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 the death of astrology enthusiast Nancy Reagan, our Threatcon Color Code is SIZE FOUR RED DRESS
- Reminder: Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ campaign was a social policy fiasco
- Contrary to the latest conservative hate meme, it’s actually traditional for the First Lady, not the president, to attend the funerals of First Ladies
- President Obama’s approval rating has gone up
- The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office has synced the FBI aerial video of LaVoy Finicum’s suicide-by-cop with cell phone video recorded inside the truck by Malheur militant Shawna Cox. There are no surprises in it, but one FBI agent did apparently fire two bullets during the traffic stop that struck nothing, sparking a new investigation that will delay the release of further evidence. Still, all the available data disproves every allegation that has been made by militia ‘patriots’ about Finicum’s death
- If Donald Trump is so rich, then how did he qualify for a tax break that only New Yorkers making less than $500,000 can claim?
- Donald Trump really doesn’t like it when you confront him with the voices of children mimicking his bigotry and bullying behavior. Macro Rubio’s kids being embarrassed by their father’s debate exchanges with Donald Trump shows that this affects all children
- What kind of people can you expect in a Trump administration? The motivational speakers and felon he hired to abuse elderly ‘students’ at Trump University are probably a good example. So is his talent search for a Latina actress to play an eager executive assistant
- Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on protesters and pre-screen the ‘undesirables’ do not bode well for freedom if he is elected. Neither do the would-be brownshirts sucker-punching protesters, who then get arrested by rent-a-cops for the crime of being assaulted
- Ted Cruz is not better than Donald Trump: his Michigan campaign co-chair wants to ban homosexuality, there are a number of anti-gay hate leaders on his ‘religious freedom council,’ he keeps seeking anti-gay endorsements, and he still touts the endorsement of hate-pastor Paul Bair, who wants Oklahoma to pass unconstitutional laws against marriage equality
- One piece of good news: a Cruz or Trump nomination increases the likelihood of flipping the Senate
- There is no better proof that Islamophobia is a form of malevolent ignorance than hate crimes by people who don’t know the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh. Or between a Muslim and a Buddhist. There is no greater driver of stupid Muslim-bashing in America than Donald Trump
- Your modern conservative movement: CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, opened with a series of panels that featured anti-Muslim conspiracy nut Frank Gaffney and a host of European Islamophobes who still push that ridiculous ‘Muslim no-go zones’ story
- Why does ICE keep trying to deport American citizens?
- When conspiracy nuts get confused: retired general and full-time culture warrior Jerry Boykin claims that The Naked Communist, a book by deceased right wing fabricator and pseudo-historian Cleon Skousen that inspired Glenn Beck’s red-baiting, was published by “the Communist Party USA” to indoctrinate our children into voting for Bernie Sanders
- Missouri Republican senators have approved an anti-LGBT ‘religious liberty’ amendment to the state constitution after a 39-hour filibuster by Democrats. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal rejects a similar bill — and makes a strong biblical case against it
- North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is moving as fast as he can to nullify the Charlotte City Council’s decision to pass a nondiscrimination ordinance including transgender restroom rights
- Love wins: the US Supreme Court has rejected a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that refused to recognize the adoption rights of a lesbian. AL Chief Justice Roy ‘Ten Commandments’ Moore and friends have dismissed petitions from right wing lobbing organizations to uphold the state’s defiance of the Obergefell marriage equality ruling
- Next week, the Franklin County School Board will decide whether to ban all after-school clubs in order to shut down the Gay-Straight Alliance
- When he was finally hauled into court by the IRS, ‘sovereign citizen’ Larry Williams tells NPR that the IRS didn’t collect much because his income had been greatly reduced by a series of investment scams. Which is unsurprising, since the whole ‘sovereign citizen’ idea is really just another financial scam
- Watch a ‘sovereign citizen’ of the Moorish Temple try his shtick on a judge at his bond hearing:
- The war on women continues: Florida Republicans have passed an anti-abortion bill modeled after the Texas law that the Supreme Court seems ready to overturn, and which also aims to choke off contraceptive access; Oklahoma’s legislature has passed an unconstitutional bill to deny medical licenses to abortion providers
- As soon as abortion restrictions pass, women start Googling how to do it at home
- The Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbus, Ohio was vandalized this week; Utah Planned Parenthood is asking a federal court to reverse that Gov. Gary Herbert’s decision to defund the family planning provider
- Dahlia Lithwick says that the era of the conservative Supreme Court is over
- The poverty trap: poor people pay more for toilet paper — and everything else. And then if people on welfare use their benefits to buy ethical food, we see them as immoral
- Sen. Lee Heider (R-Twin Falls), head of the Idaho Senate Health and Welfare Committee, is totally against abortion but thinks it’s just fine if ‘faith healing’ parents let their children die
- Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, the community known as ‘Short Creek’ where Warren Jeffs ran his child rape cult, have lost a federal lawsuit charging discrimination against residents who were not members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- The US solar market is going to double this year
- Major network coverage of climate change declined last year
- The Democratic and Republican Parties have almost completely reversed polarity in terms of their civil rights platforms since 1960. A big part of that story is Barry Goldwater:
• Those two previously-unreported bullets have re-energized the conspiracy theorists on the Right, as if somehow they change the entire sequence of events leading up to LaVoy Finicum’s death. That is to be expected, as said conspiracy theorists do not live in a universe of facts.
• At the risk of violating some corollary of Godwin’s Law, Donald Trump’s rallies are looking more and more like those orchestrated by Mussolini.
• Charlie Pierce last Sunday had this to say about Donald Trump versus Ted Cruz:
Me, I’m more scared of Cruz.
• Islamophobes aren’t the brightest bulbs in the candelabra, are they?
• I don’t know why I’m amazed at the continued hatred of LGBT people, but I am.
• Lee Heider is a real piece of work. “Pro-life,” my arse.
–alopecia
We’re not the first to note the similarity of the arditi to the people punching black rally protesters in the face. But few have made the connection that those ‘patriots’ hyperventilating in their basement reality-shelters are the kernel of an American Freikorps.