam Sharp Fails Miserably

2010-01-26T23:27:00.000-08:00

This is hilarious. Adam Sharp goes to a MoveOn rally holding a sign "I want free abortions" clearly trying to misrepresent the message of the protesters. The protesters call him out on it, and exercise their right to free speech by holding their signs in front of his. Sharp, as usual, starts crying about how oppressed he is:

"Are you videoing these classy people"

"What are you so afraid of, trying to block dissent."

Actually, they weren't trying to block dissent, because Sharp didn't have the decency to dissent. Instead, he was obviously trying to hold a sign up to deceive the passing traffic and the media. The protesters completely kicked Sharp's ass, and rightfully called him a liar.

Watch the hilarity of unintentional right-wing self-parody:

MoveOn.Org Astroturf Rally 1-26-10 from Doug Edelman on Vimeo.

Best line from Sharp: "Even lies are free speech."

When you have to point out that lies are free speech, you've pretty much lost. Nice work by the MoveOn crew!

Great Moments of St. Louis Tea Party FAIL

2010-01-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

Bill Hennessy put out a call begging "courageous CEOs" to comment on his post and tell the world how evil Obama is. Hennessy noted that he especially loves Fortune 500 companies. But unFortune-ately (heh) no CEOs answered his call, and his CEO hall of fame remains stuck at three people. It's not for lack of trying, though, as the astroturf St. Louis Tea Party repeatedly defends corporation who make a profit by screwing over the middle class, including the big banks who crashed our economy,

Dana Loesch's "race card" hypocracy

2010-01-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

Dana Loesch today got into an argument on Twitter and fell back on one of her usual empty attacks: she accused @queenofspain of playing the "race card" for pointing out that the GOP and tea party attacks on ACORN were politically motivated by the fact that ACORN played a central role in registering minorities to vote. Queen of Spain pointed out that this was not a claim that the GOP was racist, but simply that they were willing to use these (unethical) tactics to win elections. Thus, it really wasn't "the race card", but that didn't stop Loesch from tweeting the following:

And

And

After this last one, Loesch says:

Well apparently Loesch is an expert on lazy and inherently bigoted debate, as we can see from her own history of actually playing the race card, unlike Queen of Spain.
First, in an argument with the St. Louis Young Dems, she repeatedly suggests that anyone who doesn't think that Kenneth Gladney was "brutally beaten" by "union thugs" must be biased because Gladney is a black man:

But, of course, serious questions have been raised about the right-wing story about Gladney, so much so that Gladney was named the Riverfront Times' Ass Clown of the Week. There are a lot of reasons to question the story, so Loesch is both "lazy" and "inherently bigoted" to suggest that the only reason people would question it is because Gladney is a black man.
And if that's not enough, check out this tweet from Loesch:

Huh? She's claiming that someone is racist for "ignoring the contributions of brilliant black conservatives." What does that even mean? Since "ignoring" in this context apparently means, "not mentioning," why is Dana Loesch "ignoring" the contributions of brilliant black liberals?
When Loesch routinely violates here own stated principles, it's pretty hard to know what she stands for other than an unfaltering commitment to self-promotion.

Ultimate Irony! Ed Martin Ducks Out of Debate with Primary Challanger!

2010-01-24T22:26:00.001-08:00

Ed Martin, as part of a publicity stunt, challenged Congressman Russ Carnahan to attend a "townhall meeting." Carnahan, like any smart politician, ignored Martin because if he didn't everyone would think that he could be easily bullied. Of course, Martin and the right wingers freaked out about the fact that Carnahan wasn't at their fake town hall.

But get this: earlier in January, Ed Martin had already agreed to debate Republican Primary challenger John Wayne Trucker, and then chickened out! So Mr. "I heart free speech" Martin was afraid to have a honest-to-God democratic debate, and then turned around and tried to attack Carnahan for not attending his astroturf event.

Maybe someone should have told Mr. Trucker than Martin only attends debates in Todd Akin's district.

Adam Sharp Blames Obama for all of his problems

2010-01-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

Add another guy from the Party of Personal Responsibility (bankers excluded) who claims that President Obama is responsible for all of his financial problems. Adam Sharp of Sharp Elbows, Dull Wits wrote a blog post saying that for the first time in 11 years he didn't get a raise, and of course it's all Obama's fault. As all astute observers know, the financial collapse that occurred during the Bush Presidency had no effect whatsoever on the economy.

But wait, I'm confused. I thought if you were a hard worker, it doesn't matter at all what your life circumstances are? That's why we don't need to provide aid to low-income communities: if they want to move up the ladder independent of educational opportunities, social support, and mentorship, all they need to do is work harder. Yet in Sharp's case, it has nothing to do with how hard he worked; it's obviously the fault of the President? And couldn't Sharp have worked more hours or gotten a second job instead of spending hours every week running around with a camera trying to annoy people?

I guess personal responsibility only matters for people they don't like.

Dana Loesch's Phony Outrage

2010-01-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Ready the fainting couch: Dana Loesch has got the vapors. She's just so offended that Jeff Roorda used the term "teabaggers" when he was speaking on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives.

However, as pointed out here: Loesch makes "teabagger" jokes frequently, and doesn't seem to be offended by herself:

Oh yeah, and the term was originally used by right-wing activists.

Nobody does completely disingenuous outrage like the Right.

Gateway Pundit: Bush was "World's Greatest Liberator Since WW II"

2010-01-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, he really said that. This is what the tea partiers long for: a return to George Bush. I'm speechless.

Gateway Pundit Pisses on Ted Kennedy's Grave

2010-01-20T19:36:00.000-08:00

In case you ever wondered what motivates someone like Gateway Pundit, here's your answer: pure hatred.

Jim Hoft put up a blog post today titled "This One's For You, Mary Jo," referencing Mary Jo Kopechne, the woman who died in Kennedy's 1969 car accident (the source of numerous right-wing conspiracy theories). Hoft also featured a picture of the car being pulled out of the river. Pretty hard to see any motivation for Hoft posting that other than pure spite.

Of course, we learned quite a bit about Jim Hoft's character when he posted a race-baiting video from a white supremacist website and refused to take it down.

Gateway Pundit Promotes Tea Party Scam

2010-01-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

Gateway Pundit, while busy trying to hype up the fabricated story that President Obama ordered "union thugs" to beat people up at an August 6 townhall, promoted the national bus tour called the Tea Party Express last fall.

The only problem? Two thirds of the spending from the "Tea Party Express" went to the political consulting firm that created it. That's over $850,000 going to the operatives who run the GOP consulting firm based in California.

But since Gateway Pundit is so interested in the truth, I'm sure he will issue an apology on his blog anytime now.

Conservatives of American Continues to FAIL

2010-01-18T19:10:00.000-08:00

The site Conservatives of America, led by local right-wing radio hosts Dana Loesch and Jamie Alman, continues to be a giant flop. Just checked in today, and they still can't even manage having a "Today's Top Post":

This, of course, is similar to a few weeks ago.

The group, which calls itself the "conservative version of MoveOn" as do a million other groups, currently has 800 people after about 40 days, which means it will take them 684 years before they reach the 5 million members that MoveOn currently has. As I said before (but now have to change because they suck even worse) Watch Out 27th Century Liberals!

Update: Yes, COA is not very impressive, but I'm removing some of my taunts as I think they detract from the rest of the site. See other posts for more info.

Gateway Pundit 's Commenters on his Post Attacking Michael Steele

2010-01-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

In light of recent right-wing bloggers (including Gateway Pundit) declaring that Harry Reid is a flaming racist, I thought it might be interesting to examine how the commenters on Gateway Pundit's site reacted to his recent post attacking RNC chair Michael Steele. Gateway Pundit, remember, has linked to videos from white supremacist web sites on multiple occasions while trying to promote his agenda, and has refused to remove such links even after being told that they are offensive (in fact, he deletes comments that mention this). Since he deletes comments on his site that criticize himself, it follows that he could easily delete any of the following comments. But he doesn't.

You will not be surprised to know that most of the people on his blog despise Steele:

That's fine: everyone is entitled to their own political opinions. Less fine is the fact that many commenters use Steel'e flaws as an excuse to pretend that affirmative action is the root of all societal evils:

And worst of all, and really the subject of this post, is the fact that many of the commenters seem to believe that Steele is involved in a secret conspiracy to destroy the Republican Party from the inside:

Hmmm, so Steele is a mysterious "Other" who pretends to be like the rest of us but is really something Different who is trying to secretly destroy the entity he leads from the inside. Sound familiar? Like, uh, exactly the same thing these fringers believe about Obama?

One person even spells it out:

It's a shame Gateway Pundit encourages these kinds of comments on his site.

Ed Martin Approves of Lying to Congressional Staffers

2010-01-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

Local winger Adam Sharp of the blog Sharp Elbows, apparently realizing that trying to post analysis of the health care bill doesn't work very well when you don't have a clue what's in the legislation, has gone back to his tired old schtick of capturing himself being obnoxious to "libruls" on video. In the latest episode, Sharp lies to one of Congressman Russ Carnahan's staffers by claiming that Carnahan "promised to have another town hall meeting before the health care vote" as an excuse to act rude.

Sharp tells Carnahan's staffer, "he [Carnahan] did promise that he would have another town hall before the vote" (0:35 in the video) and repeats the lie throughout the video. That statement by Sharp was based on a purported comment by Carnahan where he said that he should host a town hall "on manners" in response to tea partiers like Sharp who yelled, interrupted, and insulted Democratic Congresspeople throughout last August. As is obvious to anyone with familiarity with the English language, statements made sarcastically or jokingly are not "promises" and no rational human would have taken Carnahan's statement as a "promise to hold a town hall." Nevertheless, Sharp straight up lies to the staffer in an attempt to bully her in front of the camera. What's even more hilarious is in a classic Sharp move (he's by far the biggest crybaby of all of the local tea partiers), he somehow manages to feel persecuted when the staffer says she doesn't remember Carnahan promising that. Here's Adam Sharp's reaction:

Adam Sharp acting rudely is no surprise to anyone. But what is amazing is that a candidate for a congressional office would actually endorse Sharp's behavior of lying to congressional staffers as an excuse to act obnoxiously. Nevertheless, that's exactly what ethically challenged Tea Party/Republican candidate Ed Martin did. Check out his reaction:

On the other hand, considering that Martin was happy to cynically abuse St. Louis residents' love of Anheuser-Busch and willing to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money to persecute a former employee for following the law, maybe it's not that surprising.

Ed Martin Loves 3rd Congressional District So Much That He Decides to Hold Townhall Somewhere Else

2010-01-12T12:29:00.000-08:00

Ed Martin, the ethically challenged former chief of staff for Matt Blunt and current tea party candidate against Russ Carnahan in Missouri's 3rd Congressional District, apparently cares so much about the opinions of residents of his district that he decided to hold his political stunt townhall meeting somewhere else. I guess when he's working so hard to create a fake controversy, he couldn't be bothered trying to find a place, you know, in the actual district he's running in.

h/t to FiredUp.

John Loudon Says We Should Stop Funding Public Transit and Expand Public Transit

2010-01-12T11:58:00.001-08:00

A week or so ago, I wrote about how ridiculous it was that KTRS is having Gina Loudon on as a "political analyst" on the McGraw Millhaven show. I posted a picture showing how "Dr." Loudon thinks that intelligent political discourse consists of holding signs with pictures of your political opponents as disfigured psychopathic killers.

Part of the reason I think that her role of "political analyst" is so ridiculous is that her husband, former state legislator John Loudon, is one of the most partisan ideological hacks in the entire state of Missouri, which is truly saying something. To get a sense of how ridiculous John Loudon is, consider that his most recent ploy to get into the media spotlight is to simultaneously claim that we shouldn't pass the transit tax on the April 6 ballot initiative, which is needed to fund the current public transit routes in St. Louis, and that we need to expand public transit to cover a larger part of St. Louis County. So he's against funding what we have, and for expanding it. Sounds like someone who's desperate to get media attention, and willing to say anything to get into the news.

Dana Loesch Takes on More Republicans Who Live Hundreds of Miles Away

2010-01-09T08:38:00.001-08:00

As I've said before, even though Dana Loesch is scared to take on the Missouri GOP (most recently, she unironically chastised Robin Carnahan for not debating Roy Blunt despite the fact that D.C. insider Blunt is in a Republican primary and afraid to debate actual conservative Chuck Purgason), she loves to act tough by talking trash to Republicans who live over 500 miles away. She talks some pretty good smack to GOP chairman Michael Steele in this fake interview after Steele stood her up.

Unlike St. Louis Tea Party, Poplar Bluffs Doesn't Pander to Roy Blunt

2010-01-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned several times, the St. Louis Tea Party leadership is afraid to take on Republican Senate candidate Roy Blunt despite the fact that he ignored their threats and has a career that is at odds with their ideological commitments. So they instead spend their time talking about congressional races on the East Coast. Fortunately for "real conservatives," not all tea parties are as frightened of the local GOP establishment as the leaders of the St. Louis Tea Party. Roy Blunt's name was recently dropped from the list of speakers at a Poplar Bluffs "Patriots Rally" this weekend.

FiredUp has the story.

Ed Martin Misuses SaveAB Email List

2010-01-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

There was some great journalism over a FiredUp several weeks ago following up on the AP story about how local wingnut hero Ed Martin misused and email list, and went against his word.

Martin, ever the opportunist, had created a website to "Save Anheuser-Busch" back when the reports first came out that InBev was looking to buy AB out. His group didn't do anything to stop the sale, but he sure did collect a lot of names. I'm sure a lot of the people who signed up did so because the website specifically stated that email addresses would be used, "only for this purpose and not for any other purpose."

But Martin went against the promise of the website he created and sent out a message to over 40,000 people on the list directing them to his congressional campaign website. Given Martin's past record, this kind of behavior is hardly surprising, but it is funny to see just how serious tea party members are about their "ethics."

Shorter Gateway Pundit:

2010-01-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

Give Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown all your money because he' only going to lose by 9 percent.

I suppose I should be thanking him...

Oh Noes! STL Tea Party Uses "Horrible Sexual Slur"

2010-01-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

The vast majority of what this site covers is pointing out lies, contradictions, and absurdities in the St. Louis Tea Party rhetoric. Since they are incapable of responding with actual arguments, they instead attempt to make personal attacks or discredit the site in any way possible. Generally, these take the form of, "St. Louis Pushes Back does X, so we should ignore everything written there." The "everything" is important, of course, because what they're really trying to do is to prevent their audience from realizing just how dishonest most of the Tea Party commentary really is, and the only way to do that is to keep them from reading sites that systematically examine what they say.

One of the funniest attempts at this strategy is to write that this site should be ignored because it used a "horrible sexual slur": namely, the word "teabagger." Aficionados will be aware, of course, that the term teabagger (along with its connotation) was originally used by right wing activists, and only later picked up by the people laughing at them. Anyway, you'll notice that this site does not actually use the term that much: incessant name-calling is more of a characteristic of right-wing extremists and isn't really Pushback's shtick.

But if "teabag" is really such a horrible sexual slur, then why did Dana Loesch, Americans for Prosperity, and Gateway Pundit all use the term today? Gateway Pundit had the following headline:

(screenshot from Hoft's blog)

Loesch and Carl Bearden took it a step further, tweeting the following:

I guess it's only horribly offensive when critics of the tea party use it. The hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Loesch and Hennessy Cower Before the Missouri GOP

2010-01-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

A while back I wrote about how St. Louis Tea Party leaders Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy specifically addressed MO Senate candidate Roy Blunt as they threatened that they were "coming for" him and "going to vote" him out of office if he didn't endorse independent candidate Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 House race. Roy Blunt completely ignored them despite their warnings and vague threats. At the time, I wrote that it was time for Loesch and Hennessy to, in their own words, "put up or shut up."

I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. I even wrote a post when Loesch had Chuck Purgason, the challenger to Blunt in the Republican Primary, on her show. However, at this point it's beyond obvious that Loesch and Hennessy completely lack the courage to follow through on their empty threats. They've shown the world what I've said all along: the St. Louis Tea Party is nothing more than a tool of the Missouri GOP.

Consider the following: Both Loesch and Hennessy are spending their time trying to get local conservatives to donate to the Massachusetts Senate Race. Yet they've spent no time whatsoever writing criticism of Roy Blunt, despite the fact that they specifically threatened Blunt if he didn't endorse Hoffman. In other words, they are completely unwilling to challenge the power structure of the only Republican Party they could actually change, the Missouri Republican Party. So they distract their followers by talking tough about congressional campaigns nearly one thousand miles away in New York and Massachusetts.

This fact is further supported by taking a look at their rallies. When they had the support of THE most astroturf of all astroturf organizations, Americans for Prosperity, they were able to fill up town hall meetings and even Kiener Plaza. However, when they had their little rally challenging Blunt and Akin, about ten people showed up. Nothing could be stronger evidence that movement is nothing without the support of the Republican powers that be. And they know it too. That's why they're too scared to do anything to actually challange the Missouri GOP, even after making unambiguous direct threats. I'm pretty sure there's a word for people who make big-talking threats and then are too scared to act on them.

Meet KTRS's Latest "Political Analyst"

2010-01-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Here is KTRS's latest "political analyist" Gina Loudon engaging in her standard constructive political dialogue:

(screenshot via the St. Louis Tea Party blog)

Everyone knows that the most compelling political analysis always begins with holding signs that depict your political opponents as grotesque caricatures of psychopathic killers (for those who can't tell, Loudon is holding a picture of Senator Claire McCaskill with a "joker face"). Obviously KTRS is committed to producing intelligent discussion points, and not simply hosting a guest on who will spit out self-serving Republican talking points disguised as analysis. Thank you, KTRS. for making such a strong effort to educate your listeners.

Also extremely funny: Bill Hennessy promotes Loudon's "Political A-List" on his website. A few days later: he is listed as a "Political A-Lister" on her blog to which he replies, "I am totally undeserving of this recognition." Awwww, what a humble guy! Stand up and take some credit for your quid pro quo!

More later.

Conservatives of America Decides to Fail Even Harder

2010-01-02T09:50:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I wrote that Conservatives of America was a huge failure. Well, now the site isn't even bothering to update it's posts:

Update: yes the site does appear to be failing pretty hard, but I've removed some of my other criticisms because I think it detracts from the site. See other posts for more info.

Tea Party Motto for 2010: "Cease the Day!"

2009-12-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

Adam Sharp, the classy guy who snuck onto private property to argue with ministers, directly disobeys police orders when he knows he can get away with it, regularly insults the Islamic faith, argues with five-year olds's drawings, and recently claimed that a feature of the health care bill that was dropped two weeks before he wrote his post proved that Obama was trying to turn America in to a communist dictatorship, is the perfect guy to put forth the St. Louis Tea Party Motto for 2010.
Here's what Sharp had to say in a typically juvenile recent post:

Since Missourah blog never "seizes" to make Sharp laugh, I think we're left with the perfect motto for 2010.

The St. Louis Tea Party: Cease the Day!

Loesch So Offended By Anti-American Boycotts That's She's Going to Boycott

2009-12-31T09:12:00.000-08:00

Well, it's official. The Tea Party "buycotts" of Whole Food Markets were a failure. Conversely, the pressure generated by the boycotts of Whole Food was successful in getting John Mackey to step down as chairman of the company after he wrote an article arguing that health care is not a right and that the key to reform was to allow the free market to operate. Loesch has stated in the past that she thinks that boycotts are unamerican and an affront to free speech, and so she naturally had the following to say about this:
In other words, Loesch is so offended by the success of a boycott on Whole Foods, that she's going to boycott Whole Foods. Classic Loesch. Very few people are so good at contradicting themselves in the same sentence.

COA is Unsurprisingly A Huge Failure

2009-12-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the recently formed "Conservatives of America," declared to be the rightwing version of MoveOn, has been a complete flop. Since it's creation, the group had about 500 members after two weeks. That would be almost enough people influence a class council election at a large high school, except for the fact that the members are all dispersed across the country. Furthermore, at a rate of 500 people per two weeks, it would take the group approximate 20,000 weeks or 384 more years to equal MoveOn's 5,000,000 members. Look out 25th Century Democrats!

Update: After looking over the additional content for this post, I think that it's at best childish and at worst unfair. In fact, I think it takes away from much of the other content on this site, which is pointing out inconsistencies and extreme behavior in the St. Louis Tea Party. I've decided to delete the content, but I'm sure there are screenshots of it out there somewhere if you really want to see it!

A Sharp Elbows, Dull Wits Holy Flurking Schnit Moment

2009-12-27T14:07:00.000-08:00

Adam Sharp, who loves to talk about how "stoopid" them "libruls" are, put up an absolutely freaking hilarious post today. In the post titled, "Was a Public Option Just a Decoy?" Sharp offers the following ominous warning:

Maybe the public option was a distraction, a bargaining chip that Barry asked for so it looks like he's compromising when he gives it up. He gives up the public option in favor of Medicare expansion which sounds more moderate to Joe Public. When that's all he needs to get the single payer ball rolling in the first place.

Here's the screenshot:

Umm, Adam, I guess your fellow wingnuts forgot to inform you that Medicare expansion was dropped two weeks ago when Lieberman said he would filibuster it. Maybe when you're railing on about how Obama is leading us to a Marxist Dictatorship you might try , you know, actually reading the news or understanding the issues. And aren't you the guy who keeps complaining the congress doesn't "read the bill?"

Holy Flurking Schnit doesn't even begin to capture how hilariously clueless that post was!

KMOV Interviews Noted Climatologist Dana Loesch About Global Warming

2009-12-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

Whooo-eee! Some top-notch journalism in St. Louis tonight! First, the wingnuts freak out because St. Louis business Build-a-Bear created an online animation that acknowledged that global warming is real and a threat to the polar ice caps.

Then KMOV, not content with leaving a great "wignuts freak out over nothing!" story alone, decides to get to the bottom of things by interviewing noted global warming expert Dana Loesch:

Among Loesch's important observations:

1. She won't allow her kids to watch the videos because they're "kooky."
2. The owners of Build-a-Bear likely eat tofu and wear Birkenstocks.
3. It's "political preaching" to teach children about scientific consensus.

KMOV decided to start Christmas a little early this year, by giving the sweetest gift of all: blissful, blissful ignorance.

The STL Tea Party* Lynch Mob vs the FBI

2009-12-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

Lynch Mob: a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority

OK, so maybe they're not trying to kill anybody, but the St. Louis Tea Party is certainly trying to pervert the local justice system by using political pressure, harrassment, and name-calling to try to distort legal proceedings. Despite the fact that they have never taken the time to address questions raised about their version of the altercation outside of Russ Carnahan's townhall, the local tea party is absolutely certain that SEIU members involved should be tried for a felony hate crime. They furthermore are certain that this is a conspiracy that reaches all the way up to President Obama. Due to this unquestioning conviction, they have alleged without any evidence whatsoever that local prosecutors are engaged in a massive coverup, and have been doing everything in their power to ruin the names and reputations of several people who work in the St. Louis County Government.

The latest example of their lynch mob mentality was going to the St. Louis County Government Building to demand that County Counselor Patricia Reddington raise the charges against the two SEIU members to a felony hate crime. As pointed out in their own comments, this actually has nothing to do with Reddington, but she makes a convenient political target for the mob. But more importantly, the tea party, as usual, deliberatly leaves out the fact that the person who allegedly used the n-word was also a black man. As pointed out at Media Matters, the definition of "hate crime" includes the fact that the attack was motivated by "prejudice against someone's race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability." In other words, it's ridiculous to claim that McCowan committed a hate crime (even if you believe that he used the word, which he denies), since it would imply that he's prejudiced against himself!

Furthermore, also pointed out by Media Matters, check out what the FBI has to say about hate crimes, as it's warning employees to be cautious about extenuating circumstances:

2. Misleading Facts — Agencies must be alert to misleading facts. For example, the offender used an epithet to refer to the victim’s race, but the offender and victim were of the same race.

In other words, the FBI warns their agents not be mislead by people like the tea party lynch mob. But of course, that won't stop the same people who were certain that Iraq had WMDs and who are certain that climate change is a hoax from continuing to try to destroy anyone if it helps their political ideology.

*For the record, I'm not saying that everyone who has ever participated in a tea party rally acts like a lynch mob. Rather, I'm referring to the opportunist local leaders like Dana Loesch, Bill Hennessy, Carl Bearden, and Jim Hoft who are willing to cynically distort the court system for cheap political points.

Is Bill Hennessy trying to frame the Young Americans for Liberty?

2009-12-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

Gateway Pundit posted a message today from John Burns, the NON-STUDENT who built a gulag on the Wash U Campus to protest AmeriCorps (among other things). As was pointed out on the St. Louis Activist Hub blog, Burns loves free speech so much that he decided to try to disrupt a Show Me No Hate rally last Sunday.

Burns's letter complained that the Wash U administration was trying frame the Young Americans for Liberty for the hammer and sickle emblems that mysteriously appeared on campus exactly the same day that YAL put up their gulag. He claims that "The students had nothing to do with the spray chalking" and that the university is engaging in, "MALICIOUS, RETALIATORY ACTION AGAINST THE STUDENTS" (caps lock #fail from the original) Gateway Pundit claimed they were being blamed for "random grafitti."

But if that's the case, they why did Bill Hennessy include pictures of the hammer and sickle in his report about the "student" demonstration?

Is Bill Hennessy trying to frame the Young Americans for Liberty? Why would he suggest that the emblems had something to do with the display?

Notice the precise wording of Burns. He said no STUDENTS were involved in the spraying. So maybe he's saying some of the visiting horde of tea party activists like Burns, Hennessy, and Jim Hoft were the people who actually defaced the campus property.

And John Burns, noble person that he is, decided to stick up for the students. Except for that small part where he says who actually did it.

Dana Loesch has Chuck Purgason as Guest.

2009-11-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

I had earlier criticized local tea party leaders Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch for claiming to be all about "conservative values" while ignoring the fact that an actual conservative is running against archetypal D.C. Insider Roy Blunt in the Republican primary. In fact, they continued to ignore Purgason even after he donated money to their favorite candidate Doug Hoffman while Blunt remained silent on NY-23. However, last week Dana Loesch actually had Purgason on her show to discuss his campaign.

Now, I'm still not sure why Loesch and Hennessy won't mention Purgason's name in print if they're really all about conservative values. And I also don't know why she wouldn't straight up endorse Purgason given his conservative legitimacy compared to Blunt's. If the St. Louis Tea Party really decided to go all in for Purgason, I bet he could win the primary, so their silence is the equivalent of endorsing Blunt. But ultimately I gotta give credit where credit is due. Dana Loesch at least took a step towards walking the walk, even though she's still done far more talking the talk.

Kiener Plaza Holds 3,000. Tea Party Doesn't Come Close To Filling It But Claims 4,000 Anyway

2009-11-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

Kiener Plaza has a maximum capacity of 3,000 according to it's website (h/t Fired Up! Missouri for pointing this out earlier). As you can see from this picture, today's tea party did not even come close to filling it:

(screen shot from Gateway Pundit's page)

But of course, that won't stop Gateway Pundit from claiming that they had 4,000 people.

Since they claimed to have 10,000 people at their April rally, at least we can all agree that today was a giant #FAIL.

Ed Martin Running as the Glenn Beck Candidate

2009-11-27T07:54:00.003-08:00

Stumbled across this interesting advertisement for Ed Martin the other day:

I found it here, though I imagine that the advertisements might be location specific.

Anyway, while I was always skeptical of Ed Martin's ethical virtues given his role in the Eckersley scandal, his frivolous lawsuits, and his general behavior as Chief of Staff for one of the worst governors in Missouri's history, I assumed that he probably had at least some political skill. But trying to run for Missouri's 3rd district as the Glenn Beck candidate? Seriously?

Dana Loesch (and Breitbart) Don't Understand Public Option

2009-11-27T07:42:00.000-08:00

Howard Dean says that a health care bill that doesn't include the public option would be a massive giveaway to the insurance companies. Naturally, Dana Loesch and Andrew Breitbart take this to mean that the current Democratic bills (which do have the public option) are also giveaways to the insurance companies. So either Loesch and Breitbart don't actually understand what the public option is, or they enjoy deceiving their readers.

Ed Martin Changes Mistaken Blog Post, But It's Still Wrong

2009-11-24T06:56:00.000-08:00

Ed Martin changed his earlier blog post that attacked the wrong website by changing "recovery.org" to "recovery.gov." However, he still gets the basic details so wrong that he'd probably get a C on this if it was a 4th grade book report.

First, following the link to Martin's statement from the blog, he claims that the stimulus resulted in only 73 jobs for the state of Missouri:

But reading the actual webpage, you see that over 14,000 jobs are listed as being created in Missouri, and that the number 73 actually applies to the 3rd Congressional District:

Not only that, but just a few days earlier, Martin had claimed that a different number of jobs had been created in the 3rd district:

If he just posted a few days earlier a higher number, shouldn't he at least explain why he's using the lower number now?

But finally, the worst problem is that even if Martin was able to create a passable 4th grade report, his information is completely misleading. As was noted on the Missouri Political News Blog, most of the state jobs get reported for the Jefferson City Congressional district, so there were jobs created in the 3rd district that are reported in the 4th district. Furthermore, the stimulus was back loaded, so many more jobs will still be created. So Martin's basically just trying to exaggerate incomplete information, and he's not even doing a good job at that.

Maybe he should just stick to filing nuisance lawsuits. He's good at that.

St. Louis Tea Party Lineup: Pretty Much What You'd Expect

2009-11-23T19:09:00.001-08:00

Bill Hennessy, after apparently trying to build a sense of drama through waiting a few days (can you feel it?), announced the lineup today for this Saturday's St. Louis Tea Party. As you might expect, the lineup is full of people linked to homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism:

The top billed character is Pat Dollard, who hosts a radio show called "Jihadi Killer" and regularly has posts on his blog titled things like "Cocksucking Elivis Costello on O'Reilly And Dobbs" and "Dyke Fearmonger Maddow Accuses CAIR Investigation Group of Fearmongering."

Then there's James O'Keefe , the ACORN investigator who by his own admission was kicked out of the dorms in college for allegedly using racial slurs to describe the people who shared his floor.

And of course Jim Hoft, who recently refused to delink from a race-baiting video on a white supremacist website.

And Stephanie Rubach, organizer of the St. Louis version of the Million Medicated March, who openly believes that Obama is a secret Muslim.

Speaker Mike Carey is notable in that he doesn't have any obvious form of bigotry associated with him. On the other hand, he's the President of the Ohio Coal Association. I guess he's there to show how in no way are the tea parties an astroturf movement.

And there's good old Dave McArthur, who recently got in trouble for using the slur "raghead."

And finally, the "Master of Ceremonies" for this enlightening rally will be none other than Bill Hennessy, who claims that Obama is trying to turn all of your children into Nazi snitches.

Sounds like it will be a time of great merriment and thoughtful analysis, no?

What's Ed Martin Smoking?

2009-11-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

Wow, Ed Martin really seems to be going off the deep end lately. He recently posted a tweet suggesting that global warming is a hoax:

Maybe that kind of crazy is just what he needs to do to keep his tea party base riled up. But what's really goofy is this recent statement from Martin on the stimulus. First, as pointed out by the Missouri Political News Blog, Martin gets off to a bad start by criticizing the wrong website, recovery.org, a private website that is not run by the government.

Then, in the press release, Martin claims that only 73 jobs have been created in Missouri!

But it's quite clear from the actual website that the state of Missouri has created over 14,000 jobs from stimulus money. Martin must, in fact, be talking about the 3rd District, which shows 73.7 jobs created, but as MPNB points out part of this number reflects the fact that most of the jobs are assigned to the Jefferson City Congressional District (which is listed as creating over 12,000 jobs). Yet even this would be a weird claim, considering that just a few days earlier Martin had claimed that 102 jobs were created in District 3. He can't even keep his own misleading claims straight!

Naturally, the tea people would love to have someone as completely incompetent as Martin in the U.S. Congress.

Right-wing Radio Host Reveals Key to Health Care Reform: Being More Neighborly

2009-11-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

Right-wing radio host and frequent Faux News guest Dana Loesch has long said that she and her fellow Republicans are not opposed to all health care reform, just the particulars of the Democratic proposal. Surpisingly, she previously hadn't said much about what kinds of reform would be acceptable, but in a fit of rage yesterday at the Democrats getting 60 votes to open up discussion on a healthcare reform bill, Loesch finally revealed the basic idea of what her plan would look like:

Loesch is, as usual, completely right. We don't need some stupid system where we go to hospitals and medical professionals treat people with problems. What we need is to be nicer to each other, gol darnit.

So in these upcoming days of giving thanks, maybe we should think about how we personally can solve the health care crisis. And we can take a little time out of our busy schedules to make the following changes:

-Cut out Scrabble night and instead take a class in immunohistology.
-Don't just loan your neighbor a ladder; perform triple bypass surgery on him.
-When your children's friends come over to play video games, take an extra half hour to diagnose whether or not they have leukemia.
-Invest in a community magnetic resonance imaging machine to help search for tumors.
-Pray. A lot.

Loesch has once again used her careful reasoning to teach us a very important lesson. While we were out searching through the details of how the health care system works and trying to understand complex legislation, we were forgetting to look inward. Because the truth is that health care reform was next to us all along [sniffle]: it was in our hearts.

Hennessy Fails at Another Attempt to Pretend He's Not Working for the GOP

2009-11-19T11:22:00.001-08:00

Bill Hennessy wrote a blog post today where he riffs off the idea of "liberal whack jobs" accusing him of being a "Republican Party Tool." He basically uses this as a cheap way to provide structure to his article, arguing on the one hand that he's not a GOP tool, and on the other hand that he won't support the libertarian party. But, interestingly, he actually completely ignores the central claim of my article. His way of showing that he's not a tool is to point out that he doesn't like Newt Gingrich. But as I've already said, it's easy to pick on someone who lives miles away and doesn't actually have anything to do with the political system you are involved with to try to show how tough you are. But if Hennessy were really fighting for conservative values rather than simply carrying water for the establishment GOP, he would at least mention that Chuck Purgason (an actual conservative) is running against Roy Blunt (someone who does not fit with tea party ideals and actively dissed them on NY-23) in the GOP Senate Primary. Instead, Hennessy argues against a straw man who says there should be a "third party."

Once again, Hennessy proves that he's only interested in looking revolutionary while actually promoting the same old Republican Party. If he doesn't like me saying that, then perhaps he can explain why he's not willing to even mention the Republican Senate Primary.

Parody at Super Fun Patrol

2009-11-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

Wow. Check out this post based on the McArthur racial slur fiasco: Racist Cakes Premeire in St. Louis, .

Outsourcing to the Daily Show

2009-11-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show makes the universe a better place in so many ways, the least of which being that it makes my job much easier. The show has offered the perfect response to a few of the latest faux outrages by local wingers:

First we have the oh-so-scandalous incident where President Obama bowed to the Prime Minister of Japan. This caused Gateway Pundit to collapse into his fainting couch. And Adam Sharp had to say the pledge of allegiance seventy times in a row just to clear his head. The Daily Show had the appropriate response to their weeping and gnashing of teeth:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Submission Accomplished

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Then, Dana Loesch, in an act of lazy "journalism," copied an ABC news story (but changed the state to MO) to suggest that the government was secretly sending money to the "zone of unaccountability." Fortunately, VP Biden explains what was going on in this clip:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Joe Biden Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Any guesses as to whether Loesch will have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge the explanation?

How Long Will Ed Martin Leave Up The Racial Slur Video?

2009-11-18T12:00:00.001-08:00

Earlier in the year, it was reported that the RNC kept racist pictures posted by users up on their facebook page for nearly a week.

Well, Ed Martin has now kept a video that includes a racial slur up on his facebook page for two full days.

(the slur is at about the 5:14 mark on the video above)

In fact, since that time he has remarked on how interesting the discussions are on his facebook page:

I would think that Martin would want to take a racially insensitive video down from his site as soon as possible.

Welcome, Dana Loesch Readers

2009-11-17T15:36:00.001-08:00

Hello, I see that Dana Loesch is very upset about the fact that my previous story was picked up by the Post-Dispatch's blog and is now claiming that this site is attacking the father of a marine. Contrary to what Loesch claims, I am very grateful for the service of McArthur's son and all members of the U.S. military. They are, no doubt, far more brave than I will ever be. Similarly, I can understand that it must be incredibly hard to be a parent of a soldier who is overseas, and I would not want to be in McArthur's position.

Nevertheless, none of the above makes it OK to use a racial slur. Yes, I understand that he said "raghead terrorist," but that does not make it OK either. A murderer is someone who by definition is a bad person, but that does not mean it's OK to say [racial slur] murderer. In fact, doing so draws attention away from the real problem and towards the cultural or racial identity of the person being insulted. So I don't think I did anything wrong by pointing out that McArthur used a racial slur in his comments to rile up the tea party crowd.

As long as you're here, it's probably worth pointing out a few other things as well. Loesch will no doubt try to imply that this site is used to personally attack her. This is not true. We don't know Loesch personally nor would knowing her be relevant to the purpose of this blog. Loesch and other members of the tea party are very forward about their political views, and this site is directed at critiquing those views. In fact, as I think would be clear to anyone who reads the material here, it makes a pretty convincing case that the leaders of the tea party movement are systematically misinforming the people who rely on them for information.

For example, did you know that Loesch completely invented a story about the government funneling activists to ACORN? She claimed that the government was directing traffic to volunteer for ACORN, but a quick search revealed that many of the "ACORN" sites were in fact anti-ACORN rants. Not only that, but the same site directed people to Tea Parties. But despite the fact that this was obviously not a government conspiracy, Loesch just said her piece, ignored all evidence to the contrary, and moved on to her next story.

Or, did you know that Loesch claimed that a HCAN rally was astroturf because she had a video that showed that they were holding Obama signs. The only problem, she used video that was from an OFA rally several weeks earlier. Even Sean Hannity apologizes for using video from the wrong day, but Loesch just changes the subject and moves on.

Or, not from this site, but what about two weeks ago when Loesch claimed that "union thugs" had attacked a tea party patriot. However, once the evidence came out that in fact charges had been filed against the tea party activist, she simply deleted her post with no explanation, and no "oops, I guess it was the other way around."

In other words, if you were directed here by Loesch, you are very likely being systematically mislead on a daily basis. You might not believe me now, but I hope someday you will. Maybe after healthcare reform passes and it turns out that people's lives are substantialy better, you might start to question folks like Loesch and Hennessy who use fear and propaganda for their political purposes.

In fact, I don't have time to get into it now, but Loesch's recent post today is also misleading.

So I realize her regular audience is going to be inclined to dislike me, but I think what I'm doing is a service to the community. I really wish I didn't have to spend to much time debunking false and misleading claims, but I just can't bear to leave them alone either.

Bill Hennessy Pretends St. Louis Tea Party is Independent from the GOP

2009-11-17T07:52:00.001-08:00

Bill Hennessy, de facto leader of the St. Louis Tea Party, wrote a long essay Sunday titled "How Can the GOP Win the Tea Party Vote?" In the essay, Hennessy compares the merits of tea partiers supporting a third party candidate vs trying to "take over" the GOP. The post was interesting and fairly reasonable (at least, if you start off from Hennessy's ideological commitments). However, there was just one problem: the thesis of the article is completely contradicted by Hennessy's actual behavior.

Hennessy argues, I think convincingly, against the prospects of running a third party candidate:

Every state has an array of laws to thwart the rise of new political parties. These laws were written by party insiders for party insiders. While we can decry this reality and demand it change, it won’t change in time for us to stop the White House communists from turning the USA into an oversexed version of the Soviet Union.

Remember that each of the conservative 3rd parties–Libertarian, Constitution, etc.–has been largely unsuccessful in running candidates in races with larger geographic coverage than municipal elections. Would that change if everyone who calls himself a Tea Partier supported, say, a Libertarian candidate? No. Here’s some math. While the 10,000 people who came to Kiener on April 15 may represent 100 times as many tea-partiers-at-heart, there STILL aren’t enough tea partiers to defeat both major parties in any Congressional or state-wide race.

He thus concludes that the only option available for tea party activists is to "infiltrate and rehabilitate" the GOP by generating a strong turnout in the primary races:

The primary election is usually where you’re guaranteed to have at least one non-evil candidate on the ballot. Moreover, you voice is stronger in the primary because so few people vote. In 2008’s general election in Missouri’s 3rd district, your vote competed with over 300,000 others. In the Republican primary next year, that same vote will compete with about 40,000, assuming turnout approaches 2006 levels, the last off-year election. So your primary vote is 7.5 times more powerful in the primary than in the general election.

Again, this sounds reasonable. However, this analysis is quite bizarre in light of the fact that the St. Louis Tea Party has an opportunity to support a legitimate primary challenge in Missouri that fits exactly with their purported mission, yet refuses to do so. Here's what I wrote earlier about the Republican Senate primary between D.C. insider Roy Blunt and actual conservative challenger Chuck Purgason:

First of all, let's just start with the fact that Roy Blunt embodies absolutely none of the values traditional conservatives claim to endorse. He's as much of a D.C. cocktail party insider as anyone can get. He loves government pork barrel projects as long as they help his friends. And, for goodness sakes, he cheated on his wife with a lobbyist! In other words, he is the exact opposite of any ideal the Tea Party claims to stand for.

Not only that, but Blunt has a primary challenger, Chuck Purgason, who is a legitimate conservative. He's opposed to earmarks. He's opposed to having family members be lobbyists. He was opposed to TARP. And most importantly in this context, Purgason but not Blunt endorsed Hoffman and even donated money to Hoffman's campaign. In other words, Purgason did exactly what the teapartiers [edit] were asking, while Roy Blunt completely ignored them.

Now I realize that many tea party activists live in a different reality from the rest of us, and might disagree with all of the criticisms of Blunt listed above. However, even if you don't agree with those criticisms, there are pretty huge criticisms of Blunt around that even legitimate tea party activists take seriously. For instance, Blunt was recently at an event in St. Louis County, and conservative audience members more principled than Hennessy took him to task for his policies that heavily relied on taxpayer money. From Jo Mannies' article, we see that audience members were critical of the following:

-- Blunt's support for the first part of the bank bailout approved a year ago under Bush, and Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that went into effect in 2006.
-- He also got jabbed for voting in favor of the "cash for clunkers" program earlier this year that offered federal aid of up to $4,500 to get older cars off the road.

In other words, Roy Blunt can not be considered to embody the stated tea party values in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, his primary challenger Chuck Purgason does. Yet despite these glaringly obvious facts, Hennessy refuses to even acknowledge that Purgason is challenging Blunt in the primary. And he can't even claim that this is because it is an unwinnable race for Purgason. A recent poll showed that Blunt is struggling to crack 50% of Republican support against Purgason despite the fact that very few people know who Purgason is. If the St. Louis Tea Party got behind Pugason, that could all change.

Now I personally don't have any problem with the St. Louis Tea Party supporting the GOP establishment based on their political values. Nor would I have any problem with them challenging the establishment. But surely we can all agree that it's completely ridiculous for them to be claiming to boldly challanging the establishment when in fact they are meekly supporting it. Support whatever you want, but at least be honest about it.

A few weeks ago, Hennessy claimed that it was time to "put up or shut up." Actually, it looks like he's rejected both options. Instead, Bill Hennessy has decided to change the subject and distract his supporters with shiny objects in hopes that they won't notice that he's been supporting the GOP establishment all along.

Dana Loesch Refuted in Five Short Tweets

2009-11-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

Dana Loesch, who at one time pretended to be down with union members, today retweeted a story from Michelle Malkin trying to pretend that the labor union SEIU was in a fight with the Boy Scouts. Unsurprising to readers of this blog: Loesch and Malkin don't know what they're talking about. But an interesting new wrinkle is that the magic of twitter allowed @theboneblog to dismantle their argument in five short tweets:

theboneblog Leave it to @dloesch to misunderstand collective bargaining agrmnts. Union isn't 'after' a scout, it's 'after' the city for CBA violation.

theboneblog Most CBAs have specific clauses prohibiting employers from farming out bargaining unit work. If a scout's doing BU work, it's prohibited.

theboneblog And if the union allows the scout to do the work w/o filing a grievance, the union's position is weakened in the future in similar circs.

theboneblog So rather than the union bullying a scout, it's simply protecting its position and enforcing the contract.

theboneblog So in answer to @dloesch/Malkin's question posed re: trumping Obama's service message to kids, YES, a contract would trump that. As it should.

Let's hear it for Twitter! Actually, I bet if she tried, @theboneblog could probably take out most of Loesch's blog posts in single tweets. In fact, some of Loesch's arguments are so bad, they could probably be refuted on Vowler.

Man Who Hosted Ed Martin's Campaign Kickoff Uses Racial Slur at Tea Party Rally

2009-11-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

David McArthur, a St. Louis business owner who got a lot of attention first by claiming that Representative Russ Carnahan was going to put his bakery out of business by supporting the cap and trade bill and later by hosting the official campaign announcement for Ed Martin at his bakery, used the racial slur "raghead" in a speech to fellow tea party members this weekend. McArthur used the slur while suggesting that Obama had somehow leaked vital information to the AP by discussing his plans for Afghanistan, implying that Obama's consideration of the issue was putting our troops in danger (Obama, by the way, has not yet decided what changes, if any, will be made in Afghanistan).

You can see McArthur's initial campaign kickoff announcement for Martin here:

And here's the video where McArthur uses the racial slur "raghead" (start watching at about 1:30, he uses the term around 1:43):

Of course, Dana Loesch happily promoted the speech:

Update: Fixed spelling of McArthur. Also, this post was linked to on the Post-Dispatch's Political Fix blog. Check the comments there if you'd like to see some wingnuts attempting to justify racial slurs. Fired Up! Missouri also linked here. Readers directed here by Dana Loesch should see this post.

Why do you hate capitalism? Teabaggers respond to leader Bill Hennessy's suggestion to Boycott Everything

2009-11-13T11:43:00.001-08:00

As noted earlier, St. Louis teabag leader Bill Hennessy has suggested that the teabaggers boycott everything this holiday season. Because nothing would show that durn Obama like destroying the American economy!

But it looks like some of the readers on his blog aren't too enthusiastic about the proposal in the comments. In fact, they're kinda wondering why he would suggest something that goes against capitalism, which as we all know is the solution to all of life's ethical dilemmas. Here's a sample of some of the comments:

(author's note: damn, this commenter has caught on to our secret plan to destroy America)

Somewhere, the head of an insurance company is muttering to himself, "Just stick to the script Bill. Just stick to the script."

If Your Business Isn't Succeeding, Blame Obama

2009-11-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

Remember when Republicans claimed that liberals would unfairly blame Bush for every problem in the world? If there was a hurricane in the Gulf, they would sarcastically say, "it's Bush's fault."As with every real or imagined fault of "the Left," it has taken the right-wingers no time at all to completely surpass the previous absurdity both in quality and in quality.

In a post titled "The Impact of Big Government on Small Business," Jim Durbin, right-wing blogger at 24th State, tells us he was originally planning on hiring staff for his business Social Media Headhunter. For whatever reason, he was not able to find a candidate that made the idea seem worthwhile, and decided against hiring:

So what would a guy from the "party of personal responsibility" conclude in such a case? Naturally, that it's all Obama's fault:

Durbin doesn't even give any reasons why this is Obama's fault. All he has to say about it is that he decided against it because "2010 is uncertain."

So if your business is not expanding as much as you'd like, remember that it couldn't possibly have anything to do with your decision to dig through thousands of pages of documents desperately searching for anything that resembles a scandal. It obviously isn't related to the fact that you spend hours upon end making videos from Second Life of your latest imagined scenario for a Democratic politician. No, there is only one possible explanation for why a good, honest American Patriot's business might not expand to full capacity, and that is because Barack Obama is the President.

The South Park Episode Wingnuts Don't Want You To See

2009-11-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

Wingnuts love South Park as long as it's making fun of ACORN or Scientology. But the other day, local right-wing radio host Dana Loesch said the following on Twitter:

Later, I came across a clip of a South Park episode making fun of right-wing radio hosts who make up completely unhinged stories under the guise of "asking questions:"

Gee, I wonder why Loesch wouldn't like that?

You can watch the full episode here. (warning: as offensive as your standard South Park episode).

St. Charles Teabaggers Stand Up for Conservative Values, unlike Loesch and Hennessy

2009-11-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

As FiredUp and ShowMeProgress are reporting, a St. Charles group of conservatives fed up with the Republican Party has officially changed their name from the St. Charles County Republican Club to the Conservative Club of Missouri. Here's their statement:

In an effort to better align our club with its members' core beliefs, we have changed the name of the St. Charles County Republican Club to the Conservative Club of Missouri. Reminiscent of Ronald Regan's description of why he went from being a Democrat to a being a Republican - "I didn't leave the Democrat Party, they left me." We feel the same is true with the current Republican Party and its inability to adhere to conservative convictions.

Call us right wing extremist [sic] if you like, but it has become obvious to us that most of the current crop of Republicans in office at all levels are not looking out for their constituents, [sic] as a matter of fact it has become hard to tell the difference between the Parties. Talk is cheap, and that is what we are getting from our Republican leaders. What we need is action.

In particular, check out what they had to say about DC insider Roy Blunt:

No longer does the Republican Party's actions reflect their stated values. Bigger government, ridiculous spending and removing individual freedoms seems to be the norm. Putting forth the "next in line" (Roy Blunt) is not in the best interest of the Party. Instead we need new and fresh faces that have shown themselves willing to take a stand.

Likewise, Jo Mannies reported that Blunt was aggressively grilled about his wishy-washy "conservative values" last night at a meeting with St. Louis County Republicans.

This is in stark contrast to Republican water-carriers Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch, who threatened to vote Blunt out of office if he didn't endorse Hoffman in NY-23 but then chickened out when Blunt completely ignored them.

I guess we need a new term to describe Loesch and Hennessy: TINOs. For those keeping tabs at home, that's Teabaggers In Name Only.

Dana Loesch Follows Her GOP Marching Orders, Pretends Carnahan Doing Her Job as SOS is a "Scandal"

2009-11-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

Right wing blogger and radio host Dana Loesch, who once pretended to be challenging the corrupt GOP power structure, but then chickened out when Roy Blunt ignored her, has now fallen back to being a reliable cut-and-paster of Republican press releases. Her latest example of this is following the GOP in pretending that Robin Carnahan's office was somehow acting inappropriately by exchanging emails with ACORN about voting issues. To put in perspective how ridiculous this propaganda campaign is, Robin Carnahan is the Secretary of State for Missouri, which means it is her job to serve as the state's chief election officer. Likewise, ACORN works on voter registration issues, so OF FREAKING COURSE they are going to exchange emails!!

The whole "scandal" literally consists of things like ACORN thanking Carnahan's office for "having the ability to share information" and saying that Carnahan is "helpful;" something that any polite person would do in an exchange with a public official. ACORN also complimented Carnahan for her work on the Photo ID bill, but of course Carnahan had already stated her position that she was opposed to the bill, so the fact that ACORN complimented her is meaningless. One of the pieces of the so-called "scandal" is literally (it would be hard to make something this stupid up) that someone from ACORN said, "It was a pleasure to meet with you," to Carnahan's office:

Fortunately for Loesch and her bosses at the Missouri Republican headquarters, I've got some exclusive shockingly scandalous information about Robin Carnahan that is sure to send a chill up any teabaggers' spine. I now present to you some alleged evidence from an "official who would prefer to remain anonymous because he/she may or may not exist":

One day, Robin Carnahan was observed walking down a sidewalk passing a member of ACORN. Carnahan was overheard to say "good day" as she passed by, but three hours later only said "hello" to a different person passing by.
A frame-by-frame statistical analysis of a fundraiser attended by Carnahan and a member of ACORN revealed that Caranhan was smiling 42% of the time when the ACORN member was in the room but only 39% of the time when the ACORN member was not in the room.
One time, when a person said to Carnahan "ACORN is the spawn of Satan, sent forth to usher in the apocalypse," Carnahan responded by saying, "well, that's a little extreme."

All of this is horribly shocking, I know. And of course I hate to be the guy who sets off a frenzy of unbridled fury from the teabaggers. But I just can't bring myself to hide the Truth any longer. If anyone would like to help, please post your own "SHOCKING OMG SCANDAL" revelations about Carnahan below.

Adam Sharp Continues His Islamophobic Ranting

2009-11-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I pointed out how Adam Sharp (aka teabagging blogger Sharp Elbows) was suggesting that it was somehow against Missouri values for Congressman Russ Carnahan to welcome Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison to one of his fundraisers. Well, Sharp sadly has been continuing his blatant Islamophobia. Check out this tweet from Sharp:

But of course Dana Loesch will continue to have Sharp on her radio program and continue to whine about how the tea party is really just so inclusive and unfairly maligned by the media. Why oh why, with charming fellows like Sharp pushed to the front of the movement, did REPUBLICAN voters reject the tea party in New York District 23?

St. Louis Teabaggers Urge Supporters to Boycott Everything!

2009-11-10T13:55:00.000-08:00

Bill Hennessy, Chief of Astroturfing for the St. Louis Tea Party, has put out a dramatic call for action based on his anger that the House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that could help fix the health care system. He urged supporters to:

Make no purchases on November 27, Black Friday, except for basic necessities like food and gasoline
Commit to a single gift for members of immediate family only. For adult family members, consider making something of meaning
From now until the end of the year, focus on three things: God, Home, Family.
If you have vacation available, consider taking it before Christmas
Put off major purchases if at all possible. This includes cars, appliances, and the like. Instead, hire local, independent mechanic or handyman to bring the ailing items up to serviceability
Beginning making very large contributions to worthy opposition candidates, especially for the House of Representatives and U. S. Senate.
While many people are committed to specific charities, most charities will become arms of the government if this slide to the left continues. So consider giving less to charities and more political candidates, remembering the tax implication of that decision.

In other words, teabaggers are basically supposed to boycott everything and spend as little money as possible, as punishment for the evil American system that would allow such treachery as closer-but-not-quite-universal health care to occur. I have a few more suggestions that can make their protest even more effective:

Stop going to grocery stores. If you can't find enough food via hunting and gathering, only buy your food from teabagger approved merchants. If there aren't any in your area, you should order food to be delivered, but make sure you use FedEx so that the government run Post Office doesn't insert microchips into your food.
Stop driving cars. Funnel out all of the remaining gasoline from your cars and dump it on your lawn. What use is green grass in a world run by socialist pigs?
Sell all of your worldly possessions and then donate the money to good Christians like Roy Blunt, who only leave their wives for really good lobbyists.
While we're at it, we should boycott vision as well. Vision makes you see horrible things that can't possibly be true, like a TV screen that shows Doug Hoffman losing his congressional race to a Democrat who supports the public option.
In fact, don't move at all. Just sit and wait for that exciting day where God starts chucking lightning bolts at Evil Sinner Communists.

If the teabaggers do this, they will be assured of victory. Because if there's anything the Hoffman race showed, it's that boycotting reality allows you to declare victory even after the most embarrassing results.

Brave Teabaggers take on Socialist Schoolchildren

2009-11-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

There were rumors on Twitter yesterday that the St. Louis teabaggers spent last night's protest arguing with 8-year-old kids on bikes:

Just left the opening of the MO - OFA office, got a great footage of Tea Bagger nuts debating little kids on bikes. These people are insane

Apparently, they weren't very successful arguing in person, so the teabaggers have taken their epic battle to the internets. Adam Sharp took the below picture inside the new Organizing For America office of a letter from a elementary school kid:

Photo Credit: Sharp Elbows

Here's what Sharp had to say:

Look closely the child who wrote this wishes that Obama would "Free people FROM the Army." I thought we had an all volunteer Army, I didn't realize our Soldiers needed to be "freed".

Oh SNAP! That kid got burned! Looks like Mr. Sharp Elbows, Dull Wits and the St. Louis Tea Party have finally found their intellectual equals. On second thought, that's being pretty unfair to the schoolchildren.

Check back at Peter Glickert's Twitter account for some footage of the interactions.

How Roy Blunt Proved that St. Louis Teabaggers are Unprincipled Astroturfers

2009-11-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

As I wrote a week ago, the St. Louis Teabaggers held a rally at City Hall purportedly for the purpose of calling all "real Republicans" to renounce the candidacy of Dede Scozzafava. They said they were calling on Republicans to "put up or shut up," and specifically called out Roy Blunt when they said:

we are coming for you.

and

we will vote you out! We will come at you with so much heat, you won't even know how to handle it!

I was skeptical at the time, and I said it would be interesting to see whether the tea party actually "put up or shut up." Well, they failed miserably in their over-the-top threats to Republicans, and not just because their campaign managed to lose a House District to a Democrat that Republicans have held for over a hundred years (NY-23).

First of all, let's just start with the fact that Roy Blunt embodies absolutely none of the values traditional conservatives claim to endorse. He's as much of a D.C. cocktail party insider as anyone can get. He loves government pork barrel projects as long as they help his friends. And, for goodness sakes, he cheated on his wife with a lobbyist! In other words, he is the exact opposite of any ideal the Tea Party claims to stand for.

Not only that, but Blunt has a primary challenger, Chuck Purgason, who is a legitimate conservative. He's opposed to earmarks. He's opposed to having family members be lobbyists. He was opposed to TARP. And most importantly in this context, Purgason but not Blunt endorsed Hoffman and even donated money to Hoffman's campaign. In other words, Purgason did exactly what the teabaggers were asking, while Roy Blunt completely ignored them.

Yet despite all of this, there has been absolutely no mention of Purgason's campaign on either Bill Hennessy's or Dana Loesch's blogs. If they are truly committed to only having "real conservatives" running for office, why would they completely ignore the only actual conservative in the Senate race? Why would they support a candidate that anyone from either party would agree is your typical D.C. politician only out for himself?

The reality is that Hennessy and Loesch won't attack Blunt because they are just like Blunt. They see an opportunity to further their own careers by playing a certain part in the media and systematically deceiving the people who read their blogs. If they make a claim that turns out to be false, they'll just ignore it and move on to the next scandal. They talk all blustery and angry to try to rile up their supporters, but they're not really willing to take on any powerful members of the GOP. They picked NY-23 for a reason; because it was far enough away that they knew their political theater wouldn't have any real effect on the local business-as-usual Republican Party.

The Traveling Teabaggers' Birther Express

2009-11-04T16:14:00.000-08:00

The St. Louis Tea Party put out a call today for people to join a "traveling minivan brigade" to D.C. for Queen of Crazy Michele Bachmann's War on Healthcare event on the capitol steps.
The email tells interested parties to contact Sarah, and as you can see in the blue circle "Sarah" links to the email ameriplan.trueteam@gmail.com . A little googling of that email quickly reveals that Sarah is Sarah Brooks, who is one of the biggest promoters of Orly Taitz's birther conspiracy theories. Here are a few examples.

From Orly Taitz's website:
And here's Brook's bragging about getting a Missouri Representative to sign on to Taitz's failed lawsuit against Obama:So, if you're not doing anything this weekend, and you'd like to listen to loonies rant for hours on end about how Obama is a secret Marxist Muslim Terrorist from Kenya, you should definitely hitch a ride on the St. Louis Tea Party Express!

Adam Sharp Freaks Out that Carnahan Welcomed Muslim Congressman to his Fundraiser

2009-11-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Congressman Keith Ellison was at a recent fundraiser for Russ Carnahan. Here's what Dana Loesch's favorite blogger, Adam Sharp, had to say:

Russ Welcomes Keith Ellison to Town

Who can win tons of votes in MO's 3rd District? The only guy EVER to be sworn in on a F'ing Koran! Now That's Missouri values.

Of course The Right, like Steven Colbert, always likes to pretend that they're all post-discrimination and that if it weren't for that darn liberal "political correctness" nobody would ever notice race or religion. But of course NOBODY in town freaked out about Ellison's visit except Adam Sharp, which raises a few questions:

Why did Sharp think it was so important to note that Representative Ellison was sworn in on a Koran?
Why does he think that having a Muslim Congressman at a fundraiser is somehow at odds with Missouri values?

Most of us have pretty good guesses about the answers to those questions, which is why the teabagger movement is so repulsive to the vast majority of Americans.

Ed Martin Suggests "The Left" is Trying to Steal NY23 Election

2009-11-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

Ed Martin repeatedly suggested via twitter that, "The Left" might "steal" the NY23 election if it's close. Right, because we all know how "the Left" has stolen so many recent U.S. elections. Conspiracy theory much, Ed?

Ed Martin Shopping for Veterans

2009-11-03T06:42:00.001-08:00

Ed Martin put out a call to Afghanistan Veterans, tweeting, "I need your help!"

Because, you know, he doesn't actually know any Afghanistan Vets from his district who support his candidacy, but he's sure there must be some out there somewhere.

Ed Martin Asks: Can We Get 300 FB Fans by Halloween? Short Answer: No

2009-11-01T08:00:00.001-08:00

Ed Martin repeatedly put out a call on Twitter to see if he could get 300 followers by Halloween:

And seeing as how it's the day after Halloween, we can now evaluate just how strong Martin's campaign really is:

Awww, so sad. He only got to 234, leaving him over 1/5 short of his stated goal. And just to give this some perspective, Russ Carnahan has twice as many supporters despite not putting out a call, and the Bring Back Mr. DeLong group that was created in response to a teacher being suspended for assigning a scientific article about homosexuality is over 1,700 people in less than a week. Martin's campaign is truly weak, but of course we all know that his campaign is not really about winning, but rather trying to help the Senate race.

Roy Blunt ignores Teabaggers

2009-10-31T16:00:00.001-07:00

Given that Dede Scozzafava has withdrawn from the NY-23 Congression race (she had been pressured to leave by teabaggers because she wasn't crazy enough for the GOP), it is now official that Roy Blunt completely ignored the teabaggers call to endorse conservative candidate Doug Hofmann. As I wrote last week, Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy claimed at a press conference that they were "coming for Blunt" and that he had until last Friday to make a statement. Roy Blunt never made any statement and for all practical purposes completely ignored the teabaggers hyperbolic and empty threats. Blunt's primary opponent Chuck Purgason donated money to Hoffman and challenged Blunt to do the same, but the teabaggers "principles" apparently only extend so far and they never bothered to mention Purgason. I'll have more on what Blunt's dismissal of the St. Louis teabaggers means for their "movement" and their "principle" in an upcoming post.

PushBack Greatest Hits

2009-10-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

Seems like a good time to review some of the easy pickins that have been the focus of this blog for the past three months:

Most seriously, we broke the story that Gateway Pundit (Jim Hoft) linked to race-baiting videos from White Supremacist sites on multiple occasions and refused to de-link the supremacist youtube channel even after being told about it.

We've documented numerous, numerous, falsehoods and ridiculous statements from radio host Dana Loesch.

We noticed Bill Hennessy triumphantly announcing a guest on the Daily Show who, errrr, wasn't really a guest on the Daily Show.

We've documented teabaggers who don't know the difference between public options and single-payer, but are still vehemently, reflexively against anything Obama supports.

And we've documented as the teabaggers continuously try to mislead their readers despite all evidence to the contrary.

It actually would be quite easy to write more, but there's just not enough time in a day to catch all of the lies and propaganda that come out of their sites.

A peak inside Gateway Pundit's noggin

2009-10-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

If he was capable of feeling shame, Rush Limbaugh would have been very embarrassed recently by the fact that he reported a satirical story on President Obama as true. The basic idea of the story was that President Obama had written a thesis in which he claimed that he had some serious problems with the constitution. As mentioned above, the story was in fact satire, and though Rush eventually acknowledged this fact, he refused to apologize.

After seeing this incident unfold, local looney Gateway Pundit (Jim Hoft) decided he needed to write a blog post warning his readers about evil libruls who will try to trick them into believing their satire. When the author of the original satire piece emailed Hoft telling him that the story was clearly marked as satire, check out Hoft's hilarious response email:

Matthew- Obviously, your satire is not clearly marked or Michael and Rush would not have linked.

Jim

I find this to be a truly revealing look into how Hoft thinks (or rather, how he approximates thinking). He starts out from the assumption that Rush Limbaugh must be right. All other evidence must conform to this brute truth of the universe or else it is immediately rejected. If Rush said that the sky was purple, and Hoft looked up and saw that it looked blue, he would conclude that Marxists had surgically altered his vision while he was sleeping.

And, of course, Hoft's assumption that Rush could not possibly make a mistake was about as wrong as any belief could be. Michael Leeden, the right-wing blogger who wrote the post that Rush cited, himself admitted that he missed the tag on the blog post that said "satire" (BTW, GP does mention this in an update, but is apparently oblivious to the fact that it contradicts his previous assumption).

I wonder how Hoft will integrate this into his belief system? Marxists holding Leeden at gunpoint? Implanted mind-control microchips? Whatever it is, we can be sure that Rush Limbaugh must not have made a mistake.

Time for Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy to, in their own words, "put up or shut up"

2009-10-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy were outside of St. Louis City Hall yesterday demanding that all elected officials in the GOP denounce Republican Candidate Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 House of Representatives race. Though Scozzafava was selected by voters in the primary, wingnuts around America hate her because she is too moderate for their tastes, and they have urged "real Republicans" to support independent candidate Doug Hoffman.

Loesch and Hennessy, as you can see here, held signs that said, "GOP: Put up or shut up" at the rally. In fact, Loesch said (24:35 in the below video), that she was giving Missouri Representatives Roy Blunt and Todd Akin "until the end of the day" to release a statement against Scozzafava or else, "we are coming for you." She also said earlier (19:00) that if they didn't have the brass to do "what's right," then, "we will vote you out! We will come at you with so much heat, you won't even know how to handle it!" Here's the video

Well, Friday has passed and neither Roy Blunt nor Todd Akin released any statement about the NY-23 race. Let's see if the St. Louis Tea Party really stands by their stated convictions, or whether they are all bluster and no bite. In their own words, let's see whether they "put up or shut up."

Your "movement" just might be in trouble if....

2009-10-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

...you have to write blog posts about how you are NOT collapsing:

Just sayin.

MOPNS doesn't know difference between public option and single-payer

2009-10-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

MOPNS, or as I like to call it MORPS (the Missouri Republican Propaganda Service) is apparently competing with "OMG, SEIU employees work for SEIU!!" Jim Durbin for the most inane 'scandal' of 2009, in a field already crowded by hyperventilating teabaggers. Yesterday, MOPNS claimed that Governor Jay Nixon stated that "healthcare" would not be in the final federal bill "in the world I live in." Pretty darn scandalous, right? Except when you realize that Nixon was talking about a single-payer healthcare system (one in which only the government provides healthcare insurance and private companies are abolished), and that single-payer hasn't really been seriously discussed in congress since this whole debate started. The whole discussion right now is whether there will be a government run public option in the final bill, not single-payer, and the fact that MOPNS thinks Nixon's comment was scandalous is pretty strong evidence that the writer doesn't even understand what the debate is about.

I don't think MOPNS is alone. Wingnut blogging about this subject generally shows that they literally don't grasp what the actual conversation is about. They routinely conflate Baucus's bill with Obama's plan and every other plan, and seem to think that every one of them is a single-payer plan. Unfortunately, for most wingnuts, actually doing some research beyond listening to Rush Limbaugh is just too much to expect.

Hilarious! Man Interviewed at "Liberal Media Bias" Protest is a Birther!

2009-10-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

Local wingnuts held a rally outside of KSDK shrieking about how the mainstream media has a horrific liberal bias that is, of course, destroying America. And in beautiful, hilarious irony, the teabagger interviewed for the story is a birth certificate conspiracy theorist who questions whether Obama was really born in the United States.

Doug Edelman, a local right-wing activist, was quoted in the article version as well as the video as saying, "The so called major media, mainstream media has universally misconstrued, mis-reported, unreported, under reported, mislead and deceived the american public with their reporting in general."

But if you look at Mr. Edelman's blog, you will find that he repeatedly questions whether Barack Obama was actually born in the United States and promotes lawsuits about whether Obama is actually eligible to be president, delcaring, "If there is any doubt in your mind as to the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to serve in the office of President of the United States under Title II, then you have a constitutional duty to withhold your electoral vote." Edelman has also proclaimed, BTW, that "Joseph McCarthy was right!!!" about communists hiding under every rock, just waiting to take over the U.S.

Yup, if you are legally insane and believe that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya as part of a plot to take over the United States, I can see why you'd think the media has a liberal bias.

A look inside twisted minds...

2009-10-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Here are a sampling of comments from Jim Hoft's blog regarding the news that Republican Senator Olympia Snowe helped vote a health care reform bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. I apologize in advance for how offensive some of the comments are, but I think it's useful to see just how irrationally angry Hoft's followers are and how quickly they turn to obscene personal attacks on people who deviate even slightly from far-right ideology.

OMG, Snowe. What a useless piece of shit.
myna | 10.13.09 - 12:14 pm | #

Time to drive this leftist bitch out of the GOP.
snake eater | 10.13.09 - 12:23 pm | #

Snowe is an 'enemy inside the wire' of the Republican camp. Why doesn't she just switch over to the Democrats.
IOpian | Homepage | 10.13.09 - 12:28 pm | #

Time for you to go, Snowe.

By force if necessary.
itsallverbatim | Homepage | 10.13.09 - 12:30 pm | #

Someone needs to put that ugly bitch out to pasture and win her seat. What a fucking traitor.
Anonymous | 10.13.09 - 2:27 pm | #

Did that POS every have a townhall meetin? I'd drive out of state just to go to her townhall meeting.
Anonymous | 10.13.09 - 2:27 pm | #

Every time I look at her, I'm reminded of Lilith, Frasier Crane's ex-wife off of Frasier.

Cold chills.
ChrisP | 10.13.09 - 2:36 pm |

This is how the far right deals with dissenting opinions.