In other news, NBC News has tracked down the people behind the "Qanon" conspiracy theory and found that it's just a group of three grifters making money off some stupid shit they ripped from 4chan. They didn't even write the original theory, they just appropriated it.
In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's message board.
Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of “Q,” the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump.
Now, the people behind that effort are at the center of a fractious debate among conspiracy enthusiasts, some of whom believe the three people who first popularized the Qanon theory are promoting it in order to make a living.
Come up with the dumbest shit you can possibly think of and Trump's supporters will fall for it.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman Dana White is under investigation for allegedly ordering her government staff to do personal chores for her like pick up her dry-cleaning and prescriptions.
That sounds familiar.
Finally, a grand jury convened by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has released a report on sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the systemic, 70-year-long effort to cover it up. To say that their report is astonishing and sick would be a significant understatement. I read the Jerry Sandusky indictment and even that wasn't even in the same ballpark as what the Catholic Church has done.
From the Associated Press:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A priest raped a 7-year-old girl while he was visiting her in the hospital after she'd had her tonsils removed. Another priest forced a 9-year-old boy into having oral sex, then rinsed out the boy's mouth with holy water. One boy was forced to say confession to the priest who sexually abused him.
Those children are among the victims of roughly 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania who molested more than 1,000 children — and possibly many more — since the 1940s, according to a sweeping state grand jury report released Tuesday that accused senior church officials, including a clergyman who is now the archbishop of Washington, D.C., of systematically covering up complaints.
The "real number" of abused children and abusive priests might be higher since some secret church records were lost and some victims never came forward, the grand jury said.
Among many other things, the attorney general's grand jury report says a group of Catholic priests took photos and video of their victims and shared it with each other. They were all in on it together.
Charles Pierce shredded the church at Esquire.