It's About Time: Profile For Religion And Race

Impossible: They Drive Us To Speak This Way

A Breakdown Of Cultish Thinking In America

We watch things like this and wonder, not only how so many others miss it, but how ideas that are so patently wrong could ever catch on to begin with - to the point where they're the dominant thoughts in the corporate world. It paints a picture of a nation of idiots.

Your thoughts control the world? That's not Rhonda Byrne and The Secret - it's the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi! This is why we're always dissing baby Boomers and the 1960s - all of this comes from them being too stupid to see through it, and then inflicting it on the rest of us. (We've lost countless jobs because we wouldn't go along with this kind of thinking, and there was nothing we could do, and no one we could appeal to, to save our jobs because every imbecile in the organization "believed" in this NewAge nonsense.)

Another problem, here, is that Barbara Ehrenreich is a hardcore socialist. So, while we can accept her spot-on critique of destructive cultish NewAge thinking, we're also stuck enduring her gratuitous shot at George W. Bush which (as we have seen over the last few months) is nothing like his detractors have ever sold him as. Needless to say, when it comes to politics, we don't trust this woman and we suggest you don't either.

Otherwise, we think this video - and her book on the subject, Bright-Sided - are fine contributions to the emerging thinking on the perils of cultism in American society. We need more of it, and - as the Democrats continue to lose their grip on power - it certainly looks like we're going to get it.

Big thanks to Beth! Click the tags, below, for more on these topics.

On Best Friends, Betrayal And TMR's Better Way

Our boy, Detonator Kemrexx, sent this gem to us as a reminder of how friendship "works" with the majority of people out there - and it's 100% true of 99% of the people we've known:

When the going was smooth and good, they were everywhere.

Our phone used to start ringing around 5:30AM, and the last visitor to the house usually didn't leave until well after midnight. But, ever since the murders, they can hardly be found except as occasional antagonists in this blog's comments section, still trying to push their socialist agenda on us.

We recently got in an argument with an asshole online, and all he would do is crow about how many of our former "friends" (read: San Francisco NewAge socialists) contacted him to report some bullshit they thought would damage us further - can you imagine? Think about it for a moment:

You used to be friends with a minor celebrity. He discovers his wife is in a cult. Then he discovers she's cheating on him with a "guru". Then he discovers they were killing people. Your reaction? Call him crazy and basically abandon him to the streets during the worst period of his life.

Until a few years later, when it's proven everything he was saying was true - even the "cult" talk - and we mean every single word of it!

He tried to talk to you about it all, but now you can't look him in the eye because of how you treated him in his hour of need. So he moved away, and gathered a new class of friends. A bunch of conservatives (including non-liberal Jews) who never questioned his story because they recognized the integrity you used to be drawn to - and now he no longer wants shit to do with you or your kind.

So today, being a bunch of socialist backstabbers, you use his new political orientation to attack him further. You follow his blog just to antagonize him because you can't stand being abandoned in return. You contact anyone he has beef with, claiming you used to be friends, telling his enemies all the inside dirt on him - of course, never mentioning why he no longer likes you, or the reason you used to be friends in the first place:

Because he was an honest and talented guy, who you had only hoped to hitch your wagon to, because his shine was always better then yours - and now he's free of you.

So that's friendship to us now'a'days - and it's a travesty - but we didn't make the rules. What are the rules?:

Be careful who you get close to - consider mostly conservatives (for new acquaintances) and people you've known for, at least, 20+ years.

For all others, demand they prove themselves.

We've known Detonator Kemrexx for 25+ years. He's the kind of friend anyone would want to have. He was the first one through the door when the shit went down.

And of course, to us, that exemplified The Macho Response.

This Is Why Nobody Likes The Unions Anymore

Jesus, these pink-shirted assholes are fucking nurses,...

Hat Tip: The Reluctant Optimist

See, What You Need Is A Really Good Leader,...

Man, if Obama had this type of control over his followers, we'd be in real trouble,...

Hat Tip: The Reluctant Optimist

Um, Why Is Everyone Talking About Spiderman?

“The Book of Mormon” opens on Broadway in February 2011.

The Hammer & Sickle Can't Get Your Swerve On

This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. There's nothing "real" about anything here, from the setting, to the artist - doing his contrived version of what we do - to the expected reaction of the audience to Putin's stiff, but still threatening, presence. Russian is also a terrible language to hear Rap in (German's great) and, needless to say, there's nothing about communism that says "Cold Clockin' Dollars!" even if you're a Dead Prez fan.

*Sigh*

Whatever. Ain't shit we can do about it, it's all the way on the other side of the world, and Russian Rap ain't ever leaving Russia, so just - whatever. We'll just have to chalk it up as another one of today's little musical indignities, leaving an art form - that's still begging for respect 20 years after it succeeded - exposed as vulnerable to irrelevancy because too little care has been taken in defining it's parameters. This has been it's strength, and this has been it's weakness:

It's definitely nothing to congratulate here.

The Reason Why We Do What We Do (Doo Doo)

TMR has always been very aware of how difficult it is to get a clear "meeting of the minds' with others - especially in a world filled with "believers" in one bit of cultish nonsense or another.

We noticed it from the very beginning of the blog, when we started investigating what and how cultists believe, and many readers assumed those were our beliefs - or (after actually catching our drift) started defending those outrageous beliefs themselves.

Their reactions confused us so much (and, too many times, depressed us so badly) that - for our own mental well-being - we've pretty much abandoned the oh-so-serious goals TMR started off with, and have happily settled into the role of giving believers of all kinds a home for what they really deserve:

Shameless wisecracks and free-floating ad hominem attacks.

Now, sure, occasionally we will still tell you what's going on, straight, ostensibly for the purpose for "snapping" a few of you, but - let's face it - we're under no illusions, seeing the situation as basically hopeless, and any progress as so incremental it might as well not have happened at all.

(We now prefer the 9/11 approach, where some massive act of stupidity allows something really, really bad to happen so - overnight - everyone gets a clue and starts letting old people have a seat on the bus for three or four days.)

We got to thinking about all this as we read an article in The Telegraph about those "new" WikiLeaks disclosures.

The article is by someone with the cool-assed honorary TMR name of Praveen Swami, and he basically says - as we repeatedly point out - that there's nothing "new" in the "news" we're getting about America's diplomatic cables, except that the politicians we're reading about are all essentially barking mad:

In a thoughtful interview, Chip Berlet, a political researcher, noted that both the political Left and Right in the US were increasingly prone to “Manichean thinking: there are evil forces in the world and good people have to expose them, and everything will be fine once they are exposed. This is a magical explanation of how the world works.”

Paranoiacs who claim that the world is run by conspiracy – and a 2006 essay written by Mr Assange raises fears he is among them – are evidence of the regrettable lack of access some in genuine need have to psychiatric care.

But the fact is that the paranoiacs are gaining strength because of the diminishing time both the media and its consumers are willing to devote to real knowledge about the world around them. In recent years, conspiratorialist thinking has led to the exercise of state power being cast as a dark art practiced by sorcerers in the service of evil power. Wikileaks’ media partners have done a real disservice by having pandered to this delusion. The answer, though, isn’t outrage: its information.

And check out the graphic the paper uses to illustrate the mindset of our political class:

That could be said to be the same one we use, day after day after day. But no one "believes" us - though we've provided multiples of examples - because they're still not sure what we're asking them to "believe" in, instead.

Here's a hint:

We don't even "believe" in the concept of "believing".

Anyway, we're sure, one of these days you'll get it (and give us lots of money) but we're not going to hold our breath, because - when even "the best and brightest" can be sucked into a mental landscape that's no better than a "spiritually" political Pee-Wee's Playhouse in Space - we're getting far more enjoyment from pointing and calling you names than we ever could from saving you from yourselves.

So, keep up the good work, Losers. We're with you, 100%.

Super-Fast Football Players? (Slower Than Most)

So, O.K. - this is a classic - Buffalo Bills Wide Receiver Steve Johnson drops the game-winning touchdown in overtime against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and then explodes on God using Twitter:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS IS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!!

Yea, genius, that's how he does you - and just for kicks. And what you're expected to learn from it is you're talking to yourself.

But, of course, this fleet-footed, but ham-handed, superstitious moron is too gullible to understand what's really happening to him, so he ends his online outburst with a caveat to The Big Guy for, at least, putting him in the game:

THX THO...

And, we're sure, at that moment - just like when Johnson missed that all-important pass - his training coach became keenly aware of how Johnson fumbled the ball once again.

Sit The Fuck Down, You Stupid Idiot, He's Eight!

Watching what is essentially an adult, gear up to do battle with a child, is too ridiculous for us (we had to stop the video when the kid ended his first not-bad performance, and the bozo in red put on his knit cap as though to say, "Alright, let's do this!") so we'll just let the title of this post speak for itself.

Jeez. Does anybody in Hip-Hop still know what the word "dignity" means?

The American Left: Where'd We Be Without You?

Hey, Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats:

Remember, after George W. Bush attacked Iraq, how you said the "Axis of Evil" was bogus - and the possibility that Bush might attack Iran was the worst thing in the world - proof that American neo-conservatism was a destructive warmongering ideology that had to be stopped at all costs?

We do!



And hey, Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats:

Remember, when John McCain was running against Barack Obama, and he started a chant of "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb - Bomb, Bomb, Iran", which you took as proof he was too dangerously unhinged to be president? Even though he was riffing on a question from an American citizen who had stated that we already knew, way back then, how dangerous Iran was?

We do!

So here we are in 2010, and you've got your Liberally Progressive Democratic president.

Ultra-Liberal even.

And he's promised to work with Iran "without conditions", while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (AKA the man now known as "Hitler") has been quietly building a nuclear arsenal, which now - according to the illegally obtained Liberally Progressive Wikileaks cache - has everybody and his Middle Eastern brother not only scared to death, but begging the United States to finally do the one thing you've stood in the way of for years:

Bombing Iran.

Yes, we remember it all.

And it hasn't changed our minds one bit that Liberally Progressive Democrats are the shrewdest bunch of political operators the world has ever seen.

Religion: Not Worth It At The Level Of Freedom

Hat Tip: Hot Air

It's Pretty Bad When You Make A Video And The Most Arresting Thing In It is Some Girl's Back Zit

This is making the rounds in light of the White House's revelation that Obama prays before bed, reads the bible, and says dinner prayers with his family. (Big whoop - NewAgers do all kinds of things.) Anyway, while Ben Folds is obviously a fine piano player, this is "meh" as a song and gets even less from us for the visuals. It's all contrived bullshit, and there's no "there" there, so - even coming from an atheistic point of view - we could care less. What we pick up, mostly, is an air of condescension we can't endorse:

We actually like America, and it's people, stupid or not - so we don't and won't look down on them.

WWJD?

Learn How To Think (And We'll Never Argue)

The Key To The Crazy House (Us Wanting Out)

Sometimes it becomes too difficult to read certain articles because TMR's buzzwords will be littered everywhere, making it so we think the piece should end with "read The Macho Response and see!" Of course, that would be silly because, whether we're right or wrong - and, like Rush Limbaugh, we're "right 99.7% of the time" - we know nobody's really reading this blog:

It's all about the photos. (In their wisdom, most read MSNBC.com.)

Anyway, a fine case-in-point is this column in the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente, entitled, "Can environmentalism be saved from itself?"(The answer is "no".) After a few paragraphs we stopped reading, and started typing, because it's so obvious the writer is "singing our song" there was no need for us to go on.

We've pulled a major huge quote for you, and put our regularly-referenced phrases in bold, so there's no mistaking what we and Miss Wente are identifying as the real problems with environmentalists and their cult movement:

Maybe it was just a bad dream.

Just a year ago, 15,000 of the world’s leaders, diplomats, and UN officials were gearing up to descend on Copenhagen to forge a global treaty that would save the planet. The world’s media delivered massive coverage. Important newspapers printed urgent front-page calls for action, and a popular new U.S. President waded in to put his reputation on the line. The climate talks opened with a video showing a little girl’s nightmare encounter with drought, storms, eruptions, floods and other man-made climate disasters. “Please help the world,” she pleads.

After two weeks of chaos, the talks collapsed in a smouldering heap of wreckage. The only surprise was that this outcome should have come as a surprise to so many intelligent people. These people actually seemed to believe that experts and politicians have supernatural powers to predict the future and control the climate. They believed that experts know how fast temperatures will rise by when, and what the consequences will be, and that we know what to do about it. They believed that despite the recent abject failure of Kyoto (to say nothing of other well-intentioned international treaties), the nations of the world would willingly join hands and sacrifice their sovereignty in order to sign on to a vast scheme of unimaginable scope, untold cost and certain damage to their own interests.

Copenhagen was not a political breakdown. It was an intellectual breakdown so astonishing that future generations will marvel at our blind credulity. Copenhagen was a classic case of the emperor with no clothes.

Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead. Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme is dead. Chicago’s carbon-trading market is dead. The European Union’s supposed reduction in carbon emissions has been exposed as a giant fraud. (The EU is actually responsible for 40 per cent more CO2 today than it was in 1990, if you count the goods and services it consumed as opposed to the ones that it produced.) Public interest in climate change has plunged, and the media have radically reduced their climate coverage.

The biggest loser is the environmental movement. For years, its activists neglected almost everything but climate change. They behaved as if they’d cornered the market on wisdom, truth and certainty, and they demonized anyone who dared to disagree. They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media, who parroted their claims like Sunday-school children reciting Scripture. No interest group in modern times has been so free from skepticism, scrutiny or simple accountability as the environmental establishment.

Perhaps some good will emerge from the wreckage. (Humility, for example.) Now that global warming has stopped sucking all the oxygen out of the room, some of those who care about the planet will turn to other – and more pressing – problems. There are plenty. Humans are encroaching everywhere on habitats and species. Don’t worry about the polar bears, which have survived hundreds of thousands of years of melting and freezing ice. Worry instead about the lions and tigers, which face extinction within our lifetime. Their problem isn’t climate change. It’s us.

That's right:

We live with "activists" who are clearly delusional, gullible, foolish, and - most importantly - are willing to commit fraud to make us pay for it. That is the problem - our legions of highly-motivated fools.

And it's not just environmentalists. It's every group that falls under what, over time, we've outlined as the NewAge (rhymes with "sewage") movement. These people have swarmed us with their many wrong-headed issues, are willing to do anything to get those issues legitimized, and will drag us all down to get there. Don't think failure is enough to stop them. They are the Borg. They will merely figure out another way to be wrong, but - whatever else they do - they. will. not. stop.

So what's the solution? NewAge leaders and icons should be humiliated and, where possible, jailed for fraud. That way, like followers of Mumia Abu-Jamal, NewAgers will have an issue they cannot win but will consume all their time and resources, leaving the rest of us free to get on with the other, legitimately important, things.

We think (since those in government and journalism have been found to be susceptible to such thinking) it's really the only way.

Plus - no matter how they phrase it - they have been stealing our money.