Churchhoney

Thanks....Nice to see all you guys and the conversation going on! I had two gigantic projects to do at once, and I had zero time or energy for fun.....But I have to say that I discovered duing those months that I'm not highly motivated to read about the Duggars now since 2021 seemed to shoot their ability to win friends and influence people all to hell! All I ever felt about them was outrage -- and now that they seem so weakened, my outrage doesn't have much of an object any more!

Absolutely. But luckily, Jessa and Jer seem to be the only ones truly committed to building and sustaining their influence/fame/whatever. And they're really really bad at it.... So, now that no Duggs (or their adjacents, the Bateses) are likely to get a boost from some tv network that wants to promote their whitewashed selves as a "wholesome" and "cute" and "funny" and "moral" phenomenon, they'll never see their fame or influence grow again..... So at least she's unlikely to win any additional fans into emulating her and the rest of them. Maybe without the tv-induced perks, her kids will grow up skeptical of this kind of behavior and they'll be the generation in which it stops. I hope, anyway.

Of course, in the mind of a Duggar, "reading much" is a compared-to-what situation. I do believe that she reads a little now. She's probably picked up a few "Christian wife's devotional" type books that she reads for a few minures during done some of her morning and evening devotionals -- And compared to the reading that went on and goes on in her family -- just pretend reading of the KJV, of which they don't understand a word -- a few devotional-book snippets every week probably feels like a whole lot of reading to her.

I don't know, but I'd be surprised if they don't have fairly significant investments. An endowment of some kind. One of JM's sons is a crooked stockbroker who got accused of several kinds of fraud by the SEC a couple years ago. So they're into finance. And when you run a university and a seminary besides your church, I'm sure your well aware of the value of funds. Older buildings, even churches, need a lot of upkeep, though. That'll drain the funds pretty fast. MacArrthur's also got a bunch of other entities under his umbrella, too. Like his very big communications outfit -- Grace to You. So there's money all about. That doesn't mean they wouldn't cry poor to the congregation, though. They'll want to keep bringing that money in.

Well, they clearly give Jer some other tasks to do. And I'm sure those'll increase if they keep him on after graduation. It's not as if he does nothing else. He teaches little bible classes adn gives talks to college students and he's mentioned doing some administrative tasks. He may not do anything very well, but show me a staff where everybody does. And all that stuff has to be done. Somebody has to do it. So I'm sure t they figure they're getting more for their money if they give those jobs to somebody who also has a strong social-media following. But I didn't mean that the social-media is free in the sense that Jer doesn't cost them. I meant that' it's free compared to virtually every other form of getting their name out there that you can think of, And get it out there with some perhaps slightly enticing connotations -- like a cute young tv couple with a husband who was in pro sports for a while. If you wrap a bus with with Grace Community Church advertising, you'll be seen by more locals, but you'll pay quite a bit for that privilege. If you put an ad on Facebook, you'll pay for the ad -- If you put enticing content on the church's own webpage, that's only going to reach people who already go to that page on their own. .... There's just very little way for a church to expand its reach into new groups of people, and everything you put up as advertising is a crap shoot. You almost never have a situation where you say, "Oh, we KNOW that a large chunk of people who see s this ad or this content will be interested." Johnny Mac does lots of media and has his own media channels -- but that stuff i smost likely to be found by people who already know about the church. They want some fresh eyes. The chance of making a sale to fresh eyes is never huge. But if it were an unehard of tactic, to show stuff mostly to people who probably won't be interested, why would people have been paying big money for years to put up billboards on the freeway? Of cousre, I could be wrong about this! But it's clear that practically everybody in the world with something to sell today will enthusiastically grab partners with large social-media followings as part of their publicity strategy. Those are fresh eyes and a large number of them......So virtually everybody today considers that kind of thing a bargain....Nobody considers it a sure thing. But if something's a bargain, why not do it? Just because we don't like Jeremy and think he's an annoying dumb-ass (and we're right about this!), doesn't mean they'll find him useless. He does some chores. He's an enormous and clearly very gifted suck-up. And, unaccountably, many many people with money, fame, power, influence, etc., are pleased to have suck-ups around them and often overlook that fact because they enjoy the sucking up so much.... And he brings with him a number of social-media followers that only a tiny handful of Christtianity's spokespeople can even equal, let alone surpass. In JM and company's eyes, I'd say that makes Jer pretty unebeatable as a small but potentially quite worthwhile asset!

The end game is to get knowledge of the church -- and, I guess, the implication that the church has some kind of youth factor and popular-culture aura -- out in front of as many people as possible.... .And since a fair proportion of the Duggar-Vuolo followers can be assumed to be at least mildly attracted to conservative Christianity, it's not just that there are a lot of them but there are a lot of them who might be more interested in that church than many other people on social media. So they provide high numbers of eyeballs, many of which belong to at least relatively likely customers. Just like anything else that needs people's participation and their money, churches aren't going to survive unless new people find out about them. So, just like Coke and Pepsi, they want to get and keep their name out there -- hopefully connected with things that people might look at ......And there are very few free ways to do that..... And even fewer free ways to do that to reach large numbers of people. The Duggar-Vuolo social media certrainly isn't the only thing they're using. But they're just in line with everybody else today in trying to use social media as part of their strategy. I think that's why they can keep on a suck-up like Jer and not necessarily expect him to contribute much else other than those social-media numbers. Maybe data will prove a decade or so down the line that social-media follower numbers are utterly useless for building a customer/client/congregation base.....But at this point, there's no evidence showing that. (And evidence may never show that) And there's no other equivalently low-cost game in town for reaching a ton of people -- and reaching them DAILY......How much does one radio or tv or web ad cost by comparison, for example, and it doesn't provide new content daily that people will click to.... Jer's suck-upism led him to exactly the right kind of place, I think......He really doesn't have to do a thing to be -- they hope -- contributing to their future...... They currently have a very wealthy organization that's facing a demographic and therfore a financial crisis -- but they're desperate not to let it slide (although it will slide...) Will the Vuolo-Duggar social media necessarily produce good results? No. But that's true of any form of marketing they'll try. And they're clearly going to pile on the marketing efforts as long as they can afford to keep them going. All those guys in the management of the church and the schools have tasted the delights of getting MacArthur's level of money and big-shotness, and I'm sure they'll fight tooth and nail to maintain a situation where they can live his lifestyle. The lifestyle is gonna deteriorate but I'm sure many of them are in huge denial of that fact and will fight with every weapon they can think of to stop it.

I think Jer met Bin on an occasion when Bin was visting San Antonio. Bin visited there at least few times after he got married -- because his family were in Vision Forum, which was a San Antonio-based Calvinist group. and Bin apparently carried on some acquaintances with a Vision Forum-affiliated person or persons after it collapsed. ... And Jer was connected to another major San Antonio-based Calvinist church -- Grace Community Church, San Antonio, often referred to formerly as "Tim Conway's church. That's the church that planted Jer's church in Laredo. Totally agree with you that Jer almost certainly sought Bin out in his quest to escape Laredo and the small-time, too-little-fame life. Via television or at least via the fame of a "tv star" family. And what's above is the path by which they met, I'm certain -- the San Antonio conservative Calvinist community, to which both were connected. I think his seeking out of Bin was quite similar to his later seeking out and sucking up to MacArthur.....Neither of thsee things was accidental. And although he didn't seem to put much work into his Laredo sermons. I believe he put quite a bit of work into hooking up with people who might lead him to the fame of which his slide out of pro soccer unfairly deprived him, in his opinion. In JM, Jer saw a big-time Calvinist in the LA area, and he was determined to hook up with the guy and get to the bright lights if possible. For Jer to be invited to be one of about four or five TOP-LINE, ORIGINAL signatories of MacArthur's social-justice letter in 2018 -- a year before they went to LA -- Jer had to be doing some fancy suck-up dancing. to the guy, seems to me. It's well-known that MacArthur absolutely insists that everybody brought into his orbit be intensely interrogated about how strongly they embrace all of JM's key principles. Reportedly, JM even tries to insist on that for the maintenance and other general, non-theologically-professional staff of his church and schools. So there's no way Jer got the incredible JM-awarded honor of signing that letter at the very top solely on the basis of being on tv at that point. He had to have made it very clear to Jonny Mac that he was a fervent believer in every sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. detail of that document before he was asked to be one of its top representatives. But of course what JM probably didn't know was that all Jer's expressed super-JM-y fervor was less about Jer's deep devotion to those ideas and way more about how desperate he was to get out of Laredo and into a place where he could chase media spotlights way more easily..... .Same urges that propelled him to hook up with and make nice for a prolonged period with Bin-Seewald-of-TV, via their San Antonio conservative Calvinist connections. Jer! He's gonna live forever! Baby, remember his name! ELTA: Jer was extremely low after he was cut by the Bulls. And before that, he'd really aspired to be a highly visible athlete who also brought millions to the correct Jesus. He gave an interview about how very dispirited and totally lacking in energy he was after the Bulls dumped him. So it seems as if he probably saw Texas as possibly his last chance to grab his athlete-influencer-bringer-to-Jesus dream and was on the lookout for any and all opportunities. I know Jer seems lazy in various ways. But I don't think his big quest for fame could possibly have been accidental, even though now he's so bad at social media and spends so much time playing Uno and comes off as a bit of a slug. When he was playing soccer, he absolutely told some interviewers that he was very excited about being a major athlete-Christian influencer. That he envisioned himself having more and more influence to spread. ... He was quoted talking about that in interviews way more than he talked about the actual sport....And then that version of his fame dream evaporated when the Bulls cut him.... And he was absolutely miserable over that (again, according to his own testimony in interviews). So it seems quite unlikely to me that he then just accidentally met Bin and got hooked up with a tv-famous conservative Christian family and married one of them. And then again just accidentally got hooked up with and trusted by MacArthur (no easy feat, according to many accounts)-- one of the most prominent and visible conservative Calvinist pastors in the country who also happens to live in L.A. -- aka Fameville, USA. Neither of those things was an accident, I don't think. I think a big reason why he seemed to work so little for his church in Laredo is that in his mind his really important work in that period was to insinuate himself firmly among the conservative-Christian famous. The little church in Laredo wasn't going to help with that a bit. But a tv marriage and being a top signatory of MacArthur's social-justice letter absolutely would.

I think the estimate I heard at the trial's end in mid-December was that it would be about four months before the sentencing..... There's a lot of paperwork and deliberation that goes into sentencing decisions -- more back and forth between the sides....convicted people themselves have an opportunity to submit stuff....plus the immense Covid court backup is still around and farily intense, I'd guess..

You expect him to share the artisanal coffees?

I've never heard anybody mention them. My guess is he'll stay somewhere in the MacArthur enterprise. Maybe working at Grace Church with the guys who are trying to bring more young people in or something like that. He's been offered a much bigger role there already than most other seminary students, it seems. And unlike a lot of them, he doesn't seem to have a church or a goal elsewhere that he's especially interested in, it would seem. I'm sure he has no desire to go back to Laredo. And he's probably unlikely to go back to work with his dad or anything.

Well, Jer, Marco's got a better excuse. Engliish is his second language, and he didn't start learning it till he was an adult. Unfortunately for his good sense, he seems to have learned most of his English listening to MacArthur's sermons on youtube. 😁 https://www.masters.edu/news/alumni-focus-marco-bovino.html In your case, Jer, I'd suggest wasting fewer weekend hours shoe shopping.

She's farther from it than even Jana is. And we know the size of the gulf there, since Jana's been unintentionally showing us that gulf for years now.

Based on her religious indoctrination, Ivy probably complained that the dress made her look like a slutty Disney princess and demanded that her godly parents remake it so she'd look like a stay-at-home Puritan wife instead.

Just enjoying the in-floor heating?

That's something they do fairly often, I think. And they've mentioned limos before as one of the things they've bought, too. Because they bought the limo and are driving it back to the car lot. They've gotta stop overnight somewhere. Might as well be at a mountain resort!

Well, I do see your point. But in the long run, I don't know that basing your life on a very big lie that your parents told you makes for a healthy adulthood. One way or another, these kids will have a rough time, certainly.

To be the "role model" Christian cultist her co-religionists proclaim her, Anna had to convince herself from the time she was a teenager -- and keep believing -- that two sets of the "godliest parents" on Earth AND God Himself GAVE HER JOSH. Picked her out to be the wife of this holy leader. She's talked adn talked about this at church and IBLP gatherings for her entire adult life, I think. Her whole sense of the world -- which includes her being the perfect mother to seven children with this golden man -- is based on the idea that SHE followed Christ's way perfectly by not dating and trying not even to talk about boys but waiting for God himself to reward her with the golden boy she secretly had her eye on.....This isn't just a delusion but a huge delusion on which her whole ability to function in life depends, I expect. She has a vision of her life as being super-special because of all this and it gives her that aura of surety and arrogance that she often seems to give off.. To give up her belief that Josh is her reward direct from God wouldn't be just to see truths about Josh but to have her faith in everything, including God, to be shaken to its foundations. And these people, by design, have nothing but the God they've invented. That would be a core-threatening psychic event that I'm sure she couldn't bear to entertain even in the tiniest corner of her mind. Horrifying. And she'll either keep this delusion going in whatever mad ways she can until death or she'll just psychologically disintegrate, would be my bet. .... I think she'll keep it going. Ever more intensely, I expect. Those poor children.

Please be careful about saying stuff like that. Weaseling his way into things when it's nearly unimaginable is his one significant talent (I don't count shoe shopping and burger binging as significant).

What are we leaving to him? I don't even get what she's commenting on......Just that he's doing some kind of half-silly salute in the background? .... Since when is that so interesting that you say, "Leave it to X....ha ha ha ha" ...? That's hardly something that only a "real joker" or whatever would do... It's ... nothing... Man, she is still far gone in her breathless excitement about "Jay" and the boys generally. What am I missing? When I looked at the handbook in the past, it specified wearing ties for certain activities but not others. Dunno if it's still that way or not.

They were probably walking around, running, scampering, etc. Zoos are a great place to walk around. I live near the zoo and I enjoy going there more in cold weather than in summer, when you drown in sweat. And when the weather's cool or cold a lot of the animals are outside.

They appear to think they're cool, clever and sophisticated. Uh, no. But I guess their thinking so doesn't harm anybody except maybe them, in some ways. So continue with your delusions, Seewalds.

There are times when a douchey haircut is also the perfect haircut......This may be one of them. 😁

I think it's very hard to underestimate Duggars (or Duggar adjacents, mostly). 😁

You can say that again......To me, though, that part is actually the good news,. My mood improves as any Duggar's (or Duggar adjacent's) influence struggles or, preferably, wanes. 😁

I've always wondered how aware the Duggs allow themselves to be of the true conditions of their planes. I can't imagine them doing anything but cutting every possible corner on maintenance, as I'm sure Jim Bob Daddy "teaches" for everything they're involved in. If JD knew in advance that his fuel gauge was broken, then he was flying in defiance of federal regulations......And he was also being an idiot just generally, since if you suspect that the gauge may not read empty when the tank is empty, then not just regulations but concern for your and your passengers' survival both dictate that you take on more fuel before you go anywhere.... PART 23 - AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS: NORMAL CATEGORY AIRPLANES... 23.2430 Fuel systems. (a) Each fuel system must... 4 Provide the flightcrew with a means to determine the total useable fuel available and provide uninterrupted supply of that fuel when the system is correctly operated, accounting for likely fuel fluctuations; https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-23 A lot of small planes do have wonky fuel gauges. So that's something a person who's flown as much as JD has should be aware of and on the lookout for --- If, that is, he's paying as much attnetion to maintaining those planes as he should be.... "You should also not rely solely on the gauge indication to determine how much fuel you have left. If you start with a known quantity of fuel, you should calculate your expected fuel burn prior to your flight and keep track of the time while flying. If either the fuel gauges or your calculations indicate that you are starting to run low on fuel, land at the nearest suitable airport and take on additional fuel." https://studentpilotnews.com/2018/08/common-aircraft-fuel-myths/ I can't imagine why anybody flies with Duggars in any case. (Although I guess it's entirely people who, like the Duggs, believe that the only relevant quality of somebody you do business with is whether they share the same nutso theology they have). But I'd still think some of them might be dissuaded by the fact that JD -- by far the most experienced of the Dugg "pilots" --has had two incidents within a few months that show pretty major carelessness and, potentially, ill-maintained aircraft.