I've always said the poor know their needs better than anyone, so any money should go directly to them, but, apparently, other peeps need to learn, and it appears the disappearance of Johnny Bobbitt's GoFundMe money (to the couple that raised it to "help" him after he befriended them) is their lesson:
This story is a huge mess. It remains to be seen where the money went but Bobbitt has suggested an online gambling problem might be part of the explanation. As for Jazz’s suggestion that Bobbitt should have just been given the money and allowed to handle it himself, I guess it’s difficult to argue that would have been worse than what seems to have happened here...Bobbitt’s fate is a counter-factual whereas the couple blowing the money is looking more like a fact.
And, when "help" comes through government, that fact is called "bureaucracy".
You know, I think - if you really want to engage black kids in the educational process - you've got to seriously push the history. And not hard. It practically sells itself:
(We always thought the gates to evil were J.K. Rowling's "special girl spots",...)
Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Gore have major environmental regrets. Unfortunately, being idiots isn't one of them.
And there's still no word on when we're getting back the money they've wasted. We know Al's got a lot of it.
Somebody ought to start demanding it.
It's about time: "The Northern Territory Department of Health has warned the Church of Scientology not to give people medical advice on how to detox from drugs and alcohol."
Great. Now if we can only save John Travolta from himself we'll be all good.
In court papers filed Friday, a former high ranking officer of NXIVM depicts the cultlike group as a self-help and ethics school that is secretly a place for its leader to explore opportunities for sex and gambling money.
Susan Dones, a trainer who ran the Colonie-based company's former Tacoma, Wash., center, told a bankruptcy court last week that Keith A. Raniere, the creator of the teachings used in NXIVM's self-improvement courses, may have motives beyond the education of human potential.
Dones said NXIVM presents Raniere "as the most honest, ethical, Nobel (sic), man who had the answers to mankind's problems" yet his training sessions are "used as a venue to stalk their students ... who might fit into Raniere's profile of sexual conquest and who might be willing to 'give' Raniere money to feed his gambling problem."
Raniere, who uses the name "Vanguard," and NXIVM President Nancy Salzman, Dones claimed, acted maliciously toward members who were "sold on Raniere being someone he is not and that NXIVM 'mission' is something it is not."
"I was informed and believe that Raniere/Vanguard was having sexual relationships with multiple women, sometimes with more than one of them at the same time (many of these women were told that they were the chosen one; several of them were members of NXIVM's executive board which is a per se conflict of interest and all them had to keep their relationship with Raniere a secret from the NXIVM community because it was feared that many members were not 'evolved enough' to be able to deal with this information)," Dones stated in her court declaration.
Ahh, yes, women:
Where would all these cults and frauds be without them?
"A best-selling self-help guru is suing the rich Long Island man who she says romanced her and then left her high, dry - and pregnant.
Karen Salmansohn, author of 'How To Be Happy, Dammit' and 'The Prince Harming Syndrome,' claims Mitchell Leff paid $28,000 for her fertility treatments and promised to marry her within 24 hours of his divorce being finalized.
But the 49-year-old author and radio show host contends Leff dumped her last Dec. 15 - a mere 24 hours after Salmansohn told him she was pregnant.
'I already raised two kids, I don't want to raise any more,' Leff told her, according to the suit filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The suit says Leff then cut off her off financially, after having lavished her with gifts that included a $10,000 Tiffany ring, kitchen renovations and a Paris hotel.
On top of that, the suit says, Leff, 51, never filed for a divorce from his wife, Pamela.
A lawyer for Salmansohn, whose Web site describes her as 'Deepak Chopra meets Carrie Bradshaw' did not immediately return calls.
Leff is described in the court papers as a wealthy Laundromat owner, real estate investor and bookie."
-- Jose Martinez, with the tale of another NewAger who just couldn't help it - she had to make a fool of herself one way or another - because her commitment to truth and honesty meant her lack of credibility eventually had to be revealed, even if it's not in her books, but in the pages of The New York Daily News.
"'It’s a Wonderful Life' is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation."
-- Wendell Jamieson, who can make one wonder if he, still, hasn't had enough of the bullshit - which wouldn't be surprising to TMR - considering it's coming from The New York Times.
I wasn't going to write about this article (because I just did a piece about the film, and having NewAge "angels" deciding to change my life into a "subsequent Bizarro-world alternate reality") but, since Hot Air's Allah Pundit has mentioned it - featuring the Jamieson quote about how, supposedly, "had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today” - I thought it does warrant, at least, a few more words:
Mr. Jamieson says Pottersville is "cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls". Really?
I guess Mr. Jamieson likes the imagery, after George Bailey is dead, and the "villainous" Mr. Potter owns everything - how Violet (once merely the town Girly-Girl) is reduced to "a dime dancer and maybe a prostitute" and, when we see her later - without George around - she's become the screaming mad woman of Pottersville? How about the cab driver, Ernie, who doesn't know where his wife has run off to? Or how the cop becomes "a trigger-happy madman", no longer concerned with acting within the letter of the law?
Mr. Jamieson says, before George "dies", that his brother, Harry, returns home as "a slick, self-obsessed jerk." But isn't that because he went out into a world filled with Mr. Potter's?
And, I guess, Mr. Jamieson would rather see Harry dead, than that, right?
George certainly didn't think so.
Nor does George appreciate the change that came over his mother, who's become untrustworthy and cruel - or his wife, Mary, now the town librarian and a spinster. (It always kills me, now'a'days, when I see film husbands run, desperately, for their wives - before any other concern registers - and know that used to be me, before my own Mr. Potter made his debut.)
Mr. Jamieson says, after checking with a professor of urban policy, that "Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving."
But wouldn't that be because George Bailey wasn't there to help stop Potter's "scheming"? Because of George's dreams that got in the way - and could steer other's behavior to something better (which "We ease up on,...in a depression,” Jamieson's professor says) thus allowing the real community to thrive?
That professor, Mitchell L. Moss from New York University, says "Gov. David A. Paterson 'is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of the economic problems.'" I'm not surprised.
But the answer to those problems is to come to our senses - not to keep doing the things that got us into this mess to begin with. And I think Mr. Jamieson knows that.
See, he's telling us the thoughts he had watching "It's A Wonderful Life" as a 15-year old kid. And, as a youngster, I know the world can look like a pretty dull place - but that's because adults hide the real world, from kids, if they can.
Being a foster child, I didn't exactly have that option: I grew up in Pottersville, and now, I'm looking for a way out. But the only way for that to happen is for everyone around this foster child - everyone who still insists on thinking such evil, childish, thoughts - to finally decide that what they actually want to do is grow up.
So I'm stuck here alone, writing this blog, waiting. And you know:
Hoping, maybe, y'all will consider a display of maturity as my Christmas present or something.
"It is a nagging fact of life that the lottery gods have a slender grasp on fairness and a sense of irony so developed it would even make the Devil crack a grin."
-- Alan Feuer, on some idiot who's shocked he never, ever, wins at gambling, for the New York Times
"Australians spend four times as much out of their own pockets on alternative medicines as on pharmaceuticals. "Obviously people vote with their wallets. So it's likely they do it because they're receiving a benefit."
The Skeptic's Reply:
"Australians spend more money a week on gambling than they do on petrol or on alcohol. Obviously people vote with their wallets. So it's likely they do it because they're receiving a benefit."
"Given the similarities,...the only thing they'll receive is a bout of superstitious behaviour. (The same analogy applies to most of the complementary therapies too, I'd suggest.)"
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