Thursday THREATCON – Freddie Gray Edition

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 emerging meme that Freddie Gray somehow severed his own spine, broke his own ribs, and rough-rode himself all over Baltimore for 38 minutes, our Threatcon Color Code is THIN BLUE LINE

• Let’s be clear: the police presence on Baltimore’s streets preceded the riot, not the other way around
• While debunking reports that Gray had recently suffered a car accident, The Baltimore Sun disclosed that he was a victim of lead paint. For those who forget, environmental lead exposure created the crime wave of the 60s and 70s, which only subsided after the elimination of lead from our gasoline during the 80s. By historical accident, so-called ‘broken window’ theories of policing emerged at the exact same time that crime rates were already dropping in the 90s. Advocates of the new, more militant approach, which eliminated checks on police abuse of power and installed ‘stop-and-frisk’ policies in the streets of America, have always justified themselves by taking credit for what was actually an environmental justice victory
• Speaking of environmental justice: Gray attended a segregated school in one of America’s most segregated cities, yet the worst violence inflicted by rioters in Baltimore failed to do anywhere near as much damage to the city as austerity budgets and predatory lending have. America has criminalized poverty, which it punishes with deeper poverty
• Here is the video evidence and the timeline of Freddie Gray’s ‘rough ride.’ They do not support the story that he hurt himself and suggest someone has been lying to the Washington Post
• The second prisoner in the van could not actually see Gray, and his story actually makes more sense as evidence that Gray was in serious trouble
• Baltimore has paid out $5.7 million in settlements related to police misconduct during the last five years
• Gray also suffered a head injury at some time between his arrest and his arrival. Unless someone used a Star Trek teleportation device to frame the Baltimore PD, this means he was injured while he was inside the enclosed van — handcuffed, unrestrained by a seatbelt, and unable to steady himself against any violent vehicle motion
• As conservative outlets continue to seek out new depths in reporting to frame the riot that erupted in Baltimore this week as a race war, remember that their narratives all boil down to a zero-sum game of racial supremacy
• Did you hear about the activists who threatened revolution and uprising in Baltimore if they didn’t get their way? Oh, wait, my bad — that was anti-gay activists in Colorado Springs referring to the pending Supreme Court decision on marriage equality
• Did you hear about the US Senator who fraternized with Baltimore rioters? Whoops, my mistake — that was Ted Cruz pallin’ around with Jerry DeLemus, ‘commander’ of welfare rancher Cliven Bundy’s ‘uprising’
• Did you hear about the armed, out-of-town rioters that showed up to heckle a press conference by Baltimore community leaders who were upset about the negative news coverage? Aw, darn! There I go again, so sorry, those were actually the ‘Oath Keepers’ and militia ‘patriots’ in Josephine County, Oregon

• Remember when Democratic Senators were lining up to stop President Obama’s Iran negotiations a few weeks ago? Now their bill is being denounced as a disaster by the same neocons who wanted war with Iran
• President Obama’s comedy performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner actually spoke to his serious views
• Next time you hear conservatives say that environmental regulations hurt family farms, remember that North America’s oil and gas industry has eaten up more than 7 million acres of farmland since 2000
• Federal District Judge Mark Fuller “did not deserve to have his domestic violence charge expunged“
• Isolationist Antiwar.com founder Pat Buchanan has officially thrown in his lot with anti-Semites. So has paleoconservative Ron Paul
• Remember the National Organization for Marriage? Right wing billionaires have wasted millions of dollars supporting their efforts to hold the line on marriage equality with a huge media rollout and electoral campaigns. Nowadays, NOM can’t even put together a substantial rally on the National Mall
• After voting for an anti-gay bill, Fargo, North Dakota Republican state representative Randy Boehning was outed as a closet homosexual through his Grinder account
• The inevitable result of social shame and lack of truthful sex education: most young black gay men are learning everything they know about sex from pornography
• The Kansas City Star has concluded their exhaustive series on domestic terrorism. Among their findings: extremists have stopped gathering in groups and moved into an anonymous, if atomized, online world
• Government by paranoid fringe talk radio conspiracy theory: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered the National Guard to monitor a joint military training exercise because the black helicopter crowd is convinced that it’s a prelude to the New World Order
• In parallel with the previous point, check out these chemtrail nuts yelling “we don’t need science!” at teapublican Arizona congressman Paul Gosar

• In Virginia, it’s forty times easier to become an armed rent-a-cop than a barber
• Bain v. California Teachers Association “represents the high-water mark of perverting the First Amendment as a tool against labor“
• An Alabama state senate committee has approved a bill to stop issuing marriage licenses altogether rather than comply with federal court orders about marriage equality
• Another conservative Obamacare prediction fails to materialize: states which have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are saving money. The ACA is becoming more popular, at least with Democrats
• Double standard: North Carolina Republicans want to gag teachers from expressing their political beliefs, but they also aim to force students to learn “conservative principles” cribbed straight from the Koch brothers’ state policy mill
• A new report claims that the charter school industry has produced more than $200 million in fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer funds since 2011. Remember when they were supposed to be sooo much better than those inefficient, failing public schools?
• Surprise! Pat Robertson says it’s totally OK if a man gets drunk and gives another man a blowjob just that one time
• Recent revelations that an elite FBI forensic unit has been giving flawed testimony for years sound just like what whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst said about FBI labs 20 years ago
• Childhood bullying has a harder impact on youth than abuse by an adult
• Your US RDA of outrage porn: Pastor Win Worley on the scourge of young people using their imaginations for anything that isn’t church-related