Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 6

Working for the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) from 1935 to 1940, Dorothea Lange was one of the greatest documentary photographers of depression-era America.  In 1940, shortly after leaving FSA, Lange was appointed Head Photographer for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE)¹, working for a year traveling across California and Arizona.  Her BAE photos, many published in print publications, were meant to bring American public attention to the plight of agricultural workers such as migrants, sharecroppers, farmers, and farmworkers whose hardship was largely unknown.²

One of those photos was later printed as Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona and At the cotton wagon, migrant agricultural worker, Eloy, Arizona.  Prints of this photo reside in numerous museums and art galleries³ and have sold for very respectable sums⁴. The image appeared in a seminal 1962 exhibition, The Bitter Years, curated by Edward Steichen⁵. The show featured 209 images by photographers who worked under the umbrella of the Farm Security Administration—part of Roosevelt’s New Deal—in 1935-41. A 2012 art book, edited by Françoise Poos, titled The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs, includes images from the exhibit and essays on the FSA, its legacy and impact as well as the impact of Steichen.  The book’s cover photo is Lange’s Migratory Cotton Picker.^{6, 7}

I recognized the subject portrayed in the photo when I came across three images of him while browsing Dorothea Lange images online in the National Archives. I had previously used the image in an uncompleted blog project titled, The Bitter Years.⁸ One of the images—third image below—I found in the Archives was an uncropped version of the photo Lange used for Migratory Cotton Picker.

Another image of the subject in a similar pose wearing a hat can be found at Oakland Museum of California.  The location is given as Eloy, Arizona in 1940 and described as “Migratory cotton picker with his sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field.”⁹

While some online sites claim that their version is protected by copyright, the original image was taken as part of Lange’s employment with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE), a unit of the Department of Agriculture and is, thus, a work of the U.S. Government and, as such, not subject to copyright restrictions.

1. In 1922, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE)…  was established by the merger of the Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics and the Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates, bringing together responsibility for data collection and economic research/analysis in a single agency. This new agency brought together for the first time in data collection and economic analysis and research.
   • “Economic Research Service.” Wikipedia. last edited May 30, 2021. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Research_Service.
2. “Dorothea Lange – Migratory Cotton Worker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940: Photographs New YORK Monday, March 31, 2014 Lot 47.” Phillips Auctioneers, LLC. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://www.phillips.com/detail/dorothea-lange/NY040114/47.
3. Museums and Galleries:
   • Museum of Modern Art,
   • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
   • National Gallery of Art,
   • Oakland Museum of California (this one is actually from a film negative and the the image is reversed from the normal prints)
   • Yale University Art Gallery
   • Museum of Contemporary Photography
4. Print sales
   • Christie’s (Closed, October 9, 2017) $200,000, Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, annotated ‘BAE 332’ on back
   • Christies (Closed April 10, 2008) $49,000, At the cotton wagon, migrant agricultural worker, Eloy, Arizona, print made in the 1950
5. Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with transforming photography into an art form.
   • “Edward Steichen.” Wikipedia, last edited August 12, 2021. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Steichen.
6. “The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs.”| ARTBOOK 9781935202868. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, September 30, 2012. Accessed August 16, 2021 https://www.artbook.com/9781935202868.html.
7. Originally priced $60, I found a copy online said to be in very good condition and ordered it.  With shipping and handling, it was about $15, and should be here in one to three weeks.
8. Goad, Mike. “Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona–The Bitter YEARS 005.” Exit78, September 5, 2016. https://exit78.com/migratory-cotton-picker-eloy-arizona-the-bitter-years-005/.
9. “Dorothea Lange: Omca Eloy, Arizona.” Dorothea Lange Digital Archive | OMCA: Oakland Museum of CA, June 24, 2020. Accessed August 16, 2021. https://dorothealange.museumca.org/image/eloy-arizona/A67.137.40059.4/?section=in-the-fields.

Twenty-three years ago, British doctor Andrew Wakefield published an article linking childhood autism to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet¹ and announced at a press conference that he had concerns about the MMR vaccine and its relationship to autism.

With some very careless media reporting, the findings went viral.

MMR vaccinations plunged.

It was a very small “study.”

“12 children (mean age 6 years [range 3–10], 11 boys) were referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of normal development followed by loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhoea and abdominal pain.”²

A 2003 paper in the The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine after reviewing a dozen epidemiological studies “concluded that there was no evidence of an association between autism and MMR.” Numerous studies in peer-reviewed journals concluded the same.  The British General Medical Council “revoked Wakefield’s medical license after a lengthy hearing, citing numerous ethical violations that tainted his work, like failing to disclose financing from lawyers who were mounting a case against vaccine manufacturers.” The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s paper in 2010. In 2011, The British Medical Journal concluded his research was unethically financed and fraudulent.³

Wakefield’s fraudulent actions have been tied to various epidemics and deaths.  His study and claims linking the MMR vaccine to autism led to decline in vaccination rates in the US, UK and Ireland, with a corresponding rise in measles and mumps cases along with serious illness and death.⁴

One 2011 study concluded, “The alleged autism-vaccine connection is, perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years.”⁵

Kids died.

In 2019, The Skeptic Magazine awarded Wakefield its 2018 Rusty Razor award for “pseudoscience and bad critical thinking.” At that time, the anti-vaxxer movement had “had an ugly resurgence in recent years, in turn prompting a notable rise of easily preventable diseases across the developed world.” The CDC had recently released a report saying that “the number of US children under the age of two who haven’t received any life-saving immunizations has quadrupled since 2001.”⁶

It’s happening again. Untruths and distortions about the COVID vaccines are killing thousands every week.  “Anti-vaxxers, along with conservative politicians and TV commentators, are slandering vaccines as ineffective, dangerous and part of a government plot to enslave the citizenry.”⁷

New COVID cases are soaring.

99% of new COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated.

Some will die.

Trouble is, some people don’t listen to evidence. Instead, they surf a seductively scary sea of false information, much of it anecdotal, on TV and social media. Mendacity works. Researchers at MIT have found that even minimal exposure to this nonsense depresses vaccination rates.

Meanwhile, the whole subject of COVID-19 has become so politicized that reasoned debate is difficult. More than 85 percent of Democrats have had at least one shot, but only 52 percent of Republicans. The New York Times reports that the least vaccinated counties in the U.S. have one thing in common: they all voted for Donald Trump. For some Republicans, refusing to get vaccinated has become a badge of political loyalty.

It’s tempting to say: “Darwin was right. Let these idiots go. It’s their choice.” But that response is neither humane nor intelligent. People may get COVID-19 through their own stupidity, but they go on to infect other people – and all of them become potential petri dishes for new, more contagious, more vaccine-resistant variants.⁸

I got my first vaccination – Moderna – as soon as I could.

The second Moderna injection was four weeks later.

I plan to get the booster eight months after that one.

How ‘bout you?

1. Morrison, Donald. “Turning the Tide in the Vaccine (Mis)Information Wars.” The Berkshire Eagle, July 22, 2021. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.berkshireeagle.com/opinion/columnists/donald-morrison-turning….
2. Wakefield, Andrew J, et al. “RETRACTED: Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children.” The Lancet, February 28, 1998. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.thelancet.com/…..
   • This is the RETRACTED article. The web article and the pdf both display the word RETRACTED prominently.
3. Dominus, Susan. “The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru.” The New York Times, April 21, 2011. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24.
4. “Andrew Wakefield (Section: Epidemics, Effects, and Reception).” Wikipedia, last edit August 19, 2021. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield.
5. Flaherty DK. The Vaccine-Autism Connection: A Public Health Crisis Caused by Unethical Medical Practices and Fraudulent Science. Annals of Pharmacotherapy. 2011;45(10):1302-1304. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://journals.sagepub.com/…
6. Hale, Tom. “This Year’s Award for the Worst Pseudoscience Is Especially Deserved.” IFLScience. IFLScience, July 8, 2019. Accessed August 21, 2021. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine….
7. Morrison
8. ibid

Vintage Camping Images No. 1

Camp in Tusuyan Forest, Hermit Rim, Grand Canyon, Ariz.¹

This camping image is from the second decade of the 20th century – probably before 2019 when the national park was established – on the south rim of the Grand Canyon somewhere to the west of present day Grand Canyon Village historic district.

Tusayan National Forest was established by the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona on July 1, 1910 with 1,830,487 acres  from part of Coconino National Forest and other lands. On October 22, 1934 the entire forest was transferred to Prescott National Forest and the name was discontinued.²

“Hermit Rim” refers to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  The Hermit Rim Road was constructed in 1913.  The current Hermit Road runs west 7 miles from Canyon Village along the rim to Hermits Rest and Hermit trailhead.

This card is from Detroit Publishing Company, series 79000. The series dates from 1910-c. 1921 and  was printed for other publishers, such as Fred Harvey, as with this postcard.³

1. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Camp in Tusuyan Forest, Hermit Rim, Grand Canyon, Ariz.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 18, 2021. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-9d93-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
2. “Tusayan National Forest.” Wikipedia, last edit February 22, 2021. accessed August 18, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusayan_National_Forest.
3. “Dating Guide for Detroit Company Postcards (DPC).” The Newberry. Accessed August 18, 2021. https://www.newberry.org/sites/default/files/researchguide-attachments/Detroit%20Postcard%20Dating%20Guide.pdf.

And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.¹

On October 29, 1929,—Black Tuesday—was marked by a sharp drop in the stock market.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was especially hard hit with high trading volume, falling 12%, one of the larges on-day drops in stock market history.  A panic sell-off effectively ended the Roaring Twenties and launched the global economy into the Great Depression.²

For the United States, the next 15 years would see the great dust storms of the drought-stricken plains region, massive unemployment during a depression that was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, and a global war that also involved most of the world’s countries.

Dust, drought, depression, and war—a new project

Over the life of this blog, I have posted many, many times on the great depression and the dust bowl, usually just sharing images, sometimes going into more depth.  This new “project” will take a different approach.  There will still be relevant photos or images—I can’t see doing a post without at least one image—but there will also be content associated with the period from the crash of the stock market to the end of World War II, usually including one or more of the themes dust, drought, depression, and war.

Each blog post will be an exploration of something from the almost 16 years between the crash of the stock market and the end of World War 2—no limits, no specific focus.

I want to vary the focus up so that I’m not always concentrating in one area. In the first few posts, I found myself falling into that trap with three posts related to the drought in 1930.  To add some randomness to the posts, I used a random date generator to select one year’s worth of dates between Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, and September 2, 1945, the end of the Second World War.  Those dates were then sorted in a spreadsheet using a random order function.

From that list of dates, I plan to pick the top date and do an image search on that date.  If I find an image that’s related to one or more of the themes, then the post will be related to that image.  If there isn’t an image that’s relevant, then I’ll do a regular Google search and/or a New York Times article search.

I may also stumble across a topic to blog on separate from the list of dates.

Posts already prepared—both published and scheduled—are listed at Dust, drought, depression, and war – the posts. The randomly selected and randomly ordered blog post prompt dates for future posts are also included.  Some significant dates may later be inserted or substituted.

1. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1939.
2. Halton, Clay. “Black Tuesday.” Investopedia. Investopedia, May 19, 2021. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blacktuesday.asp.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 5

In the 1934 mayoral election in New Orleans, Senator Huey P. Long¹, the Democratic political leader of Louisiana convinced John Klorer, Sr., a respected engineer and father of the editor of Long’s American Progress newspaper, to oppose the incumbent mayor, T. Semmes Walmsley.

In the final days of the campaign, Long supporters were caught removing names of Old Regular supporters from the voter rolls, so the registration books were seized by the civil sheriff and placed in the Orleans Parish Prison for safekeeping. Long’s ally Governor Oscar K. Allen ordered the Louisiana National Guard to mobilize for New Orleans to defend the registrar’s office, while Walmsley threatened to deputize ten thousand “special police.” With potential armed clashes between the National Guard and Walmsley’s police looming, a last-minute agreement to submit to an arbitration committee averted a crisis.²

The following article appeared in the New York Times on September 8, 1934.³  The image above is a composite from public domain photos.

Protest Calling of Troops.

Long Broadcasts Warning.

Mayor Points to Own Power.

Martial Law Predicted.

1. “Huey Long.” Wikipedia.  last edit August 13, 2021. Accessed August 15, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long.
2. “1934 New Orleans Mayoral Election.” Wikipedia. last edited June 25, 2020.Accessed August 15, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_New_Orleans_mayoral_election.
3. Daniell, F. Raymond. “2,000 Troops Move into New ORLEANS; Long IS ‘Dictator’; but His Faction Loses Two Important Court Rulings COVERING PRIMARY.” The New York Times. September 8, 1934. https://www.nytimes.com/1934/09/08/archives/2000-troops-move-into-new-orleans-long-is-dictator-but-his-faction.html.

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 149 of over 1200 images

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site, near La Junta, Colorado, September 5, 2018

I’ve shared a number of photos over the years about Bent’s Old Fort in Colorado and, in November 2011, wrote a fairly lengthy post² on it and created a 4-minute video. We had visited the site earlier that year, in September, and, again, seven years later in the fall of 2018.

In 1831 or 1832 Charles Bent and St. Vrain formed a partnership, which in time became Bent, St. Vrain, and Co., and entered the Santa Fe trade. In the late 1820s or early 1830s, William Bent, who had apparently been trading independently, erected a large adobe fort on the north bank of the Arkansas River, 12 miles west of the mouth of the Purgatoire. At first named Fort William, it was also known as Bent’s Fort and finally as Bent’s Old Fort after it was partially destroyed and a new fort was built elsewhere. Elaborately constructed, it was eventually a massive adobe structure of quadrangular shape having 24 rooms lining the walls, supported by poles. Two 30-foot cylindrical bastions, equipped with cannon, flanked the southwest and northeast corners. The walls were 15 feet high and 2 feet thick and extended 4 feet above the building roofs to serve as a banquette and were pierced with loopholes. On the south side was a cattle yard, enclosed by a high wall. A self-sufficient institution, the fort was operated by about 60 persons of many nationalities and vocations, including blacksmiths, trappers and traders, carpenters, mechanics, wheelwrights, gunsmiths, cooks, cattle herders, hunters, clerks, teamsters, and laborers.³

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
2. Goad, Mike. “Bent’s Old Fort.” Exit78, November 8, 2011. https://exit78.com/bents-old-fort/.
3. ibid

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 4

The Dust Bowl, caused by severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods that limit wind erosion of the land, damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies beginning in 1934 and displaced about 3.5 million people in the U.S., the largest short period migration in American history. A quarter-million Canadians migrated from the plains.¹

Before that, and little remembered, was the drought of 1930-1931.

In 1930, dry conditions touched 30 states from the Appalachians to the Rockies, but the brunt of the drought was felt in the lower Mississippi and Ohio valleys.  Arkansas was perhaps hardest hit, the epicenter of the disaster.  Wells and streams ran dry, crops failed, and by mid-summer, thousands of farm families in the region faced starvation for themselves and their livestock.²

The drought enveloped eight southern states.  Of these, it struck southeast Arkansas the worst, striking a region long plagued with poverty and economic instability and where cotton was still king.³  There, unethical practices, racism, and violence kept tenant farmers, day workers, and sharecroppers always suffering and scrambling, always in debt, and always at the mercy of the landowner and the storekeeper.⁴

The 1929 stock market crash brought ruin to the rich and poor. Bank closings shut off financing and crop prices plummeted as did the need for raw materials.⁴ The drought just added hunger, illness, and near starvation to the suffering.

Unlike previous droughts that were severe, but short in duration, that of 1930 gradually intensified and lasted for almost a year. With temperatures that reached 113 degrees in some counties, Arkansas lost from 30 to 50 percent of its crops. The parched earth and the famine that followed in its wake came as a final link in a sequential chain of disasters. Like other southern cotton-producing regions, the delta had experienced during the 1920s fluctuating cotton prices, under-production and over-production, indebtedness and foreclosures, an increase in tenantry, and the almost total collapse of the rural banking structure. Natural calamities like the boll weevil invasion and the 1927 Mississippi River flood compounded the region’s serious social and economic ills, for the counties affected most severely by the drought had also experienced the flood. Delta planters and croppers never had an opportunity to recover from one disaster before the depression and drought brought further distress.⁵

Relief for those affected by the drought was slow and inefficient.  President Hoover and other officials were reluctant to provide direct aid, fearing that farmers would end up “on the dole,” reluctant to go back to their work.  What aid did arrive was administered locally, usually by representatives of large property owners and employers, a practice that would continue through the New Deal.⁶

In Arkansas, “The drought relief experience revealed the limitations of local voluntaryism. The individual relief committees consisted of the social and economic leaders of each community — a planter, banker, merchant, and county judge. Rather than administering relief judiciously, the delta committees used discrimination and intimidation to ensure that the labor force remained under their control.”⁷

On January 3, 1931, angry farmers descended on England, Arkansas demanding food for their hungry, suffering families.  Little did they know the drastic changes their future would hold.

The drought ended, but, over the next decade and a half, agricultural production in the south, through mechanization, changed profoundly, convulsing the entire region. Sharecropping and tenant farming shrank rapidly to insignificance through wholesale evictions.  Millions of people across the region were displaced to cities or other parts of the country.  Mules, symbols and versatile laborers of the soil, became rare. “The southern landscape was depopulated and enclosed; agriculture at last became capital-intensive.”⁸

1. “Dust Bowl.” Wikipedia. last revision July 8, 2021. Accessed August 9, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl.
2. Howard, Spencer. “Herbert Hoover and the 1930 Drought.” National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, September 16, 2020. https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2020/09/16/herbert-hoover-and-the-1930-drought/.
3. “The Failure of Relief During the Arkansas Drought of 1930-1931.” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Vol. 39, No. 4 (Winter, 1980), pp. 301-313 (13 pages). Accessed August 9, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/40024133
4. Sonnichsen, C. L. “The Sharecropper Novel in the Southwest.” Agricultural History 43, no. 2 (1969): 249-58. Accessed August 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617663.
5. “Tenant Farming in Arkansas.” Southern Tenant Farmers Museum. Accessed August 9, 2021. https://stfm.astate.edu/tenant-farming-history/.
6. “The Failure of Relief…”
7. Kirby, Jack Temple. “The Transformation of Southern Plantations c. 1920-1960.” Agricultural History 57, no. 3 (July 1983): 257–76. Accessed August 9, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3742453
8. “The Failure of Relief…”
9. Kirby

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 3

E Barracks, Marine Barracks, Quantico, Va¹

General Butler Sends 700 Marines on Leave As Drought Depletes Quantico Water Supply²

WASHINGTON, July 31 (1930).—Seven hundred marines left Quantico, Va., today on special liberty granted them by the commanding officer, Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, in an effort to conserve the water supply of the marine base.

Following an inspection of the base and the troops stationed there yesterday by Secretary Adams, the officers and men were gathered in the post gymnasium, where Mr. Adams addressed them and praised their appearance. At the conclusion of Mr. Adams’s remarks General Butler told the men that he would allow all who could be spared to leave camp until Tuesday morning to aid in the conserving of the water supply of the reservation, which has been seriously depleted by the drought in the eastern part of Virginia.

The special liberty did not apply to the Nineteenth Reserve Regiment, now in training at Quantico. This regiment, which consists of 800 officers and men from New York City and vicinity, will leave camp Saturday, and their absence, according to marine officers, will greatly relieve the situation.

A tank barge, with a capacity of 54,000 gallons, was loaded at Indian Head, Maryland, today, and is expected to reach Quantico this afternoon. Two other barges are on their way from Elizabeth City, N. C., and Deep Creek, Va. With their arrival the Quantico authorities believe the supply of water will be adequate.

An order rationing water is now in effect at Quantico. Enlisted men are bathing at a beach established for the purpose on the shores of the Potomac south of the main reservation. The post laundry has curtailed its output.

The Quantico base and the town of the same name, which is entirely surrounded by the military reservation, get their water supply from a series of large tanks fed by streams in the hills back of the base. Five wells recently were connected with the pumps to increase the normal supply.

The construction of the new 2,000,000-gallon concrete tank is now under way, and when this is completed, three months from now, engineers report, there will be no further danger of a water shortage.

1. “E Barracks, Marine Barracks, Quantico, Va.” Flickr, uploaded August 12, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/exit78/51374097791/.
2. “General Butler Sends 700 Marines on Leave as Drought Depletes Quantico Water Supply.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 1, 1930. Accessed August 12, 2021.  https://www.nytimes.com/1930/08/01/archives/general-butler-sends-700-marines-on-leave-as-drought-depletes.html.

 Lindell caricature: 

Surprise, surprise… and Biden is still president.

The next date Mr. Lindell is offering for Mr. Trump’s apparent return to office is now 30 September.

The Symposium – Some Headlines

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell fled the stage at his cyber symposium at the same time news broke that Dominion’s billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against him would proceed… Insider

MyPillow CEO’s Cyber Symposium Goes Down in Flames After His ‘Cyber Guy’ Admits It’s a Sham – The effort to prove election fraud in the U.S. was one goofy disaster after another… Gizmodo

Mike Lindell said his cyber symposium would prove voter fraud. One cyber expert said it was just full of ‘random garbage that wastes our time.’… Insider

MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Holds Conference To Show Election Fraud Proof Only To Provide Nothing – In the midst of Lindell’s bizarre, three-day conspiracy conference, a federal judge declined his request for a Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against him be thrown out. … NowThis

Critics mock believers in former President Donald Trump’s ‘reinstatement day’ – MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell predicted 13 August would mark Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office … Independent

Mike Lindell’s unfortunate week gets quite a bit worse – A federal judge delivered some bad news to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell this week. But the results of his “cyber symposium” made matters worse. … MSNBC