You Were Worried About Your Weight

Description: Quite possibly the craziest cult ever, Heavens Gate was founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Heaven's Gate members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. While the group was formally against suicide, they defined "suicide" in their own context to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered," and believed that their "human" bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person's body, they routinely used the word "vehicle". This documentary investigates an incident in 1997, where thirty-nine members of the San Diego-based cult "Heaven's Gate" committed mass suicide. They intended to reach an alien spacecraft which they believed to be following Comet Hale-Bopp, which was at that time brightly visible in the nighttime sky.

They're Back (As The Spiritual Colonization Continues)

“Parents who say yoga is inherently religious have appealed a judge's ruling that allowed yoga in a public school system near San Diego, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.



'Our children are not religious guinea pigs and should never be subjected to such misguided religious experimentation,' said Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit based in Escondido, Calif.,…”

Every Time I Wave My Flag (Nobody Waves Back At Me)

As I've discovered, like so much outside of ghettos and the good life, society's proven it fully understood what yogic cult training's pitfalls were - before embracing them:

Bikram Choudury, the famously abrasive founder of Bikram hot yoga, has been accused of rape and of encouraging his followers to recruit women he could victimize, according to lawsuits filed by two different women. 

Two separate Jane Does filed suit against Choudury, 67, and Bikram Yoga alleging sexual battery, false imprisonment, discrimination, harassment and seven others counts, according to Courthouse News. Both women, whose identities were not released, filed very similar suits on the same day in the same California courtroom. 

Another former student, 29-year-old Sarah Baughn, filed suit against Choudury in March claiming he sexually assaulted her constantly during her time training to become a yoga instructor in 2005 and has since prevented her from teaching “because of her past and continuing refusal to have sex with the guru.” 

In her complaint filed Monday the second Jane Doe claimed she had been raped in November 2010 after her boyfriend paid for her to be trained as a teacher a Bikram’s San Diego studio. The court documents claimed the attack seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, reading “other persons in defendant Bikram Choudhury’s inner circle, were aware of defendant Bikram Choudhury’s pattern and practice of causing, inducing or persuading young women to enroll in teacher training classes to become yoga instructors only so he can sexually assault and/or rape them.” 

It also accuses Bikram’s underlings of knowing an attack was inevitable, but says they still “did nothing to prevent this from happening to plaintiff or to protect her.” 

Jane Doe said she “lived in constant fear” of the “cult-like atmosphere” fostered in the organization. Potential instructors are required to pay $13,000 for a nine-week training program, where they’re deprived of communication with the outside world, forced to listen to Bikram’s vulgar rants on sexuality and endure “demoralizing” activity, including urinating on themselves. 

“Plaintiff Jane Doe No. 2’s life unraveled after she returned home,” the suit claims. “Her long term relationship fell apart, she went into a severe depression, attempted suicide, started drinking, doing drugs, engaged in uncharacteristically impulsive behavior, quit her job and cut off communication from almost everyone in her life.”

 

I think the current standard is, if you don't have photos, it didn't happen. [Rimshot] No, wait, wait - if you ask me, with The Vagina Monologues playing everywhere, getting that stretching-is-mystical thing out of everyone's mind will take a little time. [Kidding, kidding - this is all tragic.] But seriously, I think I watch a lot of Nazi movies because I'm still coping with SS Guards-doing-yoga-for-Hitler-hating Americans, in America, allowing frauds to openly manipulate swallowing others whole (and even groups of others) while everybody just stands around:

“With the power and hubris Bikram wielded (and the stories that have been floating around for years) it was almost expected, like we were all just waiting for it to happen.”

 

 "We were all just waiting for it to happen.” Spoken like a real monster. Great incentives, too. Straight from the gutter - with a hearty "Namaste" and (a "spiritual") Good For You! - here's some cud for you to chew on, pimp:

   

See, it's only after someone's identified themselves as a cultist - that is, someone capable of being convinced touching their toes should be considered a smug-inducing accomplishment - that I can understand how anyone in this country "thinks" like that.

   

 And, for some odd reason, it's never a pleasant experience.

Now that I think about it, it rarely follows one either,...

 

If There's A God, He's Really Not Playing Around

 
Guys in dresses, battling over who has the best body:

Life is cruel, isn't it?

NewAge In California: This Is NOT A Philosophy

Victor Davis Hanson is continuing to call this the NewAge, without actually saying the word "NewAge". Today's target is one we've nailed on countless occasions - California:

The state's problems involve a larger "California philosophy" that is relatively new in its history; one that now curbs production but not consumption, and worries more about passing laws than how to pay for them.

California uses more gasoline than any other state and has the most voracious appetite for electricity. But Californians also enact the most obstacles to producing their own sources of oil, natural gas and nuclear power. State referenda and the legislature have made it the hardest state in the nation to raise taxes and the easiest to pass costly new laws.

The state's mineral and timber industries are nearly moribund. At a time of skyrocketing food prices, more than a quarter-million acres of some of the wealthiest agricultural land in California's Central Valley lie idle due to court-driven irrigation cutoffs - costing thousands of jobs and robbing the state of millions of dollars in revenue.

Home prices stay prohibitive along the upscale coastal corridor from San Francisco to San Diego, even as millions of acres of open spaces there remain off limits for new housing construction.

Most refined Californians who regulate how the state's natural resources are used live on the coast far away from - and do not always understand - those earthier people who struggle to develop them.

California does not ask its millions of foreign immigrants to come with legal status, speak English or arrive with high school diplomas, but then is confused when its entitlement and legal costs skyrocket. Billions of dollars in remittances are sent from California to Mexico - but without the state being curious whether some of the remitters are on some sort of state-funded public assistance.

If the professor studied NewAge he'd know what that "larger 'California philosophy' that is relatively new in its history" was.

Oh well, at least he got the "new" part right.

So There It Is (And Here It Comes)

Ahem. This is what TMR calls "a teachable moment".

If the University of San Diego was on it's game, this student would already have received a visit from her school Dean, accompanied by the campus police, instructing her to pack her things and prepare to leave campus - she's done. As she was scurried to collect her belongings, the authorities would further inform the young woman she's not going "home" but immediately into the hands of the C.I.A., which is arranging for her to be handed over to Hezbollah or Hamas - her choice - because America's enemies must be targeted away from the mainland, if possible, so as not to interfere with the rhythm of daytime network and cable television.

Then, once the cops were sure they had made the right impression - the rebel's crying, paranoid, afraid for her well-being and that of her family, including the dog - the Dean would stop the charade and tell her, essentially, "don't be a sap" (the world's made of waaay too many saps) and for a start, take that stupid tablecloth from around your neck, you're in college.

Then the authorities would leave, shaking their heads.

As I see it, alone, it could be worth the price of tuition.

Just Because "If I Only Had A Brain" Was Taken

"Jonathan Lair stood in the middle of Bethel Church's Healing Room on Dec. 5 and joyfully got straight to the point: 'I'm going to get new feet today.'

A pastor at a church in San Diego, Lair said he came to Redding so he could go to the Healing Rooms at Bethel and be cured of a painful condition that has caused his feet to be flat his whole life. Lair, 27, was barefoot and had rolled his jeans up above his ankles, exposing his flat, calloused feet.

'I will see my arches healed,' he said just before two women on Bethel's Healing Rooms Ministry team approached him. 'I really believe that.'

As Lair closed his eyes and bowed his head, the two older women stood on either side of him and began to pray quietly, tapping him on the chest and back. They motioned for another woman, one with a ram's horn known as a shofar, to come to where they stood. She began to blow the shofar at Lair's feet and in moments he fell to the ground, shaking.

Back in the Healing Room, Jonathan Lair lay peacefully on the floor, covered in a dark green blanket, while the three women continued to pray over him and blow the shofar at his feet. At one point he got up and hopped up and down in the middle of the room where people were painting pictures on easels, before lying back down again. Eventually, one by one, they walked away and left him lying still on the floor.

Lair slowly sat up 10 minutes later and looked around. He looked at his feet, then stood up.

He said he had expected bones to crack and form an arch but his feet were still flat.

'I look at them, and they don't look healed,' he said.

But his faith was not shaken,..."

-- Amanda Winters, reporting on some crazy church somewhere - promising some damned crazy thing or another - and also the crazy people who flock there, like blind DJs clamoring for The Record Searchlight.

There's Nothing We Can Do To Help

"With this type of activity, education is the most important element."

-- The San Diego Police Department, on the problem of psychics abusing NewAgers and their stupid beliefs - which seems pretty lame considering how dumb they are - but there it is, on 10 News.com.

An Environmental Nightmare Of Lies

"First, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office – the most respected voice in Sacramento – issued a Nov. 17 analysis that said the ARB's methodology was deeply flawed and often ignored evidence that would counter the economic-boom thesis. Its most startling finding was that the ARB arbitrarily defined any reduction in greenhouse gas emission as being cost-effective. If, say, energy costs double for a small business because of AB 32, how is that possibly cost-effective?

Then came the release of a scathing 'peer review' of the scoping plan. Harvard's Robert Stavins wrote that the ARB's 'economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways' and could not be relied on. Janet Peace and Liwayway Adkins of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change wrote that the analysis 'gives the appearance of justifying the chosen package of regulatory measures rather than evaluating it.' Wesleyan University's Gary Yohe wrote it was 'almost beyond belief' that the agency could claim vast economic gains and decried the “spurious precision” of its forecasts. UCLA's Matthew Kahn noted the considerable evidence contradicting the ARB's claims that manufacturers, who employ 1.5 million Californians, would not be hurt by higher energy costs. Dallas Burtraw of the Resources for the Future group said the models used by the ARB underestimate costs, wrongly anticipate a 'frictionless,' easy transition to new energy sources and are in troubling 'harmony' about the economic upside of the scoping plan."

-- The Editors, on the "Green Dreams" the California Air Resources Board is delivering to the public, in The San Diego Union Tribune.