Except for that damned hat, we usually don't have too much beef with Roger L. Simon. He's usually right-on-point with his political observations, and Pajamas Media is brilliant, as an idea, if not always in execution (Watch one episode of "Trifecta" and tell us you're watching good television - we dare you). His latest column is a good example of how close our views are and, also, where we part ways:"Much of the blogosphere is appalled, as well it should be, at the selection of Yusuf Islam — né Cat Stevens — to perform at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s now absurdly named 'Rally to Restore Sanity.'"Oh, NOW it's absurd, but it wasn't when cultist Arianna Huffington announced her participation? Or cultist Oprah Winfrey announced hers? (Can anyone explain the "cloak of invisibility" those two exist under in the mediasphere?)
"Stewart and Colbert are dumb and uniniformed. Although they pretend to be more, they are just mildly talented entertainers with the depth of a petri dish who rely on their writers to stoke them with material and ideas. And no one told them Cat Stevens supported killing a fellow artist merely for exercising free expression. And unlike many of you, they simply didn’t know themselves. They thought he was, you know, just a peaceful ex-hippie dude who went Islamic spiritual instead of zen. (Okay, that irritated some people, but so what? It would be nice to see them squirm.)"Because we accept - even in a rally to support sanity - that everybody's got to be a "spiritual" something or other, right? We can't just drop the whole "spiritual" thing, can we? (Those Pajamas Media-types can't seem to drop the race thing, either.) Nope. Christianity, or whatever, must be replaced with something equally nonsensical, and then paraded before the rest of us as the epitome of rational thought - even though we're discussing "faith" which has no rational basis.
"Of course these are the supposedly 'cool' leaders of the liberal or progressive, call-it-what- you-want, movement right now. They are above the fray, smarter than the rest of us, and anxious to return us all to sanity. Spare me. Back in the day they used to call the Republicans the dumb party and the Democrats the evil party. The way things are going, I think they got it two-thirds right. There are two dumb parties and one evil one."Yea, and that would be the political party that prefers Islam or zen to Christianity - or not bothering to worship at all - which ain't "cool" but insanity itself.
Our ex-wife's best friend, Nadia Eisen, has irritable bowel syndrome. She, along with a psychic, talked our ex into leaving us for a Homeopath.
Now we hear that Homeopath, Robert Wohlfahrt, has been charging Nadia for the "magic water" she uses to treat her irritable bowel syndrome.
The idea Nadia will die a long slow death in horrible pain, while paying the sinister quack she herself invited into our lives, is hilarious. 
Because that's how NewAge "works". 
It doesn't bring peace, or joy, or truth, or any of that immature crap into our lives. If you're strong enough to survive whatever it is they unleash on you, NewAgers leave you with cynicism and a sickening, maniacal, laughter at the folly of idiots who always think, just like the Nazis, they were actually getting away with something - until it's too late.
Nadia's a Jew, so it will come as a shock to find herself on the wrong side of that divide.
Welcome to the real world, kid:
Now that you've crossed over, there's no coming back, ever.
Second, the people of this country openly lie to themselves (and each other) so often - and without penalty - it's hard to know if "sanity" even exists anymore: 
One dumbshit at that Jon Stewart nonsense actually said:"I find it incredibly ironic that I had to come to a rally sponsored by a comedian to get at the truth."Really? Do you seriously think that because you gathered before the administration's court jester, you received something other than a joke? True - your participation made you part of the joke, so we guess your own stupidity can be counted as "the truth", but still - was there anything more? Well, yes and no.
Lots of people are up in arms because Cat Stevens participated, after lending his support to the fatwa on killing Salmon Rushdie. (Considering the only evil historical figure these dummies acknowledge is Hitler, they could've invited Pol Pot or Stalin to sing "Peace Train" and the morons wouldn't have known the difference.) Of course, we don't get the other pundit's discomfort considering Arianna Huffington - who runs a "wretched hive of scum and quackery" (and doesn't know if she likes or dislikes the use of "Lizard Brains") - was being helpful enough to the NewAge cause to bus people in, and nobody on the Left or Right said anything about that, so how "sane" can any of you - whether you participated or not - truly be? Our take:
Not very.
"It's absurd. We've lost our minds. We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics. The obstructionism is stunning. I think America really needs to know more of this kind of tactic and how it's shortchanging us."-- John Kerry, the first Democrat to acknowledge two can play the "we're crazy" game - and probably the only one not to have read Alinsky by now - in The Boston Globe.
Yes, we're a little late, but it seems to be true:"I cannot think of anything I would like less than working out in a Madonna themed gym. Everyone will have those freakishly veiny arms and look pissed off and snooty all the time. The only thing you’d be allowed to drink would be Kabbalah water."That sounds great! (Though we don't understand how someone "enlightened" by Kabbalah, as Madonna surely is, should "look pissed off and snooty all the time".) Also - now that Oprah's hooked up with Jon Stewart - it'll be a totally organic fit for Madonna to get that fat bitch exercising on The Daily Show! That's "win-win" for everybody! (Especially those of us into comedy.)
Plus, seriously, we can't win - that's been a theme of this blog from the start: 
Remember, the other day, we were talking about how Oprah's exploited Jon Stewart's "Rally For Sanity" event? Well, we've found another story about how some low-level NewAge bullshitters are exploiting (and making fools of) Major League Baseball players, too. Now, if All-American Mom and Apple Pie Major League Baseball is gullible enough (or - being jocks - stupid enough) to fall for this, what hope is there for a really snotty blog to make a dent in anything, but possibly certain individual's lives?
See, when we got into this, we thought it would be simple: 
We now see that was unrealistic. 
Plus skeptics tried it in England (no media outlet covered the story in America) and Britain's NHS got away with saying, essentially, "Fuck you, the NewAgers are paying, so bugger off!" and that was the end of that.
So we can't win.
Instead, we go on, reading one "informative" article saying:"Homeopathy has no proven clinical benefit for patients. ..."
Followed by another "informative" article entitled:"13 Benefits of Homeopathy"
And we are unmoved by any of it. Except, if that's how they want to play it, to feeling a little bit more content with the idea of anomie. But - to anyone thinking that's a wrong reaction to have - don't forget, in truth, it's the only "normal" reaction a human being could have. From the blurb on Harry G. Frankfurt's "On Bullshit":
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
Is it "normal" not to address (or to pretend not to see) "one of the most salient features of our culture", though recognizing it's "a greater enemy of the truth"?
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Announcement Extended | ||||
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Here's how the people who broke up their marriages, determined to change the world, spent the last ten years - and take note of how the word "we" is used:Remember the '90s, when we all thought we were crazy? Everyone ran out and got a shrink (New Yorkers got analysts — not just for Woody Allen anymore!). Couples' therapy became a widely chosen ritualistic precursor to divorce, aimed at clarifying for each party exactly when and how their spouse became reprehensible. The middle-aged departed on healing retreats en masse to learn about centering and recovering their inner child. The most fragile souls wound up in stuffy hotel conference rooms under the banner of Werner Erhard's Forum, where an authoritarian patriarch urged them to simply sweep away their "rackets" like so many dust bunnies.And here they are now - their inner child still insisting on some ethically-challenged, organic, recyclable, utopia of nonsense - hoping someone will feel sorry for them after all the trouble they've caused, the money they've thrown away ("I was a shopaholic") and the lives they've destroyed:
When saying you don't believe in "karma" can get you stared at, your society is fucked up.
Met a guy, in debt for $200,000, whose mother has 12 maxed-out credit cards. Met him in a car dealership, using mom as a co-signer on a new one. 
Is anybody else even the least bit curious how so many people came to monotonously, all-of-a-sudden simultaneously, and Stepford Wives-identically, start describing romantic interests with the robotically-delivered phrase "the-love-of-my-life"? 
If The New York Times found recycling to be useless to American society all the way back in 1996 - going so far as to call it "garbage" - why, during a belt-tightening depression, are we still doing it nationally?
Madonna used to insist world leaders had to put Kabbalah water in their nuclear reactors.
"An accused con man who runs an upstate 'cult' bankrolled by the Bronfman booze fortune has 'had people killed,' he boasts in an explosive new video.Yes our old friend, Keith Raniere, is admitting to murder in the midst of numerous lawsuits, multiple accusations of fraud, and and even a recent article in Vanity Fair refering to his enterprise as, specifically, a "cult". And then try this - from the same article quoted above:
Keith Raniere, who runs Albany-based NXIVM, makes the chilling claim on tape to female followers who confronted him with their concerns about the group, which has been derided by detractors as a harmful 'cult.'
'Here’s the thing,' Raniere says on the 2009 video, which was sent to The Post and also posted last night on youtube.com. 'I’ve had people killed because of my beliefs -- or because of their beliefs.'"
"Former NXIVM members told The Post that Raniere’s claim is particularly disturbing in light of the mysterious disappearance of a former NXIVM student several years ago.I give up.
In 2003, 35-year-old environmentalist Kristin Snyder vanished from an Alaska hotel after taking NXIVM classes. Her body was never found.
Snyder’s Toyota truck was discovered near a local bay, along with a note that read: 'I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed...Please contact my parents [if] you find me or this note.'"
