One interesting tidbit that I have noticed over the many years I have researched the strange and unusual is that military facilities and engagements experience a wide variety of paranormal phenomena. But the following account is just plain weird.“One time, back when I was in the Army, I was out in Fort Hood (TX) doing maneuvers and I was the lucky one with radio watch that particular night. So I'm sitting there doing my little hour-long shift and we've got the ranchers there. They've got the cattle range on the land and they would eat the grass. Well, one of them came up into our area of operation. And, you know, he had his little whip and so I was kind of talking to him because I was bored, you know. There wasn't much else going on and he didn't speak any English and my Spanish was really bad so I was like great, I can practice, and that will help me stay awake.And so we were sitting there talking for a while. It got to the end of my shift and I had to wake the next guy up. The farmer's not supposed to be there so I'm like, 'Hey man, you gotta go' and he wouldn't leave. Finally, I was like, 'No, man, you gotta git, I gotta get the next guy up.' So I reached over to grab hold of him and, he turned into a tree. He really did. He just turned into a tree. I mean it was like, you know South Texas is with the trees? And he just turned into a tree. I... I... That tree wasn't there when we set it up. He was gone. He just turned into a tree. I was like, 'Oh my god!' and, you know, I got the next guy up because it was his time and he was talking about, 'Why did we put our camp right here with this tree in the middle?' I mean, I tell you what... it was just like a little shrub like it had just grown overnight or something. It stood about 5 or 6 feet. Just weird.” TI have heard of people shape-shifting into animals or simply vanishing, but morphing into a tree or bush is a new one for me. Could this have been some form of sorcery or magic? Sounds like an episode from the movie 'The Fountain.' What explanation can you offer? LonThe Bazaar of Bad Dreams: StoriesThe Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran PatrolmanPeople Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up**********CREEPY HIGHWAYS & BYWAYS - DRIVERS BEWARE! | Join Us - LIVE CHAT - Q & A (AMAZING REAL ENCOUNTERS!)PHANTOMS & MONSTERS VIDEO LIBRARYPOLL: WHAT DO YOU THINK? Vote & comment on paranormal, cryptid & unexplained mysteries!LISTEN TO NARRATIONS OF PHANTOMS & MONSTERS REPORTS & CASES - PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE & SHAREPHANTOMS & MONSTERS RADIO Podcasts on SpotifyPHANTOMS & MONSTERS READING LISTCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistHave you had a sighting or encounter?Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. LonOUR SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBigfoot and Other Cryptid Videos on YouTubeLYCANS! - PENNSYLVANIA'S CRYPTID CANINES UPDATE'KILLER BIGFOOT' HUNTED BY U.S. SPECIAL FORCES / GLIMMER MAN / MANTIS HUMANOIDSCRAWLER HUMANOIDS - GRUESOME INVADERS! (REAL EYEWITNESS ENCOUNTERS!)WEREWOLVES: DO THEY EXIST?'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINESHey, folks. Thanks for the congrats on 'The Mothman Revisited' episode on Unsolved Mysteries. As a result, we are receiving more sighting reports and are very excited and grateful for the new information!I sincerely thank the Unsolved Mysteries team and Netflix for allowing us to tell the world about this phenomenon.If you have information about this or any other cryptid or unexplained sighting or encounter, please feel free to contact me by email or at 410-241-5974. Thanks again! LonCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistChicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive MapEXCLUSIVE VIDEO of CHICAGO MOTHMAN RECORDED----------Become a Phantoms & Monsters Radio Insider - just $2.99 monthly, and receive these perks. Thanks for your support!-Members-only live chats-Exclusive members-only videos-Priority reply to members' commentsHave perks suggestions? LMK-----YOUR SUPPORT IS APPRECIATED! THANKS-----Have you had a sighting or encounter?Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. Lon Noted UFOlogist Dr. Raymond Keller believes the idea of extraterrestrials and even ultra-dimensional beings from many different planets and alternate realms living and working among us clandestinely is more than just another conspiracy theory.Available on Amazon.comSan Francisco Book Festival Honorable MentionNew York Book Festival Honorable MentionAlso available with audiobooknarration by Terry Springs,CBS-TV Las Vegas affiliate.OUR PRIVACY POLICYThis blog and newsletter are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work 3.0 United States License.Registered trademark PHANTOMS AND MONSTERS ® / PHANTOMS & MONSTERS ® - USPTO #90902480 - Lon D. Strickler© 2005-2024 Phantoms & Monsters - All Rights Reserved

The Regime Media are up in arms and in high dudgeon after President Elect sent a Saturday shockwave by choosing former Department of Defense Chief of Staff Kash Patel as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Patel pick has been met with all manner of hand wringing on the Regime’s Sunday shows. Over at ABC, Jon Karl opened This Week with the customary overwrought editorial, loaded with appeals to authority, diminishment of Patel’s qualifications, and fearmongering over the scope of Patel’s mission at the Bureau (click “expand” to view transcript):  ABC’s @JonKarl not happy with Trump’s pick of Kash Patel to lead the FBI, opening #ThisWeek with long diatribe against him. Frets Trump following through on “radical change and retribution.” pic.twitter.com/5g8Ll3yfa8 — Brent Baker ?? ?? (@BrentHBaker) December 1, 2024 ABC THIS WEEK 12/1/24 9:01 AM JON KARL: Good morning. Welcome to This Week. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. If there was any doubt that President Elect Donald Trump intends to follow through with his promises of radical change and retribution both here at home and abroad, those doubts have been erased. On the home front, the big move came just last night when Trump announced he intends to make Kash Patel, one of his most fervently loyal defenders, as the Director of the FBI. He'll first have to fire the current director, Chris Wray, who was chosen by Trump back in 2017, and whose term isn't up for more than two years. Patel will face an especially contentious confirmation battle. Patel is so controversial that whenPpresident Trump talked about making him the deputy FBI director in 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr, said it would happen, quote, “over my dead body” according to his memo adding, quote, “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.” Again, that was Bill Barr objecting to Patel becoming the Deputy FBI Director. Now Trump has announced his intention to make him the Director. Patel has served as both a public defender and a federal prosecutor. He also served on Trump's National Security Council, and in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. After the 2020 election, Patel was dispatched to the Pentagon. As I previously reported, he used his post as Chief of Staff to the Acting Defense Secretary to attempt to chase down one of the most far-fetched election conspiracy theories, that Italian spy satellites were used to flip votes from Trump to Biden. After Trump left The White House, Patel took up the case of fighting back against anyone and everyone in law enforcement who was investigating Donald Trump. He even wrote a children's book about Trump's legal troubles called "Plot Against the King." But it's the book that Patel wrote for adults, "Government Gangsters," that gives an idea of what he would attempt to do as the FBI Director. He writes that federal law enforcement agencies must be brought to heel by firing the top ranks and prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law anyone who in any way abused their authority for political ends. “The FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to people unless drastic measures are taken,” Patel wrote, adding Democrats, quote, “should be very afraid.”  Over at CNN, Kasie Hunt went and did likewise while filling in for Tapper and Bash on State of the Union. Her open, although more succinct than Karl’s, echoed similar themes (click “expand” to view transcript”): Kasie Hunt opens @CNNSOTU by extending the Regime Media's collective freakout over the designation of @Kash_Patel as FBI Director pic.twitter.com/PUBdJoO1VA — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) December 1, 2024 CNN STATE OF THE UNION 12/1/24 9:01 AM KASIE HUNT: Hello, I'm Kasie Hunt in for Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Washington, where the state of our union is: watching a new battle brewing. President Elect Donald Trump is closing out his Thanksgiving weekend by setting up another major political fight. He wants longtime loyalist and partisan firebrand Kash Patel to lead the FBI. It's a move that would require firing the current director, Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed after firing his first FBI director in 2017. Patel is a highly divisive figure. He's accused the so-called Deep State of targeting Trump and proposed a quote, “comprehensive house cleaning”, end quote, of the Justice Department saying that under Trump, it would go after members of the media. In his memoir, former Attorney General Bill Barr said he had tried to block a move to install Patel as Deputy FBI Director during Trump's first term. Barr said that he'd allow it, quote, “over my dead body.” And multiple sources familiar with the Trump transition process had previously told CNN that Patel's rise is deeply concerning. It's not clear that Patel could be confirmed by the Senate, but his pick is another sign that Trump plans to follow through on his promises to disrupt Washington. Part of the false underpinning of the media’s arguments against Patel is the idea that his pick is a norms-busting politicization of federal law enforcement, and not an attempt to de-Ba’athify an already-weaponized government. Central to this false premise is the suppression of such stories as the malicious prosecutions of abortion clinic protesters such as Mark Houck, and the classification of both parents questioning their porn-enabling school boards and Latin Mass adherents as “domestic terrorists.” The Regime Media, in full self-preservation mode, would like you to believe that Patel is coming in to ravage a pristine FBI, as opposed to reform it.  We see similar appeals to authority over at NBC, where Meet the Depressed moderator Kristen Welker tried to corner Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) on the appeal to (Bill Barr’s) authority, to no avail: The Regime Media Sunday shows had a collective freakout over the nomination of @Kash_Patel as FBI Director. Here, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) rebuffs Kristen Welker's attempted appeal to authority, citing Patel's relevant experience, and electoral mandate to reform federal LE. pic.twitter.com/lkIbP2d2rR — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) December 1, 2024 NBC MEET THE PRESS 12/1/24 10:15 AM KRISTEN WELKER: So, Senator, you are disregarding what Bill Barr, the former Attorney General under Donald Trump is saying. His warnings that he just doesn't have the experience. BILL HAGERTY: I'm saying there are people that are serving in the current administration that are woefully inexperienced. I think Kash does have relevant experience, particularly when it comes to the mandate the American public have assigned of turning these agencies around that have become completely corrupted. Kash has pointed it out, he’s probably the best at uncovering what’s happened at the FBI, and I look forward to seeing him taking it apart.  This was part of a broader exchange on Patel, where Hagerty initially shut Welker down by pointing out Antony Blinken’s role in conjuring up the phony letter, signed by 51 former intelligence officials, claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop bore all the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.” It bears noting that Hunter’s laptop was authenticated a full year prior to publication of the letter, per testimony by the IRS whistleblowers in Congress, and FBI testimony at the Hunter Biden gun trial in Delaware. These testimonies were also suppressed by the Regime Media. Failing appeals to authority, the Regime Media went for whataboutistic justifications. Here’s CBS’s Major Garrett, sitting in for Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation, attempting to suggest that the prosecutions of Donald Trump, Robert Menendez, Hunter Biden and Henry Cuellar occupy the same moral plane and promptly getting shut down by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (click “expand” to view transcript) One of the more ridiculous media "whatabouts" in recent memory: CBS's Major Garrett comparing fed Trump prosecutions to that of Bob Menendez, which @tedcruz dismisses with richly deserved derision: pic.twitter.com/Uugb08gde6 — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) December 1, 2024 CBS FACE THE NATION 12/1/24 10:41 AM MAJOR GARRETT: As you know, Senator, there isn't a vacancy at the top at the FBI. What should become of Christopher Wray, appointed by President trump? TED CRUZ: Well, I think he'll make a choice. I think either he will resign or President Trump will fire him. But it's no secret to anybody, including Chris Wray, that he is not going to continue to serve as the head of the FBI under Donald Trump. Listen, if you look at James Comey and Chris Wray, there has never been a period in our nation's history where the FBI has suffered a greater loss of respect where more Americans doubt the fundamental integrity of the FBI. And it's because James Comey and Chris Wray presided over allowing the FBI to become a partisan cudgel, to be used to target parents at school board meetings, to be used to target people who chose not to take the covid vaccine, to be used to target President Trump and to target the political opponents of Joe Biden and The White House. It is tragic, that is not what the FBI is for. That is not what the DoJ is for. And I gotta say, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, I think, together are a very strong slate of nominees to go and restore integrity to both institutions. GARRETT: How do you place that up against the prosecutions of Bob Menendez, a congressman- a Democrat from Texas, Hunter Biden? Are those political prosecutions as well or not? CRUZ: Well, first of all, let's be clear. Bob Menendez was literally caught with gold bars and a stack of cash with his fingerprints taking bribes, and it’s why Bob Menendez is not my colleague any more. At that point, the evidence was overwhelming. Reaction to the Patel pick across the dial was equal parts rage, hysteria, fear, and loathing. There is still time to go before Patel goes before Congress but the Regime Media have made crystal clear that they will fight this pick tooth and nail.  

Of all the divisions troubling Protestantism today, perhaps none is as hotly debated as women’s ordination.All seven mainline Protestant denominations have adopted the practice, while evangelical and fundamentalist denominations have defiantly refused to entertain the notion on biblical grounds.Even progressives in the church were apprehensive about this direct assault on the 'patriarchal' status quo, fearing that it would undermine the legitimacy of the church.Scripture seems to speak quite clearly on women’s capacity for leadership in 1 Timothy 2:12. As St. Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man." But as advocates for women’s ordination argue, female religious leaders in the New Testament like Phoebe, Priscilla, Lydia, and Mary seemed to hold positions of greater respect than St. Paul suggests. Many point out that Phoebe is described as a deacon or deaconess (diakonos) in Romans, which would suggest that there was a model of female authority within the church.However, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which claim apostolic succession and a direct ecclesiastical connection to the apostles, are defiantly against the practice and defend male-only holy orders as the orthodox teaching of the church.On July 29, 1974, 11 female priests were ordained in the Episcopal Church. The act was largely symbolic, but real change soon followed. Those ordinations became legitimate in 1976 when the House of Bishops conditionally recognized them.In response, hundreds of parishes broke away from the Episcopal Church as part of the Continuing Anglican movement, paving the way for the founding of the rival Anglican Church in North America in 2009. Ironically enough, that denomination is now split over women’s ordination.Margo Guernsey’s new documentary “The Philadelphia Eleven” commemorates the 50th anniversary of this watershed moment through interviews with several of the surviving 11.It’s clear that Guernsey sees women’s ordination as a righteous act of liberationist defiance progress; these women, she writes, “provide a vision for what a just and inclusive community looks like in practice.”The women in the film depict their quest for greater female participation in the church as inspired by the civil rights movement. It was also an act of “obedience to the Spirit,” which took precedence over adherence to tradition. The film admits how radical this was. Even progressives in the church were apprehensive about this direct assault on the “patriarchal” status quo, fearing that it would undermine the legitimacy of the church.In retrospect, it’s clear that their fears were justified.The ceremony caused extensive turmoil within the Episcopal Church. Several clergy involved had their careers severely damaged. Dozens of bishops and priests condemned the ceremony as an illegal farce, even as the women publicly defended their ordinations as valid. One quoted St. Paul during a television appearance: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).It did little good in the short term, as none of the woman were able to find positions. Ultimately, however, they won. By 1988, the Episcopal Church would even ordinate its first female bishop.“Half of the human population was acknowledged as being important enough to take on one of the strongest institutions in the world,” said Philadelphia 11 member Nancy Wittig.That’s certainly one way to look at it. Another way is to acknowledge that the institution Wittig and her cohort defeated is now but a shadow of its former self.The Episcopal Church has continued down the path the Philadelphia 11 set it on, abandoning traditional Christian teaching on other issues like sexuality and abortion. It revised its canons to the point that bishops aren’t allowed to deny women’s ordinations.The church now is deeply committed to social justice and tolerance, and it does much admirable work in trying to address many of the world’s wrongs. But it is also on the precipice of demographic collapse and will functionally cease to exist by 2040.The Philadelphia 11 may have turned the tide against the patriarchy within their church and given women permission to be priests, but the resulting schism may prove too deeply wounding to celebrate their victory beyond the passing of this generation. It leaves a film like “The Philadelphia Eleven” balancing awkwardly over the abyss.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Officials within the FBI have warned that naming Kash Patel director of the Bureau could seriously undermine the agency's work on not releasing the Epstein client list.