Remember Juan Thompson, the guy who got shit-canned from The Intercept for making up stories? He was arrested today for calling in at least some of the recent threats to Jewish Community Centers and the ADL. It appears his motive was to frame his ex-girlfriend:
According to the FBI, 31-year-old Juan Thompson has been charged with cyberstalking.
Thompson was arrested in St. Louis this morning after allegedly making at least eight threats against Jewish Community Centers.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “We have charged Juan Thompson with allegedly stalking a former romantic interest by, among other things, making bomb threats in her name to Jewish Community Centers and to the Anti-Defamation League. Threats of violence targeting people and places based on religion or race – whatever the motivation – are unacceptable, un-American, and criminal. We are committed to pursuing and prosecuting those who foment fear and hate through such criminal threats.”
There have been 90 incidents this year at 73 locations in 30 states and one Canadian province, the JCC Association said.
Trumpsters will likely pounce on this story as evidence that all the anti-Semitic threats were a lefty false-flag operation designed to discredit the actual Nazis who support Trump. However, it looks like Thompson is a garden-variety misogynist and stalker who was only responsible for a fraction of the threats. Truly bizarre.
Pete Mack
The Intercept isn’t a lefty site as far as I know.
Yarrow
I saw something suggesting he was a copycat and the person who called in the first threats is still out there.
Steve in the ATL
@Pete Mack:
I came to post this exact sentiment!
Spanky
Sooooo, he’s stupid then.
schrodingers_cat
GG and his crew are in no small part responsible for the rise of T. GG was instrumental in getting Snowden to Russia, for starters.
They are working towards the same goal.
Jinchi
“making bomb threats in her name” ?????
Iowa Old Lady
Isn’t the Intercept Glenn Beck’s site?
btom89
Hi, I don’t know if you remember, but I was the one who wrote the book “Bill Gets a Balloon” with the watercolor series that covered the meme of Bill Clinton being obsessed with a balloon at the DNC last summer after Hillary gets the presidential nomination? I wanted to thank everyone for their help and I didn’t know if anyone was going to do a writer’s post on Balloon Juice.
I wanted to include the latest children’s book I did about a polar bear named Nora (born at an Ohio zoo, moved to an Oregon zoo) including a series of watercolors of her and her life so far, and get Balloon Juice reader’s opinions if possible. I’m including a dropbox link to a PDF of the book for anyone to read if they wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jqmb9me0p74x02l/Adventures%20of%20Nora%20the%20Polar%20Bear.pdf?dl=0
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: Nah, that’s The Blaze. Greenwald is the editor of The Intercept, which is underwritten by Pierre Omidyar.
randy khan
By the way, Preet Bharara is a holdover U.S. Attorney from Obama. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that his office is the first one to make a case on these threats.
(One plus from Trump not being that interested in appointing people to fill jobs is that the U.S. Attorney slots will continue to be filled by Obama appointees or career people, rather than the kinds of people he would appoint.)
Humboldtblue
@btom89: I have a nearly brand new (14 months, but that’s still, like, new-ish) grand niece named Nora so tat book may be of interest but the dropbox link leads to a sign in page. Any other way to view the pdf?
schrodingers_cat
@Iowa Old Lady: Glenn Greenwald.
Betty Cracker
@Spanky: His career in fabulism seems to indicate he’s dumb, nuts or both. “Covering your tracks” seems to be an alien concept to this dude.
debit
@Jinchi: This bomb threat is dedicated to the one I love.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
GG has so much to answer for, he should be proud of his accomplishment, he helped defeat Hillary and now this fine young man he hired, doing him proud.
MJS
@Pete Mack: It’s not Fox, Breitbart or the Daily Caller, so by wingnut definition, it is a lefty site. Also, if I’m not mistaken, Glenn Greenwald was in a smarter life critical of the Bush II administration, thereby forever pegging his projects as “lefty”.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t get this. He’s a guy calling in bomb threats in somebody else’s name? How did he think this was going to work? The more so wince he was claiming to be a woman. How fucking dumb is this guy?
btom89
@Humboldtblue I’m sorry—I don’t know if you have to have a dropbox account or not. Can someone else tell me if they’re having the same problem?
I’ll try to find another forum that people can get it from—when I did it with “Bill Gets a Balloon”, other people didn’t seem to have a problem getting it open on their browser through Dropbox.
hovercraft
@MJS:
He’s a libertarian, who want’s the democratic party to be pure and perfect. The current iteration of republicanism is broken, so there’s no point in critiquing it, the democrats are not yet quite beyond redemption so his mission in life is now to constantly harangue them for their own good.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: I judge a man by his actions not his intentions.
hovercraft
@btom89:
I had no problem viewing the PDF, cute polar bear.
lollipopguild
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): “Hello Police Dept? Yes I would like to call in a bomb threat in my ex-girlfriends name. Her name? Patty. Patty Wack.”
different-church-lady
Uh, people? Voice changing tech is all the thing now, and dirt cheap.
Spanky
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
To (apocryphally) quote Einstein, the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
Totally agree, I was giving GG’s justification for being so full of shit. I lump GG in with Snowden and Assange, smug assholes who have done more harm to the world than they are apparently able to grasp. They are smug evil dudebros, with delusions of grandeur, which perhaps explains their attraction to Twitler, though they try to hide it, their admiration shines through.
Spanky
@different-church-lady:
You call puberty cheap!?!
Geeno
Maybe his girlfriend’s name is Isis.
I’ve never heard of anyone calling in a bomb threat and giving their own name.
It’s usually for a cause or organization
Brachiator
Hate crimes are a variation of “garden variety misogyny?
@hovercraft:
Why would a libertarian care about either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?
Everything about this butt wipe seems to be crazy, hateful or stupid.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: Please add the senator from Vt to your list.
schrodingers_cat
@Geeno: There is more to this than meets the eye. I doubt we know all the details yet.
btom89
Okay, one other commenter had no problem viewing the PDF—I don’t know if you have to already have a dropbox account, or not. Maybe it’s a browser issue that interferes with Dropbox letting you open it in your browser? Let me know if you need me to find another place for you to access my children’s book.
XTPD
@MJS: Its writers are generally at least nominally leftist (or at least, were identifiably leftist before the campaign of
Skjaldmær,…although Lee Fang is in the proto-Michael Tracey mold and Zaid Jilani is a PURITY BOI fuckturd. Liliana Segura, Sam Biddle, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are all pretty clearly leftist, and pretty much the only salvageable parts of the site.SatanicPanic
Every now and then the left gets a crank on its side, there’s no use denying it. But at least we’re smart enough to not elect them president.
Aleta
@btom89: Beautiful pictures. I remember Nora! Thank you for this.
Mary G
I don’t think this loon desecrated two cemeteries all by himself so there’s plenty of anti-Semitism still around.
different-church-lady
@Spanky: puberty isn’t just cheap — it’s free to almost everyone.
patroclus
The Intercept is where the Trump-fluffing Dear Leader Greenwald hangs out. We just conducted multiple drone attacks in Yemen – is GG going berserk about it? Are there multiple paragraphs, multiple updates and searing irrefutable criticism emanating out of Greenwald’s mouth? The world wonders…
Major Major Major Major
Greenwald started off as a bog standard Cato Institute libertarian criticizing the Bush surveillance state. He got a big lefty following, then when obama was inaugurated he started criticizing the obama surveillance state. His ‘critiques’, such as they were, had gotten inaccurate, lazy, and hyperbolic. He took lefty criticism of him as lefty attacks on him and it fed into his egotistical self image as the last pure warrior for all that is righteous and good. By the time he met Snowden he was an easy pick-up for Russian interests. Somewhere between then and now he was fully turned, and now his flip-flops to support the pro-Putin line are as blatant as Wikileaks’.
Through this all, he’s retained lefty cred with a non-negligible segment of lefties.
Kenneth Kohl
@Jinchi: I have made charitable donations “in my father’s name”, but …
Major Major Major Major
My awesome comment went into the bitbucket. I’m not rewriting it.
Aleta
Another guy with a compulsion to harm a particular woman, and who then goes on to harm a lot more people.
Major Major Major Major
@XTPD: Lee Fang is a godsdamned idiot and does nothing but stir internecine shit. I really wanted to hit him the last time I saw him, but didn’t.
SatanicPanic
@Mary G: This too. Saying “aha he’s a leftist” is only going to work until a right-winger is caught doing this. wait, who am I kidding? They’ll say that guy was a left-winger too.
? Martin
Given that Trump has already insinuated as much…
chris
@btom89: Cool bear! No problem to view but there is a pop-up that asks if you want to sign in. Click No thanks…
XTPD
@Major Major Major Major: We actually shat on him quite a lot at LGM before Michael Tracey took his spot in the alt-left pantheon. And Jilani is probably even dumber.
hovercraft
I’m sure this random crazy person is just acting up for no reason, no one could have incited him or anything.
‘You Live In Trump Country Now!’: Man Accused Of Chasing Men In Hate Crime
A North Carolina man is accused of felony aggravated battery and a hate crime after he allegedly ran down two men in Key West, Florida, pelting them with homophobic slurs and allegedly telling “you live in Trump country now,” several outlets reported Friday.
Police said at around 1 a.m. on February 23, Brandon Ray Davis came upon two men, Kevin Seymour and Kevin Price, riding their bikes, according to WNCT. Davis reportedly approached them on a rented motor scooter and was swerving. When the men pointed out that Davis was swerving and almost hit a car, he allegedly became enraged.
Police say Davis allegedly chased after the men on his scooter, yelling slurs and threats like “You guys are a couple of fags,” “I bet you faggots voted for that bitch Hillary” and “You live in Trump country now,” according to the Miami Herald. He eventually caught up to them, allegedly charging and hitting Seymour’s bike with his scooter, police told the paper.
When Seymour threatened to call police on him, Davis, who was drunk, according to the Herald, allegedly told him, “If you do that, I’ll cut you up.”
karen marie
@btom89: Get a blog or something.
I thought we were all smarter than this – downloading unknown, unverified docs at the request of unknown people on the internet.
gex
@Pete Mack: That isn’t going to really matter to the base when their political leaders assert that it is.
Timurid
@different-church-lady: Cool kids terrorize with autotune!
germy
Geeno
@Major Major Major Major: We’ll take your word
gex
@Brachiator:
After GamerGate and the FBIs indifference to some pretty extreme stuff, it might be.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. Episode 1 of “Who Wants To Rat [email protected]@k America.
FlyingToaster
@karen marie: Lighten up, Francis. You’ve noticed the “writers” column on the weekends?
If you don’t trust a site, you don’t have to click on it. Since I remembered the author, I did (I have a dropbox account and it showed me as logged in). I also do this with GoogleDocs, if I recognize the author. And these particular mangoes aren’t rotten.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Persistently stalking an ex after a breakup, threatening to circulate her nude photos online, attempting to frame her for serious crimes (including making terrorist threats and possessing child pornography) — yeah, I suspect the dude is a misogynist shithead. YMMV.
? Martin
A reminder that everyone else does business the same way Trump does.
The public tends to view such deals as signed and approved, but they’re just proposals that they hope Trump will latch onto and then feel pressured to make good on lest it reflect poorly on him. In other words, Trumps behavior is causing everyone else to try and roll him (and therefore us). Given that Trump believes reality is a liberal plot, probably safe to say that every business interaction that Trump talks about is complete bullshit and will never actually happen.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@btom89:
I do not have a Dropbox account, and I got the log-in screen. At the bottom in small print was the message “Continue to view.” When I clicked that I got a message saying that PDFs are not available to preview and I could download the document. I did not do that.
KS in MA
@btom89: OMG, your artwork is gorgeous!!!
? Martin
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Well, he’s a criminal, so…
WereBear
@Major Major Major Major: There were a number of folks like that during the W Administration, and we all banded together with mutual aghastness.
Come the Obama Administration, and we found out that some of the Anti-W people are just Anti-people.
msdc
@Iowa Old Lady:
Who can tell the difference anymore?
No, that’s not fair. Beck is capable of expressing remorse.
chris
@? Martin: Caterpillar is beautiful great yuge company!
Please to be keeping your preznit out of my business news.
Aleta
@btom89: Using Chrome, which is set to ask me before downloading, your art book comes up in drop box, even though I’m not signed in. (I didn’t download it via dropbox; if I did, I would do it through my own save menus.)
hovercraft
So Twitler’s return to twitter has him ending the week down from the rapturous praise he was given after a successfully read a telepromter. Between the Confederate Gnome’s troubles and discussions about his sanity, it was not a great week for him, but frighteningly it was probably his best week so far.
Trump wants to talk about who’s ‘lost their grip on reality’
03/03/17 10:48 AM
By Steve Benen
……………Not to put too fine a point on this, but if there’s anyone on the planet who should avoid complaining about others losing their grip on reality, it’s Donald J. Trump. By all appearances, the man routinely finds himself living in an alternate reality, filled with strange ideas and conspiracies that only the president can see…………..
As the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noted today, “No president, or for that matter major U.S. political figure of any kind, has ever lied as freely and frequently as Donald Trump…. It’s important not to indulge in an easy cynicism, to say that politicians have always lied and always will. What we’re getting from Mr. Trump is simply on a different plane from anything we’ve seen before.”
This, in turn, has led to a fair amount of speculation about the president’s mental health. The New York Times’ David Brooks recently said Trump’s “mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued.” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank added, “My worry is the president of the United States is barking mad.”
New York’s Andrew Sullivan put it this way:
[T]here is the obvious question of the president’s mental and psychological health. I know we’re not supposed to bring this up – but it is staring us brutally in the face. I keep asking myself this simple question: If you came across someone in your everyday life who repeatedly said fantastically and demonstrably untrue things, what would you think of him? If you showed up at a neighbor’s, say, and your host showed you his newly painted living room, which was a deep blue, and then insisted repeatedly – manically – that it was a lovely shade of scarlet, what would your reaction be? If he then dragged out a member of his family and insisted she repeat this obvious untruth in front of you, how would you respond? If the next time you dropped by, he was still raving about his gorgeous new red walls, what would you think?
Here’s what I’d think: This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional. If he kept this up, at some point you’d excuse yourself and edge slowly out of the room and the house and never return. You’d warn your other neighbors. You’d keep your distance. If you saw him, you’d be polite but keep your distance.
We can certainly have a discussion about which members of the political world have “lost their grip on reality,” but Trump may not like where the conversation ends up.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Yep. Kind of like all of the isolationists who were shocked to discover that Obama and Obama’s supporters were not also isolationists because they also hated the Iraq War.
Major Major Major Major
@WereBear: yeah but most of them didn’t both retain a lefty following and end up in Putinland.
Spanky
@hovercraft:
Well, uhh, actually …. about those conspiracies ….
quakerinabasement
A liberal, black, Muslim, journalist.Trumpster jackpot!
Trentrunner
So: The Intercept is a haven for toxic masculinity.
hoocodanode?
btom89
@karen marie: I can understand your apprehension at just opening random links on this site–I was really apprehensive about posting the link the first time I did it last summer (for Bill Gets a Balloon) but I really cherish coming here and being part of this community even if as a lurker and I worked up the courage to post it because I wanted their feedback. It just seemed faster to give everyone the book in PDF form as opposed to random pictures on a blog, not to mention a blog is time consuming to create and maintain.
Thank you everyone for your comments. I just wanted to know if the story read smoothly for you as you followed the illustrations. I didn’t want anyone to get hung up on any abrupt jumps in the story or if people thought the story complemented the pictures well. Based on reader comments, I’d suggest if you want to read the PDF, open it in a browser on a computer (if you’re worried about security, I’d suggest a public computer, like at a library). I don’t know if dropbox works more smoothly on browsers as opposed to tablets. I’d hope a PDF would open more or less easily on a tablet since it’s in an universal format.
hovercraft
@quakerinabasement:
So now we have this to deal with too? It’s bad enough we are rampaging through the streets of Chicago, rendering that city unlivable, now we’re threatening the Jews? Sigh.
MattF
I guess the guy saw the recent popularity of phoning in bomb threats to JCCs as an opportunity. I’m only guessing here– there’s a level of stupidity that passeth understanding.
El Caganer
Hello? Do I have the JCC? Oh, great….look, I’d like to donate a bomb threat in my ex’s name, and was wondering if you’d mind sending me a confirmation letter for tax purposes. Thanks!
Origuy
@btom89: I didn’t have problems after clicking the “no thanks” link. Chrome downloads it in a window. I don’t have kids, but I liked the fact that the text was not all simple sentences and short words. It gives opportunities for the reader and child to stretch their language. The pictures are beautiful.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Sounds like you’re right from the reports I’ve read. So far, Thompson is charged with making fewer than 10 of the more than 90 threats. Plus, it’s unlikely this one guy was toppling headstones in various cities.
Aleta
@hovercraft: I wish Sullivan had been more accurate in his comparison to a hypothetical mentally ill person. The neighbor he pictures is manic, delusional and a family member feels pressure to agree with him. Not a violent, abusive, bigoted thief like Trump. Sullivan claims we would ‘edge slowly out of the room and the house and never return. You’d warn your other neighbors. You’d keep your distance.’ But some of us would consider checking in with the family members, to see if they needed help, see if he was getting help. Before deciding to isolate the man and his family. We’d be careful. And if he was violent, definitely keep our distance and warn others, but Sullivan doesn’t describe that.
J R in WV
@btom89:
For very young children, this will be great, I think. Your art is wonderful.
Keep up the good work!!
Thanks for dropping the link to your newest book off for us here at Balloon-Juice.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I was not questioning your characterization of the guy as a “misogynist shithead.” The framing and other stuff seems out of left field.
J R in WV
@Humboldtblue:
At the bottom of the sign in page there is a link for “no thanks, take me to view the pages.”
J R in WV
@karen marie:
I’ve never seen you post here before, but the author has, does good work, and I trust him pretty well. As opposed to first time posters (you) who seem paranoid. My local platforms are secure and would be difficult to hack into with a pdf, which is a pretty professional filetype.
Aleta
@MattF: @El Caganer: “Hmm, those first 250 times I threatened her just didn’t satisfy me. I’m running out of ideas here … hmm… oh, here’s an idea! Genius!”
gvg
@Brachiator: If you read the actual article, she is describing the actual reporting of what the police said. That is how he made threats in his ex’s name…he posted to his friends that SHE had made threats and pocessed child pornography. He wasn’t JUST calling in bomb threats. He was faking to his readers that she threatened him. I will admit it was a confusing read though. the guy needs mental therapy of some sort.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
A quick google shows that pdfs can and have been popular vectors for attack tools, but we have seen this writer’s art and children’s books before. It’s the internet, every click is a risk. I run a fairly secure OS which so far has not been a popular target for malicious software, so far.
gvg
@Aleta: Most people have never encountered someone with serious “issues” and don’t actually know what to expect or how to react. Sullivan might have described a more experienced person’s reaction if he knew what he was talking about but it’s likely he hasn’t encountered anything like that strange neighbor not Trump before.
Many years ago when I was young I had for a short time a boss that was a compulsive liar. I was very freaked out by him and careful not to be alone with him and started to hunt for a new job. He was so strange and alien to me. I could not understand how he could not realize that everyone around noticed that his stories from 1 hour to the next contradicted the last story. I just wanted to get away. A more experienced confident employee called the owner and reported the situation (including that customers were noticing and leaving). He got fired. At that time I did not wonder enough why the wife stayed or how he was around his young children. I am not sure where we could have called about it, but probably there was something we might have done if anyone would have listened then….We just wanted him away from us.
J R in WV
@btom89:
It opened in my firefox browser as smoothly as banana creme pie. And just as tasty (if you like that kind of pie)!
Great art and a fun story for little kids.
Do you do art work on commission? Like, if I sent you a bunch of photos could you generate a painting of people with their dogs for example?
Miss Bianca
@Jinchi: kind of like those Hitler valentines. “When you care enough to send the very worst.”
catclub
@btom89:
My experience is that there is a sign-in page but you can ‘skip to viewing pdf’
OTOH, my experience of Dropbox is pretty limited.
Humboldtblue
@btom89:
I just tried it again and it opened right up to the story. Now how do I purchase a copy? The artwork is wonderful.
J R in WV
@gvg:
News stories about people who are crazy are really difficult to write clearly, because the subject topic is not rational.
So your traditional who, what, where, when, why, and how kind of news writing falls down short of being able to accurately describe the actions of the irrational person. They’re doing crazy stuff, and any accurate description of the things they do will almost inevitably sound a little, well crazy.
glory b
@Mary G: I was listening to an ON Point podcast about the anti-semitic stuff going on yesterday, the panel was the editor of the newspaper The Forward, and the heads of the ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center.
They said there are hundreds of reported incidents in the last two months, I’d guess he was a copycat.
Tenar Arha
@Mary G: It’s up to three cemeteries now. One in NY was desecrated.
btom89
@J R in WV: Sure, I can do that. My email address is same as my screen name, but at gmail dot com. I didn’t know if you clicked on my screenname, as opposed to replying, it’d show my linked email address for my commenter stats?
But contact me at [email protected] and I’m glad to give it a try. Just an heads up—I’m a bit concerned that my watercolors are a bit flat in real life, and when I convert it to a digital format, I play with the color curve and filters to make the colors pop more. The watercolors in the book are digitally enhanced that way. So I can do a real-life watercolor painting but the digital copy will be more vivid.
btom89
@catclub: I was going to convert it to a kindle book and then upload it to the Amazon kindle store. You can save the PDF for yourself as a free copy, and if you want, I can come back and post a free kindle book copy for anyone who would want one. It seems like a good way to give back to the community who have been giving me so much all the time I’ve been coming here. Thank you everyone for your kind comments.
martian
@btom89: There’s going to be a writers’ post on Sunday, I think. You should drop in! Maybe you could even get a front page mention and link, too. At the risk of being pushy, I suggest offering up an illustration to front page.
I’d love to chat with you about your self publishing. Haven’t checked your book yet, because I’m about to zip off, but will definitely look later.
btom89
@martian: Thanks. I’ll drop in on that post on Sunday. I can offer an illustration but I don’t know who to submit it to–Betty Cracker or which blogmaster for that specific post.
Ohio Mom
@SatanicPanic: I am remembering this insight for future use. I suspect it will come in quite useful.
StringOnAStick
@btom89: Very nice! I love your paintings. One of the things I love about water color is how individual everyone’s style is. I need to get my paints out again, and you’ve helped inspire me to start painting again, so thanks!
martian
@btom89: Here is TaMara’s last post scheduling the writing group, so, maybe reach out to her. I think Hilary (sp?) also does writing group posts.