Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Sunday Thoughts

Now that the U.S. Navy has confirmed what they call UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), better known as UFOs, Republicans can now work themselves into a frenzy of hatred for a whole new group of aliens. I can hardly wait 'til Senor Trumpanzee proclaims:

I, President Donald J. Trump, am calling for a total and complete shutdown on these saucermen entering our airspace until we can find out what the hell is going on.

Republicans have always lived for finding new groups of people to hate, so now that we may be getting some official recognition that ETs are real, they will be wildly relieved. Nothing like some new fresh blood to be the target of your insecurities and derangement. I can just hear Lou Dobbs on FOX "News."

This is a joyous day! For those of us who were concerned that we were running out of people and things to hate, proof of aliens is indeed a godsend! Oh Happy day!

And don't you worry, Republicans. Your Republican Jesus will save the day with his super death ray vision, so just put on your Make Earth Great Again tinfoil hats and rest assured that your boys Trump and Stephen Miller have already met with Republican Jesus and mapped out a "tremendous, very powerful, very strong plan to deal with the situation." Well, at least Trump may think he's met with Republican Jesus, but it was probably just Mike Pence in a bathrobe.

If Aliens Decide To Visit, Would You Want Trump In Charge? Just Asking For A Friend

For some reason, the government wants to keep its UFO programs secret. The Pentagon hides the UFO office and makes it almost impossible to find in its budget requests. Congress obliges with increasingly secretive appropriations for the military UFO hunters, even though the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program went the way of the dodo bird with the retirement of its greatest advocate, Harry Reid. Yesterday, the NY Times had a team on the case, which reported that "For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by the New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze. The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties."

The shadowy program-- parts of it remain classified-- began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.



On CBS’s 60 Minutes in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.

Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft-- including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee-- Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat-- also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.

While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”

James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”

Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.

In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an emailed statement, referring to the Department of Defense.

But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.

“Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.

U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.

Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”

Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.

Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.

“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.

The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized.

The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”

He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)

During the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his plane for miles.

None of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.

...The program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.

“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.

Mr. Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.

In the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”

I certainly do not know-- and I had 3 scary but not aggressive UFO experiences in the 1970s (long after I had quit using drugs, one near Sitges south of Barcelona, one on the North Sea near Alkmaar northwest of Amsterdam and one in Noe Valley in San Francisco). The most physical one was on the beach in Holland when my girlfriend and I, late at night, watched a tiny speck of light rapidly descend and hover just above us, as big as a barn-- a big barn. We never saw who was driving but they communicated with us both telepathically. They wanted us to come with them-- seemed completely aware of what was going on with us (a breakup)-- but didn't insist. In fact they were very amicable and reassuring that they had no intention of forcing us to do anything. When we said we weren't going to go with them, they said bye-bye and took off and because a speck of light again. Years later in San Fran, they indicated it was my last chance to come with them and I got the feeling it was either the same beings or beings that the ones on the beach near Alkmaar had told about me. I said no and they said bye-bye again. I never heard from them again.

Blink-182's big breakthrough third album, Enema of the State had sold over 15 million copies when lead singer Tom DeLonge left the band. If the anti-Hillary Wikileaks leaks are to be believed, DeLonge has some kind of a relationship with Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta (a lobbyist and former Obama chief of staff). Podesta's in a documentary DeLonge produced about UFOs and the two of them emailed about UFOs as well. Hillary's campaign didn't want to talk about UFOs but certainly blamed the Podesta-Blink-182 leak on the Trump's pal Vlad in the Kremlin.

Leaked Emails: UFOs, Crushing Bernie...

No, not just worse choice, WORST CHOICE EVER

I've been trying to avoid the wikileaks e-mails, primarily evacuees I don't think there's any to know what's real, what's fake, what's doctored... The whole batch was released as a Russian propaganda effort to help elect Putin's candidate, Donald Trump. But I couldn't resist taking about the Mike Honda-Ro Khanna congressional race in terms of a leaked letter from Khanna's sleaze-bag campaign chairman, Steve Spinner, nor, earlier, about Blink 182 and John Podesta wanting to go for an interterrestial magic carpet ride. So the door's down.

Speaking of UFO's-- I'm more than a believer-- the Daily Mail has been following Podesta's... openness to extraterrestrial life-- from innocently exchanging e-mails with former astronaut Edgar Mitchell to Podesta admirably urging Hillary to declassify UFO info and Area 51 files. Mitchell, apparently, is aware that the government has been covering up extraterrestrial presence in America for half a century. He asked Podesta to set up a meeting between himself and Obama to talk about extraterrestrials.

Podesta's assistant replied to the email saying: 'John would likely take this meeting alone first before involving the President.'

'Our government is still operating from outdated beliefs and policies' Mitchell wrote in the 2014 email.

He asked for 'a conversation with you and President Obama regarding the next steps in extraterrestrial disclosure for the benefit of our country and our planet.'

The meeting would be an opportunity for Mitchell to discuss how humans can achieve 'planet sustainability generation energies.'

The email also allegedly discussed how to explore space without colonialism and destruction. It described the U.S. government having respect for 'the wisdom and intellect of its citizens as we move into space.'

Mitchell wrote of an impending space war and that the Vatican had knowledge of aliens, RT reported.

Podesta has urged Clinton in the past to declassify information about UFOs if she becomes president.

He has advocated for documents about Area 51 to be released as well.

In 2015, Robert Fish, curator of the Apollo museum, asked Podesta how he could obtain scientific data about UFOs, one email reportedly says.

'Based on significant personal experience, I can attest that UFO hunters are looking in the wrong places.' Fish told Podesta, according to RT.

  

I saw more buzz online about a Podesta leaked e-mail about his ability to get face value Hamilton tickets than about Martians. Let alone this:

This is exactly the kind of crap I don't want to get involved with... those horrible establishment types around Hillary. Yes, we know, we know... she's not a good choice, just an infinitely better choice than the alternative. After she's in office we'll have to do what we can about minimizing the horrors of the garbage she plans to bring into government-- like hideous Blue Dog and lobbyist Blanche Lincoln, who's being talking about as a possible Attorney General.

Evangelicals May Be Abandoning Trump... But Where Do The UFOs Stand?

A member of Trump's "evangelical council," James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel, an Illinois megachurch, emailed the other members of the Trumpist council that Trump's "grab-the-pussy" comments were "truly the kind of misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless-- not the guy who gets politely ignored, but the guy who gets a punch in the head from worthy men who hear him talk that way about women... No more defending Mr. Trump as simply foolish or loose lipped."

The Satanic-controlled wing of the American evangelical movement-- hucksters and right-wing prostitutes like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Robert Jeffress, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr.-- are all firmly in thrall to Trump and 100% in his sulphuric camp. Christianity Today's editors... not so much. The influential magazine is politically neutral but the editorial on Trumpy-the-Clown wasn't. "We are especially not indifferent," executive editor Andy Crouch wrote, "when the gospel is at stake... [W]e recognize that all earthly governments partake, to a greater or lesser extent, in what the Bible calls idolatry: substituting the creation for the Creator and the earthly ruler for the true God."

This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest-- indeed, sexual assault-- might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.

And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.

...Most Christians who support Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the president’s power to appoint members of the Supreme Court. Important issues are indeed at stake, including the right of Christians and adherents of other religions to uphold their vision of sexual integrity and marriage even if they are in the cultural minority.

But there is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatry-- an attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strength-- the chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Rome-- at the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it ultimately always fails.

Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us-- in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.

That's not nearly as odd as a Facebook posting from Glenn Beck this week that said "If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice." You go, girl!



You must have liked a Blink-182 song some time in the late '90s, no? They're still around, kind of, but not really because lead singer Tom DeLonge left the band. Their big breakthrough third album, Enema of the State had sold over 15 million copies. If the Wikileaks statements are to be believed, DeLonge has some kind of a relationship with Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta (a lobbyist and former Obama chief of staff). Podesta's in a documentary DeLonge produced about UFOs and the two of them emailed about UFOs as well. Hillary's campaign doesn't want to talk about UFOs but blames the Podesta-Blink-182 leak on the Russians.