Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft Embraces His Inner Birther

Yesterday, Breitbart.com hyped another "We're totally not birther, BUT..." campaign demanding that the media wastes even more time digging around the birther issue.  The Breitbots claim that Obama told his publisher that he's from Kenya, which is a pretty strange theory considering that a profile in the New York Times had already been published at that time where Obama clearly stated he was born in Hawaii. Oh, and the agency said the misdescription was the result of their own mistake.

Anyway, though the strategy is clearly intended to cause birthers to foam at the mouth even more than usual, most of the right-wingers pushing the story have been careful to clarify that they're "actually not birthers."  On the other hand, St. Louis's resident extremist Jim Hoft aka Gateway Pundit had no such inhibitions.  Here's what Hoft wrote on his blog:

Barack Obama was either born in Kenya or he lied about it for years.

Meanwhile, St. Louis radio stations like KFTK and KMOX continue to have Hoft on as a "very serious" guest.

h/t Eric Boehlert via Twitter.

Update: NicoleGennette on Twitter points out Hoft's long history of unabashed birtherism.

Loesch Cheers Soldiers Who Urinated On Corpses, Says She Would "Drop Trou" And Do It Herself

The public image of the United States has been damaged after video surfaced showing U.S. soldiers urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. Military officials have all condemned the actions.

From CNN:

"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement. "I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos said in a statement the behavior is "wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history."

Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of ISAF, called the actions on the video "disgusting."

"Any acts which treat the dead, enemy or friendly, with disrespect are utterly unacceptable and do not represent the standards we expect of coalition forces," Bradshaw said in a video statement. He said he was speaking on behalf of Allen, who is out of the country.

"It is difficult to say what long-term impacts this might have, and I would hesitate to get into speculation, but obviously any sort of footage, any sort of activity of this kind that is grossly against all the moral values that the coalition forces are standing for are very much working against our cause and against everything that we are standing for and that we are here for," said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO ISAF spokesman.

CNN "political analyst" Dana Loesch, on the other hand, apparently doesn't care if these actions were directly working against the mission of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; instead, she cheered for it in order to fuel the unhinged Muslim hatred that has become a staple of modern day right-wing media. On her show, she gave the marines in question "one million cool points" and said that she would "drop trou" and "do it too." She ended by saying: "Do I have a problem with that as a citizen of the United States? No, I don't."



h/t @nicolegennette for noticing.

Dana Loesch Admits Cheering While Tea Party Torched Russ Carnahan's Photo. Did She Also Chant "Death To the Dictator?"

Dana Loesch, the St. Louis Tea Party, and Fox News naturally spent Labor Day smearing unions with dishonest editing, cause that's what they do. What was especially funny about this was Dana Loesch hyperventilating about this situation, considering that Hoffa's comments were pretty mild compared to her daily hate speech. In fact, I thought it would be a good time to point out when Dana Loesch said "I love the way a fire smells when it's burning tyranny" while the St. Louis Tea Party set fire to a photo of Congressman Russ Carnahan at a protest outside of his office (this is the day before they carried a coffin to his home):


Here's what I tweeted:

Here's how Loesch responded:


What's interesting about this is that Loesch previously never admitted that she was there. I recognized her voice in the video and wrote about it and she accused me of "lying" (I assume over the technicality that she wasn't holding the match). Now she's changed her story to "it's OK because I just took video." Actually, it's not OK to take video and say "I love the way freedom smells when it's burning tyranny" while setting a photo of a congressman on fire. It's really pretty creepy.

Not only that, but Loesch's friend and fellow leader of the St. Louis Tea Party Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft, who bragged about "booting and torching Carnahan," said in his post that the crowd chanted "death to the dictator" while burning the photo. So if Loesch was at the rally videotaping and making comments about how awesome it was to "burn tyranny," did she also do the death chant with her fellow tea partiers? It's pretty clear that the video is spliced up and missing quite a bit in the middle. Is this really someone CNN should be having on to blather about "heated rhetoric on the Left?"

Are Prominent City Democrats Working for Millionaire Right-Wing Ideologue Rex Sinquefield? - Updated

Unfortunately, it sure looks that way. We all knew that quite a few St. Louis City Democrats were supportive of millionaire right-wing ideologue Rex Sinquefield's plans to move money from public schools to charter schools. The folks who run the City Democrats Many prominent Democratic politicians also recently decided (or were persuaded) not to resist Sinquefield's state-wide proposition to eliminate the earnings tax in Missouri, leaving it to grass roots groups to organize on minimal money to educate voters and solidly beat Rex in St. Louis City (which is important because, despite what some local Democrats are saying, voters are not so stupid as to magically forget what the earnings tax is before the April elections). But now it appears that local Democrats' collaboration with Sinquefield is taking a new, potentially devastating turn.

Activists in the City of St. Louis have been organizing for local control of their police force for a long time. And for a long time, they've been ignored by politicians in Jefferson City, who see no reason to concede power to the City of St. Louis for mere ethical reasons. However, in recent months, there's been a huge amount of momentum for local control. As I wrote earlier, I'm in favor of local control. However, alarm bells went off for me when I saw that Sinquefield and his employee, former Americans for Prosperity director of Missouri Carl Bearden, were getting involved. As reported today by FiredUp and Show Me Progress, Sinquefield created a new PAC, A Safer Missouri, and promptly donated $300,000 to the PAC.

Now, the fact that Sinquefield is getting involved by itself is not necessarily a big deal. As Alderman Antonio French (whom, I should be clear, is not one of the Democrats I'm referring to in the title) pointed out on Twitter, if there are a lot of groups working on the issue, then Democrats and liberals who are opposed to Sinquefield's extreme anti-government agenda can simply join a group fighting for the same issue that's not affiliated with Rex:

That's all well and good, assuming that everyone is up front about who exactly they're working for and where contact information is going. Unfortunately, however, this appears to be precisely what is not happening.

Mayor Francis Slay, his employee Mary Ellen Ponder, President of the St. Louis Young Dems Martin Casas, President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed, and Jamilah Nasheed all tweeted out a link to this google form.





Well, to be specific, Nasheed and Reed tweeted a link to an article on Reed's St. Louis Core website, which included a request for the RSVP that linked to the same document.

And Brian Wahby, Chairman of the City Dems Central Committee, linked to it on his City Dems page;

The actual form they were directing people to looks like this:

As I think is obvious to anyone who knows google forms, what this does is it collects your contact information and puts it into a google spreadsheet. This contact info, of course, is useful for future political campaigns. Groups interested in transparency will generally tell you how your information is going to be used. Unfortunately, this document has no disclosures of that sort.

Via Twitter, I asked most of the group if they could assure me that the information would not be used for any of Rex Sinquefield's campaigns.

None of them replied, except Casas, who said he "had no idea," despite the fact that, as was made clear in the Mayor's tweet, Casas is the point person for the day.

Slay and Reed continued tweeting, and didn't answer my question.

Of course, It would be vaguely interesting if all that happened was that the elected officials and operatives who were promoting this form only ignored my question and refused to simply say, "the information collected via that form will not be used for any future Rex Sinquefield campaigns." But it's actually worse than that. Because it's not just that they did not answer my question. It appears that I found the answer on my own.

The new web site for Rex's group, A Safer Missouri, has a page for "how you can help." This site promotes the same lobby day promoted by the St. Louis City Democrats, and says the following:

On Wednesday, January 26th the Missouri Senate will hold a hearing on Senator Keaveny’s bill that restores control of the St. Louis Police Department to the City of St. Louis. The hearing is scheduled for 2:00pm at the Capitol. Dozens of St. Louis residents will join Mayor Francis Slay and President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed that day in Jefferson City and visit with legislators about Local Control. Can you participate? We will offer transportation to those who need it.

In contrast, Lewis Reed's post about the lobby day refers to "the organizers" as a separate group. Likewise, Wahby's post simply says that buses are going, So Rex's group is providing transportation to the event, and what's more, as can be seen at the bottom of this screen shot from Sinquefield's PAC, Sinquefield's page links to the exact same Google Doc that the City Dems have been promoting:

In other words, Democrats in the city of St. Louis are apparently actively working to build the email lists of Rex Sinquefield, even as Rex is trying to push through a mega sales tax bill that would eliminate income tax in the state and shift the burden entirely to sales tax. This bill would gut our already struggling state government and would shift the tax burden to the poor and working class and away from the wealthy.

Furthermore, one wonders if city officials are also agreeing to keep quiet about the mega sales tax in exchange for Rex's support. Will they sit out a fight on a bill that would damage state government and hurt the people who can least afford it, just like they did with Rex's earnings tax repeal in November?

One other thing I'd like to point out: this is not really about a question of "how liberal are you?" Reasonable people can disagree about issues, if they debate them honestly. This is an issue of transparency. If a deal has been made with Rex, we deserve to know. If email lists and contact information are going to Rex, we deserve to know. That is about nothing more than the City Dems being honest and upfront about their dealings. We deserve that much, as do organizations like the DNC who are trying to decide if St. Louis is the best place for a national convention.

Of course, it's not too late. Any of those officials and operatives can now clear up this situation by declaring (1) that none of the emails collected from the Google Document will be used for a future Sinquefield campaign and (2) that they will vocally stand strong against Sinquefield's disastrous mega sales tax proposal and other attempts to destroy the government. I await their response, and I think it's fairly obvious how to interpret silence.

Update: A friend pointed out that the City Dems, as in the official group known as "The City Dems," did activiely oppose Proposition A in November. Apologies to that group and Brian Wahby for incorrectly characterizing their previous involvement. However, prominent politicians, most notably Slay and his crew, did not. I've changed the title and text to reflect that fact. It also doesn't explain why the City Dems would now be helping to promote Sinquefield's organization and building his email list.

Gateway Pundit: Michelle Obama's Call For People to Walk to Work is MURDER!

An ordinary right-wing extremist might decide to dial it back a little the week after being caught making ridiculous claims based on obviously fake facebook profiles and shamelessly lying about petty things about the memorial service in Tuscon...multiple times. But Jim Hoft, aka, Gateway Pundit, is no ordinary right-wing extremist.

Today, Hoft is claiming that Michelle Obama "might be responsible for increased deaths," because she suggested that people walk to work as part of her Get Up & Get Moving Program. This is the quote Hoft based his story on:

Governors Highway Safety Administration spokesman Jonathan Adkins told 630 WMAL that Michelle Obama is “trying to get us to walk to work and exercise a little bit more. While that’s good, it also increases our exposure to risk.”

Here's Hoft's sensationalist headline:


More people walking of course does increase the probability of walking-related accidents. But less people driving decreases the probability of automobile accidents. And more people being in shape obviously decreases health risks. This being Gateway Pundit, however, these obvious facts are not even considered.

Tea Party Blames Left for Senseless Shooting While Screaming About Blaming the Right

Yesterday, a horrible and senseless shooting in Arizona left six people dead, including nine-year-old girl Christina Green, and left Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords fighting for her life. This was the tragedy, and I think it's important to keep in mind that as disgusting as some of yesterday's political rhetoric was, the moral evil of the shooting was exponentially worse than anything else that happened yesterday.

That being said, I have to say that I was disappointed in much of the vitriolic and reactionary rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum yesterday. I don't have a problem with people condemning violent and inflammatory rhetoric, and I think that this should be done every day of the year, including when violent acts like this occur. In fact, I myself have been a huge critic of the St. Louis tea party's vitriolic rhetoric, including their "booting and torching" of a photo of Congressman Carnahan on the day health care reform passed, their carrying a coffin to Carnahan's personal residence the day after, and their calls for revolution and claims that they no longer had any moral obligations to the government. I also don't have a problem with pointing out that Palin's crosshairs imagery, or Angle's "second amendment solutions" language could potentially drive people to violence.

However, what I think does go way too far is to claim, at least when we don't yet have the full information, that these things caused yesterday's shootings. The fact is that yesterday, and even today, we don't really know that much about Loughner, and so it's a major mistake to claim that he was motivated by Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, or by anyone else. It's a crazy world and people's psychological makeups are all over the map, so even if violent political rhetoric increases the odds of something like this happening, it's a mistake to assume for any particular instance that we know the cause of the action when we only have very limited information. So I was a little dispirited to see such a vitriolic reaction from many on the Left saying that Beck or the tea party or whoever was to blame for yesterday's shootings, when the fact is we just don't really know that much about Loughner at this point and are basing our opinions on very limited information.

So, to that extent, I can understand why many on the Right, including the St. Louis Tea Party, were feeling unfairly accused yesterday. And despite my abhorrence for their inflammatory rhetoric, I might have even felt a bit sorry for them, if it weren't for the fact that they were doing the exact same thing they were complaining about! While simultaneously complaining about how evil the left was for daring to suggest that the shooter might be a right-wing extremist, they were claiming that he's a left-wing extremist.

For example, here's tea party co-founder Bill Hennessy claiming that Democrats "called for violence" and saying, based on extremely limited information, that the shooter was an "anarchist" or "markos-style leftist:"




...even while he was screaming about how the "Evil Left" was insinuating right-wing extremism was involved:

But America’s liberal elite turned the tragedy into a national day of shame. They accomplished this by callously and capriciously blaming innocent political opponents for the violence. When confronted with facts to the contrary, liberals, including Paul Krugman, CBS News, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Jane Fonda, Sheriff Dupnick of Pima County Arizona, and others, continued to lie, slander, and libel the tea party, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and conservatives in general.

When ubiquitous twitter voice-of-reason @Mizzouatheart tried to ask Hennessy to tone back the bile, here's how he responded:

Now maybe one could claim that Hennessy was just pointing out these alleged liberal "calls to violence," etc. in order to be ironic and point out how badly the Left was reacting. Except for the fact that immediately after the incident happened, Hennessy was already claiming that a random Daily Kos diary was "calling for violence" because the diarist said that Giffords was "dead to me;"

And likewise, Adam Sharp of the tea party called the Daily Kos post a "hit piece" shortly after the news broke of the shooting:

By the way, as pretty much anyone knows, saying that someone "is dead to me," doesn't mean you are planning to kill them: it means that they are beyond the point of redemption or that you are going to ignore them (also worth nothing that there's a pretty huge difference between rhetoric from a random diarist on a site (would anyone like to compare this with the mind-blowingly insane comments on Gateway Pundit's blog?) and a national political figure like Sarah Palin or Glenn beck). But the main point is that the St. Louis Tea Party was out of the gate blaming the Left for the shooting, even as they were complaining about any instance of people calling out right-wing rhetoric. In fact, they were even angry about the Pima county sheriff saying that we need to tone down the anger and hatred in our political discourse:

One other minor point: while he was busy blaming liberals, Hennessy also claimed that Politico wrote that the shooter was a "socialist," which does not seem true based on the link Hennessy provided.

Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, of course was his usual blatently hypocritical self:





Likewise, Dana Loesch called for people to stop blaming the Right:



...while clearly dropping hints that the shooter was a "leftist" or incited by the Left:





Also, as pointed out on twitter by MattOrtega, previously Loesch pretty blatently tried to exploit the Fort Hood shootings as part of her anti-Islam agenda:

And tea party spokesperson Jen Ennenbach? Well, who knows what the hell she's ever thinking, but she followed the same basic pattern, while including some crazy tweets about how this is the beginning of "civil war;"




Anyway, I think it's pretty obvious that the Right has been just as willing, if not more so, to blame this on the Left, even as they as usual are screaming about how "victimized" they are. In order to have a healthy discussion about this, we need to wait for more facts to come in. However, this is not to say we should avoid talking about the dangers of violent and inflammatory rhetoric. In fact, we (and particularly our local media) should have been talking about that much more for the past two years! Violent political rhetoric creates an atmosphere where things like this are more likely: whether or not it can be directly linked to any particular shooting, it is something that should be condemned and done away with.