Right-wing attacks on the National Butterfly Center

This is an incredible story. It’s like Pizzagate.

I went to the National Butterfly Center in South Texas to watch as the nonprofit closed its doors indefinitely amid far-right lies online that the center feared would lead to violence

“It’s just incredibly sad” said a butterfly enthusiast on a last tourhttps://t.co/JnJtEvDaKH
— J. David Goodman (@jdavidgoodman) February 6, 2022

We live in an unbelievably stupid time https://t.co/xyEu3pfH9J
— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) February 3, 2022

UPDATE: The National Butterfly Center on the Texas border is closing “for the immediate future” after conspiracy-fueled threats against the center escalated in recent days. https://t.co/vi9KSIEi7e
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) February 2, 2022

Covers: Love Potion No. 9

“Love Potion No. 9 ” was a hit for the R&B group the Clovers in 1959 and the British Invasion band The Searchers in 1964. At that time, young rock fans like me had not heard the earlier version.

Great New Yorker weather cartoon by Rox Chast

I call The Weather Channel “weather porn” because they put their correspondents out in the snow, wind, and rain to look miserable when they could show the same stuff just with a camera and someone doing a voice-over from a safer spot.

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A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons)

Miklos Jancso films coming to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber

This is great news. Jancso’s films have been hard to find here. UK company Second Run has Blu-rays of Silence and Cry and Electra, My Love. It appears that the version of Electra coming from Kino will be a 4K upgrade. Of the six films to be released, I think only The Red and the White was ever in a US edition (Kino Lorber DVD).

The listing on the Kino Lorber site. I ordered mine today.

Kino: New 4K Restorations of Six Miklós Jancso Films Coming Soon to Blu-ray

Rare screening: Winter Wind, from 1969, in which Miklós Jancsó presses his elaborate and exquisite political choreography into confines that heighten both intimacy and paranoia; it's at @MovingImageNYC at 2 (scroll down:https://t.co/mUVNZPXks9
— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) October 20, 2024

The Addams Family 2 is not good

“The Addams Family 2” is not a good film. The animation and voice work are excellent but the plot is dumb and predictable. If you’re not familiar with them, look at the Charles Addams cartoons that are the basis for the TV show and films. You can buy prints of the cartoons here.

Brawl at a Golden Corral

There are so many videos of this kind of stuff, I think they could make a TV show of them. It’s a violent country.

Brawl breaks out at a Golden Corral over alleged beef in the buffet line https://t.co/6WVbCInz9F
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 1, 2022

Video shows punches being thrown and chairs flying as a massive brawl broke out inside the Bensalem Golden Corral. A former employee says the fight may have happened after a customer became enraged when the buffet ran out of steak. @MattPetrillo reportshttps://t.co/d0KzKtDKeM
— CBS Philly (@CBSPhilly) January 31, 2022

Video shows over 40 people in massive brawl at Golden Corral that allegedly started because restaurant ran out of steak.

Video/More: https://t.co/BUCvoBG5Hf pic.twitter.com/Fgqjb5jjAE
— Complex (@Complex) February 1, 2022

Bad Times at the Golden Corral
— Anya Stanley (@BookishPlinko) February 2, 2022

Urine therapy is the latest terrible anti-vaxxer idea

Urine therapy – where advocates encourage people to drink their own urine to tap into its redemptive properties – is among the latest, and a recent video calling the therapy the next "COVID antidote" was viewed over 366,000 times. https://t.co/o8TzBwaozt
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) January 31, 2022

Me in 1990: I bet by the time I’m really old, like 2022 or something, we’ll have flying cars and space colonies and a cure for cancer, because we’re so devoted to scientific progress as a nation

Actual 2022: pic.twitter.com/XOdLrHBfrw
— RadicalLeftLunaticHat (@Popehat) January 29, 2022

There’s a private Facebook group called “Urine Therapy” with 10.4K members.

I thought it had to be a joke, but these people are 100% serious.

Claiming that urine cures virtually everything, including COVID and cancer.

Facebook’s private groups are so fucking dangerous. pic.twitter.com/cllFtpEfyP
— Kristofer Goldsmith (@KrisGoldsmith85) January 30, 2022

BREAKING: due to the recent outbreak of COVID in red states, there's a shortage of supermarket urine on store shelves.#ThanksJoeBiden pic.twitter.com/hHd0llKMBt
— Paul Lee Teeks (@PaulLeeTeeks) January 16, 2022

An Alabama anti-vaxxer who recently suggested urine as a COVID cure now says that he doesn’t need a driver’s license to operate his car because it’s his “wagon."https://t.co/ZLFdwZwuBo pic.twitter.com/E3xmKDH9iw
— AL.com (@aldotcom) January 29, 2022

Trump cult plans to undermine future elections

Meanwhile, regarding democracy: In Georgia, county election boards are being dissolved and remade with people who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent. The story of one… https://t.co/pOhFPKfCRr
— Stephanie McCrummen (@mccrummenWaPo) March 14, 2022

🚨🚨🚨

Can’t say we weren’t warned. https://t.co/LLYfcNtX47
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 15, 2022

Having failed to prevent certification of the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his followers are targeting state and local offices that will be involved in running the next presidential election https://t.co/lDmeFHfZ1o
— POLITICO (@politico) January 24, 2022

Arizona Republicans propose major changes to elections after GOP review finds no fraud

“A number of provisions in the two dozen bills appear inspired by debunked conspiracies and Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.” https://t.co/oIyE8r7vG6
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 24, 2022

More on right-wing intimidation of election workers

At today's @SenateRules's hearing, @SenAmyKlobuchar referenced our poll of election officials. 1 in 6 election officials have experienced threats and 20% say they’re very or somewhat unlikely to continue serving going into the 2024 election.https://t.co/7OJaUdcza5
— Brennan Center (@BrennanCenter) March 28, 2023

Pandemic, politics and now prison — these are the threats election officials are facing https://t.co/Na33vSJKF1
— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) April 19, 2022

Justice Dept.: U.S. federal agents have arrested a Nevada man for threatening a state election worker last year and telling her that she was "going to f—— die" for stealing the 2020 election from Trump.

To be clear: Biden won the election. No one stole it. Trump lost.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 28, 2022

Election workers are facing an unprecedented wave of personal threats as they ponder whether they to continue in their field ahead of 2022 midterms.

https://t.co/rwMC4gLdJA
— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) February 7, 2022

About 1 in 5 local election officials say they are likely to leave their jobs before the 2024 presidential election, with a third of that group citing false political attacks on the election system as the top reason for their departure. https://t.co/GViO3wX1rE
— CNN (@CNN) March 10, 2022

Youngkin is just like Abbott and DeSantis

The whole party is extremely confrontational and right-wing

Youngkin has decided to begin his governorship by emulating Abbott & DeSantis in waging war against his largest, most prosperous population centers-in a very different state. https://t.co/dDsLQ3UAam
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) January 25, 2022

Seeing lots of musing about Youngkin and why he didn't go the benign Hogan/Baker route, and beyond the fact that VA isn't those states, nor did he run like those guys, it bears repeating that Virginia gov is a one term office. Use the platform to do what you can, while you can.
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) January 24, 2022

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is just more than a week into his governorship, issued an executive order on his first day in office delegating to parents the decision on whether children wear masks at school. https://t.co/9tSpYgyQHp
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 24, 2022

“Youngkin stormed into Richmond with an assertion of executive power that has thrilled the GOP base but caught even some allies off guard, and he has made clear that he views his two-point margin of victory as a mandate for conservative change.” https://t.co/2hMJrJNC0k
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) January 23, 2022

This is going to be the solution to Covid lots of states choose: out of sight, out of mind. They’re going to stop testing ppl even when they’ve had close contacts with infected ppl. And some red states will almost certainly soon stop reporting Covid deaths on a regular basis. https://t.co/9V1vgR5HDR
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) January 20, 2022

For all people saying Youngkin is just doing what he said he would do by banning local school mask mandates … nope!

In November he said, "Localities are going to have to make decisions the way the law works" (h/t @terrellwrites )https://t.co/MZXMYXwe07
— Bill Scher (@billscher) January 17, 2022

Youngkin quickly extending to VA the war against the metro areas driving economic growth and innovation that characterizes modern GOP politics, especially in other Sunbelt states like FL GA TX NC & AZ https://t.co/L4Gd2StfPk
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) January 17, 2022

Newly inaugurated Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is already rolling back the priorities of his Democratic predecessors and running into opposition from counties he lost months earlier, specifically on the hot-button issue of mask requirements in schools. https://t.co/QOJsmGgmIj
— CNN (@CNN) January 18, 2022

Some Virginia school districts are already defying new Governor Youngkin's executive order upending mask mandates in schools @evamckend reports @PoppyHarlowCNN pic.twitter.com/oRlcXE8cPU
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 17, 2022

So much for the silly narrative that Youngkin was some normal R. As @TerryMcAuliffe predicted, he's brought DeSantis anti-mask nuttery to VA. Now at war with several school districts. He's only been in office a few days. Hey, VA this is what you voted for. Best of luck.
— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) January 17, 2022

Youngkin referring to “parents” as though they’re a monolithic group totally in support of him is very telling https://t.co/3Twd5nCPsb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2022

On Fox News, Glenn Youngkin defends his critical race theory ban by reciting the one and only MLK quote that Republicans are aware of pic.twitter.com/1vLFPfb97d
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2022

BREAKING: @GlennYoungkin is signing 11 executive actions on his first day in office. They include banning critical race theory, ending the statewide school mask mandate & rescinding the vax mandate for state employees @8NEWS pic.twitter.com/ToQGjUDxbB
— Jackie DeFusco (@Jackie8News) January 15, 2022

Glenn Youngkin is really going full Trump. The latest:

* He's now blaming the left for his mask fiasco

* He's defending his stance with epic bad faith/dishonesty

* He's actively inciting civil conflict when more judicious paths are available

My latest:https://t.co/GCOKSKiCkK
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 25, 2022

Echoing Abbott on abortion & DeSantis, also on classroom teaching, Youngkin wants conservatives to pursue a vigilante system of enforcing the "right" morality: “We’re asking for folks to send us reports and observations…help us be aware of their child being denied their rights" https://t.co/ZnGWqc9PSa
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) January 25, 2022

Opinion | We’re already seeing what a mistake Virginia’s voters made https://t.co/vUzwGPYdbL
— Eugene Robinson (@Eugene_Robinson) January 25, 2022

and DC press played big role in this —in the pocket of Youngkin campaign from day one https://t.co/4eYMvFKunM
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 25, 2022