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 Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy speech attacking Donald Trump’s amateur-hour policy pronouncements, our Threatcon Color Code is RED WHITE AND BLUE VELVET
- It’s bad enough that Donald Trump has so many white supremacist delegates. Now at least one militia ‘patriot’ has been identified among them, too — and he talks in the open of violently overthrowing the US government
- While some Democrats are still whining that they can’t fall in love with Clinton, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is the latest GOP leader to fall in line for Trump
- The journalist who’s followed Trump the longest explains that the reality show star has always swung back and forth between seduction and threats to get what he wants
- Trump’s defense of his Trump University scam is itself a scam. Despite protestations that delays in delivering promised charitable donations to veterans groups were the result of a ‘vetting process,’ one of the ‘charitable organizations’ to which Trump donated has a terrible record. Why should his campaign itself be any different?
- Opinion survey analysis shows that race and religion fears, not economic anxiety, drive enthusiasm for Trump’s candidacy. However, there aren’t enough white voters living where Trump needs them in order to win
- There are still some allegedly ‘progressive’ voices who claim that voting for Donald Trump is somehow better for their issues than voting for Hillary Clinton. Speaking as someone who has covered the white violent and hate-filled movements manifesting in Trumpism, I agree with David Neiwert that those ‘progressives’ are fools who flirt with disaster. Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt indicated this week that losing the White House again in 2016 might require a “resort to the bullet box“; that is the kind of fire such children are playing with
- Conspiracy candidate: Rick Perlstein notes the symbiosis of Donald Trump and Alex Jones
- My instincts say that billionaire Mark Cuban is correct about Trump’s comparative poverty. This is the most likely explanation for his refusal to provide tax documents: he’s not as rich as he pretends to be
- If you ask Donald Trump what books he reads, you get right to the heart of the problem with Donald Trump:
- Maya Dillard Smith, executive director of the Georgia ACLU, has delighted culture war bigots by resigning over her “concerns” about transgender bathroom access. It seems that Smith’s daughters encountered transgender women in an Oakland, California restroom and she “was ill-prepared to answer their questions” — a strange thing to admit, given that LGBT rights are a major part of the modern civil rights platform
- Kansas Republicans would rather pass transgender bans for restrooms in public schools than fund their public school system
- A Chicago mother and her two sons were arrested for beating a young black boy and trying to drown him
- Neo-Nazis are using parentheses around the names of Jews to target them for harassment in social media
- If you’re not Christian and you live in the South, prepare to be told every day that you’re going to hell
- Abortion coverage bias: Media Matters researchers have found that cable news channels allowed anti-abortion activists to dominate the public debate after the ‘baby parts for cash’ hoax was launched against Planned Parenthood. Liberal media!
- Five years into the latest wave of forced-birth legislation, American women are increasingly turning to extreme self-abortion measures that are far riskier than clinical abortion
- The fire at a Northern California Planned Parenthood location was arson, i.e. an act of terrorism
- Deposition questions posed by the right wing Judicial Watch organization in their Clinton email lawsuit demonstrate the entire nothingburger is a political witch hunt
- While attacking Republican officeholders and letting his campaign descend into turmoil, Trump still has not ‘pivoted’ towards the general election
- Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant says that “Christians” will “line up for crucifixion” in order to oppose letting transgender people pee in the restroom of the gender with which they identify. He’s the perfect example of the kind of right wing extremists that ‘progressives’ who toy with Trump will end up enabling with that sort of buffoonery:
- The much-reviled International Monetary Fund has finally admitted that austerity policies do more harm than good
- The Financial Times has told fossil fuel industries to accept the reality that they will decline over time
- Cliven Bundy ally Michelle Fiore has picked a fight with the Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers over her comments about shooting police officers ‘in self defense’
- In a year when they stand to gain national attention, the Libertarian Party held its convention last weekend and reminded us all why we never took them seriously in the first place
- I am totally in favor of the trend of setting Confederate flags on fire to celebrate Memorial Day as long as adults supervise these events and ensure public safety
I finally drew a cartoon that may not get shared by #Trump supporters. #Trump016 pic.twitter.com/G6VrWToNlC
— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) June 1, 2016
- Brian Brown, director of the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage, was elected president of the World Congress of Families, an international hate group that pushes various antigay legislation around the globe, at their tenth congress in Tbilisi, Georgia
- Sovereign citizen’ squatters Randall and Jennifer Skates are asking for speedy trials; they are charged with burglary, forgery, and fraud
- William Gilroy, a Hawaii resident and ‘sovereign citizen,’ tried to arrest the judge during his hearing on charges of contempt of court and driving without a license. Gilroy was arrested during a ‘freedom ride’ to protest laws requiring a driver’s license to operate noncommercial vehicles
- KRON-4 TV reporter Stanley Roberts examines a local ‘sovereign citizen’ couple:
• For the sake of the world, Donald Trump must never become President of the United States. We don’t need an ignorant, incurious, thin-skinned, narcissistic bully who holds grudges anywhere near the levers of power.
• Maya Dillard Smith’s tale of the obvious transgender women with deep voices barely passes the giggle test—I was intimidated by a group of clichés!—but the fact the woman’s using her daughter in her video makes me cringe. “Finding Middle Ground,” my foot.
• This may be unnecessarily nasty and unfair, but if you aren’t Christian and you live in the South, aren’t you already in hell?
• Why wouldn’t our glorious news media not let fetus fetishists dominate coverage of the baby parts fraud? After all, as the Villagers say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s out there.” (Better reporters, please!)
• Phil Bryant thinks the Founders would have troubled themselves with which public toilets people use? Good grief, what a knucklehead.
• Burning Confederate flags is a fine way to celebrate not just Memorial Day, but the Fourth of July. Personally, I think using a flamethrower would be a nice touch.
–alopecia
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant says that “Christians” will “line up for crucifixion” in order to oppose letting transgender people pee in the restroom of the gender with which they identify.
Not this Christian. In fact, this Christian will tell Gov. Bryant to go f&#! himself. He can be first on line for the “crucifixion” and I’m sure he’ll be the only one.