Can We Agree: Mysticism & Politics Don't Mix?

Wow - it only took two years - but somebody (else) finally noticed:

"During the feverish excitement of the 2008 campaign, a columnist for the online San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford, took it upon himself to educate anti-Obama naysayers with 'dysfunctional karmic antennae.' They had been asking him: 'What the hell's the big deal about Obama?'

The question looks prescient these days, but Morford's karmic antennae at the time picked up something different. Obama -- Morford had been told by 'spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual)' -- was a 'Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.'

The karmic antennae of Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of Oprah's favorite meditation teachers, also picked this up. Kabat-Zinn pronounced Obama America's 'first mindful president.'

Obama, of course, had encouraged this talk with his stump speeches about 'we are the ones we have been waiting for' and his campaign slogan ending in a preposition -- 'Change you can believe in.'

This ludicrous rhetoric and the expectations it inspired have caught up with him, as he looks more and more hackish, dishonest, and feeble by the day -- more a lightweight than a 'Lightworker,' less 'mindful' than mindless. Most politicians spend the bulk of their mental time figuring out how to dodge and weave through a crisis, but one would think such a fabled figure could bring a little bit more imagination and sharpness to the exercise.

The most obnoxiously self-conscious environmentalist president ever stands dumb before America's worst environmental disaster. Hillary Clinton's campaign criticisms of Obama as a wimp and cocky dullard hold up fairly well. It turns out that he is not very good at taking tricky calls at 3 AM or 3 PM."

Disaster, NewAgers. Your beliefs always end in disaster,...

No, Lady, We Think That Question's Answered

"Who is bringing these [youths] to this country? Who is supplying them with these drugs? That's the unanswered question."

-- Angela Chan, a staff attorney with San Fracisco's Asian Law Caucus, after it was discovered as many as 185 undocumented Honduran youths - held on felony criminal charges for sales of heroin, cocaine and crack in the Tenderloin and Polk Gulch areas - were shielded from deportation, from 2005 to last summer, because of the sanctuary policy of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who (of course) was the candidate endorsed by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Twinkie Struggles With Unanswered Mating Call

Mark “Twinkie” Morford, a who-knows-what at the San Francisco Chronicle, reportedly is suffering greatly from his unrequited sexual obsession with Barack Obama.

Sources say his usual things, crumpled, damp photos, stained computer screen and even his vivid imagination do not help relieve him anymore.

Twinkie has acknowledged joining a special yoga class that teaches auto-fellatio.

“They teach you how to be limber enough to fellatio, and even tea-bag, yourself”.

Despite two trips to the emergency room, Twinkie remains optimistic: “I need to learn not to bite down”.

One Of These Is An Ass-Funnel

The other is black plastic shaped like a funnel.

Reminder - We Weren’t Kidding: Get Him And His Gerbil Outta Here

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?

What Does It Hurt That I Don't Buy Your Paper?

"Dattatreya Siva Baba has a vision that the human race will transform itself by the light of the full moon.

You could say that he's a dreamer or even hopelessly naive, and you could be right. But what does it hurt to dream?”

-- David Ian Miller, advertising another idiotic "Indian mystic" liar's NewAge nonsense (about "everything from yogic meditation practices to quantum mechanics") in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gavin Newsom Is A Serious Nuisance (Because, Boy, It Sure Is Getting Hot Around Here,...)

"In his quest to make San Francisco the greenest city in the nation, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently created a $160,000-a-year job for a senior aide and gave him the ambitious-sounding title of director of climate protection initiatives.

One might expect someone with such an exalted handle to solve global warming and save the rain forest all in a day's work.

But the new climate protection initiatives director is just the latest person to join the city payroll in the name of tackling global climate woes, raising questions about whether environmentalism is becoming the latest excuse for a bloating government payroll.

San Francisco has two dozen other city employees already working directly on climate issues at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

'Although it sounds very well intentioned, and perhaps even necessary, I'm concerned this is a case where eco-chic has gone out of control,' said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the only Green Party member on the Board of Supervisors."

- From the San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Cecilia M. Vega

"The global surface temperature anomaly data from the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit has just been released, and it shows a significant drop in the global temperature anomaly in January 2008, to just 0.034°C, just slightly above zero.

This caps a full year of temperature drop,..."

- From Anthony Watts, blogging for Watts Up With That?


"If it gets any warmer around here, we’ll all freeze to death….."

- MattN, commenting on Watts Up With That?

Zombies

How could they hang with that creep? What were Oakland's leaders thinking?

Those questions run through the mind in the wake of revelations of how Oakland politicians tolerated the thuggish, thieving conduct of Yusuf Bey and his followers. For years.

There was a city loan never repaid, high-profile visits to Bey's home base Your Black Muslim Bakery, muzzled police inquiries, go-easy letters to a sentencing judge, and help with a bankruptcy mess. At every turn, City Hall came through for a quasi-religious group that was more gangster than godly.

Only late in the game, when Bey's empire crumbled after the killing of local journalist Chauncey Bailey, did these enablers vanish.

In the rearview mirror, it was abysmal judgment. But it's more than that - it's the heart of cynical deal-making, the transactional politics that mixes risk and reward to produce a decision. It's what happens when leaders fail in a fundamental way to compute the full effects of a decision.

This short-term thinking may work when locating a freeway billboard or curbing liquor sales in corner stores. But it doesn't compute with criminals linked to rape, spousal abuse, murder and torture with a heated knife. Lives, many of them, were scarred by Bey and the violent conduct he spurred.

The explanations, if you can find one from his long-gone supporters, are plausible but soft: [Your Black Muslim Bakery] was a self-help beacon in a crime-soaked neighborhood. Ex-cons and the jobless benefited. The strong, even harsh ideals of the group sent a message of personal change and belief. That bad stuff? We had no idea, honest.

It's time for a history lesson. This spin was heard before, right across the bay where a parallel saga played out a generation ago. In the late 1970s, the Rev. Jim Jones likewise surrounded himself with big-shouldered bodyguards and a retinue of flunkies. He gave edgy speeches on civil rights and marched at housing eviction protests. His church nursed social programs and health care on a grimy corner in the Fillmore District. He was a wizard with the race card: a white preacher who led a congregation of largely black and poor followers. As in Oakland, the political set flocked to his Peoples Temple to be part of the show. Doubt was not encouraged.

The names of the visitors are gilt-edged Hall of Famers. In San Francisco, it was Willie Brown, gay icon Harvey Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone, who named Jones to the Housing Authority. In Oakland, Bey's chums included former mayor and now Attorney General Jerry Brown, Mayor Ron Dellums and U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee. There were plenty of others on both guest lists.

Did these outsiders, on their closely-escorted visits, suspect something amiss or troubling? Did they wonder how either of these airless worlds operated? Were they worried about future embarrassment if the clearly eccentric Jones or Bey had a darker side?

All of them are too smart and seasoned to have missed the trouble signs. Instead they put up with these deluded leaders and hoped things wouldn't get worse. In the meantime, the bargain held with the politicos picking up a high-vis ally while the two decidedly dangerous "community leaders" bought the respect they craved.

The two stories are about more than political back-scratching. Both Jones and Bey were never seriously investigated until late in the game. Jones ran a string of rest homes and foster care facilities that he milked for income. He sheared off pension checks from his elderly followers and sold their possessions in exchange for a promised-land journey to Guyana, where their lives ended. There was no official inquiry until Rep. Leo Ryan went to Guyana in 1978 to check on temple members at the behest of their worried families. That mission unhinged Jones, who oversaw the forced deaths of some 900 followers, including his own suicide.

Bey, who died from cancer in 2003, was a less spectacular saga. His business enterprises brought him respect and standing. His troops chased off drug dealers, which led City Hall and police higher-ups to protect him from investigation. If that sounds like a defensible bargain, you're forgetting the people raped, abused and killed by Bey's soldiers.

There's an age-old question always asked when a monster falls: What have we learned to avoid a repeat? Judging from these two stories, there's a clear answer. Absolutely nothing.

--Marshall Kilduff is a San Francisco Chronicle editorial writer.

Nuts In The Fruitcake

I've just been asked - with so many people trying to convince me I'm wrong - why I won't just give in. Well, first off, because I'm not exactly a victim of cultish thinking and, I'm 100% sure, everyone around me (all Democrats) is - and, thankfully, it's influence isn't going unnoticed. Listen to the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra J. Saunders today:

"Democrats have abandoned all reason. They buy the worst-case scenarios and sell snake-oil,...The air of unreality pervades the debate. It doesn't matter what you spew if you say you believe,...You don't have to sacrifice. Fighting,...will be easy and good,....This isn't science. It's fantasy."

Like I'd written it myself.

Sorry, Kids, but you're nuts - and I'm your worst enemy:

I've always hated fruitcake.

Real Green: I Betcha Can't Do It

In the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday edition of the Pink Section, Susan Alexander, a freelance writer based in San Francisco, complains of all the junk she gets from charitable organizations and says:

"Most of them end up in a charity donation bag (one hand washes the other?) or, even worse, the trash, adding to our overflowing landfills or our overburdened recycling centers."

So, to prove my point - that I'm not "confused" about cultish-thinking on the environment (or anything else) but most everyone else is being duped, making me live amongst people who remind me of that idiot, Timothy Treadwell, of Grizzly Man, bottom photo, who wanted to galantly "save" bears who were already protected) and our lousy Left-wing, New Age-influenced, newspapers are even assisting with the problem - I'm going to put (a little of) my Macho Money where my big ol' Macho Mouth is. Here's the deal:

If anyone can find proof of "our overflowing landfills" anywhere in the United States - links to articles about just two overflowing landfills will do it - I'll gladly send you $20.00, admit I was wrong, and publicly apologize for the error - and even reconsider my position on all this cult stuff. If no one can do it (out of all the readers who write in to say I'm the one that's crazy) then you guys, maybe, should reconsider your assumptions about the world of cultish-thinking I say we're swamped in - and also think about sending me money. Don't forget:

Cultish-thinking is usually about getting people to act on fixing a non-existent problem. Our government is now being pushed to raising our taxes, including putting taxes on roads and the like, and many other coming changes - basically turning our country into France - to fight all these supposed awful environmental catastrophes to come. I say they're lying - and cultish-thinking is behind it - and I aim to prove it. This is only the beginning of these kinds of offers if this idea works out as well as I think it will.

So that's it. The whole bargain. I'm sure, if we had all these "overflowing landfills" (which would indicate some need for us to recycle, change our ways, etc.) there'd be an article about them, right? (Many articles, actually, considering the "green" climate we live in.) So go to it, kids:

Two overflowing landfill articles and you win $20.00 and a public apology from Mr. Big Mouth.

Get your environmental freak on,...or help a brother out at: