Dana Loesch has Chuck Purgason as Guest.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.