Think July was hot in the desert SW? Aug says hold my beer. A monster heat dome likely by next weekend – the most intense yet this summer. Magenta indicates where all-time record heights are forecast. This on top of PHX so far beating its hottest month on record by almost 4F!! 1/ pic.twitter.com/1tts60hrOr — …
Monday Morning Open Thread: New Week, Same… StuffPost + Comments (159)
The aliens have landed. And they have a gavel!
That is as plausible a takeaway as any from this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, the curiosity formerly known as UFOs. The panel’s national security subcommittee brought in, as its star witness, one David Grusch, a former Defense Department intelligence official who now claims:
– That there are “quite a number” of “nonhuman” space vehicles in the possession of the U.S. government.
– That one “partially intact vehicle” was retrieved from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933 by the United States, acting on a tip from Pope Pius XII.
– That the aliens have engaged in “malevolent activity” and “malevolent events” on Earth that have harmed or killed humans.
– That the U.S. government is also in possession of “dead pilots” from the spaceships…Alas, Grusch has no documents, photos or other evidence to corroborate any of his fantastic claims. It’s classified, you see.
Maybe everything he says is true, even the claim that “the Vatican was involved” in pursuing extraterrestrials, and Grusch has just exposed the best-kept secret and most sprawling conspiracy in the history of the universe. Or maybe Grusch himself is a conspiracy theorist, or he’s just having a lark at the subcommittee’s expense. Easier to discern was the motive of several Republicans on the panel: They greeted his out-of-this-world claims with total credulity, using them as just more evidence that the deep-state U.S. government is lying to the American people, covering up the truth and can never be trusted. Their anti-government vendetta has gone intergalactic…
Just over a year ago, a House Intelligence subcommittee held a similar hearing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” but with dramatically different results. The panel’s bipartisan leadership said the matter should be taken seriously to protect pilots and to make sure enemies don’t develop breakthrough weapons. But they assured the public there was no evidence of “anything nonterrestrial in origin,” and they cautioned against conspiracy theories. In addition, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, where Grusch worked, testified to senators in April that his UAP-hunting office “has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.” NASA has said likewise…
Some of the House’s leading conspiracy theorists — Republicans Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Virginia Foxx, James Comer — took seats on the dais, whether or not they were on the subcommittee. Many in the audience, who lined up for a seat in the room, applauded the beaming witnesses when they entered. And for more than two hours, Republicans on the subcommittee indulged in otherworldly accusations of a government coverup.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) proposed that the government is trying “to gaslight Americans into thinking that this is not happening.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) accused the government of “misdirection,” and Mace suggested the United States acted “unlawfully.” Complaints about overclassification even came from the Democratic side.
“The coverup goes a lot deeper” than politics, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) argued, vowing “to uncover the coverup” perpetrated by the Pentagon and the intelligence community. “You can’t trust a government that does not trust its people.” Burchett said he would like to visit Area 51 or other locations purportedly housing alien spaceships, but “as soon as we announce it, I’m sure the moving vans pull up.”…
“I don’t trust anything in this town,” complained [Rep. Eric (R-Mo.)] Burlison.
But Burlison trusted Grusch COMPLETELY, even relying on the witness to explain the “interdimensional potential” of nonhuman spacecraft — which Grusch obligingly illustrated with his index finger.
“You can be projected, quasi-projected from higher dimensional space to lower dimensional,” he explained. “It’s a scientific trope that you can actually cross, literally, as far as I understand, but there’s probably guys with PhDs who would probably argue about that.”
Yeah, they probably would…