Thursday, April 4, 2019

'The Great Awakening'? How Does A Piece Of Q-Anon Conspiracy Garbage Make It To No. 1 on Amazon?

Can any sane person really believe this Amazon ranking for this piece of trash?  People interested in conspiracies - REAL ones - are better served going to my book on the JFK assassination:
THE JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis
My book is the product of  35 years of research into the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, incorporating acoustic analyses, image analyses as well as exposing the sundry deficiencies of The Warren Report. In other words, it's grounded in reality,  not fantasy.

By contrast, 'The Great Awakening' was hatched by QAnon freaks,  likely on an all night bender of booze, bennies and  opioids, mixed with  MJ candy .  It is designed to appeal to the  indiscriminate Pizzagate conspiracy trolls and gullible gobblers,  the ones who believed (in 2016)  Hillary Clinton had a stable of child sex slaves.   I would say also  similar to  the wacko  delusions of Alex Jones of Info Wars fame, but even he has now admitted his false flag ideation about the Sandy Hook massacre was a result of severe mental illness.  What excuse do these latter dispensers of toxic mind rot have?
The Amazon book, which says it was written by a dozen “anonymous Q followers, decoders and citizen journalists known collectively as Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA),” takes up where the Pizzagate rubbish left off. It claims that Democrats murder and eat children and that the government created AIDS, polio and Lyme disease. Then there’s the belief that the world is run by a Satanic cabal led by Hillary Clinton.
NBC News, which first reported on the book's placement on the Amazon charts, noted that the book received an algorithmic boost from product recommendations. The book, written by an anonymous author, averaged 4.5 stars and has been flooded with positive reviews.
Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy-theory expert, told NBC that the book is just another way for the QAnon movement to cash in on its gullible followers, calling it “a bold new step in the endless grift at the heart of Q.”
Nevertheless, the book keeps selling and racking up questionable glowing reviews, which Jason Kint, CEO of the trade association Digital Content Next, chalks up to manipulation and the lack of oversight on Amazon’s part.  As Kint explained to NBC:
“To be clear, they absolutely shouldn’t be censoring the availability of books like this. But the fact we’re left only with the publisher’s own description of the book and a clearly gamed set of 5-star reviews — how is the average shopper supposed to know this is toxic garbage?”
Uh, how about critical thinking? How about having an I.Q. that exceeds room temperature digits? 
Amazingly,  even Reddit now appears to be coming to its senses.  Last September it banned a forum dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying users repeatedly violated its content policies.   This isn't difficult to parse because after Pizzagate nearly incited a tragedy (unhinged Trumpie entering D.C. Comet pizza parlor with loaded rifle to "liberate Hillary's child sex slaves")  there can be no issue these are dangerous loons.

Let's also get it very clear from the get go that the assorted nonsense being peddled does not qualify as conspiracy theories. They are conspiracy claptrap or refuse. In  previous blog posts I noted Barbadian psychologist Pat Bannister's categorization of those who invoke conspiracies and how she differentiated them. As part of her construction of a theory of mind, specifically showing the role of lying in young children, she also noted adeptness at detecting lies was linked to accurate detection of real conspiracies.

Dr. Bannister's classification was simple:

1- Conspiracy analysts

2- Conspiracy theorists

3- Conspiracy crackpots or cultists


At the top of the hierarchy were conspiracy analysts, such as Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Harold Weisberg, Richard Charnin and others (like yours truly)).  These were serious people possessing some measure of intellect who brought their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracies like Iran-Contra and the JFK assassination.  These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media (e.g. BOOKS - real books!) and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through half-assed posts in the lowest dreg regions of the net, like 4chan and 8chan.  


By contrast, the 'conspiracy theorist' put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't back them up with evidence. Or, if evidence was provided, it didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, such as consistent selection, coherent and accurate data assessment, and avoidance of confirmation bias.
The bottom feeders of the classification scheme were conspiracy crackpots or clowns, like Alex Jones.   Jones is most famous for his off the wall bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those slain  kids weren't really dead, they were merely actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land.  Jones claimed he'd watched "films over and over and just seen those kids walking in circles".  At least now he's admitted to being mentally unbalanced.  We now await the authors of The Great Awakening to do likewise.


How would Dr. Bannister, if she were alive today, describe a convoluted, paranoid -infused mental mosh pit like "The Great Awakening"?   Basically, she'd probably call it a psychotic's phantasmagoria and schizoid ideation attempting to make sense of disparate, suspicious elements in the contemporary U.S. - driven by social media. 

 She'd also make note that such fever dreams don't need a whole lot of external memetic fuel to get started: a coincidence here, a loaded word from Trump there, an obscure reference to "deep state" there- oh  and some "genius" who first puts it all together in his mother's basement and posts it on 4chan. Whereupon a susceptible brain will be infected and spread it on to other gullible souls, searching for meaning in their vacuous lives. Well, to be sure, it's probably a bit better than using opioids!

 It would be great if we could just ignore these looneytunes-  or dispatch them to an asylum for general ECT and lithium therapy. But alas, their fevered baloney can have real world consequences and act outs - especially when a virulently infected zombie gets activated - like the guy who fired a round into the D.C. pizza parlor looking for child sex slaves. Or the other screwball who tried to block traffic headed for the Hoover Dam.

These people desperately need help, but it seems there are just too few professionals around now to get the job done.   Where is Dr. Bannister when we need her?

Memo To Selfie Takers: Time To Touch Base With Reality

Arizona State sorority members
After the 3rd death from a fall at the Grand Canyon in eight days maybe it's time to take all the selfie sticks and cameras away before visitors enter the park.  Clearly they can't be trusted to have the common sense not to try to negotiate the assorted precarious ledges, lookouts without killing themselves. But maybe it is more a case of being unable to accept reality: that the positions and postures needed to snap that supremo selfie - say at Yosemite or the Grand Canyon - are simply beyond one's physical ability.

A week ago we learned that for the 259th time in 6 years a tourist has fallen to his death trying to get the optimal selfie shot from a precarious precipice.  This time it was a Chinese tourist from Hong Kong who died after he over a thousand feet into the Grand Canyon while trying to take photos last Thursday near the rim of Eagle Point.  This according  according to David Leibowitz, a spokesman for Grand Canyon West.

Leibowitz said a tour group from Hong Kong was visiting the Grand Canyon, and many of the tourists were taking photos very close to the rim of the canyon.   As with most selfie takers, such as a dumb lot who are nearly knocked over during bike races, they take enormous risks for "the money shot".   In this case tragedy arrived when the selfie taker while attempting to snap a photo at Eagle Point, adjacent to the popular Skywalk attraction, accidentally fell off the rim and into the canyon. We're talking of thousands of feet down. 

A subsequent helicopter search located the 50-year-old man's body at the bottom of the canyon, which was then transported by helicopter to the nearest hospital. Grand Canyon West is an area of the canyon west of Grand Canyon National Park that is owned and operated by the Hualapai Indian Tribe. The tribal nation operates the popular Skywalk bridge and other attractions in that area, which is west of the National Park.

Beyond the reckless bid for the perfecto shot, we also know selfie compulsives are warping the entire tourist landscape, including our national parks.   According to one park ranger interviewed in a UK  Guardian piece on how our national parks are going to rack and ruin. e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/20/national-parks-america-overcrowding-crisis-tourism-visitation-solutions


We're informed that now tourists to Yellowstone  regularly scramble from their vehicles - even temporarily abandoning them -  in the hope of getting an close up photo.   So what gives?  In a post five years ago, I pretty well summed up the selfie syndrome :


"The 'selfie'  embodies all the gratuitous self-infatuation that is poisoning this country - causing it to mutate into a bunch of navel-gazing zomboids with faces pushed into assorted small screens. This is whether via smart phones or iphones- and always intruding into the natural world. "

I  even quoted my sister-in-law Krimhilde, a student of Eckankar for most of her adult life:


"These are the creations and obsessions of the immature human, which remains steeped in narcissism, in self-absorption. No truly advanced or advancing human on the path to a higher spirituality takes a selfie. Our true motivation and mission in this life is instead to embrace selflessness. That means placing one's body in proper relation to one's spirit."


Less often noted than risky ledge shots - like at the Grand Canyon - is the ongoing spoiling of natural landscapes, overrun by humans with long, unsightly selfie sticks.   Add to that now a pathological impetus to change one's looks to meet "selfie standards."   Nowhere was this pathology more glaringly exposed than in a recent Denver Post piece (March 17, p. 4E), where a psychologist pointed out:

"The confidence of many younger people is being warped in unsettling ways. They come to my offices, show me selfies and point (say) to an asymmetry in their lips - a totally normal variation.  They will already have searched online for someone with a similar issue who fixed it with surgery and now want it done."

Insane? Of course! Given every cosmetic surgery of this type necessitates having general anesthesia which can have calamitous results if it goes awry. This is why they ask you to present a 'DNR' (do not resuscitate form) or produce a durable power of attorney before going under.  In other words, it's not something you'd undertake casually and certainly not to get lips fixed!

But while such idiotic vanity surgeries could result in death - or even brain damage or dysfunction - leaning over a ledge several thousand feet up can result in certain death - as occurred to the Hong Kong tourist.  What provoked him to take such a risk in pursuit of an image with one's smiling face is a subject for the psychologists like my great niece Shayle.  

While they are at it they might also ruminate on why  a young female moron at an Arizona  zoo several weeks ago, jumped a barrier to snap a selfie with a black Jaguar.  See e.g.


The beast naturally clawed her up - and she'd expressed astonishment it could "get its big claws through the bars."  But that it did!  At least in this case she survived and was able to apologize for her stupidity.  But what's needed now, as in the case of the millions of dopes who text and drive, is to have the cognitive ability to see a risky move before actually making it. 

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Hillary Guilty Of "Political Murder" in 2016? - More BS From The "Pizzagate Wing" Of The GOP (Wm. McGurn - Lindsey Graham)



We must admit that one rapid consequence of Barr's  "summary" of the Mueller report has been a massive mindfuck,  mainly amongst the Neolib  corporo media.  But also affecting too many (originally) critical pundits  in said media,  including Joe Scarborough and George Will. Both now seem to believe "democracy has been vindicated" on the basis of a 3 1/2 page crib sheet from Barr, and all is well in the land of the free and home of the brave.  Well, it's no where near clear that Barr's effort was anything more than a get out of jail free card for Trump . Worse, a license  for this thug to commit even more depredations on our nation - even as it gives license for the rat protectors to mount specious investigations of their own. Into who or what? Well, Hillary Clinton - loser of the 2016 dumpster fire election!

Thus one beholds imps like the WSJ's William McGurn and lesser moron Lindsey Graham,  charging forward with crimes against Clinton under nutso conspiracy ideations. They have now proven they've joined the "pizzagate" crackpot wing of the Republican party.  McGurn, in his WSJ column yesterday ('Don't Lock Hillary Up', p. A15) claims:

"Thanks to two lucky breaks Hillary Clinton got away with political murder in 2016. The biggest break came when opposition research produced by one of her hired hands ended up being used by the FBI to spy on her rival's campaign".

Ok, hold strain there, Billy. We know you've already shown ample signs of senility and dementia, but we can't let that twaddle pass - even in a WSJ op -ed.   Hard as it is for McGurn to wrap his febrile brain around, the fact is the Fusion GPS oppo research was originally launched by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The relevant  WSJ editorial at the time noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer.  Singer wanted oppo research done on the Donald -  a two bit Queens' chiseler and lowlife he didn't trust. Singer and a group of old guard GOP donors hired Fusion to do the job of digging up dirt on the Queens' real estate crime boss and scumball.   

Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary,   the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT in any way sinister or illegal as McGurn tries to portray  - and certainly not a whit to do with "political murder" .  Nor in any way conspiratorial, certainly like seeking the help of a hostile foreign power to meddle in a presidential campaign.  Like Trump, who up to now has not disdained or objected to the Russians' help.

What was illegal was the Trump team holding more than 100 meetings - that we now know of -  with Russians, including GRU intelligence agents.  Specifically, as the NY Times has shown,  "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration," 

If Mueller lacked the intestinal fortitude to call out what was staring him in the face -  in terms of Trump's conspiracy with Putin and the Russkies  -  then that's on him. We can say he was the wrong guy for the job. Or maybe he fell victim to membership in the 'chickenshit club" noted several posts earlier.  See e.g.



But don't blame Adam Schiff for now sticking to the facts, and open evidence for what Trump has thus far gotten away with.   

As for McGurn's complaint about the FBI getting involved, that wasn't because of the Clinton team - or the Steele dossier.  That was because multiple personae in Trump's campaign orbit were making contact with GRU agents. (Which led Mueller to indict no fewer than 12 of them last summer.)  What? Everyone all of a sudden forgot that? Did Barr's BS summary spatter that much gray matter in the nation's collective hippocampus?

We know that contacts were made by at least 17 campaign officials and advisers who had contacts with Russian nationals and Wikileaks intermediaries.   Nor were these merely crumpets and tea gatherings at the (Trump) Tower.

Further, foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents meant that the U.S.  FBI  had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets, and would have amounted to dereliction of duty.   

Hence, there was no evil conspiracy by the FBI.  It only exists in McGurn's mind as when he babbles later "there are those Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Warrants the FBI took out on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page". Uh, no, "there aren't."  The FBI needed to do a surveillance on Page after he disclosed he was a Russkie stooge by making contacts with the GRU.

So don't even think of egging Graham on to instigate another special counsel  (and another investigation) to go after Clinton. That dog is done and will no longer hunt.

McGurn then names the second "lucky break" enabling Hillary to "get away with political murder" (ibid.):

"She'd also lucked out in early July when the FBI director himself, even though he lacked the authority to do so, publicly and personally cleared her of any charges for having taken her emails as secretary of state off grid."

Ok, let's leave out for the moment that Ivanka and Jared have done the same - indeed  worse - not even bothering to try to secure their messages on What's App.   But never mind the double standard, in his high dudgeon and dementia McGurn seems to forget then FBI head Comey dumped all over Hillary with a 2nd interjection 10 days BEFORE the General Election!  

Most sentient observers of normal intelligence took that to be a totally undesirable intrusion that essentially sunk whatever chances Hillary had to win.  Seems to me McGurn -  and other Trumpies-   ought to be thanking Comey for helping knock HRC out instead of accusing her of "political murder" and "putting fingers on the scales of the election."  What planet or parallel universe do these mutts inhabit anyway?

But at least McGurn is gracious enough to admit that the Trumpies and their goons shouldn't lock her up.

Then there is the cowardly poltroon and political pipsqueak Lindsey Graham, also referenced in the piece.  He also seeks to be magnanimous...sort of...sputtering :

"I'm not so much worried about retrying her, but I want to make sure the public understands that she got away with something they wouldn't get away with."

Oh, please, you ridiculous piece of shit! She "got away" with nothing, She fucking lost!  Get over it!  Trump, meanwhile, got away with blatant conspiracy with the Russians and is still getting away with crimes and misdemeanors galore - every damned day.  As former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah put it back in January in an MSNBC appearance:

"Remember that GRU indictment - if you go back to that- one of the objects of the conspiracy is not just hacking but hacking and disseminating.  You can't look at them alone, you have to go back to everything we know, the Trump Tower meeting, the calling out by Trump to Russia (to grab Hillary's emails)...there's just so many other things."

Note here the crimes to do with Hillary's emails were not on her side, but Trump's goons hacking them in the first place, especially after he egged on Russian  bad actors, e.g. on July 27, 2016:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

The emails showed Russkie contact and Brit music promoter Rob Goldstone telling Trump's dumbo son Don Jr. that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.

Goldstone added,  in the exchange of June 3rd, 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

He didn't mince words or soft soap it, absolutely pointing out the "support for Mr. Trump".  Any sensible individual with more than air between the ears would have run - not walked - to the nearest FBI office and turned in the material. What did Don Jr. do instead?

Seventeen minutes later, the jug-headed imp welcomed the email with the reply: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”     He then forwarded the incriminating material to his comrades in crime, as his email betrays:

------------------------------------------------------------------
From:   Donald Trump Jr.
Sent:    Yesterday, June 8, 2016, 12: 55 p.m.
To:       Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort
Subject: FW: Russia - Clinton -  Private and Confidential
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Just a few weeks later the first batch of DNC emails were released.  If that isn't conspiracy - as Bill Maher so quaintly put it Friday night, then "what the fuck is it?"  

Still not buying it? Let's refer to the words of Mueller's own indictment of the Russkie GRU agents from last summer:

According to the indictment:
"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Got the lingo there? Conspirators! Of course, this referred to the gang of GRU hackers and thugs doing the spearphishing. But were they just doing it by coincidence or happenstance?   No, they did it the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded for the Russians to grab Hillary's emails.  Only a certified imbecile would not infer conspiracy or at least coordination here, certainly after the Trump Tower meet.  

So why didn't Mueller call it out?  Well as I pointed out in my March 30 post on the 'Chickenshit theory', quoting Larry Beinhart:

"White collar cases are the toughest to make and there are multiple reasons for this. They tend to take place in linguistic fogs. Instead of money taken at the point of a gun, it's taken by promises and claims that can be made to appear as merely over-ambitious, misunderstandings of complex rules, just careless, or actually made by underlings."

I added:

 It's all about manipulating the language so that - by the end of the judicial process- there is no clear proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" by which to rest a case.  In other words, like the agnotologists who muddied the waters on the causes of climate change - delaying action by sowing doubts for decades-  it's nearly impossible to prove a crime attributed to a white collar crook. Especially one with tons of cash to toss around, i.e. to buy the best lawyers, meaning the best at manipulating the language for their client's own ends.

So, in effect, the semantic fog succeeds in diluting evidence to the point a special prosecutor may not be willing to use it. But bear in mind Carl Sagan's oft repeated quote: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

And now,  given Mueller's finding for "absence of evidence"  when faced with language distortion by Trump's lawyers,  we see their side emboldened.   McGurn and that execrable punk Graham want to turn the tables on Hillary for "political murder" and "putting fingers on the election scales".  David Corn, who's done extensive work on the Trump- Russia links has accepted none of it:


 "Trump and his minions have kept saying this didn't really happen, so in a lot of ways this is an indictment of Donald Trump, of all the people who said the Russia attack never happened. Here we have it in granular detail.  Read between the lines of this indictment and there's the other half of the equation. That throughout the campaign, and while the attack was going on, Donald Trump and his lieutenants were saying it's not happening. Even when he was briefed by U.S. intelligence he came out and said, 'nope, nothing happening, could be a 400 pound guy, we don't know that it's Russia'


Well, now we know it's Russia. Now we know while they were doing this he was providing cover, he was covering up what they were doing, which was for his benefit. "

But we're not done. Graham is so beside himself with self-righteous punkery and faux outrage at Adam Schiff's sticking to the conspiracy crime that he had the nerve to squawk to McGurn:

"Mr. Schiff really does represent the Oliver Stone wing of the Democratic Party".

Of course, this imbecile probably only has the faintest inkling that it was Stone's film 'JFK' (which he always said was "a counter myth to the myth of the Warren Report") actually paved the way for the JFK Records Act and the millions of files that have since been released from the National Archives. Among those, that Clay Shaw (under the alias "Clay Bertrand") was really a CIA contract agent as Jim Garrison had shown. As then released CIA Doc. (JFK 1993: 6.28.16.07.26.560280) noted:


"A memorandum marked for files says that J. Monroe Sullivan, #280201, was granted a covert security approval as of 10 December 1962 so he could be used in Project QKCHANT [Clay L. Shaw has #402897]"

Does Lindsey know any of this? Of course not! Otherwise he'd not be expelling brain farts about Adam Schiff being from the "Oliver Stone' wing of the Democrats  which in retrospect turns out to be a compliment to perspicuity and dogged persistence to get at truth. 

As opposed to being a collapsible, spineless worm like Graham, who wifey has even described as akin to a rotten shellfish, "white, slimy all over and yellow on the inside."  And especially as this South Carolina putz still wants to appoint his own special counsel to now investigate Hillary.  

Echoes of Devin Nunes? Maybe, even a clone. Quislings of a yellow feather stick together, after all. And almost certainly part of the whackadoodle, Pizzagate wing of the Repuke party. 

Stay tuned because one thing Barr did accomplish with his inane, skewed summary Mueller's report is to open the floodgates to even more polarization.

See also:


Tuesday, April 2, 2019

"Project Blitz" - What You Ought To Know (Or - What You Don't Know Can Hurt You)



Forget the Mueller report and the inevitable fallout of Barr's "summary" for now. While we've all been distracted by Barr's stunt the Trump cabal is under the radar to impose even more feral objectives on us.  While we've been focused on Mueller and  Trump's racism and white nationalist agenda,  we've missed the threat of his pseudo-religionist allies in trying to foist "Project Blitz" upon us to remake America as a Christian Right bastion.  Never heard of it? Here's an early (June last year) account from The UK Guardian:

"The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society. A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian “model bills”.


Some legislation uses verbatim language from the “model bills” created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”.
At least 75 bills have been brought forward in more than 20 states during 2017 and 2018 which appear to be modelled on or have similar objectives to the playbook, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a campaign group which tracks legislation that undermines the principle of separation of church and state.
Opponents warn that the CPCF (which claims more than 600 politicians as members across state legislatures ) is using the banner of “religious freedom” to impose Christianity on American public, political and cultural life.
In Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee, so-called “In God We Trust” bills have become law since 2017, which will see the phrase emblazoned on public buildings, hung in schools and displayed on the side of public vehicles including police cars.

But the Project Blitz 148-page playbook sees those largely symbolic bills as just the first stage on the way to more hardline laws."
In fact, as AU noted, these laws re presented as measures to preserve religious liberty, but are intended to give businesses, pastors and childcare providers the right to discriminate against anyone of the "wrong" religion (or none at all) and especially prospective parents of the LGBTQ and transgender populations.    An AU Bulletin I received two days ago, also warns the Blitz buffoons plan to target women seeking health care, for access to birth control as well as abortion services.   Their basic shtick is to "allow state employees, corporations, health care providers and nonprofit organizations to use religion as a justification to discriminate against nearly everyone.
Here's a brief rundown of events from last year to this, from the same AU Bulletin:
- In 2018, 76 Project Blitz bills were introduced in 26 states with 9 bills passing. AU expcts even more to pass in the other states in their legislative sessions.
- On January 31, this year, AU and a broad coalition of 42 other prominent religious, civil rights, secular, LGBTQ and reproductive freedom organizations issued a joint national statement urging state lawmakers nationwide to oppose Project Blitz and related legislation that uses religion as the basis for discrimination.
- January and February, 2019 - Rachel Laser spoke out against multiple newspapers, magazines and online news outlets on the threats posed by Project Blitz and how AU is fighting back.
- February 5, 2019-  AU released  a a short video  on Project Blitz  to create public awareness. Watch it and learn more!
We have to thank Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, (a thinktank which studies the political right), who was first to write about Project Blitz, which had up to then been hiding in plain sight.  As Clarkson noted last year:
“It’s very rare that you come across a major primary source document that changes the way you view everything, and this is one of those times. This is a 116-page strategy manual hidden away on a website explaining at least what a section of the religious right are doing in the United States. To me that’s astounding.”  
The Blitz playbook came to wider attention in April  last year after Clarkson was tipped off to its existence. He also highlighted recordings of conference calls where leading figures in the CPCF set out their plans to flood state legislatures with bills.

One of the steering team behind Project Blitz is David Barton, the Texas-based founder of an organisation called WallBuilders, which takes its inspiration from the Old Testament in describing a a mission of “rebuilding our nation’s foundations”.

In a recording of a call with state legislators, Barton described in detail the strategy behind Project Blitz, which he said packages together about two dozen bills in separate categories based on the type of opposition they are likely to receive. Three categories of bills dominate  Project Blitz:

-  "In God We Trust” bills designed to trigger opposition by saying the bills are a waste of time, or the sponsor of the bill “just wants to fight culture wars and divide people”.  The strategy is to pave the way for later political attacks, painting an election opponent as “anti-faith”.

- Specious religious proclamation or resolution bills – declaring a religious freedom day or Christian heritage week that can then be used to get religious teaching into schools. The playbook adds: “If any legislator opposes this, it will be helpful to get him or her on the record against this heritage and freedom.”

- Bills with  resolutions in favor of “biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality”, such as “establishing public policy favoring adoption by intact heterosexual, marriage-based families” and “establishing public policy favoring intimate sexual relations only between married, heterosexual couples”.
We're on to these slimy bastards now and if we keep our eyes open, heads screwed on straight - especially in states where Barton and his ilk are trying to foist Blitz on an us - we will beat these vermin back.. Again, citizens need to grasp and repeat the famous line from abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1952: : "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
If you're not prepared to be vigilant and attend to all nascent or active threats in the Trump era, you are not prepared to enjoy any liberty, period.  In that case you probably don't deserve it.

See also:

by John Feffer | April 4, 2019 - 6:29am | permalink