Thursday THREATCON – 23 October 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 false reports of Banksy’s arrest, our Threatcon Color-Code is PHONE BOOTH RED

• A pair of economists are calling for a return to the confiscatory high-end tax rates of yesteryear to fight inequality. This would also stop billionaires from buying so many elections
• Yesterday’s leaks about Michael Brown’s autopsy have stirred anxiety, but the medical examiner says we shouldn’t read too much into them. That’s because wounds on his hand and arm can be interpreted as evidence that he grabbed for the gun (unlikely) or as defensive wounds incurred by a loose cannon with a badge
• Climate change is creating tornado swarms
• While serving his life sentence for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, forced-birth terrorist Scott Roeder is suing the Kansas Department of Corrections for violating his ‘free speech right’ to discuss murdering other abortion providers
• With Mike Rounds unexpectedly losing due to corruption problems, South Dakota joins the growing list of Senate races where Republicans are scrambling to win contests that they were presumed to have in hand
• Support for diversity declines in white people when you tell them they’re going to become a minority
• The data does not show a ‘Republican wave’ in this midterm election, which is good because several extremists stand to win seats in Congress
• Now that the Ebola crisis seems to be passing, it’s important for us to remember that the disease is actually very, very hard to contract
• Michael Shaw analyzes the imagery of presidential Ebola smears
• YouTube musician James Rustad is Livin in Fear of Ebola:

• Senate candidate Joni Ernst backs a fetal ‘personhood’ that would ban many forms of birth control but opposes health care for children after they are born. No wonder she’s avoiding Iowa newspaper editorial boards like they were Ebola patients
• When white people riot, it’s all just good fun
• We’ve highlighted the Republican State Leadership Committee before, and in this election they’re once again turning up with piles of cash for key local races
• Double standards: telemedicine may be the big new growth area for surgery, but telemedicine abortions are only legal in two states
• Do the attacks on Allison Lundergan Grimes seem a bit contrived to you? Senate Majority Leader Mich McConnell is paying all the travel expenses of his volunteers as they attend his appearances and keep up a facade of enthusiasm
• The Aryan Brotherhood has gotten some media attention lately, but they’re a criminal organization, not a political one
• Those of us who track political dark money will refer to 2014 as ‘the year of the shadow campaign‘
• The American Family Association’s efforts to protect ‘religious freedom’ to discriminate against homosexuality seem to be coalescing around an Idaho wedding chapel
• The white nationalist movement is descending into chaos and bickering in the wake of a recent failed attempt to hold an international conference of racists
• Remember a few weeks ago when I told you that an arrest of Mike Hubbard, Speaker of the Alabama State House, was pending?

• A Coos County, OR ‘sovereing citizen’ couple is being tried for two decades of tax evasion totaling more than $1 million
• Rush Limbaugh is America’s least trusted news source
• Rep. Dennis Richardson wants a US attorney to investigate Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber for corruption
• ‘Camp Lone Star’ leader K.C. Massey, the self-described commander of a border militia gathering in Texas, has been arrested by ATF agents for being a felon in possession of a gun
• Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial front-runner Greg Abbott can’t say whether he would defend the state’s old interracial marriage ban
• Right wing arguments against marriage equality read exactly like arguments against interracial marriage
• The Canada Revenue Agency and provincial police undertook nine raids last week against Freemen On The Land, a sovereign citizen group, in Quebec
• The US Supreme Court has allowed Texas to add to the state’s long and depressingly-modern list of efforts to disenfranchise black voters
• Murietta, California’s anti-immigrant mayor was arrested for drunk driving last Thursday after he collided with a car carrying four local cheerleaders
• The Register of Deeds in Branch County, MI has warned the public that local ‘sovereign citizens’ are filing false liens against their enemies