bestowing $$$$$ and power upon them. Eventually, one would think they would wise up, think for themselves, try to see what is going on, but suckers are born everyday. Times change, names change, Modus operandi change, but basically it's SOS.

Yet keep in mind the shaman often also doubled as the doctor, medicine man, healer of the sick and or comforter of the infirm. They didn't charge fees, some of that chicken dinner would do as "payment". Certainly few of the actual "shaman" waxed rich or made moral judgements upon others based on outdated dogma interpretations. Certainly none blathered nonsense on national television in 5000 dollar Armani suits and adorned in even more worth in gold.

Working the spirit is part and parcel of being human.

Working greed is, too. Unfortunately, they overlap sometimes.

"Dr." Ed Young is his mentor. It's a mega-mega-mega church with about five "campuses" in the Houston area. Ted graduated from the Second Baptist private school. Cruz's father became an evangelist, and Cruz is a political evangelist. These are end-timers to the extreme.

Ed Young is one of these pastors who lives the life of a multi-millionaire, is far right-wing in opposing programs for the poor, and claims to be a man of God. Oxymoron.

If he's just using his base to get power and money (a la W, IMHO), that's one thing. If he really believes that -- I mean, anybody who believes the world is destine to end in the short term (and most of them actually WANT that to happen -- they are looking forward to it), can't be acting in the good of the rest of us, or the planet. They should NOT be allowed to make decisions for the rest of us who are trying to get the world to last and society to progress!

– Part of the Benny/Suzanne Hinn “Christian” Worldwide Tax Racket Empire
http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2013/08/rafael-cruz-pastor-of-purifying-fire.html
<snip>
When the media uses the word “pastor” to describe the grifter, once illegal immigrant, father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, they are no doubt not going into any church building but merely quoting some checked mark, or line from one of his tax returns claiming tax exemption for his “religious” efforts to launder cash for the poor and needy? – with his mail order minister’s certificate???

So there was no "discussion" when Cruz accused the entire Democratic Party of "assaults on the church itself."

To Cruz, requiring faith-based hospitals and schools to match secular employers' insurance is about punishing churches and charging them for "violating their faith."

He talked about his religious liberty work in Attorney General Greg Abbott's office defending a Ten Commandments monument and the words "under God" in pledges.

was a member and went to school. Everything else is correct.

Benny Hinn is easily the sleaziest of the Christian con men; he was so bad that Farwell and several other “ministers” went to him in an intervention and told him to take it down several notches.

It follows me in my nightmares. How anyone can look at that clip and not realize that the woman is totally off her nut is beyond me.

Starting right from my birthright, shunned by the puritanical european bloodline, and called my branch of their family "the bad blood". We had to sit at a separate table to eat when my great grandparents were still alive, when visiting my grandparents. They really thought of us as unchristian, soulless creatures due to our "mixed", native blood, and more recently found out some of them in the midwest still think of us that way even in this more enlightened age. No kidding! My other grandma, who was half creek, told me to watch out for christians, reminded me always that they systematically enslaved, tortured and murdered many of my ancestors. Her view on the bible was that it may have been inspired by god, but written by the fallible hands of man.
As a youth, christian-bashing of me as a gay teen became inordinate bullying, justified by their faith. My parents made life unbearable for me, and a local minister banished me when I sought refuge. The only church that eventually fed and sheltered me was Glide Memorial. I even got to meet the master of "christian" hate himself, Fred Phelps, in a ruse plotted to land me in front of him for a hellfire damnation of my soul. I'd never met anyone so repulsive in all my 16 years. It was the beginning of the end of any sort of "normal" youth for me. After my father beat me and attempted to set up a death trap for his "fag" son, I ran away from home.
I still see christians as self-righteous, egocentrical bigots, for the most part. Very few exceptions. I have so much more respect for native american spirtual beliefs, those who didn't get infiltrated by so called "christian" values. Christianity creates the ultimate "consumer", those who slash and burn the land's resources, pollute and so many return nothing at all to the land that sustains them. All justified by some god-given right to those resources over and above "those heathens" over there. They think god put that gun in their hands to murder, mass relocate, enslave and steal the fertile, water accessible lands. Some still even adopt the moniker "inquisitor", convinced of their afterlife placement plan in some golden heaven. They will never know why they have so many karmic lives to lead through the past, present and future. They are naive to the curse of the spirals that actually renders their lives meaningless spins of futility, yet convinced of their spiritual superiority. My blood, and my "schooling of hard knocks" has rendered me able to see so many ironies behind the "american splendor" facade.

Your life journey sounds like it's worth telling. Have your written more of your experience?

Regular print? Graphic novel? Then a Hollywood blockbuster??

Good luck on it!

I won't submit it for publishing until my parents are dead. Part of why I'm here, they are infirm and aged, won't be around for long and my brother and I are setting up care for them-- at a safe distance. My upbringing was quite unique, tragic but with vindications and many odd spiritual experiences that kept me alive. Many of my schoolmates may have a hair-raising awakening someday should they read it and recognize who the main character is. Some of it is in old print format, from an older computer long dead now. I still have much compilation to do, and refinement of the dream sequences, which are really powerful and have to do with animals.

from what you've written above, i am sure it will be very interesting. i'm glad you survived...and thrived. i haven't been to Glide in a few years, so i think i will stop in soon.

by some wanna-be Benny Hinn-type con man. It's honestly rather frightening the way they're popping up like dandelions in the springtime.

Tenskwatawa (also known as The Prophet), a member of the Shawnee natives, was born in 1775. Named Lalawethika (the Rattle), his mother abandoned him in 1779. By all accounts, Lalawethika lacked the physical abilities that his other siblings, including his elder brother Tecumseh, enjoyed. His older siblings refused to train him in hunting and fighting. He was so unskilled with a bow and arrow that he blinded himself in his right eye with a wayward arrow. As an adult, he became reliant on the kindness of his fellow tribesmen to feed himself and his family. He also turned to alcohol to forget his problems, quickly becoming dependent upon liquor. Not having the physical abilities to become a warrior, Lalawethika attempted to learn the ways of his village's medicine man. When the man died in 1804, Lalawethika quickly proved unable to meet his people's needs. They remembered the drunken Lalawethika and did not respect his medicinal abilities. He quickly turned back to alcohol to provide himself with solace.

In April 1805 while lighting his pipe Lalawethika fell into a deep trance. His family believed that he had died and prepared his body for a funeral. Lalawethika regained consciousness and claimed that the Master of Life, a Shawnee deity, had visited him. According to Lalawethika, the Master of Life told him that the Native Americans must give up all white customs and products. The Master of Life reportedly viewed the natives' dependence on guns, iron cookware, glass beads, and alcohol as the worst possible sins. If they rejected these items and returned to traditional ways, the Master of Life would reward them by driving the white settlers from the Native American's land. The Native Americans must also stop fighting with each other over land and respect their tribal elders. If they followed the Master of Life's message, the natives would return to a life filled with happiness. Lalawethika also changed his name to Tenskwatawa. Tenskwatawa means "open door" in Shawnee. If the Native Americans followed the Master of Life's message as delivered by Tenskwatawa, they would have an open door. Whites called Tenskwatawa "the Prophet."
Read More...
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Tenskwatawa?rec=312

I mean, speeding up the film and running real fast and nutty is not my cup of tea.
He reminds me too much of Jerry Lewis....although the English Women he had on his show were nice looking.

and he's been around forevah.

Their insistence that their religious beliefs be given respect and legitimacy provided the wing nuts with the very same. Any criticism of religious beliefs, no matter how absurd or irrational, have been met with accusations of intolerance and bigotry.

The real reason the religious right has so much influence and power? Look in the mirror.

Seriously, I love that guy. He is an absolutely amazing performer. The best of the best.

Sure, he's a liar and con man, but so is every person who has ever donned the mantle of the holy man.

The fate that awaits the nation as the FINAL SOLUTION of the misbegotten Ahrimanic-Luciferic anti-American dark-side Republicon Cruzade:

My niece and her husband, both devout Catholics, were dragged against their will to a charismatic service by a co-worker of my niece's. She and her husband went along because the woman's husband had died and it was a type of memorial to him, but they had a Catholic distaste for the whole spectacle. Imagine my niece's horror when her husband suddenly joined the group, chanting in glossolalia and swaying around like an idiot. "I don't know what came over me," he told her later contritely. And he didn't know what the hell kind of nonsense he was spouting but he knew it didn't make any sense. He had just gotten caught up in the strong emotion and the mesmerizing effects of the preacher's sermons. I guess I can relate. It must have been a change from the mind-numbingly tedious, anesthetizing readings from the parish priests during Catholic Mass.

Most of the national and local media enable and encourage religious buffoonery by publicizing and promoting their outrageous behavior and selling it for profit as legitimate news. Ted Cruz is a clever con artist and snake oil salesman who has found his sweet spot amongst ignorant, gullible evangelical tea-baggers. The dumbing down of our education system is playing into the hands of America's Taliban. Critical Thinking is frowned upon and obedience to Corporate authority is promoted. The separation of Church and State is the most important founding principal of the United States and now more than ever we need to embrace and encourage that ideal before the religio-fascists destroy the Country and remake it in their own twisted image.

on modern advertising tricks to ensure it would win

This began when Nixon first decided to hire professional ad-men to design his campaign. Part of the game was to target new demographics for the GOP to activate. In Nixon's case that meant an appeal to Southern racists who willingly fled the Democratic party of the once-solid South, angered by the Federal-level successes of the anti-Jim-Crow movement

Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign with a coded bow to the racists, by traveling to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were infamously murdered in 1964, and giving a speech on "states rights" -- the old language of the Confederacy, which had later been taken up anew by the segregationists. But Reagan also began reaching out to the right wing religious fundamentalists, as a demographic that could help the GOP win

The negativism of the GOP under Gingrich's leadership also reflects an advertising technique. The ad-men do not want the potential customer happy and comfortable when the sales pitch begins, as then there is no motive to buy: what is desired, instead, is a potential customer who is somewhat anxious and unhappy, because the pitch can then be framed as "a cure for your troubles." The GOP tried harder and harder to make America jittery and nervous, rendering it more likely to buy the pitch for the GOP brand

By the time of Bush II, Rove had carried this combination of modern advertising outreach and careful bean-counting to an extreme: the GOP purchased and analyzed extraordinary amounts of detailed personal information to help them target and motivate potential GOP voters in a fine-grained way based on individual data. They also increasingly reached out to the rightwing fringes, hoping to engage them once again in politics on the GOP side. And the fringes brought with them a rhetoric that produced anxiety, which was useful for selling the GOP to the public

The old-style business Republicans were not at all innocent in this regard: independent of their social or religious beliefs, they supported and funded such outreach as part of a strategy for winning elections

The problem, of course, is that the GOP thus alienated more and more of its centrist support in the process. The party figured it could do so safely, since it seemed a net gain if they lost only one centrist for every two or three disaffected xtremists brought from the fringes into the GOP fold. But the increasing extremism of party loyalists began to fuel centrist flight. Today the GOP has much less centrist support than it once did, and the extremists are much more visible and vocal

An important thing to recognize is that the bizarre GOP coalition does not represent a natural coalition, formed by interest groups with similar material interests coming together to work for a common goal: it was deliberately and cynically forged by advertising methods, bringing together fringe groups to vote in support of the GOP. It is not a stable coalition, and as it unravels the GOP has resorted to vote-suppression to attempt to maintain control

Another important thing to recognize is that one cannot persuade ideologues, whose world-views are separated from reality: it is simply impossible to engage in meaningful dialogue with the diehards, whether they be laissez-faire anti-government libertarians, Christian dominionists, neo-Confederate racist secessionists, atheist Randian objectivists, corporate authoritarians, anti-feminists, or whatever. And the worst of the diehards will never hear anything except what they want to hear -- so they will always rationalize contradictions in statements from candidates whom they believe might hold their views. The game, as always, is in the center -- which is to say, the game consists of redefining the center, reconstructing the center, and holding the center

I myself do not particularly like the Christian rightwing. I regard the Christian rightwing as potentially dangerous, and as decidedly culpable in the deterioration of modern US politics, but it is certainly not the only player here, and in many respects it is not really in control of this process. The Christian rightwing has easy access to many butts sitting in pews, and that gives it some clout, but many of those butts are probably reachable by outsiders, if approached properly. To simply blame the Christian rightwing requires that we overlook important features of our current political pathology