"Human beings, be they idealists or the psychologically vulnerable, have displayed an inexhaustible capacity for credulity when it comes to charlatans posing as political or religious messiahs."

Face it - We need some kind of early warning system:

"Nobody is going to be profiling (white former quarterback) Steve Young after the game when he goes to a Mormon retreat to talk to Mormon kids. They (officers) are going to profile somebody partying at the club after the game. When you profile all those factors in, where police are likely to be looking for suspicious behavior, that's going to eliminate a number of white guys right off the shoot because they're not going to be going to those areas in those neighborhoods, looking at those kinds of activities.

…We try to let them know it's not like they're Joe Sixpack driving around at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's not that simple."

When it comes to being at home? It is "that simple":

We just keep discovering it after-the-fact,...

 

The standard for who can say stupid shit is pretty low out there.

“We have no direct information that religious beliefs factored into this, but there was a belief system and homeopathic medicine did factor in.”

Standards, for who, and why you can do stupid shit - they're low, too.

And for some reason, I really, really, REALLY wanted to say that, bad,...

 

I've mentioned before, that my best friends and I don't agree on anything, and it looks like I'm not alone:

"What’s the purpose of meeting with each other when we already agree? Find someone who disagrees and invite them to your table."

I've had some experiences like this guy, but he's gone waaaay further than most,...

 

 Getting a Vet all cleaned up to join a cult is a pretty shitty thing to do. But, by focusing only on this physical "transformation" and not the mental mindfuck they've pushed this poor schmuck into, people are patting themselves on the back and calling it applause.

It's creepy, is what it is,...

 

What else is TMR supposed to do with this?

"The single greatest task for conservatives is to fix their own leadership problems. In so doing they must avoid the single greatest mistake Obama has made, which is to rely on fantasy. The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter.”

 So they're back to slapping themselves in the face - like it's instinct - admitting they can't stay rooted in reality.

"Fully considered, it becomes obvious that Rand’s views congeal into a fatally flawed philosophy. Even when stripped of its atheistic elements, Objectivism’s focus on radical individualism cuts it off from reality and causes it to wither under scrutiny. And as much as we might admire Rand’s deep-rooted hatred of collectivism, her philosophy is still just another utopian dream, a transvalued Marxism.

Ultimately, Rand’s egoism is irreconcilable with both Christianity and capitalism. In fact, since the system fails to have any true explanatory value, it’s difficult to find any reason to adopt Objectivism at all. Fortunately, we don’t have to buy into Rand’s philosophical errors in order to appreciate her fiction. We just have to keep in mind that instead of reading a 'novel of ideas', we are reading a work of fantasy."

 But they still can't admit they're doing it again. And this time, because they've lied to everybody - including themselves - so many times before.

"Rob Ford drug use leaves Conservatives uneasy, MP suggests

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander says federal Conservatives 'not fans' of hard drug users"

 Spoiler Alert: 

I think the betrayal of Benghazi line is done now.

"The French position on race is that you can come from anywhere and become French, as long as you speak French, adopt French customs, and act French.

That’s great, but they have a hard time with difference, people who maintain customs, dress, or religion that makes them appear different. And, in the case of black people, we are conspicuously different no matter how French we feel."

 "The facts, however unpalatable. The truth, no matter how bitter” is, conservatives have reduced the enterprise of governing to soap opera, displaying all the signs of bad actors (pun intended) who - like the French - are fun to watch, but still deserving of contempt and comeuppance.

  “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

 History shows the answers devised, for even the country's obvious flaws, were always long in coming, and most only after a long fight - why, that has to be so, is the question.

  “These Negroes, they’re getting uppity these days. That’s a problem for us, since they got something now they never had before. The political pull to back up their upityness. Now, we’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to give them a little something. Just enough to quiet them down, but not enough to make a difference. If we don’t move at all, their allies will line up against us. And there’ll be no way to stop them. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”

 I've always voted for nailing things down with facts.

  “I’m thinking about making a new cult for some extra cash on the side. What sort of preparations should I make?”

 That conservatives are back to adopting my position makes the question, of whether they are highly deliberative or of low I.Q., very real.

  "I love his premise that because Oprah is African American and successful, that means racism doesn’t exist.  If you want to talk about ignorance, that is absolute ignorance.  Seriously, racism doesn’t exist because there are successful African Americans?

During segregation there were successful African Americans.  Does that mean during segregation racism wasn’t an issue? This is the simple-minded ignorance that’s rampant throughout the entire Republican party.  It’s the kind of shallow talk that gets conservatives to stand and applaud because it sounds right—when in fact it doesn’t make any damn sense whatsoever."

I assumed they'd know how to pop a clutch, you know what I mean?

 

"While you may know that Mormons believe in wearing blessed undergarments and God living on the Planet Kolob– you may not know that some of them, at least, believe that Bigfoot is actually Cain and that Quetzalcoatl was Jesus. To be sure, this is definitely folklore and not official church doctrine, but it’s still damn interesting."

"Yoga fanatics are almost always overachievers. Overachievers are fucking annoying anyway, so the ones who do Yoga are even worse. If you’re a 30-something year old with a high pressure, high paying job in a major capital city with a very active social life, an expensive apartment with your own espresso machine, an organic only diet, and you do yoga at 5am, you are the definition of a seriously annoying person."

"They are one of our largest taxpayers, but that doesn't mean they are entitled to special treatment. Hopefully, they will understand it is a two-way street."

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.

When the appointed registrar comes back in the room, he greets us with a pitiful shake of the head. “Oh no, you really missed all the good stuff,” he says. Ross and I look at each other. The “good stuff” is pretty famous, though we will all not refer to it directly for the next couple of days. The good stuff, according to Raëlian infidels, is not so much what you might call a “seminar” as what you might call “an orgy.” Stories abound of people getting naked in the seminars, massaging their genitals until they come, while onlookers try to pretend they aren’t onlooking. The “good stuff” allegedly means dressing up as the opposite sex (not the opposite sex from the one you were born with, which would be too banal a request, but opposite the one you go by in your everyday life, so for the trans-folks, it’s back to the identity you spent most of your life sloughing off, I suppose)—dressing up as the opposite sex and having a dance. Yes, a dance, the prom kind. Rumor has it these dances typically lead to everyone, save the minors, sleeping around. When Ross and I ask about the dances in our meetings, they all gaze at each other secretively and longingly. There were many times when I wanted to ask, “Should I leave you alone?”

“A mouldering pile of newspaper clippings about Prince Charles’s organic farms is a Holy Relic.”

“If there’s one thing that’s been proven in all of this, it’s that it shouldn’t be surprising that a yoga mogul could so effortlessly put his foot in his mouth.”

“Anyone who wants to understand the devious, insane nature of the fraud known as L. Ron Hubbard should read this book cover to cover, and investigate all the footnotes. You will not only want $cientology ended forever, you'll feel the same way about any similar spiritual huckster that comes along in Hubbard's wake.”

“Arrian was 15 years old. She ran track at Parma Middle School. 


In June 2012, she got food poisoning.

She vomited so badly she ruptured her esophagus.



She slipped into unconsciousness and went into cardiac arrest.



She died.”

Description: Quite possibly the craziest cult ever, Heavens Gate was founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Heaven's Gate members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. While the group was formally against suicide, they defined "suicide" in their own context to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered," and believed that their "human" bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person's body, they routinely used the word "vehicle". This documentary investigates an incident in 1997, where thirty-nine members of the San Diego-based cult "Heaven's Gate" committed mass suicide. They intended to reach an alien spacecraft which they believed to be following Comet Hale-Bopp, which was at that time brightly visible in the nighttime sky.

The rapper Angel Haze grew up in a religious community in Michigan that she’s since described as a "cult," and the first secular music she ever heard was on the radio at age 16 in Virginia.

“That was one of the assertions, yes.”

“Leader of sinister cult that carried out orgies in the presence of children is jailed in Russia for making youngsters worship sexual promiscuity”

“My brother was on his deathbed because my parents practiced faith healing, which a lot of children would die from. His throat was so swelled that he was unable to eat and he had to be given drops of water through a straw.”