What are they up to now? Gateway Pundit Edition

Remember Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, who has repeatedly promoted white supremacist websites including the Council of Conservative Citizens, especially for their "black on white" crime stories (even long after being called out by mainstream media outlets), who deletes comments from liberals at his website but leaves up comments calling black people the n-word, animals, and crackheads, and who claims that the NAACP are "the real racists."  What has he been up to?

Sadly, even in the wake of the horrific Charleston shootings perpetuated by a deranged racist, Hoft continues to allow his website to be a hub for internet racists.  Here is a sample of blatantly racist comments on The Gateway Pundit Facebook page *after* the shooting (there are plenty more from the week before as well):

WARNING: Offensive content below

 link

link 

 link

 link

 link

link

You'd like to think that there are life events that are so tragic, so momentous that they can get even people like Jim Hoft to stop for a moment and reconsider whether they really should be using their websites to flame white racal resentment.  Unfortunately, there's not much evidence to support that hope. 

Tea Party's Star Gladney Witness Found Guilty of Fraud, Blames Gay And Pro-Abortion Activists

Remember when tea partiers were completely humiliated during their fabricated story about evil "union thugs" brutally beating a guy selling tea party merchandise?  One of the tea party's alleged "witnesses" of the "brutal beating" was Harris Himes, a Montana pastor oddly attending a St. Louis political event who told conflicting stories about what he saw.  After a jury took less than an hour to reach a not guilty verdict for the "union thugs," Himes sent a letter to Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, one of the primary pushers of the fabricated story, declaring that the trial was a "miscarriage of justice."

So yeah, about that guy:

A Ravalli County jury found Hamilton pastor Harris Himes guilty on three felony counts of securities fraud Friday...

The charges followed a yearlong investigation by the state Office of the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance on accusations that Himes and another pastor, James “Jeb” Bryant, promised a Hamilton man a large return on $150,000 of his inheritance for his investment in the Mexican-based building materials company Duratherm Building Systems.

The man told the jury this week that he was surprised when he traveled to Mexico to find the factory was nothing more than an empty agricultural shed.

Oh, and guess who he previously blamed the charges on:

Himes went on to claim that gay and pro-abortion activists may be behind the charges against him and co-defendant James "Jeb" Bryant, another self-proclaimed pastor.

Himes seems like quite a guy.  He's the perfect spokesperson for Jim Hoft's right-wing victimization fantasies.

Gateway Pundit Angry About the Government Assisting the Elderly and Sick During a Heatwave

While he's not attacking people who died of cancer or getting angry at the idea of Joplin residents working together, birther Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft also likes to get angry at the government saving people's lives by providing cheap air conditioning units to the elderly and sick.  Media Matters has the story.

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.

Frequent KMOX Guest Jim Hoft's Blog Is a Racist Cesspool

KMOX 1120 AM, proud host of Rush Limbaugh's misogynist, homophobic, and racist program also frequently has Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft as a guest on their Friday Roundtable. Hoft, for those that don't know, has promoted the white nationalist site Council of Conservative Citizens on multiple occasions and still has links up to it on his blog, uses source material from "DiversityisCrap.com", has been called out for racism multiple times by national news organizations, and regularly posts race-baiting articles that quickly devolve into explicit racism in the comment section. So naturally, KMOX thinks he's a great guy to have on to "balance" the opinions of Rush Limbaugh in the name of the public interest.

It should come as no surprise then, that Hoft is allowing racism to flourish on his blog in the wake of the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin, all in the name of "page views." Here's a sampling of the racist comments, pining for the good old days of the n-word, promoting racist sties like Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens, and cheering for a race war.

Our black kids in action = rioting and stealing says this bigot:

Such a clever play on "African-American:"

Cheering for a "race war:"

"Kill yo cracka ass" is this guy's impersonation of R&B singers expressing support for Trayvon:

Apparently, this is all a secret plot to "keep white people in line:"

The "ghetto thug mentality" is a secret plot by the "Kenyan fraud President:"

kr says "blacks are not capable of governing themselves" and promotes the openly racist site Storm Front:

According to this lady, this has something to do with picking cotton, which apparently was the only thing that saved white people from looting:

Knuckle dragging animals

Cheering for profiling, because "blacks are the people who commit crimes:"

"Blacks are inherently violent:"

Complaining about "the n**ger class:"

This guy called Trayvon's mom "ghetto trash slut"

This guy wants his n word back:

Another person obsessed with "picking cotton:"

Rooting for a race riot:

Threatening response to the "no justice no peace" chant:

And here's an appropriate way to end. A commenter recommends the white nationalist site of the St. Louis Council of Conservative Citizens on Hoft's blog:

And the guy who runs the site jumps on to thank Hoft for his support in promoting one of his stories:

Note that despite this openly-racist garbage frequently being pointed out, Jim Hoft never does anything to condemn these racist comments or to let his commenters know that they are not acceptable. If Hoft made it clear that he won't stand for open racists on his site and thinks they're despicable, do you think they'd keep coming back? I guess we'll never know. Thanks KMOX!

Mayor Slay Sends Education Advisor to Koch-Funded Public Education Bashing Session Moderated By Gateway Pundit

(Image from JD Wilson)

How's this for absolutely un-freakin-believable? Robbyn Wahby, Mayor Slay's education adviser and wife of City Democrats Chair Brian Wahby, was on a "School Choice" panel put on last night by the Koch Brothers-funded Americans For Prosperity. The event was moderated by Gateway "race-baiting extraordinaire" Pundit. Her fellow panelists included Dana "drop trou and urinate on dead Afghanis" Loesch and Dick Morris. Yes, that Dick Morris.

The event was a teachers union-bashing propaganda festival, with words of wisdom like this:

And this:

Dana Loesch says that part of that reform must involve reforming the teachers unions and the way they work. She related a personal story about a young energetic teacher who was very popular in her high school. This teacher used lots of applied learning (hands on) and was a great teacher. The union came in and told her to "tone it down" because she was angering the older, less energetic teachers who had already established the "proper" way to teach. Putting the kibosh in new ways to teach and maligning fresh young teachers has long been practiced in teachers unions across the country. For those teachers, all the talk of "the children" is just that, talk. They care nothing about the children, they care only for their cushy jobs and sweet pension

And afterward, Robbyn Wahby told the extremists to be more vocal about supporting the Mayor's policies:

At the end of the panel discussion, they wrapped up with a few final thoughts. Robbyn Wahby reminds us that any good idea is twice as likely to succeed with good support systems. If we have ideas we want implemented or we feel the mayors office is promoting good choices in education, we can support that effort by making it known we support it and doing things that promote the choice.

Reasonable people can disagree about issues like school choice. But there is absolutely no excuse for the Mayor's office to be coordinating with unapologetic right-wing ideologues who categorically do not have the best interests of the vast majority of city residents in mind. Mayor Slay is already known for having taken over $100,000 in donations from Rex Sinquefield, the man who wants to privatize education in Missouri. And he's been caught playing footsie with the tea party before. If he plans on running for reelection again in 2013, maybe he should start thinking about how to appeal to the 99% rather than the 1%ers like Rex and the funders of Americans for Prosperity.

A RINO's Guide to Wooing Cranky Breitbart Editors (With Photos!)

What's that? You're a Republican politician who doesn't actually care about conservative values but likes using the government to further your business interests and personal wealth? Worried that conservative bloggers will tear you apart for pretending to be a conservative when you're actually not?

Fear not! Because here in the great state of Missouri we have the perfect example of how a GOP establishment candidate can easily win over the entire Breitbart operation just by showing them a little "affection" (if you know what I mean)!

Ann Wagner is the embodiment of the GOP establishment. She was appointed as the Ambassador to Luxembourg by President Bush. She was the chair of ultimate GOP insider Roy Blunt's successful Missouri Senate campaign where he defeated a more conservative challenger before trouncing Robin Carnahan. She was one of the finalists to run the Republican National Committee. And her husband is a registered lobbyist and Vice President of Government and Public Affairs at Enterprise, so her election would be the perfect example of the GOP establishment's favorite hobby: crony capitalism!

Not only that, but Wagner's opponent in the GOP primary is Ed Martin, a guy who was at the original St. Louis tea party rally and was on the tea party board before deciding to run against Russ Carnahan in the 2010 election. As a former Chief of Staff for Matt Blunt, Martin definitely is not a pure "outsider," but he also is not the embodiment of the national Republican Party as is Ann Wagner.

So you might think that Wagner would have a hard time wooing the "rebellious" "edgy" "unapologetic" "conservatives" who run Andrew Breitbart's sites. How wrong you'd be!

In fact, Wagner has not only charmed the Breitbart gang into avoiding attacks on her, she's actually gotten them to publish attacks on her tea party opponent! She's demonstrated that what they really care about isn't actually conservatism, but rather making sure that they get their piece of the pie.

But Adam, you're saying, it must be so incredibly hard to woo such iconoclast firebrands! No, it's really not! At least not if you are a wealthy, well-connected GOP fundraiser! Here are a few simple steps demonstrated by Ann Wagner that you can follow to ensure that the ever-so-principled "conservative bloggers" at Breitbart's sites will pretend that you represent the heart and soul of the Republican Party.

First, they really like to be taken to sporting events. See if you can arrange some VIP passes for them to make them feel special:

Andrew Breitbart and Big Government Editor Mike Flynn at a Cardinals game with Ann Wagner, Ray Wagner, and GOP operative Chip Gerdes.

Of course, a little alcohol never hurts an effort to help "grease the wheels" for some future positive coverage!

The especially red-faced & glassy-eyed Andrew Breitbart, Ann Wagner, and Mike Flynn in downtown St. Louis.

Formal events are a great place to schmooze!

Wagner with Breitbart editor Dana Loesch and "Gateway Pundit" Jim Hoft. Hoft wrote a post attacking Ed Martin on the Loesch-"edited" site Big Journalism. This was after Breitbart blogger Dan Riehl had sent a "warning shot" by attacking Martin on behalf of Wagner on Big Government.

Don't forget to introduce Breitbart editors to GOP celebrities so they can feel important!

Ann Wagner introducing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch.

And of course if you can get the manager of the radio station one of them works at to endorse you, you're as good as gold:

Ann Wagner is introduced by John Beck, the Senior VP at Loesch's home radio station KFTK, at a fundraiser hosted at Beck's home.

Are there any other secrets to wooing the Breitbart gang? Who knows? Wagner is a record-breaking fundraiser after all (and Breitbart did just raise $10 million for...something). And since Breitbart steadfastly refuses to release any information on who funds his site, Wagner can help him however much she wants without anyone being the wiser.

So, to summarize: it doesn't matter to Breitbart bloggers that Wagner is a "country club conservative" who perfectly represents the GOP establishment that the tea party fought against. It doesn't matter to Breitbart bloggers that Wagner's opponent in the primary is a guy who stood with the St. Louis Tea Party at their first rally and has been closely connected with them ever since. All that matters to the Breitbart bloggers is that Wagner promises to give them a little piece of the pie. And if you're a wealthy, well-connected GOP moderate, that's all that will matter to them about you too!

Jim Hoft Continues To Promote Racism At His Site

Is Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft a racist? I have no idea. But at this point there can be no doubt that Hoft allows, encourages, and even promotes racist material on his blog in order to drive up traffic and stir up white resentment for political reasons.

In just the past two weeks, Talking Points Memo described a completely fabricated Hoft attack on the President as a "fact free racist conspiracy" and a Los Angeles Times columnist called out a different story by Hoft as "baldly racist." Hoft's comments on those stories have been cesspools of openly racist comments.

But before going into more detail about the recent examples, let's review some of the history:

Hoft had earlier been criticized by a conservative blogger for linking to the white supremacist blog for the Council of Conservative Citizens, which he has done multiple times. Here's my previous description:

In 2009, Hoft linked to a video that claimed, without any evidence, that a white child had been beaten up by black kids on a school bus. Though it was true that the boy had been beaten, the race of the attackers was never mentioned in any of the news reports (this is not to be confused with a different incident in which there was video of a bus assault). Hoft had gotten his account from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization based in St. Louis, and he originally linked directly to them in his post. This was not the first time Hoft had linked to white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens.

After being criticized in the comments by fellow conservatives, Hoft moved the link to the Council of Conservative Citizens blog to a new location but still kept it on the blog (see update #2; note that this is from the blog of a conservative blogger). He finally removed even that link but kept up his link to the misleading video from the youtube page of KillTheCensors.

Though Hoft removed that particular link, to this day he still has links on his site to the Council of Conservative Citizens blog, despite being alerted to their presence:


You can see the link at the bottom of Hoft's web page. The St. Louis Council of Conservative Citizens moved their blog to a new place, so the link doesn't work from his page, but you can still find it on the wayback machine. As you can see, "Official Webblog of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area Council of Conservative Citizens" is clearly spelled out on the front page:


The Council of Conservative Citizens is a remnant of the White Citizens Councils and has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (read much more here). What kinds of things did the St. Louis area C of CC blog write about? Here's an example of their work, with the group attacking George Bush as "useless' because Bush came out against public noose displays in a post titled "Blacks Say Jump. Bush Says How High?" (click to photo for a larger version):


In 2007, Bill Hennessy (who later became the founder of the St. Louis Tea Party) apologized for linking to the Council of Conservative Citizens after recognizing their racism. When I caught a different tea party linking to a post on the new St. Louis C of CC blog, they removed the link with a short explanation. Yet Jim Hoft has never apologized for linking to an openly racist group, and still keeps a link up to their website to this day.

Furthermore, the Council of Conservative Citizens is not the only racist source Hoft uses. Hoft was called out by myself and by our local Village Voice owned alternative weekly, the Riverfront Times, for using a video from the openly racist website "Diversity is Crap." Here's an example of the type of comment that post from Hoft attracted:

I teach my children to stay as far clear of non-Whites as is practically possible. Our girls are being groomed by the Media to be their whores, or if unwilling, their rape victims, and our boys are being taught that to speak without a ghetto patois is to be eternally, fatally uncool. Both are factors in the destruction of our society.

Despite being criticized for openly racist comments on his site (click here for more examples), Hoft has left them up on his blog to this day. He will, however, remove comments that criticize himself.

So fast forward to the present. A couple weeks ago Talking Points Memo called out the Right's latest race-based conspiracy theory. The post was centered around Trump tweeting a link to Jim Hoft's story. Here's what TPM wrote:

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted his endorsement of the latest bit of holiday cheer from the extremist ant-Obama right. As the story goes on more than one conservative blog this week, Obama declined to offer an official statement marking Christmas, but made sure to get one out celebrating Kwanzaa.

This tale is as blatantly racial as it is demonstrably false, and it comes in the grand tradition of accusing Obama of supporting Ramadan over Easter and the old Trump favorite that Obama got into the Ivy League because he’s not white, not because he’s smart.

The trouble with the story about Christmas and Kwanzaa is that it’s 100% untrue. Here’s Obama using his taxpayer-funded weekly video address to wish Americans “a Merry Christmas” this past weekend
...

Hoft still hasn't updated his post with the truth.

And earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times took issue with a racist image Hoft used in one of his posts:

A baldly racist depiction of First Lady Michelle Obama that appeared Tuesday on a right-wing website is based on a 1775 portrait of Marie Antoinette by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). The full-length painting hangs outside Paris in the Palace of Versailles.

The Internet image grafts Obama's face onto Gautier-Dagoty's lavish depiction of the French queen, dressed in full regalia. It also replaces the draped left arm of the young monarch, then barely 20, with a muscular black arm and shifts the position of the right hand to place it in front of a world globe.

The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an "uppity Negro," which emerged among slave masters in an earlier American era. Obama, born into a working-class Chicago family whose roots are traced to the pre-Civil War South, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, prior to holding several high-level positions in the academic and private sectors.

The racist image appeared Tuesday on the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit; the slur was later called out by Media Matters for America. A post by Gateway blogger Jim Hoft paired the picture with a clip of the first lady's guest appearance on a forthcoming episode of "iCarly," a Nickelodeon sit-com. In the script, Obama commends the cast for their support of military families. Responding to a cast member who mistakenly addresses her as "your excellency," the script has Obama jokingly reply, "I kinda like it."

Hoft hasn't changed the posts in response to the criticisms, and in fact continues to allow racist comments to fester. Despite being called out by Eric Boehlert at Media Matters, Hoft left up a comment on his post attacking Michelle Obama that called her "the queen of the crackheads."

And a more recent post includes a commenter who refers to her as the "First Negress:"


Whether done out of intentional malice or pure sloppiness, this disgusting promotion of racism should be intolerable for any modern, decent human beings. Yet not only do Republican politicians like Peter Kinder and Ann Wagner fail to call out people like Hoft, they openly pander to him and beg for his support.

St. Louis should be better than this.

Gateway Astroturf Initiative Was Registered on Dec. 1, BEFORE Tea Party Publicly Criticized Jim Hoft

As pointed out by @VickyStL on Twitter, it turns out that Loesch's new astroturf venture was registered on December 1:

Why is this important? Because many on the Team Wagner side of the split acted offended by the 24th State post criticizing Jim Hoft's attack on Ed Martin. However, that post wasn't until December 3rd. In other words, it looks like Loesch and/or Scott Boston was planning this new group before anyone from the St. Louis Tea Party had ever publicly criticized Hoft.

Loesch and Hoft Demand To Be Taken Off Conservative Email List After Seeing Activist Hub Article!

At the end of a post documenting that members of the St. Louis Tea Party had criticized Gateway Pundit, I asked the following questions:

So, there are a lot of questions there, but my biggest one is this: will Hoft even acknowledge the criticisms? We all know he ignores arguments from almost anyone who disagrees with him, but will he be equally afraid of debate with his fellow members of the tea party? They also suggest that Loesch should give them a platform on her radio show or on Big Journalism to respond, and I think they have a strong point.

Well, I guess we now know the answer to these! A member of a conservative email list (that includes activists, politicians like Tim Jones and Susan Cunningham, and radio hosts like Loesch and Allman) sent out the version of that post that appeared on Little Green Footballs. Not only did Hoft refuse to answer any questions, he immediately demanded to be taken off the email list! Here's the text (forwarded to me anonymously):

That's a horrible dishonest piece. The fact that you sent that out in a mass email is deplorable and mean spirited.
Please take me off this list immediately.

Jim Hoft

I'm not sure what exactly was mean-spirited about it. The fact that conservatives disagreed with Hoft's claims?

Unsurprisingly, Dana Loesch was no less childish than Hoft. Here's her email:

I also ask to be removed from this list. Spreading Media Matters smears is hardly grassroots.

Dana

Haha, Media Matters? What does that have to do with any of this?

Why couldn't Loesch and Hoft simply respond to the points raised in the original article critical of Ann Wagner? Oh, that's right, because that would mean that they engaged in genuine debate, which is the thing they're most afraid of.

Missouri Record Asks Why St. Louis Tea Party Isn't Supporting Ed Martin

Over at the Missouri Record blog, in a post titled Weak Tea In St. Louis?, Patrick Tuohey asked why the St. Louis Tea Party isn't supporting Ed Martin:

Yet in St. Louis the movement has remained on the fence in the Congressional race between Ann Wagner and Ed Martin....

So why haven't they taken up his cause? If the Tea Party movement doesn't rally around candidates like Martin, what has been the point of the last three years? If the St. Louis activists staked a claim in party politics in New York's 23rd, why not in Missouri's 2nd?

Actually, many in the St. Louis Tea Party leadership (John Burns, Ben Evans, Michelle Moore,and I believe Bill Hennessy and Darin Morley) have put their support behind Martin. However, others, including Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft, see more opportunity for personal gain in supporting Roy Blunt campaign chair and GOP insider Ann Wagner. But Tuohey's basic point is a good one: why did certain people go wild fighting "the GOP establishment" in New York yet roll over for the GOP establishment in their home town?

St. Louis Tea Party Leaders Slam Gateway Pundit!

Obviously, I have no love for Ed Martin. And I'm on record as being critical of the St. Louis Tea Party for claiming to be principled while supporting Roy Blunt over Chuck Purgason and Ed Martin over John Wayne Tucker. But I have to say I actually do have some sympathy for the core group that, unlike Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft, is at least attempting to move forward by holding true to their ideals and opposing the GOP establishment. Though I think they're wrong in believing that Ed Martin is a principled conservative, it is at least clear that they felt like voting for Blunt was merely an imperfect step towards their ultimate goal, and that they would have to try to more actively oppose the crony capitalism of the modern Republican party in the future if they really wanted to live up to their ideals.

On the other hand, Dana Loesch, who voted for Mitt Romney in the 2008 primary and explicitly said that she liked RomneyCare before realizing that it was more profitable to be a "tea party spokesperson" on national television, is unsurprisingly abandoning Ed Martin in favor of Roy Blunt's 2010 campaign manager, GOP insider Ann Wagner. And Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft, writing on Loesch's website Big Journalism, also recently launched an attack on Ed Martin. However, members of the St. Louis tea party leadership Michelle Moore, John Burns, and Ben Evans wrote a recent post dismantling Hoft's attacks on Martin. You can read the full post here, but I'll share a few highlights:

• First, they point out that Martin didn't turn the race ugly; he was actually the target of an attack from Dan Riehl earlier in the year on Breitbart's Big sites (where Loesch is an editor).
• They reiterate Darin Morley's point that it was ridiculous for Hoft to try to imply that Ed Martin is more connected to Roy Blunt than is Ann Wagner.
• They criticized Hoft's attempts to pretend that Wagner's husband is no longer involved in advocating on behalf of Enterprise Rent-a-Car:

  As everyone in the Tea Party knows Ray delisted himself in preparation for Ann’s campaign; however, he is still Enterprise's Government & Public Affairs Vice-President. In that capacity, he oversees Enterprise's lobbying and he helps determine where their campaign funds go. Again, Jim knows this, but deliberately ignores it in the post.

• They point out that Chip Gerdes, a familiar creepy scuzzbucket for readers of this blog, said that he wrote Dan Riehl's original attack on Ed Martin as a "warning shot:"

  As mentioned at the top, Hoft was quoted in the first hit piece against Ed Martin that came out last August on Big Government. That piece, supposedly written by Dan Riehl, sparked a firestorm among Tea Party conservatives in Missouri. Upon questioning, Chip Gerdes, another paid political consultant, stated that he wrote the piece as a “warning shot” to Ed Martin because of comments that Martin made on a Christian AM radio station.

• They also question where Hoft got his data and whether he even did his own writing:

  If Gerdes is writing hit pieces for Ann Wagner and publishing them under Dan Riehl’s name, what else has he written?...We ask: Where did those figures come from? Dan Riehl and Dana Loesch have written on Twitter and in Tea Party emails that hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Ed Martin by Ann Wagner’s Enterprise connections. This has been proven false. Who gave Jim the data and where is it? Let’s see some research.

The biggest criticism of the tea party, though, is that Hoft attributed their research to Ed Martin, even though he should have known better. St. Louis Tea Party founder Bill Hennessy, who wasn't one of the authors of the post, suggests that Hoft "intentionally deceived his readers" in the comments:

I, too, am disappointed by Jim Hoft's inconsistency and deception.

Inconsistency: Jim approved of Dan Riehl's Big Government hit piece on Ed Martin some months ago--the one that rehashed old Carnahan distortions that 24th State shot down in 2010.

Deception: Jim knows that St. Louis Tea Party researchers, not the Ed Martin campaign, performed the research and supplied it to Daily Caller. I was present when Jim was told. By pretending otherwise, Jim seems to intentionally deceive Gateway Pundit readers.

Cordially,
Bill Hennessy

So, there are a lot of questions there, but my biggest one is this: will Hoft even acknowledge the criticisms? We all know he ignores arguments from almost anyone who disagrees with him, but will he be equally afraid of debate with his fellow members of the tea party? They also suggest that Loesch should give them a platform on her radio show or on Big Journalism to respond, and I think they have a strong point.

Conservatives Starting To Criticize Ed Martin's Character

Update: I wrote this before seeing a post on 24th State where the St. Louis Tea Party says they were responsible for the criticism of Ann Wagner and acted independently of Ed Martin's campaign. As I've documented, there seems to have been pretty close collaboration between the tea party and Martin in the past, so I wouldn't take the mere statement as proof, but it nevertheless is worth noting. It will also be interesting to see if Jim Hoft acknowledges it.

Nothing about Ed Martin has changed from the last election cycle; he's still just as dishonest and unscrupulous as he ever was. However, one thing that has changed is that Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft have decided to move on to the greener pastures of currying favor with Republican insider Ann Wagner, who's running against Martin in a GOP primary. And therefore many far-right conservatives who base their opinions not on what is said but rather on who said it are finally starting to realize the extent of Martin's crooked character.

Here are some great quotes from the comments on Gateway Pundit's post criticizing a typical Ed Martin attack:

Hypocritical also since Ed was so outraged that his wife’s ‘tens of thousands of dollars of stock in Exxon Mobil Corp.’ was brought up in his last election (wait second to last election – or how are we counting the switches between Senate and congress…)

Hahaha! Only in Martinbots minds would a candidate who has NEVER RUN for a race in her life be an “insider!” How many races has Martin run in? How many races has he lost or switched out of because he realized he couldn’t win?? He was chief of staff for Matt Blunt before that email scandal!! HAHAH! What a good one!

Martin’s behind the scenes smears are just as bad as what the Democrats do.

I met Ed Martin at a benefit(there was an open bar) and he was barely verbal. Make of that what you will.

I don’t get why Ed Martin hates businesses and job creators so much other than the fact they won’t give his campaign money. Not sure if he is a conservative running for Congress or the leader of Occupy Missouri 2. Oh wait forgot they’re leaderless, and that’s probably better for any movement where Ed Martin is aspiring to be their leader.

I could tell Ann is running to serve. Ed seems like he is running just to hold office-is he running for Govenor this week?????

...What did someone say, the truth will set you free. Perhaps Ed and his people should start seeking.

I used to like Ed Martin, even after the stories about the emails he deleted hit. I voted for him against Russ Carnahan in the last district. My family has since moved to Chesterfield, the district which Ed Martin is running for but doesn’t live in, and the same time I hear that he’s now also running or considering a run for the governorship? He’s not committed to the race that he’s in. I’ve also seen people behave very unconservative like online and making up stories about candidates that aren’t true but they call it vetting anyway. I attended the last, and only I think, debate with Both Ann Wagner and Ed Martin. I’m not impressed with Martin’s unprofessional way of jumping around, playing musical chairs to see which race will earn him that long awaited victory, and as a family member of an individual who, after seven months of unemployment, was just hired on at Enterprise, seeing a business that creates jobs and adds to the economy be defamed in the way that it has by this man’s campaign. It’s the height of hypocrisy to say you’re standing up for the little guy but go after the little guy employers if they don’t donate to your campaign. It’s truly a nasty thing to watch someone I once voted for lower themselves to such an unprofessional standard. I had been open to Ed Martin in my district, but seeing as he is not even committed enough to those of us that live here to move here himself, seeing also how he turns on and lies about businesses who supported him all this time, and now seeing how he may not even be running in this race, I have resolutely decided that I will be voting for Ann Wagner.

Ed Martin has a track record of being a GOP insider and the lapdog of RINOS like Matt and Roy Blunt. His sleazy antics cost the governorship of MO with email scandle and his own poor leadership and unwillingness to step up and take the blame like a man. Now Ed the perennial Republican candidate wants us to believe he is some sort of outsider? HA! How about all the big medicine money coming from his doctor friends that work at institutions that support Obamacare?

The days of Ed’s sleazy politics and left-wing OWS ideology are over, he should try to not be a politician for a while but that would be hard for a young career politician who has been a GOP insider his entire career.

Poor, poor, Ed. Ann is getting all the dough. . .shocking, after 20 years of her raising money for everyone else. . .including Martin.
Martin was foolish for jumping in Wagner’s race (as he was in the Senate, knowing full well Akin was going to run). Really, he couldn’t raise enough to beat Carnahan in the 3rd. . .there’s no way in hades he has a shot at raising enough to beat BOTH Wagner and Carnahan.
Sad. I don’t think Martin was behind the DC hack piece, but I do think he knows who is. . .some poor, pathetic dude who probably lives in his mom’s basement.

Tea Party Blogger Laughs At Gateway Pundit's Defense of Ann Wagner

Darin Morley:

I saw a picture over at Big Journalism with the sub-title: "Ed Martin, left, talks with Roy Blunt" and I just had to laugh. Roy Blunt's popularity among Tea Partiers and conservatives is pretty low, so Ed Martin probably doesn't want to be seen with him and certainly hasn't been seen with him recently. In short, the photo was a nice, subtle attempt to associate Ed Martin with Roy Blunt.

Of course, there are several reasons beyond Blunt's waning popularity why Ed Martin doesn't want to be seen with Missouri's newest US Senator. First, Roy Blunt has endorsed Ed's primary opponent Ann Wagner. Second, Ann Wagner chaired Blunt's 2010 Senate campaign. And third, Roy Blunt's daughter, Amy Blunt, works for the Bespoke Group and they provided "FEC Compliance" to the Ann Wagner campaign as documented above.

He has a point. There's no question Wagner is closer to Blunt than Martin is, so Hoft's photo was pretty misleading.

Bulldozers, Bats, and Bayonets: Gateway Pundit's Followers Call For Violence Against OccupySTL

Gateway Pundit is excited that the people he calls "goons" at OccupySTL aren't leaving Kiener Plaze. And, unsurprisingly, his followers are thrilled at the prospect of violence.

Here's a sampling of the comments from his post:

...
Send in a bulldozer. Or an Acme steamroller. Meep! Meep!

...
I hope they use dogs! A good bite on the butt would convince these clowns to move on down the road.

...
Jim, Why don’t you get your good buddy Albert P. to take his bat down there and show them some of his greatest hits?

...
Where is the 75th Ranger Regiment when you need them.
Fix Bayonets!!!

Tea Party Smears Homeless Vet With PTSD In Effort to Discredit OccupySTL

The flailing St. Louis Tea Party, seeing their relevance decline almost to the point of oblivion, is getting desperate to try to discredit the actual grassroots Occupy Wall Street and OccupySTL movement. Tea Party bloggers Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft and Adam Sharp posted the following video with the header "Hippy Fight!"


The altercation, however, was not between organizers of the occupation, but rather between two homeless men, and organizers quickly cooled them down. In fact, one of the men is a homeless veteran who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. From a friend at OccupySTL:

Ronnie - who was yelling- is a homeless vet with ptsd who was sleeping in keiner since before we arrived. He has gotten in arguments with other homeless people - but hasn't bothered anyone else and has never actually hurt anyone.

Don't expect Hoft or Sharp to have any remorse about using a guy who fought for our country to try to smear the group. In fact, they take pride in the fact that they're deficient in normal human emotions like empathy.

Whoops! Yet Another Failed Tea Party Gladney Conspiracy Theory

A St. Louis Tea Party blog has another conspiracy theory about the trial. They write the following:

Setting aside all of the peripheral evidence, the case came down to two witnesses for the prosecution stating they saw McCowan and Molens attack Gladney, versus a witness for the defense who made the claim that Kenneth started the "fight" by slapping the hand of Elston McCowan.

It was up to the jury to determine which witness testimony was most reliable

First of all, that's not technically true. It was up to the jury to determine if there was evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the two defendants assaulted Gladney. Even if one witness was "more credible" than another, that wouldn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt (BTW, as I've previously noted, the prosecution's witness John Mirelli does not seem very credible).

Anyway, they identify the witness as the woman with the cane in this video, seen in the screen shot below.


Their speculation that this is the witness is correct. Hilariously, Gladney had previously claimed that this woman had also assaulted him (Gladney's huge number of inconsistent statements and changing stories about the case are another major consideration in the jury's verdict, of course).

Anyway, the tea party speculation about the witness is just plain dumb:

The full video: You can see her just a few seconds in, clearly getting to the scene after it occurred.

As we verify the identity of this witness that stepped forward two years after the fact, it seems fair to question if she perjured herself, seeing as she arrived after the assault occurred.

Actually, as anyone familiar with the case knows, the initial incident did not take place at the curb, but rather by the button board nearer to the camera, right where the woman is walking in the screen shot. The video was shown while the witness was testifying, and the lawyers asked her questions about it. There's nothing in her statement that would indicate that she was lying.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
What this does show is that another biased assumption of the tea party turned out to be false. They claimed that there "were no other witnesses." How did they know that? Obviously, they didn't know that. They just assumed it based on limited information, and it then became a piece of Tea Party Gospel. The reason McCowan and Molens were originally arrested was because the police were approached by the tea party and only ended up interviewing three people, all of whom were tea party activists. This is the same night that the police ridiculously arrested Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, and also arrested Brian Matthews for "resisting arrest," a claim later disproved by video of the event.

Update: Like moths drawn to the Burning Flame of Teh Stupid, Jim Hoft and Dana Loesch are now promoting this idiotic conspiracy.

Response to Gateway Pundit's Latest Gladney Conspiracy Theory

Gateway Pundit is out with a new conspiracy theory about the Kenneth Gladney trial originating from tea partier Harris Himes. Himes, if you recall, was one of the people mentioned in the original highly-flawed police report as a "witness". However, the prosecutor decided not to use Harris Himes because he has a sketchy record as an extreme partisan, something I've previously reported about.

Himes and Hoft allege some grand conspiracy as being behind the not guilty verdict of the case. But their reasoning is unsurprisingly highly flawed.

First of all, Himes claims that the jurors ignored the fact that his wife was a witness and he criticizes the prosecution for not including him as a witness. He writes his letter as if both he and his wife saw the initial altercation:

Following this sham townhall meeting, as Sandra and I walked back to our car, she stopped to look at some buttons and flags, “Don’t Tread on Me,” etc., being sold by a nice, young black man (Kenneth Gladney), when—just as she was walking away—a large, black man in a purple tea shirt (Elston McCowan) confronted Gladney, “What kind of a son of a n_______ are you?” and slapped his hand which held the yellow flags. Then he punched Gladney in the side of his face , knocking him down. Another large, purple-tea-shirt white man (Perry Molens) attacked him from behind, jerking him to the ground. The fight continued across the sidewalk, out into the street—where the video began recording the incident, with Sandra and me and several others trying to break it up. We identified McCowan and Molens to the police, and they arrested them. As it turns out, Sandra and I were only two of three witnesses to the start of the fracas. This becomes important, since the union thugs claim that Gladney started the fight.

This sounds a lot like what was in the police report, but in fact is a blatant lie. Himes (ironically in a different interview with Hoft) previously admitted that his wife did not see how the fight started:

Well, actually my wife had stopped to look at the buttons and the flags he was handing out, and just as she turned away, that's when he was attacked by the two SEIU guys..."

In fact, his wife testified under oath that she didn't see how the fight started. So Himes is clearly misrepresenting reality, and also is ignoring the fact that his wife's testimony was irrelevant to the crucial question of how the fight started.

Harris Himes also admitted that he was away when the incident started and only turned around after he heard a "noise:"

And so I looked back because I heard a noise behind. And, it was my wife however, who could corroborate the fact that it was really a hate crime because she heard the black man who claims he's a minister also said "what's a ..... doing here" ... that was essentially what she heard. And I looked back and then I saw this guy slap Gladney...slap his hand away and start striking him but the other big white guy grabbed him and threw him down to the ground. So I came back, and I was trying to get them off Gladney, and my wife was circling to keep any of the others from jumping me. And so then we got them off and broke it up once and then they attacked him again.

Given that Harris and Sandra Himes did not see how the fight started, we are left with the following situation: other than the defendants, there was one witness for the prosecution who claimed that he saw how the fight started, and one witness for the defense who claimed that she saw how the fight started. Furthermore, Gladney's "medical records" were apparently sketchy enough that the prosecutor decided not to include them in the evidence. So one witness for each side who actually saw the fight start obviously does not create a convincing case on behalf of the prosecution.

Furthermore, there was additional information that the jury did not have that would have called into question the validity of the prosecution's witness. First, John Mirelli (spelled incorrectly by Hoft and Himes) claimed at the trial that he was not affiliated with the tea party and was "only at the town hall to see how health care reform would affect his employees." First of all, the forum was actually about aging, and would have included absolutely no information about how health care reform would have affected his employees. The claim that it was a town hall on health care reform was the exclusively tea party spin on the event. But more importantly, Mirelli is on video earlier in the day having to be held back from an altercation with an SEIU member. He's also on plenty of other videos from that day getting into arguments with Carnahan supporters. And if that's not enough, consider the fact that Mirelli was seen at the beginning of the video apparently leaning protectively over Elston McCowan while Gladney is in an attacking posture. Wouldn't it be a little strange for Mirelli to be protecting McCowan if McCowan had just gotten done pummelling Gladney? It was only after Molens pulled Gladney backwards that Mirelli started screaming "you guys attacked that poor man!!!" Also, in the trial, Mirelli claimed he was leaning down to help Gladney, which is completely inconsistent with the above photo.

Himes and Hoft also made a big deal about the fact that this was the first case the prosecutor had ever tried. From being at the trial, I think the prosecutor actually did a pretty good job. However, there was one crucial flaw in his case: there was absolutely no compelling evidence that supported his case (and, despite what the tea party claimed, there never was).

Himes also claims that it would make no sense for Gladney to attack the two larger gentlemen McCowan and Himes. However, this is not what the defense's argument was. The claim is that McCowan and Gladney were arguing, it escalated, and Gladney eventually threw a punch at McCowan. Molens only got involved in the fight when Gladney was allegedly attacking his friend. So it's just not true that anyone claimed that Gladney "attacked two larger men." Furthermore, Gladney can be heard in the aftermath of the original video saying he's going to "beat the hell" out of McCowan, so it seems clear to me that his temper might allow him to attack people larger than he is. And finally, for the record, short muscular people can actually be pretty tough.

Finally, Himes claimed that the "news tabloid" Riverfront Times said that the jury was stacked with union members. The RFT did mention this, but it was originally from KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen. In fact, this is what Kileen said:

More than half of jury pool has union ties -- in case of two union members accused of assaulting conservative. Two have Tea Party ties.

What this means, if you're keeping track, is that even two jurors with tea party ties reached the not guilty verdict in less than an hour's worth of deliberation. A jury's decision has to be unanimous, and even two tea partiers could see how weak the evidence was for a "union thug assault."

So, it's not surprising in the slightest that the tea party would resort to conspiracy theories to explain the fact that reality just does not match up with their conspiracy theories. In fact, yesterday Hoft idiotically claimed that "NAACP thugs" were intimidating the Gladney family outside of the courtroom. I was there, and this clearly wasn't true. And if you look at Hoft's picture, you'll notice that the so-called "thugs" weren't actually staring at Gladney's family: they were staring at the crazy tea partier Jim Hoft who was taking photos of them. Furthermore, none of the people in the photo are actually part of the St. Louis NAACP. So, that should give you some idea how Hoft's "mind" works.

Jim Hoft Cites Discredited Source to Claim Obama "Screamed F-Word"

The same source, in fact, that claimed that the U.S. military had staged a coup against Obama.

This might actually be an improvement for Hoft, who has unknowingly cited parody sources like the Onion on multiple occassions in the past, and who famously mistook closed captioning as "applause signs" at Obama's speech for victims of the Tuscon shooting.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has the story.

My Response to Tommy Christopher's Response on #Weinergate

Tommy Christopher has kindly emailed a response to my earlier criticisms of his coverage of Daily Kos and Breitbart. Some of what he said was already addressed in my update, but he wouldn't have had any reason to have know that. My understanding of his defense is that (1) he was already highly critical of Breitbart earlier, (2) that he specifically restricted his criticisms to focus on the "publications" of Breitbart, rather than other communications, and (3) he stands by his original criticisms of Markos for several reasons.

So I'll start first with his response about restricting his argument to "publications," or as Christopher puts it: "the publication of factual evidence." Christopher notes this restriction and then points out a number of tweets where he's been critical of Breitbart's behavior on Twitter in recent days, writing things like:

Drawing conclusions from an ambiguous fact pattern is yellow. Publicly claiming "we have more"=yellow. @AndrewBreitbart

First thing to note: it's ironic that Christopher himself was critical, just two days ago, of the idea that it's acceptable to be dishonest on Twitter yet claim that one's "publishing" has been honest:

So, by his own standards, it seems weird to argue that it's OK to differentiate Breitbart's behavior on Twitter from that on his web site. And the fact that he criticized Breitbart's tweets just bolsters my point that the target article presented an inaccurate piture of Breitbart's role in his mess. What we want to know is whether Breitbart behaved honestly and ethically, not just whether he was somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else. So it's true that Tommy Christopher circumscribed his arguments to focus only on the Big websites, but by doing so it ceases to be a helpful evaluation of Breitbart's role in the controversy.

The reality, however, is that Breitbart did not even meet the lowered bar of "somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else." As I pointed out, he allowed Jim Hoft to post links to the pictures and personal information of high school girls during his smear campaign.

Christopher's response to this criticism of Breitbart was twofold. One, he pointed out that he was critical of Hoft on Twitter. That's admirable, but not really relevant to my point that Breitbart allowed the filth on his site. Second, Christopher wrote the following:

If I am guilty of something, it is not noticing this link in Hoft's BG article, but once I did, I emailed Breitbart to alert him to it. If he sends me back an email saying he's leaving it up because she was asking for it, and I do nothing, then you will have a point. And what are you doing linking to it?

He later added, via email:

Since I alerted Andrew Breitbart to the presence of that link in Hoft's story, it has been deleted.

Well, that sounds just dandy that Breitbart decided to delete the link only a mere four days later, after everyone has already looked at it, and while he's trying to smear Markos as someone who publishes information about high schoolers. Just dandy, except for the fact that Media Matters' Eric Boehlert was criticizing Breitbart over Hoft's post four days ago, and the link has remained up until today. Here's Boehlert's criticism, which was retweeted by Breitbart:

And this was Breitbart's response:

So forgive me if I don't take Breitbart deleting the link four days later as strong evidence of the high quality of his moral character.

Finally, in my post I defended Markos's decision to not edit a recommended diary on his site:

I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).

And Christopher responded as follows:

3 problems with this: 1. redacting the names would have had no effect on the content's news value. 2. This was an extreme circumstance. Two minor children and their parents feared for their safety. 3. There is no "policy" against it, made clear by his offer to consider a "counter-argument" that he deemed worthy. He never argued the girls weren't being endangered, he just didn't care.

My thoughts. I agree that redacting the names wouldn't have decreased the "news value:" however, I think that a site owner making a decision to edit content of a user is a serious decision that some would have objected to. What actually happened, the author of the diary deciding to change the content, is preferable. As I said before, I personally would not divulge the girls' information, even though I previously saw the image, since I saw what happened to the women subjected to harassment after neanderthals like Hoft posted their personal information and Breitbart's site linked to it. My only point was that there is a difference between deciding what you personally write about and what is allowed to appear in a community that values free expression and investigation. Thus, though I don't agree with Markos's decision, I can see why he would (perhaps mistakenly) lean against the idea of censoring his community. And again, this is different from Breitbart's site hand-picking an article from Hoft that links to pictures and personal information of high school students. In the later case, the people who run the web site are directly responsible.