This is a special edition of our regular THREATCON feature, your intelligence briefing on right wing activity. Due to the Donald Trump phenomenon and the decline of the Democratic Party, our Threatcon Color Code for 2016 is RED NATION RISING
- As I explained just the other day, while we’re all laughing at Ammon Bundy and his friends, Republican politicians are steadily adopting their platform to privatize public lands
- Bundy Ranch ‘security chief’ Jerry DeLemus, now an official member of the Donald Trump campaign, has showed up in Burns to counter “psyops” by the federal government. DeLemus lacked any law enforcement experience when he ran for sheriff of Strafford County, New Hampshire, and lost; he has even less experience or training in psychological warfare techniques
- The Bundy cult seems to be experiencing a morale crisis as their bloodless, directionless, poorly-planned uprising goes off the rails in a frozen landscape
- While the federal response plan to watch events and take no actions appears to be working in this case, it may tend to encourage the armed-and-paranoid to keep growing bolder during a high-stakes election year. One measure that could encourage a return to the rule of law: seize Cliven Bundy’s bank accounts to reclaim 20 years of unpaid discount grazing fees whilst Ammon and his brother Ryan are snowed-in a thousand miles away from home
- The Bundy boys argue that they are not terrorists because they don’t have bombs, but then they demonize federal biologist Linda Sue Beck as “destroying America” and say they’ll never let her return to her office at the bird sanctuary. Who’s wearing the jackboots again?
- The ranchers and residents of Burns, Oregon clearly don’t want ‘help’ from the Bundy cult
- The LDS church has denounced the “scriptural basis” that Ammon and Ryan claim as justification for their armed occupation of the facility
- Stolen valor: Ammon and Ryan’s personal bodyguard has left their side in the wake of revelations that he was never really in the US Marine Corps
- Two leaders of a Texas ‘border militia’ have been convicted and sentenced for firearms violations
- Anti-government activity is not restricted to the boonies: a Bronx man spouting ‘sovereign citizen’ nonsense was arrested this week after he allegedly threatened a housing court judge
- Dear liberal/progressive soul: how many seats do ‘the facts’ control in Congress? Of course you’re right about absolutely everything, but how many Supreme Court justices do you get to appoint? How many state legislatures do you control? How many governors’ mansions? If you can’t vote for a candidate who represents 99% of what you want, and refuse to vote for a candidate who represents 50% of what you want, then you will get nothing you want — and quite possibly be stuck with lots of changes that you oppose. In short, the lesser of two evils is actually less evil
- On social media, I see far too much self-congratulatory discussion of the Republican Party as being on the verge of a crackup because the presidential race is producing a clash between grassroots and leadership. In fact, Democrats are the weaker party on the state level and in Congress, while the most ardent supporters of Bernie Sanders have turned insurgent against party leadership and promise to oppose Hillary Clinton if she wins the nomination. This is no recipe for a liberal renaissance, and writers who claim a GOP victory will somehow make the Democrats a better party are kidding themselves
- Remember how Karl Rove encouraged evangelicals to put anti-gay marriage referendums on the ballot to lift George W. Bush to reelection in 2004? Expect a reprise of that strategy this year, but with transphobic bathroom ordinances, so-called ‘religious freedom’ initiatives that actually enshrine bigotry, and so forth. There will be lots of ugly legislation this year aimed at motivating the Kim Davis demographic to the polling booth
- As House Republicans vote yet again to defund Planned Parenthood, abortion access is under greater threat than any time since Roe v Wade — and with clinics being closed by TRAP laws, women are increasingly turning to the internet for bad self-abortion ideas
- In a break with routine, Planned Parenthood is endorsing Hillary Clinton this weekend. That’s how endangered reproductive rights are in America
- The latest contrived union-busting Supreme Court case is also a stalking horse for culture warriors who want to impress their god on public schools
- Repeat after me: tax cuts do not create growth. Keep repeating this until November
- Fresh off his lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has just signed a bill he shoved through the legislature that gags local governments on ballot issues and doubles the maximum PAC campaign contribution limit. This is what the greater evil looks like
- Donald Trump has pinned his campaign to an apocalyptic, suburban sense of American decline, so the latest clash at one of his rallies saw supporters tear a sign to shreds that read: “America is already great“
- This week, Rachel Maddow finally dispelled the widespread notion that Donald Trump is unique or unparalleled in the history of American presidential politics. He actually belongs to the George Wallace tradition:
https://youtu.be/OjjJgIaH6SM
- Media organizations need to stop falling for white supremacist social media trolls this year
- Last year saw the deadliest wave of domestic terrorist violence in two decades; expect 2016 to be even worse
- While we hold a national debate about the Second Amendment, don’t forget that most criminals who obtain guns get them from a friend or a straw purchaser
- Remember when Wayne LaPierre said that universal firearm purchase background checks were “reasonable”? That seems so quaint now
- Demand for guns skyrocketed when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008; expect another surge of gun purchases this year regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination
- James Tracy, the Florida Atlantic University professor who spent the last three years harassing the families of children killed at Sandy Hook over his ‘false flag’ conspiracy theory, is now unemployed
- One blogger Tweeted that her child’s life was more important than a gun, and she’s still getting angry, threatening replies. A disturbingly-large tranche of America dismisses the Sandy Hook massacre and President Obama’s tears for murdered children as conspiracies against their right to well-armed sociopathy
- It won’t matter how sensible, moderate, or constitutional President Obama’s executive orders on gun safety actually are. The people who think he’s a secret Muslim from Kenya, i.e. Donald Trump voters, aren’t listening to anyone except themselves
- Conspiratard-in-Chief: Alex Jones has basically invented a kind of fundamentalist religion out of the paranoid style of right wing politics in America. And remember, he’s endorsing Donald Trump
- During 2015, American police shot young black men dead at five times the rate of white males the same age, yet the angriest Americans are white Republicans who say ‘their’ country has been taken away
• Jerry DeLemus thinks the government is engaged in psyops? Okay, Jerry, no more Call of Duty for you, it’s past your bedtime.
• The lesser of two evils is actually less evil. This needs to be put on tee shirts.
• It never ceases to amaze me that Righties need some small group they can loathe with all the passion they can muster in order to get out of bed in the morning. First, it was a cartoon version of black people, then it was a cartoon version of gays, then a cartoon version of Latinos, then a cartoon version of gays who wanted to marry, and now it’s a cartoon version of transsexuals. It must be exhausting to keep up on who to hate.
–alopecia