Churchhoney

Good point. This is part of why their "schooling" "system" enrages me so much. They're clearly bringing along yet another generation in exactly the same way. And if JB's moola doesn't sustain them all for life, it's going to be a pretty sight as the younger people who didn't seek out or invent this situation but are just following mom's and pop's commandments (alleged to be the commandments of Jesus) are forced to seek gainful employment outside the bubble.

She must have the kind of hair that looks like that when you tie it back really tightly? My hair disappears like that if it's tied back....Looks worse than Jingle's, because it's lighter-colored than hers. I look like a bald alien.

So I see the oatmeal fad is still going strong.

Lawn-mowing ministry with Dwain Swanson? 😁

This reminds me of what happened back in 2015 when a somewhat prominent communications consultant who'd specialized in working with conservative-Christian celebs when they'd had pr problems went to the TTH for a tryout with JB and M. That was part of the guy's process pre-hire, so he and the prospective client could find out whether they worked well together before signing a contract. The guy, who I think may have operated out of the Cincinnati area at the time?, spent several days in Arkansas with the Duggs. And then he left and gave at least one substantial interview with -- I think -- a Christian media outlet about why he wouldn't be working with them. In the interview, which got quoted in other outlets, he explained that he talked with them about the importance of humility and honesty and thoughtfulness in public communications when you're repairing your reputation after some problematic thing. But they made clear that they weren't interested in listening to a word he said. And they certainly weren't interested in following his advice, or anybody's if it involved tamping down their arrogance. He was so horrified and found them such crazy outliers among the people he'd dealt with that when he left he believed that to protect his professional reputation he needed to publicly announce that he was not acting in any way as their consultant. JB and the court yesterday kinda sounds like that all over again. ....

Wonder how much these events might lurk silently and maybe even unconsciously behind the bustup with and the shunning of Jill. (not that we know this was Jill, but we do know that she was -- allegedly -- the snitch at a later date, where another sister was the victim....but still....)

There are many many kinds of criminal cases. But when you compare them, just as in any other realm of life, you'll get more sensible answers if you try to compare things that have some similarities. Casey Anthony's was a case involving a wildly different crime and a wildly different kind of crime. With evidence of many kinds, with very little that was straightfforward to prove. Like many if not all murders, there were many many unique things about that case. Many things depended on humans testifying to things that were not at all cut-and-dried. And that's always a source of doubt for the juries. By contrast, Josh's is quite a generic case. These particular prosecutors and LE folks, and the judge, have won numerous guilty pleas and convictions in virtually identical-to-this cases over the past few years. They've been through this exact process, using literally the exact same investigatory tools, many times. So have DOJ offices around the country, because the case is part of national program of prosecuting people for these exact crimes. LE and federal prosecutors know how to prosecute this particular kind of case. Unlike Casey Anthony's case, Josh's is a case that has many factual and technical pieces of evidence. I've been on a lot of juries and I know for a fact that such pieces of evidence are not where juries' main doubts come from. That kind of exhibit has an explanation, there's a lot that's black and white about it, much of it is clearly not subjective. Each juror can look at it and examine it again and again. Those exhibits will be in the jury room. So no matter what anybody says, that kind of evidence raises fewer questions for jurors than the multiple kinds of evidence they had in the Anthony trial, and definitely raises fewer questions than human witnesses do. And while they're talking with potential human witnesses now, it's not at all clear that they'll call many of them during the actual trial. This trial really isn't going to proceed like the Anthony trial in almost any way. So is something like Anthony a good comparison for this trial? Or are the many trials this court has conducted on identical charges to Josh's charges a better comparison? Seems to me that's pretty obvious. Comparing two things that are very much alike is probably going to give you a better idea of likely outcomes than comparing things that are extremely dissimilar. of course, anything is "possible." Most anything we can think of in the whole world is "possible." But does that mean everything is equally likely? Of course not. What's likeliest here is that this case will proceed more like the numerous other cases with the exact same procedures and kinds of evidence and government teams that have already happened in this very court. And that it'll proceed less like the Casey Anthony, which which is very very very different from it. So....Yeah, of course it's possible that he'll get the Casey Anthony result. Because just about anything is at least remotely possible. But it's way way way way more likely that he'll get the result more similar to those the other guys that came to this court in the past few years facing the exact same charges got.....Guilty. With about five to seven and a half years of prison time It's a terrible waste of mental energy to worry much about things that reason tells us are only remotely "possible," I think. Because most of the time we're going to get the results that are "likely." Since nobody here seems to even know Josh Duggar, I think our mental health is much better served by remembering that for his case, history provides the odds -- and the odds are that he'll probably end with a moderate prison sentence. And if the remote possibility does come true, well, there's plenty of time to fret about it then......Our worrying about that right now isn't going to help a damn thing.

"During his testimony, Jim Bob repeatedly said he couldn't remember the details of Josh's admissions that he had touched the victims, identified during the proceeding as Jane Does 1 through 4." https://people.com/tv/josh-duggar-child-porn-case-jim-bob-subpoenaed-to-testify/ So....JB is lying here., which to my mind makes him an even worse jerk than I knew he was....or he was utterly traumatized by Josh's molestation of the girls, which is possible, but more than I ever would have given him credit for and quite different, to my mind, from the stuff he claimed in his tv interview.....or he truly didn't give a flying fuck about his young daughters being molested because that's just how frigging selfish he is. ... ..... In any of the three cases -- disturbing. Is that just me? ETA: I don't think this story'll really be great for JB's career (of course, we know now he apparently has a huge nest egg, so maybe that doesn't matter, but still....).....Do you really wanna buy a used car or a flipped house from this guy? Do you think you can trust a word he says about a crack in the chassis....or about the septic tank?

He watched them being mightily harmed to really get him off when he masturbated, though. The jury's going to see exactly what got him off. ... And they know he didn't immediately trash those absolutely horrifying videos and throw the computer out and loudly repent of ever watching them. There are very few people who could be shown that entire scenario and have any thoughts of him not being deeply culpable in some way. From what I've read about deliberations over sentencing guidelines, I'm pretty sure this is another reason why the minimum sentences aren't set extremely high for this crime. If they were, then in a jury room the "but he didn't actually harm anybody, so should we really send him to prison for 15 or 20 years?" would be much more likely to come into the conversation, and understandably so, perhaps...... With the lower minimum sentence, the prosecution has a far better chance of getting jurors to say to themselves, "Well, he didn't harm a child personally, but he enjoyed them being harmed so much that it gave him orgasms he was willing to pay for and risk prison for. And he didn't delete or destroy those horrifying pictures of used and suffering children. So he should face some personal suffering just for being that horrible a person. I can see giving him five or six years for it." My own jury experience also tells me that most humans seem to want to do the right thing when it comes to something as serious as a jury deliberation. .... I know there are some people who'll be frivolous about it, but in multiple jury deliberations I've seen, I haven't seen anyone who really takes the defense or the prosecution arguments lightly. Being on juries has really increased my faith in the human race, because people do generally understand why it's critical -- for both victims and accused -- to arrive at the best conclusion they can.

Yeah, I think she has to count on her whole (positive) audience being super-Christians who are madly infatuated with her because she represented their brand on television.......She clearly has a lot of those now. But it seems her success probably depends on how long an infatuation like that lasts. I don't know what the statistics suggest about the ability to maintain the perks of fame by people who were featured in media other than social media and then fade to being pretty exclusively on social media. Hard to see how she could pick up much of a new audience of super-Christians in search of a "famous" person to identify with, now that she's off tv., since potential fans who didn't get to "know" her as part of the shows will now see hardly anything of her except in her social media. I suppose it's possible for her to pick up new fans that way, but she'll have to do it entirely with posts of her own that actually entice. She won't have the whole extended-family story to bring people in now. And that's what really super-powered her fame before. By far her most successful posts are about infants and, especially, newborns. And it's the successful posts that bring in the kind of money you can live on. So it looks like continuing to pump out kids might ultimately be key to making a go of it.

Well, I guess they have to do this. They still have a couple rooms without lifesize photos of them kissing in the wall decor.

😟 One of the many reasons why these younger men still are very very eager to keep the patriarchy. ☹️

And yet, compared to the $2.5 million he dropped on Tony Orlando's old Branson theater earlier this year, it's apparently just a modest spend. JB's semi-sleazy car and real-estate businesses have done well by him, clearly. ... And, of course, he does have a lot of llcs for keeping his cash well away from the tax people, he lives in a free house and his 19 kids used to buy used shoes.

The hell with Janessa. It's MAMA that has to look good. ☹️

One who's been emotionally and mentally stunted and crippled by his parents day in and day out since birth and scared shitless by them, too, plus surveilled to a faretheewell in addition. And pummelled and called shit as a little guy to such an extent that he's the poor warped creature we've seen. The Rodrigui live a million miles from average even though they aren't chained to the beds like the kids who make the news. And while some people may maintain parts of their brain for their own use after that kind of treatment, a lot won't be able to hold on to much of their own perception or will.....They'll start unconsciously cooperating with the people who want them in the mental prison.

Jer has picked up the Duggar "make dumb faces for the camera" technique. Better to forget that silly trick, Jer. It doesn't make you look like an influencer. It makes you look like a lame fourth grader.

Okay, so that's weird stuff about money and weird stuff about praying. Maybe Jessa oughta start talking about things with Spurgeon more and rushing online to report his sometimes distressing comments less. And Bin should talk more with the kids in ways they can understand instead of reading the KJV to them constantly. Or, alternately, if Jessa's making any or all of this stuff up in the belief that it's cute or funny or interesting, she should stop right now. Of course, since this is how she and Bin plan for her to make their living from now on, she won't.

Spurgeon does sound like an obnoxious little shit. But he's just turned six, and his mother's been training him to be an obnoxious little shit, day in and day out for years now. And it seems Bin never steps in to steer things in a different direction. Jessa gives him positive attention whenever he says pretentious crap for the camera. I feel really bad for the obnoxious little shit. He didn't start this accelerating train.,,,,.And it's likely to really bite him in the ass if he ever has to mingle with other people, young or old.....So I suppose it's actually good that he may not ever have to do that. 😟

All SOP at the TTH, guys. 😁

Derick -- Willfully Ignorant Drinker of Kool-Aid. ... He swallowed all the Duggar lines uncritically, And at that point Jill probably believed all her parents' bullshit about how educated their children are and sold the same line. I do think the kids were kept ignorant of it. I mean, they had them doing commercials for College Minus and pretending that they were educating to a high standard and that they would send them to college -- and I believe at least JB and likely both of them knew the whole time that they had no intention of doing that. I guess that's part of why he got so bitter later. You asked for it, Der. 😁

Yep. But it looks like a lot of the Gothard families just decided to refuse to believe that. And it's especially weird because quite a few Gothardite parents, men especially but also women, are pretty well educated. They have a fair number of MDs, for example......Of course, some of them do send their kids to college. .... Gothard didn't exactly tell them not to, but he preached such a lot about the virtues of being isolated that it almost amounted to the same thing. ....That's where an idea like College Minus Plus (I forget what the names its later spinoffs are and don't know if they even still exist...) came from, of course....

Lessons from Seewald World: This is how kids behave when their primary home learning and entertainments consist of readings-aloud from the Old Testament. (KJV)

Makes me wonder if B and J are subliminally worried sick about money but don't openly admit it.......So they respond instead by sniping and snarling about anything they have to pay for and anybody they have to pay. Of course, if that did happen to be the problem, then Jessa should polish up her cooking and shopping skills to the point where they can easily eat well and more cheaply at home. .I expect one part of the issue is also Jessa's own apparent discomfort being around people she doesn't know really well -- and a matching lack of social skills that she could even impart to her kids. And the kids probably have little contact with strangers or even acquaintances. So J doesn't see any reason to teach them even the minimum requirements for how to interact with "outsiders" (whom she doesn't like anyway, no matter who they are, I'd imagine) Yep. And proudly labeled Sayings of Spurgeon and Seewald Kids Say.... She's not shy at all about owning it. I guess I don't underestimate her after all. 🙂

Gosh, I think I'd've proudly published it for a couple million people to see. \s Not. Talk about cringeworthy.....Yikes.

Seems to me their "schooling" was probably so incredibly boring, incomprehensible, and uninspiring that the only thing any of them wanted at the end of it was for it to stop. They had no real teachers; they had terrible terrible materials; literally everything they did was rote learning; and they were constantly preached to from birth that following your brain instead of God's specific words is evil, that schools and school buses are horrifying awful evil places, and that they're receiving the epitome of American education. I think after all that many are likely to both disdain any school except the one they just "graduated" from -- which has been sold to them as the best ever -- and they've been so bored and annoyed out of their skulls by this supposedly best school in the world that they've absolutely no willingness to try out one of those lesser schools.. Nevertheless, over the years, some kids have expressed an interest in pursuing learning that would lead to some career -- Josiah talked about being an accountant, one of the lost girls (was it Jenny?) talked about being a veterinarian or a doctor, and Jill talked about nursing and even tried, according to her lights, to become a halfway-trained-fundie-legit basic primitive midwife. Heck, even Joshley talked about law school once upon a time. But all the spark seems to have been knocked out of Josiah at some point. And when she even tried to master the training as a fundie-not-really-a-midwife midwife -- and, I think, looked into what she'd have to learn to be an actual SBC missionary with Derick -- what Jill apparently learned was that her so-called great "education" had left her with a Mt. Everest-scale climb to attain even those relatively modest goals, despite what she'd been led to believe. And it looks doubtful that, given the family tradition she sees ahead of her, any Lost Girl actually aspires to a college education any more (although I'd hope for a true dreamer down there somewhere.)