Usually in response to pointing out the stark disparity in how Gaza protesters have targeted and disrupted Democrats, including those like AOC and Nancy Pelosi who have openly supported a cease-fire and an end to Palestinian occupation, while neglecting to protest and disrupt any Republican events despite the fact that their stated policies are far more draconian and sympathetic to continuing Palestinian oppression (it's not like, despite the recent surge of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, the upcoming election is guaranteed for the Dems, so maybe this Republican scenario is something worth take seriously into account as a possibility worth opposing), is for the protesters to say that they focus their protests on the Dems because they are more easily persuadable to the cause, so these protests amount to exerting influence.

So here's a question: how persuasive is maggot-poisoning exactly?

It's worth asking whether or not at least some factions of protesters are even interested in influencing the Democratic party at all or rather have no interest in perserving democracy at all.


 

I'm just trying to enjoy a Friday afternoon with the Dana Carvey/David Spade podcast Superfly.  The two fellows seem to have made it a priority to avoid a lot of politics, or to try to at least balance any culture war humor in such a way as to preserve ambiguity.  Their Fly on the Wall podcast has been successful with this formula.  The SNL nostalgia interviews with typical right-wing lightning rods like Dennis Miller and Rob Schneider steered clear from any political grievance and stuck to retelling old war stories from 30 Rock.  Even expanding to a broader range of guest, for example, the recent show with Dennis Quaid, promoting the inherently political Reagan flick, managed to avoid any MAGA proselytization, and I have to imagine that this restriction must be enforced up top.  I'm not entirely sure of what Carvey or Spade's personal politics are, but they both seem eager to keep it cool and not alienate any potential audience.  (For contrast, when Quaid appeared on Joe Rogan after this, he went total MAGA.)

For the record, I don't keep up much with Danica Patrick.  If I did, I may have been more reluctant to see these guys platform her.  I just know that she's the ceiling-breaking star racecar driver who sometimes shows up in potato chip commercials.  Given the milieu of NASCAR, I'm not entirely surprised that she's on the conservative side, but that's the issue here.  I have no allergy to simply listening to conservatives.  Here's what I did not know.  I did not know that Patrick has a podcast where she's trying to out crazy Joe Rogan.  I did not know that she was just recently fired this summer from her official broadcasting gig, with Sky Sports, for pushing these crazy conspiracy theories on her podcast.  I assume that Carvey and Spade were aware of this which makes it look a lot like giving her support for these theories.  However, I'm still not sure, because both Carvey and Spade don't look particularly comfortable once the subject comes up.  They both look like they're trying very hard not to laugh in her face and pretend to thoughtfully consider her proposals.  It could very well be likely that they simply thought this would make for a compelling episode, and in some ways it was, but it was also mostly frustrating.

So what exactly are these theories?  A delectable selection of typical Rogan garbage - aliens, shapeshifting reptilians, MK-Ultra, Sumerian Woo and all of which is of course tightly politicized as a plot of the Democrat party.  What are the greatest hits?  Well, UFOs are fun, right?  That's harmless stuff.  OK, that's not what I'm talking about.  I like it when Patrick tries to flip it back on them with "Is MK-Ultra in Hollywood real?"  *long pause*  "Um, David, you want to take that one?" and then Spade gets coy "Well tell me first what MK-Ultra is?"  (I want to note that earlier in the episode, Carvey was talking about taking psychedelics at rock concerts in the '70s.)  Patrick's answer, "they brainwash you into doing certain things or behaving in a certain way, almost like you could be triggered with certain words or sounds and you have a handler to train you", to which Spade responds "Oh!"  And both Spade and Carvey, clear from facial expression, weighing how badly they might end up embarrassing her here.  Carvey offers the easiest way out, "Who are 'they'?"  "Deep state."  Spade starts shifting in his chair.  They then get talking about Illuminati and shapeshifters (including Justin Bieber?  Lord knows what Patrick must think of his new little 'rosemary's baby') and some kind of 6-foot-4 Joe Biden that she thinks exists.  Again, it's hard to tell exactly how much they're humoring her here.  A more stiff veer occurs when Patrick goes into the immigration conspiracy, where you can almost hear the brakes squelch.  Then a plug for Elon: "Would you guys go to Mars?"  (Answer: *shrug* what the hell), and then onto the more basic Moon Landing, where Patrick simply asks point blank, "Do you think we went to the Moon?"  (If you have to ask....)  "Why did Stanley Kubrick die mysteriously of a heart attack?"  Oh, the 70 year old sedentary chainsmoker?  Good question.  Patrick glares ominously like the pipe organ is in her face. 

So the big set piece is when Danica Patrick lays out the cosmology relayed to her second-hand on her podcast from someone calle 'Elizabeth April'.  This is another mythical amalgam of several conspiracist strands loosely woven.  You get the Sumerian Anunnaki, who have the privilege of being just about the oldest extant representations of deistic power in recorded human expression.  And then you mix these with the shapeshifting "reptilians", who do not appear to possess any such prestigious place in human anthropology, and it's very telling that these cheap conspiracy people can't even be bothered to look up an example of reptilian beings from the ancient world (like the Pali Nagas, for example) because, lest we forget, these people are both deeply uncreative, unimaginative and deafly ignorant of any actual cultural history.  But whatever.  Go on about the Anunnaki and these vague reptilians.  Well, apparently the "Galactic Federation".....intervenes, and declares Earth the home of human beings.  OK?  Is that some Scientology bullshit?  Fuck if I know.  I don't even know how you spell 'galactic federation' in cuneiform.  But these reptilians, goddamn it.  They went "inner earth" so they could stick around to "use their mind to control people", "and they essentially still control the planet".  *long pause*  Carvey asks the pertinent question: "Are they Democrats or Republicans?"  This is initially hilarious because it's a perfect way of showing how ridiculously such cosmological conspiracies have been politicized into contemporary discourse, and I do beleve that Carvey intended this to be a punchline.  But it wasn't.  Patrick didn't miss a beat, "Clearly Democrats."  Carvey tries to laugh but stalls when he realizes she's being serious, and Spade comes to the rescue by comparing it to the Crypts and the Bloods.  But even Spade starts to back off when it's clear that Patrick is not joking around.  "It makes you think."  Good save.

I don't know Ms. Patrick.  She doesn't seem irrational in affect.  Maybe she believes this stuff?  Maybe she's crazy?  Maybe she's grifting her crazy like&subscribers.  I do appreciate the sign-off: "We should all just say on the record that we would never kill ourselves."  This is 1:05:12.  Look at her face.  That's all I'm saying.

Since I'm a genuinely curious open-hearted individual, I wanted to get a better perspective perhaps on where Patrick stands in this social media environment.  Let's see.  She dumped Aaron Rodgers right before Covid.  Sure has been spending a lot of time with Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson on her show.  Actually called Carlson, "the reason she got into politics".  She does have a focus on "certain global companies that are running the world".  Didn't she work for Coca-Cola? 

Oh, this 'Elizabeth April' isn't an anthropologist or cosmologist at all but a psychic.  This might be a rabbit hole worth plunging.  Let's look at this in greater detail, from an episode from two months ago, I think?  We get more into these "reptilian" things, which maybe I assumed would be folded into the Eden serpent.

April insists that the Galactic Federation—a group of benevolent extraterrestrials—has declared that Earth belongs to humans, even though reptilians were here first.

These GFers need to step their fucking game up.

April predicts that humanity will go through an "uprising of the new earth frequency" between 2024 and 2028. Significant energetic shifts that will elevate the planet's vibrations will characterize this time. She contends that many reptiles are "transmuting into the light," or dying, as a result of these higher vibrations, thus changing into a more benign form/

I want to point out for clarity that Danica Patrick lives in Arizona - a fucking desert full of dying reptiles.

April predicts that in the next four years, these celebrity reptilians will be forced to reveal their true forms due to the increasing vibrations.  Those who refuse to show their reptilian nature will "transmute into the light." She even goes as far as to claim that Justin Bieber will accidentally shapeshift on stage in front of thousands, with the audience's memories being wiped afterward in a ‘Men in Black’ style operation.

I honestly didn't think anyone listened to Justin Bieber anymore.

April asserts that the government is aware of ongoing cosmic disclosure and that whistleblowers have confirmed the existence of the Galactic Federation. She believes that UFOs and aliens are real, pointing to videos from the 1940s as proof.  According to her, humanity is an experiment designed to end the universal war.

Bang up job, guys!  Again, for the record, I do believe that there will be, in my lifetime, some kind of massive attempt at a fraudulent alien disclosure/encounter which will be introduced as a surrogate for our religious compulsions.  This is a K-Mart blue-light aisle level discount effort right here.  The designated New God will be artificial intelligence.  It'll all be bullshit but these people are learning that it's pretty low bar.

In another mind-bending claim, April and Patrick discussed the idea that our reality is a simulation. April stated that humans did not evolve naturally but were engineered by various alien races. She cited quantum physics, specifically the double-slit experiment, as proof of this simulation theory.  According to April, when people die, they return to the "source" and reincarnate in a new simulation. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining a high vibrational frequency to manifest one's desires and positively influence the planet's energy.

Here's the issue.  People are starved for spiritual meaning and they're flocking to science fiction, which is opportune for the tech and media moguls, the new popes so to speak, who are racing to engage with their potential congregants.  The question is how long will it take before some stray folks, flocks, out there start to realize that what is inspirational and what is conspiratorial are opposite instincts?  Conspiracy is the most bootleg revelation imaginable.  There are no reptiles in the center of the earth, but there is a basilisk in the bottom of your brain.  I'll let you decide what that means to you, and I'm sorry I didn't post this in my Cult thread instead.

 

Some questions about the new would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh:

1) How easy is it to get on these golf courses anyway?  Good job for the sharp-eyed Secret Service, but was there no perimeter security?

2) Arrested in 2002 for "felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction".  That's interesting, but what kind of WMD are we talking about here?  Ricin?  Anthrax?  Keep in mind the time period here, which coincides with the UN search for WMD in Iraq.  According to local reporting at the time, the WMD was apparently a "fully automatic machine gun".  Which seems like an abuse of the WMD designation.  But OK, sounds serious, how much time did he serve (if any)?  Oddly enough, that detail remains unclear, as is the detail over why Routh decided to barricade himself with an automatic weapon in the first place (he had been pulled over without a valid driver's license).  The reporting also shows arrests since 1991 for everything from "hit-and-run offense, carrying a concealed weapon, possessing stolen goods" to "tax delinquencies and bad checks".  Again, no reports on any actual time served for any of this, but clearly the man had no legal right to a firearm, and apparently the serial number on his AK-47 used in his "attempt" had been rubbed off.

3) In 2022, Routh was reported to have traveled to the Ukraine to help "recruit" Afghan exiles into the cause of defending the country.  Lots of questions there.  How some "shed-builder" with multiple firearm offenses could be allowed to travel to an active war zone?  And how did he connect with these Afghan exiles?  If you were to travel to Ukraine right now, would you have the first clue of how to recruit Afghan exiles?  Would you know how to purchase illegal passports from corrupt Pakistani officials to traffick Afghanis into the Ukraine?!?!?  (The Ukrainian government have denied working with Routh and dismissed him as having "delusional ideas".)

4) How easy is it to self-publish bat-shit screeds on Amazon?


I can see how easy it will be for Trump supporters to try to tie this guy as some kind of deep-state asset, given this ambiguity over his sketchy legal past and connection to recruiting foreign fighters.  This might somewhat be offset by the fact that Routh is a former Trump supporter, as well as a Tulsi Gabbard supporter, although I can see that crowd writing this off as LHO-level "false flagging".  It could very well be that this is just a crazy guy with that old-school John Brown need for chaos.  But there's definitely a number of things which need to be answered.
 

Rampop II wrote:

Looks like that 2002 felony conviction was for possessing explosives, detonation cord, and a blasting cap. 
But he did hold off being arrested for it for about three hours with that fully–automatic machine gun.

Still seems like a radical lowering-of-the-bar for what constitutes a "weapon of mass destruction".  But what I'm reading, they're saying it was the automatic machine gun.

But getting to my question over the consequences: "As part of a plea deal, Routh agreed to undergo a mental health evaluation and comply with any treatment recommendations.  The documents provided to the AP by the county clerk of court on Monday do not include the results of that evaluation."  Now, again, consider when this happened - December 2002.  There's already a lot of conspiratorial speculation that the reason for the leniency is due to some kind of "inside connections" and that maybe this 12-02 incident may have been a foiled "false flag" attempt at a domestic terror attack.  I think the more likely explanation for the leniency is the fact that this was a white redneck in North Carolina.  Does anyone think that, say, a Muslim man in a three hour stand-off with the police with a fully automatic rifle would have gotten off with a psych evaluation?

But stranger still, this guy gets busted again in 2010 with a "concealed weapon" and stolen goods.  Now, whatever his plea deal in 2002, there's next to no way that he was allowed to legally purchase a firearm after that.  Getting caught with an illegal gun should have immediately sent his ass to prison, even if he wasn't on crack (consider Hunter Biden's felony gun charges as an comparable example).  But instead, it's called a "misdemeanor" and "court records show judges sentenced Routh to either probation or a suspended sentence, allowing him to escape prison time."  That's fucking nuts.

That's not evidence of shady deep state "connections", as the conspiracists would claim.  It's just evidence of a justice system that favors good old blonde boys.  But it still remains a question why no one's radar got alerted when this guy is bouncing off to Ukraine to recruit foreign mercenaries.  I mean, he wasn't exactly clandestine about it, doing very public interviews with Newsweek, Semafor and the god damn NYTimes.  No one thought to punch up his name in a database for multiple firearm felonies?

....

But we have gotten some very credible evidence which distances Ryan Routh from any "deep state" allegations concerning his operations in the Ukraine.  Naturally, there are those who have been eager to cast him as a deep state asset for his role in recuiting Afghan fighters, which definitely sounds very CIA-ish, and they've framed the Ukrainian government's response that Routh was just some dude with "delusional ideas" as typical plausible deniability after the fact.  Not so, in fact.  The Ukraine's International Legion, the official consortium of foreign mercenaries fighting on Ukraine's behalf - and the group with which Routh had contacted and solicited his services to - had already distanced themselves from Routh back in June of this year, with "King Jack Strong", a leader of the group, expressly tweeting:

Warning about Ryan Routh: he is not, and never has been, associated with the International Legion or the Ukrainian Armed Forces at all. He is not, & never has been, a legion recruiter. He is misrepresenting himself and lying to many people...

He has no authority to act on behalf of Ukraine, and ignores laws about visas.

Routh is either human trafficking, scamming people, or attempting to break as many country’s laws as he can by trying to smuggle people into Ukraine to fight. This is unethical, unprofessional, and unacceptable. Worse, he is doing this by insisting he is helping Ukraine.

Other issues: Routh has posted soldiers phone numbers on websites without permission; given out recruiters phone numbers to people without permission; manipulates people to breaking laws. Avoid any contact with Routh, as he misrepresents what he can legally do.

I've told Routh many times since 2022 that he's not helping and what he's going is illegaly [sic]. He doesn't listen.

It's an interesting point that in all of the coverage, like the NPR article I posted yesterday, concerning Routh's recruiting work in Ukraine, there doesn't appear to be a lot of detail over how successful his efforts were.  It's starting to sound like he was over there cosplaying CIA rather than actually being CIA.  Not that this will deter those intent on advancing the conspiracy, but hopefully it can provide some clarity.

More details coming out about Ryan Routh's activities in the Ukraine, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, which is behind a paywall, so here's a good summary.  The assessment is pretty consistent: "predatory behaviour", "fraudster", "kind of a whack job", "bizarre and alarming".

One quoted source sums it up pretty well: "[H]e simply decided that he was going to come here and save the day himself, by doing his own thing."

So someone with a messiah/martyr complex who had constructed his personal life mission around the Ukraine had been roundly rejected for those efforts.  So he turned his purposeful sights (for lack of a better term) on Donald Trump instead.

Perhaps the most alarming detail: "The FBI said on Monday that it had been tipped off in 2019 that Mr Routh owned a firearm despite being a convicted felon.  However, the bureau closed the case when it was unable to verify the information, passing on the details to authorities in Hawaii..."  A nurse in Ukraine who was alarmed by Routh also "filed an online report with the FBI".  Raises questions!
 

I had planned to do a whole thing about some of the recent stuff coming out about JD Vance, Kevin Roberts, Leonard Leo and what is a pretty autocratic Catholic movement behind the agenda we've seen laid out in Project 2025.  I guess sometimes with the politics, I feel like I may be laying on some things pretty thick, and the whole Christian Nationalism is definitely becoming a standard.  But then, here comes John Oliver with his piece on Leo last night, and I realize I missed another opportunity to be slightly ahead of the curb on these things.

It's a bit late tonight to go into too much detail, but I'll leave some articles here for anyone interested, and it is very interesting for anyone concerned about this nexus of religion and conspiracy.  That latter term is not hyperbole, in fact, as these Catholic "integralists" also like to describe themselves as "postliberal", not in the partisan sense, but as in postliberalism, meaning that they no longer believe that liberal democracy is a viable option for American society.  Considering how the top priorities of this theocratic movement are unpopular, the plan is to circumvent and discredit democratic institutions altogether:

You’re going to need a very powerful executive branch, and you’re going to need a very powerful administrative state. Then the question is just going to be how you prepare a large pluralistic society to submit to a religion that they don’t all share. So the first thing you have to do is you have to think you know that liberalism will collapse.

While liberalism is collapsing of its own weight, you get the right reflective, deeply committed Catholic people into those bureaucracies, into the judiciary, into the executive. It’s like, history will hand you this opportunity. You have your small group. They’re training their own people. They’re ready to go.

So getting there requires a large state. It requires the intellectual discrediting and collapse of liberalism and having the right place and the right time for a new elite to take things in as integralist direction as possible as they can, hopefully with relatively little bloodshed.

(That last line is familiar with those who've been listening to Project 2025's Kevin Roberts.)

This aligns with Leonard Leo's agenda at the Federalist Society, to vet and anoint unelected judges who are ideologically compatable with his religious prerogatives.  It'll be a very interesting question what would happen under this Supreme Court if (and when) a case were to arise challenging the Constitution's "establishment clause" - the separation of church and state - which is the primary target for both Catholic integralists and Protestant 'New Apostolic' reformers, by, say, a legal challenge to the recent mandate of the Ten Commandments in Oklahoma public schools, for example.  Would this Leonard Leo-vetted court blink an eye at a radical reinterpretation of settled 1st Amendment law, much in same way as their rather radical interpretation of presidential criminal immunity?  Again, the plan is to not allow the American public a chance to have much of a say in the matter.  These religious interests represent a "new elite", a small minority, very quiet but very influential.

On the eve of JD Vance's important national debate showcase, it's important to understand his role and association with this agenda, and, if anything, he's very publicly doubling down on it, recently allying with another nutter in the Christian Nationalist basket:

Lance Wallnau is a scary dude. A self-styled charismatic Pentecostal “prophet,” social-media wizard, and political activist, he’s the principal popularizer of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a doctrine that conservative Christians are literally called by God to impose their views in all seven spheres of influence in society (education, religion, family, business, government and military, arts and entertainment, and media). He was also the first religious figure to rationalize Donald Trump’s nasty conduct and knuckle-dragger views through the analogy of the biblical King Cyrus, the pagan ruler led by God to facilitate the escape of the children of Israel from exile in Babylon. Wallnau has been very loyal to the 45th president, particularly during Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results; he was one of a host of “prophets” and “apostles” leading events in the run-up to January 6 that gave the Capitol riot its peculiarly religious and apocalyptic aura.

Wallnau’s distinctive contribution to Trump’s comeback effort has been the “Courage Tour,” a series of religio-political rallies–slash–revival events in presidential battleground states (e.g. Pennsylvania, where Vance will appear). Slate’s Molly Olmstead took in a recent Courage Tour stop in Michigan and found it to be a bacchanalia of faith healing, speaking in tongues, practical lessons in mobilizing voters and ensuring “election integrity” on enemy turf, and most of all, declarations of “spiritual warfare” against the (literal) demons trying to keep Trump from a triumphant return to power.

So this whole voodoo thing is just projection, right?  Scaring people about Haitians, I mean?
 

Rock wrote:

Waiting for JJ’s breakdown of the debate.

Not much of an impression honestly.

I could say more about the news media reaction itself, which, as has become custom, is far more focused on the superficial than substance but to a degree that borders absurdity.  I personally don't understand the whole "JG Vance came off like a normal human being".  I guess that's some kind of bar.  Although I found him more like the kind of smooth-talking advertising executive type who gets to fire emplyees because he can fake empathy well enough.  "Don't listen to what I'm saying, just feel the smooth lilt in my voice and bathe in these concerned blue eyes and let's pretend - together - that I'm capable of giving a shit about your future."  The kind of guy who'll try to call your wife before you get home with the news with the same false empathy, "I think we should get together tonight to discuss what's truly best for you and the safety net you deserve."

Walz looked a bit lost.  A bit over his head.  Maybe he actually does have a problem with this exaggeration habit.  At best, maybe that whole Tiananmen thing, being such an earthquake of history, was still so palpable in the air and atmosphere that it felt like it was still going on some 10 weeks later.  But still, it's a little goofy.

And I'll still take a goofball football coach over a racist lying scumbag, and the news media's insistence on trying to draw an equivalence between Walz's memory hiccup to Vance's cold-blooded slander about Haitians - still calling them "illegals" when they factually are not - is beyond disingenuous no matter how sim-pathetically his delivery.  Or that bullshit about how Biden-Harris have lost "hundreds of thousands" of immigrant children, and vaguely insinuating that the administration is responsible for using them for sex and drug trafficking.  Or blaming immigrants for higher rents, rather than documented landlord price-fixing.  The media's inability (ie, unwillingness) to discern the significance of one exaggeration from another incendiary falsehood is one reason for the erosion in their confidence.  But maybe voters themselves should have the faculty to recognize that one side, in particular, has been far more insistent on not having live fact-checks at these debates, and clearly Vance was deeply offended at the attempt this time.  Maybe such fidelity to integrity ought to matter?

Instead of any substantial discussion of the debate, most TV news outlets simply chose to rely on flash polls and ranking the debate as if it were a college basketball game.  I'm sure that more than what should be comfortably acceptable of the American audience was satisfied by this approach.

Oh I see, his story keeps changing. Like the big fish I caught.
Hmm:

Ahead of their wedding, Gwen Walz told the Nebraska-based Star-Herald newspaper that they planned to get married on the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary because “he wanted to have a date he’ll always remember.”

Ewwkeyy, that's gross...

Rampop II wrote:

The Tiananmen Square pro–democracy demonstrations went on for a couple of months before the tanks finally rolled through on June 4th; is that what he was talking about?

He arrived in Hong Kong, for a teaching sojourn, in August 1989, two months after the protests had been effectively suppressed, but he's claimed on a number of occasions that he was "there" during the protests.  As I said, at best, what he means is that the protests continued to be "in the air" at the time, a relevant subject that remained highly significant during his stay.  But I suspect that he was eager to glom onto a highly significant historical event and, over the years, has enhanced his proximity to the event.

Is it as bad as JD Vance lying abut growing up in Appalachia Kentucky, when he in fact grew up in suburban Cincinnati?  Probably not, although I think it's a similar form of self-mythologizing.  My larger point is that neither "enhancement" is as gross as Vance's outright lies about Haitians' eating cats, murdering children, raising everyone's rents and spreading HIV.  And these things shouldn't be confused by the news media.

Jinnistan wrote:

here comes John Oliver with his piece on Leo last night

Here this is if anyone is interested, btw, since HBO takes about four days to finally post these clips.