Churchhoney

Something tells me Jer would try to depict himself as all these things if he were in the company of somebody who respected these things!...... Just the way he obviously depicts himself as a super-conservative with MacArthur but as a modern guy with modern forward-thinking deas when he's showing off for the general public that knows him from tv, etc. .... I think JV is pretty well practiced at being different people for different audiences......Possibly because he doesn't actually stand for or believe in anything. He just craves attention and admiration from all.

Maybe the vintage store's just owned by somebody they know from church or the neighborhood or something. Everybody they know probably wants to see whether they can benefit from a free (or at least low-cost) ride on their fandom and followership. ETA: The store's home page says they carry styles and looks "from all eras," and their stuff is both curated and reworked. So that's why it's called "Chance." Probably run by a stylist/designer-type person.

Yep. And vice versa, too. At one point I used to write about this stuff fairly often, but I was mostly off the religion beat for a while. .... And when I went back on it, a decade or so ago, I was shocked when I heard a couple of presidents of SBC seminaries talking up their own Calvinist beliefs..... So now it seems to be all in the family......Greetings, my homophobic and misogynistic brother!

Yeah, I expect you're right. Plus, the theological allegiances increasingly overlap now, anyway. Conservative Baptists and conservative Calvinists are now buddy-buddy something pretty unheard of for centuries and, really, until just a couple decades ago. . Now it's mostly melting into one big conservative-Protestant pot. Even some conservative Catholics mix in the pot these days. I guess the individual groups are getting small enough compared to everybody else that unifying gives a strength-in-numbers feeling that more conservative Christians are cherishing now.

They've been going regularly to the Calvinist G3 meetings the past few years, too. And while Bin has a Calvinist background, his current church doesn't seem to be affiliated with that either. Meanwhile, I don't think they've turned up at an IBLP/ATI event for some time (could be wrong about that)..... In any case, I've wondered whether all this attending of events that they haven't been officially affiliated with is an attempt to gain more prominence as IBLP is dying (and their tv fame has been cut off)...... I think Jessa has had a sneaking fondness for being a big-time national Christian influencer -- And Bin married her partly out of horniess and partly because, like Der and Jer, he wanted to ride her fame to some big religion-related job..... So maybe he's been trying to cast a wider net among the conservative Protestants, hoping his big-time job is out there.......When he tried his youtube relaunch, he brought on some guys he'd hung with at the G3 -- doing them the favor of putting them on a channel related to the famous Duggars, doncha know. That crashed pretty quickly. But attendance at more major conferences suggests that he hasn't yet given up....Jer ultimately got it to work for him, after all. However, Jer has managed to lie to the larger public about the actual beliefs and preaching of the people he's hooked up with, While Bin conversed openly with his conservative-Calvinist guests about the demonic nature of "same-sex attraction" and so on. And then apparently shut down his youtube channel again because the public response was so negative.

Great line....great irony. Of course, what's also true is that the whole "book" is a rant about "moral bankruptcy," as defined by Gothard......And he defines it in a way that's quite familiar to us from Duggartown..... And neither BG or any of his followers see anything ironic about it. For example -- One kind of "moral bankruptcy" that can destroy you is the failure to forgive those who offend against you. Gothard riffed on this fruquently, and especially stressed the imperative to forgive those who offend against you sexually by some kind of molestation. " God will not forgive us if we refuse to forgive our offenders. GJ D 2 (Read Matthew 18:21-35.) • If we translate the word forgive as "release," then we understand how God is not able to release us until we release an offender. By refusing to forgive an offender, the offended one is in bondage to his own resentment. This destructive emotion will continue to bind him until he releases his offender. Only then will God be able to release him. " (language in here....lol .... the offender needs to experience "release" while the offended remains in "bondage." Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud.") Gee, I wonder why BG was so hot on this.....Could it be because he was a lifelong sexual offender? (and so was his brother and business partner....) Yep. I think that has a lot to do with it. Gee, I wonder if the Duggs followed him on that rule? ....Maybe the answer is "Yes.? And there's the "moral bankruptcy" of DEBT......Debt, according to BG, arises from a whole bunch of sins and thus constitutes a sin in itself....And is he talking about mortgages and college loans and credit cards? Oh, yes, indeed. ... The moral bankruptcy called debt, he says, is a SIGN that you are secretly deeply mired in several other very serious sins -- notably greed, impatience, laziness and pride. .... So think of that the next time you remember that you have a mortgage. Because that's your moral bankruptcy, according to thsee people. We know how much the Duggs push that one. They certainly pushed it big time on the prospective sons-in-law, for example. .... Rather get fired from your job than use a credit card to pay for necessary car repairs so you can get to work, they told Der. ..... So none of this Gothard stuff was a minor thing in Duggar lives. They really really swallowed this shit and have always been spouting it. They have been deep deep deep in this sick cult created by a misogynistic sexual molester. And he's convinced them that it's the rest of the world that's got the moral bankruptcy.

Yep, right out of Wisdom Book #35. Where the word "bankrupt" or one of its derivatives appears 77 times! .... Great reading for 8-year-olds! (or mental 8-year-olds, like Meeeechelle) Here's the "bankruptcy" section of the Table of Contents -- HOW DOES BANKRUPTCY TEACH FORGIVENESS? • What are the two types of bankruptcy? . . . . . . . . . . . 1784 • How have new laws multiplied bankruptcies? ....... 1785 • How is bankruptcy a punishment for creditors as well as for debtors? ...... 1786 • What are God's principles related to bankruptcy? .... 1787 • How should creditors view and treat debtors? . . . . . . . 1789 You can have the book for your very own, right here -- I highly recommend looking through one of these. Because they're insane. And yet they're written in a style that clearly suggests to dazed and dazzled true believers, especially but not entirely fairly ignorant ones, that they come from somebody who really knows the score, I think. I mean, the "bankruptcy" stuff talks about how chemical reactions relate to bankruptcy, among other things. There's a totally whacked out but very thorough worldview here that BG used to sell his and his cult's superiority to many many people. https://homeschoolersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/wisdom-booklet-35-p1743-1794.pdf OR you can see ALL of the Wisdom Books, right here! Then you and yours can be as confused, deluded and brainwashed highly informed and wise as a Duggar. https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/wisdom-booklet-archive-index/

Well, that's exactly what Gothard's "Wisdom Books" say. That's what he and his fellow lunatic "authors" claimed to be "teaching" the ATI/IBLP children. That's one of the reasons they proclaimed (and the Duggars followed them in proclaiming) that ATI/IBLP-educated kids were always mature far beyond their years. (rather than the opposite, as they actually are...) So MEEEEchelle didn't make it up. She's just following the insane nonsense that her cult leaders spouted as they wrote their insane homefooling course materials.

Ah, my wishful thinking led me to miss the final rule and assume the earlier rule would hold! ....Always a mistake with regs that get disputed for a long time!. No wonder this rule was so long debated. I'm in favor of more attention paid to good behavior for most people -- but, wow....interesting that they decided to do this in cases like these..

He did the same kind of thing in Texas. Being self-centered and ungrateful -- and failing to even pretend othewise -- is pretty much who he is, it seems. I guess I noticed because I felt he had a crap character early on.....For starters, one of his jobs at the Laredo chuch was to write the website. And the whole time he was there the website had a ton of stuff about him and a paean to his parents -- the most godly people he's ever known (I assume because they gave birth to him). But he had virtually nothing to say about Jingle. And -- the worst thing, to me -- he said absolutely nothing about the other people who did the bulk of the work in the place....No mention of them. No listing of them Definitely no praise or gratitude for them.............. 1) he said more than once -- including on the Roloff's podcast -- that he ran that church singlehandedly, when it was quite clear that it was actually "run" out of the planting church in San Antonio, and several guys preached a whole lot of the sermons because Jer was gone so much; 2) he also said not word one about the other people who worked in the place, EVER, while he was there or when he was saying his goodbye to Texas -- not the ones who maintained it or the ones who did the weekday congregation meetings -- nobody); and 3) he didn't produce one public word that I saw -- EVER -- about any gratitude to the guy who, at Chuck V's request. gave Jer the Laredo job when he had zero training and zero experience. Which I think is stunning for somebody who was handed a job and a career when they had no qualifications whatsoever. I think most people would say quite a few public thanks to that person. ... But that apparently never even occurred to JV. (doubt he offered much private gratitude either, but since I can't swear to that...) So he's got a record on this kind of crap. ..... When people show you who they are, believe them the first time, I guess..... I suppose Jingle's lucky she was raised by two creeps who see their kids as numbers rather than names and write the same birthday greetings to every kid while signing themselves "Mom and Dad Duggar," because their greetings are aimed at impressing JB and M's adoring fans and not at their children at all ......They gave her low expectations about how people treat you, I imagine. And to be happy in her marriage it seems pretty clear she needs those low expectations.

Yeah, I expect JB's accountants and lawyers counsel that both kinds of IRAs are to be avoided! Find some other way that might give you NO tax liability EVER!

Not a lot of people sell enough to get royalties these days. But I'm sure they got a reasonable advance on each book. They'll only get royalties if the books sell enough to cover their advance....and then sell more. So if the books keep selling, they'll get royalties down the line..... But if I were the Vuolos, I wouldn't bank on it! Those books don't look like perennial strong sellers to me -- especially since their tv presence is gone....

I think it'd be hard to escape paying self-employment tax (for Social Security/Medicare) for all these years, although I wouldn't put it past Jim Bob to send lawyers/accountants around to everybody with plans to try and avoid it. A lot of their earnings have been liable for that tax over the years, like the tv earnings. Any earnings Jer gets from speeches. Generally influencers are considered independent contractors working for the companies they promote. So they're supposed to pay the self employment tax...... So if they're not illegally avoiding those taxes, they should have some accumulated Social Security backup. Since you're on your own with IRAs, though, it'd surprise me if Duggars did anything with them. JB's no doubt told them to prefer llcs!.....After all, when you retire you WILL have to pay some income taxes on the IRA money. .....

The thing is, though, they DID spew, spout and hate publicly. The petition was made very very public. But -- it only was able to become as public as a bunch of private citizens can make a statement about ethics and morality without help from the media. It was fully intended to be a very public reprimand and warning to every CHristian in the nation who didn't go along with their condemnation of any and all social-justice type activity as an actual damnable personal affront to God. (that clearly was intended to call out many Black church leaders, for example) And MacArthur and his gang did everything they possibly could to disseminate and publicize the petition far and wide. There were press releases and a very prominent website and lots of talking it up by the leaders of the plan. They got hundreds of the most major Protestant voices they could find to publicly sign it and pass the word. There are multiple youtube videos with MacArthur and others talking it up. Many of them talked about it in giant conference centers. In no way was it put it out there as private conversation. The originators very much wanted it to become a major rallying point for right-minded Christians nationwide. To that end, they solicited as many signatures as they could get from the most influential people they could find. And thousands of influential Christians did sign it -- publicly on the website (which they tried to thoroughly publicize). The only reasons that it didn't BECOME much of a publicly heard issue is that the media didn't report much on it. It didn't come equipped with gun-toting pastors or a groundswell of public marching etc. And, it was mostly written in kind of stuffy MacArthur-ish language. So it made a faint splash with a small amount of mainstream media coverage. Nothing bleeding. No funny costumes. It was merely a very intense statement from a very large group of religious leaders calling any and all activity aimed at calling out social-justice problems and striving to fix them or even asking for them to be addressed as a direct and very serious sin against God himself. (not exacggerating -- that's exactly what it says) I consider that a big deal, and I think a lot of people would if they actually heard about it. But it's not the kind of thing that "bleeds and leads" the media. It's a mere IDEA, which media doesn't really care for. Even if it's a very intense idea with potentially very large consequences, good or bad. So MacArthur and company never got the major media megaphone that they absolutely wanted for their pronouncement -- and that they made no secret of wanting. And without the megaphone, most people never realized they'd MADE a public statement. So since they INTENDED this to be very very public, I would never give them a pass by saying "well, they only talked their racist, misogynistic and homophobic talk in private, so it's NBD." They didn't talk in private. They fully intended to speak this very very very loudly. They made perfectly plain that this WAS what they intended. And were quite disappointed that their public launch of it fizzled the way it did. They couldn't control the fact that media outlets weren't interested, no matter what press releases they sent out.

Things definitely changed for the better (for the world -- and for the worse, for Josh), when the real-life molestations became part of the conversation. That plus a few other Josh actions such as the exact nature of the material he gravitated to really "enhanced" things for him, all right. The excellent part is that the much higher number is a hundred percent his own fault...... And, given that the whopping majority of men in that DOJ district who are convicted of the exact crimes Josh is do get somewhere between about 6 and 8 and a half years -- i.e., the 32-34 level --he clearly differs from the norm. Guess that shows that, far being among the "best" of humanity, as his nutso neighbor says, he's among the worst of CSA convicts. .... I wish this fact could somehow penetrate the thick skulls of his parents and wife. Seems to me everybody in the family would benefit -- if painfully -- from a strong dose of realism about this.

Ah, yes. More support for the proposition that her longtime nickname is SO well deserved -- "Famy" Unfortunately, her publicity tactics may still kind of work for her as long as the tabs keep wanting to write about this. There aren't many potential sources they can portray as "insiders," most likely. An excellent side benefit of the Duggs slowly fading from the radar will be Famy doing likewise. ,,,,Eventually.

Exactly. Plus, literary language -- and even academic literary critics -- have smiled at using "Bright" in the adverb way for hundreds and hundreds of years. And, whatever we think of the Vuolos, their kids' book intends to be a literary book. (The carol that starts "The moon shines bright, the stars give a light a little before 'tis day" may go back as far as the 16th century and has been showing up in anthologies ever since, for example) I do wish Jer-knew that the "grammatically correct" way is "brightly." After all, his graduate degree and his manner of preaching are supposedly grounded in the parsing and analysis of texts so he can "teach" parishioners what god REALLY means in the bible. .... But I imagine that ship sailed about 30 years ago when Jer probably decided he had zero interest in academics but a lot in standing up in front of people being admired and listened to.... That aside, though, I don't think his book title is wrong. Plus, would anybody who knew stuff like that and cared about it EVER marry a Duggar, even Jingle? I doubt it.

That's the general rule. But there's a big list of offenses to which that doesn't apply, though. (of course, in typical big-bureaucracy fashion, you can't so easily find that list!!) And child-related sex offenses, including pornography, are one category of offenses that are ineligible for the good-time credits.

It is true. There's a pretty long list of offenses that make you ineligible for federal good time credit, and any type of sex-related offenses connected to minors makes you ineligible.

And -- mega unfortunately -- all too likely some of her GRANDKIDS, too. .... Anybody think Spurge and company will ever get into an actual school? I hope they do, but the chances are looking pretty slim. Or Josh's unfortunate seven? .Or Joy's kids, maybe.. The Duggars -- spreading crap ideas and utter ignorance farther than you even thought possible.

I guess the Duggars' and TLC's tireless efforts to portray the TTH fam as super-"wholesome," super-godly, super-moral and super-adorable paid off, in the minds of at least the idiot neighbors.

Maybe JB and M told them they'd sell them land at a nice discount, but they'd only determine the discount after the Bs submitted the letters of recommendation at the TTH for approval. I suppose it didn't happen in such a shady way. But I wouldn't put that past JB and M, actually.

David Waller's been a Duggar ghostwriter before. I can imagine him helping her out a bit on this, maybe. They're both completely soaked in Gothard speak and Gothard "concepts." But DW's a little less ignorant and little less brainfoggy than Meeechelle.

I think nerve of that kind may be about Josh's only "strength." That and a certain glibness and an ability to project an arrogant composure, no matter what. Other than those attributes, he seems to be a weakling in every respect. He's a really really unfortunate combo of poisonously intersecting nature-driven and nurture-driven traits, I suppose. So depressing that he has seven kids.

Yep, Good point. I thought of that after I wrote what I wrote! ... I think the possibility still stands that she was right about the numbers but wrong about how much came from social media.... THey probably got their advance for the first book in 2020. They were on tv throughout 2020, not jsut part of the year, right? And Jer's regularly done events not sponsored by the Masters Seminary but by some other conservative-Calvinist groups, including during Covid. It's just that they were online.....So it seems to me those payments would still have added up to a big chunk of $100,000, gross. With social media just putting over that line.... Or maybe they somehow get paid huge amounts for all those new shoes Jer's got them walking around in! ..... I mean, Jingle has had a very vexed record when it comes to shilling stuff on SM. It's hard to think of any of her shilling gigs that have lasted very long..... But maybe Jer makes bank from the pen people or something? Or the Calvinist theology-book publisher? Hard to see that either of those would have much cash to hand on to their influencers....But on the other hand, they probably don't attract many influencers with followers over half a million people either....So maybe Jer's sheer numbers make him a very valuable property to them? Kinda baffling, in any case, to me.....!