It's been really funny watching the "editorial board" over at 24state.com spin out reasons why McCowan and Molens are unquestionably guilty and twelve jurors were somehow duped by the mind control powers of defense attorney Paul D'Agrosa. It took the jury about 50 minutes to reach a "not guilty verdict," but it only took five minutes for 24th State to convince themselves that if they were prosecutors, half of the city of St. Louis would be in jail right now due to the totally awesome cross-examination questions they came up with.
One admission during 24th State's I-could-totally-be-a-real-lawyer-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it routine caught my eye: So basically, after spending two years posting photos of Gladney in a wheelchair (Gateway Pundit is still doing so) and after attacking anyone who questioned the wheelchair as unconscionable, the St. Louis tea party is now admitting that it was a political prop and blaming it on David Brown, Gladney's mysterious boss/spokesperson/lawyer who allegedly called Gladney his "gravy train." The fact that it was a prop surprises absolutely no one, but it is interesting to see them finally admit it.
Just goes to show once again that the tea party is so convinced that they're right about, well, something, that they're willing to lie about anything. They probably don't even think there was anything wrong with having Gladney come out faking an injury so bad that he needed a wheelchair. After all, in Tea Party World, the ends justify the means in their war against the evil hippies, and that's exactly why no one should take what they say at face value.
A St. Louis Tea Party blog has another conspiracy theory about the trial. They write the following:
Setting aside all of the peripheral evidence, the case came down to two witnesses for the prosecution stating they saw McCowan and Molens attack Gladney, versus a witness for the defense who made the claim that Kenneth started the "fight" by slapping the hand of Elston McCowan.
It was up to the jury to determine which witness testimony was most reliable
First of all, that's not technically true. It was up to the jury to determine if there was evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the two defendants assaulted Gladney. Even if one witness was "more credible" than another, that wouldn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt (BTW, as I've previously noted, the prosecution's witness John Mirelli does not seem very credible).
Anyway, they identify the witness as the woman with the cane in this video, seen in the screen shot below.
Their speculation that this is the witness is correct. Hilariously, Gladney had previously claimed that this woman had also assaulted him (Gladney's huge number of inconsistent statements and changing stories about the case are another major consideration in the jury's verdict, of course).
Anyway, the tea party speculation about the witness is just plain dumb:
The full video: You can see her just a few seconds in, clearly getting to the scene after it occurred.
As we verify the identity of this witness that stepped forward two years after the fact, it seems fair to question if she perjured herself, seeing as she arrived after the assault occurred.
Actually, as anyone familiar with the case knows, the initial incident did not take place at the curb, but rather by the button board nearer to the camera, right where the woman is walking in the screen shot. The video was shown while the witness was testifying, and the lawyers asked her questions about it. There's nothing in her statement that would indicate that she was lying. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif What this does show is that another biased assumption of the tea party turned out to be false. They claimed that there "were no other witnesses." How did they know that? Obviously, they didn't know that. They just assumed it based on limited information, and it then became a piece of Tea Party Gospel. The reason McCowan and Molens were originally arrested was because the police were approached by the tea party and only ended up interviewing three people, all of whom were tea party activists. This is the same night that the police ridiculously arrested Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, and also arrested Brian Matthews for "resisting arrest," a claim later disproved by video of the event.
Update: Like moths drawn to the Burning Flame of Teh Stupid, Jim Hoft and Dana Loesch are now promoting this idiotic conspiracy.
After I pointed out that Jim Durbin's shameless attack on St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed was based on absurd reasoning from a white supremacist blog, Durbin has announced that he has removed the link to the blog post, affiliated with the Council of Conservative Citizens blog. I'm glad he did this. However, it's important to point out that Durbin didn't just link to a white supremacist blog: he endorsed the reasoning behind the twisted attack on Reed from that blog. Durbin wrote that Lewis Reed "used race to divide the electorate," and his evidence for that claim was that Lewis Reed had sent out fliers about crime without indicating that he was black. This leaves two explanations for Durbin's behavior: either he actually agrees with that racist way of thinking, or he's so sloppy that he doesn't even bother to read blog posts before using them to attack people he doesn't like. Either way, it's not good, and he certainly still owes Lewis Reed an apology.
A couple days ago, I cited a Post-Dispatch editorial that laid out the litany of scandals Ed Martin was involved in during his short 15-month tenure as Chief of Staff for Matt Blunt (before getting fired for his role in smearing a whistleblower). In light of the tea party's desperate attempts to pretend that Martin did nothing wrong during this scandal, I want to go into a little more detail about what he did and, specifically, show how pretty much every news outlet in the state of Missouri was openly condemning Martin's unethical behavior.
I start by mentioning that the recent "4 part series" purporting to get Martin off the hook only discusses the question of whether Ed Martin fired a whistleblower. Even if it were true that Martin "didn't fire a whistleblower" (which it's not), Ed Martin could not possibly be said to have behaved decently in the situation. Here's a brief rehash of what happenend:
After Ed Martin had already been busted multiple times improperly using the Governor's office for partisan purposes, a citizen forwarded reporter Tony Messenger an email from Ed Martin coordinating attacks by pro-life groups on Attorney General Jay Nixon while Martin was on the clock working for the state.
Republican Scott Eckersley sent Martin and other members of the Blunt administration emails informing them that emails were, in fact, part of the public record.
Eckersley was then fired, and he said it was because he was warning them about violations of the state sunshine laws.
The GOP insider slime machine claimed the firing was because Eckersley "had a bad reaction to the end of his last relationship," and because,"he started making bad life choices in drinking and pornography."
In fact, Blunt and Martin's lawyers sent reams of personal records directly to reporters across the state in an attempt to smear Eckersley even while claiming that sharing their own personal records would be against the law.
The Blunt administration lied and claimed that Eckersley never mentioned his views about the email retention prior to a Sept. 28 meeting with Ed Martin (in fact, Eckersley sent multiple emails, including at least one to Ed Martin, about the topic prior to that meeting).
Ed Martin was finally fired in a failed attempt to salvage the Blunt administration's dignity.
Now, out of all that, the only thing being challenged by the tea party is that Eckersley was fired for being a whistleblower. In other words, they're apparently perfectly willing to accept that Martin broke the law, lied repeatedly, and smeared Eckersley, but they think that if there were reasons for Eckersley being fired then we should all just forget about the whole thing. It's unbelievably deranged reasoning. But since they make no attempt whatsoever to defend the other facts of the case, I can only assume that the St. Louis tea party willingly admits that the candidate they endorsed has a hatred for government transparency, is a serial liar, and is willing to smear any law-abiding and honerable conservatives who get in his way. Quite a principled stand they're taking.
Readers of this blog know that I'm not a big fan of tea party blogger Jim Durbin of 24thstate.com. But I gotta give him one thing: he's got an amazing imagination! As far as I can tell, the main difference between Durbin and most people is that most people don't think that merely being able to imagine a story with plot twists, Noble Patriots, and Supervillains, thereby makes that story true. Durbin on the other hand seems to follow a simple rule: "If I can imagine it, it must have happened."
The latest in Durbin's free association ranting, or as he calls it, "investigative journalism," is a list of all of the apocalyptic catastrophes that will befall the state of Missouri if voters approve Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act. One of the most mind-boggling parts of his recent theorizing is that he simultaneously claims that the new laws won't be enforced and that the new laws will cause all kinds of calamities. In fact, Durbin claims that these laws that "won't be enforced," will cause 86,000 dogs to be killed and Chihuahuas to be forced to freeze to death in the cold. Needless to say, these claims are idiotic. The breeders can sell many of the current dogs as they have done (i.e. they won't be forced to "put them down"); they just won't be allowed to continue keeping large, unmanageable numbers of breeding dogs. And Durbin's claim about Chihuahuas freezing to death simply proves that he didn't even bother to carefully read the ballot language since one of the things the new law would require is that dogs have:
unfettered access to an indoor enclosure that has a solid floor; is not stacked or otherwise placed on top of or below another animal's enclosure; is cleaned of waste at least once a day while the dog is outside the enclosure; and does not fall below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, or rise above 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
Some more absurd claims: Durbin says that this will cause "less people to buy dogs." Apparently no one ever informed him of the fact that animals shelters have huge numbers (3 - 4 million) of perfectly wonderful pets that have to be put down every year. Oh, but Durbin claims that shelter and pound dogs are scary and dangerous. The guy is seriously clueless.
Durbin also claims that the new law will prevent people from being able to buy dogs like Golden Retrievers. Actually, the new law limits how many breeding dogs there can be at a location; it doesn't eliminate breeders. Another fail.
But I think my favorite conspiracy of all is his claim that all of the dogs will have to be released into the wilderness, forming wild dog packs that will eat our children:
4) The wild dog population will increase Dogs are beasts. Noble, but beasts. Like all animal populations, they will increase when left on their own, and in the backwoods of Missouri, when you let hundreds or thousands of dogs go free, you're going to see an explosion of their population in a way that is not at all controlled. Domesticating animals isn't something we solely do for joy.
Earlier in the week, a plot by right-wing icon James O'Keefe to "seduce" CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau on camera by isolating her on a boat full of sex toys and pornography was revealed and widely condemned. The plan involved O'Keefe hitting on Boudreau, who was there in a professional capacity to document the young conservative movement, while O'Keefe (and others?) were secretly videotaping the interactions. A plan for the event obtained by CNN had O'Keefe reading the following statement:
Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.
Please sit back and enjoy the show.
Amazingly, even James O'Keefe's former employer Andrew Breitbart, who in the past religiously stood by O'Keefe and even suggested that O'Keefe's arrest in New Orleans was a result of a "concerted effort" by the U.S. government to make O'Keefe look bad, has turned against his former employee. In a statement yesterday, Breitbart wrote the following:
... in my dealings with Ms. Boudreau, she and her producer, Scott Zamost, conducted themselves professionally, and I believe James owes them a candid and public explanation.
From what I’ve read about this script, though not executed, it is patently gross and offensive. It’s not his detractors to whom he also owes this public airing. It’s to his legion of supporters.
Yet, unbelievably, leaders of the St. Louis tea party movement are still defending O'Keefe's despicable plan, and are even blaming the victim! Check out some of the tweets from Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) and (Jim Durbin):
Particularly offensive is this quote from Durbin:
in CNN story, Boudreau says news business is sexist, and doesn't take her seriously. So why interview O'Keefe?
This sounds an awful lot like blaming the victim. What does interviewing O'Keefe have to do with the news business being sexist? Boudreau was interviewing him because she was doing a story on young conservative activists. Yet Durbin suggests there's something wrong with her doing that while being a woman?
Anyway, it's truly mind-boggling how willing the St. Louis tea party leaders are to throw all morals and decency out the window in their "war" against "the Left.' When you've gone far beyond even Andrew Breitbart's moral limits, you know you've got problems.
In case you wanted to see what gracious winners the tea party are after the passage of Proposition C:
Get ready for a lot more of that if progressives don't start organizing and Democrats don't figure out how to motivate their base. In fact, get ready for a lot worse as the local tea party has shown repeatedly that they're willing to use any power they have to try to personally destroy anyone who doesn't agree with their radical vision, from school teachers to USDA employees, to county prosecutors to the local animal control department.
Jim Durbin of the 24thstate blog tries his hand at video analysis again. And he fails, again.
Durbin's video of the arrest of Javonne Spitz and Brian Matthews helped get the prosecutor to drop charges against Matthews. However, Durbin is still sticking to his story that the video proves that the police report is true and that Matthews is a "liar." You can watch the video here:
Now, the following is what is stated in the police report:
As Captain Monteleone was assisting us with crowd control a subject, later identified as Brian Matthews, walked up to him and purposely fell onto the sidewalk in front of him. While laying on the ground Matthews asked people around him of he saw the police push him down. Captain Monteleone observed Matthews laying on the ground yelling that he was being beaten by the police, trying to draw attention to himself.
As can be seen from the video, this story is clearly false. Matthews did not "walk up to Captain Monteleone." He was walking in front of the police officer, leading Spitz away from the scene. There is no video evidence whatsoever that Matthews was yelling that he was being beaten, despite the fact that the cameras were picking up sound from Spitz. Brian Matthews' point is that if this part of the police report is false, why should we treat the rest of the report as gospel? The police report was clearly flawed.
Durbin further claims that Matthews was "lying" when he was quoted as follows in the Post-Dispatch:
"I can't tell you how many police officers charged us from behind," Matthews said. "I was pushed to the ground by one. I was pushed into the back of somebody who was walking away."
However, Durbin, so blinded by ideology that he's incapable of even considering the evidence, apparently doesn't even bother to watch the full video. You can see in the video that after Matthews is on the ground the first time, he's trying to get up, and the video (1:15) does seem to indicate that he was pushed back to the ground: Furthermore, you can see at the 1:16 mark that Matthews was pushed into the back of somebody: in fact, Matthews being pushed caused Spitz and the other officer to fall over. So Matthews' statement in the Post-Dispatch was true.
It looks like Durbin is trying to regain right-wing credibility because he was so embarrassed that his video actually helped prove the innocence of his sworn enemy. It didn't work.
But even if Durbin can't win back his right-wing cred, I still appreciate him. I appreciate the fact that's he's working hard to discredit himself right in time for the trial.
Tea partier Jim Durbin likes to call himself "The Editor" with a capital E on his blog 24th state. Check out the melodramatic signoff on this post:
I am simply, the Editor.
But what happens when there's no one to fact check the editor? Well, you get posts like this one from yesterday, where he presented completely false information:
Here's the official summary.
Upon voter approval, this proposed constitutional amendment prohibits any person, employer, or health care provider from being compelled to participate in any health care system...
The problem for Durbin is that in fact the Missouri General Assembly did not decide to let people vote on a constitutional amendment: instead, the vote will be about the adoption of a new state statute. And this renders it completely useless for changing the law. Dave Roland at Show-Me Daily explains:
the text that might have been legally useful as a constitutional amendment will have zero legal effect as a statute... Thus, even if HB 1764 had purported to establish a fundamental right or liberty, courts would have been unlikely to take them seriously. It just so happens that HB 1764 does not even make such an effort, further diminishing any legal usefulness it otherwise might have had.
In other words, Durbin is presenting this as if it has a chance to actually alter the law, when in fact it doesn't.
Now, I suppose it's possible that Durbin already knows this and is just withholding information to keep his readers uninformed so they will continue to be motivated to vote. After all, in the Kenneth Gladney case, he admitted that he put out false information last year and knew it was false but did not issue a correction because he didn't want SEIU to have the info. He also suggested with Bob McCarty's completely misleading video last year that McCarty wait to "release the whole video." Given that Durbin is happy to withhold information and in fact is even willing to put out false information in order to try to "get" his opposition (which hasn't worked so far), it wouldn't be that much of a shock to find out that he's also willing to put out false information to try to trick people into voting for something that has no real chance of success.
Either way, it's the kind of misinformation a real editor wouldn't stand for.
First of all, I'd just like to remind people that Durbin was claiming back in January that there was a massive government conspiracy that led to Kenneth Gladney's brother being fired by the local animal control department. Durbin uncharacteristically actually backed off that conspiracy theory after he realized how ridiculous it was, but it's hardly his only one. Anyway, back to the matter at hand, how exactly does Durbin think he "tricked" liberals into admitting Gladney was injured?
He never really makes this claim clear, just like Dana Loesch never explained the title of her post, "Are Liberal Bloggers Finally Admitting that Gladney was Beaten?" I guess the logic is supposed to be that if you acknowledge that medical records exist, that is equivalent to agreeing that Gladey was injured and/or beaten. But that doesn't follow: everyone agreed that Gladney decided to go to the hospital after the incident, so of course he would have medical records. So everyone can acknowledge the obvious fact that there are medical records without making any claims about the extent of his injuries. The interesting question is "to what extent was Kenneth Gladney injured?" In particular, was he injured in a way that explains the fact that he was running around immediately after the injury but then showed up in a wheelchair two days later?
Now I can already imagine Durbin's response. He'll likely say, "this proves that Adam doesn't have access to primary sources that I do and therefore his story about what happened that night is FALSE!" But, as I explained on multiple occasions, I actually don't have a story about what happened that night. All I've been doing is evaluating the evidence that's available. Here, once again, is a quote from my original post:
First, let me point out that I was out of town that week, and so couldn't be at the event. So I am not claiming to know what happened. In fact, I feel very similar to how I felt before the Iraq War: I didn't know that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs; I just knew that no one had provided me with any good evidence that he did. Likewise, right now I have yet to be provided with any good evidence that Gladney was the victim rather than the instigator (or co-instigator) of last Thursday's events.
I still feel that way. If Jim Durbin would like to present the evidence that he thinks is so convincing, he's welcome to do so. But so far the right-wing has failed to make a compelling case, so they don't have a good reason to be angry at the rest of the world for not jumping on to their bandwagon.
One last note, Durbin also recently wrote a post suggesting that Media Matters started writing about this case after a donation from SEIU in November. Unfortunately for Durbin, Media Matter actually started writing about this on August 8. Nice try though.
Right-wing blogger Jim Durbin made a really interesting argument this morning against Proposition A, the ballot initiative to restore and expand public transporation in the St. Louis region with a 1/2 of 1% sales tax. Apparently, he used to run 6 miles every day to get to his first job, so he knows that the people who say they rely on Metro to get to work just aren't trying hard enough. You can watch the argument here:
By the way, if you'd like to hear a serious discussion about the merits of the proposal, check out this debate between Chesterfield Mayor John Nations and Tom Sullivan.
Jim Durbin at 24thstate today accused Representative Emmanual Cleaver of "lying" and called him a "no-good, race-baiting hustler" after Cleaver told reporters that he was called racial slurs while walking through a Washington, D.C. Tea Party crowd. Durbin said that this was all a part of a scheme by Democrats to "change the subject."
Unmentioned by Durbin is the fact that if Cleaver was lying, then so were Representatives Andre Carson, James Clyburn, and John Lewis, as well as CNN reporter Dana Bash.
I personally don't know much about Cleaver's history, but I know a little about Representative Lewis. The former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a crucial figure in the civil rights movement, John Lewis was spit on, hit, and screamed at while sitting at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. He participated in the Freedom Rides, riding on previously segregated Greyhound buses into the South. A bus he was on was stopped by an angry white mob; and Lewis was dragged out of the bus and beaten. The idea that this man would throw out a fake claim of being called a racial slur is ridiculous.
Jim Durbin is at it again, illustrating the fallacious reasoning and flimsy evidence standards that characterize the St. Louis Tea Party and make all bloggers look bad. It's nowhere near as bad as when he accused the local animal control department of a massive conspiracy or baselessly attacked County Counselor Patricia Reddington, but it still says a lot about the bizarre leaps and bounds that are used to build up the conspiracy theories that sadly are a core part of the ideology of the St. Louis Tea Party.
Durbin's lastest bizarre twisting of reality was based on a question I asked on Show Me Progress nearly two years ago. I had had trouble registering an account at FiredUp and asked for advice. Clark on SMP replied by saying that he knows someone there and he'd be willing to ask about it. This was apparently enough to trigger hallucinations for Durbin, who then leapt to the conclusion that "you had to know someone," to register at FiredUp. Durbin then used this as the basis for further conspiracy theorizing.
First of all, Durbin's conspiracy completely misdescribes the situation. Too much time had passed from the issue I had wanted to discuss on FiredUp, so I didn't bother to register for the site at that time. A long time later, I wanted to discuss something different, so i registered, and was given an account. I didn't need to "know somebody." I simply got an account after registering. So Durbin's theory was based on an absurd extrapolation from a couple comments.
But let's assume that the original claim that I was allowed to post at FiredUp only after Eric talked to someone was true. Even so, Durbin's extrapolation would be completely unsupported. His argument is basically as follows:
1. If it's true that you have to know somebody to register at FiredUp, Adam Shriver could only register after knowing somebody. 2. Adam Shriver could only register after knowing somebody. 3. Therefore, it must be true that you have to know somebody to register at FiredUp.
But of course, this has the following basic structure, known in logic as the fallacy of affirming the consequent;
1. If P, then Q. 2. Q 3. Therefore P.
To see why this form of reasoning is fallacious, we can put in different terms:
1. If Mr. Ed is a dog, then Mr. Ed is a mammal. 2. Mr. Ed is a mammal. 3. Therefore, Mr Ed is a dog.
But of course, Mr. Ed could be a mammal without being a dog, so this is an invalid argument structure (both premises can be true but still have a false conclusion). And the same point is true of Durbin's original argument: even if it were true that I got an account after knowing someone, it wouldn't follow that you couldn't get an account without knowing someone. But of course Durbin's premises were false too, so not only was he using faulty logic, he was starting with incorrect information. Welcome to how the tea party builds up their massive conspiracy theories about the world.
One final note: Durbin continually likes to attack FiredUp, even suggesting at one point that he personally had defunded the blog. But of course, the reason Durbin attacks FiredUp so much is specifically because the blog is a progressive institution that successfully influences public debate. Influential Republican blogger John Combest even said he read FiredUp in his recent profile in the RFT. Thus, while Durbin continuously tries to make the case that FiredUp is a failure, he is attacking it only because it is such a success.
A few weeks ago, I noted how right-wing blogger Jim Durbin was declaring that there was a Massive Government Conspiracy to send an army of "union thugs" to an August 6 townhall to beat up random merchandise-sellers, and that Durbin now thought that this conspiracy extended all the way to your local dogcatcher. In an effort to "establish credibility" with his "honest readers," Durbin has now conceded that his in-depth investigation of the local Animal Control Department has determined that the incident was "inconclusive," (which of course actually means that the evidence proves him wrong).
Durbin, in an amazing moment of clarity, further appeared to realize that you shouldn't accuse government employees of massive conspiracies without any evidence. Perhaps he should have thought about that before declaring it a "wrongful termination," before claiming that someone in the County government "overplayed their hand," and before announcing that the firing was intended as a warning message from "monsters that steal our land and rob our people." And, of course, if he was really interested in establishing "trust" with his readers, he probably would apologize for falsely claiming that Patricia Reddington hadn't looked at Kenneth Gladney's medical reports before filing misdemeanor charges.
What's really hilarious, however, is that Durbin nearly immediately turned around and declared another Massive Government Conspiracy based on, you guessed it, no evidence. Here's how it goes: he discovers that McKenzie Lehmann worked for the Carnahan campaign at one time, and volunteered for America Votes at a different time. Her current LinkedIn profile doesn't list her volunteer time at America Votes, but an old LinkedIn profile does. Hence, Durbin concludes, it clearly was a Massive Government Conspiracy to do.....something.
Here's Durbin's flawless logic in a nutshell:
Someone changes their LinkedIn profile.
Out of the 186,741 possible explanations for why they would change their profile, one possible explanation is that there is a Massive Government Conspiracy that only Jim Durbin can see because his tinfoil hat protects him from radio waves that interfere with everyone else's thinking.
Ergo, there is a Massive Government Conspiracy.
Of course, when I looked at the two resumes, I noticed that the job underneath America Votes, brand ambassador for Brown-Forman, was also missing in the new resume. Or rather, the job was changed from a full description in the old resume to a simple mention in a list of clients represented in the new one. In other words, it seems pretty obvious that she condensed her resume as she added jobs, and didn't include America Votes because it wasn't a paying job. But this would suggest that there wasn't a Massive Government Conspiracy and that maybe, just maybe, sometimes changing a LinkedIn profile is nothing more than changing a LinkedIn profile.
But on the other hand, maybe I am part of the Massive Government Conspiracy...or did I just blow your mind?
It's no surprise that writing material that takes on the local tea party movement is going to attract some odd responses. I've gotten used to the bizarre comments and emails that come in as a result of my analysis of the tea partiers and in particular of their exaggerated and blatantly false claims. But one dude, local blogger Jim Durbin, has been strange above all the rest. I originally was planning on ignoring him, but since he just can't seem to quit pestering me, I've decided that it's probably a good idea to systematically document all of his bizarre behavior. It starts out pretty mild, so skip the first couple of paragraphs if you want to see the really weird stuff.
In what seems like eons ago, I wrote a post deconstructing the right-wing claim that a particular video showed that "SEIU thugs" had been sent to a Carnahan event to beat up protesters. In the comments of my post, Jim Durbin showed up and started arguing that the videos were all after-the-fact (contrary to what the right-wing bloggers originally claimed) and that the truth would really be revealed once the police reports came out that next week, just I wait and see (BTW, the reports have still not yet been released). Though he and I disagreed, the conversations were civilized. Durbin made a number of mistakes in trying to understand what I was saying, but at least he wasn't resorting to childish name-calling or bizarre attempts at intimidation.
That all changed after I answered a challenge that Durbin had put forward about the incident. He had written a blog post claiming that we could determine whether Elston McCowan (one of the central SEIU members involved in the scuffle) or David Brown (the "lawyer" representing Kenneth Gladney in the incident) was lying by looking at the button board Gladney was using. McCowan had claimed that the board had pictures of Obama smoking dope; Brown told Durbin that it didn't. So Jim Durbin's hypothesis was that if we could find a picture of the button board, we could determine who was lying. I found a picture of the board, and demonstrated that David Brown was misleading Durbin. Rather than simply admitting that his challenge had been met (though it initially seemed like he was going to), Durbin snapped and started acting in the bizarre ways that are the subject of this post.
Durbin's first freak-out came when I posted a diary about what happened in the aftermath of the incident at McCaskill's Hillsboro town hall where a teabagger grabbed a Rosa Parks sign out of the hands of Maxine Johnson. I posted video from outside of the event of other teabaggers immediately assuming that the entire incident was Johnson's fault, and I stated that they were blaming the victim. Durbin invented a story that I somehow claimed that one of the teabaggers in the video had told Johnson's friend to "shut up," but it's clear from my post that I said nothing of the sort. I merely pointed out that they were blaming Johnson without knowing the details of what happened and that they completely ignored the fact a man illegally ripped a sign out of her hand.
But far be it from Jim Durbin to pay attention to the actual language I used rather than his own invented delusion. His bitterness over the Gladney incident had apparently put him in a rage, and he began a bizarre Twitter tirade where he first called me an "Idiot" then called me "dishonest," and then proclaimed that he had decided to drop, "all pretense of civility," with me. When I asked him to back up his claim that I was "dishonest," he ignored me. All of this simply because I had posted a video showing the behavior I observed with my own eyes.
Durbin continued this strange name-calling into the future, and apparently even began doing some online research on me. After I participated in a "Billionaires for Wealthcare" counter-rally outside of Claire McCaskill's office, Durbin called our group "a sad bunch" for expressing our right to protest, and mysteriously referred to me as "their wannabe puppet king." But even more strange is the fact that he apparently took it upon himself to research me and then posted on his Twitter account that I am a "Washu philosophy assistant professor," (which is actually not true, but I can see how a misinformed person would reach that conclusion) Name-calling is obviously not an admirable trait, but it's hardly a new phenomenon in political discussions. But the truly bizarre behavior from Durbin is what came next. Durbin, who relishes making personal attacks on people, whether it's me, or Peter Glickert (who filmed the Maxine Johnson incident), or Glenn Burleigh of ACORN, started making bizarre threats about releasing people's home addresses. Here is a message he sent to someone I know:
*24thstate <http://twitter.com/24thstate>*to be clear - if pictures of kids, homes, jobs or personal details are exposed on a site related to you, we will return the favor en masse.
What's odd about this is that no one was releasing any of those things. Considering that no one is doing any of these things, and there was no reason to think that anyone would start doing so, it's hard to interpret the above claim as anything other than a passive-aggressive threat from Durbin. This interpretation is further bolstered by the fact that Durbin repeated this bizarre threat again at a later event. He approached myself and another person at a rally, and again strangely referred to "releasing" people's home addresses (he refers to the St. Louis PushBack Blog in his comments, which I'm pretty sure also does not release anyone's "personal information."):
Why would Durbin, who continuously digs up personal information about people, make these bizarre suggestions to me despite the fact that I've never done anything like what he is suggesting? Why does he feel it's important for people to know that he would be willing to release pictures of "kids, homes, and jobs?" I originally thought it might be because he's worried about the possibility of his angry personal attacks interfering with his businesses Social Media Headhunter and Brandstorming, but that can't be right since he's quite upfront and even proud of the fact that he's involved in both his right-wing attack blog and these businesses: Given that Durbin is obviously quite comfortable with his business clients knowing about his extreme right-wing views, I had no idea what his strange threats were all about. However, I wasn't paying much attention to it, since I really was not that interested in engaging with him in the first place. I thought that if I just ignored his weird threats, he would eventually leave me alone.
But I underestimated both Durbin's obsessiveness and his hatred of me. His next move was even more strange. He and his sidekick Darin Morley of Reboot Congress actually spent their own money to buy the domain name "St. Louis Activist Hub." They then directed their new site to the St. Louis Tea Party Website and put in a bunch of links to the new site in an apparent attempt to "google bomb" the search results to this new site. Check out the totally weird posts on Reboot Congress and on Jim Durbin's site: This actually means next to nothing to me since search engines don't really account for any of the traffic to my site (not that anyone would become a wingnut anyway from accidently clicking on the wrong site), but it's striking that Durbin and Morley are willing to spend their own money for no other purpose than to try to make me angry. This, along with Durbin's weird threats mentioned above, crosses over the line of a typical blogosphere pie-fight into Durbin being someone who is disturbingly fixated on trying to harass another person. If that's not enough, check out Durbin's wacky email to me after his post:
Durbin states, apparently for no reason, that "this is a game to you," and signals that his intent is to make sure that no one believes anything I write ever again. Even more crazily, he suggests that I personally will be responsible if the public option fails. Apparently this is the case because my questioning the Gladney story awoke the sleeping tiger of Jim Durbin, who did some investigative reporting and came to the amazing conclusion that, wait for it, an SEIU employee works for SEIU!!! Durbin apparently literally believed that this revelation was enough to kill the public option. So not only do I have a bizarre stalker, but he's a guy with delusions of self-grandeur as well. Great.
Even so, I was still willing to ignore all of this, since as I said the domain name doesn't really affect me. But I got online a couple days ago and found that, lo and behold, Jim Durbin just can't seem to quit me. He wrote, in response to a Riverfront Times article that showed that David Brown is indeed the huckster I claimed he was, that I am "not to bright" and that he's "disgusted" by my behavior. He then further claims that the RFT article somehow disproves "my story," because it shows that Gladney and Brown were just out to make a buck and not Tea Party operatives paid to start a fight: Again, Durbin's analysis shows only that he is delusional. In all of my posts, I never once claimed to know what happened at the incident. All I ever claimed was that the video was not consistent with what the winguts were saying about the video. Keep in mind that the official right-wing story is literally that President Obama, Katherine Sebelius, Russ Carnahan, and/or SEIU sent "thugs" to a tea party to beat up people who disagree with them. The official right-wing story is that the minister Elston McCowan along with three other people were all beating Kenneth Gladney as he was on the ground. My analysis was only intended to show that the video did not appear to be consistent with that story. At no point whatsoever did I claim to know how the fight started, or the entirety of what happened. I certainly never claimed that Gladney or Brown was hired to start a fight. Durbin apparently is not able to differentiate between me saying that the right-wing story is false and someone saying that a different story is true. The strongest claim I made throughout the analysis is the following:
"Here I analyze the video that is the tea baggers' primary evidence, and argue that it seems perfectly consistent with SEIU's story, and rather inconsistent with Gladney's story."
But of course evidence "being consistent" with a story doesn't entail that story is true. The fact that David Brown was selling buttons at the event is consistent both with the right-wingers' story and with SEIU's story, but obviously doesn't entail that both are true. My point was that the video did not contradict the claim that Gladney assaulted McCowan; but that is not the same thing as saying that Gladney did assault McCowan. On the other hand, the video did look like it's inconsistent with the claim that several people were standing around Gladney and beating him.
So at no point did I actually present a "story" claiming to know what happened at the event; I merely pointed out that the story being spun by right-wing extremists like Gateway Pundit did not fit the video. For anyone really dedicated, you can read my posts here, here, here, and here to verify this. Or you can simply read the paragraph I used to introduce my analysis:
First, let me point out that I was out of town that week, and so couldn't be at the event. So I am not claiming to know what happened. In fact, I feel very similar to how I felt before the Iraq War: I didn't know that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs; I just knew that no one had provided me with any good evidence that he did. Likewise, right now I have yet to be provided with any good evidence that Gladney was the victim rather than the instigator (or co-instigator) of last Thursday's events. If someone has further evidence that is relevant, I'd be very interested to see it.
Not exactly declaring that I know exactly what happened, am I? Yet Durbin invented in his mind that I am somehow spinning an elaborate tale of what happened that night, and he declares that I'm a "liar" based on his own delusions.
Finally, Durbin can't even resist taking a shot at me while exploring other conspiracy theories. In a post where he joins Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch in literally believing that Obama sent an "operative" to St. Louis to start a riot, Durbin throws in a weird cheap shot that, "Heck, even Adam Shriver says they only had 500 people at the event" while referring to OFA's rally: Of course, what I actually said was, "there were well over 500 pro-reform people there (my best guess was 800 to 1000)" so Durbin is blatantly lying yet again.
So, to sum up, Jim Durbin is a guy who:
1. Turns to name-calling even though I never stooped to the level of calling him names,
2. Is delusional to the point of believing that he single-handily killed health care reform by reporting that an SEIU employee works for SEIU,
3. Is also delusional in that he on multiple occasions accuses me of lying over things that he invented and that I never actually said,
4. Worked with Darin Morley to buy a web domain for the sole purpose of trying to make me angry, and
5. Repeatedly makes threats about "releasing names and addresses."
I honestly would be quite happy to never have to write about Jim Durbin again. But if he's going to continue making passive-aggressive threats and pestering me, then I feel an obligation to document his weird behavior.
The St. Louis Activist Hub blog is the home of weekly event listings for progressive activism across St. Louis. It is also a group blog where a variety of St. Louis viewpoints are presented. You can follow the Activist Hub on Twitter and join the Facebook group for further ways to stay connected.
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