#1065: Joyce Riley

Joyce Riley is a “prolific but generic” 9/11 truther, who spreads her delusions and joyful alignment with the Dunning-Kruger lowest quartile on virtually any topic through The Power Hour, a daily streaming radio show, which calls itself a “Patriotic media news portal”, and which is also transmitted by such noteworthy outlets as the WWCR. Apparently Riley rose to fame mainly through her “work” on natural remedies for the Gulf War Syndrome after her (apparently) military career, an condition that she seems to have concluded to be the result of biological warfare conducted on US Military members, primarily – it seems – administered through vaccines, the goal apparently being “Malthusian population reduction” (you can read one of her screeds here). Proof that the powers that be are in a conspiracy against her? “No one has come to me and said, ‘you shouldn't be saying this.’ The reason being that they don't want to fight me in court. They know its true.” One wonders how she would have concluded if they had told her that she shouldn’t be saying what she says.

Riley’s rants are also brilliant displays of crank magnetism. In addition to the absence of any earthly foundation for her political screeds, you get the usual tripe on medical issues – most of which is actually pinched directly from NaturalNews and Joe Mercola’s website. A recurring idea is that “allopathic” doctors and conventional medicine are much more dangerous than guns (hence, there is no justification for gun laws: “Doctors, comparatively, kill 783,936 people each year, which is 64 times higher than [the number killed by other people with guns]. Doctors shoot you not with bullets, but with vaccines, chemotherapy and pharmaceuticals ... all of which turn out to be FAR more deadly than guns.” The positive health advice seem generally to concern avoiding the nebulous toxins through dietary choices, detox therapies and living naturally.

And hey, Riley doesn’t believe in global warming either. But she does believe in chemtrails.

You can also buy stuff from her shop – mostly various dubious herbal supplements and colloidal silver, as well as documentaries such as Chuck & Anita Untersee’s Behold a Pale Horse – America’s Last Chance and her own (Beyond Treason) and others’ (e.g. David von Kleist’s 9/11 in Plane Sight) documentaries on 9/11 (both directed by William Lewis).

Diagnosis: Another masterly combination of paranoia and the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the results are precisely the same every time. There are surely those who listen to her, but her listeners are probably way beyond hope anyways. 

#1064: Harry Riley

We feel compelled to throw in a brief entry on Harry Riley as well. Riley, as you may recall (or not), is a retired US army colonel and the leader of Operation American Spring, a May 2014 rally in DC intended to stop President Obama’s attempt to turn America into a “socialist-fascist-communist-Marxist dictatorial, tyrannical system”, oust him from office and put him in Gitmo. The operation was supposed to proceed in several stages; first the event would draw 10 million attendees (activist Jim Garrow suggested 30 million). Then at least a million activists would remain in DC until their demands were met. Of course, the turnout was somewhat lower than expected (in fact, the estimation was off by approximately 10 million) numbering in total around 100 people (according to Riley “I think we probably had three or four thousand the first day,” but he has shown himself to be less than ideally trustworthy on this matter). Organizers blamed the weather, but prior to the event Terry Trussell, Operation American Spring’s chief of staff, and far-right radio host Mark Hoffmann warned attendees to prepare for violence and possibly even a drone strike to “destroy the capital just to get rid of us,” so perhaps they were just scared. After the event Riley claimed that “probably 1,000” activists are still on the National Mall pushing for Obama’s removal from office as part of stage two of the operation. People who were actually there suggested that Riley’s estimate was off by approximately … 1,000, describing instead a total number somewhat “less than ten”.

At Phase 3 of the operation “[t]hose with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President.” Which is ridiculously illegal and serves to confirm the suspicion that despite Riley’s claims to be defending the Constitution, he really doesn’t have the faintest clue what’s in it.

Actually, Riley suggested that he wasn’t really behind the operation – the main strategist was God, and the main reason the campaign would succeed in forcing President Obama out of office was that the campaign was “bathed in prayer” and “under God”.

Diagnosis: Delusional nutter. Evidently pretty harmless.

#1063: David Aaron Richey

David Aaron Richey is a pastor of the Gulf Coast Christian Center and founder of Operation MOBILE International Churches Inc..who has made an effort to get his priorities right. That’s why Richey is “not afraid of the many disasters that are happening simultaneously in our world. I’m not afraid of all the wars that are currently raging on almost every continent on the globe. The potential for nuclear accidents globally doesn’t frighten me.” So what’s he afraid of? “What terrifies me are good men and women saying and doing nothing when politicians we voted into office are making moral laws that contradict everything a Holy God stands for.” And you know what he means, right? David Richey is afraid of zeh gays. “Civil liberties ought not to infringe on the civil liberties of other citizens. I have a right to live in a community that does not force me to agree with and defend perverted sexual acts between two people.” Of course, no one is forcing Richey to agree with or defend anything – he has even been allowed to write long rants condemning homosexuality. But hey, these people live an breathe their persecution complex.

Diagnosis: Doesn’t exactly spend his energy to make the world a better place. That’s what happens when paranoia and bigotry are the governing principles for all your intellectual efforts.  

#1062: Joel Richardson

Joel Richardson is an anti-abortion activist, decorative painter, armchair apocalyptist and author, who writes for his own blog Joel’s Trumpet, for the WND, as well as for Glenn Beck’s website. His specialty appears to be international politics, on which he takes a decidedly Biblical stance. He has for instance written about how the possible collapse of the European Union may pose a problem for many end-times theologians and their predictions of Biblical prophecy – not for Biblical prophecies per se, to be sure, but for one particular school of endtimes thought. Richardson is himself pretty adamant about the upcoming endtimes, and most of his writings seem to be concerned with how a Muslim Antichrist will lead an army to attack Israel, in fulfillment of the Biblical prophets and the Book of Revelation and usher in the Armageddon. And of course the Muslims are in a revolutionary alliance with the leftists, because they share all the relevant values (i.e. disagreeing with Richardson).

Of course, his columns for WND are primarily advertisements for his own books (e.g. Mideast Beast: The Scriptural Case For an Islamic Antichrist and Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth About the Real Nature of the Beast, which asserts that “90 percent of the current world fighting involves Islamic terror movements,” though the number is made up) and DVDs about the endtimes, but the distinction between editorial content and advertising has never been taken particularly seriously by that particular website. According to WND Islamic Anti-Christ is also “almost certain to be greeted in the Muslim world with the same enthusiasm as Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses.’ And Richardson is prepared. He has written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.”

Richardson was at least able to see the positive side of an Obama (the “race-baiter”) reelection (which thrilled “millions of pot-heads, sodomites, pro-aborts and all common moochers”) despite his anti-Christian stance: it would help Christians know what it feels like to live in an oppressive state like Iran and take comfort in the fact that the Kingdom of God prophecied in the Bible lies ahead. Obama also foreshadows the Anti-Christ, according to Richardson, but that goes without saying. For an illustration of Richardson’s powers of thought, this one is pretty illuminating.

Diagnosis: Fundamentalist idiot, standard type. 

#1061: Frances Rice

Frances Rice is the chairperson of the (rather obscure) National Black Republican Association, which seems to be, quite frankly, engaged in one of the most ridiculous efforts to promote historical revisionism in the US. Rice herself claims to be committed to rightwing policies because MLK was, in her view, committed to such. In 2008, for instance, the NBRA announced that it was going to place 50 billboards in Denver during the Democratic convention proclaiming that “Martin Luther King Was A Republican” (no one apparently saw them). Similar campaigns in Florida resulted in a bit of a backlash, but Rice, unfazed, rather doubled down, publishing a picture in the NBRA magazine of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross with the caption “Every person in this photograph was a Democrat.” Other articles in the magazine carry such enticing titles as “Democrats embrace their child molesters,” and “Democrats wage war on God.” Indeed, the political strategy of the NBRA is primarily to portray the Democrats as the racist party.

And commenting on recent history, Rice said “The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970s with President Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black.” Yes. Rice said that. You don’t need to know much about American history to realize why her efforts have won little recognition thus far. And during the 2008 elections the NBRA tried to encourage voters to “learn the truth” – though what they presented as “the truth” … well, it is discussed here.

Diagnosis: Utterly and ridiculously delusional, and we doubt that her strategies can do anything but backfire – but who knows?