GIGLI Cofounder Ennenbach Bizarrely Accuses Me of "Hacking"

Remember GIGLI, the completely ineffective astroturf group formed after there was a split in the St. Louis Tea Party?  They have now completely given up on pretending to be a real "grassroots" group and haven't posted anything new on Twitter for over a month.  And recall that unlike the St. Louis Tea Party which actually did organize rallies with hundreds of people in their prime, GIGLI hasn't done anything to show they could organize themselves out of a paper bag.  But they don't need to because the St. Louis media will dutifully pretend they're an actual group without requiring them to establish any credentials.

Anyway, that's all just a long aside to introduce the latest bizarre conspiracy theory about me.  GIGLI co-founder Jen Ennenbach is bizarrely suggesting that I'm "hacking" her Twitter account.  Why? I have no idea, but we can be sure that they'll never provide any evidence to back up the claim, just like they don't with their nutty "SEIU blogger" conspiracy theories.  Anyway, here's the absurd tweet:

New Right-wing Bullying Campaign #VetTheCensors Kicks Off With, What Else? Homophobic Slurs

A certain 97.1 talk show host, Breitbart.com editor, and CNN contributor has decided to use her national media platform to wage a bullying campaign against me by pestering the university I attend. Despite the fact that I'm not even talking about her and haven't for a long time, she used her radio program and Twitter feed to encourage people to harass my school without knowing what they're talking about, and the results were entirely predictable given her past history of generating death threats against college professors based on dishonestly edited audio clips.

First, Quincy, IL's Parker Lee "Chip" Gerdes, a collaborator of hers who previously threatened to slash my tires, picked up on her "ponytail" and "TA" language about me to push some homophobic jokes:

Then co-founder of the Gateway "Grassroots" Initiative Jen Ennenbach said that I was "heterophobic."

And Brooks Bayne, a creepy dude obsessed with the pernicious influence of "Jewish socialism", who is documented promising to work with the 97.1 host to harass my school, also made some bizarre sexual jokes:

Yup, just another day of smearing private citizens for this CNN contributer. Only this time, she's picking on someone who knows her game.

Gateway Astroturf Initiative Badmouthing Tea Party To Other Conservative Groups, Claiming They Have "Alchohol Problems"

Jen Ennenbach, one of the co-founders of the new Gateway Astroturf Initiative (aka GIGLI), previously wrote the following about the St. Louis Tea Party:

For a movement that screams ”transparency, transparency, transparency!!!!” I certainly see none here. I see: Executive Director who was recently seated to the Board which stroked her ego; an unemployed lawyer, Benjamin Smith Williams (aka Ben Evans), who holds his Bar in New York, not Missouri, but still likes to act as legal counsel here; a loose cannon, John Burns who has been out of the Tea Party movement for over a year; another huge-headed blogger who likes to distort truth and is too chickenshit to put his name to half of what he publishes (Darin Morely); Co-founder Bill Hennessy, standing by silently, but driving this all behind the scenes.

But it looks like what she's saying about them behind their backs is even worse. Here's a message from Ennenbach to C. Steven Tucker, a leader of the Chicago Tea Party:


So very classy of Loesch's group to publicly pretend to be staying above the fray while privately smearing their former friends.

Whoops! Loesch's New "Grassroots" Group Lies About Cutting and Pasting Astroturf Mission Statement

So if you were going to announce that you'd just launched a new "grassroots" organization, wouldn't you at least bother to write your own mission statement? Not if you're Dana Loesch, who lost track of all meaning of "grassroots" and "astroturf" long ago.

Loesch's new group, which calls itself the Gateway Grassroots Initiative, has a "mission statement" entirely composed of nationally-coordinated snippets from Tea Party Patriots language used by outlets around the country.

You can see a copy of their mission statement here:



It reads, in part:

Mission Statement

Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize fellow Gateway area citizens to secure a culture consistent with our three core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.

Core Values

• Fiscal Responsibility
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets

Fiscal Responsibility: A fiscally responsible government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of his or her own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. The runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington...

...and so on. A quick google search reveals that this exact same language (except for the "gateway" part) is used by numerous tea party groups across the country. If you pick pretty much any phrase in the group's mission statement, you'll see that it was used by many groups across the country. Interestingly, they don't all use the exact same language: they pick and choose what they want to cut and paste.

It's pretty clear that there's national coordination on the messaging of these mission statements. Because so many groups use it, it's not easy to see who's in charge, but several of the groups specifically refer to the Tea Party Patriots, a national astoturf group that has a mission statement basically identical to that of Loesch's new group:


Tea Party Patriots has been explicitly linked to former GOP congressman Dick Army's astroturf group FreedomWorks and was caught distributing a memo telling tea partiers how to disrupt town halls. So this mission statement appears to be straight from national astroturf organizations.

Maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if the group just admitted that they didn't write their own mission statement. However, ridiculously, they are claiming that they wrote it themselves. My interaction with Jen Ennenbach, one of the founders of the new group:




It's pretty embarrassing for them to claim that they just spontaneously came up with the exact same language as hundreds of other tea party groups around the country including a national astroturf organization. But I expect there will be many more embarrassing moments to come for this group.

Update: The group is even more astroturf than I realized.

The GGI group argued on Twitter that the statement wasn't astroturf because the guy who wrote the mission statements for the national group is actually the same guy who copied and pasted GGI's statement. In fact, Scott Boston on Twitter claims he wrote the original Tea Party Patriots statement, and I believe him. But this makes it even more astroturf, not less, because it turns out that Boston used to be an employee of the astroturf organization Tea Party Patriots! From his Linked In profile:

National Education Coordinator
Tea Party Patriots

• Identified and evaluated training materials for local organizers and coordinated distribution of materials from such organizations as Leadership Institute, American Majority, Heritage Foundation, National Center for Constitutional Studies and Encounter Books.
• Lead Coordinator 9/12 St. Louis, one of three large regional rallies that drew 15,000 - 20,000 people to the Gateway Arch, July-September 2010. Identified and secured speakers and entertainers. Wrote press releases, did radio and TV interviews, created content for the event website.
• Volunteer Liaison to Glenn Beck’s Staff, Restoring Honor Rally, July-August 2010.
• Traveled to Tennessee and Arizona to meet with regional coordinators, May 2010.

So yeah, so one of the "grassroots" group's founders was an employee of a Dick Army affiliated national astroturf group. Another, of course, is a CNN pundit and radio host. I look forward to their future lectures about the true meaning of grassroots.

Update on St. Louis Tea Party Civil War

Bill Hennessy's wife Angela has written a new blog post defending Bill Hennessy from the Loeschbot attacks. As I suspected, Bill did most of the legwork on starting up the local tea party (though certainly with help from others), and probably would have been justified in just calling himself the founder rather than the co-founder, but graciously extended the title to Dana Loesch to help attract a different audience. Here's what Angela Hennessy had to say:

I know that I am shocked at the shameful display of infighting and hypocrisy. I am confused as to how people that I have called my friends can, at a moment’s notice, decide to pretend as if I don’t exist. I’ve let you into my home, my life, and have called you friend and without warning I am a nonentity. The end result is the establishment, political machine has fired up its work in discrediting the Tea Party, and those involved. I was, and am broadsided by this. This alone, speaks volumes about character.
I know that my husband has worked tirelessly for this organization, which he began. So we are clear, the creation of the St. Louis Tea Party in Feb. 2009 was wholly due to him; it began with a blog post. I know that he enlisted the help of many people and has called them friends and co-founders, and they are. They agreed, after being contacted by him, to stand hand in hand on the banks of the Mississippi River on that fateful day. The St. Louis Tea Party, the community, and my husband are forever in their debt. That being said, I find it disingenuous that Mrs. Loesch believes her meteoric rise has not been helped by the St. Louis Tea Party and all of us who have supported and stood behind her—but I digress.

You can read the whole thing here.

In other breakup news, the Official Dana Loesch Fan Club (aka Jimi971 on Twitter) released a statment saying that Loesch is so principled and so famous that she could walk across the Mississippi River if she wanted to, which she doesn't. Oh, and he thinks that this quote in the original tea party press release was a horrible, mean-spirited insult:

The St. Louis Tea Party certainly benefited from Dana’s rising stardom and talent. And we can’t help but think our energetic and effective grass roots have propelled Dana’s career.

The nerve of some people!

Jen Ennenbach really elevated the discussion with this post:

For a movement that screams ”transparency, transparency, transparency!!!!” I certainly see none here. I see: Executive Director who was recently seated to the Board which stroked her ego; an unemployed lawyer, Benjamin Smith Williams (aka Ben Evans), who holds his Bar in New York, not Missouri, but still likes to act as legal counsel here; a loose cannon, John Burns who has been out of the Tea Party movement for over a year; another huge-headed blogger who likes to distort truth and is too chickenshit to put his name to half of what he publishes (Darin Morely); Co-founder Bill Hennessy, standing by silently, but driving this all behind the scenes.

Finally, for those who are really into this stuff, Loesch was interviewed by 97.1's Glover on Tuesday about the breakup. She basically said that she felt like she had emotionally left the tea party a long time ago. It seems clear from her discussion of this and her behavior afterward that she really doesn't care that much about leaving the group. Just like the times she decided to throw the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, Craig Mayhem, and Gina Loudon under the bus, she has no qualms about leaving the tea party once she decided it was no longer useful for her career.

Tea Party Civil War? Email Accounts Disabled! Logos To Be Discontinued?

From the batch of emails forwarded to me.

Doug Edelman:

For the record, the TEA PARTY isn’t slamming Jim Hoft. 4 individuals are.

Jen Ennenbach (the former St. Louis tea party spokesperson):

That is absolutely the case. These four (plus a Mr Mom stay at home blogger) have gone rogue, cut off all communication within the STLTPC core, disabled email accounts, stolen intellectual property, and LIED. . .all in the name of a candidate. Sad. Oh, also, Chris Loesch has requested an immediate cease of use on his logos. . .which include the St Louis Tea Party logo and the SOB (pirate looking) logo. So, if you have these up on any of your sites, please replace them with something else. He has never been compensated for the use of these.

Also, someone might want to clue John Burns into the fact that my email has changed since he disabled my old address, so I'm not receiving his rants, except through forwards from others.. . .but hey, he's not rational right now, how could we expect him to think straight?

Sounds pretty bad.

Jen Ennenbach: St. Louis Tea Party Should Be Called "The St. Louis Ed Martin Coalition"

Former St. Louis Tea Party spokesperson Jen Ennenbach on her blog Cry Liberty:

It seems the Board of the St Louis Tea Party Coalition have hijacked the organization, and divided the movement, all in the name of a candidate. They should legally change their name to “The St Louis Ed Martin Coalition”...

(I guarantee you Darin [Morley] or Bill [Hennessy] doesn’t have the stones to pull this one over to the site!)

Highly Credible Tea Party Claims They Were Assaulted At McCaskill Event - Updated

I know this is going to come as a shock, but the St. Louis Tea Party has decided that, rather than talking about the actual issues, they'd rather scream that there was a OMGZ #BLOODBATH ASSAULTZ!!! at a recent McCaskill event. The incident wasn't caught on video, and the claim is apparently based entirely on the testimony of Jen Ennenbach, who says that two large men were "somehow standing on her legs:"

Finally, the second man went for John’s camera and in a final push, knocked John into me and I was then slammed into the wall, hitting my head and shoulder, and somehow had two men standing on my legs.

Ennenbach called the event a "bloodbath" on Twitter:

And the story was pushed by, of course, Ed Martin:


Since this entire story is based on the claims of Ennenbach, I thought it might be helpful to share some of her other recent blog posts. My favorite is a post I affectionately call "I Saw a Military Truck! Martial Law is Coming!!!"

I noticed lately, that I had been seeing an unusually higher number of military convoys with large/ heavy equipment moving through both Illinois and Missouri as of late, but never really gave it a second thought. . .that is until I ran across THIS today:

Now I want to know what is really going on. . .far too many reports to be pure coincidence! Why the secrecy? Are we gearing up for the 10 year anniversary of 9/11? Preparing for Libya? Is Martial Law about to be enacted?

If it is the latter, I’m headed out to stock up on water, batteries and toilet paper. . .you can never have too much!

She also had a nice post titled The FED Will Take Over ALL Communication on 11-9-2011!!!

After the shooting in Arizona, Ennenbach declared that this was the beginning of "civil war."

She also declared that Carnahan's victory over Ed Martin was the result of a conspiracy and claimed that her phone lines were tapped.

I'm also pretty sure that during the Prop B debate, she tweeted that a Prop B supporter jumped over her fence and punched her dog before disappearing into the night, but I'll have to track down the screen shot to make sure of that.

Yeah, so maybe, just maybe, the tea party and sketchy politicians like Martin should exercise some caution before declaring this a brutal beatdown.

Update: As if on cue, Ennenbach now claims that "progressive thugs" have hacked her Twitter account, apparently being especially sneaky by using the exact same spam that every other spam account uses:

Tea Party Spokeswoman Thinks It's Really Funny When Political Opponents Die

Jen Ennenbach, spokesperson for the St. Louis Tea Party, thought it was extremely funny that renowned U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke died after surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. This is what Ennenbch tweeted:

Meanwhile, caring and decent human beings reflected on Holbrooke's life:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Holbrooke one of America's "fiercest champions and most dedicated public servants."
"Richard Holbrooke served the country he loved for nearly half a century, representing the United States in far-flung war zones and high-level peace talks, always with distinctive brilliance and unmatched determination," Clinton said.

Holbrooke served under every Democratic president from John F. Kennedy to Obama in a lengthy career that began with a foreign service posting in Vietnam in 1962 after graduating from Brown University, and included time as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., called the loss of Holbrooke "almost incomprehensible," adding that his "tough-as-nails, never-quit diplomacy" saved tens of thousands of lives.

This actually isn't a first for Ennenbach, who earlier thought that it would be really funny if I choked to death.

h/t Sean Milford.

Jake Wagman Fails As a Reporter

During the elections, I was mildly critical of Jake Wagman's puppy love of Ed Martin and unprofessional vendetta against Congressman Russ Carnahan. But after seeing his pattern of lazily reprinting Ed Martin press releases continue even after the election, it's now obvious that Wagman can no longer be considered a trustworthy source of information. Wagman's bias combined with the fact that he really just does not work very hard at his job creates a putrid mix: people who rely on him for news will for all practical purposes be less informed than those who ignore the Post-Dispatch entirely, because they'll be getting their information through a filter that's too blinded to get both sides and too lazy to check facts. I saw Wagman on election night and he told me that he doesn't take any criticism personally because it's just part of the business. He's right. It's not personal. He's just a bad reporter.

The latest example of Wagman's desperate plea for approval from "cool kid" Ed Martin is his "report" (read: paraphrasing what Ed Martin told him on the phone) about the security firm hired by the St. Louis City Board of Elections. The story is that a security firm hired by the Democratic chairman of the board was not voted on by the rest of the board, and that other members had complained about the decision. Now, this certainly seems like a reasonable news story and there's nothing wrong with passing this info on to the public (although it's an interesting choice considering just how much important information floats by Wagman as he's "busy" tweeting about the Cardinals and writing his 1 or 2 blog posts a day). But what's particularly defective about the story is the information that Wagman leaves out, which naturally plays into Ed Martin's story of a "cheated election." Wagman starts off his article with a false dichotomy:

When Republican congressional hopeful Ed Martin complained that the St. Louis Board of Elections hired a security firm that had worked for his opponent, it was easy to dismiss his concern as sour grapes by a candidate who lost a close election.

But e-mails obtained by the Post-Dispatch show that the chairman of the Election Board, a Democrat, hired the firm despite the objections of other board members, including a warning about the perception of a conflict of interest.

Actually, Ed Martin knew on Wednesday, November 3rd, that there were not enough disputed votes to change the election results, but he nevertheless refused to concede until the following Monday. So whether or not there was a dispute about hiring someone at the Election Board, it clearly was "sour grapes" for Ed Martin to wait a full week to concede, while sending out his tea party followers to scream "Voter Fraud!" and "Stolen election!" and generally to try to create the impression that something was untoward about the election (BTW, Wagman was also too lazy to note that the exact same people screaming outside of the Board of Elections were the Ed Martin supporters at his press conference). But more importantly, the fact is that two people in plain clothes "hanging out in the lobby" (which is all that's alleged) obviously had nothing to do with the outcome of an election that Carnahan won by 4,500 votes. Yet nowhere in Jake Wagman's article does he mention that this had no bearing on the election results, which is what Ed Martin was implying from the beginning.

Furthermore, compare Wagman's breathless "reporting" on Ed Martin's pet story with an election where one might actually have reason to question the results. Democratic State Senate candidate Barbara Fraser lost by less than 180 votes, while Washington University students in that district were apparently illegally purged from voter rolls and denied provisional ballots. The St. Louis Beacon reported on this. The local public radio reported on this. But Jake Wagman was too busy tweeting about the Cardinals. Or maybe Barbara Fraser just didn't seem "cool" enough for him. Either way, the fact remains that while Wagman pushed Ed Martin's bogus "voter fraud" story in an election that was decided by 4,500 votes, he completely ignored an election decided by 180 votes with numerous reports of disenfranchised voters.

Now, I suspect Wagman is the type of reporter who'd rather repeat the beltway tripe that "if you're getting criticism from both sides you must be doing a good job" than actually honestly consider any criticism. In fact, he'd probably use my criticism to try to pretend how objective he is. But if he does subscribe to that view, then what does it say about him that the St. Louis Tea Party (which says that the NAACP is "racist," that NPR needs to be defunded, that Fox News, Andrew Breitbart, and James O'Keefe are "objective journalists," etc.) has had nothing but glowing praise for Wagman for the past two months of election coverage? Consider:





Honestly, if you go two months of election coverage getting nonstop praise from a tea party that bases its whole philosophy on the Andrew Breitbart/ James O'Keefe model, you might want to reconsider your standing as a journalist. And there are so many other examples of Wagman's bias in this past election. He refused to ask Ed Martin certain questions, even when Charlie Brennan noted that Martin was being evasive. He didn't get quotes from the Carnahan campaign and from Democratic officials on many occasions. He would refuse contact from Democratic officials on multiple occasions. He wouldn't bother to get quotes from relevant parties during smear pieces on Carnahan. He refused to ask how the tea party was funded. He refused to ask what role St. Louisan John Burns played in James O'Keefe's plan to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter. He was too lazy to point out the St. Louis Tea Party's support of Roy Blunt, reported by his own colleague Tony Messenger, or to point out that their "criticism" of Blunt lasted approximately 2 days, exactly as much time as it took to get written up in the Post-Dispatch. And on...and on....and on.

Now, just to be clear, it's not quite as simple as saying that Wagman has a "Right-wing bias." In fact, Wagman has Democratic politicians he sucks up to just as much as Martin. His main criteria seems to be trying to impress the members of the good old boys club. But this sucking up to power comes at the expense of good journalism, and prevents him from doing the kind of honest reporting that is needed for a well-functioning democracy.

I realize that it's not a great idea to be so critical of a reporter at the only major daily newspaper in town. However, sometimes it's better to get things out in the open that many people are willing to say only in private. The reality is that Jake Wagman does not do a adequate job covering politics. St. Louis deserves better.

Will St. Louis Tea Party Challenge Senator Earmark? Doubtful.

(Bill Hennessy wearing a Roy Blunt sticker at the primary celebration)

I noted a while ago how the St. Louis Tea Party, unlike other tea party groups around Missouri, was completely unwilling to support conservative primary challengers to Washington insider and Big Spender Roy Blunt. In fact, many of them admitted they supported Blunt in the primary. The St. Louis tea party tried to justify this by claiming that Blunt was a new man and "had gotten the message" from them. However, when Blunt was recently asked by the Wall Street Journal if he had changed at all over the past five years, he basically said no:

He waves the query away with, "Hey, well, I've been a pretty conservative member of congress," and then he changes the subject.

In other words, their claims that Blunt was somehow a new man were ridiculous, as anyone could have predicted.

And given that Blunt beat Carnahan by a whopping 13 percentage points in a year where basically any Republican would beat a Democrat in a statewide race, it's pretty safe to say that, ironically, the St. Louis Tea Party actually prevented a tea party candidate (Chuck Purgason) from being elected to the Senate.

What remains to be seen, however is whether they will attempt to exert any pressure whatsoever on Blunt. The tea party has expressed strong support for an earmark ban. Cofounder Dana Loesch, for example, has criticized both Senators McConnell and Inhofe on their support of earmarks:

As far as I know, however, she hasn't said anything about Roy Blunt. Jen Ennenbach, described as the "spokesperson" for the St. Louis tea party, has said she "hopes" Roy Blunt will support the ban:

However, their suggestions, or rather "hopes," are unlikely to be taken very seriously. Roy Blunt has been dubbed "Mr. Earmark" and, more recently, "Senator Earmark." It seems unlikely he will even address the "hopes" unless the tea party makes a lot of noise.

And, for a couple of reasons, it doesn't seem like a good idea for them to press the issue. First of all, doing so would likely remind people of just what an un-teaparty like candidate they supported in Missouri, when genuine alternatives were available. And second, their pushing the issue of earmarks would likely reveal just how truly weak they are, as Blunt would almost surely ignore them.

Either way, it should be an interesting six years.

Tea Party's Latest Employee: Birther, Law-Breaker, and Openly Wishing for Me to Choke to Death

Meet Jen Ennenbach, the St. Louis tea party's new spokeswoman. She's a birther:


She likes breaking the law:


And, most interesting of all from my perspective, she thinks it would be really funny if I choked to death (BTW, I've never met or spoken to her in my life):


She also thinks it would be great to kick Senate candidate Chris Coon in the Adam's apple (that is, assuming he's enough of a MAN to have one...High Five!):


And who knows what's up with this tweet?


Is she calling a black man racist just because he disagreed with her on policy? Whaaaa?

Anyway, she should fit right in with the rest of the gang.