Posted on 04/20/2006 9:56:03 AM PDT by Pippin
This is just a curiosity I have from my "travels" throught the internet and "google".
Now, after about 4 years of being a Freeper, I really do have fun here!
I've met lot's a different people from all over this country and also from other countries.
Most of you know me by now (I know, the trouble maker from MD! LOL!)
My question and comment has very little to do with politics (Or shouldn't have).
I have been looking up info on psychics and thier predictions on variuos websites and listings.
I've read all sorts of "predictions" that seem to paint a very dark picture of the future, both of our nation and President Bush and indeed the world.
Most predictors seem to have made predictions with a very liberal bent.
even one that claimed President Bush is a medium or a psychic!
others say he'll either resign by the end of this year under scandal or he'll go crazy or get very ill and die or be assasinated.
No mention of impeachment, but I'm sure it's coming!
All this leads to my question
Aren't there any Conservative Psychics or mediums?
Why do the ones I read about tend to be left-leaning Bush/America-hating liberals?
Am I missing something here?
I'll have to tell you something (at risk of being called crazy)
I do have limited psychic abilities, but I am not getting any major vibes making outlandish claims.
I am a Conservative Christian and don't think there is anything wrong with having certain abilities, you just have to be careful of were these abilities come from.
God can bestow these gifts on a person and that is good
but, be careful that they ARE from God, and not the Devil.
God bless all of you!
Psychic predictions of horrible terrorist attack & Bush assasination
Today is June 2, 2004. I am a closet psychic due to my high-profile position in the entertainment biz, however, I have been having major preminitions and visions for months - and lately they are getting stronger and stronger... I TRULY feel that the following will happen later this year so please be careful everyone!!!
TERRORIST ATTACK IN MIAMI
Port of Miami
August 15, 2004
2:12 P.M.
About 5 cruise ships will be lined up in the Port of
Miami on a sunny afternoon. All ships are RCCL and
Carnival except the last ship which is a Norweigen ship
(a dark blue) that's out of service and being
refurbished. At exactly 2:12 pm - during the
embarkation of thousands of cruise passangers - A HUGE
coordinated explosion will rock the world as we know
it. The 4th ship in line blows up first, then the
second, then the first, etc. The Norweigen ship at the
end will catch fire as well... even though it is
farthest away fom the other ships.
The BURNING FLAMES create a plume of BLACK smoke like
nothing Miami has ever seen - like a huge CHEMICAL FIRE
BALL. Miami Beach will be evacuated for fear of
additional attacks. The airport will be shut down. Some
passangers survive the flames by jumping out of their
cabin balconies into the water. Pure chaos. Very
similar to 9/11. Nearly 8,000 people will die in this
tradgedy (most victims are cruise ship staff already on
the ships). The world will mourn, the cruise industry
will be DESTROYED along with the Miami local economy.
The ONLY cruise lines that will be around 5 years from
now will be the Princess/Cunard group. Carnival, RCCL
and Norweigen (all "American" lines) will go bankrupt
Q1 and Q2 2005 - affecting the entire tourisim sector
and beginning the national economic slide.
How they did it:
The terrorists picked this date to coincide with the
anniversary of the US capturing one of their dudes
(don't know which one). Each cruise ship had 2 Al Queda
employees that brought the explosives in suitcases on
board and left them in the luggage areas on the ship
(common during embarkation). The bombs were set off at
the same time through radio control. The terrorists got
off the ships on time - and left the area in a van -
and were the only staff not accounted for at the time
of the explosions. This is how they were discovered to
have been staff.
Then...
2-4 Weeks Before the Presidential Election
Note: I am a Democrat and NOT a fan of Bush, yet my
heart hurts like crazy at the thought of what's going
to happen to George W. Bush this year. About 4 weeks
before the election, George W. will be making a speech
at an elementary school, and upon his exit (outside the
elementary school) he will be gunned down in a
firestorm of bullets that will also injure several
children and kill a young blonde haired, blue eyed nine
year old boy as well. The scene will be reminiscent of
the assasination of Robert F. Kennedy. I feel the
school may be in Florida - the SPACE COAST to be exact,
like in Titusville or Cocoa Beach.
The country will be in terrible shock, the insane
Arab-American gunman will be painted as an Anti-Bush
John Kerry devotee and as a result, Kerry and his
running mate John Edwards will respectfully drop out of
the race... allowing Dick Cheney to run uncontested...
However, just days before the election, Howard Dean
(who will join the race LAST minute) will be
unsurprisingly defeated.
Barbara Bush will have a massive heart-attack 2 weeks
after her son's death and never fully recover.
The economy will go into a major tailspin but stabilize
upon the re-election of Dick Cheney.
DICK CHENEY WILL SERVE 2 TERMS AS PRESIDENT and keep us
at war THE WHOLE TIME... against the faceless
"terrorists". He will turn out to be the country's MOST
UNLIKED PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME. By the end of his second
term, 80% of Americans will believe that he was the
driving force behind Bush's murder.
Why He Did It:
At the end of August, Bush campaigns that if
re-elected, he will pull ALL military personnel out of
the Middle East as a result of the Miami terrorist
attacks. This news makes Americans happy and the
defense industry furious. They approach Cheney and
promise to give him the power and the hit on Bush if he
STAYS AT WAR WITH IRAQ and the Middle East. Believe it
or not, Libya's Kadafi was even asked to "supply" the
hitman to kill Bush in exchange for favorable relations
and Lots of $$$ to him and his country. In other words,
this is the JFK assasination all over again.
That's all. I pray I am just a creative, insane person
or that all of this will be stopped in time. I pray I
am wrong and that this is just my imagination.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread55552/pg1
so they fixed the facts to fit thier theories?
Like I said before, good Scifi reading!
Good.
I think the Roman Catholic retreat center at Pecos New Mexico might have someone who could give you good input from that perspective.
Facts? All they did was say "These are the verses we believe Jesus said, these are the ones some else added". They didn't need no steekin' facts!
Of course not!
I know someone who goes to Pecos each year for a retreat
ve evidence of that? They are scholars who ahve studied the Bible and contemporaneous documents for many years.
in answer to the question: neither leftists nor "psychics" are bound to empirical standards of "function or fail" reality
Sorry. One of my cats was insisting on helping me with that last post.
You wrote, "The Jesus Seminar people's credibility is doubtful because they went in with preconceptions and made their findings match."
Do you have any evidence of that? They are scholars who ahve studied the Bible and contemporaneous documents for many years.
Prophetic statements. Predictions by Jesus of such things as the destruction of the Temple, or of Jerusalem, or His own resurrection are later literary additions or interpolations. How do we know this? Because no one can predict the future. So they MUST have been added later by zealous followers.
Miracles. Since miracles are not possible, every recorded miracle in the Gospels must be a later elaboration by an admiring disciple or follower, or must be explained on the basis of some physical or natural cause (i.e., the Feeding of the 5,000: Jesus gave the signal, and all those present reached beneath their cloaks, pulled out their own "sack lunches," and ate together!).
Claims of Jesus. Christ claimed to be God, Savior, Messiah, Judge, Forgiver of sin, sacrificial Lamb of God, etc. All of these, say the Jesus Fellows, are the later work of His devoted followers. The historical Jesus never claimed these things for Himself, as Funk infers in his above-mentioned statements. Reality isn't like this. It couldn't be true.
I don't know anything about this site - I was trying to find an article I read a while back that did a good job summing up the problems, but this I thought was a good description of the biggest problem.
I wouldn't use THAT as your evidence. It only takes a shred of research to know that James Randi is an established lying fraud himself, and there is no ambiguity about that.
Translation: He debunked something you fervently believe in.
I once read about one psychic who was able to predict the winning numbers of the roulette wheels and crap tables in casinos. According to the the author of the story, the psychic challenged him to pick any casino (cant recall if this was in Vegas or Atlantic City or Reno), and then pick out any table. Which the author did. The Psychic then told him which numbers to bet on. Which won everytime. According to the Author, the psychic did this in casinos around the world. But instead of breaking the bank at every casino, he merely would win enough money (around 6 figures), just up untill casino management would start taking notice of him. He would stop, cash in his winnings, get the hell out before they could kick him out, and move on to another casino where he would repeat the process.
It reads (despite the "I hope this doesnt happen" disclaimer) more like wishful thinking.
Then, there's the "Christian" prognosticator, Hal Lindsey, who uses the Bible as a ouija board (tool for divination), and recycles his old books and old wives as each is overtaken by the years.
Of course you would.
Those of us who aren't so credulous, on the other hand, have noticed that a "legitimate" psychic wouldn't have made so many goofy predictions which were laughably wrong.
For example, Cayce predicted, that a massive earthquake along the San Andreas Fault in California would take place on June 17, 2005, and that the final death toll would be over four million. Um, no, sorry.
He predicted a massive shifting of the poles in the years 2000-2001. Wrong again.
He predicted that Atlantis would be discovered in 1968 or 1969...
He predicted that a secret hall of records from Atlantis would be discovered under the Sphinx in the late 1990's...
He made 9 specific predictions about the famous "Lindbergh baby kidnapping" while the child was still missing -- all wrong.
He predicted that astronomers would discover the revolution of the Solar System around a star system composed of Arcturus and the Pleiades. Um, nice try, but Arcturus and the Pleiades are 130 degrees apart in the sky, and 400 light years apart from each other. They could make a "star system" in the same way that Mexico and Germany could make up a penninsula.
Cayce and "dowser" Henry Gross set out to try to locate a buried treasure of jewels and coins buried along the seashore. They spent weeks digging in various spots identified by their "psychic" powers, moved tons of dirt, and found exactly nothing.
Here's a good overview of Cayce's less-than-impressive history:
What's the scoop on Edgar Cayce, the "Sleeping Prophet"?
16-Jan-2001
Dear Straight Dope:
I would appreciate some insight into the case of Edgar Casey, the "Sleeping Prophet." Although Edgar did turn his trance sessions into a money-making venture, what I've read has many elements of a solid story, especially the presence of a disconnected stenographer, and several verifiable accounts of medical treatments. Does the story of Edgar Casey meet with your skeptical approval? ----Thomas Walsh, Chicago
SDSTAFF David replies:
OK, first things first. Although his name was indeed pronounced "Casey," it's spelled "Cayce." For those who aren't familiar with him, here's some background:
Edgar Cayce purportedly began his psychic career when he began losing his voice at age 21 and the doctors couldn't do anything about it. He supposedly went into some sort of hypnotic sleep, recommended a cure for himself while in this state, and got better. Since it allegedly worked for him, he began doing the same thing for other people--diagnosing and prescribing cures while in a supposedly altered sleep state. From there he went on to doing readings for people who sent him letters (rather than actually being there) and on general psychic topics including past lives, the nature of the universe, what happened to Atlantis, etc. He claimed that, upon awakening, he did not recall anything he had said. He also claimed another sleeping power: the ability to absorb information from a book place under his head while asleep. Unsurprisingly, this was apparently never tested.
Now, on to the claims.
One problem here, as with most claims of psychic success, is the fairly vague nature of the "psychic" predictions. It's made worse by the fact that Cayce gave thousands upon thousands of readings--he was bound to get a few right by accident. As with most "psychics," people remember the hits and forget the misses.
I'm not entirely sure what you meant about the stenographer, but, yes, according to The Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com/cayce.html), a stenographer did take notes during the sessions. However, this has little to do with whether his readings were accurate. "But wait," you might say, "we can look at those reports and see if he was accurate!" Not really. The Skeptic's Dictionary notes: "Cayce usually worked with an assistant (hypnotist and mail-order osteopath Al Layne; John Blackburn, M.D.; homeopath Wesley Ketchum). According to Dale Beyerstein ("Edgar Cayce: The 'Prophet' Who 'Slept' His Way to the Top," Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 1996), "these documents are worthless by themselves" because they provide no way of distinguishing what Cayce discerned by psychic ability from information provided to him by his assistants, by letters from patients, or by simple observation. Also, Beyerstein explains, "the transcripts tell only what Cayce said, with no indication of what he said as being true." As the Skeptic's Dictionary notes, "1n short, the only evidence for Cayce's psychic doctoring is useless for testing his psychic powers."
For example, Michael Shermer ("Deviations: A Skeptical Investigation of Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment," Skeptic magazine, Vol. 1, #3, Fall 1992) and Martin Gardner (Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science) note that when Cayce was doing readings in the presence of an osteopath, the terminology he used pretty much made sense only from an osteopathic perspective. Coincidence? I think not.
Let's take a look at Cayce's alleged psychic diagnostic and healing ability.
Many have claimed that because Cayce had no formal medical background, he could not have diagnosed people and prescribed cures--it must have been special powers. But as already noted, he was often assisted by people with a medical background. In addition, "he was a voracious reader, worked in bookstores, and was especially fond of occult and osteopathic literature" (Skeptic''s Dictionary again). He also knew homeopathy and naturopathy.
As James Randi notes in his classic book, Flim Flam, "It is no secret that his cures were quite similar to the 'home remedies' described in the handy medical encyclopedias that were bedside reading in many rural homes in the late 1800s." In other words, he didn't exactly need psychic powers to know about them. Randi continued, "Beef broth was one of Cayce's favorite remedies for such diverse diseases as gout and leukemia. Who can fault a nice man who prescribes a cup of hot soup?"
Some of his remedies weren't as harmless as a cup of soup. He was apparently among the first to recommend laetrile as a cure for cancer. Laetrile is ineffective, but still has a cult following among those who think poison is a miracle drug (it contains cyanide). Some of his other recommendations were "'oil of smoke' for a leg sore; 'peach-tree poultice' for convulsions; 'bedbug juice' for dropsy; and 'fumes of apple brandy from a charred keg' for tuberculosis" (Skeptic's Dictionary). In 1926 he prescribed "the raw side of a freshly skinned rabbit, still warm with blood, fur side out, placed on the breast for cancer of that area" (Beyerstein). Yuck.
His diagnoses were about as well-informed as his suggested cures. For example, we have his reading for psoriasis as, "The conditions that exist through the thinning of the walls of the intestines allow the poisons to find expressions in the lymph circulation; thus producing the irritation to and through the epidermis itself" (The Edgar Cayce Website, ecayce.tripod.com, from reading #2455-2, May 21, 1941). Funny, I have psoriasis and my doctor never mentioned thinning intestinal walls to me--nor do any of the medical websites I've consulted.
Cayce supporters probably don't like to talk about his failures in healing members of his own family. According to Beyerstein, Cayce's cousin, Ike, appealed to him for help but died. And one of Cayce's own sons died as a baby in 1911.
As if these weren't bad enough, we have several documented cases of Cayce advising how to cure dead people, in connection with readings using letters they sent to him. In these cases, the letters had been written while the person was still alive, but by the time he made his psychic "diagnosis," they were dead. Whoops! Of course, his followers have excuses for this type of thing, but it seems to me if he's getting his information through magical means, he should know this particular person is beyond help.
Those excuses apparently followed every obvious screw-up. Mind you, most of his failures weren't so obvious. As James Randi notes in Flim Flam: "The rationalizations that Cayce and his supporters used to explain his numerous and notable failures are prime examples of the art of evasion."
He later notes, "Cayce was fond of expressions like 'I feel that' and 'perhaps'--qualifying words used to avoid positive declarations. It is a common tool in the psychic trade. Many of the letters he received--in fact, most--contained specific details about the illnesses for which readings were required, and there was nothing to stop Cayce from knowing the contents of the letters and presenting that information as if it were a divine revelation. To one who has been through dozens of similar diagnoses, as I have, the methods are obvious. It is merely a specialized version of the 'generalization' technique of fortune-tellers."
Let's move on briefly to some other areas where Cayce tried to use his vast psychic powers. One example discussed in detail by Randi is Cayce's extraordinary failure in divining information about the Lindbergh kidnapping case. I bet you won't find too many Cayce supporters talking about that one.
Another failure was his attempt to find buried treasure. After several weeks of trying, with the additional help of a well-known dowser, he found nothing. The only thing they had to show for their work was excuses. Some of these are hysterical, such as the one about ghosts of Native Americans and pirates playing tricks with the psychic energy, or the claim that the treasure had been there but was already dug up by somebody else, or maybe it would be buried there at some future date. It's amazing that his magical powers could supposedly diagnose somebody from across the country, but couldn't tell the difference between the past, present, and future.
Another amusing prediction was that the U.S. would discover an Atlantean death ray (as in, one from Atlantis) in 1958. I suppose his supporters might claim the government actually did find it, but it's hidden away with the aliens from Roswell due to its dangerous nature.
The point is that, as with every other well-known "psychic" I've seen/heard about/read about, the claims simply don't stand up to scrutiny. You can read about similar cases in previous Staff Reports:
"If Psychics Are Frauds, Why Do Police Keep Asking Them for Help?"
www.straightdope.com/mailbag/ mpsychiccop.html"Did Psychic Jeane Dixon Predict JFK's Assassination?"
www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdix on.html"Did the U.S. Government Fund Psychic Research?"
www.straightdope.com/mailbag/ mpsychicfed.html--SDSTAFF David
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
I didn't think so.
I suspect it is just your imagination low,but of course I do not believe in psychics and such.
I certainly hope the accuracy of your predictions don't cause me to become a believer.
"Translation: He debunked something you fervently believe in."
Seriously, this isn't even a matter of denial. I will accept honest input on the matter, which excludes James Randi. His credibility lies somewhere between the Bill Clinton's and the Duke rape accuser.
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