Dana Loesch and her lying cronies continue to misleadingly accuse Keith Olbermann of "defending rapists"

The Breitbart/Loesch Axis of Evil continue to purposefully mislead their readers about Keith Olbermann and the OWS Movement, falsely accusing Olbermann of "defending rapists," when that's not true at all.

The factless Dana Loesch was making up her usual bullshit regarding the Occupy Movement and Olbermann for having the guts to condemn Breitbart's bogus lies in her blogposts at Big "Journalism."

Keith Olbermann published a weak spin of his defense of rapists and exploitation of women’s bodies for political profit. His excuse? No one who did the raping and attacking was identified as an Occupier. Really? How are people not at Occupy protests raping people? 

Let’s examine Olbermann’s premise: 

Occupiers were the victims. Perpetrators were not Occupiers. 

A 26-year-old Occupy Wall Street kitchen worker named Tonye Iketubosin was arrested today in connection to two sexual assaults in Zuccotti Park. The first is the rape of an 18-year-old girl whom Iketubosin invited to share his tent on Saturday morning; the second, the groping of a 17-year-old. 

Iketubosin is a Crown Heights native and had reportedly been working in the OWS kitchen for about a week. 

Gothamist found another kitchen worker who said that Iketubosin went by the name “Tonye Parks” and that “He was a genuinely nice guy…he came to get shit done.”
Iketubosin is being charged with sexual abuse, according to DCPI. 

Hold up — Keith Olbermann assured us on the show above public access that this simply wasn’t true. But the NYP wrote of it as well. Yikes. Looks like Olbermann was wrong. 

What say you, Olbermann? And don’t take another day to dodge the facts.

No, Loesch is the one that's dodging the facts, NOT Olbermann.

It's not just Dana, but her cronies in the Axis of Evil getting in the Olbermann/OWS bashfest as well:

Lee Stranahan wrote a so-called "debunking of Olbermann's rebuttal of 'Occupy rapes.'"

Before I debunk Keith Olbermann’s “debunking,” let’s remember what Keith Olbermann said. It’s the standard to which Mr. Olbermann needs to be held:
“No Occupy rapes, no cover-up, no apology, no retraction.” 

That is Mr. Olbermann’s statement and he hasn’t backed down from it. Instead, he’s made “debunking” the entire list of rapes and sexual crimes that I put together the number one item on his “Countdown” show. 

I actually didn’t need a whole list. All I needed was one, so I didn’t do an exhaustive search. I grabbed stuff from the long list of Occupy crimes called The Rap Sheet that Big Goverment kept up until the end of December, 2011. After all, Mr. Olbermann is the only person in the world I know of who is claiming “no Occupy rapes, no cover-ups.” 

The question is: Why is Olbermann still defending this?

More lies from Stranahan-- this time baselessly criticizing Olbermann and Mediaite's Tommy Christopher:

It’s a sign of deeply damaged liberal thinking that I have to explain to the likes of Tommy Christopher and Keith Olbermann why the rapes and other crime associated with the Occupy matter. There’s no doubt that these crimes occurred (despite Olbermann’s initial blanket denials) and so now the lame defense is that somehow they just are random occurrences that have nothing to do with Occupy, really. 

This is dangerous balderdash; the assaults of Occupy are directly related to the philosophy and organization of the Occupy movement, as a series of emails between Occupyiers about a rape at Occupy DC makes clear.
Tommy Christopher has a particularly contemptible article up on Mediaite right now, where he says… 

Giving Olbermann the benefit of the doubt, based on his later tweets, he meant, respectively, that the sexual assaults reported at Occupy camps did not constitute a “wave,” and that those assaults could not fairly be characterized as “Occupy rape.” He went on to point out that the assailants were often outsiders, while the victims of the crimes were Occupy protesters. The counter-argument is that he was just back-stopping his earlier errors. 

First, factually – it’s not true that the assailants were often outsiders. They weren’t and the fact that Christopher repeats this lie is disgusting. For the sake of Keith and Tommy’s ideologically warped perspectives, let’s be super clear about what the issue here is and what it is not. 

Take note, Tommy and Keith: the problem here IS the process put forward by Occupy. This IS a problem for the Occupy movement because of their ideas; dumb ideas that you idolize. Stop burying your heads in the sand about it. Your ideological boot-licking has victims.

Stranahan is lying off his ass as usual.

John Nolte, yet another member of the Loesch/Breitbart Axis of Evil, falsely accuses the "leftist mainstream media" of "hostility towards women, particularly Conservatives like Sarah Palin, Dana Loesch, Pamela Geller, Michele Bachmann."

Mediaite and certain members of their staff are rather infamous for their hostility towards women. In the past, they’ve specifically targeted Governor Sarah Palin, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, stay-at-home-moms, and our own Dana Loesch.   

Yesterday, in a pathetically transparent effort to protect the Obama-endorsed Occupy Wall Street movement from a brewing narrative that might finally expose their well-documented history of rapes and sexual assaults (and the covering up of those rapes and sexual assaults) Mediaite published no fewer than three stories that rationalized, parsed, spun, and danced circles around … RAPE.

From where I sit, according to Mediaite (and Keith Olbermann), apparently there are a certain number of rapes or certain types of rapes or a way to explain rapes that doesn’t make rape quite so rapey. I guess that when an Obama-endorsed movement rapes, it’s not rape-rape. It’s some sort of social justice program that redistributes wealth through the occupation of a teenage vagina. Also, and most of you won’t remember this (but I do), Mediaite has a history of attempting to spin violence done to innocents by leftists into something that might be heroism. But that sound you heard wasn’t Mediaite hitting bottom, it was merely Mediate hitting the rungs of the ladder on the way to the bottom. 

By the way, have you noticed that it’s almost only men wrist-flicking and rationalizing these Occupy rapes? Keith Olbermann, Tommy Christopher, Markos Moulitsas, Cenk Uygur…?

More insane lies from the Breitbart brigade.

Current TV's Countdown With Keith Olbermann host Olbermann unspun the Breitbart lie that "the Occupy people were the perps, not the victims" in his Daily Kos diary.

What you have not seen are the facts behind the transparently dishonest "list" with which Breitbart is trying to smear Occupy as rapists. Sadly, it appears his people's efforts consisted of finding stories in which both the word "Occupy" and some report of sexual misconduct. 

It doesn't look like anybody bothered to read the links. Nearly every one of the stories shows Occupy participants were the victims and not the alleged perpetrators, or the incidents had nothing to do with Occupy 

.
Those who do bother will find Mr. Breitbart and his colleagues, are lying:. 

 Story number one: Madison, Wisconsin. Turns out this is the story of Occupy Madison losing its permit for a few days, in part because of a charge of public masturbation. No charges, no names, no evidence, and even the head of the local business association that brought the complaint, one Mary Carbine, was emphatic that the behavior was, quote, "not necessarily by the protestors themselves." Breitbart's people evidently never read the update at the bottom of the post.

Number two: Cleveland, refers to an alleged assault of a member of Occupy Cleveland. No arrests, and the police offer no indication the alleged assailant was a member of Occupy.

Number three: Seattle, turns out to be the arrest of a man for indecent exposure in schoolyards and other parks, not at Occupy Seattle. Detectives say they were told the suspect had been "seen" at Occupy, and again they make no claim he was associated with Occupy.

Number four: Cleveland. This is the same story as Number two. Listed twice. This time a Fox News video is linked.

Number five, Dallas. Despite the Breitbart headline: "Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas," the alleged assault victim told police the sex in question was consensual. She would not press charges nor cooperate with authorities. The claim that there was an assault originates with one local tv station's anonymous source in the Dallas police department.

Number six: Portland, Oregon. The registered address that a sex offender gave authorities, turned out to be the same address as the Occupy Portland camp. The police have no evidence he was ever there, nor do any witnesses place him there.

Number seven: Lawrence, Kansas. A local Police Captain Jim Martin is quoted, in the Breitbart-linked story, as saying "someone who had been at the Occupy Lawrence camp reported on Monday morning a possible sexual assault. (Martin) said he did not believe the victim or any possible suspects were members of the group."

Number eight: Glasgow. Breitbart assigns responsibility for an assault on an Occupy protestor in Scotland to the American Occupy movement. He also does not note that the morning after the incident, Occupy organizers voluntarily disbanded the camp after police refused to provide security (at about 1:48 of the video, the Scots reporter notes the protestors have mostly left already and "put the Occupation on hold" while police investigate the crime).

Number nine: Manchester, New Hampshire. A woman operating out of her own home is arrested there after she tries to turn an Occupy protestor into a prostitute.

Number ten: New York City. An Occupy protestor is assaulted in her tent.

Number eleven: New York. It's the same story as Number ten. He has again listed one twice. Incidentally, despite the November reports claiming the Occupy food tent worker would shortly be charged with something besides sexual abuse, there are no stories on the net indicating this has yet occurred.

Number twelve: Chula Vista CA. On November 6th, a woman posts on the Occupy Los Angeles facebook page, asking Occupy to help locate her daughter, 16-year old Ashley Springer. The last the woman knew, Ashley Springer was at Occupy-LA. Breitbart does not note that, according to good news from "The Vanishing Kids Coalition," by December 9th, Ashley Springer was home, safe, sound, and unharmed.

Number thirteen: Philadelphia. Though the Breitbart list blares "Occupier Arrested for Rape," the actual newspaper headline says the opposite: "Man arrested in Occupy Philly sexual assault." The alleged victim was a member of Occupy, not the assailant, even though Breitbart implies it was the other way around.

Number fourteen: Austin, Texas. A man in a sleeping bag near the Occupy encampment in a public square is arrested for allegedly masturbating in front of a 16-year old. Again, despite the Breitbart headline "Occupier Accused of Masturbating in Front of 16 Year-old Girl," in the actual article police do not conclude that either victim or perpetrator was involved with Occupy.

Number fifteen: Chicago. A 21-year old man named Robert Reitz whom Occupy Chicago confirmed had attended some of its events, is arrested at his home, on child porn charges. Breitbart does not bother to note that in the second half of the very story he linked to, Occupy Chicago responded to the arrest by immediately banning him from its encampment.

Number sixteen: St. Louis. Again, the victim in an assault is identified as a member of Occupy, not the alleged perpetrator. As an aside, in the "list," Breitbart's people link not to an actual news account, but only to the notorious fraud Dana Loesch's version in which the truth has been carefully expunged.

Number seventeen: New York. Again, the victim in a fondling case is a member of Occupy; police identify the assailant as a local homeless person.

So. Seventeen stories Breitbart claims are cases of Rape at Occupy. Just reading the stories, googling the names of those identified, following up - this only took me about 70 minutes. 

The final result:
-- Two stories on the list were duplicates.
-- One story turns out to have been about consensual sex.
-- One case, in Scotland, led the Occupy group to disband for the sake of safety.
-- One case of an arrest for child porn, with Occupy immediately banning the alleged perpetrator.
-- One case of a girl disappearing -- ignoring the fact that she was home and unharmed a month later.
-- Four cases in which police said neither the victim nor the assailant were apparently even associated with Occupy. 

That is the evidence that Andrew Breitbart has submitted to rationalize his irrational attempt to smear the Occupy movement and Occupy members, as rapists, and to brand anybody who points out his dishonesty, his twisting of the facts, and who bothers to actually read the stories that disprove his own contention, as a rape denier or rape apologist. What Mr. Breitbart and his fellow propagandists have done, in fact, is to take at least eight women, eight membersof Occupy, who were raped or otherwise assaulted, and blamed them.

 Olbermann nailed Breitbart's hypocrisy and distortions right on target.


Adam Shriver at the St. Louis Activist Hub:

But Keith Olbermann decided to actually read the news stories associated with Breitbart's claims, and he found that in almost every single case the Breitbart crew was twisting reality. Here's the devastating segment from his show:

From the 02.15.2012 edition of Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann: 

I should say that there have been some crimes, including sexual assaults, at Occupy encampments around the country. This is not surprising, since we live in a culture with a serious problem of violence against women, and it's not going to be any less of a problem in communities that provide food and lodging for those who need it and are extremely open and accepting almost anyone who wants to participate. From what I've seen, the Occupy groups have been very proactive in working to make their areas safe and welcoming for women. This is not to excuse any of the assaults, but rather to point out that they are not reflective of the occupy movement or most of the people involved. And I take the point that sexual assaults should not be used as a weapon for "the Right" or for "the Left."  

But what I think is so valuable about Olbermann's research is that it shows, quite dramatically, just how morally bankrupt the Breitbartian version of "journalism" really is. In basically every case, Breitbart bloggers twisted reality to fit their narrative. A real journalist would wait for conclusive evidence before declaring that some person or movement was responsible for rapes or sexual assaults; at Breitbart's sites, they throw out the charges almost daily based on their own interpretations of limited and ambiguous information. It's very much like the Kenneth Gladney case; the video was anything but conclusive; all it showed was Perry Molens pulling Gladney away from McCowan at the end of a fight. Yet Breitbart's gang of hacks declared that the video provided conclusive proof that McCowan and Molens had severely beaten Gladney, and they steadfastly refused to engage in an honest assessment of the evidence.

Loesch still continues to lie under the sun

 In this past week, CNN "Contributor" and serial liar Dana Loesch has been caught lying multiple times, including the fact that she endorsed Mitt Romney during the 2008 Republican Primaries in Missouri despite the fact that she thinks "Romney is a Socialist, unrepentant RINO, Obama-lite Presidential candidate."

 Proof that she lied about voting for Romney back in 2008, via the St. Louis Activist Hub:

 I don't like much about CNN's Dana Loesch but I have to give her credit for one thing: she's done a great job of "branding" herself as a rebellious tea party outsider independent from the mainstream Republican Party. After all, why would gullible news outlets like CNN want to hire just another person repeating the same old tired Republican talking points? But, like pretty much everything else that's come from the St. Louis Tea Party, Loesch's image as a rebellious outsider was deliberately constructed and almost entirely false.

After supporting both Roy Blunt and Ed Martin over more conservative challengers in the 2010 election, Loesch has been seeking attention lately by bashing GOP front-runner Mitt Romney. A few weeks ago she said she'd never support him:

 Unfortunately for Loesch, even if she easily forgets, those wacky internets don't. A friend DM'd me a link to the Way Back Machine that showed that, guess what? Dana Loesch voted for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary in 2008 as the "candidate of change":

Team Loesch went to the polls this morning and cast two votes for Mitt Romney. I think he's the best candidate of change and more qualified than McCain.

Here's a screen shot:


And guess what else? "RomneyCare" was enacted back in 2006, so I guess that means that Dana Loesch actually was a fan of RomneyCare *and* thought it was constitutional. How about that?

This proves the Loesch is just another GOP talking points shill, instead of the "Independent Conservative" mantle she claims to use for her branding.

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher also had a detailed rundown of Loesch's lies about Romney:

Dana Loesch, CNN contributor and editor-in-chief of Big Journalism, has been sharpening her Tea Party cred against a Mitt Romney grindstone, bashing the candidate as an “unrepentant RINO (Republican In Name Only)” whom she “was against” in the last election, and this election. So great is her animus for Romney that she gets entire “mailbags of hate” from his supporters. The only problem is, Loesch voted for Romney in 2008, and the internet has the proof. This is the Tea Party equivalent of being in a mosh pit, and having a Justin Bieber CD fall out of your pocket.


Loesch’s main problem with Romney, if her twitter feed is any indication, is Romney’s individual health care mandate. I don’t know, am I reading these right?

I didn’t protest socialized health care for three years to support the guy who wrote it before Obama. #romney
I was against Romney last election, I’m against him this election. I will be against him so long as he’s an unrepentant RINO.

Yeah, about that. A liberal St. Louis blogger tracked down this blog post from Loesch, dated February 5, 2008 10:06 AM:

Team Loesch went to the polls this morning and cast two votes for Mitt Romney. I think he’s the best candidate of change and more qualified than McCain. Rush just has personal beef with McCain and Coulter, well, she’s Coulter.

Loesch doesn’t say anything about holding her nose while pulling that lever, but to be fair, the post’s title, “Tuesday Isn’t THAT Super,” can be seen as an indication that she wasn’t crazy about Romney or McCain. Still, why choose Romney over McCain when the thing you don’t like about the Democrats is this:

Even though I don’t like John McCain for several reasons, one of which includes McCain-Feingold, another is his hostility to small business and the free market – he’s still a better choice to me than the two successfully underwhelming socialists the other side is offering with their tax-heavy universal healthcare which circumvents our liberties and makes us all wards of the state.

The funny thing is, while Loesch was casting that vote for Mitt Romney, Barack Obama was actually to the right of Romney (and primary opponent Hillary Clinton) on the issue of health care. One of the things I didn’t like about Obama’s primary platform was that he was against an individual health care mandate. You can’t do away with preexisting condition limitations without it. It’d be like taking the “buy one” out of a “buy one, get one free” deal.
Now, we all have our internet skeletons in the closet (like my early support for John Edwards), and it’s quite possible that Loesch was unaware of Romneycare at the time. He certainly wasn’t running on Romneycare. If that’s the case, though, then why go to the trouble of deleting the post from the blog’s archive? Surely, Loesch’s current Tea Party crowd would understand, wouldn’t they?



Dana Loesch, in her response, explains that she wasn’t for Romney in 2008, she just opposed John McCain more strongly, and cast her vote for Romney to prevent McCain from securing the nomination. After her first choice, Fred Thompson, dropped out, Loesch says “We were, at that point, faced between choosing Mitt Romney or John McCain. I did not like Mitt Romney.”
Now, you would never know that from her blog post, a fair reading of which would lead you to conclude that she at least liked Mitt a little. “I think he’s the best candidate of change,” she said. A fair person would acknowledge that, based on that post, no one would conclude that she was “against” Romney in 2008. A cynical person might think Loesch was just trying to backstop an embarrassing contradiction.
However, in her response, Loesch says that there are podcasts from the period that demonstrate her dislike for Romney. Fair enough. She goes on to explain her thought process. “I weighed Romneycare against McCain-Feingold, and that’s ultimately what made my decision. I disliked both of them to the point where I almost wanted to choke. And I ultimately decided that McCain-Feingold, in that particular instance, was worse.”

Yes, the same Mike Huckabee that Dana Loesch was scheduled to introduce at a St. Louis Tea Party event earlier this year. If only she had known about him in 2008! In a bit of cruel irony, she even, coincidentally, referenced the Tea Party-friendly former governor in that 2008 blog post, defiantly decrying big government with a folksy, “HUCK THAT.”
If just a tiny fraction of Missourians had voted for Huckabee, instead of Mitt Romney, the 2008 presidential race could have gone a whole different way. Going into Super Tuesday, Huckabee was within 67 delegates of the lead, with 1,069 up for grabs that day, and was polling in a statistical tie with McCain for the lead in Missouri. Had he won Missouri, he might have stayed in the race longer, raised more money, and really given McCain what for. He kept on winning states even after he dropped out, and even wound up with more delegates than Romney!

Loesch is right, of course. Most liberals feel that Obamacare was a half-measure, watered down by Republicans, conserva-Dems, and would have preferred a public option, or Medicare for all. What we got was the equivalent of eliminating starvation by making it illegal not to buy food.

 From the 10.07.2011 edition of KFTK's The Dana Show:

 

On her blogposts at the feces-filled Big "Journalism" blog, she and her ilk have demonized the Occupy Wall Street protestors (and its offshoots) for alleged "lawbreaking", being "lazy welfare moochers," and the like.

On last night's Anderson Cooper 360, Loesch was on to offer analysis on the Bloomberg Debate.

From the 10.11.2011 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360:

 Transcript:

 JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: It is 10:00 p.m. here in Washington.

Breaking news from a place north of here. They are just about as fervent about their politics up in New Hampshire. The Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire wrapping up just moments ago.

The setting, a town hall. The eight candidates sat around a table with moderator Charlie Rose. They made their points, traded jabs, as you can see, elbow to elbow literally. The sole focus of tonight's face-off, the economy, but politics not far from center stage either.

With Herman Cain's poll numbers surging, he and his 999 plan were obvious targets. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HERMAN CAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nine-nine-nine will pass, and it is not the price of a pizza, because it has been well- studied and well-developed. It starts with, unlike your proposals, throwing out the current tax code. Continuing to pivot off the current tax code is not going to boost this economy. This is why we developed 9-9-9, 9 percent corporate business flat tax, 9 percent personal income flat tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. And it will pass, Senator, because the American people want it to pass.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And one thing I would say is, when you take the 999 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil is in the details.

RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Unlike Herman's plan, which could not pass, because no -- how many people here are for a sales tax in New Hampshire? Raise your hand.

There you go, Herman. That's how many votes you'll get in New Hampshire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A big night for Cain, also a critical event for Rick Perry. His stock is falling after two shaky debate showings and the Texas governor needed a strong showing tonight.

And of course Mitt Romney is still the front-runner, which made him a punching bag tonight as well. Just hours before this debate, Romney won the endorsement of New Jersey Chris Christie, who said Romney's experience in the private and public sectors make him the right candidate to lead the Republican ticket.

Joining me now to talk about all of this, CNN political contributor Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, also CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, and CNN contributor Dana Loesch. She's editor of BigJournalism.com and a radio host for KFTK. That's 97.1 FM.

Gloria, let's start. Making the top tier means you catch some harpoons, Herman Cain in the crosshairs tonight defending 999. How did he do?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: OK.

He didn't get specific, other than saying that he really wanted to get rid of the tax code. But it was clear that from a bunch of Republicans on the stage, they believe that you would never be able to keep the personal tax rate at just 9 percent and that also a national sales tax is regressive and something they don't like.

And, Rick Santorum, as you just showed, made a very good point. How many people in the state of New Hampshire are going to vote for a 9 percent national sales tax? The Republican Party doesn't like to talk about that, no matter how much Herman Cain does.

KING: And, Alex, it is not just the sales tax that is tough to sell. Even conservative analysis of this plan says the federal government would lose 18 to 20 percent of its revenue from the current tax system. How does Mr. Cain sell that? That would make the choices, the spending cut choices even tougher, and we see Washington can't get that done as it is.

ALEX CASTELLANOS, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Unless you accept Herman Cain's argument of course that a different tax code, a more dynamic tax code would produce dynamic growth in the economy, which is not a bad argument to make.

But one thing Cain I think needed to learn tonight -- and he didn't -- is that these debates are like parking your car on a hill. Either you keep moving forward or you slide back. And tonight we may have learned Herman Cain's PIN code for his bank card, but we sure didn't learn anything new about Herman Cain.

Romney had a great debate tonight. Newt Gingrich...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Hang on, Alex.

Dana, one thing we need...

(CROSSTALK)

CASTELLANOS: I was just going to say Romney had a...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Hang on.

Dana, we needed to learn tonight whether Rick Perry was ready to play, after two shaky debate performances, a lot of criticisms, how can he handle himself on this debate stage.

The central issue here was the economy. Here's Rick Perry on his jobs plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RICK PERRY (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Romneycare has driven the cost of small-business insurance premiums up by 14 percent over the national average in Massachusetts. So my question for you would be: How would you respond to his criticism of your signature legislative achievement?

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have the lowest number of kids as a percentage uninsured of any state in America. You have the highest. You...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: I'm still -- I'm still speaking.

(CROSSTALK)

PERRY: ... criticism.

ROMNEY: I'm still speaking. We -- we have -- we have less than 1 percent of our kids that are uninsured. You have a million kids uninsured in Texas. A million kids. Under President Bush, the percentage uninsured went down. Under your leadership, it's gone up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

I care about people. Now, our plan isn't perfect. Glenn Hubbard is a fine fellow. Take a look at his quote. Some people say that. Just because some people say something doesn't mean it's true.

The truth is, our plan is different, and the people of Massachusetts, if they don't like it, they can get rid of it. Right now, they favor it 3 to 1.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: All right, we will get to the jobs plan bite in just a minute. We rolled them in reverse order.

But, Dana Loesch, right there, you see Perry and Romney going at it. Did Governor Perry turn in a strong and forceful performance enough tonight to quiet the doubters?

DANA LOESCH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: No, he did not. And I was waiting for this question about Romneycare to be asked sooner. I thought it would appear earlier in the debate. And then Perry finally asked him. And I thought finally someone is going to ask about Mitt Romney about Romneycare and its effect on business in Massachusetts.

But then he took a nap and he fizzled out. I don't exactly know what happened. He didn't follow up. He wasn't aggressive with it. And the question itself wasn't even framed in an aggressive manner. He allowed Romney to skate by on a number of just outright fallacies. One of them was that, well, we didn't raise taxes in Massachusetts and we were able to implement this health care system.

That's not entirely true. It was because of the runoff costs of Romneycare that taxes did have to go up after it was implemented. But that is something that Perry didn't follow up on. And I was waiting for Perry to show everyone that he had the fire in his belly and that he really wants to run for president and I didn't see that from him tonight.

And now I'm beginning to wonder whether or not he is really serious about this.

KING: Well, that is an important criticism and critique, Alex.

So you have Dana raising questions there of whether he can go back and forth with Mitt Romney on at least among conservatives what should be a perceived Romney weakness. That is one critique Dana puts on the table. Let's listen now when Governor Perry was asked to describe his jobs plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RICK PERRY (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A president, particularly with the plan that I'm going to be laying out over the next three days -- and I'm not going to lay it out all for you tonight -- Mitt has had six years to be working on a plan. I have been in this for about eight weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is that good enough, Alex? You know this debate will be focused on the economy. Maybe he has more details to give us in the weeks ahead. But given his slip in the polls, given the questions about whether he can handle himself in a debate, is that good enough?

CASTELLANOS: No, it didn't seem like it here tonight.

John, I think obviously his campaign decided we are going to simplify things for our candidate. We're going to give him one idea, energy equals jobs, and we're going to let him be quiet the rest of the time and get through the debate that way.

The last debate, the excuse was made, well, he was standing up all debate long and he got tired. So this should have been his debate. He was sitting down. I think next time he will have to get a mattress because there was no energy, no fire and it was way too simple.

BORGER: Instead of seeming like an aggressor, Perry sort of almost seemed like a bystander here. And he really couldn't afford to do that.

He just put out a brutal Web ad against Mitt Romney, which attacked him on being a flip-flopper and on his Massachusetts health care. And then tonight, instead of building on that aggressively, he just kind of seemed to be a little more passive or a lot more passive than I thought he needed to be.

KING: So, Dana, if that's the case...

(CROSSTALK)

CASTELLANOS: Gloria?

BORGER: Yes.

LOESCH: I wanted to raise a quick point.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: We are all on delay.

CASTELLANOS: I was just to say that, to Gloria's point, that that is exactly how -- sorry about that.

But to Gloria's point, that's how Rick Perry's won campaigns. He's never won campaigns because he's the most articulate candidate or because he's the brightest intellect. He always wins campaigns because he sticks a fork in his opponent's eyeball. And he has got enough money in the bank and there are enough super PACs out there.

And as Gloria said, there is the negative super ad out there. I would expect to see some very tough ads from Rick Perry pretty soon in the Boston and Iowa media markets.

KING: Well, Dana, if Herman Cain didn't defend his plan plainly enough and if Rick Perry was a no-show, does that mean by default Mitt Romney won tonight or did someone else steal this debate?

LOESCH: Well, not necessarily.

And one of the things I was going to say, too, was that, during this debate, Perry's camp was sending out e-mails of things that he should have been saying in this debate, for instance, on TARP. I thought that was so odd. And they do that pretty consistently. That's something that they should be talking about in the debate.

He had a great opportunity to distinguish himself from these other candidates. You had Herman Cain and Mitt Romney both defending -- both defending TARP, rather, just kind of shocking. But I don't think that Romney wins by default. While he's a good debater and he has great rhetorical skills, his answers, if you judge them by conservatism alone, don't pass the smell test. They don't. But because of semantics, because he's an artful debater...

CASTELLANOS: I disagree.

LOESCH: ... he comes out on top.

But Newt Gingrich I thought always does well, because Newt Gingrich just chews everybody up and spits everybody out and is able to reframe any debate that he's in. But I think Romney comes out on top and I think Gingrich comes out on top. I think Cain did well. Perry did not.

KING: Newt has been strong in every debate. He just hasn't been able to move the poll numbers.

Gloria, let me close with this. CNN has a debate one week from tonight. If Rick Perry is zero for the past three, I assume that one is do or die.

BORGER: Yes, it is important. People need to believe. Republicans need to believe that if they are going to nominate somebody, this person can stand next to Barack Obama on the stage and go at him and do well at it.

And if he cannot do that in a debate with his Republican contenders, with the other Republicans, he's going to have a hard time against Barack Obama. That's what people are looking for. And he hasn't shown it yet.

KING: Gloria, Dana, Alex, appreciate your insights.

Right after this Republican debate, again, our CNN debate one week from tonight.

And let us know what you think. We're on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @JohnKingCNN. I will be tweeting tonight.

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Loesch lies about ESPN, falsely accuses Progressives/Liberals of condoning rape

Today, we have St. Louis' Queen of Hate making up heinous lies baselessly claiming that Liberals/Progressives condone raping of Conservative women, when we know that's a false claim spewed by people like her.

Last Friday, the Daily Caller ran a piece on Mike Tyson’s recent heinous ESPN remarks on Sarah Palin, and the story sparked a massive row amongst conservatives.

Correction: were this a conservative saying the same about a progressive female, the “equal rights” fellows-in-ideology would selectively invoke their chivalry and take a stand against the remarks. As it is, progressive males (and females) routinely sanction such language against conservative women. We could go over the reasons why, but feigning interest in the psyche of the male progressive is above my pay grade.

I think it’s absolutely newsworthy that a progressive male — a wife-beating convicted rapist — worshipped by Hollywood and prevalent in pop culture, advocated for rape against Sarah Palin on ESPN radio. As I write this, Tyson’s name is trending on Twitter because he is taking part in Charlie Sheen’s roast. He has cameos in big Hollywood films. His remarks were accepted by society. I don’t think this should have been reported as a dry news story, but rather in an editorial with the headline: CONVICTED RAPIST HASN’T CHANGED: TYSON ADVOCATES FOR PALIN RAPE?–a slam dunk editorial excoriating an individual and the society that idolizes women-violators and shuns conservatives who believe women should be treated better.

What almost everyone has missed is that Tyson’s remarks weren’t made on some obscure radio show. They were made on ESPN. My teenage male cousin heard this. ESPN’s jocks laughed and encouraged a nine-minute-plus diatribe by Tyson, wherein he made obscene remarks about rape and Sarah Palin. They laughed and supported it.

No one has called out ESPN or their Las Vegas affiliate on which the show aired because everyone is too busy arguing over a bad editorial call. This story was driven in the wrong direction by reaction and the focus removed from the actual victim, a woman who progressives routinely target with hatred and violence. It does Palin a disservice to use a verbal attack made on her by a rapist as a way to drive traffic, or to settle personal or political scores.

No, Dana, Mike Tyson is NOT a "progressive." And Mediaite's Tommy Christopher rebuts her dubious lie. And as GinaLou (no relation to Teahadist fraud "Dr." Gina Loudon) said on twitter:

@DLoesch The comments are repulsive and reprehensible but they're sadly par for the course on sports radio.

I bet most of those sports talkers who have a history of sexism are the ones that skew conservative.

In her lie-filled Big Journalism column today, she baselessly accuses ESPN of having double standards:

I’ve written before of ESPN’s enforcement of policy concerning political speech. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that the selective condemnation extends to radio commentary as well. Don’t everyone gasp at once.

We remember how Rush Limbaugh had to resign from ESPN over a remark about Donovan McNabb that progressives insisted was racist.

Compare this to Mike Tyson’s recent appearance on ESPN’s Las Vegas affiliate. The show’s (called “Gridlock”) hosts, Mitch Moss, Seat Williams, and Pauly Howard laughed hysterically at Tyson’s remarks on air and on Twitter.

Some quotes from the nine minutes of frat boy #fail humor (shield thine eyes ye with sensitive constitutions!):

“You want her to be with somebody like Rodman, jigging up in there [inaudible] push her guts up in the back of her head, right?”

Just imagine Palin with a big ol’ black stallion, rippin’ just rippin. Everybody gotta get that out of their system …”

“She met the wombshifter.”

“I wonder what Palin would [inaudible] a poor black man on the street needs some assistance … I know she’d give Obama some love … I’m sorry! I’m not sorry!”

ESPN allows this on their affiliate and all of the conservatives with their Daily Caller Day of Rage are now curiously silent about ESPN. This was done on an ESPN station, which is worse than a website reporting it, yet crickets. It causes further suspicions; I wondered aloud in yesterday’s post whether some were just exploiting this as a way to settle a score with Tucker Carlson. They’re making me believe that they are by not calling out the entity that facilitated this story in the first place.

By the way, look at what occurred on Twitter last night as a result of the ESPN/Tyson episode:

And to certain conservatives: will you call out ESPN with equal or greater fervor?

That, my friends, is just Loesch being a senile liar. She previously accused ESPN of "being in the tank for Obama and the Democratic Party." Baloney! Methinks she may be race-baiting as well.

Speaking of violence, Loesch's boss Andrew Breitbart advocates for a civil war, and claims that the "military will back the teabaggers up." Guess who's advocating violence now?

Conservative media provocateur Andrew Breitbart, speaking to a Tea Party crowd of over 60 people in Lexington, Ma. on Friday, got a little bit carried away with his own patter. He told the crowd that he sometimes thinks to himself, “Fire the first shot” in a hypothetical civil war with liberals, explaining that “We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns.”

Although Brietbart told the crowd “I’m not kidding,” in response to their laughter, he probably was kidding, and probably shouldn’t have been.

Speaking to the $45 a head crowd at the presumptuously named “The Ampitheater” in Lexington, Breitbart was asked about this past weekend’s “Days of Rage” protest against Wall Street. “Bring ‘em on!” he responded, before launching into his civil war hypothetical:

“I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The (unclear) call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’

Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. (laughter) I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.

And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’

They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?

The crowd lapped it up (predictably enough given the recent conservative shift toward butch, overcompensating posturing), and Breitbart, clearly caught up in his riff, eagerly piled on seconds. He’s the Miles Davis of right-wing guano, but he hit a few irredeemably sour notes here.

Although Breitbart frames his rant in terms of the death threats he receives, and is clearly working the crowd for laughs, saying that he thinks “Fire the first shot,” because conservatives have all of the guns crosses the line from harsh rhetoric into irresponsible speech. Unlike the recent brouhaha over union leader James Hoffa’s fiery voter-encouragement comments, Breitbart goes on to clarify that he is not speaking metaphorically about voting, but rather, a literal civil war.

If you think that Liberals/Progressives go around and advocate violence and rape, you are sorely mistaken, buddy! Generally speaking, it's the right-wingers that do this, not the left! And members of the Breitbart/Loesch Axis of Evil have a long history of advocating violence against Liberals/Democrats/Progressives.

Dana Loesch and their cronies lying about Anthony Weiner

Recently, Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch, and their cronies over at the Axis Of Evil (Breitbart blogs) are at it again... this time the victim is the well-respected Progressive Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY9) for allegedly posted a lewd photo of his penis. Naturally, the spinners on the Right were screaming "the MSM is burying this story on purpose because he's a Democrat" excuse. Breitbart defending Chris Lee doing the same thing that he's accusing Weiner of doing. Projection much?

From Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:

On January 14, former Rep. Chris Lee sent a shirtless photo of himself to woman who had posted a personal ad on Craigslist. Nearly four weeks later, Gawker posted the picture along with reporting on the context in which it was posted and confirmation from the woman who received it that it was in fact legitimate. Less than four hours later, Lee resigned.

On Friday, a link to a photo of a man in tighty whities appeared on Rep. Anthony Weiner's public Twitter stream. The link was addressed to a female college student in Seattle who was one of Weiner's 45,000+ followers. It appears as though the tweet was not genuine. Weiner says the account was hacked, and the addressee says she has never met Weiner, but even before either of them had a chance to respond, Andrew Breitbart's website posted a screenshot of the tweet and the page to which it linked.

Breitbart's Axis of Evil members are treating this non-story as credible.

Congressman Anthony Weiner has recently been the target of an intrusion on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The parties involved appear to have spent about six weeks stalking the Congressman online, studying his followers, and when they got in they had a smear ready to go.

Unfortunately (for him) Breitbart was either involved in the planning, or he was the first and only media source to treat the ridiculous stunt as credible, and it blew up in his face.

We took this ‘scandal’, we ripped it to shreds, and then we rammed the jagged fragments right down Andrew Breitbart’s throat. This is what a healthy media would have done to him long ago, but they’re as rotted as any institution in this country. Without us they’d have gone for titillation and serving the long term goals of their corporate masters over honest reporting and the public good.

Here’s another thing the media won’t touch: Indict Breitbart. The crimes against ACORN in Baltimore City’s jurisdiction are crystal clear and the only reason there wasn’t a grand jury investigation long ago is the city’s battered financial condition.

Image: Daily Kos, via PJTV.

The Weinergate's makings may have started on May 11, 2011, via Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76).

Image: Daily Kos

The massively stupid Big Hackulism Editor-In-Chief Dana Loesch defends the Right-Wing smear of Anthony Weiner, by trotting out the "faking a yfrog account" excuse.

Image: Daily Kos

So I think we can see what happened here.

1) Rep. Weiner's Facebook was hacked, giving the hackers access to post on his Twitter if the accounts were linked.

2) [edit] A link, supposedly to [/edit] The underwear photo was then tweeted out by the hackers, tagging the college girl but visible to all of Twitterville.

3) Meanwhile, the hackers have taken a screencap of another yfrog account with the photo posted to it, and then photo-shopped Rep. Weiner's name in at the top of the page.

4) They send this photo-shopped screencap to Dana Loesch as "proof" that Rep. Weiner indeed posted the photo.

4) Crazy old @patriotusa76 is meanwhile tweeting madly about the whole thing.

6) Breitbart wastes no time in publishing the story.

Two questions remain:

Who is @patriotusa76 and did he participate in the hoax?

and

Was Breitbart in on it, or did he fall for it?

Loesch crony and regular guest of The Dana Show, Dan Riehl falsely accused Weiner's representative of "lying" twice.

I've already wrote about why I think it's very likely that Representative Anthony Weiner's twitter account was hacked (though, obviously, the facts are still coming out). But here's some further evidence backing up the claim that Breitbart's bloggers are, predictably, doing an incredibly sloppy job covering the story and trying to use it to attack Weiner.

On Big Journalism, Dan Riehl claimed that Anthony Weiner's spokesperson "lied" twice to the New York Post. However, this claim of "lying" was based only on Riehl's preconcieved notions of what happened. Here's the first claim that Riehl says is a "lie:"

Again, the claim that it was a "lie" was based on the idea that the reference point was when the photo was posted. Again, an equally plausible reference point was the time that Weiner first saw the photo. In that case, Riehl has no evidence to justify his claim that it was a "lie" that Weiner joked about the tweet 15 minutes after seeing it.

The sloppy schmournalists at Breitbart's sites are always happy to accuse people of "lying" without bothering to look for alternative explanations. If they were actually committed to finding the actual facts, they would not be so sloppy.

Adam Shriver of the St. Louis Activist Hub has this takeaway:

On Friday night, a photo of an erection in shorts was posted on Congressman Anthony Weiner's twitter account, seemingly directed at a woman from Seattle. Weiner posted shortly after telling people that his account was hacked but, unsurprisingly, the goober's from Breitbart's websites are declaring that this is all-but-conclusive proof that Weiner is engaging in scandalous behavior. Unlike a recommended diary at Daily Kos, I don't think that Breitbart photoshopped the photos or that they weren't really posted on Weiner's account. However, I think there are pretty clear reasons to think that the account was hacked.

Basically, the "Weiner is guilty" crowd is arguing for the following idea: Weiner intended to DM (Direct Message) the picture, but accidently sent it publicly. The idea is that it is improbable but not impossible that Weiner would be so sloppy as to send a lewd photo publicly. But the problem with this theory is that EVEN if the message had been sent in a DM, it wouldn't have been private! The photo was posted to RepWeiner's yfrog account. Yfrog is an application that allows you to post photos. It does allow the option of direct messaging: however, any and all of the photos you post on it are publicly available. So even if Weiner sent a DM through his yfrog account, the photo would be available to the public.

Any honest, sane, ethical purveyors of information will wait for the full facts to come out to make declarations of what ultimately happened; which of course is exactly why the Breitbart bloggers are doing the exact opposite.

Gennette Nicole Cordova, the alleged recipient of the photos, issued a statement to the New York Daily News, home to Red Eye regulars and Conservatives S.E. Cupp's and Andrea Tantaros' columns:

Friday evening I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about a dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been tweeted to me by Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The account that these tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the Congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters.

I am a 21-year-old college student from Seattle. I have never met Congressman Weiner, though I am a fan. I go to school in Bellingham where I spend all of my time; I've never been to New York or to DC. The point I am trying to make is that, contrary to the impression that I apparently gave from my tweet, I am not his girlfriend. Nor am I the wife, girlfriend or mistress of Barack Obama, Ray Allen or Cristiano Ronaldo, despite the fact that I have made similar assertions about them via Twitter.

There have never been any inappropriate exchanges between Anthony Weiner and myself, including the tweet/picture in question, which had apparently been deleted before it reached me. I cannot answer the questions that I do not have the answers to. I am not sure whether or not this letter will alleviate any future harassment. I also do not have a clear understanding as to how or why exactly I am involved in this fiasco. I do know that my life has been seriously impacted by speculation and faulty allegations. My reputation has been called into question by those who lack the character to report the facts.

The point of the story is this: that Breitbart, Loesch, O'Connor, Riehl, Nolte, and their ilk will lie about everything under the sun.