Yes, I really called NASA to ask about an Infowars martian child slave story.
No, they aren't talking to me again.https://t.co/nG56oiYT8K https://t.co/xaadAOSQQL— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) June 29, 2017
Trump voter: “Now we know what the FAKE NEWS attacks upon Donald Trump’s Mika tweets were intended to distract us from!!!11!”
…“There are no humans on Mars. There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there weren’t. There are,” Guy Webster, a spokesperson for Mars exploration at NASA, told The Daily Beast. “But there are no humans.”
On Thursday’s program, the InfoWars host welcomed guest Robert David Steele onto The Alex Jones Show, which airs on 118 radio stations nationwide, to talk about kidnapped children he said have been sent on a two-decade mission to space.
“We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride,” said Steele. “So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony.”…
On Thursday’s Infowars broadcast, Steele alleged the kidnapped children were not only being kidnapped for space labor, but also murdered for their blood and bone marrow.
“Pedophilia does not stop with sodomizing children,” said Steele. “It goes straight into terrorizing them to adrenalize their blood and then murdering them. It also includes murdering them so that they can have their bone marrow harvested as well as body parts.”
“This is the original growth hormone,” said Jones.
When NASA’s Webster was asked about the veracity of the one rumor by The Daily Beast on Thursday, he responded, “there’s only one stupid rumor on the Internet? Now that’s news.”
Let’s just change the national motto to LOL NOTHING MATTERS
Trump offered to marry Joe and Mika at the White Househttps://t.co/YVpMCbxnXS
— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) June 29, 2017
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I … can’t even. Just make it all stop.
m0nty
At this point it would not be surprising to hear that Trump ordered Priebus to get into his replica Grey Goose at gunpoint.
Jerzy Russian
Typical government waste. They could have used an island in the Pacific ocean to house all of their kidnapped slaves, but NASA jumped in and grabbed those lucrative slave ship contracts from the Navy.
Major Major Major Major
@Jerzy Russian: Maybe after Trump is done bringing back steam he can bring back oars.
m0nty
Did they ever make a straight film of Watergate? Or just did it from outside through All The President’s Men. One wonders how this saga will be portrayed in popular media when it is all over. How do you fit this much insanity into a two hour movie? Even a miniseries would not be enough. Perhaps it is unfilmable.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
There need to be some leash laws. You urp up some particularly insipid dreck like that and your legal age should be set back to 17. no vote, no alcohol!!!! and it will keep you away from elected office for a long time…..
(Ranting and hyperbole warning for the humor impaired)
Villago Delenda Est
What I want to know is are those kids right now growing potatoes fertilized with their own shit?
Villago Delenda Est
@m0nty: There’s always Dick.
scav
I wondered where Bat Boy had gotten off to.
Mart
Here is my million dollar idea, so nobody steal it. When I put CAPS LOCK on, and I auto pilot press the Shift Key with my pinky, why the hell does it make all letters small case. Two positives does not make a negative. Just keep ’em as CAPS. This could help settle down angry INTERNET people. And yes I look at my keyboard a lot while I type, but I have decent speed.
m0nty
@Villago Delenda Est: Dick wasn’t exactly straight though, was it? More curved.
Villago Delenda Est
@m0nty: Delightfully so. Particularly the ending.
Mnemosyne
I don’t think I will ever understand what these people have against fiction. Seriously, you could write a pretty cool dystopian science fiction novel around that idea.
But, no, something is broken in their brains that insists that fiction is bad and evil and unGodly, so therefore any crazy story they find interesting must be true, or else it’s worthless.
I just don’t get it.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
That’s because, as you said, it’s the behavior of somebody with a broken brain.
John Revolta
Well now, I’m an active rover
And I roved both near and far
‘Til they put me in a rocket ship
And sent me off to Mars
They said I wasn’t human
“Cause I was a Dimmycrat
Joost a lowly member
Of the pro-le-ta-ri-at
They dined on kidnapped children
That had been adreenalized
And sodomized and terrorized
Before me very eyes
But now me twenty years is oop
And I’m a-goin’ home
I’ll head on doon t’ Infowars
And talk t’ Alex Jones!
Bill E Pilgrim
@m0nty:
> Did they ever make a straight film of Watergate?
I think the Trump White House is an attempt at a live reenactment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill E Pilgrim: Without the sometimes sympathetic head villain.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Villago Delenda Est: You must mean this guy
The head villain in more ways than one.
One of my favorite gags ever was when they were in the head museum having a big party and had an exchange that went “Where’s Grant?” “He’s over there, puking in the Bushes”
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne: The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick.
Ruckus
@m0nty:
I sure as fuck hope so. The only way I want any of this filmed is as a courtroom record.
Betty Cracker
Michelle Goldberg at Slate has a column up in which she theorizes that Trump is finding it harder to contain misogynistic outbursts lately because the stress of the presidency is getting to him. I’m not convinced he ever suppressed it; there are probably incidents we just don’t know about. I definitely agree with Goldberg’s conclusion, though:
Yep.
NotMax
Typical misdirection to distract from the kiddies being sent to the Nazi military base on the Moon.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
That was far funnier than this “production” we are now living with.
NotMax
@Mart
Caps lock on the keyboard here is disabled.
As should everyone’s be.
(Thank you, Logitech Setpoint.)
NotMax
Torch Song Trilogy coming up in a few minutes, at a quarter past the hour on TCM.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Haven’t seen that movie in ages, but I’ve never forgotten one line from Arnold, on carrying a torch for his murdered partner: “It’s easier to love someone who’s dead; they make so few mistakes.”
patrick II
100 is the median IQ score, so the Bell curve says there are as many people with IQ’s in the 90-100 range as in the 100-110 range, as many in the 80-90 range as in the 110-120 range, and as many people in the 70-80 range as in the 120-130 range, etc.
That’s just the way it is, but the real problem is what susceptible people are being taught. People with a below average IQ are often, in spite of the media environment we live in, great people. It would help if they weren’t being corrupted in an information environment deliberately meant to keep them as stupid as possible. Don’t blame that on the average Joe’s, but talk radio, fox news, etc., and the historically racist culture they live in.
montanareddog
My dystopian novel would be set in a world where the US president has the power to project his thoughts in real time and take up space in everyone’s head. Then the US elects a lunatic to the office. I would call it “POTUS tweets his id”
I never said it would be set in the future
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Saw it as well during its original run in Manhattan.
The film works better (as a whole) than does the play. Tighter, more nuanced and does not have the shroud of depression with which the play (at least in its original run) left one.
And that whoever was responsible for Matthew Broderick’s make-up in the movie did not receive a nod from Oscar was a first degree faux pas.
Betty Cracker
@patrick II: The question is, what to do about it. There’s so much bullshit out there, and many people, regardless of intellectual capacity, are ill-equipped to separate fact from fiction. I think schools could help address that by teaching critical thinking and research skills.
My kiddo graduated from high school last year, and there was no dedicated class or section at any point in her schooling that was specifically about conducting online research and evaluating the veracity of sources. The topic came up here and there in the context of book reports and such, but it really deserves more attention.
Luckily for my kid, her father and I passed along a fairly well-calibrated bullshit detector. But as has been noted here and elsewhere endlessly, it’s really tough for a democracy to function when citizens can’t reach consensus on empirical facts.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Especially, when it comes to the sciences, teaching and drumming in the difference between belief (of any sort, don’t necessarily mean just of a religious nature) and evidence.
Sab
@montanareddog: Hope you don’t get far with your dystopia novel. Never thought I would say that about anyone’s novel. Nothing personal.
patrick II
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with that. Some rhetoric and logic might fit in the standard education as well. As well as some serious civics courses. But there is a advantage against educating our citizenry by those who’s interest it is to keep them ignorant. Vouchers for private schools are not just about profit, but also to prevent public schools that actually teach things that might cause change to the status quo. We are swimming against a strong tide.
patrick II
@Betty Cracker:
Just to add: I am old, and when I was young not so much of our reality was built from TV and internet. We could take apart a clock and see how it worked, or various other things. We lived in a more real “reality”, and I think we were less susceptible to the kind of fantasy world people live in now. Now “reality” is not naturally evolving but being created by those with the power and knowledge to do so. Orwell wasn’t kidding.
I was reading something not long ago about how knowledgeable the average American was at the time of the American Revolution about the political theories of John Lock and Montesquieu. They were often more educated by pamphlets which were the commoner’s medium of the day, than many are today. McCluhan was right, but even more so at a time when private interests have taken control of most media and operate it in their own interest.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: Does Trump need to suppress his bigotry when that is why he’s in the White House?
The man started his political career by questioning the legitimacy of President Obama’s presidency.
He started his presidential campaign by racially profiling Mexicans.
After his p*ssy grabbing comment came out, he still won.
His supporters eat up his bigotry so he’s alright on that front.
TenguPhule
Not enough booze in the world.
JFC, is it too much to ask that Infowars be bombed back into the stone age?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Its simple. Fiction has to make sense.
Betty Cracker
@patrick II: I agree about the profit motive driving media, but I’m not so sure that’s really a new problem — it’s just that the channels have proliferated. I’m also not sure the “reality” folks lived in pre-Information Age was more “real” — to name just one example, I know I was fed a steady diet of lies about this country as a child. I don’t know what the answer is.
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, the only true thing that came out of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ mouth yesterday when she was attempting to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior is that people knew what they were getting when they voted for Trump. It was obvious he was not only a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue but also an asshole with no character. They wanted that!
montanareddog
@Sab: too late to write the novel – somebody stole the idea for a reality show
weaselone
@patrick II:
I don’t necessarily think the correlation between IQ and believing this crap is necessarily a strong one or even exists. High IQ people are probably just as capable of swallowing this BS and are more capable of constructing elaborate arguments to support their positions.
Yoda Dog
It’s been my motto since 11/9/16.
Mezz
Shots Fired! Shots Fired!
ICYMI (and I healthily loathe these two) – WaPo allowed the two hosts to write an op-ed, which the Post published. Article title: “Donald Trump is Not Well.” Since it’s a stupid “he said/they said” and they’re arguing against a proven pathological liar, I don’t really care about the denials. But holy sh*t near the end there are shots fired!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Holy shit – Harold Ford is leaping out of his studied centrism and carried out against the portion of the electorate that supports Trump.
Remember that “Basket of Deplorables”? Hillary was right.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Must be an impostor, Harold Ford Jr. would never do that.
bystander
@m0nty: Spielberg is currently working on a movie about the Pentagon papers. But I don’t know any straight narrative retelling of Watergate.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Twitler is plotting a widespread global trade war against even the advice of most of his mediocre cabinet, primarily because his idiot, deplorable base wants it.
p.a.
@Patricia Kayden: They’ve always been here; nativism, Red Scare, McCarthyism etc but in the past would lapse into electoral apathy after any disastrous-for-the-state victory followed by election defeat. The true ‘genius’ of the religious right, con thinktanks and Fux News/24 hour news cycle is keeping them engaged all the time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Has Congress delegated the ability to increase tariffs to the President?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It appears that he does have some latitude to do so.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Ill-intentioned men most certainly do.
different-church-lady
@Mezz: You say hypocrisy as though voters think it’s a bad thing.
Ivan X
@Mart: Apple has already stolen your idea for their computers.
different-church-lady
@Patricia Kayden: Like I’ve been saying all along: Trump is a symptom. Voters are the disease.
Mezz
@different-church-lady: And that’s the part that is really terrifying: That Man’s followers will simply refuse to see anything wrong, or anything in conflict.
I came to a similar alarming realization back in the day with Dobelieu. Like he actually, genuinely believed his own nonsense was true, and that what he was doing would work. A true believer (why Pence is equally terrifying). And normal people are rightly horrified, but Cheeto and Cheeto’s supporters just say “Meh, what’s the big fuckin deal?”
kd bart
This colony is somehow connected to The Clinton Foundation, right? The kids make Hillary’s pants suits.
Lurking Canadian
@kd bart: obviously they’ve got a teleporter in the basement of that pizza joint. It’s how they get the kids to Mars in the first place. Wake up sheeple!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Isn’t this more-or-less the plot of Torchwood: Children of Earth?
Ohio Mom
@patrick II: Basic intelligence and education are part of it but let’s also remember that general mental health plays a role. I’m not saying that every right-winger has psychological issues — many of them are just bad people — but a good number of them do have a few loose screws, at least in my experience.