'Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting' Is Now A Celebratory Anthem For The Week

IT'S NOT JUST THE WIFE:

  Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.”

 

 GAVIN NEWSO0M'S WIFE CLAIMS TO BE AN 'EMPATH':

  “If you run into a white person who says they’re an empath, run the other way,....you are one of the people I see that makes me not believe in a loving god,...”

NICOLE KIDMAN LEFT SCIENTOLOGY BUT STILL PROMOTES CULTLANDIA:

  Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in talks to reunite for Practical Magic 2 

    

CULTS ARE BAD BUSINESS:

  Exclusive Brethren’s leading family expected to cop a loss on $9.5m Dural estate

IT'S ALL A GAME:

  'Grow your cult… with friends': Worship's new trailer shows how much chaos you can cause

THE PRESIDENT IS A LIZARD:

  Who believes in conspiracy theories? A meta-analysis

WHAT A BITCH:

  Shocking moment Nancy Pelosi admits SHE 'takes responsibility' for the National Guard not being deployed on January 6 in new footage

WATCH YO MOUTH - JESUS IS LISTENING:

  Rudy Giuliani Calls Fani Willis a ‘Ho’ at Far-Right Christian Rally

DEFUND THE POLICE:

  Police abandon police station following goblin attacks

GO TO COMPTON WHERE YOU'RE WANTED:

  Neo-Nazi March in South Dakota Condemned: 'Not Welcome Here'

OH GOODIE - MOBB:

  ISIS makes ‘lone wolves’ threat to Paris 2024 Olympics with chilling mock-up of Eiffel Tower being attacked by drone

SHARK ATTACKS ON KIDS ARE 'GOD'S WILL,' TOO:

  Doctors on vacation rescue 15-year-old shark attack victim in Florida: ‘It was God’s will that everyone was there’

GAZA (In Perspective)

 

 The University of Exeter will offer a degree in ‘magic’

Hooray!: "James Randi - An Honest Liar" Is Now Online For Everybody To Watch

If America, and it's people, were who we say we are, this man - and his work - would be much more famous. As it is, he's known just well enough to be my hero.

Frank Zappa Only Found 2 Things Important To Sing About (And One Was Race)

"She said she was a Magic Mama and she could throw a mean Tarot

and carried on without a comma that she was someone I should know."

"The Mystery Man came over and he said, "I'm outta sight!"

He said, for a nominal service charge, I could reach Nirvana tonight."

But They're Expected To Be Reasonable Now

"Political expression on the Left...often mixed politics with occultism — magic and witchcraft along with costumes and symbolism drawn from Native American religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For example, at the mammoth antiwar protest near Washington, dc, in October 1967, Yippies performed a mock-exorcism to levitate the Pentagon and cast out its demons."

Like Magic: Notice How Quickly The Cop Turns Violent

What Is This Alluding To & Why Don't The Courts Know?

"The reality is, most of us will struggle an entire lifetime to resolve one or two main issues. Yoga is the most effective way I know to aid that resolution, but it’s no magic spell (though there is plenty of magic)."

Bammer

The scene is a chaotic house in the Dublin suburbs filled with the cries of four little children. Born to a feckless father and an inept mother, they have been dumped into the care of their grandparents, who plainly cannot cope.

The year is 1940 and, desperate to reduce their burden, the grandparents arrange for the two youngest of the brood — twin brothers, aged six months — to be adopted by a trusted family friend from London.

The friend’s name is Pamela Lyndon Travers. And as the author of a popular new children’s book about a nanny with magical powers, the eccentric writer — who is unmarried and yearns for a son — seems the ideal person.

When she arrives, however, she blithely insists she can only take one of the twins and (having consulted her astrologer to ensure she has made the right selection) picks the first-born boy, the bonnier and more placid of the two.

The chosen twin, Camillus Hone, is duly whisked away to a life of wealth and privilege amid London’s fashionable literary circle. But his rejected brother, Anthony, is left behind in Ireland, to be foisted onto neglectful relatives.

Thus, on the whim of one self-centred woman, were two lives mapped out.

Malls: "A Large Number Of Compliant People To Effect"

I love the gleam in his eye when he's got them,...

O Show

If you want to understand the blind alley NewAge leads you down, first you have to understand the landscape:

As Fleming reiterates about this period, “The mainstream of European thought was not materialist but sacramental. In the sacramental view, the material and visible world paralleled another that was immaterial and invisible.” Science, magic, religion — they are all attempts to understand what is hidden from us, and sometimes the three blur together. Isaac Newton, as is well known, left hundreds of pages of notes on alchemy and astrology. Benjamin Franklin was a member of an elite Freemason Lodge called “The Nine Sisters.”  

“The basic premise of occult knowledge is that a search for hidden causes in nature may lead towards something higher than nature: absolute wisdom, supernatural power or the divine.” Naturally such an ambition can readily verge on the heterodox, not to say the diabolical, given its echo of the serpent’s insidious promise, “You shall be as gods.”

Which we've heard from Oprah, Shirley MacLain, J.Z. Knight, Rhonda Byrne - all of 'em. And while everyone's laughing, they're taking our money - and believing it. Oprah's ruling. Get it?

You will if you add a dose of this guy for seasoning,...

 

Better-Than-Hot Air Candidate Number One: USAToday!

Of all the papers out there, the usually-totally-uninformative USAToday delivered what has to be, for a layman, a pretty damned informative article on one industry that fueled Mitt Romney's inspiring rise and fortune. It's described a little differently here than at the Republican National Convention, but I mean, bing, bang, pow, man - this paper is really working to rectify any discrepancies, ASAP:

While many in the alternative medicine industry are cashing in, Offit says there are few people looking out for the desperate patients whose hopes — and bank accounts — are being exploited. 

"Quackery is an enormous concern," Briggs says. 

Consumers are often taken in by outrageous claims, partly because they lack the scientific knowledge to spot phonies, and partly because they fall victim to a huckster's charismatic personality, Offit says. 

"Our science literacy is terrible as a nation," Briggs says. "People like magic. I don't know why, but they do." 

Many Americans are unaware that supplements, unlike drugs, don't need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration — or tested for safety — before going on the market, Offit says. One study found that 58% of Americans believe that the FDA must approve herbal supplements before they're sold. 

"When a consumer buys a food supplement or dietary supplement, they may think it's really going to do what it says on the label," Waxman says. "That's not necessarily the case. ... Consumers should know that when they buy a dietary supplement, they are really on their own."

[Light organ. Preacher's cadence:]

Brothers and Sisters, can we please take a moment, to thank Mitt again, for his service to his country, in this matter, and then be honored, with another rousing speech, from his ugly, NewAge MS-riddled wife, about how fucking lucky we are, to have him, working, in this way, on our behalf?

I said "please" you haters.

Once we can cross-reference this type of information with the coming spiritual unmasking, it'll eventually make a dent. I understand it's difficulty, like studying Homer. I can wait.

In the mean time, good job, USAToday:

It's nice to know you don't have to be shit, all the time, either,...

 

Game Change: Exposing Faith Healers On Easter (Derren Brown Is Back On The Case)

This story is connected to that last post, on lawyers abandoning prosecuting a faith healer, showing it can be done if you know what you're doing:

"I guess I've gone from being somebody who wanted to go: 'Look I can do magic tricks – aren't I clever?' to having grown out of that now," says Derren Brown, who Channel 4 audiences have watched apparently predict the lottery numbers and play Russian roulette live on air. His Easter Monday show aims to discredit faith healers – and do so using a member of the public posing as a pastor who can perform miracles. "[It's] about somebody else's journey rather than me looking clever and doing tricks and things."

Those who watched Hero at 30,000 Feet last autumn might question Brown's change of direction; I'm not sure I was ever convinced by the idea, let alone the execution. But his new adventure finds him firing on all cylinders – faith healers shouldn't expect an easy ride. "I realised it wasn't just [like] psychics and mediums," Brown says. "I realised they're genuinely dangerous."

Brown grew up Christian and saw faith healers as "worrisome" but not to be taken too seriously – a view he didn't change until he abandoned his faith. "Coming out of Christianity altogether and having a slightly clearer sense in my own mind of what I believed and what I didn't believe … it was much clearer to me: no, no, this is just a scam," he says.

And so, Brown recruited a volunteer, and taught him the tricks of faith healing: how the blind are made to see, the deaf hear, limbs lengthened. And then "Pastor James" and Brown headed for America to see if they could play the healers at their own game. The pair's adventures make for some great television – but Brown also wants to make a serious point: that faith healing exploits those it claims to help.

"You have the despair of all those people who are no better – and it's despair because they're blaming their own selves and their faith for it not working," he says. "And then you have these hordes of people who are following these healers round America; chronically ill people going from gig to gig to gig – and it just never happening, so there's that wake of despair. And then there's the money side of it." The top healers, Brown says, earn more than Hollywood A-listers – and what's more, because it's religion, it's all tax free.

And they can be busted - easily - if you understand the landscape, but lawyers are reluctant to go there.

Why, I just don't know,...

Buddhism's A Belief Right Out Of Sesame Street

How a supposedly atheist country can continue to play this game is beyond us:

It’s probably best not to even try making sense of Beijing’s pronouncements on the 14th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan spiritual leaders: you’ll only make your head hurt. Last week the officially atheist Chinese government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs disclosed plans to enact a new law forbidding the 75-year-old Buddhist deity to be reborn anywhere but on Chinese-controlled soil, and giving final say to Chinese authorities when the time comes to identify his 15th incarnation.

That might seem to pose a dilemma, given the exiled leader’s earlier promise that he will never again be reincarnated in Tibet as long as his homeland remains under China’s heel. Still, no one seems too concerned just now about the Dalai Lama’s next life.

Considering no one in the history of mankind has ever been proven to have reincarnated, that last line is the only thing in the entire article resembling a connection to reality. Here's a fun fact about why the Dalai Lama's staying in India, though:

The Chinese say he’s merely on a quest to retrieve a black hat said to have magical powers,...

A magic hat? Suurrre. We think he's also traveling with an imaginary friend. Whatever.

There's some other nonsense in there about him somehow magically acquiring $1.6 million dollars, but who cares about that? The man's reincarnated and looking for a magic hat!

Look, call us whenever those guys in the orange robes decide to grow up, o.k.?

If They Think We'll Ever Go Along They're Crazy

A "tell" is one of those observable signals someone makes when they're trying to deceive you. You know, shifty eyes, stuttering, not keeping track of the details of a lie they've told, that kind of thing. There's all kinds of tells. Here's one that gives the whole spirituality/religion game away:

A Chinese magician has sparked outrage from animal rights groups with a trick in which he gets goldfish to swim in sync, prompting China's state broadcaster to cancel an encore performance Thursday.

However, a separate regional broadcaster said magician Fu Yandong would perform the controversial trick again on Thursday night -- and reveal its secret so as to silence his critics.

Fu dazzled audiences two weeks ago with the trick and had planned a repeat performance Thursday on a Lunar New Year holiday show on China Central Television (CCTV).

A CCTV spokeswoman told AFP he would not perform on the show, declining to give further details.

Animal rights activists cried foul over the stunt, saying Fu had likely fed the fish magnets -- or implanted them in the fish -- so they could be dragged around their tank from underneath.

Remember what we said about not recollecting the details of a lie that's been told? O.K., explain this:

Why is it that when a self-proclaimed healer, shaman, psychic, mystic, or Man of God claims to do something miraculous, it's immediately accepted on face value, but let a self-proclaimed magician do something miraculous and everyone's immediately sure he's up to something?

Why are they fervent believers when faced with someone using one title, but then, with someone using another title, they become critical thinkers, when the scam is the same?

Either way they're being tricked - and they prove they know it! Their reaction to self-described "magic" is their tell:

These so-called believers are either as dumb as a box of hammers or they know better.

All we've got to do, now, is figure out how to get them to admit which one it is,...because - let's face it - with these clowns today, simple appeals to honesty sure don't work.

Fucking liars.

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"?

Fact: Every Wolf In Sheep's Clothing Will Always Attempt To Pull The Wool Over Someone's Eyes

It seems pretty obvious to us why people engage in this "spiritual" stuff - or even destroy lives and kill for it - but if it isn't to you, read on:

Mark Hofmann says a childhood delight in fooling others with card tricks and magic eventually led him to become a master forger and the killer of two people.

“As far back as I can remember I have liked to impress people through my deceptions,” Hofmann wrote in a January 1988 letter to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. “Fooling people gave me a sense of power and superiority. I believe this is what led to my forging activities.”

Hofmann’s four-page handwritten letter — obtained Monday by The Salt Lake Tribune following a December ruling from the state Records Committee — gives new insight into the Salt Lake City man’s motive for killing two people with separate pipe bombs in October 1985. Rather than face exposure as a forger, Hofmann claims he preferred to commit murder and even attempted suicide with a third bomb.

Hofmann fabricated a number of early Mormon documents designed to embarrass The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and hoped the church would pay large sums to keep them private. His infamous Salamander Letter, purportedly written by an early church convert, described LDS founder Joseph Smith conversing with a spirit that first appeared as an amphibian.

Salt Lake County investigators believe Hofmann made $800,000 in cash and $200,000 in trade for his forgeries but by the fall of 1985 had incurred half-a-million dollars in debt. He was also under financial pressure to produce a collection of letters purportedly written by a 19th-century church apostle-turned-critic.

Hofmann needed months to forge the documents, but Steven Christensen, a Mormon bishop and document collector, threatened to expose him as a fraud unless he delivered the collection by Oct. 15.

The ultimatum led Hofmann to take what he called “drastic measures” to divert attention from himself.

“The most important thing in my mind was to keep from being exposed as a fraud in front of my friends and family,” Hofmann wrote. “When I say this was the most important thing I mean it literally. I felt I would rather take human life or even my own life rather than to be exposed.”

Forgery was one of the same activities we encountered with our own fraud, the French quack guru, "Dr." Robert Wohlfahrt, who started this blog on it's present course.

We love it when anyone involved in all this is finally honest - even if it's forced - because, as always, it's the truth that sets us (all) free.