Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (So I Don't)

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."

-- James A. Michener, quoted for an overnight thread on Little Green Footballs.

"You never hear bad news."

-- Michael Pattinson, a longtime member of Scientology, describing what it has in common with other NewAge "faiths" - well, that, and not accepting bad news about themselves - which they'll find (in spades) from The Daily Beast.

Why I Hate Those Stupid Bitches In Berkeley

"[Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D.] Lemon's Domestic Violence Law is organized as a conventional law-school casebook — a collection of judicial opinions, statutes, and articles selected, edited, and commented upon by the author. The first selection, written by Cheryl Ward Smith (no institutional affiliation is given), offers students a historical perspective on domestic-violence law. According to Ward:

'The history of women's abuse began over 2,700 years ago in the year 753 BC. It was during the reign of Romulus of Rome that wife abuse was accepted and condoned under the Laws of Chastisement. ... The laws permitted a man to beat his wife with a rod or switch so long as its circumference was no greater than the girth of the base of the man's right thumb. The law became commonly know as "The Rule of Thumb." These laws established a tradition which was perpetuated in English Common Law in most of Europe.'

Where to begin? How about with the fact that Romulus of Rome never existed. He is a figure in Roman mythology — the son of Mars, nursed by a wolf. Problem 2: The phrase 'rule of thumb' did not originate with any law about wife beating, nor has anyone ever been able to locate any such law. It is now widely regarded as a myth, even among feminist professors.

A few pages later, in a selection by Joan Zorza, a domestic-violence expert, students read, 'The March of Dimes found that women battered during pregnancy have more than twice the rate of miscarriages and give birth to more babies with more defects than women who may suffer from any immunizable illness or disease.' Not true. When I recently read Zorza's assertion to Richard P. Leavitt, director of science information at the March of Dimes, he replied, 'That is a total error on the part of the author. There was no such study.' The myth started in the early 1990s, he explained, and resurfaces every few years.

Zorza also informs readers that 'between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic violence.' Studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, indicate that the figure is closer to 1 percent.

Few students would guess that the Lemon book is anything less than reliable. The University of California at Berkeley's online faculty profile of Lemon hails it as the 'premiere' text of the genre."
-- Christina Hoff Sommers, with more of Berzerkeley's insanity - that, somehow, passes as an education at the (expensive) University of California at Berkeley - but not in The Chronicle Review.

Better Left To The Dogs (That Would Be Y'All)

"After telling the world of his pride in his dead son and love for his grieving grandchildren, Joe Jackson turned back into the family compound.

He had a smile that made him all the more a walking question for which there are no simple answers,...

To be fair to Joe Jackson, he could have been standing outside a rundown house in Gary with a family whose sufferings had been met with the indifference offered millions who have fallen victims to racism and poverty."


-- Michael Daly, writing another of those silly pieces of misandry - attempting to denigrate Michael Jackson's father for disciplining him ("If you messed up you got hit, sometimes with a switch, sometimes with a belt") when Michael probably wouldn't have amounted to shit without him - because, with this current NewAge outlook, strong men are targets for The New York Daily News.

Fine - Fuck It: Kill The Little Bastards

"Until medicine became effective, there was no push to say we absolutely have to do medical treatment [on sick and dying children]. There wasn't this notion of deference (to religion) until medicine began to work and to become institutionally powerful."

-- Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, a pediatrician and co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, almost convincing me to hate Marcus Welby ("Many of the exemption laws were enacted in the 1970s.") or Orac - whose comfortably smug ass I, already, don't always like much - or somebody, dammit, like even The Associated Press.

Bad Art Changes You Beyond All Recognition

"The content of pop songs is generally restricted to two essential modes: I Love You and I Hate Myself. In its limitations it resembles binary code. What should not compute, but unfortunately it does, is our insistence that the world’s greatest musicians should impoverish their own imagination by working in such a confined space."

-- Andrew Calcutt, reminding me why I can't stomach the work of The Spinners, or other related dreck - turn on the radio or any popular "Booty Call" music channel - and (no matter what I have to offer) may never become a popular recording artist myself, on Spiked.

A World Gone Mad (With Laughter)

"Once, when I was a lad, I was verbally assaulted on the streets of New York by a paranoid schizophrenic. This raving lunatic came at me waving his hands wildly in the air with spittle and shrill curses spewing from his mouth in equal measure. I had been walking along lost in my own meditations and was so startled by the attack that for a moment, I couldn’t process it. I wondered: had I unwittingly done something wrong? It took me a moment to understand that, no, it had nothing to do with me, really. I had simply violated the borders of the poor fellow’s internal world. The abuse was, in some sense, his way of defending his fantasies from the threat of my reality.

Arguing with a leftist is something like that."
-- Andrew Klavan, cracking me up - which happens a lot offline - online, not so much, on Pajamas Media.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Change Rules Enough (And Change You Will Get)

"As women start to gain more of the social, economic, and political power they have long been denied, it will be nothing less than a full-scale revolution the likes of which human civilization has never experienced.

This is not to say that women and men will fight each other across armed barricades. The conflict will take a subtler form, and the main battlefield will be hearts and minds. But make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent."


-- Reihan Salam, chronicling what he claims is "The Death of Macho" - revealing the long-range fatal flaw in the Baby Boomer's NewAge feminist hippie designs: "Macho" men are never going to join women and their allies, but have only been too decent to do anything before now, and are already preparing for battle (my best friend and I spent this weekend at a gun show) - because, I guess, weak wimpy wusses work at Foreign Policy Magazine.

Finally: Reporters Are Laughing At The Lies



Step Two: They wake up, get pissed, and say, "Wait a minute - we elected you jokers!"

Off The Wall

"I know there has been an increase, I now believe the figure is 12."

-- Gary Taylor, president and owner of MJJcommunity.com, on the number of Michael Jackson fans who may have killed themselves - over the death of a guy they never met, or really ever knew, in any way - probably thinking they'd meet him in Heaven, but really only making it as far as Sky News.

If This Doesn't Work Out, Give Me A Call

"Scientists have achieved a new milestone in brain imaging: we have seen a memory in the process of being formed. Using brain cells from a lowly sea slug, which actually makes a good model for our brains, images were captured of proteins forming between the neurons. These proteins distinguish the memory as a long-term one rather than short-term, as the proteins solidify the memory in the neurons. This process had been suspected but not visualized until now."

-- Dan Smith, probably not realizing he's causing everyone who's had to deal with a cheating spouse to say, "Well, that's one way to do it!", using PopSci.com.

Worthy Of A Punch In The Nose

"In my imagined utopian future where foul language has lost its sting, people will have to be more creative if they wish to offend. David Tredinnick, the Tory MP for Bosworth, recently showed us how it's done when it emerged that he'd spent £510 of public money on astrology software and attendant tuition - a purchase so foolish it makes a duck island seem like a vital heart operation for the child of a constituent.

He claims he needed them for a debate on alternative medicine (perhaps to see whether Capricorns like him believed in homeopathy) but I think he was looking for a way, without swearing, of telling the entire country to go f**** itself. No scream of scorn could have been more eloquent. No word he used could have caused me more offence."


-- David Mitchell, standing by this blogger in thinking swearing isn't offensive - but NewAge is - on UTV News.

If You Can't Trust Your Spouse, Who Can?

"Adultery, unlike a frisky bachelor lifestyle, connotes a reckless dishonesty at odds with our basic notions of integrity. Because it shows a lack of respect for the most important commitment that most of us will ever make. Because it indicates that the adulterer will always place his selfish desires above those who depend on him."

-- Steve Chapman, saying that which I've been saying all along, but only liberals (here) and the lying French (in France) seem not to understand, though it only stands to Reason.

It's Monday: Thanks For The Good Thoughts!!!

"Ayres and Pelossi [sic] and Soros and Huffington and the rest of the late 1960's cabal of Jacobin new agers finally found the perfect vessel to pour all their work into and win power in an American election. I wonder if the recent Honduran experience will replay itself here when we reach the time that free elections no longer gurantee these operators their ruling powers?"

-- Traditionalguy, accurately describing Obama - with his support group of the "late 1960's cabal of Jacobin new agers" - just as I would, and we all should, including Althouse.

Why NewAge influences aren't being explored as an important political topic can only be explained by the fact it describes so many of those in power - including journalists. It's a crime, really. A crime of intellect, at least. Definitely, the biggest "elephant in the room" of my lifetime. I mean, if anyone can give me a good reason why Deepak Chopra is treated with credibility and gets so much airtime - when he originally came to fame for trying to scam the Journal of American Medicine - please do. I really want to hear it.

Candy-Coated Disappointment (Yea!)

"Do not confuse me with somebody who cares very much what editorialists in Der Spiegel or other outposts of the European chattering classes think of any American president. I could not care less, in no small part because I believe that the interests of such people generally diverge from mine own. I note, however, that many of the cosmopolitan Americans who voted for Barack Obama did so because they were embarrassed by the Bush administration's reputation among foreigners, particularly European elites. They hated having to explain themselves over dinner in Paris, Brussels, and Frankfurt, and worried that most Europeans would not understand that we are not all unnuanced rubes. I therefore wonder how such people will react if anti-Obama sentiment in Europe grows to the point where they have to explain themselves all over again. Will they rise in Barack Obama's defense, agree with the foreign critique but deny that they voted for him, or explode from the cognitive dissonance?

The possibilities for hilarity are not small."


-- TigerHawk, sounding, both, proudly American - and absolutely floored - after realizing "We still have a reputation problem?" when any fool (with experience in Europe) could've told him that, on TigerHawk.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Sunday, June 28, 2009

NewAge Should Come With A Warning Label

"Fawcett's case had a,...component that potentially sent the wrong message to other patients. In addition to the traditional cancer treatment she was receiving in the United States, the actress traveled to Germany six times to receive a combination of natural supplements and immune treatments not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These trips were chronicled in a moving documentary, Farrah's Story, that aired on NBC in mid-May. In seeking this type of therapy, Fawcett mirrored a choice made by actor Steve McQueen, who futilely traveled to Mexico in 1980 in search of a cure for his malignant mesothelioma. McQueen's Mexican doctors treated him with dozens of enzymes and vitamins, coffee enemas, and an anti-cancer drug called Laetrile, which was ultimately shown to be worthless.

Did the alternative treatments help Fawcett? It is unlikely. As Laurence R. Sands, a Florida surgeon who treats anal cancer patients, told WebMD, there is no scientific proof that such immune system stimulants work. Nevertheless, one of the German doctors involved in Fawcett's case claimed that the treatments had shrunk her tumors and substantially prolonged her life.

Once again, media coverage of Fawcett's case, while ostensibly providing useful information, ran the risk of sending the exact wrong message. Thousands of desperate end-stage cancer patients traveled to Mexico upon hearing Steve McQueen's story. The new destination may now become Germany."


-- Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University, reaching the same conclusions I did about Farrah Fawcett's cancer treatment, on Slate.

So - this may sound like a stupid question - but shouldn't the media be warning people against quackery? Can anyone explain, logically, why that isn't happening?

Y'Know, Like, Waiting Until You're Divorced?


"How about avoiding adultery?"

-- Mona Charen, on a question about, supposedly, thinking people that's puzzled me for some time now, in The National Review.

Falling

"Jackson’s need to caper on stage at age 50 recalls the pathetic spectacle of Isaac Hayes, who driven to financial hardship after resigning from South Park after it came into conflict with Scientology, forced himself to continue performing even though he was physically incapacitated,  even if 'performing' consisted of pretending to play the keyboard, speaking songs or stumbling through interviews.

The process through which a principal is captured by his servants is familiar to students of bureaucracy and even business. Once capture is consummated, the master and servant exchange places. The enterprise is run thereafter not for the benefit of the principal, but for those of the agents, such as when a country is run for the benefit of a government, or when a government is run for the benefit of its officials. In the case of Jackson, he may have been working — and made to keep working — for the benefit of the vast swarm of creditors, suppliers and hangers-on who attached themselves like parasites to failing host.

But the most deadly aspect of having ‘enablers’ is that they throw a veil over your eyes. A
cordon sanitaire tells you everything you need to know. How you look; what people think; what foods are good for you; what 'medicines' will make you well; what your prospects are. It tells you everything you need to know; but tells it all wrong. Take Adolf Hitler. Up to the very end he was being treated by the good Dr Theodor Morell, 'well-known in Germany for his unconventional, holistic and alternative treatments', another way of saying he kept Hitler drugged to his eyeballs. But Morell was not alone. Hitler’s decision-making processes were ably informed by soothsayers, mountebanks, toadies and certified maniacs. They collectively did more to mess up the Third Reich’s decision making processes than any Allied disinformation plan. Hitler was 'destined' for victory the way some companies are 'too big to fail'.

But how many people, reflecting on the King of Pop’s fantasies, will ask themselves whether subprime mortgages, unfunded social security or borrowing our way out of debt makes any more sense than that last shot of Demerol? On a day when the House has passed the climate change bill, wouldn’t it be good to ask how much of what the public is being made spend is for the public’s own benefit, and how much for the continued livelihood of the armies of special pleaders who surround society with their policy pills and needles?  Good, but unlikely. It is far easier to believe in promises and rely feel-good nostrums than it is to look in the mirror, even though we know what it will show.  Jackson’s death when it came, wasn’t a surprise; probably not even to him. And the crash of public policy fantasy, when it arrives, will not be wholly unexpected."
-- Richard Fernandez, showing he "gets" how NewAge is disastrously influencing society - without just saying (as I do) it's NewAge that's disastrously influencing society - which is why he qualifies (and I don't) for Pajamas Media.

Ah, Come On: Go Pet 'Em

"Senior Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami (no relation to Mohammad Khatami, who visited the US in September 2006) demanded today that the leaders of election protests be executed."

-- Charles Johnson, making Democrats feel warm-all-over that Obama wants America to be friends with rabid dogs, on Little Green Footballs.

Step Right Up, Folks, The Show's About To Begin

"Former [John] Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal.

St. Martin’s Press just inked a deal with Young, who also says in his proposal that, contrary to his public statement last year, he is not the father of Hunter’s infant daughter — Edwards is. Edwards has denied that.

Young says that his belief in Edwards ran so deep that he agreed to take the fall for the candidate, inviting the pregnant Hunter to live with him, his wife, Cheri, and their three children. Later, after Hunter delivered the baby, Young and his family moved to a different home in California.

While he was unpacking, Young discovered a videocassette, according to the book pitch. Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.

The purported sex tape confirmed to Hunter that Edwards was even more reckless than he thought."


-- Rush & Molloy, stopping the Democrat's laughter and finger-pointing about Mark Sanford's adultery - cold - in The New York Daily News.

Liberals: The Bravest Bastards In Politics

"Afterward they'll continue to believe you are a fascist, and say so behind your back,..."

-- Harry Stein, advising conservatives to be nice to liberals (which I don't endorse) in "How to survive as a conservative in New York" - which sounds a lot like how conservatives survive elsewhere - except they're not reading The New York Post.

Groovy - "Gassy" - Get Out Of Here!!!

"Sky Saxon, the mop-haired bass player and front man for the psychedelic protopunk band the Seeds, whose 1965 song 'Pushin’ Too Hard' put a Los Angeles garage-band spin on the bad-boy rocker image personified by the Rolling Stones, died Thursday in Austin, Tex. He was thought to be 71.... Sky Sunlight Saxon was the name he used in later years, the middle name given to him in the 1970s as a member of the Source Family, a spiritual cult whose leader — known as Father Yod or Ya Ho Wha — started what has been described as the quintessential hippie commune... 'Sky has passed over and Ya Ho Wha is waiting for him at the gate,' his wife wrote on Facebook. 'He will soon be home with his Father.'"

-- Bruce Weber, with more evidence generations of cultists have been influencing the culture of the greatest country on earth - and driving it into the ground - including The New York Times.

Hat Tip: Althouse

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Folks, We've Caught A Rat In The White House

"Obama has essentially endorsed the detention policies of George Bush without the courtesy of apologizing for slandering him over the last two and a half years.  Obama and his allies screeched endlessly about indefinite detentions, and not just in Gitmo, either. They specifically railed against the holding of terrorists without access to civil courts in military detention facilities around the world, specifically Bagram, but in general as well. Not even six months into his term of office, Obama realized that Bush had it right all along.

Did he even have the grace to admit that? No. Instead, the White House took the cowardly method of a late-Friday leak to let people know that Obama had adopted the Bush policy all over again. Barack Obama just appeared at a press conference this last Tuesday to discuss Iran, energy policy, and ObamaCare, where he could have told the national press that he had changed his mind on indefinite detention. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, and had his media staff whisper it into phones to a couple of White House favorites in the press.

It’s a shameful performance, and the measure of the man in charge.

Addendum: I guess Obama has finally conceded to Dick Cheney on national security, hasn’t he?"


-- Ed Morrissey, backing me up on something I've said a billion times: NewAgers never apologize, thinking that kind of honesty is just so much Hot Air.

The people who voted for this clown are morons - racist black skin-worshipping morons - and, if the rest of the American people don't say something soon, we will officially become a nation of morons.

Save yourselves - and your country.

And stop worrying about whether you look good doing it: Just do it.

Damn It Feels Good To See People Up On It

"It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as 'deniers.' The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N.—13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers."


-- Amanda Carey, on what, for me, was a not-quite-obvious (but still expected) development, because I deal in Reason.

And, when spreading the blame around, let's not forget the "scientists". Many of them, if not most, are culturally Liberal NewAgers, though (like most NewAgers) they'd be loathe to admit, or investigate, what's happened to them - because it happened to them - and they're (also like most NewAgers) too arrogant and/or cowardly to admit the horrible truth of that: To accept that, maybe without even knowing it, they drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago. That they've been made fools of - and used as pawns and mouthpieces by - a bunch of flakey "spiritual" megalomaniacs. Considering how highly they cherish their view of themselves, as educated, that's gotta hurt.

I mean, if one self-educated atheist black conservative artist is smarter than they are at figuring this nonsense out - and they ain't even as smart as a bunch of pseudoscience-loving loonies - something's very, very wrong, right?

If Cultism and Quackery Killed Michael Jackson, Are We Going To Let These Vultures Get Away With It - Again? (Of Course We Are)

"For the circle of handlers who surrounded Jackson during his final years, their golden goose could not be allowed to run dry. Bankruptcy was not an option.

These, after all, were not the handlers who had seen him through the aftermath of the Arvizo trial and who had been protecting his fragile emotional health to the best of their ability. They were gone, and a new set of advisers was in place.

The clearout had apparently been engineered by his children’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba, who was gaining considerable influence over Jackson and his affairs and has been described as the ‘queen bee’ by those around Jackson.

Rwaramba had ties to the black militant organisation, the Nation of Islam, and its controversial leader, Louis Farrakhan, whom she enlisted for help in running Jackson’s affairs.

Before long, the Nation was supplying Jackson’s security detail and Farrakhan’s son-in-law, Leonard Muhammad, was appointed as Jackson’s business manager, though his role has lessened significantly in recent years.

In late 2008, a shadowy figure who called himself Dr Tohme Tohme suddenly emerged as Jackson’s ‘official spokesman’.

Tohme has been alternately described as a Saudi Arabian billionaire and an orthopaedic surgeon, but he is actually a Lebanese businessman who does not have a medical licence. At one point, Tohme claimed he was an ambassador at large for Senegal, but the Senegalese embassy said they had never heard of him.

Tohme’s own ties to the Nation of Islam came to light in March 2009, when New York auctioneer Darren Julien was conducting an auction of Michael Jackson memorabilia.

Julien filed an affidavit in Los Angeles Superior Court that month in which he described a meeting he had with Tohme’s business partner, James R. Weller. According to Julien’s account, ‘Weller said if we refused to postpone [the auction], we would be in danger from 'Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; those people are very protective of Michael'.

He told us that Dr Tohme and Michael Jackson wanted to give the message to us that 'our lives are at stake and there will be bloodshed'.’

A month after these alleged threats, Tohme accompanied Jackson to a meeting at a Las Vegas hotel with Randy Phillips, chief executive of the AEG Group, to finalise plans for Jackson’s return to the concert stage.

Jackson’s handlers had twice before said no to Phillips. This time, with Tohme acting as his confidant, Jackson left the room agreeing to perform ten concerts at the O2.

Before long, however, ten concerts had turned into 50 and the potential revenues had skyrocketed. ‘The vultures who were pulling his strings somehow managed to put this concert extravaganza together behind his back, then presented it to him as a fait accompli,’ said one aide."


-- Ian Halperin, letting us see - once again - that the hand of all this cultish nonsense, that so many want to ignore or excuse, is deadly to all we hold dear, in The Daily Mail.

First, there was Uri Gellar, and, now, Louis Farrakhan. Even that lying quack, Tupac Fucking Okra, is in there - all the usual NewAge suspects of this blog. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is "Bad" - and (knowing this crap as I do) it's bound to only get worse. But does anyone really care, beyond superficial fandom, what's really happened here? We'll see,...

Bullseye

Hat Tip: Lucid TV