controversies, Duggars, religion, sexism, wingnuts

Creepy men who are obsessed with getting some “young stuff”…

The featured photo is a screenshot of part of Patrick Weaver Ministries’ post.

There’s so much I could be writing about today. So much, in fact, that I’ve been sitting here for almost two hours, trying to decide which comments to make regarding the vast array of potential hot topics. Ukraine has been invaded by Russia, and who knows what that is going to lead to on a worldwide scale. Whatever happens will probably affect my husband’s work.

Then there’s the arrest of the guy who killed my former colleague, Matt. I could write more about that, but I don’t know how interesting that is to people other than me.

Then there’s the evergreen issue of COVID-19, but who isn’t sick of hearing and reading about that? I know it’s a tired subject for me.

And then there are the Duggars… another wedding is on the horizon, and apparently, another baby is allegedly on the way. This time, it’s John David and Abbie who are reportedly expecting. And next month, Jeremiah Duggar is going to marry Hannah Wissmann– just ahead of Josh Duggar’s sentencing. Yeah, I could write about that, but I’m not going to… because this morning, I saw something that really creeped me out.

Someone in the Duggar Family News group shared this post by Patrick Weaver Ministries. It’s calling out a youth pastor/filmmaker named Joshua_Wesely, who posted a picture of his girlfriend, Isabelle, on her 18th birthday, back on November 17, 2020. That means she was born the day after Bill and I married, on November 16, 2002. Have a look…

Eeeww…

Perez Hilton has an article about this couple, in which it is revealed that apparently, the two started their relationship when she was 14 and he was 20. He’s now 24 and she’s 18, which sounds slightly less icky… until you realize that he’s been working on her since she was in puberty! Mr. Wesely and his wife have made their Instagrams private, but the front page does reveal that he and the young lady are now married, and have been so since August of 2021. He also has a YouTube channel, at which I am currently taking a look. Interestingly enough, it turns out that he is German, and his content on YouTube is all in German. Also, in Germany, the age of consent is 14. I suppose I’m not surprised, given the attitudes about sex here. Still, it does seem kinda gross. ETA: Yikes! He is from Mainz, which is 20 minutes away.

It’s not their age difference. It’s the fact that he’s been chasing her since she was fourteen… and he’s a “youth pastor”.
So, I guess what Mr. Wesely did was technically legal in Germany… but yucky to Americans.

I remember what I was like when I was 14. I was in no way ready for sex, or a committed relationship. I know there are exceptions. Loretta Lynn married her husband, Doo (Oliver Lynn), when she was somewhere between 13 and 16 years old, and he was nineteen. They had six children, and were together for fifty years, until he died at age 69 in 1996. However, Loretta Lynn’s husband was a violent alcoholic who beat and cheated on her. If it hadn’t been for Loretta Lynn’s extraordinary talents as a musician, who knows what would have happened to her?

Hell, I was barely ready for sex when I was 30, which was when I finally started having it, two weeks after my wedding day. This isn’t to say that my situation is the norm. It isn’t. I just think that kids shouldn’t be engaging in serious and sexual relationships. Isabelle is not a child now, but she was for several years before she and Joshua got married. I know that if I had a fourteen year old daughter, I would not look too fondly on some 20 year old guy wanting to date her. That sounds like a dangerous situation to me. There’s a reason why so many fundies like to marry young– especially when the female half is young. It makes them a lot easier to “mold”. Fourteen year olds tend to be more submissive and less worldly.

It looks like maybe Mr. Wesely is on the far right. Below is a trailer from a 2021 film he produced called 2025- The World Enslaved By a Virus. The film envisions a world in which communism and atheism have taken over, and meetings, Christianity, and travel are forbidden. Wesely starred in the film, which he also wrote. His brother, Simon, co-produced and co-directed it.

I notice the channel where this is posted is called “Wesely Bro’s”… Apostrophe abuse, too?

This reminds me of something I saw back in the early 00s, when Bill and I were newly married. At that time, a lot of men thought the Olsen twins were super hot. I once actually saw a countdown clock in a bar that showed how much longer it would be before Mary Kate and Ashley turned 18. I know there were a number of Internet sites dedicated to their 18th birthday, which was June 13, 2004. Granted, the Olsen twins are celebrities. They are fabulously wealthy, and apparently, nothing creepy happened to them offline– that I know of, anyway. But still, there were basement dwelling creeps who were actually watching a clock to see how much longer it would be before they were “fair game” for being pursued by horny older men.

Ugh… This is just gross.

I know a lot of people think church is the best place to find a mate. Sadly, the reality is, church is a place where a lot of people wind up victimized, because they are conditioned to trust church leaders due to their role in a religious organization. I think this is especially true in strict, culty belief systems that promote conspiracy theories. In fact, as I have referenced before on my blog, there are even Web sites that encourage “Christian” men to marry young women, so they can be properly “groomed” for submission. The link I provided is a blog dedicated to “Biblical Gender Roles”. I have written about that site before, and judging by my stats, a lot of people are interested in it, as well as “domestic discipline”.

Churches are not the only way older men wind up with younger women. Having watched many episodes of To Catch a Predator, I know that these types of guys come from all walks of life. It doesn’t take much for them to take the bait if an underage woman signifies her consent. A few weeks ago, I was watching a YouTube clip that involved a 48 year old married physician from San Francisco, who came over to a decoy’s location, hoping to score. The physician ultimately committed suicide some years later. Surprisingly enough, he was still married to his physician wife when he died.

This is unbelievable. Obviously, he didn’t care about his career at all…

Bill and I talked about this subject this morning. We are, after all, about eight years apart in age. I had just turned 18 when he married his ex wife. However, Bill and I are a hell of a lot more compatible than he and Ex were. When we married, I was 30, and he was 38. Age matters less when you’re older.

I would say there is a big difference between 18 and 24; however, according to recent scientific research, neither Joshua’s nor his wife’s brains are even fully developed yet. That might explain the bizarre movies he puts out, promoting right wing conspiracies. According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, human brains aren’t considered fully developed until age 25. Bill did say, by the way, that he would have had a serious problem with a 20 year old man pursuing one of his daughters when they were that young. Not that Ex would have given him a chance to intervene.

And let’s not forget the case of Jack Schaap, a former “minister” at Hyles-Anderson College, a Christian school in Hammond, Indiana. He famously delivered a horrifying sermon in which he “polished” a rod, masturbation like, as he spoke about how God finds mates for the faithful. Mr. Schaap later went to federal prison for taking a sixteen year old girl he was “counseling” across state lines for sex. He was sentenced to twelve years in 2013, and is scheduled for release next February.

Part of Mr. Schaap’s defense was that the girl he abused was “aggressive” and had prior “extensive sexual experience”. He also alleged that she was a drug user. Apparently, in his feeble mind, that made molesting her okay. The girl was also reportedly a student at the private school run by Schaap’s former church, the 15,000 strong First Baptist Church of Hammond, since kindergarten. Based on Schaap’s comments, in spite of her religious schooling, she was “experienced”. I’d like to know who gave her that experience. Obviously, the staff at that church weren’t to be trusted. Or, at least that’s what I would think if I were that girl’s mother.

OMG… I would have died watching this.

I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. I’m sure there’s a scientific reason why so many of them are looking for “young stuff”.

“You should be gettin’ that young stuff!” Eew.

Anyway… I don’t know if Isabelle is happy. She’s certainly young and pretty, and I can assume she married Joshua consensually. And I understand that German laws are different than US laws are, as are the mores surrounding sex. I do think it’s too bad she isn’t still single, though, and enjoying her youth… maybe doing something for herself, instead of jumping into marriage with a man who appears to be drinking some pretty strong right wing Kool-Aid in the name of “Christianity”. But, it’s her life. Still… eeew. Count me among those who disapprove.

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book reviews, religion

Double repost: Two reviews of books written by wing nut James Dobson…

I originally reposted these two book reviews on books by James Dobson on May 4, 2014. They were both written for Epinions.com in 2006 and 2007 respectively. I am reposting them again, as/is. Bear in mind that these reviews were written for a review site, rather than a personal blog. I probably would have been much snarkier on my own space. I also didn’t have the gift of wisdom that comes from years of living. I used to get a kick out of buying books from Fort Belvoir’s thrift shop… stuff I would never buy on my own!

Note from 2014

I’m inspired by another blogger to repost these book reviews I wrote of books written by James Dobson.  I actually had some fun reading and reviewing these books several years ago and don’t want to lose them to the Internets… so here they are. 

Written in the 1980s, this book promotes values of the 1950s…

And I’m not sure how I feel about that. Truth be told, I’ve never been much of a fan of Dr. James Dobson’s very conservative viewpoint when it comes to counseling married couples and children. Nevertheless, I was curious when I spotted his 1983 book Love Must Be Tough: New Hope For Families In Crisis at Fort Belvoir’s Thrift Shop. My husband Bill and I are not in a crisis, but I am his second wife. The reason I’m his second wife is because he and his first wife got a divorce. At this point, we’re nowhere near having marital troubles, but it’s not lost on me that second marriages fail more often than first marriages do. My husband sadly knows about that firsthand, since he was his first wife’s second husband. The book was priced at $1 and it’s still on the market today, over twenty years after it first appeared in bookstores. I figured I’d read Dr. Dobson’s sage words of advice for couples in trouble.

It doesn’t surprise me that I was taken aback from the very first pages of Love Must Be Tough. Dr. Dobson starts his book with an introduction. In the introduction, Dobson presents a scenario that would outrage most married people. A jerk of a man tells his wife that he’s been having an affair with another woman for the past eighteen months. He wants a divorce. He apologizes, telling his wife that he never meant to hurt her, but he’s in love with the other woman and wants to marry her. He asks his wife to “make it easy on him and the kids”. Then he says everyone will be better off when the whole thing is taken care of once and for all.

My immediate reaction to that scenario was disgust and offense on behalf of the wife. I read the scenario aloud to my husband and told him that if he ever approached me in such a way, I’d knock his block off. Then I gave him a hug, because I know my husband will never approach me that way because he loves me. He also respects me; likewise, I respect him. According to Dr. Dobson, mutual respect is very important in a marriage; in fact, it’s every bit as important as love is. Then Dobson explains why mutual respect is so important to maintaining a successful marriage. I agree with James Dobson on that point. No one can be happy as another person’s doormat. Likewise, it’s hard to love and appreciate someone you don’t respect.

Dobson goes on to outline disastrous scenarios in which a spouse doesn’t show respect… or on the other hand, scenarios in which a spouse who is not getting respect engages in nagging, pleading, or sniveling behavior in a desperate bid to save the relationship. I like the fact that Dobson didn’t aim his book just at women. In fact, I thought it was refreshing that even back in 1983, this psychologist recognized that women are not the only victims of disrespectful spouses. I also think Dobson made sense when he advised spouses who were feeling desperate and clingy to take a step back and give the other spouse a chance to breathe.

What I didn’t like as much was Dobson’s extremely conservative viewpoint concerning homosexuality and divorce. I knew from reading his newspaper column and his work with Focus on the Family that James Dobson is a very well known proponent of Biblical values. Love Must Be Tough is liberally sprinkled with Bible verses. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But then, toward the end of the book, Dobson rants about the evils of homosexual behavior. He includes a letter in his book from a woman whose marriage is on the rocks because her husband is gay. She writes in her letter to Dobson that homosexuals are very self-centered people. When they have sex, it’s only to please themselves. Dobson commiserates with the woman’s sentiments and takes the opportunity to bash homosexual behavior. Of course, he quotes the Bible… and then much to my amazement, he advises the woman NOT to divorce her husband. He insists that homosexuality can be cured and gays and lesbians can go on to enjoy fulfilling lives as heterosexuals if only they’d seek treatment.

I know that some people agree with Dr. Dobson and his stance on homosexuality. I’m not one of those people. I found his anti-gay sentiments offensive. I was especially offended by the graphic section he included (along with a warning disclaimer) describing homosexual behavior in a gay bath. I have no doubt that some of the more lurid sexual acts he describes do go on in some places in the world, but I doubt it’s the norm. Even if it is the norm, as long as it goes on between consenting adults and I don’t have to watch it, I don’t think it’s my business. A couple of times in Love Must Be Tough, Dobson goes on to insinuate that AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections are God’s way of punishing those who commit sins of a sexual nature. I can’t help but wonder how Dobson explains children who are born infected with HIV. Moreover, he describes homosexuals as if they are vermin. I caught an undertone of disgust as Dobson acknowledged that gay people are everywhere in society, working in hospitals, drilling teeth, and gasp– teaching children. I have to say that Dobson comes across as pretty ignorant at times.

Remember, though, this book was written in the 1980s. Dobson uses a few song lyrics from popular songs of the 1970s and early 80s that will no doubt remind readers that this book was written in the 1980s. You know the book is old when the author quotes the song “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield and claims that it’s a recent release! For those who don’t know, “Jessie’s Girl” was a big hit in 1981!

As I read this book, I couldn’t help but think that some of Dobson’s insight was good. I wasn’t around when my husband was married to his ex wife, but he did tell me some of the things that went on in their marriage. I know that my husband’s views about what went wrong in their marriage are bound to be distorted from the truth, as are his ex wife’s. It’s rare that people can be objective when they talk about things that have gone on, especially when they’ve gone wrong, in life. Furthermore, no one is ever totally innocent when relationships fail because no one is perfect. Nevertheless, as I read Love Must Be Tough, I could see my husband’s situation. I’m not sure who played what role in the demise of my husband’s first marriage, but a lot of Dobson’s anecdotes were very familiar to me because they sounded a lot like my husband’s stories about his time with his ex wife.

But Dobson believes that people ought to stay married, especially for the sake of the kids. He offers very few reasons why people might not stay together. On the surface, I’m inclined to agree with him. Divorce is an ugly business; I hope it never happens to me. It’s been bad enough dealing with the aftermath of my husband’s divorce from his ex wife. On the other hand, I think that divorce is sometimes very necessary. Sometimes, it’s not worthwhile to try to save the relationship, even if kids are involved.

Dobson mostly focuses on the evils of infidelity, but he also delves a bit into alcoholism and domestic violence. I wish he’d devoted a little more attention to these two areas. I also wish he’d acknowledged that men can be victims of domestic violence, too. I know that some will say that women are more often the victims, so the focus should be on them. I will agree that statistically speaking, it does look like women are more often beaten up by their spouses than men are. But I also think that most people don’t consider that men tend to be very reluctant to get help in a domestic violence situation. I’m sure it happens a lot more often than we’d like to think. It would have been very enlightened if Dobson had figured that out and included it in his book instead of just focusing on female victims.

I was expecting to read a lot of Christian rhetoric and Biblical doctrine when I picked up Dr. Dobson’s book. I’m not surprised that he’s against homosexuality. But I was not prepared to read what amounts to blatant bigotry. Dr. Dobson is not a theologian, but he does a lot of judging in his book. A couple of times, he even writes that sinners, whether they be adulterers, drunkards, or homosexuals, will have a hard time when they meet their maker on the day of accountability. Many Christians will agree with Dr. Dobson. Suffice it to say that those who don’t believe in conservative Christian viewpoints probably won’t like this book much.

I don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of what Dr. Dobson writes in Love Must Be Tough. On the other hand, there’s a lot in this book with which I do have serious disagreements. And because it’s so dated, I’m inclined to believe that there are better books out there for couples in trouble.

Focus on the Family’s Web site: www.family.org

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And…

James Dobson thinks your kids are going to Hell…

I must be a glutton for punishment. Last week, while I was searching Fort Belvoir’s thrift shop for cheap shelves for our new home, I found myself in the book section. My eyes landed on the 1990 book, Children at Risk: Battling for the Hearts and Minds of Our Children by Focus on The Family’s Dr. James Dobson and his friend, Gary Bauer. Having already read and reviewed a book by James Dobson, I already knew what to expect from him. I had a feeling Children at Risk would outrage me. I was right. But shoot, the book was priced at just $1.75 and I figured that was a cheap way to get my adrenaline flowing.

The premise behind Children at Risk is that today’s youth is at a serious risk of heading down the tragic path of immorality thanks to what Dobson considers overly liberal laws, too much freedom of speech and religion, homosexuality, pornography, and abortion. Dobson contributes the first few chapters of this book, which mostly consists of his own ranting about the aforementioned subjects. Then, he introduces attorney Gary Bauer, who was once Ronald Reagan’s Domestic Policy Advisor and the Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family. Bauer contributes his own slightly less rabid ranting about the path our country is supposedly taking toward Godlessness. The two authors continually accuse the U.S. government of being taken over by heartless secular humanists.

I have to say, having read Dobson’s earlier book, Love Must Be Tough, I used to think Dobson was a bit overly conservative but capable of some rational thinking. After reading Children at Risk, I don’t think I feel that way anymore. What changed my mind about Dobson is the following sensationalist passage, which appears on page 28.

… I should mention one more monument to the humanist movement that came straight out of hell. A father dying of kidney failure artificially inseminated his 16 year old daughter with the help of her physician. Seven months into her pregnancy, the child was taken from her uterus by cesarean section its kidneys were removed sugically and transplanted into the father (grandfather). The infant was then left to die of uremic poisoning.

Yes, you read that passage right. I read it aloud to my husband when I suspected that it was BS. My husband concurred with my assessment. Dobson presents this anecdote as if it’s a fact. I don’t know… maybe it did actually happen somewhere. But Dobson does not offer any sources that would allow readers to find out the actual details of the account. Dobson is credited as having spent 14 years as an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California’s medical school and a 17 year veteran on the Attending Staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Divisions of Child Development and Medical Genetics. Perhaps in his medical capacity, he did have occasion to witness or hear about such a case. But he doesn’t reference the case so that readers can verify the veracity of his account.

I suspect that in today’s litigious society no doctor in his or her right mind would ever consent to taking part in such a scheme. Even if a doctor did willingly participate, I doubt the outcome would be the way Dobson describes it. I’m no doctor, but as I understand it, there’s a lot to organ donation. I can’t believe that a seven month old fetus would be a viable candidate for organ donation to a full grown man. And again, I just can’t believe that any doctor, let alone the large number of doctors and other medical professionals required to carry out both an organ donation procedure and an artificial insemination procedure would touch that case with a ten foot pole. That leads me to believe that Dobson’s anecdote as it’s written in Children at Risk is complete and utter hogwash.

But enough about the seemingly half baked portions of this book. Dobson and Bauer go on and on about the evils of homosexuality and the way it’s causing people to change the way the public defines family. Dobson and Bauer are convinced that families are ONLY mommies, daddies, and their children. There is absolutely no room for any other configuration. And what’s more, women have no place in the work force if they have children. According to Dobson and Bauer, mommies belong at home, raising their young. Personally, I agree that it would be nice if parents could spend more time at home raising their kids instead of putting them in childcare. I even agree with Dobson’s and Bauer’s assessment that our society unfairly judges people who choose to stay home to raise their kids or maintain their homes instead of having a career. But I don’t believe that mommies are the only ones capable of being good parents. I don’t believe that daddies always have to be the breadwinners in their families. I also don’t believe that all homosexuals are bad people simply because of their sexual preferences, nor do I think that they can will themselves to be straight. I don’t know what it’s like to be gay, but I also don’t think that most people choose to be gay just because they want to be sinful. Above all, I don’t think that simply being gay makes someone an unfit parent or undeserving of family or marriage.

Dobson and Bauer are also very unapologetic about their objections to abortion. But personally, I don’t think that abortion is always a bad thing even though I doubt I would choose it as an option for myself. I’m glad that for the time being, it’s still a safe, legal option for women in this country. According to this book, Dobson and Bauer believe that a lot of doctors don’t want abortion to go away. Why? Because abortion is supposedly a “money maker” for them. But again, this assertion doesn’t ring true to me. First of all, I don’t think that many doctors are performing abortions. A lot of them have personal objections to the procedure and I suspect that many of them fear for their own safety. After all, abortion clinics have been bombed and doctors have even been killed by pro-lifers intent on saving fetuses, no matter that when they bomb clinics, they endanger the lives of people who are already born, women who are considering having abortions, and those unborn fetuses that they are trying so hard to save. Yes, I understand that many people think of abortion as murder and I give credit to Dobson and Bauer for not suggesting that readers bomb abortion clinics (they want them to picket them instead). But the whole disgusting notion that doctors who perform abortions are “simply in it for the money” is repugnant to me. And once again, the authors also do not provide any kind of real proof of this notion that abortion providers are just looking to make money, which they present as a fact.

I guess therein lies my problem with Children at Risk. I’m probably not one of the people Dobson and Bauer were trying to reach. I’ve already made up my mind about most of the issues they are ranting about and their approach does nothing to sway my opinion the other way, even though I can see their points about some of their concerns. For example, I agree that too many kids are having sex too young. I agree that in some situations, our society is too politically correct and lacks common sense. I agree that sometimes the government exerts too much power when it comes to letting people choose how they want to raise their children. But Dobson and Bauer want us to go back to the way things were in the 1950s. Throughout this book, these two authors continually harp on how much more family oriented we were back in “the day”. They conveniently ignore the fact that the 1950s were far from a perfect time period. They present cultural awareness and racial equality is if they’re bad things. And it seems Dobson and Bauer believe that any religion that doesn’t follow the Judeo-Christian ideal is not right and should be excised from American culture. They offer ideas to their readers on how they can counter society’s negative influences on their children.

Dobson and Bauer write this book in a way that conveys sorrow and disdain toward American culture. And I agree, that some of their concern has merit. Too many of today’s children do have too much access to harmful media influences and not enough supervision from their parents. Too many children today are growing up having to deal with difficult situations including divorce, abuse, and suicide. But I find the authors’ tactics for reaching their readers to be offensive and insulting to their intelligence. The passage I quoted above was an immediate turn off for me and made it hard for me to consider their ideas in the rest of this book… some of which were not that unreasonable.

What’s more, I don’t think the situation today– or even back in 1990 when this book was published– is as bad as Dobson and Bauer seem to think it is. For example, these two authors seem to think that every teenager is having rampant sex, getting high, and dropping out of school. But I can assure them that while there are a lot of kids doing those naughty things, not all of them are. I sure wasn’t back in 1990 and I definitely had the opportunity. And even those who are doing those things as teenagers don’t necessarily grow up to do them as adults, nor do they always find their lives ruined forever just because they experimented when they were kids.

I don’t think I can recommend this book to anyone, even those whom I think might like its message.Children at Risk was published a long time ago, so it’s a bit dated. Some of the information Dobson and Bauer present is highly suspect and the authors don’t always cite their sources of information. They ask their readers to believe what they write simply because they are presenting themselves as authorities. But they didn’t convince me that they were worthy of being called authorities. And again, I think their shrill tone undermines their message to the point that it becomes unbelievable and downright offensive. I don’t know how available this book is nowadays, but I will advise most of my readers not to go looking for it unless they want to be outraged too.

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healthcare, politics, religion, wingnuts

The danger of tempting fate has never been as real as it is in the COVID-19 era…

The other day, I read that conservative wingnut pundit Rick Wiles, 67, who has said all kinds of nutty things about liberals and has condemned the COVID-19 vaccines as tools for “global genocide”, is now very sick with the virus. I have written about Rick Wiles before on this blog. He’s among the most rabid right wing crackpots on the airwaves today. I don’t pay a lot of attention to Rick, because most of what he says is preposterous. I have blogged about him a couple of times, when he’s said things that are especially ridiculous… and now it seems that he, along with a lot of other science deniers, is eating his words about COVID-19.

Yes, friends… Rick Wiles, Trump zealot, pastor of Flowing Springs Church in Vero Beach, Florida, host of TruNews, and overall whackjob, declared in late April that he would not get vaccinated against COVID-19, because he believes the shots are “global mass murder” perpetuated by Satan. Alas, Mr. Wiles is now begging for your prayers, because apparently, he’s one of the many people God doesn’t like. Of course, I don’t actually know what God thinks of Rick Wiles, or even if there is a God. I base that last statement on something Wiles himself has said about the coronavirus. He has repeatedly claimed that the vaccine is a plot to kill people, and that a lot of “stupid people” will be killed off by getting vaccinated against the disease.

In January 2020, Rick Wiles said COVID was God’s way of punishing China for its “godless communist government”. I wonder what he thinks now…

A couple of days ago, I noticed a link in the Duggar Family News group about Mr. Wiles and his newly acquired condition. It was the first I’d read about his experience with COVID-19. I was shocked to read that he believed the vaccines would be used to kill off 70% of the population. According to Newsweek.com, Wiles apparently based his theory, in part, on an article he read on Great Game India, “a website that promotes itself as a ‘journal on geopolitics and international relations’ and has published conspiracy theories on a variety of topics.” Great Game India’s comments were partially based on a paper put out by the United Kingdom’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational subgroup. In that paper, it was reported that “up to 70 percent of people who had both vaccine doses could die in the third wave of COVID infections.” However, what Mr. Wiles seems to have missed is that the 70 percent figure was never attributed to the efficacy of the vaccines. Rather, that number is reflective of “the high death toll among vaccinated individuals to the easing of restrictions and there being a large number of high-risk people being vaccinated.”

In other words, there could be more deaths among people who are already at a higher risk. That means a large number of older people who are unvaccinated, older people who are vaccinated but immunocompromised, and older people who are vaccinated, but still get sick despite being vaccinated, could possibly perish in a third wave. That figure has nothing whatsoever to do with the vaccines being ineffective. The 70 percent figure could be “the result of ‘uptake being so high’ among the higher risk group.” As we’ve seen recently, the COVID-19 virus is continually evolving and mutating, which is why the vaccines are so important. The more people get vaccinated, the fewer hosts are available for the virus to mutate. As it is, those of us who have been vaccinated will all probably need to get booster shots, although it’s not currently known when or how often the shots will be necessary.

Rick Wiles has been permanently banned from YouTube because he says things that are so controversial and hateful. I had not looked for him in awhile, so I was surprised this morning when I didn’t find his channel on the popular video sharing site. However, plenty of people on YouTube are still making videos about Rick Wiles and his lunacy. He also posts, and has been posted about, a lot on Twitter. Last week, Wiles had to be rushed to the emergency room, and he spent some time hospitalized because of the illness.

Will you survive, Rick?

This isn’t the first time I’ve read about a COVID-19 denier getting sick after publicly stating that the virus is a hoax. I remember in April 2020, reading about 45 year old Karen Kolb Selke, a woman who had, in March of last year, gone on Facebook to rant about how COVID-19 was a socialist plot to scare people into voting Donald Trump out of office. Three weeks later, she was dead, having contracted the virus herself.

There have been other stories about this phenomenon– people claiming that the virus is a “media hoax” or a “plandemic”, just to get Trump out of office and promote a “socialist” agenda. It’s a bunch of rubbish, of course. If it were only about removing Trump, COVID would not be killing people around the world. Moreover, vaccines of all kinds have saved so many lives and prevented disabilities in people. When my parents were growing up, polio was a real and scary threat to children. Thanks to the polio vaccine, later generations, including mine, did not have to worry about the disease. Ditto for measles, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, and rubella. Todays’ young people can get vaccinated against chickenpox and the human papilloma virus, which is thought to cause cervical cancer. Having had shingles as a young woman, I certainly wish I could have avoided being infected by varicella, which lurks in the body forever and waits for the opportunity to strike when you’re physically “rundown”, as I was after I came home from the Peace Corps and suffered from multiple skin infections. Unfortunately, it’s too late for me to avoid that fate.

One would think that the Trumpers might have changed their tunes over the past few months, but the crazies are still out there, peddling their bullshit. Just this morning, the actor Robbie Rist, shared this frightening post by Laurie Roth, Ph.D., who is the self-proclaimed “Annie Oakley of the Airwaves”. Based on this post, I can’t say I’m too impressed by her credentials… I can’t imagine why anyone with sense would want Trump in charge again. I get being conservative, but Trump isn’t like most conservatives.

WHAT?

The so-called “Annie Oakley of the Airwaves” continues with this follow up post on Facebook, which was posted on June 5th:

From False Narrative Dr. Laurie Roth

Apparently, my last article stating that President Trump had signed the Insurrection act in January 2021 and that the military was in control caused a Tsunami of reaction. This included Facebook tagging my article as a lie and false.

What does one do in a situation like this? Do I go to liar school, hide in the closet and never speak again? Do I disappear and accept the label and let the leftists win again?

What I did was call my connected military source again, who by the way knows a top General who is a man of honor and service as my source is. I told him the response of social networking controllers and Trump haters and one of their statements. “This can’t be true because it is not written anywhere and hasn’t been publicized.”

My source said, Trump didn’t have to publicize it to the media that has long been sold out to the America hating left. There is no law or rule that declares his signature and declaration of this act had to go to anywhere else but the Military.

Remember, the House and the Senate failed us and they were given the evidence of a stolen election The Supreme Court wouldn’t hear any case regarding it. They failed us also. So did numerous, liberal Governors and courts. There was only one choice left – the Insurrection Act.

As I said in my last article that got everyone’s knickers in a twist, it was President Trump’s duty to sign the Insurrection Act since it was already proven that other countries interfered and stole the Presidential 2020 election. It was also investigated thoroughly by our military who found the real numbers of the election. Trump boldly won the popular vote and the Electoral College.

It was their duty, then to acknowledge the Insurrection Act because of foreign influence and a sea of election crimes in this election. Trump did the only thing a real patriot would do and sign the act putting our military in charge.

Most in social media hate Trump, real freedom of speech. In their eyes, they know all, see all and are the 4th person of the Trinity. In truth, they are the sell outs and liars. If real Patriots are nothing but liars and conspiracy nuts these days, then I am proud to be one!

Think about it for a minute. Do you recall President Trump as the type of man who would just submissively accept the fact that hard core proof showed a landslide victory, that China and other countries coordinated the stealing of our election and he would just drink a beer and go golfing? Don’t believe that Trump would disappear and not fight for our country and justice for a second. We are in the biggest battle of our lives and much of it we cannot see…..yet.

It is so boringly like the left, to immediately call you all manner of names and scream with shrillness that you are lying. Hopefully, I would slither off and never talk again.

Truthfully, I should yell thank you from the rooftops since all they did was add fuel to my fire. I will scream the truth all the more. Remember, I survived, national talk radio for 15 years and was called every name there is. Believe what you will but pray and fight for your country. Stand. Great things are on the way and Justice is coming.

I don’t even know what to write about Laurie Roth’s nonsensical drivel. Does she actually believe this, or is this just about making money and a name for herself? I am relieved to read comments from people who see what I see… some straight up crazy bullshit conspiracy theories. She’s like “The Transformed Wife“, Lori Alexander, but for Trump zealots instead of Christian evangelical fundies.

In any case, I think it’s quite clear that COVID-19 is very real, and people had better get wise. I’m grateful Bill and I were able to get the vaccine. It doesn’t mean we won’t get sick from COVID-19 or anything else, but I am convinced that the vaccine will make it less likely that we’ll need to be hospitalized from the virus if we do get it. Frankly, I am surprised by how easy the shots were for me. Other than a little bit of a sore arm, I wasn’t affected at all. In fact, I recovered from “COVID arm” even faster with the second shot than I did the first. Bill did have a harder time with the second round, but it only lasted a day. Neither of us wants to lie in a hospital bed gasping for air from a viral infection as we prepare to depart life.

Posted on Twitter, May 31st.

I don’t wish death on Rick Wiles, and I am not rejoicing in the fact that he and some of his family members got sick with COVID-19. I have doubt that this experience will do much to change his mind about the crap he’s been spewing. But I do hope that his experience will serve as a wakeup call/moment of truth for his followers. Not getting vaccinated is a crazy gamble, even though I respect your right to self-determination. I would encourage you to learn from Rick and do your part to avoid spreading this disease. It’s definitely real.

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religion

Taste testing crapocalyptic slop…

Bill and I were super busy yesterday, so I didn’t have time to blog. However, I did find some time to discover new personalities on YouTube. I’ve written about Jim Bakker before– if you were around in the 1980s, you might remember him as one of the leaders of the PTL channel (Praise the Lord). He and his late ex wife, Tammy Faye, were in huge legal trouble for embezzling money from their ministry to pay for an extravagant lifestyle. Jim Bakker was later sentenced to 45 years in prison, but only ended up doing almost five.

Bakker was also known for his sexual dalliances with Jessica Hahn, a church secretary. He paid her $279,000 to keep silent about their shenanigans, but the truth eventually came out.

I was a teenager when all of that was happening. I grew up in the Tidewater area of Virginia, not too far from the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Portsmouth headquarters. Jim and Tammy Faye got their start at CBN, which is where Pat Robertson reigns supreme. I don’t remember following the story of the scandal closely when it was going on, but I do remember it well. It was national news.

Years later, I read and reviewed an excellent and comprehensive book about Jim Bakker. In 1989, author Charles E. Shepard published Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry. The book is out of print now, or at least it was when I managed to score a used copy of it. Although it took a long time to finish reading it, I found Forgiven a very juicy read. I was left fascinated by televangelists like Jim Bakker.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how Jim Bakker and his wife, Lori, are now hosting a new show. They are selling shelf stable buckets of food for the end times. Bakker cries about how the world is going to end soon and there won’t be enough food. You can protect your family by buying his overpriced buckets of slop for your food storage. They supposedly last for 25 years.

Thanks to YouTube, all of this is easily discovered online… along with some true comedy gold. Yesterday, I discovered two guys who have a show called Good Mythical Morning. Rhett and Link bravely “tasted” the apocalypse era food so you don’t have to. Behold this…

These guys are HILARIOUS! But then, so is Jim Bakker… for all the wrong reasons.

Jim Bakker is just fucking nuts, but people are still watching his tripe. Sadly, some people actually believe what he says. Someone is bankrolling his show, after all. I haven’t sat through a whole episode yet, because it mostly seems to be about his end times prophecies and selling this bucketed slop. You can use the buckets as tables, too. Seriously, they show you how to do this. How thrifty!

They follow up with another funny video of their taste test of apocalyptic milk… If this is what we have to look forward to after the apocalypse, why bother trying to survive? Isn’t it the goal of Christians to go “home” to Jesus?

These guys cracked me up so much yesterday. They seem to enjoy the same kind of juvenile humor I never managed to grow out of. Case in point, they started off this video with a ten word story… “Well, I just went number two in a large bucket.” Ha ha ha… maybe they rehearsed that… but it seems spontaneous. And I dig ten word stories about taking a crap.

I think my favorite part of these videos is when they show Bakker tasting this crap in front of everyone. You can watch Bakker almost choke on faux potato soup as he tries to convince everyone how delicious it is. When you consider how convincing Bakker must have been in the 80s when he managed to separate so many gullible people from their rare and hard earned dollars, you know that trying to look like he’s enjoying the slop he’s selling must have been super difficult. In fairness, these guys don’t totally diss the slop. They say it’s kind of like what you’d eat on a camping trip.

Anyway… I see Rhett and Link do a lot of food reviewing. Some of the stuff they try is truly bizarre and disgusting. I love that they taste tested Jim Bakker’s apocalyptic slop, though. My liberal friends have been posting about Bakker a lot lately, since he’s been putting out all kinds of bullshit about the end times and how Christians are soon going to start killing each other. In fact, I think I was even prompted to watch this silliness because I recently read an equally silly story about how Bakker thinks “Christians will die” if Trump loses in 2020. He’s not the only one who has made such ridiculous declarations about the slaughter of Christians. Rick Wiles, host of TruNews, has also made stupid comments about this.

Guys like Bakker and Wiles prey on the dull and dim.

The prospect of another four years with Trump in charge is terrifying to me. I’m glad Good Mythical Morning is around to make me laugh as I try not to ponder the United States’s slide into complete lunacy at the hands of religious wingnuts and narcissistic sociopaths like Trump.

After watching Jim Bakker’s slop taste test, I think you should explore Vic Berger’s hilarious videos, comically edited to show everyone how nuts Bakker and his ilk are…

After you eat the slop, you can crap in the bucket. They even say so! And as Bakker talks about people starving, I look at the people in the audience, almost none of whom look like they’re ever going to be in danger of starving.

I know what I’d like to do with Bakker’s particular brand of doo doo… At least they hire decent musicians, even if their songs are ridiculous.

Wow… who needs Netflix when you can watch this shit?
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politicians, religion, Trump

Rick Wiles: Batshit wingnut of the week…

Not long ago, I noticed a hit on a post I wrote on my old blog. The hit came from South Carolina. I think the person who read the post was probably reading up on the follow up I wrote on a young woman who tried to crowd fund her law school education. I got curious as to whether or not she finished school. I looked her up, saw that she’d finished law school, then congratulated myself for paying off my own student loans.

The second part of the post was about Christian TV host, Rick Wiles, who has a show called TruNews. I had never heard of Rick Wiles before last July, when I saw a video he did about how God will destroy America because of “pro-choice” people. He also claimed that Democrats are stalking Trump’s “people” with the intention of killing them.

I see that I was mightily taken aback by Wiles’ vitriol. It’s scary that men like him have a platform and a significant following of brainwashed people. But, even though Wiles’ rhetoric seems absolutely crazy to me, I soon forgot about his crazy tirades… until this morning. Rick Wiles is back with a new claim. He says, “We will impose Christian rule in this country, whether you like it or not!”

Wiles continues with an anti-semitic rant about how the United States has allowed the Jews to take over everything and turn our country into “Zionists”. He claims Jews, whom he says make up about 2% of our population, are running everything. He goes on to praise Alabama’s insane new law against all abortions and promises that Christians will soon be taking over and running things the “right” way… if you know what I mean.

Uh… yeah… I’m all for free speech and all, but this guy comes off as a complete and total lunatic to me. Trump has a lot of people believing that undocumented immigrants are the cause of evil in the United States, but Wiles just comes right out and blames everything on the Jews. Who else does that remind you of?

Yikes!
This lady was a regular person who came to believe that Hitler had the answers. She worked for him at his “Berghof” from 1943-45.

Wiles isn’t just against Jews. He’s also homophobic. Last year, after he accused TV journalist Rachel Maddow of trying to stage a “bloody coup” against the disastrous Trump administration, Wiles said this:

America, you’ve been homosexualized. You’ve been Jewdy-ized. I’m just telling it how it is. She (Maddow) was spewing out, last night, calls for revolution. She was telling the left, ‘Take a deep breath, we’re at the moment, it’s coming, we’re almost there, we’re going to remove him from the White House.’ We’re about 72 hours — possibly 72 hours — from a coup.

Be prepared that you’re going to turn on the television and see helicopters hovering over the roof of the White House with men clad in black rappelling down ropes, entering into the White House. Be prepared for a shoot out in the White House as Secret Service agents shoot commandos coming in to arrest President Trump.

That is how close we are to a revolution. Be prepared for a mob — a leftist mob — to tear down the gates, the fence at the White House and to go into the White House and to drag him out with his family and decapitate them on the lawn of the White House.

Um… of course, this never happened. But Wiles still said it, and he probably had a lot of people cheering at home, behind their television screens. Notice he says America has been “homosexualized”. Who else was against homosexuals?

Hitler and his followers believed homosexuals were carriers of disease, which “weakened” the nation… They spoke of wanting to “morally purify” Germany.

I find it rather scary, but not too surprising, that a guy like Rick Wiles would use the term “homosexualized” in a way that implies that America has been morally degraded by the left. The more I listen to Trump cheerleaders, the more I’m reminded of the Holocaust and the many thousands of innocent people who were tortured and killed simply because of who they were. We don’t need people like Rick Wiles spreading the same vile hatred in today’s world. Those years of hell should stay far in the past.

You see… back when Trump started his campaign, I saw him much like a lot of people probably saw him. He was a flamboyant reality TV star and former beauty pageant owner. He was a real estate mogul and sometime pitchman for companies like McDonald’s. Like all malignant narcissists, he was charming. I was never a “fan” of his at all, but I didn’t really take him seriously. Little did I know, so many Americans were duped into voting for a morally bankrupt man who encourages hatred and divisiveness.

I can’t believe he’s the president.
Steven Anderson… yet another “Christian” asshole who wishes death on people who aren’t like him.

I know guys like Rick Wiles and Steven Anderson have been around forever. What I don’t remember ever happening before in my lifetime is guys like them getting so much airtime. Too many people are lapping up their rhetoric and cheering on the same kind of fervor that led to Hitler’s uprising.

Yeah… Trump says all children “born or unborn, are made in the holy image of God”… except for the ones with brown skin he separates from their parents and incarcerates at the border. And guys like convicted felon and televangelist Jim Bakker are cheering him on.

Folks, these are some truly scary times. Maybe they’re even scarier than they seem. It’s easy to laugh at wingnuts like Rick Wiles, Steven Anderson, and Jim Bakker, but their messages are still coming through loudly and clearly to the unhinged masses who want to blame people who aren’t like them for everything wrong in their lives. It seems like these people want to blame everyone but white men– and they have declared war on women, non-whites, homosexuals, and anyone else who’s different.

I am truly scared of what will happen if Trump isn’t defeated in the next election. You want to talk about “bad hombres”? Well, they’re coming out in droves now, completely uninhibited as they share their messages of hatred. Maybe these people have always been there, and now it’s a lot easier for them to reach the masses due to the Internet. But for those who know history, these messages convey something we’ve heard before and should never want to go back to.

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