The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

Jimmy Carter ’s long public goodbye began Saturday in south Georgia where the 39th U.S. president’s life began more than 100 years ago.

A motorcade with Carter’s flag-draped casket began at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, where former Secret Service agents who protected the late president were serving as pallbearers and walking alongside the hearse as it left the medical center’s campus.

The Carter family, including the former president’s four children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, are accompanying their patriarch in a procession that will take his remains through his beloved hometown of Plains and past his boyhood home on its way to Atlanta.

Carter died at his home in Plains on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.

Families lined the procession route in downtown Plains, near the historic train depot where Carter headquartered his presidential campaign. Some carried bouquets of flowers or wore commemorative pins bearing Carter’s photo.

“We want to pay our respects,” said 12-year-old Will Porter Shelbrock, who was born more than three decades after Carter left the White House in 1981. “He was ahead of his time on what he tried to do and tried to accomplish.”

It was Shelbrock’s idea to make the trip to Plains from Gainesville, Fla., with his grandmother, Susan Cone, 66, so they could witness the start of Carter’s final journey. Shelbrock said he admires Carter for his humanitarian work building houses and waging peace, and for installing solar panels on the White House.

Carter and his late wife Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, were born in Plains and lived most of their lives in and around the town, with the exceptions of Jimmy’s Navy career and his terms as Georgia governor and president.

The procession will stop in front of Carter’s home on his family farm just outside of Plains. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times to honor his place as the 39th president. Carter’s remains then will proceed to Atlanta for a moment of silence in front of the Georgia Capitol and a ceremony at the Carter Presidential Center.

There, he will lie in repose until Tuesday morning, when he will be transported to Washington to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. His state funeral is Thursday at 10 a.m. at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains for an invitation-only funeral at Maranatha Baptist Church.

He will be buried near his home, next to Rosalynn Carter.

Honoring a good man whose decency, humility, and life's work has earned him great affection and endless respect and credit.

The bad:

Sure, any religion is kind of weird, if you look at it too closely. It is faith, after all, not science. But the group Tulsi Gabbard grew up in (and possibly is still in) sure sounds like a cult. Or to use the more polite term, a “High Demand, Closed Group,” wherein the leader was worshipped like a God and some of his followers even ate his toenails, and sand from where he’d walked. Oh sorry, were you eating?  [snip]

The group is called Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), founded by an acid-dropping white surfer guy named Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, AKA Jagad Guru, AKA Sai Young, in the 1970s, as an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas, AKA the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. 

Butler got his start as a guru teaching mediation and yoga, and was drawn to the Krishnas, but he didn’t want to shave his head or wear robes or do other Hare Krishna stuff. So he founded his own thing, which involved him living with two dozen 18-to-22-year-olds in a Quonset hut under a freeway, beating bongos and arranging his followers’ marriages.

Two of his hut-dwellers were Tulsi Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, who joined the group in 1983. After they got married they built an altar to him in their house. According to Mike’s sister, they were “bowing and prostrating to this white surfer guy — it was bizarre.”

Butler taught the group that outsiders were not to be trusted, and was paranoid that the mainstream Hare Krishnas were trying to kill him. Like Chuck McGill in “Better Call Saul” he had a fear of electromagnetic radiation, and places he stayed when he traveled were lined with tinfoil. He was a hypochondriac, and at one point he accused disciples of poisoning him through light bulb fumes. [snip]

Even not knowing a thing about the what sure sounds like a weird-ass cult that she grew up in, though, Gabbard is deeply, DEEPLY, EXTREMELY not qualified for the role of director of national intelligence.

It’s a cabinet-level position created after 9/11 that all 18 national intelligence agencies directly report to. The director is responsible for daily security briefings to the president, advises the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, and directs intelligence gathering and analysis. So she would have access to all of the stuff, every little secret the US has.

Not only does Gabbard have no intelligence experience whatsoever, or any management experience, many times she’s directly acted against US interests and pushed braindead conspiracy theories, such as repeating QAnon/Russian conspiracy-theory lies about biolabs in Ukraine.  [snip]

What could explain Gabbard’s flip-flop from Bernie-hugger to Putin apologist with tweets full of lies? In 2022, her now-deceased aunt told the Independent it was cult-fueled ambition. “​It gives me no pleasure to ​note that Tulsi’s single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.” Rejected by the Democrats, she clawed her way back to relevance by the only path available.

So, just like the boss. You’d think That Man would not want intelligence briefings potentially full of conspiracy theories and lies from the lady Russian state TV described as “our girlfriend Tulsi” shoved between his hamberder wrappers. There are literally thousands of millions of people who would be more qualified, and even loyal. But according to a Russian spokesman, he has “certain obligations.” Is giving Russia’s girlfriend a job one of them?...

So, raised in (and possibly still part of) a grifting cult, being utterly unqualified for the role of Director of National Intelligence, and a Putin apologist, reporting to another Putin apologist?  What could possibly go wrong...

The ugly:

Social media users are misrepresenting a report released Thursday by the Justice Department inspector general’s office, falsely claiming that it’s proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report’s finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events.

Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A December 2024 report released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General is proof that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a setup by the FBI.

THE FACTS: That’s false. The report found that no undercover FBI employees were at the riot on Jan. 6 and that none of the bureau’s informants were authorized to participate. Informants, also known as confidential human sources, work with the FBI to provide information, but are not on the bureau’s payroll. Undercover agents are employed by the FBI.

According to the report, 26 informants were in Washington on Jan. 6 in connection with the day’s events. FBI field offices only informed the Washington Field Office or FBI headquarters of five informants that were to be in the field on Jan. 6. Of the total 26 informants, four entered the Capitol during the riot and an additional 13 entered a restricted area around the Capitol. But none were authorized to do so by the FBI, nor were they given permission to break other laws or encourage others to do the same. The remaining nine informants did not engage in any illegal activities.  [snip]

These claims echo a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in instigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters determined to overturn Republican Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden stormed the Capitol in a violent clash with police. The report knocks that theory down. Wray called such theories “ludicrous” at a congressional hearing last year...

Wait until the MF pardons the January 6 insurrectionists "on Day 1." Wait until the Justice Department and FBI are under the control of the seditionist MAGAts.  They'll be ordering whitewash by the gallon to cover up and re-write this shameful history.  Sic transit gloria, America!