Adam Shriver pwns Dana Loesch, STL Teabagger Hate Cabal Asskisses Roy Blunt

Adam Shriver, a blogger at the STL Activist Hub, attends the 9/12 Teabagger Rally and questions one of the members of the STL Teabagger Hate Cabal (Dana Loesch) harasses him as a "stalker" and a "defamer." She has also referred me as "a person who sits in Mama's basement defaming my character."

Some points about the conversation:

The reason I hesitated about whether I'm "a Washington University employee" is because I'm on dissertation fellowship this year, so I actually was not sure whether I would be classified as an employee. However, I am pretty sure that I'm not considered "staff." It's not because I was trying to "conceal my identity" as they claim. And for the bazillionth time, I'm not, "using the university's resources to smear and libel private citizens."

Dana and her cronies are outright defamatory jerks by going after Shriver with no facts to back it up.

Speaking of which, she's still ridiculously claiming that I "libel" and "defame" her by responding to her public political statements. She also claims that responding to her opinions is equivalent to "stalking" her. On this definition, I am also "stalking" Bill Hennessy, Ed Martin, Roy Blunt, Jim Hoft, Adam Sharp, etc. etc. etc. And, for that matter, Dana Loesch is "stalking" Eric Boehlert and President Obama. She sure as hell would be "stalking" Russ Carnahan when she burned a picture of him and said, "This is how a fire smells when it's burning Tyranny" on this definition. But on the real definition, it's not stalking to criticize other people's political viewpoints that they state on blogs or on Twitter. Most people with even a modicum of intelligence realize that once you put a political opinion out on Twitter, people are going to read and respond to it. Likewise, it's not "libel" to use evidence to point out when other people are wrong.

As I say in the conversation, all of this blabber about "stalking" and "libel" is an attempt by Loesch to shut down political discourse, and shows just how scared she is of having people actually analyze her comments.

Loesch can't stand smart, well-informed people owning her in a debate, so she is a coward and is well-known for refusing to open up the comments on the Dana Radio blog and on her youtube page. Suprisingy, her show's facebook page allows comments (if you fan her).

She said I tried to expose "payola situations" and hence was "coming after her job." Well, sorry, but if her husband's business Shock City Studios gets $5,000 from Ed Martin and she fails to disclose that while giving Martin favorable coverage, then I'm going to mention it (BTW, Chad Garrison and another reporter who wasn't in a position to write about it agreed that this was a newsworthy story). It's called "a conflict of interest" and most people are capable of recognizing clear instances of it.

She thought she was clever by saying that the Congressional Black Caucus also made a video there so, "does that mean she's in the pocket of the CBC?" But, as I said in the video, I think the rules would be exactly the same. If she was reporting on the CBC, then she would have a duty to disclose that she had a financial conflict of interest. Transparency isn't only a good thing for the government. It's also quite an important feature of a well-functioning media. I tried to explain this to her but her Fox News Guide to Conversation kicked in and she simply ignored my point multiple times before changing the subject.

She says that I "attack them personally" but "never address the merits of their ideas." Hilarious.

Dana alluded to the right-wing conspiracy theory that health care reform is "unconstitutional." As I point out, this is not true according to the dominent interpretation of the commerce clause: While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of "commerce" as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

The 2010 Health Care Reform Act, while not perfect, is a start.

Finally, her comment about "poll numbers" was a complete distraction. We were discussing whether the law was unconstitutional, not whether it was popular. Incidentally, the latest poll shows a very small difference between the number who view it favorably and those who view in unfavorably, 43-45.

Dana must've been using Biasmussen polls as usual.


http://stlactivisthub.blogspot.com/2010/09/conversation-with-dana-loesch.html





Also, this moron tried to claim 14,000 showed up, when in fact maybe 4,000 at the most showed up.

Bill Streeter said this to me on Twitter:

@JGibsonATRL my estimate is 3k on the high side (99% white) about 13 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to JGibsonATRL

Want further proof that the STL Tea Party kisses up to Roy Blunt:
A long while ago, the St. Louis took their shot at being a group that actually fought for the values they claimed to endorse. They held a press conference demanding that Roy Blunt endorse Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 race over Dede Scozzafava. They said that if he didn't, "We will vote you out! We will come at you with so much heat, you won't even know how to handle it!"

Roy Blunt didn't endorse Hoffman. He completely ignored the St. Louis tea party. And that was the moment that any claims the St. Louis tea party had of truly standing for conservative values rather than the same old GOP establishment faded away forever. The St. Louis tea party was broken.

Blunt's primary opponent Chuck Purgason did endorse Hoffman. But that didn't make any difference to the St. Louis tea party leadership. They still supported Roy Bailout Blunt, even as 28 other tea party groups around the state did not (and as, nationally, tea party groups took out Republican incumbents). At yesterday's tea party rally in St. Louis, the St. Louis tea party gave Blunt center stage.



http://stlactivisthub.blogspot.com/2010/09/st-louis-tea-party-decides-to-be-even.html