"At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. Nor do I still have the fatigue that felled me, often, at my desk and made me sleep for 16 hours a night on the weekends. Now I rarely choke on things like water, though it turns out laughing, which I do a lot of, is an easy trigger for a violent, paralyzing cough that doctors refer to not as a cough, but a paroxysm.

…Led by discredited doctors and, incredibly, a former Playmate, the movement has frightened new parents with claptrap about autism, Alzheimer’s, aluminum, and formaldehyde. The movement that was once a fringe freak show has become a menace, with foot soldiers whose main weapon is their self-righteousness. For them, vaccinating their children is merely a consumer choice, like joining an organic food co-op or sending their kids to a Montessori school or drinking coconut water.

Thanks a lot, anti-vaccine parents. You took an ethical stand against big pharma and the autism your baby was not going to get anyway, and, by doing so, killed some babies and gave me, an otherwise healthy 31-year-old woman, the whooping cough in the year 2013. I understand your wanting to raise your own children as you see fit, science be damned, but you're selfishly jeopardizing more than your own children. Carry your baby around in a sling, feed her organic banana mash while you drink your ethical coffee, fine, but what gives you denialists the right to put my health at risk—to cause me to catch a debilitating, humiliating, and frightening cough that, two months after I finished my last course of antibiotics (how’s that for supporting big pharma?), still makes me convulse several times a day like some kind of tragic nineteenth-century heroine? "

Honestly, who would want to be black? Who would want people to be terrified of you and not want to sit next to you on public transportation?

Who would want to have this dark skin, broad nose, large thick lips, and wake up in the morning being despised by the rest of the world?

A lot of the time I feel like my skin color is like my personal prison, something that I have no control over, for I am judged just because of the way I look.

He documents this journey in his book “Escape: My Lifelong War Against Cults,” a thrilling read that’s also educational. It links half a century of mental manipulation, violence, and legal warfare waged by controversial totalistic movements.

Chapter after chapter details the similarities of cults and their megalomaniacal leaders. It’s revealing to see the same elements in Charles Manson’s “family,” the Symbionese Liberation Army, Synanon, Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, Werner Erhard’s est, the Unification Church, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s commune and even Scientology.

Many of these cults have their own version of forced abortions, extreme hours with little to no pay, sleep deprivation, and constant ego-smashing abuse combined with praise and reassurance. Also common are disconnection from families, and diabolical legal strategies intended to ruin reputations and cripple outside interference.

But Paul’s heroics have come at a steep price. In 1978, his fiancé left him out of fear for her children. And then 10 years ago, Paul was diagnosed with a serious blood disorder linked to rattlesnake venom. Paul’s forced to live on bi-monthly transfusions. (He jokes, “I’ve developed simpatico with Dracula.”)

In “Escape” Morantz skillfully traces Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung’s theories of brainwashing he used on his own people and also on American POWs during the Korean War. Paul lays the groundwork for showing how many controversial groups here at home, particularly those coming out of the 1960s human potential movement, shared the same ideas, methods and, all too often, the same tragic results.

“The source of the pollution is not an external contaminant such as blood or dirt, but human interaction.

  The affected person develops strong feelings of contamination that are evoked by direct contact with the violator or indirect contacts such as memories, images or reminders of the violation.”

Of course, we've been over all this before,...

 

"There have been several big arguments that could have been avoided if I had just asked a question without getting in my feelings right away."

Jennifer Hough thought it'd be cute to get blackened up.

And this guy decided he looked a lot like Trayvon Martin,...if Trayvon's face was slathered in shoe polish. The chick in the middle also thinks she's hot - not. 

I don't always know about white people.

Glenn Reynolds is still another scared punk with a gun, out for blood, forgetting kids mixed up in "teenaged-gangbanger" nonsense are still mixed up kids - also forgetting they're also really just more scared punks with a gun. Being an adult, I've been outsmarting kids for years, but Instapundit thinks it's "deliberately misleading" to think of kids as kids and implies they should be shot.

My point is, if Glenn or Cody doesn't shoot 'em all, the black kids can and will mature.

Nobody knows what to do about white people,...

Everybody stay calm, alright? Me and the good doctor will do all the freaking out for everybody:

  "Homeopaths truly live on a different planet, a planet where belief is everything and responsibility is an alien concept. I certainly hope that they will not take over planet earth in a hurry. If I imagine a world where homeopaths dominate primary care in the way it is suggested in this article, I start having nightmares. It seems to me that people who harbour ideas of this type are not just deluded to the point of madness but they are a danger to public health."

I can attest to that:

My own nightmares are just subsiding after 7 years,..