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 Sen. Chris Murphy’s successful filibuster, our Threatcon Color Code is SUPERMAN SHIRT
What Trump did this am is arguably equivalent to a Dem suggesting 9/11 is an inside job the day after 9/11. https://t.co/A1rf9Xhi4r
— Sam Stein (@samstein) June 13, 2016
- The wisdom of the 24 hour rule was made crystal clear by the way the early narrative of the Orlando massacre fell apart. We quickly learned that Omar Mateen had frequented the Pulse nightclub, used gay dating apps, and pursued a gay relationship, but hid his real self from his family so well that his own father doesn’t think he was gay. Warped by shame, secrecy, and self-loathing, Mateen was a ticking time bomb of “bipolar,” gun-toting rage before the Islamic State ever existed
- Since yesterday, when I published a 5,000-word analysis of weaknesses in the Donald Trump campaign that the Hillary Clinton campaign can potentially exploit for a devastating victory, Trump has already managed to highlight many of those flaws. He’s a lazy fundraiser, ignores advice, sets subordinates against one another for fun, and lags far behind Clinton in building a general election campaign machine
- In an example of how these weaknesses impact Trump’s response to the news cycle, Clinton has already issued a statement reacting to the assassination of British MP Jo Cox today by an assailant who reportedly shouted “Britain first!” while shooting and stabbing her. Trump has yet to mention this tragedy at all. In the days since the Orlando massacre, Trump’s worst personality traits have been on full display because no one can rein him in
- For the aforementioned reasons, polling data suggests that Trump is dampening enthusiasm in the Republican electoral tent
- I confidently predict that Trump will regret going to war with the Washington Post
- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s legal vendetta against Gawker.com now extends to specious litigation over their excellent reporting on Trump’s hair weave specialist. Theil will be rubbing elbows with white nationalists at a ‘libertarian’ conference in Turkey this September
- The Orlando massacre led Jim ‘Gateway Pundit’ Hoft, widely known as ‘the stupidest man on the internet’ for the amazing credulity he gives every idiotic conspiracy theory that arrives in his email inbox, to come out of the closet after years of hateful gay-baiting
- Ten years ago, Trump was accused of destroying email evidence in one of the thousands of lawsuits that have been filed against his companies for breach of contract
- Trump has not ‘hijacked’ conservative orthodoxy on Islamic terrorism, he has intensified it. Which is another way of saying that Republicans are all out of ideas when it comes to the international relations challenges of the 21st Century; their politics are mere posturing
- By the 164th day of 2016, America had experienced 133 mass shootings
- I would like to thank the evangelical Christian pastors celebrating the mass murder of LGBT Americans, or wishing aloud that gays and Muslims would just slaughter each other, for deepening and confirming my atheism
- Why are so many right wingers unable to admit that the Orlando massacre was a result of radical anti-gay extremism? Are Republicans so incoherent because they are themselves so anti-LGBT that this week, they have even blocked efforts to extend non-discrimination protections without a trace of shame? These seem like good questions for journalists to ask
- Why aren’t we focused on questions about the radicalization of James Howell, the 20 year-old man arrested Sunday near a gay pride parade with guns and explosives? His story is just as convoluted as Mateen’s. How come we aren’t hearing mentions of his nationality? Why is no one examining his religious views or concern-trolling about whether the president recognizes his dangerous extremism?
- ‘Sovereign citizen’ Erick Shute of Morgan County, West Virginia was arrested for allegedly murdering three men with an AR-15 on Monday
- Not one Masachusetts jail or prison is in compliance with state laws that prohibit shackling female prisoners during labor
- This woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks is a good example of how ‘late term’ procedures, which are easily the most demonized by abortion opponents, are almost always the most necessary and tragic
- Brandi Swindell thinks she can put Planned Parenthood out of business by offering all the same services except the icky birth control and abortion stuff
- A Kentucky appellate court has proven that abortion rights mean nothing at the state level by granting Gov. Matt Bevin’s request to temporarily close a Lexington abortion clinic
- A Waco, Texas school is accused of doing nothing while three white boys put a noose around a 12 year-old black girl’s neck and dragged her around a ranch during their class field trip. Welcome to Trump’s America
- Talking Points Memo is publishing a series on privatization. The first installment, a brief history of government privatization efforts, is mandatory reading
- Sen. Kark Lee (R-Utah) blocked efforts to give visas to translators and their families for working with US troops in Afghanistan, literally holding their lives hostage for his pet issue
- “When you see the person David Hall, tell him he’s not leaving jail either“
- Thomas Mair, the man who allegedly murdered British MP Jo Cox, supported the neo-Nazi National Alliance for decades
- What do you get when Breitbart writers, Islamophobic conspiracy goofballs, and a shameless right wing mayor get together with Glenn Beck? Irving, Texas, the community where Muslim kids can be arrested for bringing clocks to school
- Robert Morrow, the Austin, Texas conspiracy goofball who co-authored a deranged book about Clinton with Trump ally Roger Stone, really enjoys teeeting racial slurs
- Racial bias in Google results: you get very different returns when searching for “three black teenagers” as opposed to “three white teenagers”
- Michelle Fiore, the gun-toting anti-government Nevada assemblywoman who allied herself to the Bundy cult and took part in the denouement to the Malheur occupation, has failed in her bid to join the US House of Representatives
- ProPublica asks: why are hate crimes so poorly tracked?
- Focus on the Family, the nonprofit side of the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, has insinuated its ‘resources’ into public schools across the nation to promote their right wing agenda
Speaking of terrorism-inspiring mullahs, here is @realDonaldTrump with anti-gay pastor Robert Jeffress pic.twitter.com/zKDgO8eOmc
— Matt Osborne (@OsborneInk) June 12, 2016
• Under a (very) different set of circumstances, I would have felt a good deal of sympathy for Omar Mateem. Unfortunately, 49 innocents died because he couldn’t figure out how to have a happy life.
• It’s fun to watch Donald Trump’s campaign become a slow-motion train wreck, but let’s not get too cocky. A lot can happen between now and the general election.
• Another mic-drop moment for Barack Obama. Pity it will have no effect on the mouth-breathers.
• The response to the Orlando murders of all too many Christian leaders has been nothing short of obscene.
• Late-term abortions are almost always necessary and almost always are sought by women who want to have a child. To claim otherwise is one of the more disgusting lies coming from the fetus fetishists.
• We’ll just have to wait and see if Brandi Swindell’s Stanton Healthcare turns out to be an actual provider of healthcare or if it plays the same cruel games other “crisis pregnancy centers” do, like stringing women along until they can’t legally obtain abortions, then effectively abandoning them (pro-life, my arse). (No, I’m making no accusations. I hope Swindell’s operation is on the up-and-up. Too many others are not.)
• “For its part, the school has claimed that the entire incident was an accident and the boys were just being playful when they put a rope around the girl’s neck.” Presumably, the boys were playing the ever-popular game of Lynch Mob.
• It doesn’t surprise me that Focus on the Family would be pushing its materials for schools. It also doesn’t surprise me that those materials are irrelevant at best and appalling at worst.
–alopecia
That’s “rein”, not “reign”. A reign is what Trump wants.
Typo fixed.