John Freakin Loudon Was "Not Far Right Enough" for Brunner

John Loudon, the original tea partying, right-to-work-for-less pushing, friend of the National Organization for Marriage who said that gay people should just quit complaining and move to a state that allows gay marriage, had a post last week saying that he was "not far right" enough for Missouri GOP Senate candidate John Brunner. Well, technically, Loudon said he wasn't far right enough to accept Brunner's father's offer to go as a delegate for Pat Buchanan to the RNC in San Diego, but since the younger Brunner was Buchanan's state chairman in Missouri, ipso facto the same reasoning should apply. If you're too far right for John Loudon, well then you're just too darn far right.

Here's what Loudon had to say:

For those conservatives wondering about John Brunner, I can tell you this. His father picked me to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1996. I turned down the trip to San Diego and the chance of a lifetime because I was not as far right as Jack Brunner who was requesting that I serve as a delegate for Pat Buchanon. .

Confirmed! John and Gina Loudon Were Kicked Out of the St. Louis Tea Party

In the past, I've written several times that there appeared to be serious rifts between Gina Loudon and the rest of the St. Louis Tea Party. First, someone left an anonymous comment on my blog suggesting that there were tensions between Dana Loesch and Gina Loudon, and right around that time Bill Hennessy said that a tea party member needed to be (metaphorically) "beheaded." Later, I noted that Loesch had bitterly suggested on Twitter that Gina Loudon wasn't an "actual St. Louis Tea Party organizer."

Today we have confirmation of the rift, and of the fact that Gina Loudon and her husband John Loudon were kicked out of the St. Louis Tea Party. On a discussion on Vanessa Roman's facebook wall, Ed Reggi made the following comment (I'll post the full quote + screenshot below):

For the record, Dana (who I sort of knew prior to her going Tea Party global) has NEVER said one homophobic thing. If anything she has always come across (to me) as very non-judgmental ...in the area of LGBT. However, I will suggest Chris plenty of other "Tea Party" folks, like Dr. Gina Loudon and her husband, do come across very much anti-gay and homophobic. Dr. Gina Loudon and her husband, former Sen. John Loudon both supported the recent National Organization for Marriage rally held in Clayton. NOM (as it is known) is a political organizational front for mostly fundamental christian members to send their tax-free donations out-of-state to help create anti-LGBT legislation under the guise of democracy and patriotism. Their recent $1 million effort helped oust three Iowa Supreme court justices all because they did their jobs granting same-sex couples the freedoms of marriage supported by the Iowa Constitution. Not only did these three Judges do their job by protecting a minority from the tyranny of the majority, it was an unanimous ruling was made by a 7 justice panel appointed mostly by previous Republican Governors -- ironic no?

In response to this, Chris Loesch, Dana's husband (who also is a central member of the St. Louis Tea Party), replied:

You can see a full shot of that conversation and it's context here:

The tea party did a good job covering up the rift, but now there's no doubt that it's real. Of course, that doesn't stop "Dr. Gina" from advertising herself as a St. Louis tea party member:

Gina Loudon: Don't Worry About Healthcare Cause There's Pie In the Sky When You Die

St. Louis tea party leader Gina Loudon had a post up on Big Journalism responding to a recent evisceration of Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair by Michael Joseph Gross. While most of Loudon's points were irrelevant to the central claims of the article, it's true that much of Gross's article is based on anonymous sources. It seems pretty clear that the way people react to the article will be based mostly on their preexisting political beliefs, or on how much they trust the author and/or publication to do good work (although I should note that Gross does provide pretty damning new information about Palin's frivolous shopping habits with campaign money and it seems like a lot of the claims, such as his suggestion that she doesn't really hunt, could be easily disproved by the Palins if untrue).

But what I want to focus on is this quote from Loudon in her post:

I do agree with you on one thing, Mr. Gross. You said that “Her talk of leading with ‘a servant’s heart’ is a dog-whistle for the born-again. Her dig at health-care reform as an expression of Democratic ambitions to “build a Utopia in the United States is practically a trumpet call (because the Kingdom of God is not of this earth), and perfection can be achieved only in the life to come.

Got that? While Gina Loudon and her husband John rake in the cash as Republican consultants, she wants to remind you to keep your head down, pray a lot, and don't worry about silly, unrealistic things like making sure your family has access to health care. After all, only the most naive idealists could possibly think that the United States, with the largest economy in the world, could provide its residents with affordable health care the way many other countries do. Yep, Gina reminds us all to "Work and pray, live on hay, cause there's pie in the sky when you die:"


(note to readers: I don't see this song as an attack on Christianity, but rather as an attack on a certain cynical way of using religion to keep people down)

Final Score: Equal Rights: 215, The Loudons: 40 (Photos and Video)

The National Organization of Marriage (NOM) held a rally in St. Louis yesterday as part of their nationwide bus tour claiming incoherently that two loving same-sex partners getting married would somehow destroy the family unit. In preparation for the rally, tea partier and former state senator John Loudon said that gay people should quit complaining and move to a state that allows gay marriage, and his wife Gina Loudon (also a tea party leader) compared the right for same sex partners to get married to a person marrying an animal.

Unfortunately for the Loudons, and fortunately for the rest of us, St. Louis sent a strong message yesterday that we believe in equal rights for all, including of course the right for same sex partners to get married. The NOM/Loudons' rally only attracted a puny crowd of about 40 (probably all from the bus), while the counter-protest (organized by PROMO, Faith Aloud, and Show Me No Hate) gathered at least 215 people (at one count: other people said that the crowd grew to over 300 later in the event). So there were at least 5 times more counter-protesters than there were protesters at NOM's event. Below are some photos from the pro-love side of the event, stolen from Ella:














Here's a Vital Voice article about the rally, and below is a Fox 2 video.

 

Nice job St. Louis! Even if it's maddeningly slow, we (and the rest of the country) are moving in the right direction!

Gina Loudon Compares Gay Marriage to Marrying Animals

FiredUp Missouri catches some obnoxious behavior from John and Gina Loudon. First, check out former State Senator John Loudon telling someone to move to Iowa if he doesn't like the law:

If you want gay marriage, keep the federal government out of it. Move to a State of your choosing, and live happily gayly married ever after. This crap of you leftists getting one judge to make laws really irritates the heck out of people who believe in the rule of law. It is disgusting that you people cannot learn from the past. Live by the sword, die by the sword. You leave no choice but a US Constitutional Amendment.

But Gina Loudon's blog post is even more obnoxious, in my opinion.

First, she suggests that thinking that there's a right for people to be able to marry same sex partners is similar to thinking that there's a right for someone to be able to "marry his horse." Here's her full quote:

So one should not be surprised that progressives who could find a Constitutional right to “privacy” buried deep in the penumbras of that precious document, could also find a Constitutional “right” for men to marry men or a man to marry multiple women for that matter. How about the right of a Missouri man who did his State proud by telling the BBC that he wanted to marry his horse?

Second, Gina Loudon appears to be threatening protesters in her update:

Update: The opposition plans to be out in protest ahead of our event at 5:30. It will be interesting to learn 1) if they secured permits and 2) if they will be permitted to protest without permits. See YOU there!

I thought Mrs. Loudon was the world's biggest propoment of free speech: now she's trying to stifle people's ability to celebrate the fact that loving couples can now be legally recognized?

Did Michelle Bachmann Stab The St. Louis Tea Party in the Back?

A few months ago, the St. Louis tea party was going nuts hyping up their new Ensuring Liberty Caucus, which was purportedly designed to, "address the Federal Government's continual encroachment on our personal liberties by focusing on the ballot box." The "caucus" was even mentioned in a goofy Playboy article that featured an anonymous K street lobbyist trying to make the tea party sound cool. At the time, former Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel remarked:

Follow the progress of Ensuring Liberty PAC -- which was launched four months ago at the first National Tea Party Convention -- and you wonder whether this piece is promotion for a project that hasn't been very influential yet.

It sure seems like Weigel's point was on the mark. As of me writing this, the front page on the Ensuring Liberty website features a video from May 11. The most recent post on the facebook page is from June 16 (or June 29, if you want to count the postings from board member Bill Hennessy). Their Twitter page has 9 people following it, 4 of whom are board members, and hasn't been updated since June 16. This group that is supposed to revolutionize the conservative movement hasn't even had their act together enough to send out a tweet in the last month.

But what's really got to smart is that it appears their trophy congressperson, Michelle Bachman, is jumping ship. The Ensuring Liberty Caucus was designed to be a caucus in the U.S. Congress. Here's what the web site says:

With these principles to guide us, we have assembled a group of leaders currently serving in Congress to hear our voice and keep our First Principles. They are the Ensuring Liberty Caucus.

Michelle Bachman and Steve King of Iowa were apparently supposed to be a couple of the members, as they were the participants in the first (and only) Ensuring Liberty "Virtual Townhall."

But now Bachman released a press release saying she's starting her own tea party caucus in the House of Representatives. Her caucus is called the "Tea Party Caucus," rather than the "Ensuring Liberty Caucus," so it appears that she's avoiding the name already branded by Hennessy and others in the St. Louis and Quincy Tea Parties. If it is a different group, one has to wonder if Bachmann jumped ship after seeing the sad performance of the "Ensuring Liberty Caucus." If it's intended to be the same group, then it certainly speaks against any claim to being grassroots, since Bachmann's press release makes no mention of the Ensuring Liberty group or any actual "citizens" who played a role in the group's creation. Either way, it will be very interesting to see how much money was raised and where it's actually going.

Call Off the Buycott? Another Tea Party Media Stunt

Back in April, the St. Louis Tea Party called for a "buycott" of Ford because Ford was apparently the Last Great Patriotic American Car Company. The tea party was excited that Ford did not take funds from the U.S. government as did General Motors and Chrysler, and thus they considered it a True Paragon of Capitalism, smacking away the hand of the Oppressive Big Government who offered to help Ford stand up.

But, alas, this once noble Galtian company has apparently succumbed to the pernicious propaganda of the socialists trying to take over our country, because today it became official that Ford is going to receive $100 million in incentives from the state of Missouri. Apparently their desire to be ruggedly independent did not overcome their desire to get some nice freebies. Will the tea party now call off their "buycott" of Ford?

This reinforces once again that the buycotts put on by John and Gina Loudon and the St. Louis tea party are nothing more than p.r. stunts. The Whole Foods buycott was a joke, as evidenced by the fact that prominent tea party leaders were bragging about shopping at Trader Joes a few months later. You know, Trader Joes, the place that sells stuff that's similar to Whole Foods except cheaper? After their initial Whole Foods buycott and a few more p.r. opportunities, the Loudons forgot all about Whole Foods. And after sending their big press release about Ford, they forgot all about it too.

These campaigns are not designed to actually change anything. Or, if they are, they are being run by people with no ability whatsoever to actually have a significant economic impact. There's only one thing the buycotts are good at: they do a great job of getting publicity for the tea party, and more specifically for the Loudons.

Gladney is a Means to the Tea Party's Ends

I mentioned earlier this week how a former St. Louis tea party speaker expressed his disgust at the mentality in the St. Louis Tea Party that the "ends justify the means," because they see themselves as being "in a war." This of course fits perfectly with STL Tea Party cofounder Bill Hennessy's recent statement that the purpose of the group is to, "destroy the Left." I don't think there could possibly be a better example of how the tea party is willing to flippantly use people in their quest to "destroy the Left" than the way they've gone about trying to exploit the August 6 town hall fight between Kenneth Gladney and Elston McCowan. Gladney, McCowan, and Perry Molens have been used as nothing more than pawns in the tea party's cynical attempts to smear a multitude of political enemies.

Both McCowan and Gladney agree that the fight started after McCowan commented on the buttons Gladney was selling with fake pictures of President Obama smoking marijuana. Thus, the obvious thing to think would be that this was a simple escalation between two people who had a disagreement. Yet the tea party began raising money for Kenenth Gladney within two days of the incident, and just as quickly Gladney and his employer/lawyer/spokesperson David Brown bizarrely linked the incident to President Obama, calling for Obama and Congressman Russ Carnahan to "condemn the racist actions of these union thugs."

It's pretty strange that Gladney, who has described himself as not being very political before this event, would immediately decide to implicate two of the local Tea Party's favorite targets in the incident. Is it that much of a stretch to think that Gladney might have had a little tea party coaching behind this statement? However you answer that question is not particularly important, because I'm about to show you an overwhelming collection of evidence that demonstrates just how blatantly the tea party was willing to use this incident to try to attack strategic opponents on the left. I've assembled a helpful (but not complete, due to the fact that no human could possibly keep up with all of their misinformation) timeline of their pathetic attempts to link this incident to political opponents:

On August 7, one day after the fight, St. Louis tea party leader Bill Hennessy wrote that "[Congressman] Russ Carnahan’s SEIU thugs severely beat a conservative.”

Also on the 7th, Michelle Malkin suggested that Health and Human Services Chair Kathleen Sebelius's quote, "Keep doing what you're doing" was meant to encourage violence.

On Aug. 8, the tea party holds a rally outside of SEIU offices. Hennessy claims President Obama had “sent a signal” to supporters to be violent. The tea party put out chairs for the NAACP and ACLU and implied that they wouldn't support Gladney because he was a conservative.

August 9: Bill Hennessy says Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern “might as well have kicked Gladney himself.”

Aug 18: Friends of the tea party, along with Gladney and Brown, had a protest outside of the NAACP office, claiming that they only care about “liberal black people.” Only problem: they hadn’t even filed a complaint with the NAACP. They also shamelessly were protesting while the NAACP offices were closed to honor one of their recently deceased leaders.

Nov. 10: 97.1 Talk host and St. Louis tea party leader Dana Loesch suggests that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina was involved

Nov. 30: A post on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government (a national blog that patronizes the St. Louis Tea Party) claimed that HCAN national field director Margarida Jorge issued instructions that “inevitably led to violence.”

Dec 1: Also on Big Government, St. Louis Republican political operative John Loudon alleges that there is a conspiracy in the County prosecutors office that is holding up the filing of charges. Loudon writes, “In Pat Reddington’s St. Louis County it appears that “victim” is a status reserved for liberals, and “perpetrator” is a status reserved for conservatives.”

Also on Dec 1: Dana Loesch falsely accused County Counselor Patricia Reddington of “downgrading” the charge without looking at the medical records. Tea Party blogger Jim Durbin did the same. Neither apologized after it was revealed that Reddington had received a copy of the records from the hospital well before the charges were filed.

Dec. 2nd: Big Government adds several more people to their grand conspiracy theory: one of their favorites, Buffy Wicks, who was previously the OFA director in Missouri. Then comes the shocking revelation: “Sara Howard worked with Buffy Wicks on the Obama for America Campaign in Missouri and Sarah Howard worked at SEIU in St Louis. The day before the St. Louis town hall she was hired by Rep. Russ Carnahan.” The author of the post Larry O'Conner then goes after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch: “I think even the most casual observer can look at this and reach the conclusion that Mr. McCulloch brings with him a certain level of partisan bias when executing his duties as Prosecuting Attorney.”

Dec 23: Kenneth's brother Keith Gladney lost his job. Big Government alleges a massive conspiracy involving the local animal control department and SEIU: “Is it a coincidence that the same Prosecuting Attorney that Keith called out in his statement is also one of the highest ranking officials in the government structure that Keith worked for?”

Jan 12th: On Big Government, St. Charles Tea Partier Bob McCartny claims: “Keith Gladney’s firing appears to be an example of how Democrats, in the words President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff Jim Messina used on the day of the Kenneth Gladney beating, “punch back twice as hard” against those who oppose their socialist ways.”

Also on the 12th, Jim Durbin of 24th State suggested that Dolores Gunn, head of the St. Louis County Department of Health, was involved in this conspriacy and claimed that “ultimate responsibility lies with [St. Louis County Executive] Charlie Dooley." Amazingly, Durbin actually admitted he was wrong later, before moving on to another conspiracy theory.

April 16, Andrew Breitbart of Big Government accused former AFL-CIO President John Sweeny of issuing orders for violence.

So, just to recap, according to the St. Louis Tea Party/Big Government story, this massive government conspiracy created simply to get a few punches in on a random guy selling merchandise at a town hall in St. Louis, Missouri involves:
the president of SEIU, the president of the AFL-CIO, the President of the United States, Congressman Russ Carnahan, Carnahan’s spokesperson Sara Howard, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, former OFA Missouri Coordinator Buffy Wicks, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, Field Director of Health Care for America Now Margarida Jorge, Prosecutor Bob McCullough, St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Reddington, County Executive Charlie Dooley, the NAACP, the ACLU, the head of the St. Louis County Dept. of Health, and even the local animal control department. Now that's quite a conspiracy theory!

In reality, however, to call this a "conspiracy theory," is probably far too generous. I'm fairly confident that many of the primary people pushing these stories don't think for a second that all or any of these people played a meaningful role in the August 6 incident. Rather, the tea party and their patron Andrew Breitbart see this simply as a political weapon they can use against the people they hate. In fact, with as much as I've written in this post, I haven't even touched on the other way they milk this incident: by using it to deflect and dismiss all of the evidence of racist elements in the tea party. Whenever some incident is reported of racist behavior in the tea party, you can bet that Dana Loesch will be on Fox News the next day saying, "it's Democrats who beat up black men in parking lots."

Elston McCowan, Perry Molens, and Kenneth Gladney all have lives and families that will potentially be forever changed by this incident. Yet to the St. Louis Tea Party leadership and Big Government, they are nothing more than an excuse to take cheap shots at unions, Democratic politicians, and anyone else who stands in the way of their right-wing vision for the country. After all, this is a "war" for them, and the people who are harmed along the way can easily be written off as "collateral damage."

More Kevin Jackson on the Loudons

I wrote previously about how Kevin Jackson called St. Louis Tea Party leaders John and Gina Loudon, "the biggest two crooks in St. Louis." Jackson was a frequent speaker at Tea Party events, and was the emcee at last year's tea party rally on April 15 in Kiener Plaza. I've tracked down some additional comments from Jackson about the Loudons and his thoughts on the Ensuring Liberty Political Action Committee at the heart of the controversy.

First, after the initial Hillbilly Logic radio show where questions were raised about the Ensuring Liberty PAC, Jackson commented to "Hillbilly" Jay Stewart: He later added:

Jackson was also quite actively attacking the Loudons on his Twitter account:












Geez, you think Jackson is mad at his former publicist? One last note about the conflict. Someone named Clive Rangler commented on Kevin Jackson's post that Gina Loudon had been riding Dana Loesch's coattails to success.
Jackson responded by noting that this was happening while Loudon was supposed to be working as his publicist:

Jackson further added that the Loudons started it:

Wow. The tea party is usually pretty good about circling the wagons and trying not to let anything out to the public. But I guess when the cracks appear there's lot of animosity waiting to burst out!

Ed Martin Spins While Tea Party Fights...Itself!

Ed Martin, even after being corrected, is still amazingly trying to spin a ridiculous story about how Congressman Carnahan is "avoiding taxes" because Rep. Carnahan's co-owned, inoperable boat is docked in Alton. This takes an amazing amount of gall from Martin considering that his ruthless persecution of a whistle-blower as Chief of Staff for the Blunt administration cost the state of Missouri $2.1 million in taxpayer money! And he wasn't even done then: he later filed a lawsuit dismissed by a judge as frivolous, that even Martin himself described as a "nuisance"!

Also, it looks like Martin might have hitched his opportunistic wagon to the wrong horse. Members of St. Louis Tea Party are fighting amongst themselves over allegations about a new Political Action Committee. Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy called 97.1's Jamie Allman a "stammering, pausing idiot", Allman called Hennessy a "sad, psycho typist", and former tea party emcee Kevin Jackson called Tea Party leaders Gina and John Loudon "the biggest two crooks in St. Louis" (7). It's getting pretty wild, and it's not clear at all whether the tea party will be able or willing to address the issues underlying the allegations.

Bill Hennessy Dodges Ensuring Liberty Questions

As has been documented here, several prominent local conservatives, including 97.1 radio host Jamie Allman, author Kevin Jackson, and the Hillbilly Logic radio crew, have raised questions about the transparency of the St. Louis Tea Party's Ensuring Liberty PAC. This is on top of allegations a couple weeks ago from @JanSimpson that the tea party was using their organization to make money from political candidates.

St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy wrote a post in the last couple days purporting to explain the operations of the PAC. Here specifically is what he had to say about the monetary aspect:

Ensuring Liberty is a 501(c)4, and its affiliated PAC, the Ensuring Liberty PAC (ELPAC) were formed to address the next step in the growing impact of the conservative movement through issue advocacy, fund raising, candidate recruiting and most importantly, the development of a Congressional Caucus of like-minded representatives that stand for our First Principles.
As we have decided until primary issues have been resolved, the PAC has not yet been established, candidates have not yet been chosen and thus no money has yet been raised or distributed. Transparency for the PAC is required by FEC rules and will be followed to the letter and spirit of the law once established.

Here's what's interesting: Hennessy suggests that they haven't started raising any money for the PAC and thus there is nothing to be transparent about. However, this really dodges the issue, because the reality is that Ensuring Liberty has been raising money for their nonprofilt organization, even if they havn't been raising money for the PAC specifically. From their Ensuring Liberty website, you can see that they have a donations page set up already:
You can also see via their facebook page that they've been raising money for the nonprofit since March 19:


So did Hennessy really address the questions? It sure seems to me that the people asking questions were really interested in transparency for the organization in general, not just for one particular facet of it. Any of the problems you might have from raising money for a PAC would surely be at least as prevalent in raising money for a nonprofit corporation. Does Hennessy really not recognize this, or is he being deliberately opaque?

STL Tea Party Insider: A Tragedy is Unfolding

Twitterer @Jimi971, a close friend of Dana Loesch, was arguing over Twitter with Kevin Jackson after Jackson unleashed a series of highly critical comments about St. Louis Tea Party leaders Gina and John Loudon. A central part of Jackson's criticism is that the Loudons were misusing the new Ensuring Liberty PAC. Ensuring Liberty was also at the heart of the criticism directed at the St. Louis Tea Party by 97.1 radio host Jamie Allman and the Hillbilly Logic radio crew.

For the most part, the tea party has tried to keep very quiet about the allegations. Bill Hennessy posted a little information about the PAC (which is inadequate, as I'll explain in a future post), but in general the only discussion has been tea party members urging people not to talk about the issue in public. So it was especially interesting to see this comment from Mr. Jimi:

@Theblacksphere Ashamed? C'mon man? I think it's a tragedy unfolding and the damage it could do to a great cause, a great group. Not needed

So I'm a little confused. Why would this be a tragedy? It seems to me that all the St. Louis Tea Party would need to do is follow Jamie Allman's suggestion and no one would have anything to complain about. Here's what Allman said:

My solution is this and I'll present this to Bill and Gina. Let's see ALL the paperwork from the PAC and let's see ALL who contribute and let's see ALL who receive and let's see ALL receipts. Let's see it now and let's see a pledge to make it available to the public from here on out. That way innocent, hard working people will not be harmed by suspicion or innuendo. And that way good people who have the same expectations of the TP leadership as they do of the U.S government won't be smeared and threatened with lawsuits and otherwise trashed in this little game of high school.

I should just add: this shouldn't apply only to the PAC, but also to the many other ways in which the Tea Party generates income, from the $25,000 dollar Conservatives of America glorified website to the tea shirts and hats they sell to the Ensuring Liberty corporation. That's not too much to ask, right? If they're criticizing the government for a lack of transparency, then surely they can be transparent in their own organization?

Kevin Jackson: "Gina and John Loudon are the biggest two crooks in St. Louis"

Whoa! The infighting in the St. Louis Tea Party is getting pretty serious! Here's what Kevin Jackson, conservative author and frequent speaker at St. Louis Tea Party rallies, had to say on facebook today:

Gina and John Loudon are the biggest two crooks in St. Louis. Gina is saying that I hit on her (LOL!), spent her political capital (doesn't exist), and wrote part of my book (as if!). She was worthless as a publicist (a FRAUD), and they will do ANYTHING for money, including using their "chirrens!" You want war LOUDON, you GOT it! I can back ALL my words up!

Jackson was previously listed as a client for the Loudons' marketing firm Legacy Group of Missouri:

Jackson had more to say below:

They started a PAC, so they could rob good conservatives of their money. These people will be funding their LIVES with this money. EVERYTHING they do will fall under the "PAC." They will be like rogue salespeople with expense accounts! And they tried to hide the PAC, then made John Loudon the Chairman of the PAC! All associated with the St. Louis Tea Party, which they CLAIM is not political!!

Here are the screen shots:



h/t MOPNS.

California A.G. Report Exposes O'Keefe as a Fraud: Relevance for St. Louis

The Brad Blog has a detailed account of yesterday's California A.G. report that found "no violation of criminal law" on the part of ACORN in the phony right-wing story that claimed that ACORN was running a child prostitution ring, a story that ultimately destroyed the group. On the other hand, the report said that the facts presented, "strongly suggests that [James O'Keefe] and [Hannah Giles] violated state privacy laws." It's worth reading the whole blog post, but here are a few key findings:

O'Keefe never actually posed as a pimp, despite suggesting that he did.

The report said that O'Keefe, "did not act as a journalist."

O'Keefe and Giles's video critically relied on telling a story where Giles was actually trying to escape from an abusive pimp, and they were asking the ACORN workers to help.

The A.G. describes the videos by O'Keefe and Giles as "severely edited," which fits with the Brooklyn D.A.'s assessment that they were a "highly edited splice job."

Keep in mind that O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's campaign was designed specifically to take down ACORN because ACORN is an important liberal institution that has registerd tens of thousand of minority and low income voters. The right wing has been trying to destroy the organization for a number of years. So O'Keefe and Giles went into ACORN offices with a story specifically designed to provoke sympathy in normal feeling humans, then edited the tapes to make it look like the ACORN workers were encouraging prostitution. Breitbart (O'Keefe's employer) even suggested that ACORN was aiding and abetting child prostitution. And, for the most part, the right wing attack was successful, basically destroying through a completely fabricated story one of the few national groups that actually organized on behalf of the poor.

So what is the relevance for St. Louis politics? First, James O'Keefe is a close friend of John Burns, the faux leader of anti-public transportation group "Citizens for Better Transit." O'Keefe visited St. Louis a couple times to help with Burn's antics, and also was a speaker at a St. Louis Tea Party rally as well as a guest on Dana Loesch's show. O'Keefe was described as a "hero" by Gina Loudon, and Loudon, Loesch, and Bill Hennessy have all defended him after his arrest in New Orleans.

Furthermore, many St. Louis Tea Party members have connections to Andrew Breitbart. John Loudon, Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft, and Dana Loesch have all written for Breitbart's site Big Government. They regularly promote his stories, and he does so with theirs.

But more importantly, I think that if you really want to understand the guiding ethos of the St. Louis Tea Party, you should start by understanding Breitbart. The unethical and misleading tactics. The red-faced spittle attacks and argument-through-talking-louder approach to life. The "flipping the script" of constantly accusing liberals of racism and sexism while simultaneously complaining about political correctness. These are all the things Breitbart embodies, and the qualities that the St. Louis Tea Party leadership tries to emulate.

Tea Party "Honor"

St. Louis Tea Party Leader Bill Hennessy earlier today:

We Will Conduct Ourselves with Honor

We want as many people as possible with signs to demonstrate our values...

Anyone curious what "Tea Party values" and "Tea Party honor" look like?

Well, for one thing, it involves flying an American flag upside down (the flag right above Jim Durbin: click image to expand):

Apparently, it also involves impersonating members of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most important progressive institutions in the country and a leader in the fight for health care reform:
Bill Hennessy "honorably" posing with people dressed in SEIU shirts.



24thstate blogger Jim Durbin, who likes to offer tips on good blogging etiquette when he's not calling people with different political opinions "liars," "monsters," and "thieves" or libeling local prosecutors. Photo of Durbin from Gateway Pundit's site.

As far as I know, the only purpose of this gimmick was to try to annoy liberals. I'm personally not really that annoyed (unless I hear something about them trying to act obnoxious to make SEIU look bad), but I think this says volumes about the character of the tea party leaders. They claim that they will be acting with "honor" and then they spend their time impersonating and demonizing those they disagree with.

Who is CBT's John Burns?

Shortly after the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville Tennessee, a new group emerged in St. Louis dedicated to fighting against funding for public transportation in the St. Louis region. The misleadingly titled "Citizens for Better Transit" (CBT) was publicly represented by spokesperson John Burns, a relative newcomer to St. Louis politics. Despite the fact that Burns had no particular credibility and was using wildly misleading talking points (which I'll have to discuss at a different time), the local media has been quite wiling to treat him as the spokesperson for a legitimate group and to provide him with equal airtime to the pro-transit campaign. In this post and the following, I want to examine the recent political activities of John Burns characterized by the blatant use of misinformation, sketchy connections, and contempt for the LGBT community.

Burns' first appearance in the local media was in November when he built a gulag on the Wash U campus along with the Young Americans for Liberty. They passed out literature that claimed that we were approaching a gulag state because of things like AmeriCorps, child labor laws, and the civil rights act. There were only a small handful of actual students who participated in the rally, but Burns was among a number of right-wing activists with no affiliation with the university who came to campus for that day. Of particular note, James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, neither of whom even live in St. Louis, attended the event. Basel dressed up in the full uniform and was one of the main speakers, while James O'Keefe secretly videotaped conversations with Washington University administrators and then edited the tape to make it look like they had an agenda against YAL. Both can be seen in the following video (Basel is the guy with glasses and a bloody head arguing with students, Burns has the goatee, and O'Keefe is the person videotaping the administrators):

O'Keefe and Basel are best known at this point for being arrested under suspicion of maliciously tampering with the phone lines in Senator Mary Landreiu's office in New Orleans, but both had controversial careers before that point. Basel was reviled on the University of Minnesota campus after putting up fliers that read, "End Racism and Sexism Now: Kill all the White Males" and managing to offend the entire black student body so much during a speech that they all walked out while he was talking. O'Keefe, of course, was a right-wing hero for severely damaging the reputation of ACORN by using highly edited, decontextualized, and often blatantly false videos of his visits to ACORN offices across the country. Despite the fact that O'Keefe and his funder Andrew Breitbart have implied that ACORN is "running a child prostitution ring," investigators have repeatedly stated that ACORN employees did not break any laws. On the other hand, it was recently revealed that the right-wing media was blatently lying when they stated repeatedly that James O'Keefe was wearing a pimp outfit when he was in the ACORN offices. In many cases, the actual story O'Keefe told employees was that he was trying to protect Hannah Giles from a pimp. Of course, it's hard to know what the full story is because Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe refuse to release the full video tapes. As we'll see below, Burns' extensive involvement with these characters calls into serious question what his actual motives are.

But back to the original story: O'Keefe once again surreptitiously videotaped employees at the university and selectively edited the tape to try to imply that they had an agenda against the students (even with the editing, he didn't really get very good material). Burns then went all over the local right-wing media portraying himself as a leader of YAL and suggesting that they were victimized by a biased university. A member of YAL, however, claimed that Burns was not a member of the group. But that didn't stop Burns from claiming that the gulag was his idea and creating the group Campus Gulag.

A little later Burns again appeared in the right-wing media accusing Washington University of "fraud" because the university was charging the student group YAL for the costs of removing hammer and sickle graffiti that appeared on campus the same day as the display. Burns suggested it was fraud because the university used "mexican labor" to wash the graffiti off, and claimed that the students were innocent. Extremely interesting, however, is the fact that Burns repeatedly uses the specific phrasing that "students" did not put up the graffiti, which of course leaves open the possibility that Burns, O'Keefe, or Basel were the people who were spray-painting the university. Even more interesting, at the bottom of this page, Burns writes that people interested in helping "the students" can make a donation, and he directs them to the campusgulag.org page. Yet there's no place on the campus gulag page for donations that differentiates general donations from those made for helping "the students." Was Burns trying to make money for his own organization on the backs of the students at Washington University?

The next appearance of Burns is the most shameful, in my opinion. I wrote last week about how James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel attempted to disrupt the free speech of LGBT protesters at a rally in St. Louis. O'Keefe was in town to speak at a St. Louis Tea Party event. It's not entirely clear why Joseph Basel was accompanying him. But John Burns also attended the event with his two friends. Here's video of Burns conferring with O'Keefe and Basel at the start of the event:

Burns looks a little different without his goatee, but he was ID'd the day before at a tea party rally by Dana Loesch:

Later, you can see Burns trying to blend in with the crowd as O'Keefe and Basel are being disruptive:

Here's a screenshot in case you missed Burns:

And just to recap what I've written earlier, here's how O'Keefe, Basel, and Burns acted at the rally. First, as is seen in this video, Basel and O'Keefe blatantly disregarded police orders and the wishes of all of the protesters by standing in front of the line. At another point, O'Keefe and Basel push people out of the way (including a woman in a wheel chair) to make sure that they were at the front of the line. At another point, rally participants were handing out signs for the rally, and John Burns took one of the signs:

The trio then wrote "Free Abortions" on the sign and attempted to hold it up to the Catholics who were attending mass as the Basilica. They also shouted "what about health care?" while people were attempting to speak at the rally. In other words, John Burns, who presented himself as a fighter for free speech when complaining about the administration's response to the gulag, attempted to directly interfere with the LGBT community's ability to express themselves in a peaceful rally.

Now flash forward to the present. John Burns is now the head of an anti-transit group. As was detailed at the St. Louis Pushes Back blog, Burns was involved in planning meetings with the St. Louis Tea Party at the national Tea Party convention in Nashville, and it appears he was also planning with them the weekend before in Dallas. In particular, he was part of a group with noted anti-transit campaigner John Loudon. Also of interest, Burns again appeared in two pictures with his friend Joseph Basel at the conference. A few days after Nashville, the first anti-transit event kicked off, promoted only by the St. Louis Tea Party. The first meeting of the group was promoted by Tea Party member Gina Loudon.

Like most of the St. Louis Tea Party activities, the anti-transit groups strategy appears to be based on repeating falsehoods and misleading information over and over. As one example, Burns recently wrote a misleading op-ed for the Wash U newspaper where he failed to identify himself as a nonstudent and as the spokesperson for CBT and put forward a number of misleading claims. I'll have to analyze the arguments at a later time. But for now, I'd just like to summarize some of the specifics about anti-transit group CBT's leader John Burns:

Burns is closely connected with James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, two people arrested in Louisiana under suspicion of maliciously interfering with the government phone lines.
As someone with no affiliation with Washington, Burns claims to have organized the campus gulag which compared AmeriCorps, labor laws, and the civil rights act to totalitarian communism.
He claimed he organized the events, but members of the student group claimed he's not part of the group and that it was their event that he was merely helping out with.
Burns's group secretly recording Washington University employees and used highly edited tapes to try to claim that the University was "biased" against conservatives.
Someone from the event vandalized the grounds of Wash U, and Burns accused the university of "fraud" for asking the group to pay for the cleanup.
Burns tried to raise money for his own group while claiming to help out "the students."
Burns, along with O'Keefe and Basel, maliciously interfered with an LGBT protest.
They wrote "free abortions" on signs trying to deliberately lie about the protesters message.
They refused police orders, and then pushed people out of the way to make sure they could be front and center at the rally.
They ignored the polite requests of protesters to stop interfering.
Burns wrote an op-ed for a student newspaper refusing to identify himself as the head of an anti-transit organization

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I'll have a lot more to say about this in the near future, but for now I think there are a lot of questions people (and especially reporters) should be asking Burns about his background.

Typical Teabagging: John Loudon Accuses St. Louis DA of Massive Coverup Based on No Evidence

Former Republican State Senator John Loudon today wrote a piece for Big Government accusing St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough of a massive cover-up of a "gang assault" during the August 6 altercation between Kenneth Gladney and Elston McCowan. As I detailed yesterday, the facts about the case are still in question, and the only evidence the teabaggers have is the testimony of their own members, and their testimony is inconsistent with the video. But that doesn't stop Loudon from suggesting a massive government cover-up that can be linked to everyone from President Obama to HCAN director Margarida Jorge to St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley. If you believe the teabaggers, this appears to be a cover-up conducted by every single member of the Democratic Party.

A couple things to say about Loudon's blog post. First, he can't write. How the hell did this guy get elected to be a State Senator? Second, and more to the point, it is absolutely absurd that he would accuse a public official of a cover-up (even going so far as to compare the county officials to mobsters from the movie Goodfellas) based on no credible evidence. Does Loudon know what other investigation has gone into the case? Does he know that there are at least four other people at the scene who have testimony that would probably be directly at odds with that of the teabaggers? Does he realize that this would mean that there are four people who tell the teabagger side of the story, and four who tell a different story and absolutely no material evidence? In fact, the police report notes that Gladney has *no* facial injuries.

This post is a great example of what would happen if teabaggers ruled the world. They have no respect for allowing the legal system to work cases out on their own. They rush to judgments based on flimsy evidence from people who share their political beliefs, and ignore all else. In fact, they're willing to leak police reports and information to national media outlets in blatant attempts to bias the public about the case. If I were McCullough or Dooley, I would sue Loudon for libel. I would also investigate who leaked the police report to Glenn Beck. It is disgraceful that the local teabaggers are trying to subvert the justice system, and someone should put a stop to it.