It’s Thursday Threatcon, your intelligence briefing on right wing activity. Below are the best reports, investigations, exposées, and debunkery of the wingnutosphere this week. Due to last night’s GOP debate, our Threatcon Color Code is PINKO PEACOCKS
- To be sure, the third GOP debate was a total trainwreck — and how could it be otherwise on CNBC? — but the sight of these candidates attacking the TV channel that created tea parties with accusations of ‘liberal bias’ just underscores how reactionary and extreme the Republican Party has become. Ted Cruz was so busy decrying a supposed lack of substantive questions that he never actually answered the substantive question he had just been asked
- Say what you like about the moderators, but they exposed the biggest weaknesses in Ben Carson. His math is fuzzy, his remarks about ‘divisive politics’ are belied by his own divisive statements, his accounts of past history and personal events are sketchier than an artist’s drawing pad, and even the National Review doesn’t buy his denials about sponsoring quack cure company Mannatech for a decade. Carson was partly responsible for changes to the debate format that made it even more of a disaster, and now Carson is so mad at CNBC that he’s vowed to make further changes, suggesting that the fiasco has only just begun to take shape
- Speaking of candidates who promote quack cures: did Mike Huckabee just accidentally endorse fetal tissue research? I think he did
- Actually, given how loudly the crowd cheered for Carson’s Mannatech denial, and how the conservative movement has never seemed to mind being ripped off in his name, it might be helpful to think of the entire body of modern right wing orthodoxy as a series of quack cures for every sort of policy problem
- Jeb Bush was the biggest loser last night, but let’s remember all that his family has done to create the modern Republican electorate which rejects him
- By invoking the imaginary ‘Ferguson effect,’ Chris Christie tacitly announced that he’s totally okay with cops slamming children on the ground, shooting people in the back, and choking them to death. Expect that authoritarian dog-whistle to raise his polling numbers a bit
- The conference of the Association of Chiefs of Police has called for universal background checks for gun purchases. Conservative support for police ends the moment they ask politicians to pass sane gun legislation
- Did anyone else catch the advertisement from SPLC-listed nativist hate group NumbersUSA during the debate? Our so-called ‘liberal media’ has been consistently incapable of recognizing this organization for what it really is. If immigration moderate Marco Rubio is correct that the mainstream media is the Democratic Party’s best super PAC, then this is the equivalent of billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer airing Heartland Institute climate change denialism
- Overall, I was impressed by how thin-skinned the entire debate field was. Politics is a bloodsport, and if these people can’t handle two hours on a stage, how are they going to stand up to America’s enemies the way they all bluster about? Can you imagine any of these people, say, testifying before Congress for eleven hours? How would they handle relentless coverage of deranged left-wing attacks? This is why I think last night’s biggest winner was Hillary Clinton
- Apropos of the apocalyptic rhetoric on display last night, here is right wing ‘end times’ nutter Carl Gallups saying that jokes about fundamentalist Christianity will lead directly to a Holocaust against all Christians:
- Pay no attention to anyone who wants to ‘move on’ after a South Carolina policeman was fired for body-slamming a traumatized 16 year-old girl to the ground for disobedience. School resource officers have done even worse, and the lesson that every student in America will draw from this incident is that adults who confiscate their cell phones are dangerous
- You know what actually does lead to fewer dead cops? Hiring smarter police — and training them to defuse situations instead of resorting to gunfire
- Hacktivists associated with Anonymous claim they are going to reveal the identities of 1,000 Ku Klux Klan members. If this happens, expect law enforcement officers to be among those exposed
- Two KKK members protesting a faculty effort to remove the state flag, which contains a confederate flag, were arrested on the University of Mississippi campus and charged with federal firearms violations
- Cheekily pointing out the disparity of state resources, Michigan school superintendent Nathan Boortz has written a letter asking the governor to turn his school into a prison
- At her wedding, a Maryland bride presented her pastor father with a medical certification of her intact hymen, demonstrating once again that ‘purity pledge’ culture is incredibly creepy and Talibanesque
- Hobby Lobby owners the Green Family, who sued all the way to the Supreme Court to win the right to deny their employees medically necessary reproductive health care, are under investigation for importing thousands of illicit artifacts
- When she’s just not that into you, cisgendered Christian blogger Larry Solomon advises men to avoid looking in their wives’ faces during sex
- The real death panels: because the Idaho legislature turned down Medicaid expansion for working families in the state, this 36 year-old woman delayed treatment for severe asthma and died on the day she would have finally been covered by her husband’s new insurance policy
- The National Rifle Association has become openly insurrectionist
- Witch hunt: Texas officials are demanding thousands of documents from Planned Parenthood offices in the state, including the names, addresses, and salaries of employees — information with no discernible purpose other than harassment
- A new study says that so-called ‘sidewalk counseling’ by forced-birth activists is not only useless for changing minds, but also psychologically stressful on women who arrive for procedures
- A federal judge has blocked Alabama from cutting off Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood
- The right way to counter-protest: Mary Numair of Portland, Oregon wanted to thank Planned Parenthood for helping her with stubborn yeast infections when she lacked insurance, so she made a sign and began chanting about it, which caused the forced-birth activists to call her a “whore” and leave in disgust
- The wrong way to counter-protest: while dressed as Jesus, North Dakota internet troll Nik Severson was spat upon by forced-birth activist Tyson Kuznia, who he then allegedly assaulted
- One of the anti-abortion protesters screeching loudest about Severson turns out to be a convicted knife-wielding rapist of his own family members. Barholomew Schumacher whines that he merely wants to “protect the innocent”
- Anti-immigration hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is holding a ‘border tour’ this weekend with three right wing sheriffs, only one of whom has a jurisdiction anywhere near the US-Mexican border
- Social media site Reddit.com has finally taken some action against racist and anti-Semitic subreddits
- Having served in the US Army of the 1990s, I can say the horror of soldiers being discharged for ‘misconduct’ due to mental health issues, especially PTSD, is an artifact of military culture made vastly worse by Bush-era wars
- After a debate that seemed pointless, what do you suppose popular culture is going to make of the GOP race?
• I think the moaning about theliberalmedia during the third GOP debate was simple reflex, like a sneeze. They weren’t even trying to work the refs, just going for a cheap applause line.
• I’m tempted to mock and try to marginalize Carl Gallups just on general principles, but he’s not worth the effort.
• I’d love to see an analysis of School Resource Officers (somewhere in the afterlife, George Orwell starts double-fisting G&Ts): does their presence actually accomplish anything meaningful? Also, if we as a society decide we really need them—for what it’s worth, I vote no—we need to make sure they’re extremely well-trained.
• Hiring smarter people to be police officers (my rinky-dink city seems to go out of its way to hire dumb people), training that emphasizes conflict resolution and de-escalation skills, and teaching officers hand-to-hand fighting skills (if you depend on a weapon, you are helpless if you are disarmed) would be certainly be a good start.
• Brava! to Mary Numair’s counter-protest. Pure genius.
–alopecia