Guy Who Said Conservatives Should "Kill The Claire Bear" Can't Figure Out Why Democrats Think Akin's Views Are Outside the Mainstream

When we last heard from St. Louis-based tea party activist Scott Boston, he was telling a Missouri tea party audience the following about Senator McCaskill:

“She walks around like she’s some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something but really she’s an evil monster.” “We have to kill the Claire Bear,” he added.

This prompted additional security at Senator McCaskill's events and a harsh rebuke from the Post-Dispatch.

Today, as you can see from the above tweet, Boston is absolutely shocked about a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee email that stated the following:

From his record to his rhetoric, everything about Todd Akin’s Tea Party policies are outside of the mainstream and dangerous for Missouri families.

Noting first that the email was referring to Todd Akin's policies, rather than "conservatives," why would anyone think that Akin's policies are "dangerous" and "outside the mainstream"?  Well, aside from the fact that Akin refused to condemn Boston's "kill the Claire Bear" comments, here are a few reasons:

• The Hill: Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) voted against the creation of a national sex offender registry and against reauthorizing a program that assists runaway and homeless children.
• On CSPAN: In March 2011, Akin said he doesn't like Social Security. "Now, Social Security through the years, for many, many people, has been a terrible investment. It's really a tax, that's all it is. Social Security is a tax. The government has taken the tax. There's been more money coming in than going out. And we spend it. That's not been responsible. I don't like it. I didn't design Social Security. It actually came from Bismarck, FDR put it in place." [CSPAN Washington Journal]
• Fired Up Missouri: ...when giving an interview to Greg Knapp on KCMO, republican extremist Todd Akin stated that he would ban emergency contraception because he "believes it is abortion," and he would ban it for everyone, with no exceptions.
• The Washington Post: In 2012, Akin was one of 24 to vote against the Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act; 147 Republicans voted for it. A GOP press release described this as an effort to “advance training and education for autism service providers” so that “autistic children and adults can lead fuller, happier and healthier lives.”
• And: In 2010, Akin was one of only 13 to vote No on a motion “expressing the support of the House of Representatives for the goals and ideals of the National School Lunch Program.” 155 Republicans voted for it.
• And: In 2009, Akin was one of 11 to vote against a measure “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that providing breakfast in schools through the National School Breakfast Program has a positive impact on classroom performance.” 152 Republicans voted for it.
• Buzzfeed: Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin drew fire from fellow Republicans in the '90s for praising a private militia group associated with extreme anti-abortion actions, according to a 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.
• Mediaite: Rep. Akin, a veteran and father of three Marines, clues us in about his confusion on the issue with very inarticulate language:

  There is a misunderstanding. If people are gay, they can serve in the military now. It’s just that they can’t allow their ‘gayness’ to get in the way of getting the mission done.

I could go on, but life is too short.

So yeah, even if you don't think that conservatives are "dangerous" and "outside the mainstream" you certainly have reasons for thinking that Akin's policies are.

Phyllis Schlafly Vs. The Facts

Another great post from Hotflash at Show Me Progress about the Ed Martin forum where Martin supporters where outnumbered and outdebated by supporters of the Affordable Care Act. This one is of Phyllis Schlafly's factually-challenged speech about "Obamacare:"

Sean at Fired Up Missouri also had a nice roundup of the coverage of Ed Martin's failed event.

Ed Martin's Financial Disclosure Flub: Part of a Pattern

Sean at FiredUp Missouri linked to a story in the Hill that caught Ed Martin falsely reporting having nearly $200,000 in the bank in his FEC report. Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch of course simply regurgitated Martin's claim that it was a "computer error," but Sean has presented some good reasons for thinking that even Ed Martin's amended comments are suspicious, especially considering that he now claims he had no activity in Q4 according to PoliticMo.

Of course, this isn't exactly new territory for Martin. During his failed bid for Congress, he filed his financial disclosure forms 300 days late because he was "really busy." Sure is interesting how much difficulty Ed Martin has with basic things like reporting his finances, and how it's always someone else's fault.

Activist Hub Radio 1/30/11

After a month long hiatus, this week Adam and I talk with Sean at FiredUp! Missouri about the priorities of the Republican State Legislature, Rex Sinquefield, and the general political landscape in Missouri. Join us to find out what progressives should watch out for in 2011.



Also we are on itunes so please subscribe Activist Hub Radio on Itunes.

Dana Loesch Cheerleads for Post-Dispatch Censorship

Dana Loesch wrote an article today attacking FiredUp Missouri for criticizing the Post-Dispatch's decision to edit out crazy tweets from Lt. Governor Peter Kinder. Loesch, being continually scared to death of someone revealing to her followers how shallow her arguments are, was of course afraid to name FiredUp, but she does amazingly manage to link to this article. Here's what Loesch had to say:

What’s with these reporters? They think their byline is more important than the fact of the story they’re supposed to report. No one cares what Messenger or any other journalist thinks, they want the story. Period. MSM’s inability to give the people what they want has resulted in both citizen journalism (people creating a product they’re unable to find elsewhere) and drop in support for media overall.

Of course, even if you thought Messenger was editorializing when he said that Kinder tweeted "far right Republican conspiracy theories' (which Kinder does), there's no explanation for why the specific content of Kinder's tweets needed to be edited out. Why did the following factual and true sentence need to be edited out:

Kinder has compared liberals to Hitler, politicized a hostage crisis and repeated false claims about “death panels” in the new federal health care law. He even speculated on the worst “tramp stamp” tattoos on women.

As I wrote yesterday, after Loesch attacked the Post-Dispatch with a claim that had no merit, and which Post-Dispatch Political Editor Christopher Ave knew had no merit, Ave nevertheless invited Loesch to a journalism conference to tell reporters how to cover the tea party. I suggested that the Post's decision to censor content critical of the Right shortly after that conference looks pretty bad. The fact that Loesch is now engaged in actively cheerleading for the Post-Dispatch adds credence to that suggestion.

Ed Martin Tries to Rewrite History

FiredUp Missouri caught Ed Martin hilariously claiming that he is in support of a revival of the Works Progress Administration, the largest New Deal program that employed millions of people in public works projects across the country. Here's the relevant exchange:

MARTIN: I live in South City, and you drive down on River Des Peres and you'll see in the bricks the WPA symbol. And what we didn't do -- we took $1.2 trillion in the stimulus -- we didn't do shovel ready jobs.

JACO: Would you have been in favor of those kind of things -- maybe a son of the WPA -- to put people to work immediately on public-sector construction jobs.

MARTIN: Emphatically yes. I mean, emphatically yes. And I think places like Highway 21 in Jefferson County, they're desperate to finish the roads. The federal government has a role to play, and I think you and I can talk about how big or small the role is. But public level infrastructure, I think we should have done that. We would have put, put people together. I mean, we built the Zoo, we built the memorials. We should have said -- and even during the WPA, we sometimes said -- if workers need 20 hours each to build a 40 hour because we have two men that need a job, in this case two men and women, we'll split it up. You get 20 each. I'm emphatically for that.

Martin and his flunkies like Jim Durbin (who by the way, proved my prediction wrong by actually addressing the issue, however disingenuously) are trying to argue that they were never opposed to the stimulus: they were just opposed to the way the stimulus funds were being used. They would have been totally cool with the stimulus, they argue, if only the money had been spent on "shovel-ready" projects.

So first of all, as pointed out by Sean, the stimulus money was used for things that benefitted the economy, in Missouri and all around the country:

The $862 billion package was divided roughly in thirds among tax cuts, aid to states and the unemployed, and investments in infrastructure, health care and other areas. The first two have delivered most of their boost, but much of the investment spending is moving far more slowly. At the end of July, nearly 18 months after the stimulus passed, more than half of the $275 billion in investments had yet to be spent.

Underlying the slow pace is a defining tension: Officials want to get money out the door to jolt the economy but want to spend it carefully enough to meet long-term policy aims -- and avoid headlines about waste or fraud.

But even more unfortunately for Ed Martin than simply being wrong is the fact that he has a long, documented history of comments that contradict the claim that he would have been in support of the stimulus if only it had been used differently. Here's a sampling of his comments that contradict his claim that he would have supported "shovel-ready" spending by the federal government:

November 17, 2009:

Want real stimulus? Cut Taxes

.
November 18, 2009:

Our elected leaders do not grasp the fact that nobody – not even the government – can borrow your way out of debt!

There is another way. Truth is, there is only one tried and tested formula for job creation and real economic growth that has succeeded EVERY TIME it has ever been tried.

My plan for job creation and economic growth follows a tried and tested formula that has succeeded EVERY TIME it has ever been tried! I’ll be blogging and talking about this a lot in the coming days and weeks, but the cornerstone of real prosperity is IMMEDIATE TAX RELIEF.

December 3, 2009, in a post titled "Jobs Grow When Washington Gets Out of the Way:

Job creation is the one thing our economy needs and the one thing Washington is hopelessly incapable of producing. They seem to think that a group of highly educated academics can engineer prosperity by forcing together labor, government and business.

And:

My friends, it really is this simple. Job creation requires nothing more from our government than a willingness to let it happen.

December 12, 2009:

Russ’ problem isn’t a lack of advice, nor a lack of good advice. Russ’ service to Missouri is service to Big Government and the politically connected. Every problem has one answer “let government control it.” The only advice he needs for jobs is to get government out of the way, advice he has been ignoring his whole career.

So when Martin said "get government out of the way," he actually meant create a Works Progress Administration with federal funding to help improve our country's infrastructure?

January 27:

While I support calls to freeze spending, President Obama’s words again are already out of tune with his action. He is freezing only certain spending. He plans to keep spending billions overseas even as Americans struggle here at home. Given that he is already engaging in sleight of hand, how can we believe the most profligate spender in American history or his free-spending, rubber-stamping congressmen like Russ Carnahan will change?

Hmm, how exactly does one "freeze spending" while creating a new Works Progress Administration?

And, as recently as June 29:

Nothing about this is surprising. Tea party activists all across the nation warned against the $787 billion dollar stimulus. We knew from managing our own financial lives that America cannot borrow and spend its way into prosperity. The Federal government has no money of its own to waste, it can only take it from the private sector – or in this case obligate. Billions in spending will, like night follows day, lead to billions in taxes.

And:

The only thing that can save America is Americans. We need congress to stop spending, reduce regulation, relax taxes and undo legislation that has been signaling businesses that the Federal government is going to punish their efforts to prosper with higher taxes and increased red tape.

The idea that Ed Martin has always supported a WPA is a laughable joke. This is a desperate move on his part because he realizes that aligning himself with fringers like Durbin, Hennessy, and Loesch is not going to win an election in the 3rd District.

Dana Loesch Calls Victim of Alleged Assault a "Pansy" Who Should Be Slapped and Thrown Through Glass

Last week, campaign staffer Sean Bell filed a police report claiming he was slapped, forced to strip, and told he was going to die by Missouri Republican Representative and tea party favorite Brian Nieves (who also reportedly used the N-word repeatedly during his tirade). Nieves was infuriated because he believed Bell was responsible for an email sent out claiming that Nieves had had affairs with several lobbyists while he was in the Missouri House. In a amazing catch by FiredUp Missouri, Loesch reacted to this incident by saying that if Bell was responsible for the email, "in my opinion, you deserve to be slapped, that's just my opinion, and like Michelle, I'd have probably thrown him through a window too. I don't think that's cool. And then don't gripe about it and whine about it like a pansy."

You can listen here (crazier-than-normal comments start at about 1:30):



As noted by FiredUp, Loesch inexplicably claims that Bell was a "Democratic Operative" from "the Beltway." You can also check out two longer audio clips at the original FiredUp post that are pretty nuts.

Shameful! Ed Martin Touts Endorsement from Racist AZ Sheriff

Ed Martin is now bragging about an endorsement from Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known nationally for his endorsement of racial profiling, for his support from neo-Nazis, for the deplorable conditions of his jails, and for his willingness to abuse power to terrorize political critics.

I believe the first person to report on this is Clark at Show Me Progress.

Sean at FiredUp Missouri and Chad Garrison at The Riverfront Times both add a lot of disturbing details about Arpaio's background (you can see the photo where Arpaio poses with a neo-Nazi at the RFT site).

Disgusting!

Durbin's Latest FiredUp! Conspriacy

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.

FiredUp asks MO GOP to "Define Unpopular"

FiredUp Missouri, as only they can, squarshed another pathetic claim by the Missouri Republican Party today. The GOP claimed that Senator McCaskill was supporting an "unpopular public option." But, as FiredUp points out, people favor the inclusion of a public option at a level of 57% in support and 40% opposed:

Image Credit: FiredUp

Not only that, but support has been growing steadily since August. Read the whole hilarious post here.