Cold Open: What the Hell is Pizzagate? It’s a detailed conspiracy theory claiming that a pedophile ring - a Satanic pedophile ring is was being run out of a Hillary Clinton-linked Washington D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. Seriously. In the fall of 2016, the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's Presidential 67 year old campaign manager, was hacked and his emails were made public by WikiLeaks. Proponents of the Pizzagate theory claimed that these emails contained coded messages, messages that once DE-coded - clearly were referring to human sex trafficking and a dark connection between Comet Ping Pong, other D.C. restaurants, and high-ranking members of the Democratic Party and their disgusting, wealthy liberal-elite friends with a pedophile child-sex ring.

Liberal political elites taking kids to pizza place basements to molest them! Because, you know, that’s why you get into politics in the first place. To eventually be able to finger nine year old sex slaves in D.C. Pizzerias. It turns out that’s the liberal agenda I’ve heard referred to my whole life! I’ve heard that term tossed around forever and no one’s been able to conclusively tell me what the agenda is - turns out, it’s pedophilia. They want to take away our guns so we can’t shoot ‘em when they diddle our kids! Those fuckers! Those demons!

Get the Hell out of here.

In the leaked emails, it was believed by many, for example, that “cheese pizza” was code for “child pornography.” Get it? Same initials so it must be true. CP. Gotta be careful now when you tell you people you’re really into cheese pizza. Gotta be careful when you tell people you can’t get enough cheese pizza. You love cheese pizza so much. Nothing makes your harder or wetter than a slice of sexy ass cheese pizza.

This utter, unsubstantiated nonsense led to a 28 year old North Carolina man, Edgar Maddison Welch, firing a rifle into Comet Ping Pong on Dec. 4th, 2016, in attempt to rescue kids he believed were being held captive, molested, and raped in the pizza place’s basement. Thank God he didn’t hit anyone. Comet Ping Pong, by the way, has no basement!! Edgar was sentenced to four years in prison this past June after pleading guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon and transporting a firearm over state lines. And I feel like he got off easy.

A December 2016 poll conducted by Public Policy Polling asked registered voters if they thought Hillary Clinton was "connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC?" 9% said that they did believe she was connected and 19% were not sure. So, you know, a third of the people polled either thought that Hilary was definitely a sexual predator or definitely could be, even though no serious, credible allegation concerning anything even remotely tied to pedophilia has ever been made against her.

Also on December 4, Alex Jones and his slanderous shit show - infowars.com, uploaded a YouTube video that linked Pizzagate to the November 13th death of a sex-worker-rights activist. The video falsely claimed that she had been investigating a link between the Clinton Foundation and human trafficking in Haiti and it speculated that she had been murdered in connection with her investigation. According to the activist's former employer, her family and her friends, her death was in fact a suicide and she was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. In March of 2017 Alex Jones retracted his pizza gate death accusations to avoid prosecution for libel.

I personally remember, right around this same time, overhearing a woman on a plane I happened to be on ranting about the Clintons molesting kids on some crazy pedophile island as if it were a documented fact. Such a horrific accusation to pass along that was perpetuated by people whom all shared one thing in common- none of them knew what the fuck they were talking about!! Not everything on the web is true people. Wish more humans understood that.

So how do these whackadoodle conspiracies get started? Why do they get started? Why the fuck do so many people believe this intellectually insulting drivel? The evolution and accusations of the pizza gate scandal examined and culture of U.S. anti-intellectualism and “fake news” pondered in this of Timesuck that really is one big edition of Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome: What’s going on Timesuckers! Hello Cult of the Curious. Hi- dy Ho people open to new ideas. People who don’t necessarily agree with me but listen anyway because you’re not afraid to disagree with someone, knowing their not gonna threaten or change you in ways you don’t want them to. I’m Dan Cummins aka Suckius Maxiumus Mundi, Suckmaster Supreme, Walks With Bojangles, Prophet of Nimrod, Cult Leader Cummins, and whatever else you’ve felt like referring to me lately. And this is Timesuck. HAIL NIMROD!

Some tour date announcements and then we’re on to Pizza Gate! All other announcements, including the fact that the first generation of the Timesuck App is available RIGHT NOW in the Android and Apple App stores - whoo hoo!!! - pause this now, download the app and listen to it there. More details at the end of the episode!

Huge thanks to all the Timesuckers who came to Dr Grins in Grand Rapids MI this past weekend. So many! Had a blast with you guys. Thanks for letting me work out a few brand new bits and for hearing some old ones. Working on a getting a live Timesuck show set up in Grand Rapids now. Can’t wait to figure out that date and let you know. Not sure when it will happen but sure it will happen in 2018.

This weekend I’ll be the St Louis Funny Bone in St Louis Missouri in the Westport Plaza. Hope to see Timesuckers there! December 7-10.

The following week I will be in APPLETON Wisconsin - one night only, on December 13th at the Skyline Comedy Club. And then I’ll be at Comedy Club on State in Madison, Wisconsin December 14-16.

Rounding out the year at Comedy Works in Denver, Colorado, December 28 through New Year’s Eve.

And 2018 tour dates being posted at www.dancummins.tv and timesuckpodcast.com such as:

Indianapolis !! Morty’s Comedy Joint January 5th and 6th. Providence, RI - The Comedy Connection January 19-20th. Chicopee, MA - Cabot Comedy Club Jan 21st Philadelphia! I’ll be at The Punchline January 25-27th.

And so many more cities. Baltimore, Chicago, NYC, Minneapolis.

Two live podcasts now on the books for 2018!!! Sisyphus Brewing in Minneapolis on March 3rd. Only $10 tickets for that podcast. Those aren’t quite on sale yet but you’ll know soon. I’ll announce first on Instagram. Small room - only 90 seats. And I’ll be doing standup shows there March 2nd and the 3rd as well.

And the Small Town Murder swap cast in Detroit on Feb. 16th, 2018 at the Magic Bag is happening! Thanks for pre-buying those tickets to the stand up show. Live swap cast podcast tickets go on sale tomorrow. Two shows now in one night - standup at 7PM, and I believe the swap cast will start at 10PM. Again, those details tomorrow.

Ticket links in the episode description.

And now…Pizza Gate.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Pizza Gate Origin. A. Original Facebook Post: The original Pizzagate Facebook post appeared on the evening of October 29th, 2016, a day after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau would be reopening its investigation into Clinton's use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

Normally I'd do a Timesuck Timeline for something like this, but, the dates are going to bounce around so much it doesn’t quite make sense.

Data from Hilary’s private e-mail server had been found on electronics belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner - husband of Clinton's close aide Huma Abedin (“Who-ma Abba-dean”) and he of the numerous sexting and infidelity scandals - the dude named Weiner who can’t seem to keep his weiner in his pants and away from cell phone cameras. The dude who seems to have a life self- destruct button on his dick. Weiner, then 51 years old, had been caught texting lewd messages to a 15-year-old. So gross.

Well, on Facebook, user Carmen Katz wrote, "My NYPD source said its much more vile and serious than classified material on Weiner's device. The email DETAIL the trips made by Weiner, Bill and Hillary on their pedophile billionaire friend's plane, the Lolita Express. Yup, Hillary has a well documented predilection for underage girls. . . . We're talking an international child enslavement and sex ring.”

Okay. Pretty hefty accusations here. So - what is Carmen talking about? Let’s break it down.

1. Lolita Express: The “Lolita Express” referred to here is the private plane of billionaire financier and philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein. And, in addition to the Clintons, Trump, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Hawking, Prince Andrew, Naomi Campbell and others have flown on it, some numerous times.

Epstein has a private island in St. Thomas that has been referred to as an “orgy island”. Author James Patterson even wrote a book about Epstein and his island in 2016 called “Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy - The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein”

And, make no mistake, Epstein IS a piece of shit.

In June 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 13 months before being released. 13 months for a man then in his mid-50s for fucking numerous teen girls. Young teen girls. Why do we allow this as a society? Seriously? Why do we place so little value on dealing with sexual predators?

At release, Epstein was registered in New York State as a level three (high risk of re-offense) sex offender. Apparently, although he plead guilty in a deal to only soliciting prostitution from one girl, he had a whole parade of underage escorts disguised as masseuses who he and some of his associates would sleep with.

Super dirty. Super fucked up. But - tying this to our story today - weird that someone like Facebook user Carmen Katz would cherry pick which politician they think fucked kids along with Epstein. There’s no more evidence that Hillary Clinton also slept with underage girls on his island than Donald Trump did. They both knew him! And since there has never been any evidence that Hilary has slept with or been attracted to women of any age, logically, it’s more likely that Trump fucked some kids on that island than Hilary did on the basis of known heterosexuality. And, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that he has a murkier sexual past. We know he talked about grabbing pussy aka sexual assault - we heard it. It’s undeniable to any rational person.

Like him, love him, or hate him - he said what he said. Hate Hilary all you want - not saying I personally like her or love her - but there is no known evidence - real evidence - of her saying something so sexually aggressive. But - she flew on that kid fucker’s plane, so, Carmen Katz is convinced she is also a kid fucker.

Few more moments on Epstein here.

Another woman claiming in a recent lawsuit that she was lured into a sex-trafficking ring run by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and contends that the depravity began at a Florida resort now known as the winter White House: Mar-a-Lago. You know - the place Trump owns. Epstein was a regular at Mar-a-Lago. To be fair - he was also a regular contributor to the Clinton Foundation. Funny though how some people will choose to only associate the Clintons with Epstein if they’re conservative, and I’m sure others only associate Trump with him if they’re liberal. Well - put your political bias aside and open your eyes. They appear equally connected based on currently released information.

But again, Carmen Katz suddenly posts that it’s the Clintons who, along with Epstein, are running an international child sex ring. Because, you know, Hilary is KNOWN to have a thing for young girls. Remember that from Carmen’s post: “Hillary has a well documented predilection for underage girls” Think what you want about her politics. Think what you want about her personality and political associations. Call her part of the liberal agenda or think she caters to the Hollywood elite if you want.

There is not a shred of actual credible evidence - key word being credible - that Hilary Clinton has had anything to do with pedophilia ever!! And to speak otherwise is to be recklessly slanderous and defamatory. You can think she is. But you can’t prove it based on known information.

Can you imagine if someone who hated you because of your personality or because they didn’t like how you treated them at work or whatever - started posting shit online about you being a pedophile? It’s not cool. It’s beyond the realm of dirty politics. It’s morally repugnant.

According to politifact.com, a Pulitzer Prize winning government fact checking website run by reporters and editors from the Tampa Bay Times, Clinton Pedophile ring rumors are unequivocally baseless and false.

Additionally, since 2009, PolitiFact.com has declared one political statement from each year to be the "Lie of the Year”. And PolitiFact’s 2016 Lie of the Year was "fake news" referring to fabricated news stories including the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

These rumors are so crazy. There was another one way back in 2008, a rumor that the Clinton’s pastor had been convicted of sexually abusing a child. He was part of their sex ring! Various websites ran the headline “Clinton pastor convicted of sexual abuse of a child.” Comment sections went crazy condemning Bill and Hillary for their pedophilia associations. The actual truth? A pastor from the town of Clinton, NY was convicted. A pastor from a town that happened to share the name Clinton with the Clintons. That was literally the only association. Ha! But the fucking Idiots of the Internet took a true story and spun it into slanderous lies like those morons love to do.

I find tracking down the origins of rumors and conspiracies fascinating.

Back to the Pizzagate origin Facebook post!

Carmen Katz appears to be a fake profile name of a real woman named Cynthia Campbell. For more than 20 years, Cynthia, a 60- year-old attorney, has practiced law out of her home in Joplin, Missouri. And where did she get her pedophile information?

From Lucifina herself! Dark and evil temptress of Timesuck! Sister of Satan! It is Lucifina! She is behind Pizzagate. She is the lie’s originator.

Actually - Cynthia won’t say what her source was. Probably because she knows she doesn’t have a good source. But, it’s likely she picked it up from either a 4Chan chatroom or Reddit.

2. 4CHAN post: Over three months before Cynthia’s post, on July 2nd, 2016, someone calling themselves FBIAnon, someone who claimed to be a "high-level analyst and strategist" for the bureau, hosted an Ask Me Anything forum on 4chan. He claimed to be leaking government secrets – á la Edward Snowden – out of a love for his country.

I feel like claiming to be a high-level FBI analyst is a red flag. I’ve met a number of weirdos in all of my traveling over the years who have claimed to possess classified government knowledge. They were or are in the Special Ops. The were part of some covert operation. They know stuff. Stuff the government doesn’t want you to know. And, to me, they all seemed extremely full of shit. They seemed like someone who wants to feel important - someone who’s in the mix - but they are not in the mix. They are not doing anything important. They’re just a liar. “Dude, if you are some government elite VIP, why are you having a drink with me at the Appleby’s down the street from the comedy club. Why are you drinking at Appleby’s alone. Why are you wearing Crocs to the bar? Why are you wearing cargo shorts, Crocs, and black socks to the bar if you’re some James Bond type secret information having son of a bitch? Why does only your right hand smell like lotion? Why is your mom coming to pick you up and take you back home in half an hour? Why is there a ham and cheese hot pocket stain on your tank top? What kind of covert ops guy has a comb over?

Okay - maybe the liars I met didn’t look quite like that. But they had that vibe.

And there are a lot of liars out there. And it’s even easier to lie on the web than it is to lie to someone’s face. I always hate it when people say something to the effect of, “Well if it wasn’t true, why would they say that?” Because they’re a fucking liar! Because they enjoy lying! In my experience, a large amount of the population just lie quit a bit. Lie like it’s no big deal. Lie to get out of trouble. Lie to get ahead. Lie to mess with someone. Lie to bring someone else down. Lie when it makes them feel important.

And FBIAnon user seems to be a liar.

FBIAnon's secrets were about the Department of Justice's inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which federal prosecutors never formalized. "Dig deep," he wrote. "Bill and Hillary love foreign donors so much. They get paid in children as well as money."

"Does Hillary have sex with kidnapped girls?" a 4channer asked. "Yes," FBIAnon answered. No sources listed. Just some poster whose actual identity no one knows claiming to be a government source. And more rumors fly.

Now - here’s where things really get interesting. The primary source I relied on for this information, by the way, was a Nov. 16 Rolling Stone article that was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. I love the Investigative Fund’s mission statement, by the way. “The Investigative Fund’s mission is to produce high- impact investigative reporting that holds the powerful accountable. We seek to bring underreported stories to light, cultivate diverse journalistic talent, and create a home for independent journalism that serves the public.”

Fuck yeah. Power to the people! Rage Against the Machine! Killing in the Name of!

3. TheeRANT: Another piece of the Pizzagate origin puzzle appeared online about 10 hours before Katz posted her story on Facebook. TheeRANT describes itself as a message board for "New York City cops speaking their minds." Virtually everyone on the site uses some identity-masking screen name. I’ve checked it out myself. Mostly boring shit or juvenile stuff like naked boob posts. As if there isn’t enough boob on the rest of the web.

On October 29th, 2016, user “Fatoldman" posted that he had a "hot rumor" about the FBI investigation, saying "[T]he feds were forced to re-open the hillary email case [because] apparently the NYPD sex crimes unit was involved in the Weiner case," User Fatoldman also wrote. "On his laptop they saw emails. [T]hey notified the FBI. Feds were afraid that NYPD would go public so they had to reopen or be accused of a coverup."

Someone then posted that news to a law enforcement Facebook group. From there, user Eagle Wings (@NIVIsa4031) posted it to Twitter. I just checked Eagle Wings' profile picture yesterday and it shows a smiling middle-aged woman above the description "USAF Vet believes Freedom Soars FB.” In her profile pic, she’s wearing a Christmas Santa hat that says, “Make Christmas Great Again”.

Fuck me. Can we PLEASE stop with the "making shit great again” moronic slogan??? When they fuck exactly was Christmas not great? When was Christmas just horrific and then, how are our current political leaders making it great again? What specifically is the current administration doing - what exactly are they doing - to make Christmas - specifically Christmas - great again? God damn it! We’re being treated like stupid children by the White House and I’m starting to get really pissed off about how many people aren’t pissed off about that. Work less on hollow slogans and more on putting the cost of higher education and real estate in line with inflation, work on creating more domestic manufacturing jobs, make China buy more of our goods instead of kissing their ass, focus on affordable health care and a tax plan that helps small businesses and the bottom 75% and, outside of that, shut the fuck up. Less talk, more action. Help the middle class you assholes!

This is why I try not to talk about politics. I get so angry. We’ve been talking about affordable healthcare my entire adult life and we still can’t figure it out. Why? Insurance and pharmaceutical company lobbyists and insurance and pharmaceutical company corporate Wall Street profits. Someday, like with gun control, when I have more time than usual to research I’ll dig in on all this shit.

But back to Eagle Wings.

She has a shit ton of followers. Almost 125,000 as of this past weekend. And she has some powerful followers.

Among Eagle Wings’ more influential followers are former deputy assistant to President Trump Sebastian Gorka and former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, the man who plead guilty this past Friday to lying to the FBI about conversations with Russia's ambassador. Flynn actually shared a separate Eagle Wings tweet last year.

However, Samuel Wooley, who directs research at the Institute for the Future's Digital Intelligence Lab, whose mission statement describes themselves as an independent, non-profit research organization with a nearly 50-year track record of helping all kinds of organizations make the futures they want - Samuel doesn’t think Eagle Wings is a real person.

4. An Army of Twitter Bots: He thinks she tweets too often - more than 50,000 times since November 2015 - and has too many followers. "Without a shadow of a doubt," he says, "Eagle Wings is a highly automated account [and] part of a bot network" – a centrally controlled group of social-media accounts. To explain how these work, Ben Nimmo, a fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, uses a shepherding analogy. "A message that someone or some organization wants to 'trend' is typically sent out by 'shepherd' accounts," he says, which often have large followings and are controlled by humans. The shepherds' messages are amplified by 'sheepdog' accounts, which are also run by humans but can be default-set "to boost the signal and harass critics." At times, the shepherds personally steer conversations, but they also deploy automation, using a kind of Twitter cruise control to retweet particular keywords and hashtags. Together, Nimmo says, the shepherds and sheepdogs guide a herd of bots, which "mindlessly repost content in the digital equivalent of sheep rushing in the same direction and bleating loudly."

Fuuuuuuuck! Think about that for a second. Think about how if you had the money, you could hire a team of on-line social media manipulators to push whatever message you want out to the masses. Create a ton of smoke where they’re actually is no fire. Why do that? Well, to discredit a political opponent and win an election for one thing. Think about the possibility that the National Security Advisor of the most powerful nation on Earth may have been retweeting the tweet of an automated account.

Whether Katz repeated something a herd of bots was bleating, or repackaged tidbits found on other parts of the Internet, her Facebook post was the "human touch" that helped the fake news story go viral.

The "tell," says Watts, was what happened next. Most of us post into Internet oblivion. But about 12 hours after Katz shared her story, a Twitter user named @DavidGoldbergNY tweeted a screenshot of her post, twice – adding, "I have been hearing the same thing from my NYPD buddies too. Next couple days will be - interesting!"

Woolley says that @DavidGoldbergNY appears to have been, like Eagle Wings, "highly automated" and part of "an organized effort" – possibly a bot network – to spread disinformation.

Who runs @DavidGoldbergNY ? No one knows. The handle is not one of the 2,752 Twitter accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin run disinformation organization, a group the House Intelligence Committee released information on in November. And Twitter has yet to make public the handles of an additional 36,746 bot accounts its attorney Sean Edgett told Congress have "characteristics we used to associate an account with Russia."

One of the Russian accounts involved with pizza gate is @AndreiChikatilo. “Yes! It is I, Chikatilo! like pizza gate. On many levels. I love pizza. And I love doing bad things to children. It is best of both worlds! I snack, I wrassle. I eat slice of NY style pepperoni pizza… I jerk soft cock in pizzeria sex dungeon basement. America! What a country!”

I’m so sorry if this is your first episode. How confusing that just was for you.

And Russia, by the way, isn’t the only one playing this social media manipulation game. "We've also had sources tell us that using bot networks has become a common practice among U.S. political campaigns," says Woolley. He says, ”They do it with subcontractors. And the Federal Election Commission doesn't require reporting for subcontractors,” adding, "the more sophisticated bot nets, the ones that are successful at spreading stories, are built by people with a lot of resources. In our experience, across multiple different countries, the people that have deep pockets are the powerful political actors."

According to a sample of tweets with Pizzagate or related hashtags provided by Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics at Indiana University, Pizzagate was shared roughly 1.4 million times by more than a quarter of a million accounts in its first five weeks of life – from @DavidGoldbergNY's tweet to the day Welch showed up at Comet Ping Pong with his rifle.

Remember Welch? The dude who shot up Comet Ping Pong on Dec. 4th, 2016, in an attempt to rescue kids he believed were being held captive, molested, and raped in the pizza place’s basement. The basement that doesn’t exist.

At least 14 Russia-linked accounts had tweeted about Pizzagate. Some of those accounts were retweeted by Donald Trump Jr., Ann Coulter and Roger Stone, a political operative who recommended Paul Manafort as Trump's campaign manager.

Now, I know how sensitive diehard Trump supporters can be, and I want to say that I am not attacking Trump from a liberal point of view. I am relaying the information I have found, which happens to link Pizzagate to his campaign. Does this mean he planned Pizzagate? No, it doesn’t. Absolutely not. There is no evidence of that. And, for all we know, other politicians could have been doing the same thing. I have no proof of that either, but, it’s both possible and hard to trace, so there’s that to consider. What’s scary to me isn’t that conservatives may have manipulated social media to help win an election. That isn’t scarier to me than if liberals did it, or if they tried to do it. What’s scary to me is that it’s possible to do that. THAT is truly fucking terrifying. It’s terrifying that people are specializing in web based, social media manipulation propaganda. The web has been a place where people living in nations with state controlled media have been able to go, even if it’s sneaking there via the Dark Web - to ESCAPE propaganda. And now, the web is becoming littered with a very advanced form of propaganda. Damn you Lucifina!

Okay, back to the development of Pizzagate, right after a quick word from today’s sponsor:

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Now back to Pizzagate. Back to full on crazy gate.

On November 19th, 2016, Pamela Moore tweeted "Well! Well! Well!"above the fake news headline "FBI: Rumors About Clinton Pedophile Ring Are True.

Michael Flynn's son, Michael Flynn Jr., who followed 58 accounts discovered to be bots, tweeted, "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story." And then was promptly fired from the Trump transition team in early December.

And not all the Twitter handles constantly pumping this story out were bots. Crystal Kemp, a real 50-year-old grandmother from Confluence, Pennsylvania, tweeted about Pizzagate more than 4,000 times in five weeks. An investigative journalist reached out to her via Facebook to ask why she did it, and she told the journalist she didn't want Hillary to win at any cost.” Said she didn't actually know that much about Pizzagate. She told that journalist that everything she tweeted or retweeted was stuff that I found through my own research or from another Twitter follower.

5. The downsizing of legitimate media: Her own “Research?” What research did she really do? I’m guessing none. At least no good research. This is such a big problem with the web. I’ve noticed that a lot of conspiracy theorists are really bad at discerning good information from bad information. And, sadly, more and more journalists, in my opinion, are not as careful about factual reporting as maybe they should be. I think many journalists probably have a harder time than ever fact-checking a story because there’s such a demand for constant content. Pre-internet, newspapers, for example, were more profitable than they are now and could afford larger staffs to do their due diligence on research.

TV came along in the 1950s and newspapers took a big hit. There was a sexy new medium people could get their info from. And then the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s really increased the options available to the average news reader, further hurting various paper’s profits. And with less profits, cutbacks start being made. Even less journalists end up being used to keep carrying the same media workload for any given paper.

Then journalists began to feel an increasing amount of pressure from Wall Street, as shareholders demanded of the Viacoms of the world, the big media conglomerates, to be more profitable which also created staff cuts. It put an even higher workload on journalists. And now, a lot of journalists can’t just write for the paper, they don’t have daily deadlines hours away for the paper the next day, they have to write for the web and have deadlines minutes away. Get that story out now! We needed that breaking story minutes ago! There’s more competition, more players trying to break the same story first.

And it’s not just newspapers and the websites they’ve spawned over the years that have suffered. I’ve watched TV news sources over the years down size as well. Doing standup around the country, I’ve been a guest on countless local morning shows. And year after year, I watch the staffs at these places dwindle. I’ve done morning shows where the on-air personalities and I are the only people in the room. No producer is even around. It’s all automated. One of the shows I did said that the host was being replaced in early 2019 by an actual robot. They showed me beta testing photos of this thing. Looked like some dude. And he’d just be a permanent host. They’re gonna start him off with a real woman as a cohost for the first year or so, and then replace her with a robot clone in another year and then they’ll replace news anchors all over the country with robots. Rumor has it that Kathie Lee Gifford died three months ago and it’s been a robot ever since. Robots man.

The staff at daily papers keep shrinking. Journalists are paid less and expected to do more. That does not create an environment for reliable news.

And so, we have the more trusted news sources slipping a little bit in terms of accuracy, relying on sensationalism to keep people’s attention. And now there are all these fake news websites out there reporting utter nonsense. And people like Crystal Kemp don’t know what the fuck to believe. It's hard when people like me are lying about stuff like robots. That robot stuff was bullshit, just to be clear. Kathie Lee Gifford, to my knowledge, is not a robot. And robots are not replacing news anchors. Yet.

6. Fake News Websites: But check this crazy shit out. Crystal didn’t just retweet the retweeted bot thoughts - she also shared stories from obscure news outlets like ConservativeDailyPost.com, which, according to the investigative journalism done for the Rolling Stone article I read, appears to be a legit fake-news site operated out of Macedonia during this past election. The real “fake news”.

Some other journalists at Buzzfeed found out that teenagers in the little de-industrialized 40,000 person town of Veles, Macedonia published pro-Trump stories because they were profitable as click- bait. Does that make sense? They found out they could make ad money based on site traffic by publishing pro-Trump news stories, whether they were real or not. Makes sense to me. It always comes back to money.

Borce Pejcev, a Macedonian computer programmer has set up dozens of fake-news sites – for around 100 euros each. And then he makes that money back and more with ads. He said that Macedonians don't invent the fake news stories they post, telling a journalist. "No one here knows anything about American politics. They copy and paste from American sites, maybe try to come up with more dramatic headline." Alex Jones InfoWars and Breitbart (“Bright-bart”) , he said, were among the Macedonians' most common source material. He said that Macedonians would've happily copied anti-Trump fake news too, but "Unfortunately, there weren't any good U.S. pro-Clinton fake-news sites to copy and paste.” For these Macedonians, it's not about politics. They don’t give a shit about Republicans or Democrats. They’re half a world away. They just post sensational stories that people will click on and read. Tabloid shit.

Wow. Really think about that. They’re taking headlines from Alex Jones, the crazy fucking lunatic who wept on his show because he was so angry that Barack Obama was in the Whitehouse because he knew that Barack was a demon. He knew! He heard many reports that he smelled like sulphur, he say videos of flies buzzing around Barack’s face - sure signs that he was a minion of Satan. That’s how backwards and medieval the piece of shit Alex Jones. Or worse. He recently claimed in a custody battle that he was just doing a character for his show. Oh, so you’re just making hundreds of thousands of other people believe that Hilary Clinton is a pedophile and Obama is an actual demon on your show, but in real life, you’re a totally mentally competent person. You manipulative asshole. Fuck Alex Jones.

This is medieval, middle ages type of nonsense. And again, this isn’t an attack on conservatives, who Alex Jones aligns himself with - it’s an attack on aggressive, reckless, and dangerous stupidity.

Europeans creating fake news websites to repeat the teachings of Alex Jones. Bots retweeting lies by the thousands. By the millions. A massive disinformation campaign anyone can wage if they have the money. That is fucking terrifying. I used to watch Alex Jones videos and laugh at what a looney tune he is. I put him in the same category as David Icke of the Lizard Illuminati infamy. It doesn’t seem so funny right now. When you realized millions of other people are watching the same video and digesting it as journalistic truth as opposed to the rantings of a mad man, or at least the rantings of a con man, it starts to feel like the inmates are running the asylum.

Now let's talk about Douglas Hagmann.

7. Douglas Hagmann : Douglas Hagmann is a self-employed private investigator and host of HagmannReport.com, a webcast that exposes the "New World Order agenda." It was Hagmann who – four days after Carmen Katz first posted the story and six days before Election Day – brought Pizzagate from social media to fake news' largest stage.

On the November 2nd broadcast of Alex Jones’ InfoWars, arguably the most influential conspiracy-theory outlet in the country, with 7.7 million unique visitors to its website a month, Alex Jones asked Hagmann to tell his audience what sources had revealed about the e-mails recovered on Weiner's computer.

"[T]he most disgusting aspect of this is the sexual angle," Hagmann said. "I don't want to be graphic or gross here. . . . Based on my source, Hillary did in fact participate on some of the junkets on the Lolita Express."

Based on “my source”. Any asshole can just say that now and sound legitimate. I’m just gonna stop researching anything for this podcast and just make up everything as I go along, occasionally saying “based on my source”. “Based on my source”, JFK was killed by none other than the Hamburglar! “Based on my source”, Michael Motherfucking McDonald has won 117 Grammy Awards, and, even more impressive, won 12 leading man Oscars despite never acting in a movie. “Based on my source”, Michael Jordan is the greatest martial artist alive! “Based on my source”, George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey ARE THE SAME PERSON! And that “person” is TOM CRUISE!

And then I’ll reveal years from now that my “source” was none other than Bojangles!! Three leggedd, one eyed pitbull and master of disinformation! Bad dog Bojangles! Sluffing off on your research so you can do what - fuck around with Lucifina!?!

Hagmann’s story took off. Google Trends measures interest in topics among the 1.17 billion users of its search engine on a 0-100 scale. On October 29th, the day Katz posted the story on Facebook, searches for "Hillary" and "pedophile" ranked zero. Ninety-six hours later, when Hagmann "broke" the story on InfoWars, they scored 100. Least to max four fucking days.

In April, Hagmann agreed to meet with Amanda Robb, investigative journalist for the Investigative Fund for a look at his "courtroom-ready" documents on Pizzagate in Erie, Pennsylvania. And here’s what Amanda learned: a) Amanda’s interview with Hagman: In October of 2016, Hagmann had claimed that he "communicated" with a friend who knows someone affiliated with the NYPD. The friend of the friend - here we go - the old “friend of a friend” song and dance. This “friend of a friend” had been on the "task force" that secured Weiner's computer and had copied documents onto a thumb drive "proving" Clinton and her associates were involved in pedophilia. "Now, I can't get him to give me the thumb drive," he said. "Or even admit to the fact that he had it." When Amanda asked how he could possibly know the files existed, he said, "I trust my source.” How convenient.

“Where’s the evidence I claimed having in a story that made millions think Hillary was a pedophile? It’s in a thumb drive, okay asshole!”

“Where’s the thumb drive?”

“My uh, my source won’t give to me.”

“Who’s your source?”

“A friend of a friend, okay smarty pants!”

“And you’re sure this friend of a friend has the information on this thumb drive?”

“Not exactly. Now, he’s saying he doesn’t have it.”

“So, you never even saw it and now the person who told you it existed is saying they never had it either?”

“Yes, that’s pretty accurate.”

“So why do you still believe the story?”

“Cause I trust my source you question asking piece of shit! Why can’t you just leave it at that!?! You and your insistence on actual evidence!”

Hagmann launched into a synopsis of three decades of rumors that Clinton and her associates are lesbians and perverts. No proof. No evidence. Just rumors probably started by people as paranoid and uninformed as he is. He referenced the unsubstantiated claims of Cathy O'Brien, a conspiracy theorist from Muskegon, Michigan, who alleged that while held as a CIA sex slave, she was forced to service Hillary Clinton.

I looked up Cathy O’Brien and she is an obvious whackadoodle. Her claims show up on sketchy looking websites like trance-formation.com where one unsubstantiated claim after another is made. Where no footnotes or sources are ever listed. Cathy claims she was a victim of MK ULTRA in 1988. She was rescued from her mind control enslavement and went on to tell her story - that she was Hilary’s sex slave and that the government’s ultimate goal is to control the minds of every citizen.

This idiot. Get the fuck out of here! God man. Being from Idaho, where there is a high percentage of paranoid nut jobs, I’ve been around people like Cathy most of my life. I’ve never met her but feel confident betting my life on the fact that she is batshit fucking crazy. If the government really was doing that, they would have killed her to keep the secret from getting out. They’d kill her after she escaped. I have plenty of complaints about the government, I’m sure they do shady shit. I’m not naive. What they don’t do is create a mind-controlled sex slave for the First Lady and then let her live to talk about it. If what she said was true, she would’ve been covertly taken the fuck out by the CIA. C’mon.

Hagmann moved on to Clinton's "close" relationship with Weiner's estranged wife, and the allegation that her campaign manager, John Podesta, and his brother Tony resemble sketches of the suspects in the 2007 disappearance of four- year-old Madeleine McCann in Portugal. "Sorry," Hagmann stopped himself. "I know this case is difficult. Circumstantial.” Circumstantial? It’s crazy you looney tune!

“And, let us take a look at Exhibit A! Notice how the suspect KIND OF looks like the suspect in another unrelated crime half a world away. Sure, you say, this man couldn’t have committed the crime because he has a strong alibi in that he wasn’t even born yet when the crime was committed. HOWEVER! Let me remind you that he KIND OF LOOKS LIKE TED BUNDY! What about that!?!”

When Amanda asked if him if he had actually verified anything, anything at all, Hagmann shuffled some papers, lifting one sheet by a corner, like a poker player. With apparent reluctance, he turned over a color copy of an image showing a clean, uninjured boy wearing a green T-shirt in a dog cage. The kid could have been playing instead of being held hostage. I have a dog kennel and my kids have been inside it. It was their idea. They thought it was funny. ”That might be a disturbing image," Amanda told Haggman, then sating. "But I don't see what it has to do with Hillary Clinton." Hagmann shrugged. "You could say I have dog crap for answers and dog crap for sources," he said, adding later, "I hope you don't think this was a waste."

And this is the guy who went on InfoWars talking about what he knew. This is the type of guest that piece of shit Alex Jones has on his show. Fuck I hate Alex Jones. I’ve hated him for years. Such a liar. Such an aggressive agitator. A man who waves the flag of truth so fervently who has ZERO respect for truth. Fucking charlatan. Fucking snake oil salesman. True wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The following month, at Awaken to the Shakin', a Bible conference in Gurnee, Illinois, Hagmann presented his evidence to an audience of about 40 middle-aged churchgoers. His courtroom-ready exhibits included the Wikipedia entry for "fake news," the New Oxford Dictionary definition of "post- truth," a quote by John Wayne, a photo of people sitting on a couch wearing horse masks, a photo of scars on the fingers of John Podesta. And the kicker – a photo of a decapitated body that Hagmann said was a victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and another of a sculpture in Tony Podesta's home, a sculpture titled "The Arch of Hysteria." That he said, looked shockingly similar to Dahmer’s victim.

Do you hear this crazy shit? He’s touting as evidence of someone’s evilness a statue that kind of looks like a picture of one of Dahmer’s victims. Even Fox Mulder from the X-Files would laugh that off. (British detective type voice) “It’s the work of the illuminati! Look at all the evidence! Look at this apple laying on his counter that is the same shape as the head of the founder of the free masons! Look how round both the apple and the head are! Uncannily similar! And look at this, look at this crumpled up receipt we found in his trash. If you look at it in the right light, at the right angle, it looks EXACTLY like another crumpled up receipt found in the basement of John Wayne Gacy! And look at this picture of him resting his chin in his hands, his fingers form a triangle with the table his hands rest on - an illumanati triangle- he’s throwing it in our faces. He’s practically screaming, “I fuck kids in pizzeria basements!” The horror! The evilness!”

Two days after Hagmann's appearance on InfoWars, Erik Prince, the brother of Trump's secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, "confirmed" that the terrible rumor was true in an interview on Breitbart (Bright - bart”) . Prince is best known as the founder of the private military company Blackwater USA.

On Breitbart (Bright-bart”) radio, Prince painted a picture sure to stir the far right. "Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating," he said. "They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money-laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times.”

I love that the Epstein’s island, where sex with teen girls did go on, is now a “sex island”. As if that’s all that happens there. You step off the plane into some Romanesque orgy where it’s nothing but dick and puss, most of it underage. 24 hours a day every day, 365 days a year. Lube is being dropped off every hour on the hour by drones. Boats of sex slaves being unloaded every morning. (Old timey paper boy) “Sex slaves! Get your fresh sex slaves! Welcome to sex island folks! Grab some free viagra. Grab a whip to whip your sex slave!”

Citing Prince's interview, Alex Jones fumed, "When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped . . . yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children." Jones' video was viewed on YouTube more than 427,000 times. Prince's interview was shared another 81,000 times.

Motherfucker. With NO evidence, he is telling his listeners that Hillary Clinton rapes, murders, and “chops up” children. This shit is not okay. Alex Jones should be BURIED in lawsuits. He should owe 10 lifetimes worth of money to all the people whose lives he’s endangered by leading a portion of the public to believe they’re ridiculous monsters.

Around this time, Clinton campaign staffer noticed "Podesta Spirit Cooking Emails Reveal Clinton's Inner Circle as Sex Cult with Connections to Human Trafficking" on a website called DangerandPlay.com become "Podesta Practices Occult Magic" on the Drudge Report, and then saw Alex Jones shouting that Clinton "is an abject, psychopathic demon from hell," who "smell[s] like sulfur.”

It got even weirder after users on 8chan read a Podesta e-mail that revealed that Democratic activist David Brock had dated the owner of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, James Alefantis. The citizen investigators considered Brock their archenemy – he'd founded Correct the Record, a Super PAC that defended Clinton against defamation by online trolls. Suddenly, morons began to see sinister meaning in any mention of pizza; for instance, the first letters in the words "cheese pizza" are the same as in "child porn."

Jesus. 2016. And so many of our citizens are no smarter than the people who sentenced innocent people to death during the Salem Witch trials. Witch hunt mentality - alive and strong!

The election came and went, but Pizzagate remained alive and well. Several Twitter accounts tweeted exclusively about Pizzagate to a number of alt-right "influencers" – such as, of course, InfoWars.

One Twitter account @Pizza_Gate, caught the attention of Mehmet Ali Önel, a Turkish TV anchor. Önel, who has 196,000 Twitter followers, was one of dozens of Turkish commentators who claimed Americans had no right calling out Turkey for sex crimes with Pizzagate erupting in their own capital. One of the most shared Pizzagate tweets was posted by the anchor on November 16th. Roughly translated, it reads, "USA #PizzaGate shaken by the pedophilia scandals.”

This shit is real news now in Turkey.

Several hours after Önel sent his November 16th tweet, a web troll named Jack Posobiec went to investigate Comet Ping Pong and another nearby pizzeria. Live-streaming the visit on Periscope, he described evidence of "what's really going on" – a double pane of glass near an oven, security cameras, a texting cashier. Posobiec paused, worrying his viewers might not understand the situation. "It's like in the movie Jurassic Park," he said. "Nedry had the shaving cream bottle. And you could press the top and a little bit of shaving cream came out. . . . The bottom part is where they had the dinosaur embryos.

The Twittersphere went wild. The previous day, there were roughly 6,000 tweets about Pizzagate. Now, it was closer to 55,000.

InfoWars posted a video called "Pizzagate Is Real." On November 27th, Jones spent a half-hour explaining the story. "Something's being covered up," he told his audience. "All I know is, God help us, we're in the hands of pure evil." Hours later, he released another video, "Down the #Pizzagate Rabbit Hole." On December 1st, the show posted "Pizzagate: The Bigger Picture." In North Carolina, Edgar Maddison Welch, the man who would fire shots in to Comet Ping Pong was becoming obsessed with all the Pizza Gate coverage. By the evening of December 4th, he’d be in solitary confinement in a Washington, D.C., jail.

Nearly a year after the election, in three separate hearings with members of Congress, executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google took turns expressing contrition for hosting Russia's attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion. A Facebook vice president said it "pains us as a company" that foreign actors "abused our platform." Twitter's general counsel said he too was "troubled" that the power of Twitter was misused.

And people are still talking about this event as if it really happened, people I refer to as Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

III. Idiots of the Internet A. David Seaman: For today’s Idiots I looked at a brand new Youtube video that came out just this past weekend, posted by user David Seaman, a true whackadoodle moron. Not the retired English Goalkeeper - not that David Seaman. Not the British DJ. No - this one is all American. And a real piece of shit. He describes himself on his Youtube Bio as “I report the truth. Often socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and curious. Always human. Former contributor: Huffington Post, Business Insider. Maybe you've seen me on as a guest in the past: ABC News Digital, Coast to Coast, CNN Headline News, BBC, HuffPost LIVE, The Young Turks, or Fox News.”

Keep all his credits in mind as we walk through this video. He has gotten on all these networks, as a journalist. He has almost 160,000 Youtube subscribers.

And on December 2 - just the other day, he posted a video called “Pizzagate & Podesta: DEEP STATE CHECKMATE?!”

And he starts off with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lD- OZb_hZI “Let’s be unbelievably clear…”

Behind this idiot, as he’s talking, is a handwritten poster that says, “Wake the Fuck Up.” It should say, “I’m Off My Meds”, or, “I Could REALLY Use Some Sleep”, or maybe “I’m In a Real Dark Place Right Now and I’m Scared and Confused.”

1. Idiot Deborah R posts first: “Can't we sue the GOVERNMENT or FBI for not looking into pizzagate after 1 year of informing them???!”

No Deborah, we can’t, because it’s nonsense. To sue someone you have to have a credible case. Now take your computer and smash it into a million pieces. Reading shit online is clearly making you dumber.

a) First reply to Deborah comes from Think Tank founder and obvious MENSA member Dog Sings, who posts “Fbi in on it. Top officials are Satanists.” Well there you go America. Top officials are Satanists. It’s a fact. As told by user Dog Sings.

b) Then, user Divergent says, “It's happening. Destroying the fake news is one of the first steps and Trump is currently taking them down one by one.”

Holy fuck. Goddmamn it you guys. I don’t care if you love Trump. I really don’t. But please don’t love him because you think he’s draining the swamp. He’s not. He’s one of the monsters in the swamp. Like his business policies? Fine. Like his social issues stances? Agree to disagree. Think he’s taking on the system? Get the fuck out of here. Wake up. He is the system.

B. User Stacey Van Adder aka Vapid Hatemonger posts, referring to Podesta, “people that powerful NEVER go to jail. The BEST thing that could happen to him is STREET JUSTICE, however rich assholes like him usually have security teams. Keep it up, Mr. Seaman, your courage is inspiring. . .its great to see there are still REAL men in this country. Leaked emails? How about that horribly disturbing AUDIO of that creep torturing a little boy? Like I said, the BEST thing that could happen to him would be to presented as a "Christmas gift," to the parents of one of his victims.”

Stacey you vile ignorant asshole. If Podesta ever does get injured or killed because of this, you should go to jail with whoever does it. This shit is so dangerous. Encouraging others to kill someone for being a Satanic pedophile when there is no evidence. When it’s all made up. The Comet Ping Pong owners received TONS of death threats because of this shit. It’s not okay. Think about the Satanic daycare scare of the 1980s I talked about in the Mandela Effect episode. When all those innocent daycare providers were accused of being Satanic pedophiles, part of some huge conspiracy. People went to prison. Families were destroyed. Lives were ruined. Businesses bankrupted. And years later, it was revealed that it was all bullshit. False memory syndrome combined with religious hysteria combined with poor criminal investigation. And the same irresponsible hysteria is back with this story.

C. Fake Accounts: And then, there is this crazy amount of obviously fake accounts posting crap. Tons of different accounts that have the same type of User pic. If the Username is Patricia May, than the account picture is also the words “Patricia May” but because Youtube requires a circular pictures the edges of the letters are cut off. And the font is the same for nearly all the Youtube Username pics. Clearly, someone has used some type of automated program to produced hundreds of fake accounts to kick fake comments that all say the same type of thing, that all push the same agenda.

D. One account that doesn’t look fake to me, User RisingSun49, posts utter paranoid insanity. He says “Yeah! Why did he write "you can go have fun with chicken or chicken livers, i dont think this ones going to make it thru the night but you can have fun with her!! Chicken means child in pedo tongue. There were so many others we can dissect and know exactly what he meant. Hes talking about raping children to Death!! He has a bad temper just by listening to him when hes being interviewed when he doesnt like whats being said he raises his voice and gets enraged , those poor little kids. I think JOhn is a serial killer of children.

“Chicken means ‘child’ in pedo tongue.” Yeah. It does actually. As in a Chickenhawk. Someone preying on the young. However RisingSun49, it also means CHICKEN. As in the food you fucking lunatic. “He’s talking about raping children to Death!” No he’s not! Jesus Christ. No he’s not. Fucking morons.

Thank God for you Timesuckers. Seriously. If I wasn’t constantly reminded, thanks to you, that there are so many intelligent, intellectually curious people in this nation, people who don’t still cognitively dwell in the dark ages, I would be forming an exit plan to leave the country when my kids graduate from high school. Not kidding. This shit depresses me so much. It makes me feel alone and terrified that I am surrounded by easily manipulated hateful morons who year after year, waste their time focusing on this shit instead of actually paying attention to real problem in our society. Corporate greed. And not some evil cartoonish greed. We just have fallen into a system where our retirement investment accounts only significantly increase in value when the Dow Jones jumps up, and that only happens when giant companies post bigger and better profit margins than ever before, and those profit margins come at the expense of the salaries of the same people investing in the stock market that is oppressing them so they can eventually retire. It’s a fucked up system that I still have no idea how to fix. But I think about it a lot. I think about it. What I don’t think about is dumbshit illuminati Satanic pedophile and child murder rings because they’re not real. This is boogeyman shit. This is don’t go out into the woods because a witch lives out there shit. Careful crossing that bridge because a troll lives under it bullshit. When are we going to rise above that type of thinking? Unless we double down on education. Good critical thinking, focus on accurate historical analysis and scientific fundamentals type of thinking, we will NEVER rise above this. We will forever have an enormous percentage of the population dwelling in the intellectual muck and the mire that is the cesspool home of the Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

IV. Conclusions.

A. “Fake news” Fake news. That’s what Pizzagate is really all about. Truly fake news.

Get a population not only lose trust in mainstream media but to become convinced that mainstream journalists are nothing but lying, manipulative hate mongers - members of elite, secret societies out to destroy everything you and your family care about and stand for - and that population starts to look elsewhere for their information. And elsewhere can get really scary, real quick.

The AP may not ALWAYS get everything right because they’re an association comprised of human beings, imperfect like the rest of us. But the Associated Press IS an independent non-profit organization with oversight and ethics boards who work to provide the most factual reporting possible. With an emphasis on avoiding conflicts of interest in reporting. There is a focus their on journalistic integrity. And are their still some bad AP journalists? Of course. MSNBC anchor got caught lying about having a helicopter he was traveling in in Iraq hit by an RPG. He was suspended without pay for six months. Others have made mistakes as well. But, at the end of the day, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, CBS - biases as they may have - are still a Hell of a lot more reliable than INFOWARS with Alex Jones or SubjectPolitics.com - the news equivalent of Star Magazine or the Weekly World News. Places who blatantly lie and make stories based on nothing but heresy or worse - based on nothing at all. They literally just make shit up to boost their views constantly. And, even worse, they throw in a lot of truthful journalism to muddy the waters. To give them just enough legitimacy to make their outright lies and slander seem legitimate.

And when people start looking to conspiracy nuts - and I do mean NUTS - for the truth - they start to lose touch with reality. Wonder how people start to believe in stuff like the Lizard Illuminati and a Flat Earth? It’s because they’ve lost faith in mainstream media and have chosen to believe in fringe lunatics who’re convinced that a small group of people in power are constantly manipulating them. They’re people, who odds are never studied critical thinking or how to analyze media and they’ve put themselves in a position where they’re unable to discern truth from fiction. Suddenly, a group of reptilian overlords controlling the human race because they need our emotional turmoil to survive sounds as plausible, if not more plausible, then large corporations using their immense bank accounts to hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists who can bribe and bully capital hill into consistently passing legislation that serves their corporate profit slash Wall Street goals of keeping investors happy by constantly posting higher and higher profit margins and taking over a larger and larger market share.

Money makes the world go ‘round. Always has. But not in some secret society way. It’s right out there in the open for all of us to see. It’s basic human greed. It used to belong to Kings and Queens and other conquerors. CEOs and corporate founders are the new conquerors. Grabbing bigger share of the International marketplace is the new colonialism.

But that’s not fun to think about. It’s complicated. It’s an economic trend that feels impossible to reverse. It sometimes feels inevitable. It’s nuanced and involved. It’s hard.

Much easier to think a small group of people are just evil and that they’re fucking with us. Maybe Satanic pedophiles. Maybe lizard people. And if we could stop them, maybe we could make the world right according to whatever we happen to think “right” even is. The Earth isn’t round - NASA is a bunch of liars. Scientists are a bunch of liars who just want to take our money and give it to the illuminati.

It’s paranoia to believe this shit. It’s nonsense. It’s why we need to educate ourselves on the actual voting records and policies and platforms of politicians and vote whenever we can, whenever we can afford it, to prioritize education. I need to do this too. I’ve been shamefully lazy the last three Presidential elections. It’s embarrassing but it’s true. For 12 years I’ve bitched and done very little about anything. But I’m changing that. I’m reading far more than I ever have in my life. I’m forcing myself to pull my head out of the sand and get involved. No liberal agenda. No conservative agenda. Just a human agenda. How can I help make the world a little better, a little more fair, a litter more bearable and enjoyable for the common man. And, of course, the common woman. Hail Nimrod!

Bad ideas fester in the muck of the chronically poor and multi- generationally uneducated. And certain wealthy people in power must love that. It makes increasing their obscene wealth that much easier. They love keeping us dumb and distracted. Keep us getting fired up about nonsense like Pizzagate when we should be angry over limited access to healthcare, a failing education system in many of our cities, a housing and higher education market that keeps getting farther and father out of reach for the majority of the population.

As recently as five years ago, the US spent more on education than the average spent per student by other developed nations. In a study conducted in 2010 by The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States spent more than $11,000 per elementary student and more than $12,000 per high school student. When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report. That sum inched past some developed countries and far surpassed others. Switzerland's total spending per student was $14,922 while Mexico averaged $2,993 in 2010. The average OECD nation spent $9,313 per young person. The United States spent 7.3 percent of its gross domestic product on education, compared with the 6.3 percent average of other OECD countries.

But the OECD conducted a new study this year and the results are troubling. U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined 3 percent from 2010 to 2014 even as its economy prospered and its student population grew slightly by 1 percent, boiling down to a 4 percent decrease in spending per student. Over this same 2010 to 2014 period, education spending, on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD. Some school districts in Oklahoma that cut the number of school days to four from five each week. And with decreased spending the burden on US teachers grows. U.S. teachers teach close to 1,000 hours a year, compared with 600 hours in Japan and 550 hours in Korea. In these countries, teachers might specialize in one course, such as Algebra I, and teach it only a few periods a day. The rest of their work week is spent on other activities, such as preparing lessons or giving feedback to students. We’re still spending more on average than other developed nations but we’re moving in the wrong direction.

We may be the leaders of the free world but we’re not currently the leaders in education. One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. at 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Even worse, among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. 30th out of 35 other developed western countries. That’s fucking terrible. That’s scary. That’s not leading. That’s putting ourselves in a mental place to be taken advantage of. To believe in gibberish like Pizza gate.

By deemphasizing education, we’re fertilizing an anti-intellectual movement in this country. This attitude of you may have a degree and you may have your “book learning, but I know what I know dude!”

Growing up in a small, rural town, I’ve met tons of people who look down on higher education. Really seem to almost despise it. This attitude of “that may work in books and such but I live in the real world, buddy. I graduated for the school of hard knocks”.

And look - practical experience and hands-on learning has IMMENSE VALUE - but so does education. And you just can’t beat the combination of strong education combined with strong hands-on, real-life experience. And if you don’t believe that, then you’ve allowed yourself to become too stupid to know what you don’t know.

I just hired a young man with an audio engineering degree to increase the sound quality of this podcast because I know enough to know I’m not as smart as he is when it comes to sound engineering. I didn’t study it for two years like he did. If this podcast becomes as successful as I hope it does, as I want it to, I’d love to hire someone with a masters or doctorate in historical research or investigative journalism because I know they’re going to catch things I don’t. I’ll learn from them. I’d love to got back and get a history degree if I had time to right now. I value education. Always have. Wish I had a Masters degree. Wish I had a doctorate - and not for the title, for the knowledge. Knowledge really is power. I work with a professional literary editor now because he catches grammatical flaws that I don’t because I don’t know as much as he does about grammar. He’s more educated that I am in that regard.

Be curious and question the information around you Timesuckers - that’s the spirit of this podcast. It is the will of Nimrod. It pleases his prophet Bojangles and his bard Michael McDonald. And his other bard James “So Smooth He Makes Silk Seem Like Sandpaper” Ingram. It’s the ethos of Timesuck.

But also, while questioning, also learn to trust - trust that not everyone is out to get you, trust that people who have a degree in journalism probably, on average, are better at presenting journalistic information than someone who doesn’t. Double check mainstream media sources as opposed to ignoring them and looking to some sub reddit or Twitter where the same lie has just been reposted a thousand different ways.

On the Timesuck app, I’ve included PDF downloads to my notes from all of my episodes for full transparency. All the notes I use for the episodes are right there for you to see. Check my sources. You’ll see that I work hard to give you the best info possible. If I make a mistake it’s out of human error not agenda.

We can’t let our nation fall into Idiocracy. We’re in real trouble as a society, culture, and world if we let the Idiots of the Internet become the majority. We must fight ignorance. Combat it with intellectual curiosity. Keep debunking conspiracies. Keep skewering destructive cults. Keep mocking idiots of the internet. Keep learning. Keep thinking. Keep talking and debating. Keep updating. Keep on fucking sucking.

And now, you wonderful beautiful bastards, it’s time for Top Five Takeaways.

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V. Top Five Takeaways

1. Number one. There is zero evidence that John Podesta, or Hillary Clinton, or any other high ranking DC insider ran or was even involved with a pedophile ring. And there certainly isn’t evidence a pizza place was involved.

2. Number two. There is evidence that Edgar Maddison Welch fired a rifle into Comet Ping Pong on Dec. 4th, 2016, in attempt to rescue kids he believed were being held captive, molested, and raped in the pizza place’s basement. He’s serving four years in prison because he believed Pizzagate was real.

3. Number three. Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is connected socially to the Clintons AND Trump and he for sure is a pedophile. He’s a level three sex offender. He did run a sex trafficking ring of sorts. And he did get off easy. But that doesn’t make everyone he’s ever brought on his plane guilty by association. Matt Lauer appears to be a sexual predator. Should NBC also fire Kathy Lee Gifford because she worked with him. She was friends with him - does that make her guilty too? Of course not - guilty by association doesn’t apply there or with Pizzagate. And, as I made clear, Kathy Lee Gifford is a robot and robots can’t be held accountable for their actions.

4. Number four. If you have the money you can actually hire people to manipulate social media and web based news in ways I didn’t realize were possible. You can retweet a lie so many times it starts to feel like a truth. Any lie. We’re entering a dangerous time regarding disinformation. Pizzagate is going to be far from the last unfounded conspiracy to bring about actual harm. Rumors can kill.

5. And Number five - new info! Comet Ping Pong, despite all the bad press, currently has a 3 1/2 out of 5 stars rating on Yelp after 730 reviews. It’s a two dollar sign pizza place where you can get a pizza or a calzone for anywhere from $9 to $17 bucks. And, strangely, some of the poor reviews have been left by customers upset that they didn’t have kids on the menu, customers like Yelp Reviewer Chikatilo Still Alive 666 who posted, “Why no kids on menu? I hear so much pizza gate talk I look forward to vigorous wrassling and killing of kids in basement. I look forward to working up appetite pulling around cock soft like wad of evil putty. I look forward to hard tugging of shame cock like giant worn out plastic tube. Like old rubber band that has lost snap. Instead, I get calzone and ask to leave when pull down sweat pants at counter. What big deal? I stretch penis that look more like dog chew toy than sexual organ when nervous.”

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VI. Closing Announcements A. Alright - that was Pizza Gate you guys. Hope you liked it. Hope you didn’t see it as a partisan attack. It’s not. The problem of Pizzagate runs far deeper than any one political party.

Okay - some Timesuck news.

1. THE APP! The Timesuck App is out! It’s in it’s first phase but I think it’s looking pretty good.

It has a player where you can download or stream any of the episodes. And, unlike on any other podcast app, you can push a button and get the PDF of the show notes to any episode as you listen. You can read the bios of Lucifina, Bojangles, Nimrod, and other characters. You can pick an Avatar for those characters. When later versions of the app come out, your avatar can be seen in message boards, in the topic voting section, et cetera. The new website that matches the app is also here - timesuckpodcast.com has changed it’s look. Sorry there will no longer be pictures associated with episodes on the website. I made the decision not to list those because technically, I don’t have legal permission to do so as someone pointed out, and, it clunks up the site. I want the focus on the audio and Timesuck artwork, notes, et cetera - not on random images you can find anywhere. And there will be plenty of pics still on Timesuck social media.

FYI - the player is going to be able to play at variable speeds in a later update. There’s a link to the store on the app. And in a later update, a link to tour dates.

There is a cool sponsor section where I’ve made it as easy as possible for you to take advantage of Timesuck discounts. Current sponsorships are listed as buttons with the deal info below them. Push the button and get taken right to the deal. Can’t make it easier.

All of this will be on the App, the new website, and the mobile version of the new website for those of you who hate apps or can’t use them for whatever reason.

And, if you have any problems with the app, do not mail me! Email the Bit Elixir App development team. A team of Timesuckers actually. [email protected]. There should be a button right on the app to directly access that email.

Thanks in advance for helping trouble shoot this. We’re going to grow it into the best podcast app out there.

So download it from the Apple or Google store - it’s available for both iOs and Android devices - and get familiar with it so when the premium Space Lizard features come out in February, you’re ready for them.

Finally - some of the Avatar artwork is temporary. Danger Brain has created all the artwork for the app and the new website, and Sebastian at Danger Brain will finish more kick ass avatars in the future. Danger Brain man - they’re busy guys because they’re so fucking good.

Go to thedangerbrain.com for all your design needs!

2. The Office: Also -start moving into an actual office later today. Going to get it set up over the new few recordings to increase the recording quality and volume of the suck. Turn it into a clubhouse. I’ll host a little Timesuck open house in a few months after we’re real settled in. Details on that sometime in the next few weeks.

Alright.

Thanks all the iTunes and Facebook reviews and ratings again this past week Thank you, thank you, thank you. Heading towards 2,000 ratings on iTunes which is incredible.

ALSO - Timesuck is on Spotify on both the app and the Spotify desktop website if that is where you insist on listening to it.

Sorry Timesuck is not quite on Youtube but it will be this week or I may have to kill my new employee. Josh has promised me the Suck will be on Youtube this week.

Sorry the store is so depleted. I’ve put new orders in and am restocking after getting wiped out on Cyber Monday as fast as I can. Follow the suck on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook - @Timesuckpodcast to know when stuff hits the stores the day it arrives.

Special thanks to Timesuckers Leigh House, Brooks Growand and anyone else I missed - I think I missed several who suggested today’s topic. Hope you liked it. So your suggestion doesn’t get lost, please email them to [email protected] Much easier to find later in the emails than they are from private messages on social media.

Special shoutout to young Sucker @maverickmason66 on Instagram just for being a cool dude.

Thanks to Sydney Shives for killing it on social media, Harmony Vellekamp for all of her help and Jesse Dobner for his editing wizardry once again!!

3. NEXT WEEK: Next week, Griselda Blanco! La Madrina, the Black Widow, the Cocaine Godmother, the Queen of Narco-Trafficking, Satan’s Pomeranian.

Alright - I just made up that last nick name but the other ones are legit. Griselda was a Colombian drug lord of the Medellín Cartel and a pioneer in the Miami-based cocaine drug trade and underworld during the 1970s and early 1980s before she took two bullets to the head at the age of 69 in 2012. Still gangster at 69! Shit. How did this woman become a major player in the man’s world of narco trafficking. By being a bad motherfucker.

The Godmother is rumored to have been responsible for roughly 200 deaths. Who is this woman? A real life Lucifina? Find out next Monday on Timesuck. And, I will figure out some options for the Dec. 15th Friday Bonus Suck here very soon and post those options on Instagram.

Now let’s get to the Cult of the Curious. Time for Timesucker Updates.

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VII. Timesucker Updates A. First one today is an update of an old episode - an update to episode Timesuck episode 16, Is We Getting Dumberest? A Suck on the current state of education in America. Seems fitting for this week’s episode. This comes from a young Sucker by the name of Shane.

“Hey dan, this is shane,the guy that drew that terrible picture of you, but this isnt about that. I was recently watching your "is we getting dumberest" episode and i heard you say that you wished there was a common sense class in school. Well i thought i would tell you that at my high school starting next year(my senior year) there is going to be a senior life preparation class, where they teach students about the things they should get ready for in there future such as tax, rent, stocks, and overall just common sense. So youre wish has been granted, at least in my school district(oroville union high school district in case you were wondering) keep on sucking master sucker you make me curious to learn more about this ball (or disc) of earth...hail nimrod!

Hail Nimrod Shane! I love it. A life preparation class. That’s so great. I feel like it’s so important. We have to focus on history, critical thinking, math and science, literacy of course - but also - on how to fucking pay your bills and taxes and invest so you can put your life in a position to have time to focus on continuing to learn as you get old. So you’re not always confused and financially struggling. Great to hear Shane - love it!

B. BTK update from Timesucker Asellus Claudum

Came to Timesuck through Dork Forest and am enjoying it immensely. Just finished the BTK episode & it begs some very important questions.

First; other than Wichita does Kansas have any city names of its own?

Ha. We do reuse names a lot in this country when it comes to towns for sure.

Second; is BTK proof that dipshits can be monsters or that monsters can be dipshits? Further study is required and I’m frankly disheartened that no BTK interviewer has come at it from that angle yet. Holy shit what a dumb fuck that guy was. As far as murderers go I really can’t think of a better example of someone so confidently stumbling through life until his luck ran out.

For a guy who went so long without getting caught, he really didn’t seem that intellectually superior did he? He was careful more than intelligent. He was a good planner. Very methodical if not hyper intelligent.

Finally I just wanted to mention as it’s a recurring sentiment with you in the more murdery episodes that the sociopath with a shitty childhood thing is a bit of a myth. While there’s outliers such as the Iceman et al by and large we’ve learned that most violent sociopaths’ sob stories are bullshit and the ‘cycle of violence’ narrative is usually just that; a narrative. I only mention this as it is a myth that haunts many people with truly traumatizing upbringings. People who were abused as children often live in constant fear of when their own monster will surface due entirely to the pervasiveness of this narrative so the less people spreading it around the better for everyone.

That’s an interesting point. Yeah - having a tough childhood and being raised by monsters shouldn’t make someone worry that they themselves will become a monster. At the end of the day, it’s a choice to be a killer, and you can’t blame anyone but yourself for choosing to be a piece of shit.

I wish I had some specific sources locked and loaded for you but I believe research along these lines is cited in the books The Wisdom of Psychopaths; Liars, Lovers and Heroes; and The Psychopath Next Door. The comic creator and abuse survivor Dean Trippe has also spoken of this at length on several podcasts specifically SmodCo’s Fatman on Batman.

Not trying to admonish, just enlighten. Keep up the good work!

Thanks Asellus! I appreciate it.

C. Flat Earth Update from a NASA Timesucker! This comes in from Timesucker Jonah Rieman.

Dan, I've started listening to your podcast a couple weeks ago and Ive been listening to one or two a day at work. I was struggling through another Friday and just got to your flat earth theory one. Funniest fucking shit I have ever heard. I work for Nasa and all your references have completely turned around my day. I told my coworkers to listen and even when this job sucks, fluid system design sounds a lot more enjoyable than guarding a cliff around Antarctica. Keep up the good work. I'm excited to see how this podcast keeps progressing.

Thanks Jonah! Glad you’re not stuck on that ice wall patrol buddy.

D. And last for today, another BTK update. Straight from Kansas!

Dear Mr. Dan ‘the suck master, master of the suck’ Cummins, my wife and I wanted to message you to say thank you for covering BTK, a horrifying reign of terror that our ourselves, our friends, and families remember all too well.

It was a little surreal to hear the timeline and knowing exactly the locations you spoke about. I was in 5th grade when Rader started dropping off packages around Wichita and was finally caught. A quick story to add to the ‘potential victims list blurb’, a friend of mine’s co- worker lived in Wichita in the 70’s and came home to find her phone cord cut. When she asked her roommate why the phone wasn’t working the roommate had said a guy with ADT came by earlier to bury a new line in the back yard but needed a shovel. They immediately left the house and told the police.

A few douchey corrections that don’t really matter or affect the facts of the story but as locals, matters to us! The town of Salina is pronounced with a long I sound not a long E sound. Sah-LINE-Uh. KAKE news is simply said as ‘Cake’, and I must defend my alma mater and say WuShock is the best mascot in higher education, Go shox! On a side note, my wife and I both got bachelors in Psychology from Wichita State, just wanted to share the commonality.

Thanks so much for the incredible podcast Dan, my wife and I hope to meet you one day if you ever come close to Wichita, sorry the Looney Bin was such a let down, til next time.

Keep on Suckin!

- Alex and Kaitlyn Freund(Pronounced Friend)

Wow - scary shit about your friend’s coworker. Nuts. And yeah, got a lot of emails about Suh-LINE-us. It cracks me up when a pronunciation changes over time because the original language of the word is lost. I bet that Suh-line-us was supposed to be pronounced Salinas, I bet the origin is still Spanish, but, it got ‘Mericanized!

Thanks for sending that in fellow students of the human mind. And go Shox!

I know a TON of you write in and don’t make it to the Updates. When The Secret Suck comes out in February, so many more of you can have your voices heard. It’ll be great. Thanks for continuing to write in, and can’t wait for the extra podcast to include so much more of you into the growing community.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

VIII. Goodbye! A. Well thanks everyone. Extra thanks this week to the Australian Timesuckers. Thanks for spreading the word down under - the Suck has been really growing there and I appreciate it.

Until next week, enjoy your week, good luck preparing for your Fantasy Football playoffs, don’t spread propaganda on the web, and put some “keep on” into some “suckin’.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-09-18/while- rest-of-the-world-invests-more-in-education-the-us-spends-less https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/dcs-pizzagate-shooter- sentenced-to-4-years-in-jail/531381/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list- study-shows/ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/pizzagate-anatomy-of-a-fake- news-scandal-w511904 https://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-billionaire-pedophile-who-could-bring- down-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PolitiFact http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/04/ conservative-daily-post/evidence-ridiculously-thin-sensational-claim-huge-/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/may/14/case-mistaken- identity/ https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/theerant/thee-rant-f72/ http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/01/politics/michael-flynn-charged/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers http://trance-formation.com/