Monthly Archives: May 2009

San Francisco Hails Jimi Hendrix as a Role Model for Teachers

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Only in San Francisco can you find such an obvious example of the perpetual adolescence of modern post-60s Liberalism and it’s insidious influence on society and culture:

The district has chosen a highly unusual role model to grace the cover of its new education guide, and some residents are questioning whether the choice sends a good message to the city’s youth.

On the cover of the new district guidebook – aimed at changing the educational “experiences for every child in each of our schools” – is a portrait of 1960s rock legend Jimi Hendrix, known as much for his fatal drug habit as his revolutionary take on rock music.

The district’s manifesto asks readers to remember “the first time you heard Jimi Hendrix,” before proclaiming “our plan is as transformational now as his music was then,” according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Garcia told the Chronicle that he was simply trying to “revolutionize” the district and felt comfortable with Hendrix’s controversial image because, “Hey, we’re in San Francisco.”

Jim Dierke, the principal of the Visitacion Valley Middle School told FOX News Wednesday that he supported the initiative: “This new approach, starting here … is a new and exiciting way to get to the root problem of kids and try to bring them along to the standards.”

But not all administrators feel the same.

One concerned “liberal hippie educator” in the district – who went unnamed for fear of retaliation – told the Chronicle, “I find the choice of Hendrix as inspiration to be used in an educational setting rather strange and out of touch.”

Out of touch because Hendrix died choking on his own vomit after a drug and alcohol binge. Jimi Hendrix is a tragic figure who should be admired for his music and used to perhaps teach a lesson in the dangers of excess. To use a drug fatality as a role model is more a childish thumb in the eye to social standards than a “revolutionary” gesture.

I suppose if teachers were to follow his example and die covered in piss and vomit they’d be heroes.

h/t Detention Slip

Death by Pretension: New Age “Pinkskins” Allowing Their Indian Fantasy to Kill their Son

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One of my most basic criticisms of the New Age movement, which is an altogether different animal than pre-1960s occultism in America, is that for the most part it’s a dishonest venture into roleplaying and never concerned with actual spiritual enlightenment or (perish the thought!) proficiency in what Western Civilization would call the Black Arts which comprise Witchcraft, sorcery and the various forms of what McBride’s venerable Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences would term “low magic.”

Instead New Agers, and I include modern Wiccans,”progressive” Christianity, and the whole “Spiritual, not Religious” movement in my definition of the term along with the throngs of crystal toting weekend meditators who you’ll find prancing through a Whole Foods, are concerned with image. More specifically they are concerned with projecting an image of spiritual attainment (and thus superiority) without really putting in the work needed to have even the most simple epiphany like “What others think of me should have no bearing on my relationship with the Divine.” Thus, a weekend Yoga retreat and a subscription to Mother Jones is often all a New Ager needs to begin sanctimoniously lecturing you as to how “devolved” you are for believing in things like morality, objective truth and the literal existence of gods.

Worse than these cut rate Yogis is the “Pinkskin” which is a term used by people like Sun Bear (a.k.a Vinnie LaDuke, an actor who founded the “Bear tribe” in the 70s) to describe mostly middle and upper class Whites who join “Native American churches” in one of the New Age’s most offensively racist peculiarities. White Americans (liberals especially) so exoticize American Indian tribes that there persists among new agers an image of the Native American as some sort of nature spirit incarnate that seems to owe more to Tolkien’s image of Elves than the hard reality of pre-contact American life. As the cult like following of Sun Bear proves, this unrealistic idealization of native Americans causes many New Agers to simply follow the random proscriptions of random people in the quest to capture what they see as “pure” spirituality, no matter how insipid or dangerous.

Sun Bear himself was known to recommend that people live in Kenya or Nigeria rather than Colorado. He had a “vision” you see.

This brings me to the case of the Hauser family. They are members of the Nemenhah “band” (they are legally unable to represent themselves as a Native American tribe) who practice what they claim is traditional Native American religion. Since ancient America was home to thousands of tribes with hundreds of religious traditions this doesn’t tell us much. But the Hausers, typical of New Agers, don’t need much to fulfill their smug sense of self satisfaction. 13-year-old Daniel Hauser is in fact a “medicine man” in the group.

That’s right, this supposed church has a 13-year-old boy convinced he’s completed all the training he needs to be a shaman of some sort. All you people who have studied for years to achieve a Black Belt, 3rd Degree Initiation or a Master’s degree are feeling pretty foolish now eh?

This would be an amusing pretension if it wasn’t for the fact the littlest Shaman is dying of an easily curable cancer but is refusing treatment. He and his family have decided to treat his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma with vitamins, herbs and “natural therapies.”

From StarTribune.com:

Daniel Hauser has what doctors consider one of the most curable types of cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But the 13-year-old from Sleepy Eye, Minn. and his parents don’t want him to have chemotherapy and radiation, the standard treatments. For the past three months, they have ignored the advice of his cancer specialists and turned to natural therapies, such as herbs and vitamins, instead.

Now they are going to court to defend their decision.

James Olson, the Brown County attorney, has filed a petition accusing Daniel’s parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, of child neglect and endangerment, and he has asked a judge in New Ulm to order the boy into treatment.

While I support the authority of the family over their children, I’m not sure how I feel about this case. Daniel is their son and if they choose to listen to his nonsense it should be their decision. But when parents are irresponsible we often step in, and in this case Daniel will die if he stays this course. This is death by pretension, the child and parents acting out their pinkskin fantasy of being persecuted by “the White man’s laws” for following the more wholesome and natural way of life that they imagined Native Americans would have followed.

What’s worse is that there are a host of New Agers of various stripes rallying to the cause of allowing this kid to believe that his parents can cure his cancer:

The case, which goes to trial this morning, has quickly turned into a cause celebre in the world of alternative medicine. Last week, supporters packed the courthouse in New Ulm, Minn., for a pretrial hearing, and both sides are bracing for an even a bigger crowd today.

“You can’t imagine what kind of outpouring we’ve gotten here,” said Calvin Johnson, a Mankato attorney who is representing Daniel’s parents. “There’s a lot of feeling on this subject.”

Of course New Agers and aficionados of “natural therapy” are rallying around this cause, and will until the boy dies. Then they’ll quietly slip off into the night muttering something like, “He should have used more Bee pollen,” while the Hausers passion play moves to the next act where a grieving family starts doling out bits of young Daniel’s unearthly wisdom. After all, they have already groomed him as a child prophet:

The teenager filed an affidavit saying that he is a medicine man and church elder in the Nemenhah, an American Indian religious organization that his parents joined 18 years ago (though they don’t claim to be Indians).

“I am opposed to chemotherapy because it is self-destructive and poisonous,” he told the court. “I want to live a virtuous life, in the eyes of my creator, not just a long life.” He also filed a “spiritual path declaration” that said: “I am a medicine man. Some times we teach, and some times we perform. Now, I am doing both. I will lead by example.“

Unfortunately, he will. He will lead at least some people to see how dangerously naive the modern New Age movement has become.

h/t Crime Scene KC

Late Sunday/Early Monday Link Round-Up

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It’s no secret that I’m a crazed survivalist with the world’s most neglected survival blog. As such I have spent this weekend “prepping” for the inevitable apocalypse which may or may not include civilization ending solar storms, an Autumn Swine Flu die off or the dreaded Mass Rising of the Dead who will feast upon the flesh and/or brains of the living. This largely included transplanting my one of my tomato plants and demanding that the lazy, good for nothing Bumble Bees who spend their time trying to crash into my head pollinate my damn tomatillos.

I also found yet another Hard Tack recipe on the ‘net which is frankly exactly like all the others, but this one has a video.

In other words I puttered around all weekend so I’m throwing up this link round up of all the things I’ve been meaning to blog about but never got around to:

The Black Sphere posted this great video about the Klan vote and Democrat hero Hugo Black. Great Moments in Democrat Racist History:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1gXG1PY5bM[/youtube]

The Pagan Temple takes on Wiccan con artist Marrenna Lindberg, the morbidly obese author of The Orgasmic Diet. In the book Lindberg basically tells women to artificially boost testosterone levels and “embrace real foods” like fatty foods, milk, double bacon cheeseburgers and all the things she likes to stuff in her swollen gullet, that is when she isn’t pretending to be a gay man in sexually explicit chats on forums. Patrick Kelly says it best:

I have a pretty firm way of looking at overweight people who spout off about magic and spirituality when they apply this much-vaunted learning and wisdom to the areas of government and left-wing politics. Without seeing them, you might merely assume they are simply deluded. Once you get a good look at their fat-asses, you then start to realize they might just be full of shit.

Cryptic Subterranean brings us a story from jolly old England that shows what happens when you rely on the state to defend you and your family from criminal predation. The Gun Rights Examiner backs him up.

Oxford is about to make a degenerate with a history of sexually harassing students their Professor of Poetry and consider it “sabotage” to point out his history of abuse. He doesn’t deny the charges.

Atlas exposes institutionalized Jew hatred in the University of Toronto.

An Egyptian government minister issued a Fatwa calling for the slaughtering of pigs-because pigs are Jews.

German socialists are moving to silence a Pro-Israeli blogger.This seems familiar somehow…

Sultan Knish has a provocative must read essay called Obama’s plan to destroy Israel that I’ve re-read twice. Spend some time with it.

Iraqi Military Spokesman Maj. general Atta Qassim says Obama’s release of 4000 insurgents has cause Al-Qaeda to revitalize and increase activity.

Charles Johnson was the Religion of Peace Dhimwit of the month for April. Looks like people are starting to notice his perfidy.

I thought Libertarians were against wars of aggression? Lew Rockwell has made an exception for Russia’s war on Georgia. Z.A.C. also has a piece on the new Blood Libel. Supporting Israel = White Supremacy.

In End of the World news (h/t Survival Blog):

Tamaflu has been linked to abnormal behavior in patients 10-17 in a Japanese study. The“real” unemployment rate is likely at around 15% and the decline of the dollar is acceleratng. Doctors are predicting a worse strain of Swine flu this fall and corporate insiders are quietly selling off at a frantic rate. According to a chart on The Pragmatic Capitalist Jeffery Bezos of Amazon sold 800,000 shares May 1st and another 200,000 may 4th. I’m putting in my Amazon orders quick.

Deborah Perez is not the daughter of the Zodiac, but she is a nut. Surprise!

Babalu Blog has a beautiful letter from a customer to Urban Outfitters explaining why Che t-shirts are so offensive.

Family Security matters has a great essay on Female Sex Killers.

This is why gun control will never work.

Tammy Bruce Argues for Civil Unions with a Gay Gestapo Member on Fox and Friends

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I’m posting this not just because I’m sure within a decade I’ll be part of what is known as the Tammy Bruce wing of the Republican party, but because it goes to show a point about the gay marriage issue most people forget. Supposedly gay leftists don’t care about guaranteeing gay Americans their civil rights to inherit property and choose their heir at all, because this could be done in a civil union framework. The Marxist infiltrated “gay rights” movement is only interested in using gays as a bludgeon to attack the right, while their new messiah is actively persecuting gays in the military.

It should be noted that Dan Choi, about to get the boot from service because he’s “out” has been out since last year. Mean old homophobe President Bush (the guy who tried to get gays civil unions) and the Republican led military couldn’t care less about that, you know because there’s a war on. Somehow Obama’s made time to ensure that the military loses good soldiers using the Clinton era “don’t ask don’t tell” policy where Homosexuals needed to hide their orientation. It’s almost like leftists secretly don’t like gays at all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08tRG58PHnA[/youtube]

Make sense to me. Tammy Bruce 2012!

The Sucker’s Rally Again

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The Dow has been, if not roaring, than issuing a mighty growl. The MSM is claiming that we’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel but what exactly is driving this positivity?

Is it unemployment numbers? Reuters has a headline that says U.S. Sheds Fewest Jobs in Six months. Sounds good, right? Except that it goes on to report that we “only” lost 539,000 jobs. This means that while layoffs slowed down, the unemployment rate has risen to almost European levels, right now at 8.9%

Unemployment at this rate, despite what Obama is claiming in press conferences, will negatively effect not only our economy, but spending on imports will go down. China will not be happy.

Because the U.S. Census is hiring, the actual unemployment number should technically be estimated at +50,000 or so. Remember, the census is a temporary job that will end next year and not hire again for a decade. It is simple luck that kept these people from the unemployment line.

Doesn’t sound like much to base a rally on does it?

The Democrats have already admitted that they are waging a propaganda campaign based on their reading of a hack pseudo-Marxist tome Animal Spirits: How Human Emotion Drives the Economy and Why it Matters to Global Capitalism. The White House is basing policy on a book that claims outrageous nonsense like if we had no Social Security people would undersave for retirement.Think about that for a second. Akerloff and Shiller claim that Social Security encourages people to save money, and absent that entitlement program they wouldn’t feel the need to save money at all. How does this fit with the reality on the ground of the Boomers you know?

Banks are rallying even though the government has unprecedented control over them. What kind of sucker do you have to be to invest your private capital into a company basically on the hook to the Obama administration after seeing the deal they created that screws investors to GM? Banks seeking to repay TARP funds are being told there are new restrictions on the payback. And now Obama is threatening to bankrupt California at the behest of petulant unions who won’t take wage cuts even though California is literally weeks away from running out of money.

Financial like J.P. Morgan are leading today’s rally on the “good” news of the stress test. But the credibility of these tests is suspect to say the least. Peter Schiff explains that the economy getting better is an illusion created by America printing trillions of dollars:

Once again, the facts do not support the euphoria. Over the past few months, the government has literally blasted the economy with trillions of new dollars conjured from the ether. The fact that this “stimulus” has blown some air back into our deflating consumer-based bubble economy, and given a boost to an oversold stock market, is hardly evidence that the problems have been solved. It is simply an illusion, and not a very good one at that. By throwing money at the problem, all the government is creating is inflation. Although this can often look like growth, it is no more capable of creating wealth than a hall of mirrors is capable of creating people.

We are currently suffering from an overdose of past stimulus. A larger dose now will only worsen the condition. The Greenspan/Bush stimulus of 2001 prevented a much needed recession and bought us seven years of artificial growth. The multi-trillion dollar tab for that episode of federally-engineered economic bullet-dodging came due in 2008. The 2001 stimulus had kicked off a debt-fueled consumption binge that resulted in economic weakness, not strength. So now, even though the recent stimulus administered a much larger dose, we will likely experience a much smaller bounce. One can only speculate as to how much time this stimulus will buy and what it will cost when the bill arrives.

My guess is that, at most, the Bernanke/Obama stimulus will buy two years before the hangover sets in. However, since this dose is so massive, the comedown will be equally horrific. My fear is that when the drug wears off, we will reach for that monetary syringe one last time. At that point, the dosage may be lethal, and the economy will die of hyperinflation.

As always, the bulls fail to understand that investors can lose wealth even as nominal stock prices rise. As a corollary, the bearish case is not discredited by rising stock prices. While there are some bears that mistakenly cling to the idea that deflation will cause the dollar to rise, those of us in the inflation camp understand that the opposite will occur.

In the meantime, stocks are not rising because the long-term fundamentals of our economy are improving. If anything, the rise in global stock prices is due to investors realizing that cash is even riskier then stocks. The massive inflation that is the source of the stimulus is essentially punishment for those holding cash. To preserve purchasing power, investors must seek alternative stores of value, such as common stock.

Doom and gloom? No just realism. Stocks may seem safer than cash but frankly none of the investments (including the much lauded gold, where the demand has far outstripped the supply) are safe in this new era of American socialism. Gold and silver may be good investments but only if you can take physical delivery of the metals. Gold certificates are being printed as fast as dollars by some shady businesses.

So where’s my money? In preparations. Gardening, long storing food and items that will retain value if Schiff’s worst case scenario happens (guns & ammunition, medical supplies etc) and we move to a pawn shop/flea market economy. Where my money won’t be is in any industry where Democrats can dictate business practices. I guarantee you that people investing in the new government backed banks will regret their investment within 2-3 years.

Don’t be a sucker.