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 Donald Trump’s decision not to release his tax returns until November, our Threatcon Color Code is RED INK
It seems our database of white nationalist leaders was unintentionally merged with our database of delegates. Could happen to any campaign.
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) May 10, 2016
- The white power candidate: Donald Trump is stuck with white nationalist William Johnson as a California delegate because the campaign failed to meet the deadline for replacing him. Their excuses for his appointment are lame, and Trump’s candidacy is fully explained as a racial backlash against the Obama presidency. But don’t expect the media to tell that story when they’d rather report on a horse race
- The way to beat Trump is by mobilizing voters of color
- Anti-Trump conservatives are floating a third party bid for the White House, but it’s extremely unlikely to succeed and they have already missed deadlines for ballot access. Rachel Maddow suggested Tuesday night that everyone should start ignoring the ‘Stop Trump movement’ and I second that motion
- Contrary to years’ worth of conspiracy theories, Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only State Department employee using unclassified email systems
- For all the talk of dark money in national politics, opaque political spending poses its greatest threat at the state level, especially judicial races. For example, the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity has given backers of HB 2, North Carolina’s infamous ‘bathroom police’ law, almost half a million dollars. That’s a whole lot of ‘freedom-loving,’ ‘libertarian’ money going to authoritarian ends, isn’t it?
- Of course, North Carolina Republicans are now bracing for electoral blowback from HB 2. But will they blame Gov. Pat McCrory, the man whose longtime obsession with opposing LGBT rights led them to this pass? Or will they shrug while the state loses $5 billion in economic activity? Because McCrory’s new answer, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act should simply be gutted on behalf of his law, seems unlikely to work out well for him
- The latest episode of right wing social media angst features some dubious complaints of Facebook censorship
- A controversial new study in the journal PLOS ONE finds that people with favorable views of Trump, Republicans, and conservatism tend to misperceive bullshit statements as profound
- Anyone who denies the existence of glass ceilings hasn’t looked at academia lately. Anyone who denies the existence of rape culture hasn’t asked a standup comedienne
- Samantha Bee and Patton Oswalt take down ‘crisis pregnancy centers,’ fake clinics that receive public funds to lie, frighten, or shame them out of having abortions. NSFW
- This former priest, who actually did wear dresses and abuse children, is not only free to use Michigan bathrooms, he’s now running one of these fake pregnancy crisis clinics
- Cross County, Arkansas District Judge Joseph Boeckmann has resigned after thousands of images of naked young men were found on his phone, some being spanked, all depicting defendants he had sentenced to ‘community service.’ Does his robe count as a dress?
- Yet another study concludes that abortion laws do not reduce abortion rates, but contraception does
- Planned Parenthood terrorist Robert Dear was found unfit to stand trial yesterday. A mental hospital will now try to render him competent to aid in his own defense, with a report issued in 90 days. Oddly, Dear was deemed competent enough to buy a small arsenal
- A federal judge has ruled that Missouri cannot revoke the operating license of the Planned Parenthood center in Columbia without due process
- This profile of June Ayers, an Montgomery, Alabama abortion provider whom I interviewed extensively last summer, is mandatory reading
- A Kansas jury decided that forced-birth activist Angel Dillard wasn’t trying to intimidate a doctor by suggesting that someone might place explosives under her car. Apparently, all abortion providers must simply get used to receiving such threats on their lives as a perfectly-legal consequence of their careers
- For all of the noise and drama about motherhood in America, you’d think that we would treat moms better than we do
- The fundamentalist Quiverfull cult tried to hold a matchmaking retreat for teenagers, but the Salvation Army quickly denied them use of the campground after being informed that child brides would be meeting their appointed grooms
- Congressional Republicans haven’t given up on passing an anti-gay ‘religious freedom’ bill for the whole nation
- With a governor under federal investigation, a House Speaker under indictment, and a Chief Justice suspended for defying the supremacy of federal courts, Alabama is under-appreciated as a model of conservative governance
- When blue lives don’t matter: there has been an unusual surge of police deaths this year, so why isn’t right wing media blasting the news? Maybe it’s because the perpetrators are mostly white
- When nobody’s life matters: James Edward Loftis of South Carolina is using the state’s ‘stand your ground’ law to defend himself against charges of double homicide and setting his victims’ bodies on fire to “slow cook” in shallow graves; he’s out on bail
- Speaking of cowards who kill: George Zimmerman is auctioning the gun he used to shoot Trayvon Martin (UPDATE: the website has reportedly removed his auction)
- Maverick Dean Bryan was returned to lockup for threatening to hang Arkansas mayors from “mighty oaks” unless they replaced Common Core curriculum with religious instruction and discounted the votes of gay, atheist, communist, socialist, or non-Christian citizens
- Bad rancher and domestic terrorist Cliven Bundy got together with vexatious right wing litigant Larry Klayman to file a lawsuit against the federal government; their case levels some spurious accusations at Sen. Harry Reid. Meanwhile, a coalition of environmental groups is pressuring the Bureau of Land Management to remove the Bundy herd from Gold Butte
- Ammon and Ryan Bundy are very upset at how bad the jailhouse food is
- Bundy sympathizer and Oregon militia leader Joseph Rice is running for Josephine County commissioner; Malheur militant Michael Emry was arrested in nearby John Day with a stolen Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun
- White supremacist Robert C. Doyle was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for his part in a conspiracy to murder and rob a man, then use his silver and coin collection to finance a race war
- If you find Donald Trump terrifying, just wait until you read about all the cranks, frauds, and hacks who advise or run his campaign
- Evolutionary psychologist Dr Nicolas Baumard made waves this week by suggesting that religion will die out as the human race becomes more affluent. Call me a skeptic on both counts: there is nothing inevitable about reduced global poverty, while religious and magical thinking often persist in direct, conscious opposition to evidence — gods can never fail, they can only be failed. Just ask the poor dog that an Alabama pastor starved for two days in order to make his theological point about obedience
• Donald Trump’s entire campaign is about resentment. I doubt anyone in the campaign cares the least bit that there’s a white nationalist delegate in the mix. It’s not as if our glorious news media will call him on it.
• Golly, another piece that makes it clear Hillary Clinton did nothing out of the ordinary with her email. That must mean there’s something out of the ordinary about it. *eyeroll*
• There are plenty of good people in North Carolina, but there’s a part of me that hopes HB 2 causes the state’s entire economy to crater.
• I did a quick skim over the PLOS ONE paper. Either I have a very oddly-calibrated humor detector or the authors had their tongues firmly—if subtly—in their cheeks when they wrote their paper (the science, incidentally, looks reasonably sound).
• “[A]bortion laws do not reduce abortion rates, but contraception does.” In other news, water is wet, fire is hot and chocolate is delicious.
• I hope I never understand the obsession Righties have with other people’s sex lives.
• George Zimmerman is a despicable human being.
• If they weren’t dangerous lunatics, the Bundy clan might be amusing to watch as reality crashes in on their carefully-maintained intellectual bubble.
• To all those Right-wing politicians who think God told him to run for President, perhaps it’s time to consider the possibility that God’s just messing with you.
–alopecia
God told me to run for President, too, but I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me.