Nearly Two Years Later, Tea Party Finally Admits Gladney Wheelchair Was a Prop

It's been really funny watching the "editorial board" over at 24state.com spin out reasons why McCowan and Molens are unquestionably guilty and twelve jurors were somehow duped by the mind control powers of defense attorney Paul D'Agrosa. It took the jury about 50 minutes to reach a "not guilty verdict," but it only took five minutes for 24th State to convince themselves that if they were prosecutors, half of the city of St. Louis would be in jail right now due to the totally awesome cross-examination questions they came up with.

One admission during 24th State's I-could-totally-be-a-real-lawyer-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it routine caught my eye:

So basically, after spending two years posting photos of Gladney in a wheelchair (Gateway Pundit is still doing so) and after attacking anyone who questioned the wheelchair as unconscionable, the St. Louis tea party is now admitting that it was a political prop and blaming it on David Brown, Gladney's mysterious boss/spokesperson/lawyer who allegedly called Gladney his "gravy train." The fact that it was a prop surprises absolutely no one, but it is interesting to see them finally admit it.

Just goes to show once again that the tea party is so convinced that they're right about, well, something, that they're willing to lie about anything. They probably don't even think there was anything wrong with having Gladney come out faking an injury so bad that he needed a wheelchair. After all, in Tea Party World, the ends justify the means in their war against the evil hippies, and that's exactly why no one should take what they say at face value.

Jim Durbin Removes Link to Racist Site, But Doesn't Apologize for Racist Attack

After I pointed out that Jim Durbin's shameless attack on St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed was based on absurd reasoning from a white supremacist blog, Durbin has announced that he has removed the link to the blog post, affiliated with the Council of Conservative Citizens blog. I'm glad he did this. However, it's important to point out that Durbin didn't just link to a white supremacist blog: he endorsed the reasoning behind the twisted attack on Reed from that blog. Durbin wrote that Lewis Reed "used race to divide the electorate," and his evidence for that claim was that Lewis Reed had sent out fliers about crime without indicating that he was black. This leaves two explanations for Durbin's behavior: either he actually agrees with that racist way of thinking, or he's so sloppy that he doesn't even bother to read blog posts before using them to attack people he doesn't like. Either way, it's not good, and he certainly still owes Lewis Reed an apology.

Tea Party Links to White Separatist Blog to Claim That Lewis Reed is "Using Race"

No, I'm not making this up. The St. Louis Tea Party today promoted a blog post claiming that Lewis Reed, President of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, was "striking out" at the tea party to "hide his corruption."

The post, written by St. Louis tea partier Jim Durbin, was full of their usual discredited conspiracy theories about yachts and ballrooms that were debunked during the Carnahan/Ed Martin contest. However, a vindictive comment at the end took Durbin's post over the edge. Durbin wrote, addressing Reed:

One thing is for sure. The use of race to divide an electorate is in your bag of tricks. But this time, we're watching. And recording.

Curious to see what Durbin was talking about, I followed the link. It took me to a web page proudly proclaiming a "St. Louis CofCC Blog Exclusive."

What is the significance of the "St. Louis C of CC", you ask? I'll let the Anti-Defamation League explain:

The St. Louis-based Council of Conservative Citizens traces its roots directly to the racist, anti-integrationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. Its current leader, attorney Gordon Lee Baum, was an organizer for the WCC and built the Council of Conservative Citizens in part from the old group's mailing lists. Like its predecessor, the CCC inflames fears and resentments, particularly among Southern whites, with regard to black-on-white crime, nonwhite immigration, attacks on the Confederate flag and other issues related to "traditional" Southern culture. Although the group claims not to be racist, its leaders traffic with other white supremacist groups and its publications, Web sites and meetings all promote the purportedly innate superiority of whites.

The article continues:

Both on its national and chapter Web sites and in its primary publication, The Citizens Informer, CCC's belief in white superiority and its derision of nonwhites, particularly African Americans, are delineated without apology....

The ideology of The Citizens Informer's editors is echoed in the publication's pages, although in a somewhat muted form. Many articles consist of either tributes to the superiority of the white race or diatribes about black violence or Hispanic immigration. As Robert Patterson, the publication's past editor, has written in a column, "...any effort to destroy the race by a mixture of black blood is an effort to destroy Western civilization itself." Columnist H. Millard has offered a similar observation and a morek visceral anxiety about intermarriage when he argued that minorities are turning the United States population into a "slimy brown mass of glop." Other essays in the publication lament the victimization of whites at the hands of minorities and the liberal "elite."

Other contributing writers to The Citizens Informer have included Jared Taylor, publisher of American Renaissance, which argues that African Americans are genetically inferior; Indianapolis Baptist Temple Pastor Greg Dixon, who believes that churches are not bound by human laws or regulations; and psychology professor Glayde Whitney, who wrote the preface to David Duke's racist and anti-Semitic "autobiographical thesis" My Awakening ("Completely separately from David Duke," Whitney wrote, "my inquiries led to essentially the same places and some of the same conclusions that he spells out in this book.")

Or, if you prefer, you can read the history of the C of CC at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which echoes the ADL site:

The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South. Created in 1985 from the mailing lists of its predecessor organization, the CCC, which initially tried to project a "mainstream" image, has evolved into a crudely white supremacist group whose website has run pictures comparing pop singer Michael Jackson to an ape and referred to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." The group's newspaper, Citizens Informer, regularly publishes articles condemning "race mixing," decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization.

Both the ADL and SPLC sites have much more about the history full of disgusting details, so click through if you want to get the full flavor of the group.

Linking to a white supremacist web site to justify the claim that Lewis Reed "uses race to divide an electorate," is extremely bad, but maybe you could argue that Jim Durbin had his head in the sand for most of his adult life and didn't realize who the group was. In fact, there is a quite a bit of evidence that Durbin has his head in the sand most of the time. However, that would not explain how he could feel free to justify his statement about Reed with the absurd logic spouted in the Council of Conservative Citizens blog post.

Here's how the white separatist post sets up their "issue" with Lewis Reed

Mr. Reed has degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, and no doubt his math education has taught him that if he expects to win this election, he is going to have to get enough white votes from south city. While south city is becoming more and more non-white (especially black), still the vast majority of voters in south city are white.

However, Mr. Reed has some competition for that white vote, and that being the white incumbent he is challenging.

The post then goes on to mention that Reed, in his election contest against Shrewsbury, sent out a mailer suggesting that Shrewsbury bore some responsibility for the high rates of crime in the city. I have no idea if that was true or not, but either way it sounds like a pretty standard attack mailer. But check out what the Council of Conservative Citizen's blogger takes issue with:

After seeing all that, a white voter in south city might be tempted to want to get rid of Shrewsbury now, and vote for that other guy.

What other guy?

There isn’t anything in this ad about the “other guy.”

Except if you look way at the bottom of the yellow, underneath the red stripe. If you can’t see it, then go to the full resolution version and scroll to the bottom.

In tiny white letters, very unreadable on the yellow background, and very easy to miss, are these words:

“Paid for by Committe [sic] to Elect Lewis Reed Thomas Shepard, Treasurer”

Okay. Is Lewis Reed Thomas Shepard running for City Treasurer? If you didn’t know that Mr. Reed was the opposition on March 6, you would think so. But if you know, you also know that, by accident or design, no punctuation mark exists between “Reed” and “Thomas” to indicate that Lewis Reed was running for Aldermanic President, and that Thomas Shepard was his campaign treasurer.

Okay, brass tacks time.

Lewis Reed needs white south city votes. But he can’t get those in the numbers he needs if the average white person knows he is black. So his strategy here is to whoop up hostility toward Shrewsbury among whites on a white concern, (black) crime, and get people not to vote for Shrewsbury or to vote for his opponent, and not indicate who is opponent is, and certainly not show a picture of his opponent. In other words, trick the dummies.

Got that? This blogger is complaining about the fact that Lewis Reed, a black man, sent out an attack ad focused on crime without indicating that he is black. In fact, the blogger claimed that Reed was "tricking" voters by not including a picture of himself! He is, in effect, claiming that whenever black politicians send out a mailer about crime, they are obligated to inform the recipients that they are black! Blatant racist garbage!

And Durbin links to this to claim that Reed "uses race to divide an electorate." The evidence? That Lewis Reed did not tell people he was black when he sent out a flier about crime. This is beyond despicable, and is a new low even for Durbin.

Back in 2007, Bill Hennessy apologized for linking to the Council of Conservative Citizens web site. Let's hope the tea party does so again. But this is more than just a bad link: Durbin was suggesting that Lewis Reed needs to include photos of himself in mailers about crime. Without some really good explanation that I currently can't imagine, I'm not sure how anyone could justify promoting Durbin's garbage after this.

There's No Defense for Ed Martin's Role In Memogate Scandal

A couple days ago, I cited a Post-Dispatch editorial that laid out the litany of scandals Ed Martin was involved in during his short 15-month tenure as Chief of Staff for Matt Blunt (before getting fired for his role in smearing a whistleblower). In light of the tea party's desperate attempts to pretend that Martin did nothing wrong during this scandal, I want to go into a little more detail about what he did and, specifically, show how pretty much every news outlet in the state of Missouri was openly condemning Martin's unethical behavior.

I start by mentioning that the recent "4 part series" purporting to get Martin off the hook only discusses the question of whether Ed Martin fired a whistleblower. Even if it were true that Martin "didn't fire a whistleblower" (which it's not), Ed Martin could not possibly be said to have behaved decently in the situation. Here's a brief rehash of what happenend:

After Ed Martin had already been busted multiple times improperly using the Governor's office for partisan purposes, a citizen forwarded reporter Tony Messenger an email from Ed Martin coordinating attacks by pro-life groups on Attorney General Jay Nixon while Martin was on the clock working for the state.

Messenger asked Martin about the email, and Martin claimed he deleted it, which would be a violation of state sunshine laws regarding the retention of public records.

Republican Scott Eckersley sent Martin and other members of the Blunt administration emails informing them that emails were, in fact, part of the public record.

Eckersley was then fired, and he said it was because he was warning them about violations of the state sunshine laws.

The GOP insider slime machine claimed the firing was because Eckersley "had a bad reaction to the end of his last relationship," and because,"he started making bad life choices in drinking and pornography."

In fact, Blunt and Martin's lawyers sent reams of personal records directly to reporters across the state in an attempt to smear Eckersley even while claiming that sharing their own personal records would be against the law.

The Blunt administration lied and claimed that Eckersley never mentioned his views about the email retention prior to a Sept. 28 meeting with Ed Martin (in fact, Eckersley sent multiple emails, including at least one to Ed Martin, about the topic prior to that meeting).

The Blunt administration also lied and claimed that the records didn't exist.

Someone in the Blunt administration illegally accessed Eckersley's email account while digging for information to try to smear him with.

Ed Martin was finally fired in a failed attempt to salvage the Blunt administration's dignity.

Now, out of all that, the only thing being challenged by the tea party is that Eckersley was fired for being a whistleblower. In other words, they're apparently perfectly willing to accept that Martin broke the law, lied repeatedly, and smeared Eckersley, but they think that if there were reasons for Eckersley being fired then we should all just forget about the whole thing. It's unbelievably deranged reasoning. But since they make no attempt whatsoever to defend the other facts of the case, I can only assume that the St. Louis tea party willingly admits that the candidate they endorsed has a hatred for government transparency, is a serial liar, and is willing to smear any law-abiding and honerable conservatives who get in his way. Quite a principled stand they're taking.

Latest Conspiracy: Packs of Wild Dogs Will Eat Your Children if you Pass Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act

Readers of this blog know that I'm not a big fan of tea party blogger Jim Durbin of 24thstate.com. But I gotta give him one thing: he's got an amazing imagination! As far as I can tell, the main difference between Durbin and most people is that most people don't think that merely being able to imagine a story with plot twists, Noble Patriots, and Supervillains, thereby makes that story true. Durbin on the other hand seems to follow a simple rule: "If I can imagine it, it must have happened."

The latest in Durbin's free association ranting, or as he calls it, "investigative journalism," is a list of all of the apocalyptic catastrophes that will befall the state of Missouri if voters approve Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act. One of the most mind-boggling parts of his recent theorizing is that he simultaneously claims that the new laws won't be enforced and that the new laws will cause all kinds of calamities. In fact, Durbin claims that these laws that "won't be enforced," will cause 86,000 dogs to be killed and Chihuahuas to be forced to freeze to death in the cold. Needless to say, these claims are idiotic. The breeders can sell many of the current dogs as they have done (i.e. they won't be forced to "put them down"); they just won't be allowed to continue keeping large, unmanageable numbers of breeding dogs. And Durbin's claim about Chihuahuas freezing to death simply proves that he didn't even bother to carefully read the ballot language since one of the things the new law would require is that dogs have:

unfettered access to an indoor enclosure that has a solid floor; is not stacked or otherwise placed on top of or below another animal's enclosure; is cleaned of waste at least once a day while the dog is outside the enclosure; and does not fall below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, or rise above 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

Some more absurd claims: Durbin says that this will cause "less people to buy dogs." Apparently no one ever informed him of the fact that animals shelters have huge numbers (3 - 4 million) of perfectly wonderful pets that have to be put down every year. Oh, but Durbin claims that shelter and pound dogs are scary and dangerous. The guy is seriously clueless.

Durbin also claims that the new law will prevent people from being able to buy dogs like Golden Retrievers. Actually, the new law limits how many breeding dogs there can be at a location; it doesn't eliminate breeders. Another fail.

But I think my favorite conspiracy of all is his claim that all of the dogs will have to be released into the wilderness, forming wild dog packs that will eat our children:

4) The wild dog population will increase
Dogs are beasts. Noble, but beasts. Like all animal populations, they will increase when left on their own, and in the backwoods of Missouri, when you let hundreds or thousands of dogs go free, you're going to see an explosion of their population in a way that is not at all controlled. Domesticating animals isn't something we solely do for joy.

Anyway, just goes to show you how far the tea party will go to fight against a bill that really should have nothing to do with whether you're "conservative" or "liberal." The decision to provide dogs with sufficient food and clean water, necessary veterinary care, sufficient housing, sufficient space, regular exercise, and adequate rest between breeding cycles should just be about basic compassion.

Vote Yes on Prop B.

Flashback: Post-Dispatch Editorial on Ed Martin's Reign as Chief of Staff

There are some tea party bloggers out there hilariously suggesting that Ed Martin didn't do anything wrong during the memogate scandal where whistleblower Scott Eckersley was fired and smeared by Martin for suggesting that the Blunt administration follow the law. Unfortunately for these bloggers and for Ed Martin, the internets have not yet forgotten the many articles written about Martin's disgraceful tenure, and in order for their claims to be true it would have to be the case that reporters from every single credible news outlet in the state of Missouri were blatantly lying about the controversy. Needless to say, it wasn't the reporters who were lying, and the bloggers carrying Martin's water are either clueless or dishonest.

It will take a little bit of time to organize the relevant information, but in the meantime, I'm presenting a great editorial from the Post-Dispatch about Martin's time as Chief of Staff. From November 21, 2007, a couple months after the scandel went down:

It's difficult to believe that Ed Martin's tenure as Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's chief of staff didn't even last 15 months. The 37-year old St. Louis lawyer packed a lot of controversy into a very short time.

Mr. Martin was at the helm when the governor's office botched the private settlement over Agriculture Director Fred Ferrell's demeaning "show dog" comments about a female staff member. Mr. Martin wrote shirty letters to Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Laura Denvir Stith in the controversy over the judicial selection process. Spearheading Mr. Blunt's drive against illegal immigrants, Mr. Martin told a meeting of the Missouri Housing Commission that merely by driving by construction sties, "every frigging developer can figure out who is illegal." And how could they do that? "There's a bunch of Mexicans out there, I guess some of them are probably not legal," he said.

And there was so much more. Who can forget that Mr. Martin tried to drag the Highway Patrol into politics by suggesting that it criticize Attorney General Jay Nixon for his investigations into Ameren's Taum Sauk Dam collapse? And it was Mr. Martin who met in the governor's office with the chairman of the state Public Service Commission and Ameren officials - even though such ex parte meetings between regulators and utility officials are illegal when the utility has a state request pending. Then Mr. Martin himself accidentally disclosed this secret meeting.

And finally there was Mr. Martin in his Capitol office one night last August, sending out emails to pro-life groups, trying to rally them to the cause of removing Mr. Nixon as the state's attorney in a suit brought by Planned Parenthood. When Tony Messenger of the Springfield News-Leader Filed a Sunshine request for those emails, Mr. Martin glibly replied that he'd deleted them, thus kicking of the "Memogate" controversy.

It was the public reaction to Memogate - and Mr. Martin's subsequent firing and sliming of Scott Eckersley, Mr. Blunt's deputy counsel, for trying to warn him that he was violating state law- that proved to be the last straw....

The article ends with a funny kicker:

Not since Hedley Lemarr's work for Gov. William J. LePetomaine in the movie "Blazing Saddles" has a chief of staff served a governor so poorly as Mr. Martin served Mr. Blunt. When Mr. Blunt held a news conference Tuesday morning and pardoned the sate's ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey but declined to do the same for Mr. Martin, it was clear that his 15 months of fame were up. We're glad for the Turkey.

Sadly, Martin is back for a few more months of fame. But if Democrats and progressives do their job, we can make sure that he won't be given another opportunity to abuse the public trust as a government official.

St. Louis Tea Party Defends O'Keefe Even After Breitbart Walks Away

Earlier in the week, a plot by right-wing icon James O'Keefe to "seduce" CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau on camera by isolating her on a boat full of sex toys and pornography was revealed and widely condemned. The plan involved O'Keefe hitting on Boudreau, who was there in a professional capacity to document the young conservative movement, while O'Keefe (and others?) were secretly videotaping the interactions. A plan for the event obtained by CNN had O'Keefe reading the following statement:

Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.

Please sit back and enjoy the show.

Amazingly, even James O'Keefe's former employer Andrew Breitbart, who in the past religiously stood by O'Keefe and even suggested that O'Keefe's arrest in New Orleans was a result of a "concerted effort" by the U.S. government to make O'Keefe look bad, has turned against his former employee. In a statement yesterday, Breitbart wrote the following:

... in my dealings with Ms. Boudreau, she and her producer, Scott Zamost, conducted themselves professionally, and I believe James owes them a candid and public explanation.

From what I’ve read about this script, though not executed, it is patently gross and offensive. It’s not his detractors to whom he also owes this public airing. It’s to his legion of supporters.

Yet, unbelievably, leaders of the St. Louis tea party movement are still defending O'Keefe's despicable plan, and are even blaming the victim! Check out some of the tweets from Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) and (Jim Durbin):





Particularly offensive is this quote from Durbin:

in CNN story, Boudreau says news business is sexist, and doesn't take her seriously. So why interview O'Keefe?

This sounds an awful lot like blaming the victim. What does interviewing O'Keefe have to do with the news business being sexist? Boudreau was interviewing him because she was doing a story on young conservative activists. Yet Durbin suggests there's something wrong with her doing that while being a woman?

Anyway, it's truly mind-boggling how willing the St. Louis tea party leaders are to throw all morals and decency out the window in their "war" against "the Left.' When you've gone far beyond even Andrew Breitbart's moral limits, you know you've got problems.

Arnold-Imperial Leader Mocks Out of Town Tea Party Council Crashers

Patrick Martin, editor of the the Arnold-Imperial Leader, had a column this week laughing at tea partiers from across Missouri coming to the Arnold City Council meeting and trying to tell them how to run their city. The St. Louis Tea Party was angry that the Arnold City Council was voting on hiring Bob Sweeney, whom they believe is part of the secret ACORN/NEWBLACKPANTHERPARTY/CUBA plot to turn the U.S. into a Communist Dictatorship Under Sharia Law. So naturally they travelled to Arnold to scream at other people's council members for two hours. Here's the St. Louis Tea Party putting out the call to go to Arnold:



Patrick Matrin wrote up a funny response to the tea partiers, which also included this nice cartoon:



Here are some choice excerpts:

Sometimes we have problems with geography. Yes, the Arnold Rifle Range and Pistol Club is in Barnhart. Festus Ford is in Herculaneum, just like Twin City Toyta is in Herculaneum.

But this Arnold thing I don't get at all. Not a bit.

Last Thursday, a group of villagers stormed the Arnold City Council to yell about all kinds of things, though they primarily were there to loudly protest the rehiring of former and now again current city attorney Bob Sweeney.

The thing was, the villagers weren't from the village.

Ken Horton, president of the Jefferson County Tea Party, told the council, "You just made it my mission to get every one of you cowards out of office.

Horton will have to get others to pull that one of. He lives in Imperial.

Another woman, who is an Arnold resident, yelled her disapproval at city clerk Diane Waller, "I voted to appoint you!"

Waller, who does not vote on anything or have a say in the decision to hire an attorney, is appointed by the mayor, not voted on by city residents, though she did run in 2001 when city clerk was still an elective office. Maybe the woman has a long memory.

The tea party people, while exhibiting a raw anger that reflects the economic uncertainty in this country, get even madder if they are described as angry. It's all part of a conspiracy of the mainstream media, they say.

I'm not sure what the media is conspiring to do. Make the tea parters look less credible by making them look like crazy people, maybe?

If so, exhibitions like the one in Arnold last week make it pretty obvious that the mainstream media-whoever that is-isn't going to need a lot of help.

There are focused, angry people with legitimate gripes and there are unfocused, crazed, angry people who just like to be angry. The later are like thugs who look for a bar fight that doesn't concern them. then jump in just because they like to mix it up.

Anyway, pretty funny stuff. The St. Louis Tea Party, meanwhile, isn't backing down. They're still chest-thumping and bragging about how they're totally going to stick it to that Arnold City Council. We'll see how that goes.

And, given that the debate between Ed Martin and Russ Carnahan is tonight, I wonder how many of the tea party people attendance will even be from a 50-mile radius of Missouri's 3rd District. I know in the past people from all over the state and even from other states have come to yell at scream at Carnahan's townhalls.

h/t The Bone Blog for the pointer.

You can read the whole article by Martin here:

Arnold-Imperial Leader Ribs the Tea Party

Latest Tea Party Conspiracy: Protecting Puppies Is A Secret Plan to Take Away Your Pets

Missouri has been dubbed the "puppy mill capitol of the U.S." by the Better Business Bureau. Currently, many puppy mills don't provide adequate food and water for their animals, and breeding dogs are exposed to extremes in the weather while trapped in small wire cages with no opportunity to exercise or interact with humans. If breeders are found to take terrible care of their puppies, they currently face virtually no repercussions.

So people who care about the way we treat animals worked hard to put Proposition B on the ballot for this November. A "Yes" on Prop B would ensure that dogs are provided with:

Sufficient food and clean water;
Necessary veterinary care;
Sufficient housing, including protection from the elements;
Sufficient space to turn and stretch freely, lie down, and fully extend his or her limbs;
Regular exercise; and
Adequate rest between breeding cycles

For the specific ballot language, click here. This is not an extreme request by most people's standards. In fact, most people would agree that it's a no-brainer that dogs should be provided with all of those basic necessities. Furthermore, the ballot would create a misdemeanor for people who violate these laws, since there currently are virtually no enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the dogs are treated well.

Now I know a lot of conservatives who disagree with me on virtually every issue who nevertheless are fully supportive of laws that prevent animal cruelty. This is not in any way a Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative, Small Government/Big Government issue. This is simply a matter of whether we think it's OK to abuse puppies for the sake of profit. There really is no reason why the St. Louis tea party leadership should be taking a stand on this issue (unless it was a supportive stand to show how they in fact are compassionate, caring individuals).

Nevertheless, they (or at least a couple of them) have decided to make it a pet issue. And because it is an issue where compassionate people of any political persuasion would naturally feel compelled to protect dogs, the tea party has decided to outright lie about the issue in order to trick caring people into voting against a law that would protect dogs from unnecessary suffering. Jim Durbin spreads the utter nonsense that Proposition B is actually a secret plan to eliminate pet ownership:

Proposition B will be on the November ballot in Missouri. It looks on the surface to be a great plan that will take care of the innocent dogs in terrible puppy-mill conditions...
However, the true purpose of this legislation is to ELIMINATE pet ownership through "regulation"...and then push the "regulation" on to force cattle, hog, and poultry farmers OUT OF BUSINESS!

I had heard rumors that Bill Hennessy's name was seen on anti-Prop B email chains, and that was confirmed recently as Hennessy started posting anti-puppy propaganda on the St. Louis tea party website yesterday. Of course, neither Hennessy nor Durbin linked to the actual ballot language when they discussed the issue.

Like I said, this is not a Left/Right issue. I'm sure there are a lot of tea party members planning on voting yes on Prop B. Furthermore, Hennessy has said repeatedly in the past that the tea party should focus on changing the federal government first. On May 15, he claimed The Tea Party's Focus Has Been Federal and wrote:

In spite of our work on state and local projects, the Tea Party movement didn’t come about to address Autism or state referenda. The Tea Party was born, according to my records and memory, to change the federal government, first by resistance, then by changing Congress.

In a different article, he was quoted as saying:

While many local tea party organizations involve themselves in local or state issues and races, the movement’s primary interest lies in Washington.

So why would they focus on this issue? It makes me wonder if some of the tea party leaders are being funded by dog breeders or by the large scale agri-businesses that also oppose this legislation based on the belief that opposing animal cruelty anywhere paves the way for making the food industry more humane. Furthermore, I wonder if this issue was ever put to a vote by the membership of the tea party. Shouldn't the people who attend these rallies have some say in how their names are being used?

Anyway, it's truly sad to see tea party leaders take such a despicable stand in favor of profits over puppies. Hopefully, they lose big and some of their followers start to realize that the St. Louis tea party leadership is not really looking out for the interests of anyone except themselves.

Update, in response to a comment: Someone in the comments suggested that I was unfairly characterizing the views of the St. Louis tea party based on the ravings of one person. I certainly don't think that everyone in the tea party agrees with this nonsense, which is why I have repeatedly emphasized that this issue should not be an issue the tea party leadership should get involved in. However, it's false to claim that the St. Louis tea party leadership doesn't endorse these extreme views. Bill Hennessy, the leader of the St. Louis tea party, specifically endorsed the conspiracy posts from Durbin:

Predictions: Will St. Louis Tea Party Have Intellectual Honesty to Criticize Ed Martin?

Apparently, Ed Martin's strategy of being a full-blown insane right-winger is not working very well in Missouri's 3rd District. So he's now decided to completely shift positions against everything he's ever claimed to stand for by saying that he's now in favor of reviving a massive government jobs program known as the Works Progress Administration (which, by the way, I wholeheartedly support):

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, if you recall, has been a huge critic of the stimulus program, and not because he thought it was too small. In fact, Martin previously (and hilariously) claimed that when you increase the size of the government, you're taking away people's freedom, which in turn takes away their ability to "find salvation."

But my question is whether the St. Louis Tea Party leadership, who also has stated that using the government to create jobs in times of economic hardship is always a bad idea, will have the intellectual honesty to criticize Ed Martin. Clark at Show Me Progress is predicting crickets, and I pretty much concer. Here are my predictions, with some explanation:

Dana Loesch's husband's business got $2,500 from Ed Martin, so we know she won't say anything.

Bill Hennessy didn't have the guts to criticize Roy Bank Bailout Blunt, and has shown no interest in doing anything other than electing the same old Republicans to office, so he's unlikely to say anything.

Jim Durbin at 24thstate.com was explicitly a Roy Blunt supporter, so I expect crickets from him.

Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft is a total hack; no way he criticizes Martin.

However, Darin Morley at Reboot Congress might have the guts to criticize Martin, since he stands on his principles more than the others. But still, he's an ardent Ed Martin supporter, so I doubt it.

If the St. Louis Tea Party actually stands for anything other than trying to get speaking gigs for their leaders, they will surely not let this pass by without comment. Nevertheless, I doubt they'll say anything. Anyone else have predictions about what will happen?

h/t FiredUp Missouri

KMOV Is Confused

Mark Schnyder at KMOV is extremely confused. He can't seem to figure out how Congressman Carnahan feels about having his office firebombed. Schnyder wrote that he shockingly got "weird vibes" from Carnahan's staff the day after someone tried to burn their office down:

When I went by the building this morning I got a weird vibe. I saw a campaign worker coming out of the back of the office with big Bread Company to-go bags. I jokingly said, "Are you with Bread Company or the Carnahan campaign?" He said, "Bread Company," then tossed the bags in the dumpster and went to the front of the building, presumably back in the office. Weird.
(I talked to a reporter at another station who worked on this story who told me when she was there, she met a campaign worker outside the building who also denied being associated with the campaign. When she went inside to talk to a spokesperson, she saw that person who denied being with the campaign IN Carnahan's office.)

OK, so someone acted "weird," the day after arson was attempted. Big deal. And as for his story from "a reporter at another station," I sincerely hope he's not basing his claim that she was speaking to "a campaign worker" only on the fact that they saw the person inside the building later. There are millions of possible explanations for why someone who doesn't work for the campaign could be in the office.

This story is already fueling conspiracies by the usual wingnuts. Jim Durbin wrote that Carnahan's staff, "did take out a bunch of documents hidden in St Louis Bread Company bags to the dumpster. " Durbin also curiously sent someone over to take photos of the office to take photos. Hmmm, wonder if they were planning on doing any dumpster diving while they were there? Keep in mind that Durbin is the conspiracy theorist who claimed that ACORN is housed in Carnahan's office, a theory still believed by the tea party's other "expert" on this case, Jim Hoft. Yesterday, Hoft said that "inside sources" told him that it was a burglary. Later, his "inside sources" completely changed their story to arson, naturally without any explanation or correction from Hoft. Nice that Schynder is so willingly adding fuel to the conspiracy theorists' fire.

But Schnyder's later comments were even more strange:

Meantime, opponent Ed Martin wasted no time condemning the action on his campaign website. He agreed to an interview outside his headquarters, too...He says there are lots of things to disagree on as far as the campaigns are concerned, but he says there's no place for violence.
Weird how the Carnahan campaign couldn't or wouldn't put similar words together.

Huh? As one commenter put it:

What kind of "comment" were you looking for, anyway? "Well, it sucks that someone tried to burn our office down, and violence is wrong"? Duh!

Yup, it's pretty obvious to thinking humans that Carnahan and his staff are not happy about having someone try to burn down their campaign office. They did issue a statement after the event happened, and it's not clear what else Schynder expects from them. Does he want them to rush to judgment, like the tea party no doubt would, and start publicly blaming people even though the police investigation has thus far not been conclusive? Does he want them to cry on camera and say how scared they are for their lives, thus giving the arsonist satisfaction? Their office was firebombed. They feel like crap. Give them a break, dude.

Tea Party Class

In case you wanted to see what gracious winners the tea party are after the passage of Proposition C:


Get ready for a lot more of that if progressives don't start organizing and Democrats don't figure out how to motivate their base. In fact, get ready for a lot worse as the local tea party has shown repeatedly that they're willing to use any power they have to try to personally destroy anyone who doesn't agree with their radical vision, from school teachers to USDA employees, to county prosecutors to the local animal control department.

Zzzz, Another Snoozer from 24thstate

Jim Durbin of the 24thstate blog tries his hand at video analysis again. And he fails, again.

Durbin's video of the arrest of Javonne Spitz and Brian Matthews helped get the prosecutor to drop charges against Matthews. However, Durbin is still sticking to his story that the video proves that the police report is true and that Matthews is a "liar." You can watch the video here:


Now, the following is what is stated in the police report:

As Captain Monteleone was assisting us with crowd control a subject, later identified as Brian Matthews, walked up to him and purposely fell onto the sidewalk in front of him. While laying on the ground Matthews asked people around him of he saw the police push him down. Captain Monteleone observed Matthews laying on the ground yelling that he was being beaten by the police, trying to draw attention to himself.

As can be seen from the video, this story is clearly false. Matthews did not "walk up to Captain Monteleone." He was walking in front of the police officer, leading Spitz away from the scene.

There is no video evidence whatsoever that Matthews was yelling that he was being beaten, despite the fact that the cameras were picking up sound from Spitz. Brian Matthews' point is that if this part of the police report is false, why should we treat the rest of the report as gospel? The police report was clearly flawed.

Durbin further claims that Matthews was "lying" when he was quoted as follows in the Post-Dispatch:

"I can't tell you how many police officers charged us from behind," Matthews said. "I was pushed to the ground by one. I was pushed into the back of somebody who was walking away."

However, Durbin, so blinded by ideology that he's incapable of even considering the evidence, apparently doesn't even bother to watch the full video. You can see in the video that after Matthews is on the ground the first time, he's trying to get up, and the video (1:15) does seem to indicate that he was pushed back to the ground:

Furthermore, you can see at the 1:16 mark that Matthews was pushed into the back of somebody: in fact, Matthews being pushed caused Spitz and the other officer to fall over. So Matthews' statement in the Post-Dispatch was true.

It looks like Durbin is trying to regain right-wing credibility because he was so embarrassed that his video actually helped prove the innocence of his sworn enemy. It didn't work.

But even if Durbin can't win back his right-wing cred, I still appreciate him. I appreciate the fact that's he's working hard to discredit himself right in time for the trial.

Shocker: Tea Party Lynch Mob Jumped the Gun

As I wrote previously, the local tea party freaked out recently claiming that a "leftist" had "assaulted" a "patriot" at a recent rally in North Carolina. That group included Dana Loesch, Jim Durbin, Jim Hoft, Adam Sharp, and, apparently, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder. But the story, like pretty much all of their "leftist thugs attack tea party," tales to date, turned out to be false.

In an interview with Stage Right, Nathan Tabor, the Republican who was supposedly assaulted, revealed that the police, after seeing the full unedited video, (7:45) decided to charge both Tabor and the other man with assault. Tabor later said (14:15):

My local paper, who ignored the North Carolina GOP convention...calls me and says, "Hey Nathan, if you freeze this at such and such, your hand was at this guy's face, and his head's kinda going back, are you sure you didn't hit him first?...The liberal media, after watching the full, raw, unedited video, a 17-minute video clip and an 11 minute video clip from two different angles, they saw the hate and vile coming from this man's mouth about George W. Bush and Cheney [editor's note: gasp! the humanity!], they saw his foul language towards me and my family, heard my comments which were very civil and had the audacity to ask me if I had hit him first.

So both the police and the media, who unlike the local tea party had access to the full, unedited tapes, concluded that Tabor was equally culpable (if not more culpable if he in fact started the fight). In fact, you can see from this video, it looks like Tabor (the white man with a video recorder) did start the fighting (note: yes, I did edit out the part where the guy punches Tabor, however, unlike the Tea Party I'm honest about what I edited out. I did it this way simply to show how it started):


Once again, the hate-filled St. Louis Tea Party was ready to throw the book at a black man, whom Tabor made sure to say is affiliated with the "black liberation and black pride" movement (16:30), based on a completely edited video. And once again the facts appear to show that they're complete off base. If they even had any shred of intellectual honesty, they would update their posts pointing out that both men were charged with assault. But I'm not holding my breath.

Tea Party Lynch Mob Reminds Us Why They Should Never Be In Power - Updated

Update: Turns out both men were charged with assault. See update at bottom

The local tea party is freaking out again about a video they claim shows "another" leftist violently assaulting a noble Republican patriot merely expressing his dissent. Here are a few excerpts from their predictable rants:

Dana Loesch:

Another tea partier punched, another conservative woman harassed by a man. Unflippingbelievable. http://bit.ly/9YfzhZ #tcot

Jim Durbin:

I wonder what Media Matters will claim happened here. Will they take responsibility for the violent rhetoric that led his unhinged leftist with a hatred of all things George Bush to attack a citizen journalist?

And

This video shows once again that violence is a tactic of the Left.

Jim Hoft, in a post titled Leftist Thug Beats Peaceful NC Tea Party Protesters:

Tea Party Protesters Violently Assaulted in North Carolina–They were asking for less government — The leftist thug beat them instead.

Sharp Elbows:

Obama THUG Attacks Tea Partier - Cameras Cameras Cameras People. The Lens is our weapon.

The video in question follows a familiar pattern we've seen from all of these tea party stories: it is heavily edited, and the key clips conveniently start exactly where the "leftist" is doing something physical without showing what happened immediately beforehand. In fact, this video has two camera angles that both conveniently start only after the conversation already began. You can watch the video here:

Update: YouTube Video was removed for some reason, so I'm putting up a video from a different source:



So, I certainly don't condone the guy punching the Republican camaraman in the face, and I have no idea how the fight started. But there are a number of questions that are completely unanswered by the video that any reasonable person would want to know about before jumping up and down screaming that this was a violent leftist assault. First, the 2nd video angle clearly shows that the Republican holding the camera pushed the other guy before he was punched. It looks like he pushed him fairly hard:

Now, the Republican claims in the video that the other guy pushed his wife and that he's "got it on video", but there's no evidence of that on tape. And it sure is interesting that the Republican's camera started in the middle of their conversation and then was shut off immediately before the other camera angle shows the Republican pushing the other guy.

And, of course, we've seen this remarkable coincidence before. Here's a video from Bob McCarty that the local tea party all proclaimed was "leftist violence" before quickly moving on to other subjects after it was found out that the tea partier actually attacked the woman in the video:

An extremely similar video: inexplicably edited in key places, with the video starting only at moments where the liberals look bad, and strangely leaving out al of the context. And in this case it turned out that the video was complete bullsh*t.

And then of course we have the video from the Kenneth Gladney incident.

Once again, the video miraculously starts immediately after both Gladney and McCowan were on the ground, with no indication of how they ended up on the ground, and the only altercation it shows is Perry Molens pulling Gladney backwards.

Isn't it strange that in all of these cases we only get highly edited videos that inexplicably start and stop at places that completely block any of the context and prevent us from seeing how the altercations started? Strange, that is, unless you realize that the videos are pretty clearly being edited for political purposes. But that doesn't stop the local tea party from screaming about evil leftist violence to stifle dissent.

Once again I ask: given that this is how irrationally the tea party reacts to partial shreds of evidence, calling people thugs based only on edited video clips, can you imagine how government would be run if they were in charge, or even if they had any influence over the people in charge? The tea party antics are not just comical: they would be extremely dangerous to our system of justice if they ever had an opportunity to influence it.

Update: Check out the interview from Stage_Right about the incident: Turns out, according to the interview, that after seeing the full, unedited video footage, the magistrate decided to charge both men with assault. Hmm, that doesn't fit well with the tea party story.

Furthermore, check out this quote from Nathan Tabor, the Republican whom they originally claimed was assaulted:

My local paper, who ignored the North Carolina GOP convention...calls me and says, "Hey Nathan, if you freeze this at such and such, your hand was at this guy's face, and his head's kinda going back, are you sure you didn't hit him first?...The liberal media, after watching the full, raw, unedited video, a 17-minute video clip and an 11 minute video clip from two different angles, they saw the hate and vile coming from this man's mouth about George W. Bush and Cheney [editor's note: gasp! the humanity!], they saw his foul language towards me and my family, heard my comments which were very civil and had the audacity to ask me if I had hit him first.

Yup, just another failed conspiracy theory based on a fake editing job, and of course all of the local tea party members fell for it.

But who will edit the Editor?

Tea partier Jim Durbin likes to call himself "The Editor" with a capital E on his blog 24th state. Check out the melodramatic signoff on this post:

I am simply, the Editor.

But what happens when there's no one to fact check the editor? Well, you get posts like this one from yesterday, where he presented completely false information:

Here's the official summary.

Upon voter approval, this proposed constitutional amendment prohibits any person, employer, or health care provider from being compelled to participate in any health care system...

The problem for Durbin is that in fact the Missouri General Assembly did not decide to let people vote on a constitutional amendment: instead, the vote will be about the adoption of a new state statute. And this renders it completely useless for changing the law. Dave Roland at Show-Me Daily explains:

the text that might have been legally useful as a constitutional amendment will have zero legal effect as a statute... Thus, even if HB 1764 had purported to establish a fundamental right or liberty, courts would have been unlikely to take them seriously. It just so happens that HB 1764 does not even make such an effort, further diminishing any legal usefulness it otherwise might have had.

In other words, Durbin is presenting this as if it has a chance to actually alter the law, when in fact it doesn't.

Now, I suppose it's possible that Durbin already knows this and is just withholding information to keep his readers uninformed so they will continue to be motivated to vote. After all, in the Kenneth Gladney case, he admitted that he put out false information last year and knew it was false but did not issue a correction because he didn't want SEIU to have the info. He also suggested with Bob McCarty's completely misleading video last year that McCarty wait to "release the whole video." Given that Durbin is happy to withhold information and in fact is even willing to put out false information in order to try to "get" his opposition (which hasn't worked so far), it wouldn't be that much of a shock to find out that he's also willing to put out false information to try to trick people into voting for something that has no real chance of success.

Either way, it's the kind of misinformation a real editor wouldn't stand for.

Delusions of Grandeur

Sigh. I probably shouldn't be spending time on this, but classes just got out, so what the heck? Jim Durbin, the guy who claimed that he single-handedly defeated the public option is back again trying to convince the world how brilliant he is. His latest claim is that by putting out false information and withholding a correction for several months, he somehow lured "liberals" into "admitting" that Kenneth Gladney was injured.

First of all, I'd just like to remind people that Durbin was claiming back in January that there was a massive government conspiracy that led to Kenneth Gladney's brother being fired by the local animal control department. Durbin uncharacteristically actually backed off that conspiracy theory after he realized how ridiculous it was, but it's hardly his only one. Anyway, back to the matter at hand, how exactly does Durbin think he "tricked" liberals into admitting Gladney was injured?

He never really makes this claim clear, just like Dana Loesch never explained the title of her post, "Are Liberal Bloggers Finally Admitting that Gladney was Beaten?" I guess the logic is supposed to be that if you acknowledge that medical records exist, that is equivalent to agreeing that Gladey was injured and/or beaten. But that doesn't follow: everyone agreed that Gladney decided to go to the hospital after the incident, so of course he would have medical records. So everyone can acknowledge the obvious fact that there are medical records without making any claims about the extent of his injuries. The interesting question is "to what extent was Kenneth Gladney injured?" In particular, was he injured in a way that explains the fact that he was running around immediately after the injury but then showed up in a wheelchair two days later?

Now I can already imagine Durbin's response. He'll likely say, "this proves that Adam doesn't have access to primary sources that I do and therefore his story about what happened that night is FALSE!" But, as I explained on multiple occasions, I actually don't have a story about what happened that night. All I've been doing is evaluating the evidence that's available. Here, once again, is a quote from my original post:

First, let me point out that I was out of town that week, and so couldn't be at the event. So I am not claiming to know what happened. In fact, I feel very similar to how I felt before the Iraq War: I didn't know that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs; I just knew that no one had provided me with any good evidence that he did. Likewise, right now I have yet to be provided with any good evidence that Gladney was the victim rather than the instigator (or co-instigator) of last Thursday's events.

I still feel that way. If Jim Durbin would like to present the evidence that he thinks is so convincing, he's welcome to do so. But so far the right-wing has failed to make a compelling case, so they don't have a good reason to be angry at the rest of the world for not jumping on to their bandwagon.

One last note, Durbin also recently wrote a post suggesting that Media Matters started writing about this case after a donation from SEIU in November. Unfortunately for Durbin, Media Matter actually started writing about this on August 8. Nice try though.

For background info, see "The Case Against the Tea Party/Kenneth Gladney Story"

Jim Durbin's Fictions

Right-wing blogger Jim Durbin of 24thstate has a new post out following his usual pattern of inventing comments and ideas and attributing them to me without any justification. As I've documented previously, every step of the way since he first posted comments on this blog, he has been escalating the antagonistic rhetoric against me, from originally calling me a "liar" and an "idiot," to teaming up with Reboot Congress to purchase the domain Stlactivisthub.com, to dropping not-so-subtle hints about "releasing personal information."

His personal attacks against me started when I posted video of tea partiers blaming Maxine Johnson after one of them had ripped a sign out of her hands during the forum in Hillsboro. Durbin then linked to another one of my videos where a tea party person said, "I wasn't telling you to shut up," and acted as if this proved that my previous post was "a lie." The only problem? My post didn't say anything about tea partiers telling Johnson's family to "shut up:" I merely pointed out that they were blaming the victim, which they were.

Durbin's latest post fits this pattern perfectly. He claims that I "posted a roundup of yesterday's press conference," where I "repudiated" most of my previous reporting and "contradicted" my earlier accusations. Once again, he is relying on fiction born of his imagination, his deficits in reading comprehension, or some combination of the two. My post wasn't a "roundup" of a the press conference: it was a detailed examination of the cynical way in which the tea party used conspiracy theories revolving around the Gladney incident to attack all of their political opponents (BTW, Durbin played a central role in this cynical behavior, falsely accusing Patricia Reddington of filing charges without looking at Gladney's medical records, and even inventing a conspiracy theory where Kenneth Gladney's brother was fired from the animal control department because of persecution from the St. Louis County government).

More importantly, his claims that I have "contradicted" or "repudiated" my previous account, which he calls the "Shriver version of events," is based on nothing more than things that he imagined that I said. There really is no "Shriver version of events," because from the very beginning, as you can see in my first post on the matter, I haven't claimed to know what happened at the event. Here is my quote from the first post:

First, let me point out that I was out of town that week, and so couldn't be at the event. So I am not claiming to know what happened. In fact, I feel very similar to how I felt before the Iraq War: I didn't know that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs; I just knew that no one had provided me with any good evidence that he did. Likewise, right now I have yet to be provided with any good evidence that Gladney was the victim rather than the instigator (or co-instigator) of last Thursday's events.

At the press conference, I said (approximately) "The video is inconclusive, and unlike the tea party I don't claim to have divine insight into what happened in the moments beforehand." So Durbin's continued fiction that I have some elaborate description of what happened that night is just false. I don't claim to know what happened, and never have; but I think that any rational person who reviews the evidence that's available would see that there are serious problems with the tea party/Gladney description of the events.

Anyone who's familiar with Durbin's blog 24thstate would know that he's meticulous about taking screenshots and saving any evidence he can use against the people he dislikes. So if he had evidence that there was a "Shriver version of events," that was contradicted, he would present it. But he doesn't, so he won't. He'll just continue to argue with the figments of his imagination that arise from his assumptions of what "beard and ponytail types," must be like, and his preconceived notions that all union workers are lazy and immoral.

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."

Oops! Gateway Pundit Disproves Tea Party Conspiracy Theorists...including Gateway Pundit!

Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft wrote a triumphant blog post today claiming that the tea party's "army of videographers" disproved the statement by the Quincy Police explaining why the riot police were summoned during yesterday's protest of President Obama. Who knows if his claims are true, given that the Tea Party has a known record of deliberately editing video to be misleading and worship at the feet of Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe, the two people who's names are practically synonymous with "misleading editing."

But what's really hilarious is that Jim Hoft, in his out-of-breath rant attempting to show how "hip" and "tech savvy" the tea party is, admitted that the Quincy Police called in the riot squad. Here's what Hoft had to say:

The Quincy Police Department released a statement today following the embarrassing incident yesterday when they called in the SWAT squad to quash the peaceful tea party protest outside the convention center during Barack Obama’s visit.

This is in stark contrast to the tea party conspiracy theory that had been repeated over and over since yesterday that it was "Obama" or "Obama's team" who called the riot police, against the wishes of the local police force. To wit, I give you:

Bill Hennessy:



Jim Durbin:


Lobbyist Carl Bearden (also with Americans for Prosperity):


Gina Loudon (links to post that claims Obama sent in riot police):


Dana Loesch:



Special Dana Loesch Bonus: check out this hilarious claim from Loesch:

Loesch, being the top-notch schmournalist that she is, gets the inside scoop on who *really* ordered the riot police out from Doug Edelman, a guy who believes that President Obama is not a citizen of the United States.

Adam Sharp;


Congressional candidate Ed Martin, painfully wrong for the 2nd time in two days:


And of course, Gateway Pundit Himself:


My personal theory: they're trying as hard as they can to distract from the fact that they only got 150 people to protest Obama.