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 Joni Ernst’s bizarre attempt at ‘folksy charm,’ our Threatcon Color Code is WONDER BREAD
- President Obama’s popularity is rising, and his SOTU address is widely seen as a groundbreaking success. While most of his agenda stands little chance of passage in this Congress, that contrast just makes him look better and better to the public — which explains why House Republicans have censored his remarks on climate change and anti-Semitism in their “enhanced webcast”
- Speaking of climate change: I’ve said for years that the United States Senate is a sham legislative body, and now we have empirical scientific proof in a Senate vote on the recognition of human agency in climate change
- No one was enthusiastic about Joni Ernst’s State of the Union response, least of all tea party conservatives. At Slate, Josh Voorhees caught a glaring difference between what was said in English and in Spanish about immigration
- Now that we see Republicans trying to cover up the full CIA torture report, can we finally agree that the lesser of two evils is actually less evil? Also: can we please concentrate on better-punishing police who use torture right here in the United States?
- It’s not just me and Karoli saying that Bill Maher doesn’t understand how free speech works: Bob Cesca agrees. By the way, if you’re one of his podcast listeners then you really ought to nominate him and Chez Pazienza for a podcast award. I’ve submitted the Bob & Chez Show (URL here) for People’s Choice, Politics/News, and Best Produced categories
- On his way out as Arizona’s
white power advocateSuperintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal cited a poem by Chicano playwright Louis Valdez that was being taught in Tuscon schools as an example of “illegally promoting ethnic solidarity and the overthrow of the U.S. government.” Ironically, the poem’s actual words, “If I do harm to you…I do harm to myself” sound remarkably like the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” - Rick Perlstein dives into the privatization mania of Rahm Emmanuel’s administration in Chicago
- Mike Huckabee is a rock and roll hypocrite: as Brian Tashman reports, the ‘family values’ conservative once performed a sexually explicit song with nutjob rocker Ted Nugent — and recently lied about changing the lyrics after being called out for his criticism of Beyoncé
- Speaking of Huckabee, watch him watch convicted felon Jim Bakker suggest that “persecution” of Christianist bigots might be the next Holocaust
[youtube]http://youtu.be/DqK7dE4dmTI[/youtube]
- Did you hear that the woman whose photo of herself holding a bible and a gun went viral last year also cheated on her combat veteran husband with a video editor at the Tea Party News Network? Did you want to know about this unimportant soap opera? That’s too bad, because conservative creep Charles C. Johnson just had to make sure we know all about it
- Get ready for a new round of Benghazis: Republican House committee chairmen are lining up to exert sole authority over subpoenas, cutting Democrats out of the process completely
- Fox News actually apologized for broadcasting those ridiculous false claims of Muslim-only ‘no-go areas’ in Paris and England
- I’m as Hillary-skeptical as any liberal, but CNN is burying the lede on Clinton’s poll numbers, which have her beating the entire Republican field
- Speaking of Clintons: Daily Caller reporter Patrick Howley’s article smearing Bill for supposedly praising a Holocaust denier has been exposed as a fabrication
- Mandating idiocracy: two Florida lawmakers are trying to force students in that state to watch convicted felon and proven liar Dinesh D’Souza’s painfully-awful revisionist history movie America, Imagine the World Without Her
- For several months now, I’ve been reporting on Alabama Christian Coalition Director James Henderson’s hysterics regarding the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville. Last week, a ‘Stand for Life’ event in Huntsville was unexpectedly heckled in front of a reporter, giving Henderson another opportunity to demonstrate his hypocrisy. If “ridicule and opposition” — meaning mockery and disagreement with the Great James Henderson — truly count as “harassment,” then what are we to make of Henderson’s goon squad pestering women who dare to access reproductive health services? What should we say about them following clinic volunteers home and annoying school staff so much that the city installs a gate to keep them out?
- It’s nice that the GOP House won’t be taking up the 20-week abortion limit, and even better that it’s due to resistance in the Republican caucus. But as you can see in this handy ACLU infographic, the real attacks on abortion aren’t happening in Washington, DC:
- Watch this space: Michael Centanni, former Chief Operating Officer at Base Connect — a subprime conservative fundraising scheme and CPAC sponsor — pleaded guilty on January 5th to possessing thousands of child pornography images on his computer. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 9th
- Darkest money: a mystery donor is paying for the white supremacist/neoconfederate organization League of the South to put up billboards calling for secession
- Brandon Darby, the fraudulent managing editor of Breitbart Texas, was spotted at an Islamophobic hate rally in Dallas headlined by the spectacularly-deranged Pamela Geller
- Don’t believe the FBI’s hate crime statistics — because they’re way too low
- Buchanan, Michigan “doomsday prepper” Ted Lancer shot at his neighbors’ homes and set his house on fire before apparently committing suicide, cooking off three thousand rounds of ammunition
- Sentinel, Oklahoma survivalist Dallas Horton shot Police Chief Louis Ross four times, was questioned, and then got released without any illegal choke holds or a hail of gunfire
- The Ku Klux Klan distributed flyers of Martin Luther King, Jr’s mug shot for the Monday holiday in Pennsylvania
- 79-year old Bedford County, Pennsylvania ‘sovereign citizen’ Don Ralph Ickes was sentenced to a year in prison for probation violations
