Most People Are The Same & In Exactly The Same Way

Desperately seeking stability and fulfillment through a variety of crackpot therapies and belief systems and riven with insecurities,…

Kota Ezawa's "Beatles Über Alles"

Don't forget the world described here is the NewAge cult hell you fucking moron meditating hippie freaks are trying to create, with your goddamned recycled Whole Food organic health trip obsession, you fucking losers - you even brought Jerry Brown back (and people are calling Obama's term "Carter II") you fucking idiots. Click the tags at the bottom of the post to see how many other ways you've already willingly gone down the road to becoming as much like Nazis as possible:

I am Governor Jerry Brown
My aura smiles
And never frowns
Soon I will be president…

Carter power will soon go away
I will be Führer one day
I will command all of you
Your kids will meditate in school

California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California

Zen fascists will control you
100% natural
You will jog for the master race
And always wear the happy face
Close your eyes, can't happen here
Big Bro' on white horse is near
The hippies won't come back you say
Mellow out or you will pay

California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California

Now it is 1984
Knock knock at your front door
It's the suede/denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece

Come quietly to the camp
You'd look nice as a drawstring lamp
Don't you worry, it's only a shower
For your clothes here's a pretty flower…

DIE on organic poison gas
Serpent's egg's already hatched
You will croak, you little clown
When you mess with President Brown

California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California

Hey - We Told Them To Try A School For Boys,..

This is great because A) I haven't done a Madonna post in a looong time, and B) I can't stand Madonna. So, if you can grasp it, work with me to try and appreciate the full zen-like irony of this Kabbalah master's spiritual group working to create nothing:

A high-profile charitable foundation set up to build a school for impoverished girls in Malawi, founded by the singer Madonna and fellow devotees of a prominent Jewish mysticism movement, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never came to fruition.

The board of directors of the organization, Raising Malawi, has been ousted and replaced by a caretaker board, including Madonna and her manager, officials with the organization said Thursday. Its executive director, who is the boyfriend of Madonna’s former trainer, Tracy Anderson, left in October amid criticism of his management style and cost overruns for the school. These included what auditors described as outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school’s director.

Most strikingly, the plans to build a $15 million school for about 400 girls in the poor southeastern African country of 15 million — which had drawn financial support from Hollywood and society circles, as well as the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre International, an organization devoted to Jewish mysticism — have been officially abandoned.

It honestly doesn't get any more metaphysical than this:

Madonna and her manager (!) sit on a charitable board, to help extremely poor girls, through building an already-overly-expensive school that will never exist.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I love it!

It's not as cool as Oprah's African "Leadership Academy" for girls, which resulted in rapes and lesbian relationships with the principal (and other horrible weirdness) only to have Oprah admit she was too busy, picking out drapes, to pick the staff, but it's close. I mean, if Madonna doesn't build it, who can get hurt, correct? (Of course, right after all that, Oprah gave one of her American audience's A NEW CARRRRR!!!! and then nobody cared about what happened to no stinkin' African kids.)

The choice of "the boyfriend of Madonna’s former trainer" as executive director is a nice touch as well. Message:

She cared.

Sigh.

Strike a pose.

Sex For The Blind

We told you a few days ago that we wanted to hear from Buddhists whenever they finally decided to grow up, but engaging in adultery is definitely not the way we had in mind:

The founder and charismatic Buddhist teacher at Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center has stepped away after acknowledging a sexual affair with an advanced Zen follower.

Dennis Merzel, known by his Buddhist name and honorific title “Genpo Roshi,” is a nationally respected Zen master who leads trainings all over the world.

He first acknowledged the affair in late January to hundreds of students in Holland. Shortly after his return to Salt Lake City, Merzel addressed an open meeting at the center, took responsibility for his actions and apologized for “the pain, anger, concerns, questions and feelings of his wife, family and sangha members,” according to a statement on the center’s website.

Merzel voluntarily “disrobed” as a Zen priest and also resigned as an elder in the White Plum Asanga, a consortium of Zen centers led by students of Taizan Maezumi.

Merzel was on retreat Friday and not available for comment. But he did post an apology on his own website, http://bigmind.org/Responsibility.html.

“My behavior was not in alignment with the Buddhist precepts. I feel ‘disrobing’ is just a small part of an appropriate response,” Merzel wrote. “Experiencing all the pain and suffering I have caused has touched my heart and been the greatest teacher.”

Since then, Merzel’s actions have been discussed and dissected throughout the American Zen community.

Such sexual behavior “cuts the legs from under Zen practice in this country,” said Franz Metcalf, a Buddhist scholar in Los Angeles. “It’s a tragedy on various levels.”

It's not like TMR is surprised in the least:

Considering their BS belief system, a Buddhist can't be expected to do anything right.

Homeopathy: Just Another Kind Of "Stimulus"?

James Randi is up to his old tricks again - except, this time, the government's exposed:

James Randi launched a bold challenge Saturday that aims to debunk so-called homeopathic drugs. The fraud-busting magician even offered $1 million to any manufacturer who could prove they work as directed.

Finding science and medicine experts to defend homeopathy isn't easy. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine offers a primer complete with an explanation of homeopathy regulation, the status of research and more.

That reference to The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is significant, because they're the federal government.

Amy Alkon calls homeopathy "a scam".

English doctors call it "witchcraft".

Both of these descriptions make sense to us, since - along with a lot of what some consider mainstream in our NewAge-emersed society - they go hand-in-hand with the occult:

The Occult Bookstore has been offering guidance and books in alternative approaches to spirituality and self-healing since 1917, according to the store's website. It stocks titles on topics such as homeopathy, Zen Buddhism and old Hermetic magic. Though the store carries an array of used books, largely collected from old libraries, it specializes in rare, hand-bound books, such as Aleister Crowley's "The Book of Lies," which can cost up to $2,000. Crystals, amulets and other accessories are sold to complement specific spiritualities, and the store hosts readings, signings and classes that range from spiritual jewelry making to fire eating.

Let's see if Randi's offer gets to the bottom of a question we've been asking for years:

Why the American government "offers a primer" on a quack cure "scam", labeled as "witchcraft", that's sold by purveyors of "the occult"?

He's Got The Cattle (But Should Lose The Hat)

Except for that damned hat, we usually don't have too much beef with Roger L. Simon. He's usually right-on-point with his political observations, and Pajamas Media is brilliant, as an idea, if not always in execution (Watch one episode of "Trifecta" and tell us you're watching good television - we dare you). His latest column is a good example of how close our views are and, also, where we part ways:

"Much of the blogosphere is appalled, as well it should be, at the selection of Yusuf Islam — né Cat Stevens — to perform at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s now absurdly named 'Rally to Restore Sanity.'"

Oh, NOW it's absurd, but it wasn't when cultist Arianna Huffington announced her participation? Or cultist Oprah Winfrey announced hers? (Can anyone explain the "cloak of invisibility" those two exist under in the mediasphere?)

Incredible. It seems to us, Ol' Rog is so into the Islamofascism thing, he's missing the hole in "spiritual" nonsense altogether.

"Stewart and Colbert are dumb and uniniformed.  Although they pretend to be more, they are just mildly talented entertainers with the depth of a petri dish who rely on their writers to stoke them with material and ideas.  And no one told them Cat Stevens supported killing a fellow artist merely for exercising free expression. And unlike many of you, they simply didn’t know themselves.  They thought he was, you know, just a peaceful ex-hippie dude who went Islamic spiritual instead of zen. (Okay, that irritated some people, but so what? It would be nice to see them squirm.)"

Because we accept - even in a rally to support sanity - that everybody's got to be a "spiritual" something or other, right? We can't just drop the whole "spiritual" thing, can we? (Those Pajamas Media-types can't seem to drop the race thing, either.) Nope. Christianity, or whatever, must be replaced with something equally nonsensical, and then paraded before the rest of us as the epitome of rational thought - even though we're discussing "faith" which has no rational basis.

"Of course these are the supposedly 'cool' leaders of the liberal or progressive,  call-it-what- you-want, movement right now. They are above the fray, smarter than the rest of us, and anxious to return us all to sanity.  Spare me. Back in the day they used to call the Republicans the dumb party and the Democrats the evil party. The way things are going, I think they got it two-thirds right.  There are two dumb parties and one evil one."

Yea, and that would be the political party that prefers Islam or zen to Christianity - or not bothering to worship at all - which ain't "cool" but insanity itself.

And, on that, we and Roger Simon can totally agree.

I'm An Optical Illusion (I'm Running Backwards)

I can't keep up. Actually, that's not true - what I can't do is fall back far enough to run with the pack.

Like an African marathoner, I've been way out in front, screaming, "We should stop talking about race!" but, since I wasn't calm about it (because the discussion was about me) all it got me was doping accusations.

Now, coming up fast on my heels is Roger L. Simon, CEO of Pajamas Media, with this:

"No more race…. No more race….Am I the only one who is feeling this way? I don’t think so. In fact I rather suspect I am in a majority. If there’s one thing most of us don’t want to hear about now, whatever color we are, it’s race.

Eric Holder had it all wrong (as he does about a fair number of things these days) when he said we don’t have the courage to talk about race. It’s the reverse. We don’t have the courage to NOT talk about it."

Then, of course (and, again, showing why I'm so many steps ahead) he goes NewAge on us:

"Like monks at a Zen monastery told by their abbot to STFU until further notice, we need nothing more than a solid dose of enforced silence about race. The minute we mention the “R” word we should be clapped on the back by the abott’s hardwood stick and made to sit endless hours in the lotus position — without a cushion."

As much as I like the acknowledgment that peaceful Zen Buddhist monks say shit like "Shut The Fuck Up" - swearing being another supposed sin of mine - I swear (Ha!) the hypocrisy of how I get treated, by the important people (even conservatives) intimately familiar with the inner workings of monasteries, is galling.

You see, I've written to Simon, but he never writes back - probably because I'm an angry black kook - an angry black kook who's sick of hearing people talking about my race. I'm also sick of Americans talking about the French as a solution to our problems (they did encourage us to elect Obama, after all) but, like Shirley Sherrod trying to contact Tom Vilsack, whenever I contacted Simon, "I kept saying: 'Look at the entire thing. Look at my message,' and no one would listen. No one would listen." And he still isn't:

"There is another way to look at it: Years ago I heard about a treatment used by French psychiatrists to circumvent decades of painstaking and overpriced psychoanalysis. They would put highly troubled neurotics in the hospital and, instead of giving them the “talking cure” or some other treatment, they would just make them go to sleep for two weeks. (I’m not sure that was the precise length, but you get the idea.) When they awoke they would be all better (or close).

That’s the way I feel about race.

I know this sounds a tad sarcastic but actually I think it’s true. The best way to deal with America’s race problem at this precise moment in history is to shut up about it. Everybody. Including me."

Good idea, Monsieur. And, with all due respect, eat my dust.

Another popular topic with Pajamas Media and I has been the culture war. Dr. Helen Smith once asked:

"Where is Conservative Culture? Is there no creativity today among those who lean right? If so, where can you find it?"

Needless to say, I answered in the comments - twice - trying anything to be part of this, but the result was the sound of crickets.

So much for blacks taking initiative.

It doesn't matter to PJM that I'm a conservative who's been repeatedly called a musical genius, or that it's liberals - the very people whose minds we're trying to change - who gave me that designation. No, what matters is that the best artist to start the conservative's cultural revolution kow-tow to their behavior code in my writings:

A code they themselves break whenever they feel like it.

Now don't get me wrong - I love Pajamas Media and Roger L. Simon (hate the hat, though) Dr. Helen and Glenn Reynolds, etc. - but they make me tired.

Like Pajamas Media, I fight the good fight for conservatism, but, along with that, I also have been fighting, almost broke and alone, against the scourge of NewAge, cultism, misandry, race, the culture war, and more, and it's draining.

Some days I honestly feel like I can't go on.

Nobody is but, if you ask me, that's the only reason why anybody even appears to be catching up.

He's The Biggest Selling Author On Pandora

"[Third "wife", Joyce] Maynard described Salinger, who had been influenced by Zen Buddhism and Hinduism, as consumed with yoga, meditation, and a strict diet of whole grains and vegetables. She also said he could be 'moody and cranky' and critical of her 'worldly' habits, including her desire to publish and give interviews.

In 2000, Salinger’s estranged daughter Margaret wrote the memoir 'Dream Catcher.' In it, she described a neurotic father obsessed with health fads, including homeopathy and the drinking of his own urine."

-- Nancy Moran, on J.D. Salinger, the now-deceased literary wackjob icon of the '60s - who (as also evidenced by "Catcher In The Rye") appears to have been really onto something - like how to be humiliated in death, here, and kinda in the pages of BusinessWeek.

Click the tags, below, for more on ol' J.D. and the gang.

Superficial As All Get-Out (So Get Out)

"Is Buddhism pacifist? One would think so, to hear the Declarations of the Dalai Lama and those who claim there has never been 'Buddhist war.' So has Zen Buddhism's 'drift' to militarism been only an aberration, after the timeless message of Gautama, the warrior-prince who, once he became the Buddha, preached nonviolence? We are not simply faced here with a gap between theory and practice. Even though Buddhism has no concept of a 'holy war,' it doesn't mean its doctrine does not at times legitimize the recourse to violence and the just war.

In whatever countries Buddhism has became official ideology—whether Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia or Tantric Buddhism in Tibet or East Asia—war has often been zealously waged. At present, the Buddhists of Sri Lanka, for example, have openly taken up the struggle against the Tamil freedom fighters. What is true of Japanese Zen holds equally for other forms of Buddhism. Long before its lyrical metaphysical flights exerted their charm, Buddhism took hold first and foremost as a tool for protecting States.

How can one kill another person, when, according to good Buddhist orthodoxy, all is emptiness? The person who kills with full knowledge of the facts kills no one, since he has realized that all is but illusion, himself as well as the other person. The idea, moreover, is not exclusive to Buddhism, since it can be found in the Hindu scriptures, in the Bhagavad Gita. In China a Zen text similarly states that, if a murderous act is perfectly spontaneous, it is of the same order as a natural disaster, and thus entails no responsibility. One finds this sort of sophism in the writing of Zen apostles like D.T. Suzuki. Here as elsewhere, the recourse to higher truths provides justification for the worst aberrations."

-- Bernard Faure, pointing out that Buddhism is bullshit and we can kill them all - if we do it spontaneously - which is the last thing I thought I'd find, reading Sangam.org.

Thanks to Poncho and Lefty - but especially Lefty - for the tip.

You've Just Gotta Understand (Unless You Can't)

"The historical trajectory of this empathy thing has some roots and I know where they lie because it was right here in San Francisco and I was around then.

These warm and fuzzy feelings we're debating now are a direct backlash to a '70s movement/hustle that was the antithesis of empathy. It was about being guilt-free and basking in the wonderfulness and perfection of yourself. This deal was a conscious-numbing plague of narcissism that crept into the upper reaches of the Jimmy Carter White House, and had hundreds of thousands of adherents who came to believe they were fine just the way they were. No feeling other people's icky pain and suffering necessary.

They called it EST.

Right. That thing. Erhard Seminar Training, the brainchild of former encyclopedia salesman and new age wizard Werner Erhard (actually Jack Rosenberg; apparently not everything was perfect 'the way it is' -- as his EST slogan had it.)

To be fair, Mr. Erhard got a lot of people on board his feel-good wagon, including celebrities (John Denver, Diana Ross), political wives and a lot of young adults who felt the flames of '60s social activism licking the edges of their BMWs and just didn't want to have to feel guilty about their own creature comforts.

As I saw it, EST boiled down to this: don't feel bad. Don't worry about anything but yourself. And you're pretty damn perfect the way you are. Who doesn't want to hear that, even if you're Woody Allen?

Brilliant! As James Lipton would say.

Werner Erhard even started an offshoot called The Hunger Project where, so far as I could tell, no one actually got fed, directly. But the message seemed to be that you don't have to actually do anything about world hunger. Just acknowledging its existence is enough. How freeing is that!? You could do that and play a game of squash at the same time.

While he brilliantly synthesized useful tips from Zen Buddhism, Dale Carnegie, and mass hypnosis, his jewel of conscription was a full weekend of large room, haranguing lectures from Jack himself where no one could leave to pee the entire time."

-- Phil Bronstein, seeing the world - and it's delusional cultism, from the roots up - as we do, except he's posting on The Huffington Post.

Get This Mangina Off The Planet

Well, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford out does himself with sycophantic, hyperbole over his Obammessiah, today, February 27. He so revels in hero worship for The One, it's amazing that the White House doesn't feel compelled to get an order of protection against this creepy columnist.

No one in the Old Media is more sold on The One and less credible for his girlish crush than Morford. He is a fount of mush as he wonders if he should be scared of today's problems or suffused with lust in his heart for Obama (if you'll remember the Carterism). “It goes something like this: Do you allow yourself, even now, to feel any sort of ongoing, relieved, merciful joy that Barack Obama actually is sitting in the Big Chair in the White House? That this elegant, articulate, Zen-like man whose integrity is rock-solid and whose ideas, while certainly not in perfect alignment with every ultra-lefty vision on the planet (clean coal? Please), are astonishingly ambitious and brave, is leading this nation during one of the worst economic times in its short and paroxysmal history?”

One would expect such gushing from a teenage girl writing to a teen idol, not a grown man talking about a mere politician.

Seriously, Morford wasn't finished...

“It's a bizarre choice indeed. The good news is, the Obamafied bliss is still out there, still swirling, still waiting to be supped like a fine digestif. At any given moment you can, if you so choose, pause in whatever it is you're suffering from and hear that voice and see his visage or perhaps merely hear some pundit say the words "President Obama" out loud, and you can still enjoy that delicious chill, that little jolt that says, "Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?"

-- Warner Todd Huston, NewsBusters

OK – This is the point where it doesn’t matter what your politics are or who you voted for.

This is not journalism, it’s not reporting, it’s not commentary, it’s not observation.

This is the perverse ramblings of a masturbatory freak recounting his orgasmic fantasies. It’s not hard to picture this poofer lying in bed in his Obama Under Roos (the custom type with the built in seaman cup so he doesn’t have to get up in the middle of the night) crying out for his savior at the just right moment.

The recent news is the SF Chronicle will be sold or closed. Geez, we wonder why.

There is a third option, if the egos running this porn-shop/newspaper will pull their heads out of each others butts:

FIX IT.

For openers, get rid of Mark Morford. Show us some hope. It’s good for the paper, and Morford can get on with his true calling in the drama-queen gay-porn film business.

Where does this vulgar sleaze end?

"I Am The Offspring Of The (NewAge) Movement"

"What remains to be seen is whether this will be his presidential modus operandi — sort of a Zen-like indifference,..."

-- Jennifer Rubin, finally noticing something a little bit "off" in the NewAge Left's choice of the NewAge "Lightworker" from Oprah's NewAge "power spot" of Hawaii (though he was clearly attached to her nonsense and deferred to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi cult when he was getting elected as the NewAge Democratic Party's candidate) not the first choice of Pajamas Media.

"The less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes."

-- David Ehrenstein, who wrote the controversial "Barack The Magic Negro" op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times - because no one would've believed it if TMR said it - but, now, even that's also being repeated by Pajamas Media.

Plus, click this post's title to get another dose of political reality,...the Democratic Party's NewAge cult politics, that is:

And finally, I must confess, I never imagined you so-called "skeptical" folks could be so naive,...

If Only They'd Stay Silent When They Leave

"It began at 4:30 on a Saturday morning.

The three dozen participants started out with two half-hour Buddhist meditation sessions before dawn. They then spent the next two hours doing what’s called work practice, which consisted of scrubbing toilets and raking leaves, all in silence. An afternoon of instruction on the essentials of Buddhism led to more meditation, cleaning the dinner dishes, and sleeping in dorm-style accommodations. Sunday was an abbreviated version of the day before.

Perhaps what was the most unusual aspect of this austere weekend at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, N.Y., was that many of the attendees were not adherents of Eastern religious practices, but were part of an increasing number of nonbelievers who are seeking stress-free, spiritual and often inexpensive weekend breaks at local ashrams (isolated communities formed around a guru who follows Hindu philosophy) and Buddhist monasteries (residences for monks)."

-- Shivani Vora, who (along with the "stressed" guru-following idiots profiled in this piece) doesn't seem to understand that "nonbelievers" aren't "spiritual" - except (no surprised here) in The New York Times.

No Signs Of Intelligent Life Out Here

"A teenage boy who many believe is the reincarnation of Buddha has re-emerged from the jungle in southern Nepal, attracting thousands of devotees, officials said today.

After retreating into the jungle for more than a year, Ram Bahadur Bamjan, 18, re-emerged Monday near Nijgadh town, about 100 miles south of the capital, Katmandu.

Upon hearing the news, thousands of Bamjan's followers, some from as far away as India, traveled to the site Tuesday to see him, police official Abhaya Joshi said over the telephone.

Joshi said Bamjan plans to talk to his followers for a few hours every day for a week before returning to the jungle to meditate."

-- The Daily Mail

If I had survived more than a year in the jungle - emerging only to find a bunch of men in dresses saying I'm someone else - going back into the jungle would probably be my response as well.

The Only "Change" The Dems Need Is To End Their Fascination With The Beliefs Of The 70's

"It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode,...." [Underlined emphasis TMR's]

-- Tom Wolfe, who nailed the current Democratic Party's "spiritual" obsessions in his 1976 essay "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening", for New York Magazine

Everyone should read Wolfe's essay - not just because it's a hysterical comedy of errors - but as a very informative "spiritual" romp through the worst American decade in the modern era, which was the moment of inspiration for the latest wave of NewAge believers, the current Democratic leadership's cultism, and even John Edwards's confession he was "narcissistic" (in love with himself) when he fell for the "enlightened" Rielle Hunter.

If, like me, you find the Left "out there," then it's all right here. Dive in - but be sure not to have eaten for, at least, an hour.

Hat Tip: Mystic Bourgeoisie - who wears a mighty big hat - and adds:

"If the final sentence above doesn't alarm you, you haven't been paying sufficient attention. For your penance, say six Hail Marys and six Our Fathers, commune with your Inner Light for five hours, sign up for A Course in Miracles at your local Unity Church (or New Thought church of your choice), watch seven episodes of Oprah co-teaching with Eckhart Tolle, register your kid in a Walden School -- then go back to the first post here and read through the entire Mystic B archives! If that last bit doesn't work, swear an oath of lifelong celibacy and stay out of the gene pool.”