You Don' t Have To Be A Democrat To Suck Big Donkey Dicks (Glenn Reynolds Does It Seven Days A Week,...)

A Mormon is being excommunicated from the "church" for writing naughty stuff about Mitt Romney, so I sent a link about it to the "bigotry" clique of Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, and Robert Stacey McCain, but you know what?

Not one of these newly-brave free speech-in-the-face-of-religious-persecution advocates bothered to post a word about it.

That should tell us all we need to know about the snow job going on out there. None of them has said one word about any negatives surrounding Romney's cult during this entire election - and let me remind you A MORMON is being excommunicated for saying there IS something negative about it - but Reynolds is sure OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN because a religious filmmaker with warrants was brought in for questioning by the L.A.P.D..

 By the way, all you big shot know-it-all lawyers - how'd THAT work out for ya?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And they're squandering what credibility they have for what?

Romney’s current troubles don’t stem from miscalculation or even a duff convention in Tampa but are manifestations of his own political character as heard and witnessed over the past half-decade. This is a man who has altered his positions—not modified, not tailored, not hedged, but utterly transformed—on every single issue from abortion to climate change to the health-care reform that he signed as governor in Massachusetts. Now he runs a campaign that doesn’t want to talk about his record as governor or as a financier and that refuses to put forth an economic alternative of any detail beyond building the Alaska pipeline and lowering taxes for people like himself, even as at the same time he won’t show us what he pays in taxes now or whether he pays taxes at all. His adamant hostility to revealing anything that resembles an authentic belief or credible strategy for accelerating the recovery is not only losing Romney the choice part of the election but the referendum part as well, as the Democrats succeed in making this a referendum on Romney, not Obama. Romney’s selection of Ryan was meant both to reassure the party’s base and bathe the presidential candidate in the glow of the vice-presidential candidate’s reputation as a man of integrity and candor. As evinced by the ticket’s appearances on this past Sunday morning’s news programs and Ryan’s speech at the Republican Convention, when he blamed Obama for a plant that closed during his predecessor’s term and for a Medicare cut that Ryan himself supports and for not embracing a debt-commission report that Ryan himself opposed and for the country’s credit downgrading that Ryan himself brought about as much as any single individual, it is truth-teller Ryan who bathes in the glow of Romney’s irrefutable standing as the phoniest nominee of our lifetime.

Meanwhile - four years too late - Reynolds is supposedly telling us about THE OBAMA YOU DON'T KNOW. Oh I know about him, Boy-O, and you as well - how about this Reynolds link:

 David Harsanyi: A Short Visual History of the Creepy Obama Cult.

Really? Really? I mean, REALLY? Is this man joking? Reynolds is backing a candidate with one of the biggest cults in the world and NOW he wants to go there? 

It's bad enough Reynolds was of no help on the subject of the Obama cult in 2008 - and Althouse denied it (even to herself) until AFTER OBAMA WAS ELECTED (something Reynolds never called HER on, being blogging butt buddies and not truth-tellers) - but to see it now coming from this goofy NewAge blogger who, less than four hours later, is promoting "CHI RUNNING" makes the whole thing so hypocritically ugly and hysterically stupid I can hardly figure out what to write. You know what? I won't write anything - let me show you what the great "Blogfather," PROFESSOR Glenn Reynolds "believes" in:

Ch'i or qi (pronounced "chee" and henceforth spelled "chi") is the Chinese word used to describe "the natural energy of the Universe." This energy, though called "natural," is spiritual or supernatural, and is part of a metaphysical, not an empirical, belief system. New Agers often refer to this energy as subtle energy. Chi is thought to permeate all things, including the human body. Such metaphysical systems are generally referred to as types of  vitalism. One of the key concepts related to chi is the concept of harmony. Trouble, whether in the universe or in the body, is a function of disharmony, of things being out of balance and in need of restoration to equilibrium. 

Proponents claim to prove the existence and power of chi by healing people with acupuncture or chi kung (qi gong), by doing magic tricks such as breaking a chopstick with the edge of a piece of paper or resuscitating a "dead" fly, or by martial arts stunts like breaking a brick with a bare hand or foot. When examined under controlled conditions, however, the seemingly paranormal or supernatural feats of masters of chi turn out to be quite ordinary feats of magic, deception, or natural powers. 

Vitalism is a popular philosophy in many cultures. Thus, chi has many counterparts: prana (India and therapeutic touch), ki (Japan); Wilhelm Reich's orgone, Mesmer's animal magnetism, Bergson's élan vital (vital force), to name just a few. The concept is very popular among New Age thinking, where it generally goes by the name of energy, though the concept bears no resemblance to the concept as used by physicists. 

To find out more about what believers think about chi, look at any of the advertisements on the Internet for chi products. You may be surprised at what miracles people think are possible with a few grunts and groans, and the waving of hands through the air.

Yeah, like "Chi Running." Here's as fine a demonstration of the "chi" concept as I could find:

Didn't I tell you Glenn Reynolds can't spot quackery? Well now I'm telling you something else:

He's got no integrity what-so-ever.

Want proof? Here's the latest post he's put up as I write this: 

 THE ONE CONSTANT IN GOLF: The Need For Consistency.

Face it - if he plays like he blogs - Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds HAS to stay in the rough,…

 

Hahnemann's Got A New Name: Nostradumbass

Whenever people discuss homeopathy, they always point out how little of (or none of) a substance is in it. What they hardly ever discuss is the part that drives people insane:

Magic? Yes. Homoeopathy is based –in part– on the idea of the Vital Force, a my(s)thical force that is supposed to be in all of us. According to Samuel Hahnemann, the man who created homoeopathy, his highly diluted products serve to coax the Vital Force (which is thought to be powerful but not very intelligent) into attacking the disease.

Part of homoeopathy is also the concept of miasms, a type of fundamental cause of disease, of which the psora (itch) is the most important one. This magical thinking is also why some people call homoeopathy a religion or a cult. As a result, reading what homoeopaths are being "taught" is not unlike returning to the Dark Ages.

Or do you think believers are going batshit crazy, demanding watered-down water, because they think that water - alone - is what "works"?

Sure.

Long story-short:

Homeopathy is a psychological problem - a cult obsession - not one of medicine or science.

It Sure Beats What The Rest Of You Are Doing

"There is ample evidence that rock ’n’ roll may hold the secret of eternal vitality, if not eternal beauty."

-- Stephen Holden, reviewing Martin Scorsese's new Rolling Stones documentary, "Shine A Light", in the New York Times.

Homeopath = Liar

"To be a homeopathist, you have to be a dualist, a vitalist, and know about enough chemistry to make you dangerous. You also have to have approximately zero idea of how the scientific method actually works,...it doesn't hurt if you're a bit of a hippy-dippy syncrete, either.

You also have to be the type I refer to as a "fixer," which is generally someone who's suffused with the desire to help people (at all costs) and not enough brains, skills, or basic competence to do it very well. These types tend to become social workers, counsellors, and/or things like homeopathists, aromatherapists, or other woo-meisters. Key to pulling this one off is to be convincing (mostly because you believe it yourself) and have a pleasant demeanour (at least at first)."

- Interrobang's comment about homeopaths on Orac's Respectful Insolence blog.

"I know what you are trying to say here but for me it seems to let the practitioners of the hook to much. Many very probably do sincerely believe that what they doing is backed by evidence, and that they do indeed want to help others. The only problem is that they have no basis for holding that view. The only way they could have arrived at such a view is by a willful disregarding of how science, and medicine, works, and as such honesty is not something they can make much claim to. It is much like the situation with creationists. Creationism is not an honest position, and no one (with the exception I think of the mentally ill or mentally retarded) can hold a creationist position and make claim to be honest. There is a duty on people taking a position to understand the position they are taking. In the case of both homeopaths, and creationists, they cannot do so without ignoring masses of evidence."

- Matt Penfold's comment on the same subject.

"Homeopaths not outright liars? If not outright, they are liars nonetheless - outright deceivers in any case.

They defend themselves with the usual "pseudo-scientist" argument: If you can't prove something is impossible, then it's theoretically possible, and therefor if we posit that it's true, you can't say by your own logic that we're wrong.

That's all many who want to believe something need to give themselves permission to believe it. So the problem or question to tackle first would seem to be, why do their adherents want to believe the barely believable and how much do they want it?

And the countermeasures should involve less of a discussion of the logic of homeopathic suppositions than of the deceit involved in whatever efforts were applied that caused adherents to hope for an ultimately ridiculous prospect to begin with.

It is our nature to expect to be deceived, but we want to feel complicit in the deception - it must be of the type that reinforces our expectations. We didn't agree in advance to deception that only bolsters the deceiver's expectations."

- Royniles, adding one more comment.