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 Barack and Michelle Obama’s tango dancing, our Threatcon Color Code is ARGENTINA BLUE
- Those long lines of people waiting to vote in Maricopa County, AZ were not an accident, but the predictable result of decisions to provide one polling station for every 21,000 voters. Either Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell is extremely bad at her job, or she’s a walking example of why America needed the Voting Rights Act in the first place
- Another great argument for federalizing elections: Republicans in Kansas and Arizona are creating ‘two-tier’ systems of voting registration to help reduce turnout in local and state ballots
- Did you know that the venue for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland is an unconstitutional, un-American ‘gun free zone’? Here’s a petition to force the Quicken Loans Arena to allow open carry of firearms. With Donald Trump expressing hope for “riots” on the convention floor, It’s important that the GOP shows it can be consistent about those ‘Second Amendment remedies’ and embrace the freedoms it has so bravely defended
- Trump tweeting pictures of Heidi Cruz to deride her for not being a magazine model like Melania — and getting delighted replies from white supremacists — is the patriarchy in a disgusting nutshell
- If Trump’s creepy campaign manager Corey Lewandowski calls late, don’t answer the phone
- In a sane country, Trump’s interview with the Washington Post editorial board would have ended any chance of his being elected dog catcher, much less president
- Ted Cruz is terrifying, too: his conspiracy-addled national security adviser says that Sen. Joe McCarthy’s red scare was ‘spot on’
- An astounding number of Bush-era neoconservatives have emerged as advisers in the Trump and Cruz campaigns
- Despite their new program having 100% less Josh, the Duggar family is still gross and advertisers don’t want their brands associated with the show
- From now on, this audio of Alabama’s ‘family values’ governor talking to his adviser/mistress about how much he enjoys touching her breasts will be my standard reply to the state’s right wing culture warriors whenever they splutter about morality and ‘biblical principles in governing’
- The Alabama Senate has passed a bill which would take the state out of the marriage license business altogether, reduce funds allocated for preventing domestic violence, and require every couple to negotiate their own contract — all so that county clerks won’t have to sell marriage licenses to icky gay and lesbian couples
- Responding to Charlotte’s nondiscrimination law, which had drawn protests from anti-gay evangelical groups because of its provisions allowing trans people to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify, Republican legislators in North Carolina moved quickly to call a special session of the legislature and pass a bill voiding all local nondiscrimination ordinances. Let’s see if they move this fast the next time the state faces a fiscal crisis
- American basij: self-appointed Christian morality police have taken it upon themselves to protest a swinger’s club in Amarillo, TX, try to get the customers fired, and destroy their reputations “for Jesus”
- Don’t be fooled, the ‘American College of Pediatricians’ is not a real medical organization. It’s an anti-science, anti-LGBT hate group
- The Oklahoma Supreme Court has nixed a state ballot initiative to criminalize abortion. The measure is a brainchild of extremist forced-birth group Abolish Human Abortion, which is still pushing legislators to defy the courts and pass their measure anyway
- Need help paying for an abortion? Here’s where to find it. Women are also helping each other obtain Plan B without the pharmacy slut-shaming
- The Florida legislature has passed a bill to replace Planned Parenthood family planning clinics with a list of facilities that aren’t equipped for pap smears, cancer screenings, STD testing or treatment, etc. In order to access contraception, women are now apparently supposed to visit local schools, dental offices, Salvation Army depots, a Holland Cruise Lines location, pediatricians, and podiatrists
- The latest birth control case before the Supreme Court is an insult to scientific reality and rational, evidence-based policy. Plaintiffs in Zubik v. Burwell want the court to get rid of the opt-out provisions, which were expressly put in place for faith-based organizations, claiming that a requirement to disclose their religious objections somehow violates their religious freedom
- Joyce Curnell of South Carolina went to the emergency room with gastroenteritis, but was arrested and taken to jail for unpaid shoplifting fines instead. Untreated and unattended, she died in custody
- Why isn’t mainstream media holding the Republican Party to account for the fiscal disasters that have befallen Louisiana and Oklahoma under their ideology? Is the issue just not ‘bothsidesy’ enough?
- Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear was in court today for a competency hearing. Dear had told news station KKTV that a mental health examination has found him incompetent to stand trial. The state evaluator will now have to testify on April 28th
- Terry Lynn Smith, a Louisiana ‘sovereign citizen’ found guilty of sexually abusing his stepdaughter, has been sentenced to life plus 65 years in prison
- ‘Sovereign citizen’ Dr. Debra Johnson-Jordan of Winder, Georgia has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison and must pay $464,432 to the IRS
- Winston Shrout, one of the most notorious and successful ‘sovereign citizen’ gurus of the last 15 years, has been indicted on 19 counts of failing to file income tax returns as well as filing $100 trillion in bogus liens and other financial instruments. He will likely die in prison
- Why don’t the poor just pack up and move away from the depressed areas where they live? Because they’re too poor to rent a U-Haul
- The Oregon state DOJ investigation of Grant County, Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer has expanded to cover questions about his activities before the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover, such as his hiring of 70 “special deputies”
- The Bundy agenda continues in Congress: Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has pushed a bill that would transfer law enforcement power from federal land management agencies to local powers that lack the knowledge or ability to enforce them — in other words, to people like Glenn Palmer
- While interviewing Tucker Carlson, professional conspiracy nutjob Alex Jones praised Donald Trump for being a great listener
- Someone tell Trump: conspiracy theories are for losers
- Donald Trump supporters are more likely than those of any other GOP candidate to think that white people are ‘losing out’ to minorities in America. And on Twitter, they’re far more likely to spout complaints about “white genocide”
Reading the inane comments on the back window of the vehicle about Hillary Clinton really is saddening. Here in the United States a free education thru high school is offered to everyone. Some don’t make it like this poor slob. Angry and upset with the world because he never developed the cognitive and comprehension skills to understand the world he lives in.
• A part of me finds the idea of an open-carry GOP convention appropriate. A larger part of me finds the idea horrific.
• In a sane country The Washington Post‘s editorial board would never have had cause to interview a thin-skinned bully with four bankruptcies under his belt.
• It must be exhausting to live in a state of terror over QUILTBAG people.
• Charming people, Repent Amarillo. Simply charming.
• Everyone working at Charleston County Jail, whether employees of Charleston County Sheriff’s Office or Carolina Center for Occupational Health, should have been charged with second-degree murder (“depraved indifference”) in the death of Joyce Curnell.
• That Tom Toles cartoon reminds me of something a college friend of mine used to say: “That’s not funny, it’s true. The truth is never funny.”
–alopecia