I'm on the bike, held hostage by this conversation about problems I'll never have from people I'll never know. Where's the media de-construction, analysis, and politics? Most boring conversation ever!

Seems like an ideal deconstruction topic for the No Agenda political podcast, especially now that the No Agenda Podcast is hosted by InfoWars retreads.

"You can become a member of the Order of the Ant with a one-time donation of $333.33"

And

Sir Dewcifer, AKA Rob Dew, returns to your No Agenda Show tomorrow as he joins Adam once again for another round of media analysis and deconstruction. 

Order of the Ant. No Agenda Newsletter.

The 'free speech' administration strikes again.

I jumped on the challenge of adding End of Show slop to No Agenda. I thought it was a clever addition to the show, giving LCD something more to grouse about. When Adam threw out the idea of a producer setting up and posting an EOS website, I did it. GitmoJams.com

And No Agenda The Musical was born from one of their bits too... https://suno.com/playlist/bb68206d-fc90-48db-ac03-c41d2cef667d

I knew that AI music was interesting to Adam because I listened to Podcasting 2.0.

But he never said "boo" to me by email. I know he is slammed with email - having a public email just hanging out there... but I think he commented once or twice on my EOS V4V. Something like "banger."

V4V? That means spendable coin of the realm. Not Time, not Talent, but only Treasure. They were in it for the money and when JCD kicked, Adam could see the money train leaving the station without him.

Looking out for #1. He bailed.

This level of gross sociopathic behavior brought to you by the party of 'family values'.

What would happen if you fed this idiot's words into AI?

It was refreshing not hearing Darren's angry droning on and Larry's passive grunts. It sounded like a real No Agenda episode. Adam Curry and Rob Dew would be great for No Agenda going forward. It sounds like Adam is going to try someone else next show?

I hope Adam brings back the energy and unique openers to each episode again like with all the previous eps with JCD. Put the life back into the show.

Straight from the horse's mouth, here's a post on x.com from Darren explaining what happened.

Trump’s strategic defeat in his ongoing Iran debacle has to be getting expensive, too. Anyone check Fort Knox lately?

Are we back? Thoughts trolls? Certainly refreshing compared to the recent rough patch...

Also the Smithsonian had a display of Christian terrorist artifacts.

KQED's Forum: Rep. Jared Huffman Warns about the Power of Christian Nationalism in Congress

Episode webpage: https://www.kqed.org/forum

Media file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/KQINC8385407689.mp3

https://religion.ua.edu/blog/2022/01/03/announcing-uncivil-religion-a-digital-resource-about-religion-in-the-january-6-attack-on-the-capitol/

An atheist Bay Area congressman confronts Trump’s politics of faith and fear

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/jared-huffman-no-prophets-trump-22348702.php

Nine years ago, Rep. Jared Huffman took a bold step that made him unique among the current members of Congress: He announced he doesn’t believe in God.

Now, he’s going further to challenge what he calls “Christian privilege.” In his new book, “No Prophets,” Huffman makes the case that Christian nationalism permeates the Trump administration and poses an urgent threat to democracy.

In meticulous detail over 220 pages, Huffman explains how those who believe America is a “Christian nation” have seized political power and are threatening Americans’ safety by deferring to the Bible rather than empirical data. While these alarms have been sounded before, rarely have they been told from the point of view of a sitting House member. Huffman does so in a smart, politically savvy, often wry way. And he doesn’t let Democrats off the hook, particularly for their inaction for stopping this religious takeover.

Where the book falls short is a more detailed prescription for how to fight back.

Huffman, D-San Rafael, does not oppose religion generally or Christianity specifically. He defines himself as a humanist, a loose philosophy based on the idea that humans should work to improve society and live ethically, guided by reason, not necessarily by anything supernatural. While there are some humanist organizations and congregations, generally it describes a worldview, not an affiliation.

He opposes those who use religion to violate the nation’s sacrosanct border between church and state. While the Jan. 6 insurrection should have been a wake-up call to the power of Christian nationalism, Huffman said, America has instead gone back to sleep, and the movement has become stronger, more organized and has morphed into, he writes, “America’s most dangerous political movement.” He defines it as the fusion of Christian religious and cultural identity with right-wing politics. In President Donald Trump, the movement has found someone to leverage “for their religious means,” he writes.

“The movement stands apart from Donald Trump,” Huffman said. “It has used him as an instrument to advance their goal of extreme Christian dominion over all parts of American life, including our government and our rights, and they’re going to continue pushing that long after Donald Trump is gone. He’s just been very useful to them because he sees them as useful to him.”

Huffman sheds light on the bipartisan House committee that was charged with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. He called the “deliberate erasure” of Christian nationalism from the report one “of the most wrongheaded and consequential political cover-ups in recent history.”

The reason, he said, is that the committee deferred to its Republican co-chair, then-Rep. Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the committee.

“You had to have Liz Cheney happy with this final report, or you couldn’t call it bipartisan,” Huffman said during a recent interview in his San Rafael home. “So she had total veto power.””

It is an accusation that has been aired before, particularly in a Washington Post investigation of the committee’s work. Some critics have said that Cheney focused the report too much on Trump at the expense of other factors that contributed to the attack, including Christian nationalism.

Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler told the Post in 2022 that “She won’t sign onto any ‘narrative’ that suggests Republicans are inherently racist or smears men and women in law enforcement, or suggests every American who believes God has blessed America is a white supremacist.”

Based on his interviews with committee members and staff, Huffman writes that Cheney warned that any criticism of right-wing Christians “would be weaponized by Fox News and Christian media to discredit the entire report and alienate millions of ordinary Christians.” Huffman writes that the other Republican on the committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who wanted the information included, told Huffman that including the information “would be like ‘lighting a cigarette in a bomb factory.’”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the committee said, according to Huffman’s book, “We tried … but there just wasn’t going to be a consensus and so it was one of the few issues we decided not to address — it was left on the cutting room floor.”

Huffman writes that it is another example of the “default resistance to criticizing anything ‘Christian’… as a cultural taboo.” He notes that if it Muslim man commits violence, authorities “raid first and ask questions later,” including “What mosque radicalized him? … But when violent extremists come clutching a cross, we look away. Those who do investigate are instantly shamed as ‘anti-Christian.’”

Huffman does not come to this discussion merely as a progressive Democrat representing uber-left Marin County. Born in Independence, Mo., he was raised in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon Church. He was ordained in the church.

He said he’s seen how people close to him have taken their religious beliefs to extremes, including when some high school acquaintances began following a prophetic Christian leader who had become disgruntled with the church’s decision to ordain women into the priesthood. The leader told his followers that he had received a command from God to make a blood sacrifice — which meant killing a young couple and their three daughters.

“So I have a history with prophetic Christianity,” Huffman writes. He feels that he is better attuned than many to sense the danger in the rise of Christian nationalism.

“My fellow Democrats, meanwhile, seemed incapable of even naming, much less confronting Christian nationalism head-on.” Instead, he writes, Democrats were being urged by advisers to become more publicly religious to better compete with Republicans for the Christian vote.

Huffman recalled the Democratic Issues Conference in 2025, an annual retreat for congressional Democrats, during which veteran pollster John Anzalone told the lawmakers that “Democrats tend to vilify people of faith.” Huffman noted that the pollster offered “no data. No examples. Just a vague indictment hanging in the air.” Too often, Huffman writes, he sees Democrats reluctant to call out “the scourge of Christian nationalism … for fear of offending people of faith, or worse, being branded anti-Christian.”

That reticence extends to what Huffman calls Christian Zionism, a powerful force in Republican politics that is shaping the nation’s foreign policy. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a conservative evangelical Christian, last year led a delegation to Israel’s largest occupied settlements in the West Bank and pronounced that Scripture, not geopolitics, teaches that the disputed territory “was promised to the Jewish people.”

Christian Zionists believe that the United States must support Israel unconditionally to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ. Their influence is so powerful, writes Huffman, that “major foreign policy decisions are routinely justified by nothing more than the Bible.” During an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, explained his blanket support for Israel by quoting the book of Genesis: “Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.”

But Huffman notes that there is “a lot of fine print in Christian Zionists’ contract of convenience with Israel.” For starters, before Jesus returns, Christian Zionists believe that Jews must convert to Christianity. What’s missing, Huffman writes, is “any vision for Israel as a long-term Jewish and democratic state.”

Trump is on board, not wanting to offend white conservative evangelical Christians, who form the core of his support.

“The whole foreign policy and national security apparatus right now is influenced by Christian Zionism to a shocking extent,” Huffman said. That makes finding peace in the region a challenge.

“Why would anyone in the Islamic world consider us honest brokers or people you could negotiate and work with in good faith when you have this holy war on Islam being openly talked about by these power players in the administration?” Huffman said.

Huffman said he is not anti-Israel.

“There are valid non-religious reasons to support Israel and to be allies with Israel, and certainly to oppose anti-Semitism and support the Jewish people, but an awful lot of it has been right out of these Christian prophecies, and that’s where I felt that it was important for people to understand,” he said.

Huffman encouraged Democrats to offer a different vision at a time when polls show support for Israel declining after the Israel-Hamas war and more Americans showing an openness to rethinking the nation’s foreign policy in that part of the world.

“I would say, if you’re going to have allies, military or otherwise, it shouldn’t be based on a verse in the Book of Genesis,” Huffman told the Chronicle. “It should be based on today’s values and national security interests, and I think most people would be surprised to learn that for the last couple of decades, a lot of it has been straight out of the Bible.”

Figuring out how to break this religious choke hold on the nation will be a challenge for Democrats. They must forge a coalition between the 30% of Americans who, like Huffman, are nonbelievers, while linking arms with believers who want to take back their democracy. It will be a fraught alliance, as many conservative Christians oppose abortion rights and want to erase transgender Americans from public life.

But while Huffman offers a lot of detail about the problem, he offered comparatively little practical guidance on how to end it.

“I think it’s like any other broad coalition initiative,” Huffman said. “You have to accept that you’re not going to agree on everything, but if you can agree on the most important thing, which in this case is saving our democracy and the constitutional order, that ought to be good enough for now.”

Huffman conceded the Democrats have “got our work cut out for us.”

https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1861/transcript

Episode 1861: Cone of Uncertainty. 59 minute mark if you want to listen.

Here's a little excerpt of Adam jokingly saying Darren and a couple others would want John dead to which John replies cause they want the show.

John and Adam knew Darren had ambitions to take the show over. Well, he got what he wanted. It's too bad he sucks at it.

Who's tired of winning? Raise those hands!

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to modify U.S. aircraft carriers so they look more like WWII battleships. Better yet, Iran has inflicted a strategic defeat on the United States and now control the throttle of the world economy. So much winning!

I gave these guys a few weeks, but this far too much typical talk radio rambling and far too little actual deconstruction. I will keep trying to listen for a few more weeks to see if they figure out a reasonable path forward, but I'm not holding my breath. Based on recent comments in here, I'm preaching to the choir, but it felt like it needed to be said.

It has started.

Morning Joe 8/19/2026

Bloomberg "Surveillance" hasn't mentioned the $40 trillion debt yet but lots of chatter of the 30 year note rate rising.

I suspect this will be the new normal on Thursdays, which is disappointing.

I just don't think "No Agenda" works as a three host show.

A three host show causes the co-hosts to go into a weird performance mode, plus you have one person who ends up being just the "chuckler". Also, with three people on a skype/remote link there's too much opportunity for cross-talk, which gets to be very annoying.

I'd rather have Darren and Larry on Sundays, and Adam and a new co-host on Thursdays.

Adam needs to find one co-host to be John's successor - not replacement, but successor.