Josh & Anna Smuggar: A Series of Unfortunate Events

[SMama]

2 hours ago, Jeeves said:

Also, when he would speak up in meetings it would be to offer ideas that were - lame, and made clear he had no idea how things really worked in the world.  

And that is what his sperm donor and incubator achieved; chronological adults who have no idea how the real world works. Mission accomplished, JB&M are vile. 

[LilJen]

10 hours ago, hathorlive said:

Dear god, it's an entire appliance revolution.  The rise of the machines has begun!

 

8 hours ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Tell me about it.  My brand new $2700 refrigerator is being messed up by a malfunctioning $20 water filter.  

3 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

And the ice maker in my refrigerator is not working properly. I am going to dust my router to get back in its good graces. 

ETA - it worked!

You’re gonna have to do more than dust the router. Those routers have formed a sneaky army of devious routers who will make all of us look bad. . . And kill all our appliances.

[crazycatlady58]

4 minutes ago, SMama said:

And that is what his sperm donor and incubator achieved; chronological adults who have no idea how the real world works. Mission accomplished, JB&M are vile. 

Yes, even without Josh's..issues ( I mentally tried different words and could not come up with something that would not get me in trouble) they failed as parents. 

[JustRosie]

6 hours ago, Jeeves said:

Yes, they let him "resign" when the scandals broke in 2015. From the Reddit posts I mentioned above by a young woman who worked for FRC when The Family Felon did, FRC seems like a not untypical Washington DC policy/lobbying organization. Their staff includes people (I think generally young people) with college degrees and experience in politics in their state/local areas, who have busted their butts to get those jobs in DC and work to further whatever their ideology is. Then there are people like The Family Felon who get hired by some kind of influence, and have not worked their way into the job. I assume some of those hires work out fine, if the person has some skill or connections that can help the organization in raising funds or getting past some doorkeepers. 

But not The Felon. I'll share this little nugget from the Reddit discussions. Mr. Duggar would be late to meetings. One specific memory she shared was of him sauntering into the room, ten or more minutes late, and obviously expecting that of course they would not have started the meeting without him. Except - they had. Heh. Also, when he would speak up in meetings it would be to offer ideas that were - lame, and made clear he had no idea how things really worked in the world.  

Could you please pm the link for this ama to me?  Thank you. 

[Rabbittron]

5 hours ago, LilJen said:

You’re gonna have to do more than dust the router. Those routers have formed a sneaky army of devious routers who will make all of us look bad. . . And kill all our appliances.

I put something in my microwave just now and I just heard a loud bang  now smoke is coming out of it and the smoke alarm went off it is attack of the killer routers coming to a house near you. The microwave is only 6 months old. 

Edited January 1, 2022 by Rabbittron

[Kiss my mutt]

Further evidence that machines have reached sentience. Beware!

[Almost 3000]

12 minutes ago, Kiss my mutt said:

Further evidence that machines have reached sentience. Beware!

I think you're right. My garbage disposer just stopped. I'll have to watch a youtube video on how to use that key thingy to unstick it. Hopefully I will prevail!

[Rabbittron]

Now on Monday I will have to call the microwave company and get a replacement and get the extended warranty against routers. 

[DXD526]

That's another good thing to come out of this trial, besides The Felon ending up behind bars, the exposure of the evil router problem, At last it is exposed! Everyone is now on high alert to keep a wary eye on those routers. I hear the French ones are particularly problematic!

[Quilt Fairy]

3 hours ago, DXD526 said:

That's another good thing to come out of this trial, besides The Felon ending up behind bars, the exposure of the evil router problem, At last it is exposed! Everyone is now on high alert to keep a wary eye on those routers. I hear the French ones are particularly problematic!

And I didn't even buy one of the refrigerators that was wi-fi enabled.  I didn't want one with a camera in the door to check on my groceries.  I don't want the fridge sending info back to the router. 

Edited January 2, 2022 by Quilt Fairy
fridge not frig

[Rabbittron]

1 hour ago, Quilt Fairy said:

And I didn't even buy one of the refrigerators that was wi-fi enabled.  I didn't want one with a camera in the door to check on my groceries.  I don't want the frig sending info back to the router. 

That was going to be my next fridge purchase because I was really wanted wifi but after today no thank you. 

Edited January 2, 2022 by Rabbittron

[emmawoodhouse]

My new oven was delivered and installed last Monday. Of course, it isn't properly calibrated; it cooks about 25 degrees hotter than the set temperature. Sadly, there is no router to blame. 😁

[SJC]

All of my appliances are working well. I assume that my router has repented and is walking the straight & narrow.

[sue450]

so my question is.........now that duggar is in jail he is  in solitary a lot  but  jailers  and other prisoners are basically normal people that live in the real world  he is being exposed to them and not being constantly pounded with the religion/cult  and if he gets 10 years how will this change him???    will he come to see what a huge farce it all is?...will he in time realize how many  lies his parents told him over the years??He did say if he goes down  he will take everybody down with him

 

[emmawoodhouse]

I think he's thought the whole Gothard thing (and probably religion) was a sham for a long time. He has known how to talk the talk to convince people (including his own brainwashed wife) otherwise.

[JoanArc]

1 minute ago, emmawoodhouse said:

I think he's thought the whole Gothard thing (and probably religion) was a sham for a long time. He has known how to talk the talk to convince people (including his own brainwashed wife) otherwise.

I think he never really believed it.  It’s possible he believed it in a very self-serving manner, but that is even arguable. And he is the one child who had a relatively normal childhood and got to go to school until, what, first grade? I’m sure he was pretty quick to pick up on how to attain personal power through religion.

[sue450]

good point ..I do remember him saying that he wouldn't mind if god only gave them a couple of kids  so he didn't buy into the whole thing ( or he didn't want to act too overexcited  like he WANTED  lots kids  because of what we now know about him

[sue450]

7 minutes ago, JoanArc said:

I think he never really believed it.  It’s possible he believed it in a very self-serving manner, but that is even arguable. And he is the one child who had a relatively normal childhood and got to go to school until, what, first grade? I’m sure he was pretty quick to pick up on how to attain personal power through religion.

are you SURE about him going to first grade to a school ??  do you have a link??  everything I ever read  says he was home schooled....now he was first so michelle raised him and probably actually formed a bond with him and the first few kids she had......the reason I ask is  they had josh  and michelle went back on birth control pills she had a super early miscarriage and the dr told her it was because of the birth control   pills that's when they became super fundy and decided to leave it up to god how many children they would have......josh would have been several months old at that point so they would not send him to school several years later

Edited January 3, 2022 by sue450

[Jeeves]

I thought he might have had at least some exposure to school - maybe kindergarten, and have probably said so here. But now that I look into it, Michelle had a miscarriage between Josh and the twins JD and Jana. Which I think is when she and JB got into the IBLP/fundie world. For some reason I'd thought it was a little later than that. So Josh probably didn't have much time during their relatively normal phase of life after all. I don't know how long after the miscarriage it took for JB and Meech to go full-on ATI. Probably not long enough for Josh to have memories of a non-cult family life. I still don't think he was a true believer though. That constant onslaught of new squalling siblings may have delighted his mother but I doubt he was thrilled about them as a young kid.

I doubt he'll be left alone in prison. I'm sure his parents and Anna will make sure he's bombarded with IBLP/ATI/fundie religious books and preachy prison visitors. His own FIL is in the prison ministry biz, don't forget.

[Zella]

I don't think Josh is a true believer either. I mean, he may well believe in God, and I have no doubt he thinks that he himself is a highly superior creature, but I think he probably buys into the family's specific Gothard theology the least of all the kids. I think, in general, he's the least sheltered and most worldly of all the Duggar kids.

[GeeGolly]

For some reason I thought Josh went to a Christian school for a couple of years.

Josh and his siblings have had real world exposure for years. And obviously even more so for Josh. It was said during the trial, some with a criminal past worked for Josh and whoever he was doing 'business' with online are sexually deviant criminals, so I'm guessing he actually has a lot in common with other felons.

[Zella]

12 minutes ago, GeeGolly said:

For some reason I thought Josh went to a Christian school for a couple of years.

I keep thinking he had a year or two in school too and am not finding anything one way or the other. But I'm wondering if it was Shiloh Christian, his dad's alma mater. 

[Absolom]

I keep thinking I remember hearing Michelle say in an interview that Josh went to Shiloh Christian for K and maybe 1.  She said they had several children before they encountered ATI.  They saw how well behaved the other children were and wanted that for their children so went to the Gothard Basic Seminar.  

[ginger90]

Nothing about Josh, but I found this on a blog:

 

In 1979, First Baptist Church of Springdale--which included Shiloh Christian School, founded in 1976--moved from downtown Springdale to a site on Johnson Road.

Jim Bob Duggar was a member of the first graduating class of Shiloh Christan School. For his first official date with his future wife, Jim Bob took Michelle Ruark to the Shiloh junior-senior banquet. 

 

I would like to advise not looking up anything regarding Josh. The intended results may just be lost in a sea of other information. I didn’t wade past the above.

Edited January 3, 2022 by ginger90

[cmr2014]

11 minutes ago, Absolom said:

I keep thinking I remember hearing Michelle say in an interview that Josh went to Shiloh Christian for K and maybe 1.  She said they had several children before they encountered ATI.  They saw how well behaved the other children were and wanted that for their children so went to the Gothard Basic Seminar.  

This is what I remember, too. 

They went hard core fundie after the J'Caleb miscarriage, but didn't get on the ATI/IBLP bandwagon until after Josh had started school. I doubt he remembers much of what his earlier "normal life" was like.

[Cinnabon]

I 💯 remember reading that Josh went to kindergarten and possibly first grade, as others have said.

[madpsych78]

Huh, I didn't know that Boob was part of the first graduating class of Shiloh Christian.

Thinking about what Josh may have been thinking when each younger sibling was born, and then I think about Spurgeon and even Mack, although her experience is likely different being a girl. But I'm getting a lot of similar vibes with the Seewalds that I imagine were the Duggars when they had fewer kids.

[emmawoodhouse]

1 hour ago, Cinnabon said:

I 💯 remember reading that Josh went to kindergarten and possibly first grade, as others have said.

I'm almost positive that Boobchelle wrote about this in one of the books. It's definitely part of their testimony.

[Zella]

I used some Google-Fu to work through what I could see of The Duggars: 20 and Counting (2009) and A Love That Multiplies (2012), and in both of them, they claim they always wanted to homeschool ever since Josh was 1 and they first learned of homeschooling. There's no indication he ever went to public or private school in those books that I could see. 

BUT I know I have heard that, and I know it's not just me since a lot of us remember that. Has their story changed over the years? Is it something they said on the show but not in the books? 

I think we actually have at least one of those books at my library, but I refuse to check it out in the name of more research. LOL 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Zella

[Cinnabon]

I started searching for info on Josh attending kindergarten, and this is what comes up on every page. This is what they’ve done to their children.

 

 

[GeeGolly]

I didn't find anything on Josh going to Christian school, but I did find this gem. According to a 2011 entry on Lily & Ellie's blog, many of the Duggar 19 were taking online college classes.

Here's an update on the specific degrees that the older kids are pursing:

Josh, who is married and expecting his second child (a boy) in June, wants to study law. In order to achieve his goal, he is first working on his bachelor's in Political Science. Jill (age 19) has a heart for nursing and is taking a combination of online courses and on-site classes at a local university. Jessa (age 18) is on her way to earning a Business degree through CollegePlus, and Jinger (age 17) is pursuing a BA in Music.

[Chicklet]

Well that's proof that Lily and Ellie did a lot of "creative" writing.

[JoanArc]

11 hours ago, cmr2014 said:

. I doubt he remembers much of what his earlier "normal life" was like.

 You don’t have to remember a lot of your early childhood for the shape you. The socialization he was exposed to made him different from the other kids. You would think, it would be a better experience, but maybe as others have noted he is just a bad seed. 

[Rootbeer]

4 hours ago, GeeGolly said:

I didn't find anything on Josh going to Christian school, but I did find this gem. According to a 2011 entry on Lily & Ellie's blog, many of the Duggar 19 were taking online college classes.

Here's an update on the specific degrees that the older kids are pursing:

Josh, who is married and expecting his second child (a boy) in June, wants to study law. In order to achieve his goal, he is first working on his bachelor's in Political Science. Jill (age 19) has a heart for nursing and is taking a combination of online courses and on-site classes at a local university. Jessa (age 18) is on her way to earning a Business degree through CollegePlus, and Jinger (age 17) is pursuing a BA in Music.

The Duggars were spokespeople for College Plus (AKA College Minus) which is why they claimed all their kids were studying online with the program.  There is no evidence that any of the kids actually took a course, let alone passed one and none of them ever received a degree in any area.  This was all just PR for what was most likely a paid endorsement of College Plus, a supposedly Christian based online program for college credit aimed at fundies who were terrified their kids would turn to Satan if they ever set foot inside an actual college classroom.

Anyway, all the stuff about Duggar kids attending college is a fairy tale meant to sell College Plus to the masses.

I, too, remember hearing that Josh was enrolled in a regular school for at least kindergarten and maybe first grade.  While JB and Michelle claim that the miscarriage triggered their descent into deep fundamentalism, I think it took them a few years to latch onto Gothard/ATI and decide to homeschool/nonschool their kids.

[Trillium]

Much like how Mr and Mrs Wayne meet their untimely end in the alley after the opera, the details of the Duggar origin story seem to change every so slightly depending on what their current agenda/angle is.  

[Ohiopirate02]

34 minutes ago, Trillium said:

Much like how Mr and Mrs Wayne meet their untimely end in the alley after the opera, the details of the Duggar origin story seem to change every so slightly depending on what their current agenda/angle is.  

At this point, I don't even think JB and Michelle know what actually happened.  They have spun their story so many times to so many audiences.

[galaxygirl76]

9 hours ago, GeeGolly said:

I didn't find anything on Josh going to Christian school, but I did find this gem. According to a 2011 entry on Lily & Ellie's blog, many of the Duggar 19 were taking online college classes.

Here's an update on the specific degrees that the older kids are pursing:

Josh, who is married and expecting his second child (a boy) in June, wants to study law. In order to achieve his goal, he is first working on his bachelor's in Political Science. Jill (age 19) has a heart for nursing and is taking a combination of online courses and on-site classes at a local university. Jessa (age 18) is on her way to earning a Business degree through CollegePlus, and Jinger (age 17) is pursuing a BA in Music.

Ooooh Fanfiction!

[libgirl2]

On 1/1/2022 at 7:02 AM, MargeGunderson said:

And the ice maker in my refrigerator is not working properly. I am going to dust my router to get back in its good graces. 

ETA - it worked!

When we moved to our new house 15 years ago, I decided to not get a fridge with an icemaker. It seemed like everyone had such problems with them. 

[Iguessnot]

7 minutes ago, libgirl2 said:

When we moved to our new house 15 years ago, I decided to not get a fridge with an icemaker. It seemed like everyone had such problems with them. 

They have always been the number one source of fridge problems.

[babyhouseman]

17 hours ago, Zella said:

BUT I know I have heard that, and I know it's not just me since a lot of us remember that.

I remember seeing that Josh wasn't always homeschooled. 

[Zella]

2 minutes ago, babyhouseman said:

I remember seeing that Josh wasn't always homeschooled. 

Yeah so many of us have seen it that, like Mulder, I believe it's out there! Just impossible to find with the trial news burying any other results. 

[BigBingerBro]

I remember reading about Josh going to regular school too.  Has to be buried in one of their books or interviews from years ago.  Either that or they scrubbed it in order to fit their current narrative.

[JoanArc]

5 hours ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

At this point, I don't even think JB and Michelle know what actually happened.  They have spun their story so many times to so many audiences.

  Keen observation.  Very 1984 sort of spirituality they practice. 

[Olliesmom]

2 hours ago, libgirl2 said:

When we moved to our new house 15 years ago, I decided to not get a fridge with an icemaker. It seemed like everyone had such problems with them. 

I never use ice so I didn’t get an ice maker in my fridge.  When I need ice I use my old fashion ice tray lol.

[Rabbittron]

On 1/1/2022 at 2:58 PM, Rabbittron said:

I put something in my microwave just now and I just heard a loud bang  now smoke is coming out of it and the smoke alarm went off it is attack of the killer routers coming to a house near you. The microwave is only 6 months old. 

Took what happened with the microwave company to small talk the prayer closet. 

[hathorlive]

On 12/20/2021 at 11:38 PM, Tabbygirl521 said:

 

Edited due to late posting and the mod's notice.

That said, Joshie doesn't like rules of any type.  And I'm sure he's going to get in trouble at the OTHER big house.  I'm sure he'll try to charm the staff, which they see every single minute of every day.  Fun fact: In college I had an internship at a federal medical corrections facility, which is a federal prison with hospital staff.  I spent three months getting paid 22 dollars an hour (back in the late 90's) to read prison mail.  Let me tell you, fun times.   The prisoner's mail is screened, you can't send them stamps (it's a known method of sneaking LSD into prisons) or lewd pictures.  They can receive things like shoes only from one or two approved companies.  We also had the prison intake and outtake system.  The career staff reveled in making me and the other intern watch strip searches.  I thought it was degrading to the inmates. I did my best to look the other direction and give them privacy.  Cough and squat took on a new meaning that summer.   Federal prison is no joke.  Josh is in for a rude awakening.

Edited January 4, 2022 by hathorlive

[hathorlive]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:00 PM, Zella said:

Since none of these people strike me as pleasure readers, I am not even sure they'd be able to think of many books between all of them to send Josh. Unless he just wants to get a Bible for every shipment. 

Maybe he'd like a copy of "waiting for Prince Charming" ?  

[sue450]

33 minutes ago, hathorlive said:

Edited due to late posting and the mod's notice.

That said, Joshie doesn't like rules of any type.  And I'm sure he's going to get in trouble at the OTHER big house.  I'm sure he'll try to charm the staff, which they see every single minute of every day.  Fun fact: In college I had an internship at a federal medical corrections facility, which is a federal prison with hospital staff.  I spent three months getting paid 22 dollars an hour (back in the late 90's) to read prison mail.  Let me tell you, fun times.   The prisoner's mail is screened, you can't send them stamps (it's a known method of sneaking LSD into prisons) or lewd pictures.  They can receive things like shoes only from one or two approved companies.  We also had the prison intake and outtake system.  The career staff reveled in making me and the other intern watch strip searches.  I thought it was degrading to the inmates. I did my best to look the other direction and give them privacy.  Cough and squat took on a new meaning that summer.   Federal prison is no joke.  Josh is in for a rude awakening.

so josh was 6 when that blanket training abuse book came out (to train up a child)    how different would he be today if he had been blanket trained??  in fact the first 5 were born before this book came out.....

[hathorlive]

On 12/29/2021 at 11:21 PM, Zella said:

I don't think I'm devoid of empathy, but if Josh were my brother, I wouldn't be terribly interested in helping him through the rough time he's created for himself. 

Hell, If I were Joy or Jill, I'd call him, and sit there eating Chick fil a in front of him while singing "how do you like 'em apples".  But then I'm a bitch like that.

On 12/30/2021 at 11:52 AM, Ohiopirate02 said:

I agree.  Visitor logs are one thing, but the actual content of the visits is a step too far.  There really is no pressing reason for the public to know what is said between a prisoner and his/her minor children.  Prisoners still have rights like attorney-client privilege and the seal of the confessional.   

The visits are stored for future analysis if needed.  I did a DVR examination of an inmate who called his wife and walked her through making meth.  They used the video in court to smack him down.  And this was a local county prision.

[hathorlive]

On 1/1/2022 at 11:36 AM, LilJen said:

You’re gonna have to do more than dust the router. Those routers have formed a sneaky army of devious routers who will make all of us look bad. . . And kill all our appliances.

Whisper to it gently as you blow compressed air over its vents.  Works every time to a soothe an angry router.