Review of Mike Bara on Coast-to-Coast AM, 1 February

        With Jimmy Church guest-hosting, Mike Bara was allowed out of the stable to frisk around the paddock for a couple of hours last night. An opportunity to pre-plug his next load of rubbishbook, Ancient Aliens and Secret Societies -- also to preen about what he thinks of as a successful prediction.

        It was quickly obvious that the new book will be another lame anti-NASA rant. Mike reiterated his false claim that Buzz Aldrin conducted a Masonic ritual on the Moon (it was a form of catholic mass, actually) and asserted that there was at least one freemason on each of the Apollo flights. I'd like to see his sources on that second claim^{note 1}, but even if the data is correct, I can't quite see what could be deduced from that. To Mike, it indicates that NASA had an astronaut selection bias toward people who could be trusted to keep secrets. Ergo, to him, this proves that there were secrets to be kept. Ergo, there are aliens on the Moon. Q.E.D. How very, very weak. How pathetic.

        Mike seems to have swallowed Zecharia Sitchen's Nibiru/Annunaki ideas hook, line and sinker — since he regurgitated them (without attribution) last night. I guess he thinks that's what the woo audience wants to hear. Any readers of this blog who don't know what I'm talking about could google Annunaki and settle in to read 861,000 pages of garbage. Alternatively, just pull up Mike Heiser's web site Sitchin Is Wrong.

Planet X, Planet Y
        The Planet X idea officially died last March, when the final results of the WISE infra-red survey were announced. There are no Saturn-sized objects out to 10,000 AU, and no Jupiter-sized objects out to 26,000 AU.^{note 2} A Scientific American podcast gave the news.

        But it seems the Planet X idea won't lie down. Just recently, astronomer Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of the Computense University of Madrid (with co-authors in Cambridge, UK) published^{note 3} findings on perturbations of the orbits of small extreme trans-Neptunian bodies which suggest the influence of one or two larger bodies out there.The survey is highly preliminary, and based on observations of only 13 small bodies, but that's good enough for Mike Bara the world-renowned planetary astronomer. The basis of his TOLDYA claim is that, in his book The Choice, he ripped off a Richard Hoagland notion that a relationship between angular momentum and luminosity could be seen as predicting trans-Neptunian planets. This blog dealt with that four years ago.

        So how come WISE missed these large bodies? "Oh," quoth the world-famous astronomer, "Maybe they detected them but decided to keep it quiet." As he said that, I felt the anger rising in me -- but then I thought it was better to just laugh it off. After all, when somebody has to posit something as ridiculous as that to make their story stand up, the weakness of the story becomes bloody obvious.

The Haters (that's us, I guess)
       Right at the end, we were treated to Mike's current thoughts about his many critics. Jimmy Church asked how he was coping with that — it went like this:

JIMMY CHURCH

“You know, Mike, you’ve been rolling that rock uphill in a lot... for a long time, for, uh, you know, twenty years.  And, what do you do, because— what do you do to fight uh, the, the wave that is going against you?  And, not only the skeptics, but the ones that just want to combat you at every step of the way? Because, you know, you choose... and like I said at the intro,  you’re steadfast in... in your research and your belief, and you don’t waver.  How do you keep up the good fight?”

MIKE BARA

“Well, you know, for me it’s that I know that we are all right about all this stuff.  I mean, there.. there may be certain issues that we’re wrong about.  There may be, you know, maybe some of the 9/11 stuff really isn’t all that serious. Not to bring up a sore subject, but, you know, there are going to be parts of what we believe in as a... as a unit, as a... what do you call them? ‘Fadernauts’ or the Coast to Coast AM audience, or anybody who’s interested in these kinds of TV shows and programs. We... we are gonna... Maybe there’s parts of the story that we’ve got wrong, but the VAST majority of it — 80% of it — we’ve got it right.  And it’s the truth.  And knowing that it’s the truth keeps pushing me forward.

"And, again, I don’t care about convincing those other guys.  I’ve  gotten to the point now where I’ve completely blocked out the people that attack me.  I... you know, I responded for a long time, it takes a lot of energy.  I basically set up a page where I said, ‘If you believe what these people say, here’s my counter-argument,’ uh... a dozen of them or so, and that’s it!  That’s... I’m just gonna let that stand.^{note 4}

"Ummmm, and now I only wanna talk to the people that are actually interested in listening, and knowing that there are people out there that wanna listen, knowing that there are people out there that are gonna make their own discoveries because they’ll be inspired by me, or you, or George Noory, or listening to these programs, or some of the other guests you have on, just... That’s what fuels me — that’s what gets me up every day saying, you know, ‘Hey! We... we need to move forward with this.’

"And the other thing that’s really important, I think, that fires me up, is we are not the weird ones.  They are.  The people that look at us like we’re black sheep — like we’re crazy because we believe this weird stuff, they’re the ones who aren’t awake.  They’re the ones that aren’t paying attention, they’re the ones that are living with their heads in the sand.  So, I really have... feel like I’m on a quest to make people feel comfortable with who they are and with their fascination with this whole realm of stuff that’s out there: All these different issues that we talk about on shows like this."

        So Praise the Lord, Mike admits he might be wrong some of the time. On the other hand, Curse the Lord, Mike has a new policy. It's known as LAAAA LAAAA LAAAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.


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[1] According to this list, only Apollos 7 (Eisele,) 10 (Stafford,) 11 (Aldrin,) 14 (Mitchell)  and 15 (Irwin) qualify. When the book came out, it did not contain that claim.

[2] For comparative  reference, the Kuiper Belt, of icy asteroids, extends to 50 AU. The Oort cloud, containing millions of comets, is at roughly 30,000 AU (80% of a light-year).

[3] C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos. "Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signalling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 443(1): L59-L63, 2014. Here's a summary.

[4] This is the page he means. Note the barefaced lie: "As you will see, I never said that orbital eccentricity was measured from the Earth, that centrifugal force makes you heavier..." (See Ancient Aliens on Mars, p.42, and The Choice, p.32.)

Imaginary Masonic rituals and fake star alignments

Yesterday something pretty funny arrived on the Dark Mission "official" blog. Under the title "Meet the New Boss... the Same as the Old Boss," Mike Bara constructed a fantasy of masonic ritual, woven around the second swearing-in ceremony in the Map Room of the White House, served up with an unmistakable whiff of racism. The analysis underlying this ridiculous nonsense was at the level of numerology. I had to comment:

I offer the following comments on your post "Meet the New Boss...", which attains new heights of absurdity as you stretch to breaking point in your attempt to find "ritual symbolism" in a small ceremony that was hastily arranged, and that absolutely nobody could possibly have predicted the need for until a few hours before its occurrence.

* You write of the "overwhelming Masonic overtones of this second swearing-in ceremony." Who are you alleging arranged these overwhelming overtones? President Obama himself? I don't think he's a freemason, is he? How about the First Lady? Not a mason, by definition. How about NASA? Think they arranged it, at a couple of hours notice? You might think about obvious facts like these before posting such drivel. "Masonic overtones" were not overwhelming, Mike. They were entirely absent.

* The hour of 7:30 pm is not known as 19:30 in Washington DC. It is not known as 19.5 by anybody on Earth -- with, I guess, the exception of conspiracy theorists with no understanding of science or mathematics.

* Isn't the "ritual significance" of the number 19.5 supposed to attach to angles, anyway, according to your baseless theories?

* There is nothing strange, still less "ritual", about an architect trained in London in the 18th century being a Freemason. It would be more strange to find such a person who was not.

* There is nothing strange, still less "ritual", about re-arrangement of rooms in the White House at the start of a new Administration. It happens every single time, Mike. Like clockwork. You write "what does it imply for our new President and what does this symbolism signal about his true loyalties?" The answer is -- movement of a portrait on the wall of the White House Map Room signals nothing at all.

* The ancient Egyptians would not have measured anything in feet or inches. Neither would modern Egyptians, come to that -- so your teasing out of the "ritual" figure 666 in relation to the Washington Monument is not only meaningless but dishonest as well.

* Your analysis of the positions of stars at the moment of the ceremony is, as usual, meaningless. Actually, even more laughable than your other star alignments, since you admit you were not able to find a significant 'hit.' I wonder why, in that case, you even raise the point. It simply makes you look idiotic.

I wish that you had spent your time addressing the factual objections James Oberg has expressed over your characterization of Ken Johnstone, which appears to be incorrect. Oberg has already pointed out that your description of three failed Mars missions is entirely in error. I have exposed your "Data's Head" image as a fraud, and found a fatal error in the mathematics of "Von Braun's secret." You have conceded that Neil Armstrong never likened himself to a parrot. You have admitted that you have no evidence to support your contention that Apollo astronauts brought alien technology back from the Moon. Farouk El-Baz himself has written on this blog that there were many managers of the Apollo program more senior than him. There's not a whole lot left, even for your ardent fans, to believe in. Why not just cancel the proposed second edition?

Naturally, Mike Bara blocked publication. He can't stand rational analysis.