Thursday THREATCON – July 24, 2014

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 Arizona’s two hour death by torture execution, our Threatcon Color Code is OLD GOLD

• You’ve probably heard by now that Steven Steinlight, senior policy analyst at the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, said that being “hung, drawn, and quartered” was “too good” for President Obama. While hate speech is not criminal, Steinlight has committed a grammar crime: people are hanged with ropes, not hung. If you believe the president should hang because of immigration issues, at least say so in proper English
• A county-level nationwide study by Notre Dame researchers has found that tea parties form where educational segregation is highest.

Their statistical analyses show that even after accounting for many other factors, Tea Party organizations were much more likely to form in counties with high levels of residential segregation based on education levels, and that college graduates were more likely to indicate support for the Tea Party if they resided in a county characterized by high levels of educational segregation.

“Acceptance or rejection of the Tea Party’s views on the government’s role in redistributing wealth is shaped, to a large degree, by the extent to which those who have benefited from higher education are set apart in their daily lives from those who have not,” says McVeigh, who specializes in inequality, social movements, race and ethnicity. “As the article explains, the commonly held view that individuals and families who are struggling to get by are undeserving of government assistance is reinforced when the highly educated have limited contact with those who have been less fortunate.”

• Empirical evidence contradicts another conservative economic fairy tale: states that raised the minimum wage this year have seen faster economic growth, which is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen according to the libertarian moral fables
• Now that the deficit has drastically declined, the media isn’t talking about it anymore
• Governor Rick Perry’s defense lawyer in a grand jury investigation has already cost Texas taxpayers $40,000
• Kansas Republicans want to repeal the 17th Amendment. That is a longtime goal of the John Birch Society, and this is another demonstration of their long-term organizing success
• Australia has become the first nation to eliminate a carbon tax, but before conservatives celebrate they should know that Tony Abbott will still try to meet the nation’s carbon goals with a $2.5 billion Big Government subsidy
• In a survey of twenty industrialized nations, the United States has the highest rate of denial about anthropogenic climate change. Rush Limbaugh is taking credit
• Confirmation bias: Republicans tend to look up climate change during extreme weather in order to convince themselves that no link exists, while liberals tend to look up the topic during temperature trends to confirm a link does exist
• Your weekly US RDA of outrage porn: the Fox & Friends crew are very angry that 911 services respond to callers whose first language isn’t English

• The Sunlight Foundation’s fancy new political ad sleuth is quite handy — here’s a nifty map of the more than 100 local television stations where organizations linked to the Koch brothers bought ad time in this election cycle
• The president of Common Cause debunks the scare tactics being used to fight the DISCLOSE Act
• Backlash to all the ugly scenes of protesters trying to turn back refugee children on buses? The National Journal reports that South Carolina’s evangelicals are turning pro-immigration reform
• The sense of immigration crisis has fringe right conspiracy theories focusing on the last vestiges of “compassionate conservatism.” World Net Daily is suddenly very, very worried about faith-based charities receiving federal funds
• As I keep telling you, anti-immigration protests have generally been spectacular failures
• Jennifer Berkshire, a critic of education “industry” profiteering, deconstructs the way charter schools cover up their corporate-speak
• Contrary to the propaganda, President Obama is very good for business
• Guess who’s rescuing the institution of marriage? Young liberals
• That huge verdict against fracking well polluters in Texas is probably destined to be overturned by the most corporation-friendly state supreme court in the country
• A landmark, decades-long study by Johns Hopkins University concludes the American dream is dead

• Children exposed to religion have a difficult time telling the difference between fact and fiction
• As we predicted here, right wing media is treating the Hobby Lobby decision as a “religious liberty” protection for bigotry. Yesterday, Sen. Marco Rubio gave a speech decrying “intolerance” towards same-sex marriage opponents
• Speaking of Hobby Lobby: their efforts to expand corporate personhood are linked to “The Family,” the secretive organization responsible for anti-gay legislation in Uganda
• Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist is reviving his nativist organization
• Three South Carolina ‘sovereign citizens’ have been convicted of mail fraud after an FBI investigation into their debt-elimination scam
• When Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution from 2003-2009, rape decreased sharply
• The neoconfederate League of the South has gone full Holocaust denial
• At The Atlantic, Michael Wolraich remembers when Republicans created the progressive movement