In person, [Tagg Romney] looked remarkably like his mother, with her toothy smile and bird-like eyes.
[Mitt Romney's] wife,...has the eyes of a bald eagle deciding what chunk of flesh to tear next.
The notion that Republicans have leverage is silly. It’s the same kind of happy thinking that led some to boldly predict a Romney victory.
In the CAMbrella report we identified that: herbal medicine is used by up to half the people studied; homoeopathy, surprisingly, is used by about 30% of Europeans using CAM; chiropractic and acupuncture by up to 20% of CAM users; and dietary supplements by almost everyone. We have estimated that this service is provided by 328,000 registered CAM providers, comprising of 178,000 non-medical practitioners and 150,000 medical doctors. Acupuncture (96,380) is the most available therapy practised by both, physicians (80,000) and non-medical practitioners (16,380). We also estimated that there are 65 CAM providers for every 100,000 EU citizens. The UK has one of the most organised approaches to registration and regulation for non-medically qualified practitioners who provide most of these clinical interventions. In the rest of the EU, particularly in Germany and France, these treatments are almost always part of medical practice in both the community and in hospitals.
This was not some alien machete-wielding bloodlust. It was methodical and systematic and conducted with cold efficiency by men who read poetry and listened to string quartets afterwards.
They turned upside-down the paraphernalia of progress to achieve it. Architects planned the camps – an interesting challenge, presumably, for no one had designed this kind of concentration camp before. Sewage engineers surveyed them, installing drainage ditches in the marshland ' and effluent treatment plants to avoid polluting local rivers. Rail officials timetabled the steady influx of trains to Birkenau, selected by Himmler for its good railway links.
This was extermination on an industrial scale and it involved huge numbers of people. Neighbours and employers reported Jews to the Gestapo. Bureaucrats processed notices of deportation. Postmen served them. Railway staff marshalled their departure. Others drove the trains and manned the signals. It was all logically and legally planned in an inversion of all the values on which human civilisation had been built,…
An edifice of lies supported the whole ghastly enterprise. The camps were presented as places of resettlement. Families were told to pack a suitcase and given lists of essential clothing and goods. When they arrived, the suitcases were taken from them, and their careful contents later casually ransacked and sorted to be sold. Some knew then what this meant. "The cherished objects we had brought with us thus far were left behind in the train, and with them, at last, our illusions," wrote one survivor, Elie Wiesel. But others persisted in hope, even as the Nazis persisted in their lies. At the end of the long walk from the railway ramp, the condemned were ushered into a subterranean dressing-room. There were numbered hooks for the clothes. "Remember your number for when you come out," the guards shouted. "Children, fasten your shoes together by the laces so they don't get separated when you come out." They would, of course, be easier to sell if the pairs did not become separated.
Even inside the killing-room the deceit persisted. There were fake shower heads in the ceiling to maintain the pretence that this was a place of cleansing until the very final minute. Then cyanide pellets were dropped through holes in the roof. Even on Nazi invoices, now in the Auschwitz museum, the mendacity continued: new supplies of Zyklon B were billed as "material for Jewish resettlement".
Over the last decade or so, a growing disconnect has developed between the bizarre and almost cult-like rhetoric and practices that companies use with their staff, and the increasingly grim reality of being an employee in modern day Corporate America.
For example, anyone stumbling upon the Walmart careers website might be forgiven for thinking that Google had malfunctioned and directed them instead to the Scientologists, whose recruitment site features a collection of testimonials virtually indistinguishable in their tone of robotic devotion.
Over at "Walmart People," Lois Givens, Personnel Manager at store number 992 assures us: "If you live your whole entire life according to the Walmart culture and three basic beliefs, life becomes a lot easier." Shana Bailey, Director of Store Operations emotes: "To this day, I continue to grow and learn, and the Walmart family is always there for me every step of the way," while Patricia Graham of the Distribution Centers adds: " Walmart is my Life (capitalization her own). When I think about it, it's amazing how many aspects of my life are touched and made better by Walmart."
For those of us whose lives have yet to be touched by the transformative miracle of the out of town superstore, these testimonials may seem a little excessive. But these are not rogue sycophants in the company ranks. According to Michael Bergdahl, former "Director of People" for Walmart's Headquarters, and now an international speaker and consultant on the company's practices, the creation of "cult-like commitment" and devotion to the so called "Walmart Way" among its employees is the explicit aim of the company's intensive staff training program for new recruits. And lest employees forget what they have learned on the course, loyalty is reinforced daily in stores with the "Walmart cheer," a compulsory devotional chant.
It's not just Walmart. Corporate songs are common, "reframing" disappointment for those whose lives have taken the road marked "middle manager" rather than the one marked "rockstar." "We built this Starbucks on Heart and Soul," "Blue Box Values Are the Best, I Work For American Express" and perhaps most uplifting, Big Four accountancy firm Ernst and Young's reworking of gospel anthem "Oh Happy Day" which replaced the lyrics: "When Jesus washed my sins away" with the competing message "When Ernst and Young showed me a better way."
Once they have whipped their staff into a frenzy of corporate sycophancy, employers are increasingly expecting them to turn their whole selves over to the company's message and aims, and are employing a range of sophisticated psychological and practical techniques to achieve this.
Silicon Valley firms encourage their employees to work ever longer hours by turning offices into playgrounds, complete with slides, graffiti walls and foosball tables. Free dinner and on site dry cleaners, dentists and hairdressers are standard ways of ensuring that staff never leave the building. Facebook made the perfect metaphor for the overworked American employee into a reality with their flagship 'Insanity Wolf' treadmill desk, which allows employees to keep running to a never materialising destination while they continue to work. I met (a rather tired looking) Facebook employee recently who was thrilled to be provided with pizza and "allowed" to work overnight on a company project of his choice at no extra pay.
The boundaries between self and company are further blurred as employers increasingly encroach onto personal territory in order to keep their staff firmly in the workplace and not outside it. Biotech firm Genetech will organize babysitters for its staff rather than have them take time off to stay at home with a sick child. Consulting firm Deloitte offers backup care for an elderly parent or grandparent. Human Resources philosophers have ditched the mantra "work life balance" for the more sinister (and employer friendly) "work life integration."
Corporations now aim to identify and satisfy employees' emotional needs as well as their financial ones. Major white collar employers such as UBS, American Express, KPMG and the law firm Goodwin Proctor have instituted "happiness training" for staff, drawing on a combination of psychological research and ancient religious traditions. Other employers sponsor their staff to go on courses such as the hugely popular Landmark Forum series, several full days in a group setting in which bathroom breaks are discouraged and participants are invited to share personally disturbing life events such as relationship problems and family breakdowns with the group and then go through a signature process to "heal" these issues and find lasting peace.
“Miscegenation should be prevented, because there is evidence to show cross-breeding between individuals of widely different race is biologically unsound.”
"The greatest threat to Earth in 2012, at the end of this year and in the future, is just from the human race itself."
"There is no true issue here. This is just a manufactured fantasy."
Only a couple of references to the 2012 date equivalency have been found carved in stone at Maya sites, and neither refers to an apocalypse, experts say.
Such apocalyptic visions have been common for more than 1,000 years in Western, Christian thinking, and are not native to Maya thought.
'This is thinking that, in truth, has nothing to do with Mayan culture,' said Alexander Voss, an anthropologist at the University Of Quintana Roo, a state on Mexico's Caribbean coast. 'This thing about looking for end-times is not something that comes from Mayan culture.'
No - it's all about these loving white "spiritualists" in the West. But who cares? So it is written, so it will be done:
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
-- John F. Kennedy [Emphasis mine]
Fears the end of the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world this coming December have run rife on the internet in recent years.
Less well known is the rumour that one particular mountain in south-west France will burst open on that day revealing an alien spaceship which will carry nearby humans to safety.
Well, if you were counting on that possibility to save you from the apocalypse, prepare to be disappointed. French officials have banned access to the Pic de Bugarach to avoid a rush of New Age fanatics, sightseers and, above all, journalists.As I said the last time I visited this topic - whether it's NewAge fanatics or so-called journalists - We're Hoping The French Army Shoots To Kill,...
I kept going on and on about the importance of showing up, and that seems to have been what mattered. Why didn’t people show up?
When is Glenn Reynolds going to stop settling for being popular and start to matter?
At this point, I have much more interest in Glenn Beck - who speaks truth to power when we need it most - than the hey-look-at-this/it-could-be-this-way-it-could-be-that/I'll-wait-to-see-how-the-wrongs-play-out nonsense of Glenn Reynolds. I mean, he says he'll start acting like there's an environmental crisis when the green meanies do. Well, I feel the same way about Glenn Reynolds on a whole host of other issues, that are just as important - and, as he knows, are bleeding us dry as we speak.
You guys make jokes about it but - seriously - you are professors, and some of us expect more of you. We need more of you. Right now, in my opinion, you're not too many steps above AGW scientists, insisting your critics are the crazy ones and we should just accept that you, as gatekeepers, dish out the best information we have. It's bullshit and anyone with a functioning brain - anyone who sees through conventional wisdom - can see it. I think many of our online gatekeepers are a big part of why this country is having such a hard time getting moving again.
"In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise.
In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained, in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy."
A paragraph from an old Supreme Court case that feels like something some people who ought to know better have forgotten. Boldface added.
The Crack flounce-off coincided with our lack of response to his attacks on Mormons.
Shit, watching this megalomaniac routine of threatening other bloggers is like watching the Kill Bill movies, and finding them big, bloated, soulless, and utterly without merit.
Here - I'll make the point clear:
Ann, I am formally requesting to be taken off of your blog roll.
If the world ends, I'll let you know.
“Well, I guess that’s one lawyer… I post for people to see and think about things and reflect about things. I don’t know if it’s realistic.”
Dude I left there too when I felt disrespected and I will not go back.
As Trooper York.
So I respect you for your stand.
But you have to realize that most people don't give a shit.
As a friend I have to tell you something brother.
Get over yourself.
A fast-emerging body of scientific evidence points to a conclusion that's unsettling, to say the least, for a lot of older athletes: Running can take a toll on the heart that essentially eliminates the benefits of exercise.
"Running too fast, too far and for too many years may speed one's progress toward the finish line of life," concludes an editorial to be published next month in the British journal Heart.
They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside
In his novel Empire of Lies, the very wise and extraordinarily attractive author has one of his characters declare that, “In an empire of lies, only a crazy man would speak the truth.” The character then goes on to explain that the empire can then destroy the crazy man, not for the truth he speaks, but for doing the crazy things that crazy people do.
Ann and Rush, Sean and Glenn aren’t crazy, but the sort of person willing to hurl himself against the vast machinery of the left-wing information empire is not likely to be all that concerned about decorum. This puts a weapon of slander in the hands of the left-wing media and they use it effectively to demonize these truth-tellers and stopper the ears of those who might hear them and be convinced.
It’s easy to be calm and polite when you have the power to destroy the reputations of your enemies — it’s a lot tougher for the rebel brave enough to fight back.
Who will win? I don't know - they're both lame - but Romney has an uphill battle, because his nomination kicked me out of the voting booth, and I can't be the only one.
I'm mulling over how much I despise ObamaCare - to see if it's worth compromising my values on cultism - but I doubt it:
Now - reality check - in light of the results, "screwed the pooch" seems pretty on-point, right-right? A little vague, but everything lined up pretty nice there. So much that, I'd think, post-election, there would be little anyone can argue with me about (I don't consider asking about cultism arguing,...) Hell, in a fair world, some might even search a black conservative Republican out to ask what went wrong - but no. I may be right, but I'm not a good person, in fact I'm crazy:The Right has simply "screwed the pooch" this time,...
Re: Crack - he's crazy. I'll bet he's a swell guy IRL (in fact I think I met him back in the 80s, if he was in the Beatnigs at that time) but he's still crazy. Batshit, foaming-at-the-mouth, off-his-fucking-rocker crazy. If you disagree with him, you're his enemy or, at very least, one of the brain-dead masses who voluntarily dopes themselves up, rendering pure comprehension of the Gospel According To Crack Emcee incomprehensible.
Crazy.And for the record, I haven't seen anyone else who refused to vote, either. I figure, since we don't passively accept anything they say, we must all be crazy - though Robert Stacy McCain couldn't wait to see my take on Demi Moore and Deepak Chopra. (Maybe they just don't need reality in politics.) Pish-Posh:
