Comments by "silat13" (@silat13) on "Secular Talk"
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Reagan a steaming pile
Ronald Reagan represents all of the worst elements of the American political experience of the last 50 years. All of them. He was, and always will be, nothing but a steaming hot pile of filthy hyena puke.
Intellectually, Reagan gave chimpy a run for his money. He was vacuous. He was shallow. He was incurious. He was a puppet and a door stop for a group of sick ideologues who really ran the country. He was a bad actor and foolish tool.
Ideologically, he was a hater and an imperialist and far-right loony-tune. He hated the poor. He hated gays. He hated leftists. He hated communists - and he was pretty sure you were one if you disagreed with him. He hated and he hated and he hated. Just ask his own kids. He hated them and himself and his ex-wife. Ronald Reagan was a twisted unrepentant closed-minded waste-bag hate monger. And that's just for starters.
The foreign policy of Ronald Reagan did more to impoverish and kill the poor and helpless humans of the world than any world leader before or since - with the possible exception of our Bush. Reagan just didn't give a hoot. He was going to defeat communism (which was already falling of its own weight) and he didn't care how many children were burned alive or how many people starved to death on the way. Let em die. Reagan was a friggen dirtbag.
On Reagan's watch the military budget of the U.S. grew to the proportions of a heaping pile of 10,000 week-old dead and bloated Blue Whales. And it stunk just as bad. The practice of rewarding incompetent cronies with gigantic useless contracts for unneeded military hardware was elevated to art form under Reagan. Reagan's legendary megalomania, hubris and abject ignorance led him to believe the tales of any crackpot who managed to slither past the goons who comprised his inner circle. Star-wars missiles, atomic shields, space-age death rays. You name it - that loon would fall for it - and blow billions of your tax dollars on it.
And on the domestic front - holy crap the domestic front. Ronald Reagan was a force for the rampaging evil of anti-human destructiveness. He never met a social program he didn't scorn. He never met an American in need he didn't have a bowel movement directly upon. His response to the AIDS epidemic is one of the most sickening cold-blooded expressions of pure murderous political evil in the history of the earth. Genghis Khan could only dream of such depravity and indifference to human suffering. There is so much more, but, hell, if you don't already know about this crap, then go read a book or two.
Then there was Iran-Contra - the infamous orgy of unfettered criminality at the heart of the Reagan legacy. Again, look it up. Rogues, liars, crooks, murderers and ignorant heartless scum surrounded Reagan at all times. Ali Baba would've been shamed. But Ronald Reagan was shameless.
Oh, did I mention The War on Drugs and it's ballooning of the prison/criminal industrial complex and the rise of brainless goon-like authoritarianism? Or the destruction of the modern labor movement including the cowardly firing of the Air Traffic Controllers? Or the beginnings of the current trend of packing the Judiciary with corrupt freakish pseudo-fascist stoolies? Or the repugnant rapes of Lebanon and Grenada? Or the dim-witted goofball junk science that came to known as "Reaganomics?" Or grant rigging at the Department of Housing and Urban Development? Or James Watt and the whole-hearted attempt to destroy the earth and all its inhabitants at the expense of greed mongers and corporate whores? Or the largest white collar theft in the history of planet Earth - the Savings and Loan Bailout? And on and on and on and on.
So let me conclude,
Ronald Reagan will forever be remembered as one of the most idiotic, vile, worthless leaders of any any nation in any era. He presently occupies a special place in Hell beside Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. And I promise you, they all think he's an idiot too. Screw Ronald Reagan. And then screw him again.
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The history of Ronald Reagan should be written that he was nothing more than a tool to harm the nation. He tripled our debt, he sold weapons to enemies and he started the war against the nation by bringing in trickle down. The man is a disgrace.
Since Reagan the Americans have suffered.
Republicans and those who vote Republicans are nothing more than tories, red coats, the buffoons and suckers who kissess rich man's ass and exist for no other reason than to kiss rich man's ass. It's obscene and it's worse than pornography.
Dispel the Reagan myth. Multiple tax increases, a balloted budget, giant increase to government and deficits. Reagan beyond being a failure as a President was someone that should have been arrested for crimes against humanity for what he did in central america.
Reagan was the first president to politicize the CIA. He told the CIA to lie to Congress by telling Congress that the Soviet Union was a very wealthy country, so he can con money out of Congress.
The Soviet Union was on it's way to a collapse long before Reagan took office. Kurschev already told Nixon the model in the Soviet Union was not working.
Mikhail Gorbachev spoke in a US community, one of only two communities he gave a speech at in the United States. At the speech, Gorbachev blew the Reagan myth out of the waters. Gorbachev blamed himself for not acting quick enough to transform the former Soviet Union into a new model.
The Cold War was long gone and over before Reagan came onto the scene. The Soviet Union knew it was a matter of time. It was Reagan who lied, nothing new there, lied about the economic conditions in the former Soviet Union.
I have heard many Russians say it was the Beatles that taught them about freedom and kept the ideas alive until they could throw off the regime.
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KOCH GAME PLAN
1980, when David Koch ran as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket. This was and is currently their platform for that year.
It is a manifesto of what David and Charles Koch and the current conservative movement expects to receive in return for their large investment in American politics.
• We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
Every single one of these ideas is rooted in Libertarian/fascist/neoconfederate/John Birch Society dogma that they learned from their antiAmerican government bigot father who was a bigwig in the Bircher movement.
Keep this list handy. Pass it on as often as possible.
You're going to need it in the days to come.
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BUBBLEGUM GUN is stupid and he proves it daily.
For years, the right wing has been equating nazism, with the left, and socialism. This is standard propaganda for Fox News and the Tea Party which both denounce Obama as a socialist and at the same time portray him visually with a Hitler mustache. Conservatives have also argued that Jared Loughner -- the shooter of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords -- was influenced by leftwing ideology because his reading list included both Das Kapital by Karl Marx and Hitler's Mein Kampf (without mentioning another book on his list, We the Living, by Ayn Rand).
The conflation of nazism and socialism has gone largely unchallenged by the media, and through repetition it is becoming almost "common knowledge" in the US, so I feel compelled to speak against it. I hope that others, especially professors who have occasion to talk about it in and out of class, will also speak against this vile propaganda.
The basis of the conflation of nazism and socialism is the term "National Socialism," a self description of the Nazis. "National Socialism" includes the word "socialism", but it is just a word. Hitler and the Nazis outlawed socialism, and executed socialists and communists en masse, even before they started rounding up Jews. In 1933, the Dachau concentration camp held socialists and leftists exclusively. The Nazis arrested more than 11,000 Germans for "illegal socialist activity" in 1936.
Nazism is a right wing ideology. It is violently racist, anti-socialist, and it targets the political left for extermination.
Now why dont you join your coward friend Alex Spec at stormfront.
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GOP PLATFORM 2016
Some tasty bits.
Below are some of the Republican Platform. Much like the idiot Libertarian platform. ANARCHY is the result of these idiotic anti American platforms.
Here are 50 ... right-wing proposals in the 2016 GOP platform
Each of the following Republican planks can be evaluated using the yard-stick of the “Golden-Rule
“Do NOT do unto others that which you wish not be done unto you”
Tax cuts for the rich: (prime directive)
Deregulate the banks: (let recessions and depressions regulate the economy)
Stop consumer protection: (you don’t matter, only business)
Start repealing environmental laws: (LA was great in the early 70’s)
Start shrinking unions and union labor: (America went downhill since the weekend)
Privatize federal railway service (Amtrak): (taking profit out of the common good)
No change in federal minimum wage: (you don’t matter, only business)
Cut government salaries and benefits: (you don’t need good services; hire the cheapest)
Appoint anti-choice Supreme Court justices: (Republican activist judges are not activists)
Appoint anti-LGBT and anti-Obamacare justices: (see above)
Legalize anti-LGBT discrimination: (What ‘golden rule’?)
Make Christianity a national religion: (Violation of US Constitution)
Loosen campaign finance loopholes and dark money: (Money and guns and oligarchy)
Loosen gun controls nationwide: (Guns and money and dead mommas)
Pass an anti-choice constitutional amendment: (What ‘golden rule’?)
End federal funding for Planned Parenthood: (Women don’t matter)
Allow states to shut down abortion Clinics: (Women don’t matter)
Oppose stem cell scientific research: (Science doesn’t matter)
Oppose executive branch policy making: (Things like Bush’s preemptive war idea)
Oppose efforts to end the electoral college: (Democracy is such a bother, let the rich rule)
Require citizenship documents to register to vote: (Your papers, bitte!)
Ignore undocumented immigrants when drawing congressional districts: (Democracy is such a bother, let the rich rule)
No labeling of GMO ingredients in food products: (Science doesn’t matter, you don’t matter, only business)
Add work requirements to welfare and cut food stamps: (pyramids for porridge)
Open America’s shores to more oil and gas drilling: (Water, water, everywhere-none is fit to drink)
Build the Keystone XL Pipeline: (clean water doesn’t matter)
Expand fracking and burying nuclear waste: (air, water, health… it’s not money)
No tax on carbon products: (prime directive)
Ignore global climate change agreements: (keeping one’s pledge is not a Republican thing)
Privatize Medicare, the health plan for seniors; (taking profit out of the common good)
Turn Medicaid, the poor’s health plan, over to states: (life expectancy by zip code)
No increasing Social Security benefits by taxing the rich: (prime directive)
Repeal Obamacare: (Hey! You were born; dignity of life is for fetuses)
Give internet service providers monopoly control: (taking profit out of the common good)
Make English the official U.S. language: (‘Cuz that’s what Jesus spoke)
No amnesty for undocumented immigrants: (Kick them out; crops rotting in the fields)
Build a border wall to keep immigrants out: (Keep them out; food prices rise and shelves empty)
Require government verification of citizenship of all workers: (Your papers, bitte!)
Penalize cities that give sanctuary to migrants: (Local control is such a bother)
Puerto Rico should be a state but not Washington DC: (Local control is such a bother)
Support traditional marriage but no other families: (favoritism is so American, but you don’t matter)
Privatize government services in the name of fighting poverty: (taking profit out of the common good)
Require bible study in public schools: (Violation of US Constitution)
Replace traditional public schools with privatized options: (taking profit out of the common good)
Replace sex education with abstinence-only approaches: (Science doesn’t matter)
Privatize student loans instead of lowering interest rates: (taking profit out of the common good)
Restore the death penalty: (Daily NRAterrorist death penalties abound in America)
Dramatically increase Pentagon budget: (without violating prime directive)
Cancel Iran nuclear treaty and expand nuclear arsenal: (keeping one’s pledge is not a Republican thing)
and:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/heres-are-50-shockingly-extreme-right-wing-proposals-in-the-2016-gop-platform/
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+canyon report If I was weak willed like you and believed in the fairy tale then Satan would be my hero.
SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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GOD THE ABORTIONIST
Dear Forced Birther...
Your God Is Not Pro Life
You might find that statement surprising, but I know this from your own holy book. Despite what you may have been told, the Bible is not a pro-life document. It is, in many parts, pro-death. In one of the first stories in the Bible, God murders millions of people through a global flood — including born and unborn children. Unborn children — the ones you fight for. God only wanted to get rid of them.
Later in your holy book God commands the death of nation after nation because they happen to inhabit the land he plans to give the Israelites
(Josh 7-9). He commands Israel to kill women and children (1 Sam 15).
When he wanted to make a point to the Egyptians, he murdered all the firstborn sons of Egypt. Innocent children. And when King David killed a man and slept with his wife, God punished him by killing his unborn child.
This same God does nothing while billions of people throughout
history have been starved, drowned, raped and murdered. He sits on the sidelines and watches.
That is not a God who is pro-life!
On top of all that, at least 25% of all pregnancies end in “natural” abortion — which you believe your God either designed or actively performed — an act you consider murder.
No, your God is not pro-life. By your own standards, he is a murderer — the most prolific abortionist of all time.
So don’t tell us you base your morality on the Bible or on the character of God. Don’t tell us you’re sent from your God to protect the lives of the innocent. Despite what your pastor says, your God is not pro-life. He has been killing, maiming, and letting people suffer for ages. You’re pro-life because, like most humans, you value human life.
I also value human life, but it has nothing to do with supernatural beings.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2009/07/your-god-isnt-pro-life/
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Same amount of things that the christian sky fairy says you cannot do.
Who happens to be the same cod that the muslims pray too.
Shortlist:
Eating rabbits, pigs, or camels.
Leviticus 11:4 “Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.”
No shellfish, clams, oysters, urchins, or lobsters.
Leviticus 11:10 “And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.”
No eating cats, dogs, and ferrets
Leviticus 11:27 “And whatsoever goeth upon his paws, among all manner of beasts that go on all four, those are unclean unto you: whoso toucheth their carcase shall be unclean until the even.”
No eating snails, moles, weasels, mice, rats, bats, bugs, insects, worms, spiders, roaches, etc.
Leviticus 11:28–29 “These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind, and the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.”
Don't eat fat or blood
Leviticus 3:17 “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood"
You cannot eat certain birds.
Leviticus 11:13–20 “These are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the osprey, and the vulture, and the kite after his kind; every raven after his kind; and the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, and the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl, and the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat. All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.”
If you wear ripped jeans, you're going to burn.
Leviticus 10:6 “Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people.”
Oh, yeah. You also can't wear mixed cloth, bitch.
Leviticus 19:19 “Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.”
No short haircuts
Leviticus 19:27 “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads.”
Beard required
Leviticus 19:27 “Neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.”
That tat of a cross isn't getting you extra credit, Johnny.
Leviticus 19:28 “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.”
Don't put two seeds in the same crop, 'cause it's an abomination...for some reason.
Leviticus 19:19 “Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed.”
That mixed-breed dog you have? Yeah...that'll grant you a one way ticket to hell, too.
Leviticus 19:19 “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind.”
No grudge-holding!
Leviticus 19:18 “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.”
Touch a dirty puppy? BURN!
Leviticus 5:2 “If a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him; he also shall be unclean, and guilty.”
Wait...so less church is good?
Leviticus 12:4–5 “And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.”
No alcohol in church (people probably don't do this anyw- oh wait)
Leviticus 10:9 “Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die.”
No manual labor on Saturdays.
Leviticus 23:3 “Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.”
No going to church after birth.
Leviticus 12:2 "Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean."
No tarrot cards
Leviticus 19:31 "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists..."
Pull out=die
Genesis 38:9-10 "Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; so He took his life also."
No divorce
Mark 10:9 "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
No balls=No gawd
Deuteronomy 23:1 "A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the Lord."
No jewelry
Timothy 2:9 "Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments."
If someone's attacking you, you can't grab your attacker's privates.
Deuteronomy 25:11-25:12 "If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity."
Don't fuck your wife's mom
Leviticus 20:14 "'If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you."
Don't go to church if you're Asian.
Leviticus 21:17 “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; nor his nose or eyes be flat."
Kill anyone with a different religion than Christianity
Deuteronomy 17:2-17:7
“If there is found in your midst, in any of your [a]towns, which the Lord your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, by transgressing His covenant, 3 and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host, which I have not commanded, 4 and if it is told you and you have heard of it, then you shall inquire thoroughly. Behold, if it is true and the thing certain that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, 5 then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil deed to your gates, that is, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them to [b]death. 6 On the [c]evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the [d]evidence of one witness. 7 The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst."
Don't say "Fuck you, mom!" Even if you're a rebellious teen.
"Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head."
If you've ever cheated on someone, you're going to Hell.
Leviticus 20:10 "If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the man and the woman who have committed adultery must be put to death."
If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be "cut off from their community"
"If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her menstrual period, both of them must be cut off from the community, for together they have exposed the source of her blood flow."
Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard
Leviticus 19:10 "Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God."
God hates honey.
Leviticus 2:11 "Do not use yeast in preparing any of the grain offerings you present to the LORD, because no yeast or honey may be burned as a special gift presented to the LORD."
Buying a house.
Leviticus 25:23 "The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me."
Mistreating foreigners
Leviticus 19:33-19:34 “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born”
Stand when you talk to grandpa.
Leviticus 19:32 "Stand up in the presence of the elderly, and show respect for the aged. Fear your God. I am the LORD"
Lying
Leviticus 19:11 "Do not steal. "Do not deceive or cheat one another."
Cheating
Leviticus 19:11 "Do not steal. "Do not deceive or cheat one another."
Funny how so many Christians nowadays say homosexuality is an abomination, when they are committing abominations themselves when they say this.
I'm a straight supporter of the LGBT community, and I'm proud of it. Are you, too?
Bonus! The raped person must marry their own rapist!
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
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"How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions." Just pick "A" or "B" for each question.
1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.
2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.
3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.
4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.
5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.
6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.
7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.
8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.
9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.
10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.
Scoring key:
If you answered "A" to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality -- not your superiority.
If you answered "B" to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.
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Fox News Mouthpiece WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN "christian" TALIBAN.......
These are the fundamental christians trying to create a fundamental theological nation.... Read the website and recognize that the wheels are in motion and have been since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's...
The conservative "christian" fundamentalists commit domestic terrorism because they use fear, lies, and religious propagand to further their agenda of a white dominated, conservative christian, theological nation-->which goes against our current SECULAR ideology and laws. Some of these include (and I'm sure there's more) .....
*War on women's rights to choose and control over their own bodies = SHARIA LAW
*Voter rights suppression of what they consider "second-class citizens"....ieminorities, pagans (what they consider all other so called religions), LGBT, nonbelievers, poor, homeless, elderly and disabled.
*Worker rights suppression via low/slave wages , distruction of the middle class, and dismantling of unions to oppress worker rebellion
*Religious indoctrination of our public school system to get them converted while they are young, removal of true science for creationism, pushing biblical stories into the curriculum and rewriting history to brainwash future generations.
*Pushing their religious beliefs and agenda into our SECULAR government, laws, justice system and more....
*They have a specific agenda and folks like Bush, Coulter, Santorum, Bachmann, Cruz, Paul, Perry, Abbots, Pat Robertson, and soooo many more are a part of this group. Faux, conservative media, and all the far right organizations that push agenda through lobbying, threats of killing re-elections, and lots of money help them as well.
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BUBBLEGUM GUN For years, the right wing has been equating nazism, with the left, and socialism. This is standard propaganda for Fox News and the Tea Party which both denounce Obama as a socialist and at the same time portray him visually with a Hitler mustache. Conservatives have also argued that Jared Loughner -- the shooter of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords -- was influenced by leftwing ideology because his reading list included both Das Kapital by Karl Marx and Hitler's Mein Kampf (without mentioning another book on his list, We the Living, by Ayn Rand).
The conflation of nazism and socialism has gone largely unchallenged by the media, and through repetition it is becoming almost "common knowledge" in the US, so I feel compelled to speak against it. I hope that others, especially professors who have occasion to talk about it in and out of class, will also speak against this vile propaganda.
The basis of the conflation of nazism and socialism is the term "National Socialism," a self description of the Nazis. "National Socialism" includes the word "socialism", but it is just a word. Hitler and the Nazis outlawed socialism, and executed socialists and communists en masse, even before they started rounding up Jews. In 1933, the Dachau concentration camp held socialists and leftists exclusively. The Nazis arrested more than 11,000 Germans for "illegal socialist activity" in 1936.
Nazism is a right wing ideology. It is violently racist, anti-socialist, and it targets the political left for extermination.
Now why dont you join your coward friend Alex Spec at stormfront.
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***** Hypocrite Cod
Tells you to forgive everyone, but can't even forgive Eve for eating an apple.
Nothing screams "GOD" in this world. Literally not 1 single bit of existence we have found or been able to observe has had any relation to "GOD". However, there have been religious people turning towards science in giving the name "GOD" to a particle, the God Particle.
Everything "GOD", however, actually points to simple science. "GOD" is the name we've given something we can't understand. No more, no less. To preach otherwise is taking a few steps back in our own progression.
What to know another fun tidbit? We are able to recreate all those vivid experiences that lead people to believe in god and a higher purpose at will. Yeah, turns out that a portion of our brain is responsible for all of those profits and messiahs, not some experience with "GOD."
Which leads me to a question. If GOD exists and has rules for us to live by and guidelines for us... Why does He or She or It, hide themselves from us? Why would they only communicate with a single human, and have that sole human spread their word? It's the worst possible thing you can do as a creator. The only purpose in doing that, is specifically to give an excuse for when you decide to act negatively upon your creations. I've never heard God, but I have heard countless humans. If God has demands of me, why can't God confront me?
I'd rather chase theories and ideas in science than follow some failure as you have named. If your God, like all other Gods exist, then they are not Gods worth following.?
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Seán O'Nilbud What are you going on about? The facts are clear.
Galileo's belief in the Copernican System eventually got him into trouble with the Catholic Church. The Inquisition was a permanent institution in the Catholic Church charged with the eradication of heresies. A committee of consultants declared to the Inquisition that the Copernican proposition that the Sun is the center of the universe was a heresy. Because Galileo supported the Copernican system, he was warned by Cardinal Bellarmine, under order of Pope Paul V, that he should not discuss or defend Copernican theories. In 1624, Galileo was assured by Pope Urban VIII that he could write about Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a mathematical proposition. However, with the printing of Galileo's book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was called to Rome in 1633 to face the Inquisition again. Galileo was found guilty of heresy for his Dialogue, and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life. In 1638, the Inquisition allowed Galileo to move to his home in Florence, so that he could be closer to his doctors. By that time he was totally blind. In 1642, Galileo died at his home outside Florence.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node52.html
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The Moral Crusader Idiot. Immigrants have been coming to the USA since the beginning.
I know you are stupid but illegals do not get their votes counted if they vote which they do not.
The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system that was American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad).
NOW THIS FACT WILL MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE:
In total, 74% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans voted for passage of this bill.
The House of Representatives voted 320 to 70 in favor of the act, while the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 76 to 18. In the Senate, 52 Democrats voted yes, 14 no, and 1 abstained. Of the Republicans, 24 voted yes, 3 voted no, and 1 abstained.[8] In the House, 202 Democrats voted yes, 60 voted no and 12 abstained, 117 Republicans voted yes, 10 voted no and 11 abstained. One unknown representative voted yes.
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Reagan a steaming pile
Ronald Reagan represents all of the worst elements of the American political experience of the last 50 years. All of them. He was, and always will be, nothing but a steaming hot pile of filthy hyena puke.
Intellectually, Reagan gave chimpy a run for his money. He was vacuous. He was shallow. He was incurious. He was a puppet and a door stop for a group of sick ideologues who really ran the country. He was a bad actor and foolish tool.
Ideologically, he was a hater and an imperialist and far-right loony-tune. He hated the poor. He hated gays. He hated leftists. He hated communists - and he was pretty sure you were one if you disagreed with him. He hated and he hated and he hated. Just ask his own kids. He hated them and himself and his ex-wife. Ronald Reagan was a twisted unrepentant closed-minded waste-bag hate monger. And that's just for starters.
The foreign policy of Ronald Reagan did more to impoverish and kill the poor and helpless humans of the world than any world leader before or since - with the possible exception of our Bush. Reagan just didn't give a hoot. He was going to defeat communism (which was already falling of its own weight) and he didn't care how many children were burned alive or how many people starved to death on the way. Let em die. Reagan was a friggen dirtbag.
On Reagan's watch the military budget of the U.S. grew to the proportions of a heaping pile of 10,000 week-old dead and bloated Blue Whales. And it stunk just as bad. The practice of rewarding incompetent cronies with gigantic useless contracts for unneeded military hardware was elevated to art form under Reagan. Reagan's legendary megalomania, hubris and abject ignorance led him to believe the tales of any crackpot who managed to slither past the goons who comprised his inner circle. Star-wars missiles, atomic shields, space-age death rays. You name it - that loon would fall for it - and blow billions of your tax dollars on it.
And on the domestic front - holy crap the domestic front. Ronald Reagan was a force for the rampaging evil of anti-human destructiveness. He never met a social program he didn't scorn. He never met an American in need he didn't have a bowel movement directly upon. His response to the AIDS epidemic is one of the most sickening cold-blooded expressions of pure murderous political evil in the history of the earth. Genghis Khan could only dream of such depravity and indifference to human suffering. There is so much more, but, hell, if you don't already know about this crap, then go read a book or two.
Then there was Iran-Contra - the infamous orgy of unfettered criminality at the heart of the Reagan legacy. Again, look it up. Rogues, liars, crooks, murderers and ignorant heartless scum surrounded Reagan at all times. Ali Baba would've been shamed. But Ronald Reagan was shameless.
Oh, did I mention The War on Drugs and it's ballooning of the prison/criminal industrial complex and the rise of brainless goon-like authoritarianism? Or the destruction of the modern labor movement including the cowardly firing of the Air Traffic Controllers? Or the beginnings of the current trend of packing the Judiciary with corrupt freakish pseudo-fascist stoolies? Or the repugnant rapes of Lebanon and Grenada? Or the dim-witted goofball junk science that came to known as "Reaganomics?" Or grant rigging at the Department of Housing and Urban Development? Or James Watt and the whole-hearted attempt to destroy the earth and all its inhabitants at the expense of greed mongers and corporate whores? Or the largest white collar theft in the history of planet Earth - the Savings and Loan Bailout? And on and on and on and on.
So let me conclude,
Ronald Reagan will forever be remembered as one of the most idiotic, vile, worthless leaders of any any nation in any era. He presently occupies a special place in Hell beside Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. And I promise you, they all think he's an idiot too. Screw Ronald Reagan. And then screw him again.
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***** LOL the old cannard that they are the same.
You will not see a Mullah Scalia from a dem president.
You will not see Christian Sharia from a Dem president.
PARTIES NOT THE SAME
Another MYTH.. Both parties are the same... Never have they been more different in my 60+ years nor have they been the same historically, from support for unions, safe working conditions, min wage, overtime, equal pay, child labor laws, weekends, civil rights, anti-monopoly/trust laws, Medicare, Soc. Sec., progressive taxes favored by DEMs/founding fathers, zero tax rates for the rich favored by repubs=>permanent aristocracy, unemployment compensation, education, voter suppression vs. voting rights laws, infrastructure, HS rail, green energy, clean air and water acts, regulating Wall street or fixing our failed healthcare system..
Repubs are clearly for 1/3 of one percent, that are sociopaths with their SERF wantabe's.
DEMs may not make big enough changes, but then they like the rest of the country have an anchor around their neck..Republicans and the 59% who dont bother to vote.
DEMs were against the "corporations are people" ruling, for gay rights, NOT REPUBS.
DEMs Pro Choice, not repubs.
Repubs are against facts, science and history!
Heck, Repubs are now for a theocracy!
REPUBES are for Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas
DEMS are not.
Can you imagine a Supreme court packed with more Repub judges?
Anyone saying that they are the same, speaks in complete ignorance.
THEY are NOT THE SAME!
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Eric Zetterlund PARTIES NOT THE SAME
Another MYTH.. Both parties are the same... Never have they been more different in my 60+ years nor have they been the same historically, from support for unions, safe working conditions, min wage, overtime, equal pay, child labor laws, weekends, civil rights, anti-monopoly/trust laws, Medicare, Soc. Sec., progressive taxes favored by DEMs/founding fathers, zero tax rates for the rich favored by repubs=>permanent aristocracy, unemployment compensation, education, voter suppression vs. voting rights laws, infrastructure, HS rail, green energy, clean air and water acts, regulating Wall street or fixing our failed healthcare system..
Repubs are clearly for 1/3 of one percent, that are sociopaths with their SERF wantabe's.
DEMs may not make big enough changes, but then they like the rest of the country have an anchor around their neck..Republicans and the 59% who dont bother to vote.
DEMs were against the "corporations are people" ruling, for gay rights, NOT REPUBS.
DEMs Pro Choice, not repubs.
Repubs are against facts, science and history!
Heck, Repubs are now for a theocracy!
REPUBES are for Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas
DEMS are not.
Can you imagine a Supreme court packed with more Repub judges?
Anyone saying that they are the same, speaks in complete ignorance.
THEY are NOT THE SAME!
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***** SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
In the country I live in (Canada) we do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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el80ne When I was in High School we read some of her books. That was in the early 60's. They did not make sense to me then or now.
Got a couple funnies for you.
Ayn L Rand Reviews Children’s Movies
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”
An industrious young woman neglects to charge for her housekeeping services and is rightly exploited for her naïveté. She dies without ever having sought her own happiness as the highest moral aim. I did not finish watching this movie, finding it impossible to sympathize with the main character. —No stars.
“Bambi”
The biggest and the strongest are the fittest to rule. This is the way things have always been. —Four stars.
“Old Yeller”
A farm animal ceases to be useful and is disposed of humanely. A valuable lesson for children. —Four stars.
“Lady and the Tramp”
A ridiculous movie. What could a restaurant owner possibly have to gain by giving away a perfectly good meal to dogs, when he could sell it at a reasonable price to human beings? A dog cannot pay for spaghetti, and payment is the only honest way to express appreciation for value. —One star.
“101 Dalmatians”
A wealthy woman attempts to do her impoverished school friend Anita a favor by purchasing some of her many dogs and putting them to sensible use. Her generosity is repulsed at every turn, and Anita foolishly and irresponsibly begins acquiring even more animals, none of which are used to make a practical winter coat. Altruism is pointless. So are dogs. A cat is a far more sensible pet. A cat is objectively valuable. —No stars.
“Mary Poppins”
A woman takes a job with a wealthy family without asking for money in exchange for her services. An absurd premise. Later, her employer leaves a lucrative career in banking in order to play a children’s game. —No stars.
“Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”
An excellent movie. The obviously unfit individuals are winnowed out through a series of entrepreneurial tests and, in the end, an enterprising young boy receives a factory. I believe more movies should be made about enterprising young boys who are given factories. —Three and a half stars. (Half a star off for the grandparents, who are sponging off the labor of Charlie and his mother. If Grandpa Joe can dance, Grandpa Joe can work.)
“How The Grinch Stole Christmas”
Taxation is also a form of theft. In a truly free society, citizens should pay only as much as they are willing for the services they require. —Three stars.
“Charlotte’s Web”
A farmer allows sentimental drawings by a bug to prevail over economic necessity and refuses to value his prize pig, Wilbur, by processing and selling him on the open market. Presumably, the pig still dies eventually, only without profiting his owners. The farmer’s daughter, Fern, learns nothing except how to become an unsuccessful farmer. There is a rat in this movie. I quite liked the rat. He knew how to extract value from his environment. —Two stars.
“The Muppets Take Manhattan”
This movie was a disappointment. The Muppets do not take Manhattan at all. They merely visit it. —No stars.
“Beauty and the Beast”
A young woman rejects a financially independent hunter in favor of an unemployed nobleman who lives off of the labor of others. Also, there are no trains in this movie. I did like the talking clock, who attempted to take pride in his work despite constant attacks on his dignity by the candlestick. The candlestick did not take his job seriously. —Two stars.
“The Little Mermaid”
A young woman achieves all of her goals. She finds an object of value—in this case, a broad-chested brunet man—and sacrifices as much as she believes necessary (the ocean, talking, etc.) in order to acquire him. —Four stars.
“Babe”
Another pig farmer fails to do his job. —No stars.
“Toy Story”
At last, a full-length feature about the inherent value of possessions. —Four stars.
“Garfield”
I liked this movie. Cats are inherently valuable animals. It makes sense that there should be a movie about a cat. I could demonstrate the objective value of a cat, if I wanted to. —Four stars.
“Up”
A man refuses to sell his home to serve the convenience of others, which is his right as an American citizen. He meets a dog, which neither finds food for him nor protects him from danger. He would have been better off with a cat. There are no cats in this movie. —Two stars.
“Frozen”
An exceptional woman foolishly allows her mooching family members to keep her from ruling a kingdom of ice in perfect solitude. She is forced to use her unique powers to provide free entertainment for peasants, without compensation. I liked the snowman, when he sang. —One star.
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whyamimrpink78 Monday, June 11, 2012
5 Myths About Canada’s Health Care System
The truth may surprise you about international health care
By Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., M.S.
AARP Newsletter, April 16, 2012
Myth #1: Canadians are flocking to the United States to get medical care.
How many times have you heard that Canadians, frustrated by long wait times and rationing where they live, come to the United States for medical care?
I don’t deny that some well-off people might come to the United States for medical care. If I needed a heart or lung transplant, there’s no place I’d rather have it done. But for the vast, vast majority of people, that’s not happening.
The most comprehensive study I’ve seen on this topic — it employed three different methodologies, all with solid rationales behind them — was published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs.
Source: “Phantoms in the Snow: Canadians’ Use of Health Care Services in the United States,” Health Affairs, May 2002.
The authors of the study started by surveying 136 ambulatory care facilities near the U.S.-Canada border in Michigan, New York and Washington. It makes sense that Canadians crossing the border for care would favor places close by, right? It turns out, however, that about 80 percent of such facilities saw, on average, fewer than one Canadian per month; about 40 percent had seen none in the preceding year.
Then, the researchers looked at how many Canadians were discharged over a five-year period from acute-care hospitals in the same three states. They found that more than 80 percent of these hospital visits were for emergency or urgent care (that is, tourists who had to go to the emergency room). Only about 20 percent of the visits were for elective procedures or care.
Next, the authors of the study surveyed America’s 20 “best” hospitals — as identified by U.S. News & World Report — on the assumption that if Canadians were going to travel for health care, they would be more likely to go to the best-known and highest-quality facilities. Only one of the 11 hospitals that responded saw more than 60 Canadians in a year. And, again, that included both emergencies and elective care.
Finally, the study’s authors examined data from the 18,000 Canadians who participated in the National Population Health Survey. In the previous year, 90 of those 18,000 Canadians had received care in the United States; only 20 of them, however, reported going to the United States expressively for the purpose of obtaining care.
Myth #2: Doctors in Canada are flocking to the United States to practice.
Every time I talk about health care policy with physicians, one inevitably tells me of the doctor he or she knows who ran away from Canada to practice in the United States. Evidently, there’s a general perception that practicing medicine in the United States is much more satisfying than in Canada.
Problem is, it’s just not so. Consider this chart:
Source: “2009 International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians in Eleven Countries,” The Commonwealth Fund, November 2009.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information has been tracking doctors’ destinations since 1992. Since then, 60 percent to 70 percent of the physicians who emigrate have headed south of the border. In the mid-1990s, the number of Canadian doctors leaving for the United States spiked at about 400 to 500 a year. But in recent years this number has declined, with only 169 physicians leaving for the States in 2003, 138 in 2004 and 122 both in 2005 and 2006. These numbers represent less than 0.5 percent of all doctors working in Canada.
So when emigration “spiked,” 400 to 500 doctors were leaving Canada for the United States. There are more than 800,000 physicians in the United States right now, so I’m skeptical that every doctor knows one of those émigrés. But look closely at the tan line in the following chart, which represents the net loss of doctors to Canada.
Source: Canadian Institute for Health Information
In 2004, net emigration became net immigration. Let me say that again. More doctors were moving into Canada than were moving out.
Myth #3: Canada rations health care; that’s why hip replacements and cataract surgeries happen faster in the United States.
When people want to demonize Canada’s health care system — and other single-payer systems, for that matter — they always end up going after rationing, and often hip replacements in particular.
Take Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, for example. A couple of years ago he took to the House floor to tell his colleagues:
“I just hit 62, and I was just reading that in Canada [if] I got a bad hip I wouldn’t be able to get that hip replacement that [Rep. Dan Lungren] got, because I’m too old! I’m an old geezer now and it’s not worth a government bureaucrat to pay me to get my hip fixed.”
Sigh.
This has been debunked so often, it’s tiring. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, concluded: “At least 63 percent of hip replacements performed in Canada last year [2008] ... were on patients age 65 or older.” And more than 1,500 of those, it turned out, were on patients over 85.
The bottom line: Canada doesn’t deny hip replacements to older people.
But there’s more.
Know who gets most of the hip replacements in the United States? Older people.
Know who pays for care for older people in the United States? Medicare.
Know what Medicare is? A single-payer system.
Myth #4: Canada has long wait times because it has a single-payer system.
The wait times that Canada might experience are not caused by its being a single-payer system.
Wait times aren’t like cancer. We know what causes wait times; we know how to fix them. Spend more money.
Our single-payer system, which is called Medicare (see above), manages not to have the “wait times” issue that Canada’s does. There must, therefore, be some other reason for the wait times. There is, of course. It’s this:
Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
In 1966, Canada implemented a single-payer health care system, which is also known as Medicare. Since then, as a country, Canadians have made a conscious decision to hold down costs. One of the ways they do that is by limiting supply, mostly for elective things, which can create wait times. Their outcomes are otherwise comparable to ours.
Please understand, the wait times could be overcome. Canadians could spend more. They don’t want to. We can choose to dislike wait times in principle, but they are a byproduct of Canada’s choice to be fiscally conservative.
Yes, they chose this. In a rational world, those who are concerned about health care costs and what they mean to the economy might respect that course of action. But instead, they attack the system.
Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t.
This one’s a little bit tricky. The truth is, Canada may “ration” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost.
An 11-country survey carried out in 2010 by the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based health policy foundation, found that adults in the United States are by far the most likely to go without care because of cost. In fact, 42 percent of the Americans surveyed did not express confidence that they would be able to afford health care if seriously ill.
Source: “How Health Insurance Design Affects Access to Care and Costs, by Income, in Eleven Countries,” Health Affairs, November 2010.
Further, about a third of the Americans surveyed reported that, in the preceding year, they didn’t go to the doctor when sick, didn’t get recommended care when needed, didn’t fill a prescription or skipped doses of medications because of cost.
Finally, about one in five of the Americans surveyed had struggled to pay or were unable to pay their medical bills in the preceding year. That was more than twice the percentage found in any of the other 10 countries.
And remember: We’re spending way more on health care than any other country, and for all that money we’re getting at best middling results.
So feel free to have a discussion about the relative merits of the U.S. and Canadian health care systems. Just stick to the facts.
Aaron E. Carroll frequently blogs about this topic for The Incidental Economist and is the coauthor of Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health.
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Fox News Mouthpiece Christians are “brutally repressive. Christianity is a comprehensive, totalitarian, supremacist doctrine, especially bad for women, for homosexuals, for Jews, other minority, religious faiths, well, pretty much just about for all human beings, actually.
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From the Hamas Charter: • “Israel will exist...until Islam will obliterate it” (Preamble) • “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them” (Article 7) • “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad” (Article 13) • “[Peace] initiatives...are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement” (Article 13)
Hamas charter in full:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
A little history for those that have forgotten or do not care to know their history:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/07/18/clifford-d-may-sixty-six-years-later-too-many-arabs-still-dream-of-slaughtering-israels-jews/
The objective of both the PLO and especially Hamas is still one prohibited under international law, and a crime, i.e. genocide. Until those Charters have changed, that still stands. It does not help the Palestinian people one bit. International Aid can not continue to prop up such government. It is nice of Qatar to come to the aid of the Muslim family members, and set up a fund to pay Hamas government salaries. That does not create a Palestinian State, an economy, jobs for people, a national conscience as a people. On the contrary. Other aid props up others, such as UNWRA, which has incentives to keep Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan in the camps, with no way up and out. Allowing integration, assimilation, citizenship where they reside, ownership of property, would but UNWRA - that is a 30000 person payroll, out of business. People who are being held captive s so that others may enrich themselves, do not work, are not educated, are not part of the fabric of society and the economy, lose whatever skills and abilities they have, forever., Adding to that a reputation of terrorism and criminality is not helpful.
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Max Atwood I will let Spindell speak for me:
Nuclear Musings
Published 1, October 19, 2013
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
It has always seemed to me that the use of nuclear energy is a bad idea given the current technology. My opinion is perhaps formed because I was in school during the 1950’s and due to the “Cold War” and the bomb tests, there developed in most of us, a deep fear of nuclear annihilation. I can remember watching in fascinated fear, in 1952, as they exploded a Hydrogen Bomb at Eniwetok, one of the Marshall Islands. The blast was covered on TV as I guess a reassurance to the American People of the power and might of our government and to give us a feeling of safety from those “Commies” in the USSR. Being eight years old at the time this demonstration of US power was not comforting in the slightest. We had “duck and cover” exercises in Elementary School, where we would go under our desks and cover our eyes in case of a nuclear attack. Given the actual nuclear explosions I had witnessed on TV, the idea that “duck and cover” would save me cast a skeptical suspicion in my eight year old mind.
As I grew I learned that beyond the immediate effect of a nuclear blast, the subsequent radiation was even more dangerous. Radiation poisoning could maim you and it could kill you in a slow, lingering death. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings did more than just kill many people. Beyond the maiming of the immediate victims who survived, we learned about the rates of cancer which were off the charts, especially in the infants of pregnant women. As the threat of nuclear destruction faded, the idea of radiation poisoning was nevertheless present as the United States began using nuclear power and a large industry sprang up around it. The industry was fostered by the then named Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was soon in thrall of the industry it was supposed to regulate. As with cigarette smoking the stories of rising cancer rates were downplayed by the AEC and the “nuclear industry. The AEC has now become the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) because the AEC had developed the reputation as an industry shill, rather than regulator. This is hardly a surprise because it seems that all government regulation today is in the hands of industry lobbyists and an exchange program where the regulators find jobs with the industry they regulate. The “revolving door”.This Wiki article on nuclear power is rather even handed in its approach, but will supply you with all the background you might need on nuclear power plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant One item from it sets up my thoughts for today:
“In many countries, plants are often located on the coast, in order to provide a ready source of cooling water for the essential service water system. As a consequence the design needs to take the risk of flooding and tsunamis into account. The World Energy Council (WEC) argues disaster risks are changing and increasing the likelihood of disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, ?ooding.[29] High temperatures, low precipitation levels and severe droughts may lead to fresh water shortages.[29] Seawater is corrosive and so nuclear energy supply is likely to be negatively affected by the fresh water shortage.[29] This generic problem may become increasingly significant over time.[29] Failure to calculate the risk of flooding correctly lead to a Level 2 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale during the 1999 Blayais Nuclear Power Plant flood,[30] while flooding caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami lead to the Fukushima I nuclear accidents.[31]
The design of plants located in seismically active zones also requires the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to be taken into account. Japan, India, China and the USA are among the countries to have plants in earthquake-prone regions. Damage caused to Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant during the 2007 Chuetsu offshore earthquake[32][33] underlined concerns expressed by experts in Japan prior to the Fukushima accidents, who have warned of a genpatsu-shinsai (domino-effect nuclear power plant earthquake disaster).[34]”
In this time of global warning worries, with the distinct signs of a rising sea level, nevertheless the economics are such that the optimal way to build nuclear plants is by large bodies of water, preferably the ocean. Which brings me to the disaster at the Fukishima Nuclear Plant in Japan:
“The Fukushima nuclear disaster illustrated the dangers of building multiple nuclear reactor units close to one another. This proximity triggered the parallel, chain-reaction accidents that led to hydrogen explosions damaging reactor buildings and water draining from open-air spent fuel pools — a situation that was potentially more dangerous than the loss of reactor cooling itself. Because of the closeness of the reactors, Plant Director Masao Yoshida “was put in the position of trying to cope simultaneously with core meltdowns at three reactors and exposed fuel pools at three units”.
Some more about Fukushima:
“The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Fukushima Dai-ichi was an energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, initiated primarily by the tsunami of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011.[5] The damage caused by the tsunami produced equipment failures, and without this equipment a Loss of Coolant Accident followed with nuclear meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials beginning on March 12.[6] It is the largest nuclear disaster” since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale,[7] releasing an estimated 10 to 30% of the radiation of the Chernobyl accident.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster
A September 1, 2013 story from the BBC related that the radiation levels around the Fukushima Nuclear Plant are now 18 times higher than was initially thought. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23918882
“The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts. The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.
In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour. The plant has seen a series of water leaks and power failures. The 2011 tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down. The damage from the tsunami has necessitated the constant pumping of water to cool the reactors. This is believed to be the fourth major leak from storage tanks at Fukushima since 2011 and the worst so far in terms of volume.”
It doesn’t surprise me that these new revelations have come out re-estimating the radiation levels at Fukishima. I am in the camp one could describe as skeptical and/or hostile to the nuclear industry. However, I’ve supplied enough information in the various links above and below for people to come to a different conclusion. Indeed, I realize that nuclear power has many beneficial pluses to it use. My specific worries can be classified as its danger to the surrounding community, the long lasting after effects of nuclear radiation and the fact that industry invariably co-opts its regulators. When these factors are put together with the business imperative, which must always be to continually raise profitability, I worry.
“Nuclear power plants are some of the most sophisticated and complex energy systems ever designed.[13] Any complex system, no matter how well it is designed and engineered, cannot be deemed failure-proof.[14] Veteran anti-nuclear activist and author Stephanie Cooke has argued:
The reactors themselves were enormously complex machines with an incalculable number of things that could go wrong. When that happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, another fault line in the nuclear world was exposed. One malfunction led to another, and then to a series of others, until the core of the reactor itself began to melt, and even the world’s most highly trained nuclear engineers did not know how to respond. The accident revealed serious deficiencies in a system that was meant to protect public health and safety.[15]
The 1979 Three Mile Island accident inspired Perrow’s book Normal Accidents, where a nuclear accident occurs, resulting from an unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system. TMI was an example of a normal accident because it was “unexpected, incomprehensible, uncontrollable and unavoidable”.[16]
Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a consequence of the system’s immense complexity. Such modern high-risk systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he termed a ‘normal accident’. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to abandon such technology entirely.[17] .
A fundamental issue contributing to a nuclear power system’s complexity is its extremely long lifetime. The timeframe from the start of construction of a commercial nuclear power station through the safe disposal of its last radioactive waste, may be 100 to 150 years.[13]”
We live in an age where the “Captains of Industry” believe that efficient management is one that lays off workers, cuts wages and looks to cost savings of all kinds in order to increase profitability. Why would we expect that the nuclear industry is immune to the management fashion of the day? These plants are admittedly among the most complex power delivering entities on the planet. There have been innumerable accidents, with disastrous consequences, that have occurred through the years some of which are referenced in the links I’ve supplied. My position is that I could be open to the idea of using nuclear energy for power, providing that I could be certain that safeguards exist. I don’t believe they currently do exist, despite reassurances from the industry and the NRC. Currently, my two children, my grandchildren and my beloved mother-in-law live in close proximity to a nuclear power plant, Indian Point, in New York. A little history of this plant impacts my concerns for their safety:
“According to the New York Times, the Indian Point plant “has encountered a string of accidents and mishaps since its beginnings, and has appeared on the federal list of the nation’s worst nuclear power plants”.[10] A 2003 report commissioned by then Governor George Pataki concluded that the “current radiological response system and capabilities are not adequate to…protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point”.[11] On March 10, 2009 the Indian Point Power Plant was awarded the fifth consecutive top safety rating for annual operations by the Federal regulators. According to the Hudson Valley Journal News, the plant had shown substantial improvement in its “safety culture” in the previous two years.[12]”
This is a history of the nuclear incidents at Indian Point, on the important Hudson River, thus far:
• In 1973, five months after Indian Point 2 opened, the plant was shut down when engineers discovered buckling in the steel liner of the concrete dome in which the nuclear reactor is housed.[10]
• On October 17, 1980,[13] 100,000 gallons of Hudson River water leaked into the Indian Point 2 containment building from the fan cooling unit, undetected by a safety device designed to detect hot water. The flooding, covering the first 9 feet of the reactor vessel, was discovered when technicians entered the building. Two pumps which should have removed the water were found to be inoperative. NRC proposed a $2,100,000 fine for the incident.[14]
• There was intense scrutiny of the Indian Point plant between 1993 and 1997, when it was on the Federal list of the nation’s worst nuclear power plants.[15]
• In February 2000, the most serious incident at the plant occurred, when a small radioactive leak from a steam generator tube forced the plant to close for 11 months.[10]
• In 2001, a series of leaks sprung up in non-nuclear parts of the plant.[10]
• In 2005, Entergy workers while digging discovered a small leak in a spent fuel pool. Water containing tritium and strontium-90 was leaking through a crack in the pool building “and then finding its way into the nearby Hudson River.” Workers were able to keep the fuel rods “safely covered” despite the leak.[16] On March 22, 2006 The New York Times also reported finding radioactive nickel-63 and strontium in groundwater on site.[17]
• In 2007 a transformer at Unit 3 caught fire, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission raised its level of inspections, because the plant had experienced many unplanned shutdowns. According to The New York Times, Indian Point “has a history of transformer problems”.[4]
• On April 23, 2007, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined the owner of the Indian Point nuclear plant $130,000 for failing to meet a deadline for a new emergency siren plan. The 150 sirens at the plant are meant to alert residents within 10 miles to a plant emergency. Since 2008, a Rockland County based private company has taken over responsibility for the infrastructure used to trigger and maintain the ATI siren system. The sirens, once plagued with failures, have functioned nearly flawlessly ever since.[18]
• On January 7, 2010, NRC inspectors reported that an estimated 600,000 gallons of mildly radioactive steam was intentionally vented to the atmosphere after an automatic shutdown of Unit 2. After the vent, one of the vent valves unintentionally remained slightly open for two days. The levels of tritium in the steam were within the allowable safety limits defined in NRC standards.[19]
• On November 7, 2010, an explosion occurred in the main transformer for Indian Point 2, spilling oil into the Hudson River.[20] The owner of the Indian Point nuclear plant later agreed to pay a $1.2 million penalty for the transformer explosion.[4]
• In the middle of February [2013], employee error caused an accidental shutdown of Reactor Two. This incident released no radiation.
Now these incidents have occurred at a nuclear plant that has a “relatively safe” history, but from my perspective it remains a potential threat to those I love. There are also some who say that nuclear plants contaminate the surrounding area and raise cancer risks. This has devolved in a “he said, she said” argument between environmentalists and the industry, with the NRC siding with industry. There is another Indian Point safety issue to be mulled:
“Indian Point stores used fuel rods in two spent fuel pools at the facility.[16] According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Indian Point spent fuel pools, which contain more nuclear material than the reactors, “have no containment structure”.[28] While the spent fuel pools at Indian Point are not stored under a containment dome like the reactor, they are contained within a 40-foot-deep pool and submerged under 27 feet of water. The spent fuel pools at Indian Point are made of concrete walls that are four to six feet wide with a half-inch thick stainless steel inner liner.[29][30] According to Jonathan Alter, the pools are located in bedrock, not above-ground as at many other plants including the Japanese ones.[31]”
And then:
“In 2008 researchers from Columbia University‘s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have located a previously unknown active seismic zone running from Stamford, Connecticut, to the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill, New York – the intersection of the Stamford-Peekskill line with the well known Ramapo Fault – which passes less than a mile north of the Indian Point nuclear power plant.[35] The Ramapo Fault is the longest fault in the Northeast, but scientists dispute how active this roughly 200 million-year-old fault really is. Many earthquakes in the state’s surprisingly varied seismic history are believed to have occurred on or near it. Visible at ground level, the fault line likely extends as deep as nine miles below the surface.[36]
Indian Point was built to withstand an earthquake of 6.1 on the Richter scale, according to a company spokesman.[37] Entergy executives have also noted “that Indian Point had been designed to withstand an earthquake much stronger than any on record in the region, though not one as powerful as the quake that rocked Japan”.[38]”
So in the end “you pays your money and you takes your choice”, as the old canard goes. My choice is that nuclear power comes at too great a potential cost to be relied on as the power source of the future, given current technology. There are semi valid arguments that it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere and that it helps keep energy costs down. The fact is, that all things considered, these plants are quite costly to build and maintain. The plants are expected to last 100 to 150 years because of both initial cost and the need to clean up the nuclear waste produced. The question also comes about as to the cost both financial an physical of the disposal of nuclear waste. I concede that neither do I have a scientific bent, nor am I an expert. I further concede that there are points to be made that favor nuclear energy used as a power source. Nevertheless, in my opinion the downside exceeds the benefits. Where do you stand?
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniwetok
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
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Wordy Birds LOL fission, fusion, thorium , molten salt whatever. SAFE DOSE
The real choice is between deadly energy that is not renewable and life sustaining energy that is renewable.
Using a false statement in a false equivalence is also brazen, like Clapper “telling the least falsehood available” under oath.
First of all, federal regulations allow the daily release of radioactive steam from nuclear power plants:
Many people do not realize that every nuclear power reactor dumps radioactive water, scatters radioactive particles, and disperses radioactive gases as part of its routine, everyday operation. It doesn’t take an accident. Federal regulations permit these radioactive releases.
(Beyond Nuclear, http://www.beyondnuclear.org/pamphlets/ ). That corrupt practice happens even though there is no such thing as a safe dose level:
The U.S. Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiations concludes that, despite some evidence of a partial repair mechanism, recent low-dose radiation data “do not contradict the hypothesis, at least with respect to cancer induction and hereditary genetic effects, that the frequency of such effects increases with low-level radiation as a linear, non-threshold function of the dose.” (National Research Council BEIR V 1990)
A panel from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) charged to investigate the dangers of low-energy, low-dose ionizing radiation has concluded, “that it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers… (BIER VII, 2005)
(No Safe Dose http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/radiation-and-health/NO_Safe_Dose1.pdf )
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bluesrockfan36 No they are about forcing you to be serf bubba.
Here is the libertarian platform in America. This is the K0CH plan if they get enough governors and the presidency. Their words not mine:
• We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
Every single one of these ideas is rooted in John Birch Society dogma. His sons are just expanding capacity for them now, not abandoning their principles.
Keep this list handy. You're going to need it in the days to come.
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SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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Tubemax68 PARTIES ARE NOT THE SAME
May 27, 2015 12:35 PM
The Tired Old “Both Sides Getting More Extreme” Meme
By Ed Kilgore
In my recent book and elsewhere, I’ve noted that the meta-narrative Republicans were promoting—and much of the MSM was echoing—during the 2014 midterms was that the Great Big Moderate Adults of the GOP had gotten the crazy extremist Tea People under control, and were ready to govern in a serious way that Serious People could appreciate. An important sub-narrative to the completely phony Republican Shift to the Center was that Democrats were moving to the left so fast that they’d probably start singing the Internationale at party events before long.
A lot of people who don’t completely buy the GOP Shift to the Center are happy to promote the false equivalency classic of Everybody’s Polarizing at Exactly the Same Pace. But there’s one species of observers who are deeply invested in the Democratic Lurch to the Left meme: Republican “moderates” who spend a fair amount of time criticizing their zany brethren and need an excuse to reassume the Party Yoke when elections come around.
Peter Wehner is one such person, and so he pens the classic so’s-your-old-man-and-actually-maybe-your-old-man’s-worse op-ed for the New York Times. Ignoring the fact that most actual lefty Democrats think Barack Obama is too much like Bill Clinton, Wehner’s case almost entirely depends on contrasting the noble centrist Big Dog (who, of course, conservatives denounced as a godless socialist when he was actually in office) with the left-bent Obama.
And it’s a really terrible argument. Exhibit one for Wehner involves Clinton’s support for three-strikes-and-you’re-out and 100,000 cops, as though they are the same thing, with Eric Holder’s de-incarceration commitment. Keep up, Pete: Clinton, along with two-thirds of the Republican presidential field, has called for a reversal of “mass incarceration” policies. It’s not an ideological move in either direction so much as a rare and belated bipartisan recognition of what does and doesn’t work.
Exhibit two is welfare reform, and aside from ignoring everything Clinton did on low-income economic policy other than signing the 1996 welfare law, Wehner blandly accepts the race-drenched lie—and he’s smart enough to know that it is indeed widely interpreted to be a lie—from the 2012 Romney campaign that Obama has “loosened welfare-to-work requirements.” Then he tries to pivot to a contrast of Clinton’s shutdown of the “welfare entitlement” with Obama’s creation of a health care entitlement—without noting that Clinton had a health care proposal that was distinctly more “liberal” than Obama’s. Pretty big omission, I’d say.
It gets worse. Wehner suggests that unlike Clinton Obama wants to boost taxes on the wealthy, which conveniently ignores Clinton’s first budget. Speaking of the budget, Obama’s fiscal record is contrasted with Clinton’s without noting that Obama inherited not only a huge deficit but the worst economy since the 1930s. Wehner makes a fact-free assertion that Obama isn’t as friendly towards U.S. allies as Clinton was. And in a telling maneuver, he suddenly shifts the contrast from Clinton-versus-Obama to Clinton-versus-Clinton in mentioning the dispute over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where HRC has been “non-committal.” Well, the crazy lefty Barack Obama hasn’t been “non-committal,” has he? Yes, a majority of congressional Democrats oppose him on TPP. But a majority of congressional Democrats also opposed Clinton on NAFTA and GATT, and denied him “fast-track” trade negotiating authority. Plus ca change….
Nonetheless, Wehner stumbles on to his pre-fab conclusion:
The Democratic Party is now a pre-Bill Clinton party, the result of Mr. Obama’s own ideological predilections and the coalition he has built.
In the very next breath he acknowledges that on the one issue where the Democratic Party really has “moved to the left,” same-sex marriage, the country has moved with it (and the “pre-Bill Clinton” Democratic Party had to move as well). And then he leaps to the circular argument that Republicans must be better representing the “center” of public opinion, because they’re doing so well in midterms!
Well, Pete, guess you have to take the position that makes it possible for you to spend so much time calling out the crazy people of your party. But the facts are not friendly to your argument.
Ed Kilgore edits the Political Animal blog and is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is managing editor for the Democratic Strategist, a weekly columnist at Talking Points Memo, and the author of Election 2014: Why Republicans Swept the Midterms, recently published by the University of Pennsylvania Press
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/the_tired_old_both_sides_getti055757.php
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***** GOD THE ABORTIONIST
Dear Forced Birther...
Your God Is Not Pro Life
You might find that statement surprising, but I know this from your own holy book. Despite what you may have been told, the Bible is not a pro-life document. It is, in many parts, pro-death. In one of the first stories in the Bible, God murders millions of people through a global flood — including born and unborn children. Unborn children — the ones you fight for. God only wanted to get rid of them.
Later in your holy book God commands the death of nation after nation because they happen to inhabit the land he plans to give the Israelites
(Josh 7-9). He commands Israel to kill women and children (1 Sam 15).
When he wanted to make a point to the Egyptians, he murdered all the firstborn sons of Egypt. Innocent children. And when King David killed a man and slept with his wife, God punished him by killing his unborn child.
This same God does nothing while billions of people throughout
history have been starved, drowned, raped and murdered. He sits on the sidelines and watches.
That is not a God who is pro-life!
On top of all that, at least 25% of all pregnancies end in “natural” abortion — which you believe your God either designed or actively performed — an act you consider murder.
No, your God is not pro-life. By your own standards, he is a murderer — the most prolific abortionist of all time.
So don’t tell us you base your morality on the Bible or on the character of God. Don’t tell us you’re sent from your God to protect the lives of the innocent. Despite what your pastor says, your God is not pro-life. He has been killing, maiming, and letting people suffer for ages. You’re pro-life because, like most humans, you value human life.
I also value human life, but it has nothing to do with supernatural beings.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2009/07/your-god-isnt-pro-life/
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***** CHRISTMAS PAGAN HOLIDAY
Jewish angels and Roman gods: The ancient mythological origins of Christmas - Salon.com
That’s a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn’t refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?
Nugent: One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god–even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.
The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.
Why were they added to the Christian story?
Nugent: Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”–they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when – Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection.
Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.
But Matthew and Luke think that the sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us learned it.
Why didn’t the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions?
Nugent: They did, some. This is called the “orthodox corruption of scripture.” But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.
I was raised that the bible was the literally perfect, “inerrant” word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question this point of view.
Nugent: Which Bible?! There are thousands of manuscript variations. Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond the issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.
Ok. Back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love with most is angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?
Nugent: Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn’t get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It’s all about angels.
What are angels in these stories? Who are they?
Nugent: The Bible calls them the sons of God, the Divine Council. The word used for God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Elohim, is plural implying a family of deities. Angels are the lesser gods of the deposed pantheon of ancient Israel. They are under the rulership of Yahweh. Together with Yahweh they are part of Elohim, a plural word that we translate “God” in the book of Genesis. Elohim/God says “Let us make humans in our image.” Christians understand this to refer to the trinity, but that is a later interpretation. These angels came from the ancient pantheons of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many of these gods come from stars. There is a strong astral dimension. “Heavenly Hosts” are stars.
The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically: Gabriel. Is he the archangel?
Nugent: Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside of the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means “Strong One of El.” He is first named in Daniel.
f you go into an Eastern Orthodox church you have two icons on the north and south. Michael is on the North to fight with Satan who lives there. Gabriel is on the south. He is more like what the angels originally were, which is messengers of the gods. That is what angel means. The idea that God has a special messenger is exactly what we read about in the Middle Eastern mythologies. Each of the earlier gods has his own special messenger. Enki, who becomes Yaweh, has Isimud. The goddess Inana has Ninshubur. Each high god will have an envoy or assistant, who is a lesser god. The angel of the lord is the same thing. The distinction between angels and gods came later.
So Gabriel is a star person? Or one of those semi-divine descendants of gods and women.
Nugent: He is one of the gods who would come down to earth.
Why do you say that?
Nugent: The offspring of the gods mating with women are called Gaborim–from the same root as Gabriel. In the second century, Gabriel appears in the Epistula Apostolorum. It talks about Jesus and these secret teachings that he gave to his apostles after the resurrection. One of the secrets is that he is actually Gabriel. After Gabriel took on flesh and united with Mary, then he becomes Jesus. The idea that Christ was an angel was extremely popular in the early church. Later we find this really strict separation between humans and angels; between gods and angels. (more)
We have time for just one more favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.
Nugent: The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (the better translations don’t say in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.
Are you assuming that this story is historical?
Nugent: Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don’t always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.
My former fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?
Nugent: We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.
This interview first appeared at the Huffington Post, December 25, 2008.
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/12/jewish_angels_and_roman_gods_the_ancient_mythological_origins_of_christmas_partner/
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Deluded libertarians and the K0CH party are kissin cousins.
REICH WING LIBERTARIAN PLATFORM
(REICH WING GOP PLATFORM IN THE NEXT POST)
• We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
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EAS NJ The history of Ronald Reagan should be written that he was nothing more than a tool to harm the nation. He tripled our debt, he sold weapons to enemies and he started the war against the nation by bringing in trickle down. The man is a disgrace.
Since Reagan the Americans have suffered.
Republicans and those who vote Republicans are nothing more than tories, red coats, the buffoons and suckers who kiss rich man's ass and exist for no other reason than to kiss rich man's ass. It's obscene and it's worse than pornography.
Dispel the Reagan myth. Multiple tax increases, a balloted budget, giant increase to government and deficits. Reagan beyond being a failure as a President was someone that should have been arrested for crimes against humanity for what he did in central america.
Reagan was the first president to politicize the CIA. He told the CIA to lie to Congress by telling Congress that the Soviet Union was a very wealthy country, so he can con money out of Congress.
The Soviet Union was on it's way to a collapse long before Reagan took office. Kruschev already told Nixon the model in the Soviet Union was not working.
Mikhail Gorbachev spoke in a US community, one of only two communities he gave a speech at in the United States. At the speech, Gorbachev blew the Reagan myth out of the waters. Gorbachev blamed himself for not acting quick enough to transform the former Soviet Union into a new model.
The Cold War was long gone and over before Reagan came onto the scene. The Soviet Union knew it was a matter of time. It was Reagan who lied, nothing new there, lied about the economic conditions in the former Soviet Union.
I have heard many Russians say it was the Beatles that taught them about freedom and kept the ideas alive until they could throw off the regime.
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Ambassador of Truth CHRISTIAN TERROR
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), also known as the Lord's Resistance Movement, is a militant movement which is "Christianist, stated goals include ruling according to the Ten Commandments northern Uganda and South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and in 2007 it was reported that it was in Central African Republic.
The LRA has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation,child-sex slavery, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.
And that's not including things like the neo-nazi movements across Europe who have, for example, attacked 12 mosques in Sweden for their ideology.
There is something fundamentally wrong in the world and it's leading people to ever more extreme dogmas.
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I voted for Bernie in the primary.
But I did not whine and cry and let the country go to Hitler and his minions because I my preferred candidate lost.
FACTS count:
Donald Drumpf a man who opened his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists” bested Mitt Romney’s share of the Latino vote by 8 percentage points. He performed better among black voters than his 2012 predecessor, and he swept four Rust Belt states that President Barack Obama carried twice ? Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin under a harsher economy than we face today. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which should matter, but does not.
The exit polls provide some clarity: A significant chunk of Obama voters flipped to Drumpf. Drumpf won 10 percent of voters who approve of Obama’s presidency and 23 percent of voters who think the next president should “be more liberal,” according to CNN data. Drumpf significantly outperformed Romney among union households. He did 14 points better than Romney among whites without a college degree, according to The New York Times, and 16 points better among households with less than $30,000 in income. The Drumpf Democrat turns out not to be a myth, but a meaningful constituency that just cost Clinton the presidency.
Bernie whiners, Reagan Dems and the rest who did not vote were enough to give away the election.
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The only thing she did wrong was apologize.
Abortion Super Parks
It's way too easy to get sidetracked into a discussion about exemptions for rape, incest, and the life or health of the woman, or into quibbling about Planned Parenthood's functions, and that's exactly how the anti-choicers want it. When we get swept into harping about the worst-case scenarios, we miss the point that abortion is a fundamental right for EVERY woman, regardless of the circumstances.
ABORTION SUPER PARK
I don't care if Planned Parenthood provides nothing BUT abortion services. I don't care if it's a million-story abortion superpark with abortion waterslides and an abortion electrical parade.
Abortion is legal.
ABORTION IS LEGAL.
If I read one more 'defense' of Planned Parenthood that says "it's not JUST abortions!" or "only 5% of what they do is abortion! And abortions aren't federally funded!" I'm going to abort myself.
Abortion is legal, culturally necessary, and good for humanity. It has been and will be practiced for millennia.
It is essential. It is a fact. By minimizing, denying or apologizing for this fact, you are allowing these venal anti-woman Nazis to frame this debate and continue to chip away at this essential right.
It is a fact. It is a right.
Demand it, fight for it, and for the sake of the women who have given their lives to defend it, stop apologizing for it.
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SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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Study: KXL Pipeline Would Raise U.S. Gas Prices |
Consumer Watchdog, a nationally recognized nonprofit consumer group, has reviewed corporate, industry and government data and found that pipeline developers and the Canadian government intend to use the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to raise the price of Canadian tar sands oil on the global market by shipping oil directly to the Gulf. This would raise U.S. gas prices in the Midwest by up to 40 cents a gallon.
“Keystone XL is not an economic benefit to Americans who will see higher gas prices and bear all the risks of the pipeline,” said report author Judy Dugan. “The pipeline is being built through America, but not for Americans.”
Key findings from the report:
- Drivers, especially in the Midwest, would pay 20 cents to 40 cents more at the pump if the disputed pipeline were built, as the current discount of up to $30 a barrel for Canadian oil disappears.
- The true goal of multinational oil companies and Canadian politicians backing the pipeline is to reach export outlets outside the U.S. for tar sands oil and refined fuels, which would drive up the oil’s price.
- With U.S. oil production rising fast, any “energy security” benefit for the U.S. would vanish as American oil output exceeds that of Saudi Arabia in about 2020, according to the International Energy Agency.
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If you vote K0CH then you want the following:
This is a manifesto (The K0CHs wrote this for the Libertarian party platform) of what David and Charles Koch expect to receive in return for their large investment in American politics.
• We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
Every single one of these ideas is rooted in John Birch Society dogma. His sons are just expanding capacity for them now, not abandoning their principles.
Keep this list handy. You're going to need it in the days to come.
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Alex Spec Nazi boy try some facts:
It is often believed that the Bible gives absolute religious freedom to everyone. Most of the Christians in the United States and in the West think that the freedom of choice and speech that they have comes originally from the Bible. Let’s just see how accurate this myth really is.
In the Old Testament:
Let us look at Deuteronomy 13:6-9 “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying: Let us go and worship other gods (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other, or gods of other religions), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people.”
Also let us look at Deuteronomy 17:3-5 “And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens, …..and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die.”
2 Chronicles 15:13 “All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.”
In the New Testament by Jesus and Paul:
Jesus:
Note: Please pay close attention to my red emphasis below.
Let us look at what Jesus said in the New Testament in context:
Matthew 15:1-9
1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked,
2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.‘
5 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’
6he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
7You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 ” ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'”
There are few points to notice here:
1- Notice in verse 3, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for breaking the Commands of GOD Almighty.
2- In verse 4, he used the cursing of parents’ punishment as an example. The context, however, is not limited to just this example!
3- In verses 7,8 and 9, he used a quote from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, to further prove that they are not following the Commands of GOD Almighty.
4- Jesus clearly had a problem with them not following the punishment of death for cursing the parents or any punishment of death that is commanded in the OT for this matter! In fact, Jesus himself said:
“Do not think that I [Jesus] have come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament) or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law (the Old Testament) until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)”
“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.‘ (Matthew 23:1-3)”
This clearly means:
1- Jesus absolutely approved and commanded the following of the OT’s Laws regarding apostates!
2- The fact he commanded death penalty for cursing the parents clearly proves that he also approves of killing apostates as clearly shown in the OT verses above!
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Alex Spec How about that Kkkristian violence?
CHRISTIAN TERROR.
You ever heard of the Bosnian War? It's this little thing that went down back in the early 90s. Bosnian Serbs (Christians) went about on an ethnic cleansing campaign in which tens of thousands of Muslims were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. They did it in the name of Christianity. Evangelical Christians in several African countries have made headlines in recent years for butchering homosexuals and people who refused to convert to their religion. Don't try to claim that Christians do not commit atrocities in the name of their religion.
Or how about Argentina:
"As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina," Videla told the region's army commanders, gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1975, "to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy." He was true to his word. Months later, on 24 March 1976, the armed forces overthrew the inept and chaotic government of María Estela Martínez ("Isabelita"), the widow of Juan Domingo Perón.
They installed a ferocious military regime. During the next six years, it murdered up to 30,000 people in the name of "national reorganization" and western, CHRISTIAN civilization.
"Where are Christians beheading people?"
Nagaland, parts of Africa, parts of Asia.
"Where are Christians burning people alive in the name of Christ?"
Nagaland, parts of Africa, parts of Asia.
"Where are Christians slitting throats and screaming 'praise Jesus'?"
Nagaland again, not sure about Africa or Asia on that one.
"Where are Christians harming, murdering, throwing gays from rooftops as ISIS is doing or hanging them from cranes as Iran does?"
Parts of Africa, parts of the US, parts of Asia, parts of Russia. Specifically throwing off roofs, I'm not sure.
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Alex Spec CHRISTIAN TERROR
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), also known as the Lord's Resistance Movement, is a militant movement which is "Christianist, stated goals include ruling according to the Ten Commandments northern Uganda and South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and in 2007 it was reported that it was in Central African Republic.
The LRA has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation,child-sex slavery, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.
And that's not including things like the neo-nazi movements across Europe who have, for example, attacked 12 mosques in Sweden for their ideology.
There is something fundamentaly wrong in the world and it's leading people to ever more extreme dogmas.?
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Alex Spec Christians are “brutally repressive. Christianity is a comprehensive, totalitarian, supremacist doctrine, especially bad for women, for homosexuals, for Jews, other minority, religious faiths, well, pretty much just about for all human beings, actually.
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The history of Ronald Reagan should be written that he was nothing more than a tool to harm the nation. He tripled our debt, he sold weapons to enemies and he started the war against the nation by bringing in trickle down. The man is a disgrace.
Since Reagan Americans have suffered.
Republicans and those who vote Republicans are nothing more than tories, red coats, the buffoons and suckers who kissess rich man's ass and exist for no other reason than to kiss rich man's ass. It's obscene and it's worse than pornography.
Dispel the Reagan myth. Multiple tax increases, a balloted budget, giant increase to government and deficits. Reagan beyond being a failure as a President was someone that should have been arrested for crimes against humanity for what he did in central america.
Reagan was the first president to politicize the CIA. He told the CIA to lie to Congress by telling Congress that the Soviet Union was a very wealthy country, so he can con money out of Congress.
The Soviet Union was on it's way to a collapse long before Reagan took office. Kurschev already told Nixon the model in the Soviet Union was not working.
Mikhail Gorbachev spoke in a US community, one of only two communities he gave a speech at in the United States. At the speech, Gorbachev blew the Reagan myth out of the waters. Gorbachev blamed himself for not acting quick enough to transform the former Soviet Union into a new model.
The Cold War was long gone and over before Reagan came onto the scene. The Soviet Union knew it was a matter of time. It was Reagan who lied, nothing new there, lied about the economic conditions in the former Soviet Union.
I have heard many Russians say it was the Beatles that taught them about freedom and kept the ideas alive until they could throw off the regime.
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***** Umm the old testament is the word of the christian skyfairy and their pretend messiah told them to follow it.
You think that christianity is not violent in the modern age?
CHRISTIAN TERROR.
You ever heard of the Bosnian War? It's this little thing that went down back in the early 90s. Bosnian Serbs (Christians) went about on an ethnic cleansing campaign in which tens of thousands of Muslims were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. They did it in the name of Christianity. Evangelical Christians in several African countries have made headlines in recent years for butchering homosexuals and people who refused to convert to their religion. Don't try to claim that Christians do not commit atrocities in the name of their religion.
Or how about Argentina:
"As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina," Videla told the region's army commanders, gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1975, "to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy." He was true to his word. Months later, on 24 March 1976, the armed forces overthrew the inept and chaotic government of María Estela Martínez ("Isabelita"), the widow of Juan Domingo Perón.
They installed a ferocious military regime. During the next six years, it murdered up to 30,000 people in the name of "national reorganization" and western, CHRISTIAN civilization.
"Where are Christians beheading people?"
Nagaland, parts of Africa, parts of Asia.
"Where are Christians burning people alive in the name of Christ?"
Nagaland, parts of Africa, parts of Asia.
"Where are Christians slitting throats and screaming 'praise Jesus'?"
Nagaland again
"Where are Christians harming, murdering, throwing gays from rooftops as ISIS is doing or hanging them from cranes as Iran does?"
Parts of Africa, parts of the US, parts of Asia, parts of Russia.
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***** CHRISTIAN TERROR
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), also known as the Lord's Resistance Movement, is a militant movement which is "Christianist, stated goals include ruling according to the Ten Commandments northern Uganda and South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and in 2007 it was reported that it was in Central African Republic.
The LRA has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation,child-sex slavery, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.
And that's not including things like the neo-nazi movements across Europe who have, for example, attacked 12 mosques in Sweden for their ideology.
There is something fundamentally wrong in the world and it's leading people to ever more extreme dogmas.
I can do this all day.
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Ted Nugent a real man and a real patriot
LOL
"High Times" Interviews the man cons want for president.
From the October 1977 issue:
“High Times:How did you get out of the draft?
Ted Nugent: Ted was a young boy, appearing to be a hippie but quite opposite in fact, working hard and playing hard, playing rock and roll like a deviant. People would question my sanity, I played so much. So I got my notice to be in the draft. Do you think I was gonna lay down my guitar and go play army? Give me a break! I was busy doin’ it to it. I had a career Jack. If I was walkin’ around, hippying down, getting’ loaded and pickin’ my ass like your common curs, I’d say “Hey yeah, go in the army. Beats the poop out of scuffin’ around in the gutters.” But I wasn’t a gutter dog. I was a hard workin’, motherfuckin’ rock and roll musician.
I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.
See, I approached the whole thing like, Ted Nugent, cool hard-workin’ dude, is gonna wreak havoc on these imbeciles in the armed forces. I’m gonna play their own game, and I’m gonna destroy ‘em. Now my whole body is crusted in poop and piss. I was ill. And three or four days before, I started stayin’ awake. I was close to death, but I was in control. I was extremely antidrug as I’ve always been, but I snorted some crystal methedrine. Talk about one wounded motherf*cker. A guy put up four lines, and it was for all four of us, but I didn’t know and I’m vacuuming that poop right up. I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop. I was six-foot-three of sin. So the guys took me down to the physical, and my nerves, my emotions were distraught. I was not a good person. I was wounded. But as painful and nauseous as it was – ‘cause I was really into bein’ clean and on the ball – I made gutter swine hippies look like football players. I was deviano.
So I went in, and those guys in uniform couldn’t believe the smell. They were ridiculin’ me and pushin’ me around and I was cryin’, but all the time I was laughin’ to myself. When they stuck the needle in my arm for the blood test I passed out, and when I came to they were kicking me into the wall. Then they made everybody take off their pants, and I did, and this sergeant says, “Oh my God, put those back on! You f*cking swine you!” Then they had a urine test and I couldn’t piss, But my poop was just like ooze, man, so I poop in the cup and put it on the counter. I had poop on my hand and my arm. The guy almost puked. I was so proud. I knew I had these chumps beat. The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in the ear test booth and they were sweepin’ up. So I went home and cleaned up.
They took a putty knife to me. I got the street rats out of my hair, ate some good steaks, beans, potatoes, cottage cheese, milk. A couple of days and I was ready to kick ass. And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F. They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass. But you know the funny thing about it? I’d make an incredible army man. I’d be a colonel before you knew what hit you, and I’d have the baddest bunch of motherf*ckin’ killers you’d ever seen in my platoon. But I just wasn’t into it. I was too busy doin’ my own thing, you know?
I've sanitized the swear words. They are there in their profane glory in the original text.
This is the guy Mitt Romney chased down with a phone call to a gun store and asked for his endorsement.
This is the guy that Tagg Romney tweeted about how cool it was that Ted Nugent was endorsing his dad.
http://on.aol.com/video/dickipedia--ted-nugent--sfw--518758342
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John Hood How about you read your own cult handbook with some comprehension.
Here you go:
Murder, rape, and pillage at Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21:10-24 NLT)
So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. "This is what you are to do," they said. "Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin." Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives. But there were not enough women for all of them. The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel. So the Israelite leaders asked, "How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead? There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever. But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God's curse."
Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, "Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, 'Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn't find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.'" So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land of their own inheritance. Then they rebuilt their towns and lived in them. So the assembly of Israel departed by tribes and families, and they returned to their own homes.
Obviously these women were repeatedly raped. These sick bastards killed and raped an entire town and then wanted more virgins, so they hid beside the road to kidnap and rape some more. How can anyone see this as anything but evil?
2) Murder, rape and pillage of the Midianites (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)
They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded. "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
Clearly Moses and God approves of rape of virgins.
3) More Murder Rape and Pillage (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
What kind of God approves of murder, rape, and slavery?
4) Laws of Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
What kind of lunatic would make a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God.
5) Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.
It is clear that God doesn't give a damn about the rape victim. He is only concerned about the violation of another mans "property".
6) David's Punishment - Polygamy, Rape, Baby Killing, and God's "Forgiveness" (2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB)
Thus says the Lord: 'I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.'
Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan answered David: "The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die." [The child dies seven days later.]
This has got to be one of the sickest quotes of the Bible. God himself brings the completely innocent rape victims to the rapist. What kind of pathetic loser would do something so evil? And then he kills a child! This is sick, really sick!
7) Rape of Female Captives (Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)
"When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb. After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."
Once again God approves of forcible rape.
8) Rape and the Spoils of War (Judges 5:30 NAB)
They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil. (Judges 5:30 NAB)
9) Sex Slaves (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
10) God Assists Rape and Plunder (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)
Lo, a day shall come for the Lord when the spoils shall be divided in your midst. And I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle: the city shall be taken, houses plundered, women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be removed from the city. (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)
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***** PARTIES ARE NOT THE SAME
May 27, 2015 12:35 PM
The Tired Old “Both Sides Getting More Extreme” Meme
By Ed Kilgore
In my recent book and elsewhere, I’ve noted that the meta-narrative Republicans were promoting—and much of the MSM was echoing—during the 2014 midterms was that the Great Big Moderate Adults of the GOP had gotten the crazy extremist Tea People under control, and were ready to govern in a serious way that Serious People could appreciate. An important sub-narrative to the completely phony Republican Shift to the Center was that Democrats were moving to the left so fast that they’d probably start singing the Internationale at party events before long.
A lot of people who don’t completely buy the GOP Shift to the Center are happy to promote the false equivalency classic of Everybody’s Polarizing at Exactly the Same Pace. But there’s one species of observers who are deeply invested in the Democratic Lurch to the Left meme: Republican “moderates” who spend a fair amount of time criticizing their zany brethren and need an excuse to reassume the Party Yoke when elections come around.
Peter Wehner is one such person, and so he pens the classic so’s-your-old-man-and-actually-maybe-your-old-man’s-worse op-ed for the New York Times. Ignoring the fact that most actual lefty Democrats think Barack Obama is too much like Bill Clinton, Wehner’s case almost entirely depends on contrasting the noble centrist Big Dog (who, of course, conservatives denounced as a godless socialist when he was actually in office) with the left-bent Obama.
And it’s a really terrible argument. Exhibit one for Wehner involves Clinton’s support for three-strikes-and-you’re-out and 100,000 cops, as though they are the same thing, with Eric Holder’s de-incarceration commitment. Keep up, Pete: Clinton, along with two-thirds of the Republican presidential field, has called for a reversal of “mass incarceration” policies. It’s not an ideological move in either direction so much as a rare and belated bipartisan recognition of what does and doesn’t work.
Exhibit two is welfare reform, and aside from ignoring everything Clinton did on low-income economic policy other than signing the 1996 welfare law, Wehner blandly accepts the race-drenched lie—and he’s smart enough to know that it is indeed widely interpreted to be a lie—from the 2012 Romney campaign that Obama has “loosened welfare-to-work requirements.” Then he tries to pivot to a contrast of Clinton’s shutdown of the “welfare entitlement” with Obama’s creation of a health care entitlement—without noting that Clinton had a health care proposal that was distinctly more “liberal” than Obama’s. Pretty big omission, I’d say.
It gets worse. Wehner suggests that unlike Clinton Obama wants to boost taxes on the wealthy, which conveniently ignores Clinton’s first budget. Speaking of the budget, Obama’s fiscal record is contrasted with Clinton’s without noting that Obama inherited not only a huge deficit but the worst economy since the 1930s. Wehner makes a fact-free assertion that Obama isn’t as friendly towards U.S. allies as Clinton was. And in a telling maneuver, he suddenly shifts the contrast from Clinton-versus-Obama to Clinton-versus-Clinton in mentioning the dispute over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where HRC has been “non-committal.” Well, the crazy lefty Barack Obama hasn’t been “non-committal,” has he? Yes, a majority of congressional Democrats oppose him on TPP. But a majority of congressional Democrats also opposed Clinton on NAFTA and GATT, and denied him “fast-track” trade negotiating authority. Plus ca change….
Nonetheless, Wehner stumbles on to his pre-fab conclusion:
The Democratic Party is now a pre-Bill Clinton party, the result of Mr. Obama’s own ideological predilections and the coalition he has built.
In the very next breath he acknowledges that on the one issue where the Democratic Party really has “moved to the left,” same-sex marriage, the country has moved with it (and the “pre-Bill Clinton” Democratic Party had to move as well). And then he leaps to the circular argument that Republicans must be better representing the “center” of public opinion, because they’re doing so well in midterms!
Well, Pete, guess you have to take the position that makes it possible for you to spend so much time calling out the crazy people of your party. But the facts are not friendly to your argument.
Ed Kilgore edits the Political Animal blog and is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is managing editor for the Democratic Strategist, a weekly columnist at Talking Points Memo, and the author of Election 2014: Why Republicans Swept the Midterms, recently published by the University of Pennsylvania Press
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/the_tired_old_both_sides_getti055757.php
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yaniczka
Well you have bought the propaganda hook line and sinker.
Here are 2 examples of the wonderful world of christianity:
CHRISTIAN TERROR.
You ever heard of the Bosnian War? It's this little thing that went down back in the early 90s. Bosnian Serbs (Christians) went about on an ethnic cleansing campaign in which tens of thousands of Muslims were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. They did it in the name of Christianity. Evangelical Christians in several African countries have made headlines in recent years for butchering homosexuals and people who refused to convert to their religion. Don't try to claim that Christians do not commit atrocities in the name of their religion.
Or how about Argentina:
"As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina," Videla told the region's army commanders, gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1975, "to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy." He was true to his word. Months later, on 24 March 1976, the armed forces overthrew the inept and chaotic government of María Estela Martínez ("Isabelita"), the widow of Juan Domingo Perón.
They installed a ferocious military regime. During the next six years, it murdered up to 30,000 people in the name of "national reorganization" and western, CHRISTIAN civilization.
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Jefferson's Wall of Separation Letter
Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to answer a letter from them, asking why he would not proclaim national days of fasting and thanksiving, as had been done by Washington and Adams before him. The letter contains the phrase "wall of separation between church and state," which lead to the short-hand for the Establishment Clause that we use today: "Separation of church and state."
The letter was the subject of intense scrutiny by Jefferson, and he consulted a couple of New England politicians to assure that his words would not offend while still conveying his message: it was not the place of the Congress or the Executive to do anything that might be misconstrued as the establishment of religion.
Note: The bracketed section in the second paragraph had been blocked off for deletion, though it was not actually deleted in his draft of the letter. It is included here for completeness. Reflecting upon Jefferson's knowledge that his letter was far from a mere personal correspondence, he deleted the block, he says in the margin, to avoid offending members of his party in the eastern states.
This letter is also presented online at Library of Congress, and reflects Jefferson's spelling and punctuation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful & zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more & more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
(signed)
Th Jefferson
Jan.1.1802
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Roger Diogo No idiot Nazis were not left wing. Nice try moron.
Did Hitler and the Nazis really take away Germans' guns, making the Holocaust unavoidable? This argument is superficially true at best, as University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explained in a 2004 paper (PDF http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/67-harcourt.pdf ) on Nazi Germany's impact on the American culture wars. As World War I drew to a close, the new Weimar Republic government banned nearly all private gun ownership to comply with the Treaty of Versailles and mandated that all guns and ammunition "be surrendered immediately." The law was loosened in 1928, and gun permits were granted to citizens "of undoubted reliability" (in the law's words) but not "persons who are itinerant like Gypsies." In 1938, under Nazi rule, gun laws became significantly more relaxed. Rifle and shotgun possession were deregulated, and gun access for hunters, Nazi Party members, and government officials was expanded. The legal age to own a gun was lowered. Jews, however, were prohibited from owning firearms and other dangerous weapons.
"But guns didn't play a particularly important part in any event," says Robert Spitzer, who chairs SUNY-Cortland's political science department and has extensively researched gun control politics. Gun ownership in Germany after World War I, even among Nazi Party members, was never widespread enough for a serious civilian resistance to the Nazis to have been anything more than a Tarantino revenge fantasy. If Jews had been better armed, Spitzer says, it would only have hastened their demise. Gun policy "wasn't the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group."
Gun enthusiasts often mention that the Soviet Union restricted access to guns in 1929 after Joseph Stalin rose to power. But to suggest that a better armed Russian populace would have overthrown the Bolsheviks is also too simplistic, says Spitzer. "To answer the question of the relationship between guns and the revolutions in those nations is to study the comparative politics and comparative history of those nations," he explains. "It takes some analysis to break this down and explain it, and that's often not amenable to a sound bite or a headline."
(Ironically, pro-gun white nationalists have tried to stand the "Hitler took the guns" idea on its head by arguing that he was in fact a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms—for Aryans. William Pierce, author of the race war fantasy The Turner Diaries, made this claim in his book Gun Control in Germany, 1928-1945. So who's behind the effort to paint Hitler as anti-gun? The Jews, of course.)
Even if President Obama suddenly unleashes his inner totalitarian, there's no chance he could successfully round up all of America's 300 million-plus firearms. Such an idea is practically and politically impossible. A tough assault weapons ban like one Democrats are currently proposing would affect just a fraction of the total privately owned firearms in the country. Yet by invoking the historical threat of disarmament, Spitzer says, "the gun lobby has worked to throw a scare into gun owners in order to rally them to the side of the NRA."
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Roger Diogo
Hitler Gun Control Lie
People were shocked when the Drudge Report posted a giant picture of Hitler over a headline speculating that the White House will proceed with executive orders to limit access to firearms. The proposed orders are exceedingly tame, but Drudge’s reaction is actually a common conservative response to any invocation of gun control.
The NRA, Fox News, Fox News (again), Alex Jones, email chains, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, Gun Owners of America, etc., all agree that gun control was critical to Hitler’s rise to power. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (“America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership”) is built almost exclusively around this notion, popularizing posters of Hitler giving the Nazi salute next to the text: “All in favor of ‘gun control’ raise your right hand.”
In his 1994 book, NRA head Wayne LaPierre dwelled on the Hitler meme at length, writing: “In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938, signed by Adolf Hitler.”
And it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense: If you’re going to impose a brutal authoritarian regime on your populace, better to disarm them first so they can’t fight back.
Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.
University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.
The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.
The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).
Besides, Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich, notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?” he told Salon.
Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to concentration camps.
Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics and chairs the political science department at SUNY Cortland, told Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. “[It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained.
Meanwhile, much of the Hitler myth is based on an infamous quote falsely attributed to the Fuhrer, which extols the virtue of gun control:
This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
The quote has been widely reproduced in blog posts and opinion columns about gun control, but it’s “probably a fraud and was likely never uttered,” according to Harcourt. “This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all, suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant of which is that the date often given [1935] has no correlation with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration, nor would there have been any need for the Nazis to pass such a law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government were already in effect,” researchers at the useful website GunCite note.
“As for Stalin,” Bartov continued, “the very idea of either gun control or the freedom to bear arms would have been absurd to him. His regime used violence on a vast scale, provided arms to thugs of all descriptions, and stripped not guns but any human image from those it declared to be its enemies. And then, when it needed them, as in WWII, it took millions of men out of the Gulags, trained and armed them and sent them to fight Hitler, only to send back the few survivors into the camps if they uttered any criticism of the regime.”
Bartov added that this misreading of history is not only intellectually dishonest, but also dangerous. “I happen to have been a combat soldier and officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and I know what these assault rifles can do,” he said in an email.
He continued: “Their assertion that they need these guns to protect themselves from the government — as supposedly the Jews would have done against the Hitler regime — means not only that they are innocent of any knowledge and understanding of the past, but also that they are consciously or not imbued with the type of fascist or Bolshevik thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”
Alex Seitz-Wald
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PREEST P LOL moron. The figures include 9/11. White right wing christians are the real threat to America.
RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS
A report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy on Jan. 15 discusses the potential dangers of “violent far-right” organizations, which has angered some conservatives that believe the military should focus on international threats.
The executive summary of the paper, “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right,” claims that “since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating from individuals and groups who self- identify with the far-right of American politics.”
Written by Arie Perliger, Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, the paper asserts that three distinct ideologies exist in the “American violent far right.” Those are “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement,” the last of which “includes mainly Christian Identity groins such as the Aryan Nations.”
“Findings indicate that…it is not only feelings of deprivation that motivate those involved in far right violence, but also the sense of empowerment that emerges when the political system is perceived to be increasingly permissive to far right ideas,” it later reads.
The rise in attacks in the 21st century were significant, as “Although in the 1990s the average number of attacks per year was 70.1, the average number of attacks per year in the first 11 years of the twenty-first century was 307.5, a rise of more than 400%.”
The study also found that “presidential election years and the preceding year are characterized by an increase of far-right violence,” leading the author to conclude that “in general, far-right groups and individuals are more inclined to engage in violence in a contentious political climate.”
Furthermore, it found that the number of Republicans in the House was positively correlated with an increase in far-right violence, although the causes were not immediately clear. The study posits that it could mean those groups believed those legislators might be “more tolerant of their activities” or possibly that “the high expectations of far-right activists during a conservative legislature” were not “fulfilled.”
Some conservatives object to the report. The Washington Times, The National Review, and World Net Daily all report on critical reactions from the right, according to the Atlantic Wire, with blogger Pamela Geller calling it an “appalling attempt to demonize loyal Americans and whitewash the Islamic threat.”
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MrToby9999 CHRISTIAN TERROR.
You ever heard of the Bosnian War? It's this little thing that went down back in the early 90s. Bosnian Serbs (Christians) went about on an ethnic cleansing campaign in which tens of thousands of Muslims were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. They did it in the name of Christianity. Evangelical Christians in several African countries have made headlines in recent years for butchering homosexuals and people who refused to convert to their religion. Don't try to claim that Christians do not commit atrocities in the name of their religion.
Or how about Argentina:
"As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina," Videla told the region's army commanders, gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1975, "to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy." He was true to his word. Months later, on 24 March 1976, the armed forces overthrew the inept and chaotic government of María Estela Martínez ("Isabelita"), the widow of Juan Domingo Perón.
They installed a ferocious military regime. During the next six years, it murdered up to 30,000 people in the name of "national reorganization" and western, CHRISTIAN civilization.
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***** Not subscribing to your delusion is not bigoted. LOL
SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
That is all made up just like the religious extremist sheepherders made up the skyfairy.
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Rubio, Ryan, and every other K0CHsucker right wing freedumb loving libertarian government hating moron wants this for the USA:
KOCHsucker GAME PLAN
When David Koch ran as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 1980 this was their platform for that year. It is a manifesto of what David and Charles Koch expect to receive in return for their large investment in American politics.
• We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
Every single one of these ideas is rooted in John Birch Society dogma that they learned from their anti American government bigot father.
Keep this list handy. Pass it on as often as possible.
You're going to need it in the days to come.
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"How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions." Just pick "A" or "B" for each question.
1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.
2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.
3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.
4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.
5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.
6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.
7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.
8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.
9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.
10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.
Scoring key:
If you answered "A" to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality -- not your superiority.
If you answered "B" to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.
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redandblackrevolutionary I did. It was short and to the point. The delusion you subscribe to leads to serfdom for everyone but those at the top.
Stefan Molyneux has an interview with Noam Chomsky, where Chomsky clearly defined Anarchism and the problem with Libertarians (American Anarchists). He actually talks about the difference between European style anarchists and American style. He actually says something along the lines... "Libertarians want to abolish the state, which is fine and good but they want the market to dictate things. They're just serving a different master." ...and in my view, Chomsky is right. They're literally trading a state "master" for a plutocratic "master".A Manifesto for Psychopaths
March 5, 2012
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/03/05/a-manifesto-for-psychopaths/
Ayn Rand’s ideas have become the Marxism of the new right.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th March 2012.
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the post-war world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her non-fiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness(1)) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as “refuse” and “parasites”, and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention, in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.
The poor die like flies as a result of government programs and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for example, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing”.
Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed. Yet, as Gary Weiss shows in his new book Ayn Rand Nation, she has become to the new right what Karl Marx once was to the left: a demi-god at the head of a chiliastic cult. Almost one-third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year.
Ignoring Rand’s evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has taken her to its heart. No rally of theirs is complete without placards reading “Who is John Galt?” and “Rand was right”. Ayn Rand, Weiss argues, provides the unifying ideology which has “distilled vague anger and unhappiness into a sense of purpose.” She is energetically promoted by the broadcasters Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli. She is the guiding spirit of the Republicans in Congress.
Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed second-hand by people who have never read it. I believe it is making itself felt on this side of the Atlantic: in the clamorous new demands to remove the 50p tax band for the very rich, for example, or among the sneering, jeering bloggers who write for the Telegraph and the Spectator, mocking compassion and empathy, attacking efforts to make the world a kinder place.
It is not hard to see why Rand appeals to billionaires. She offers them something that is crucial to every successful political movement: a sense of victimhood. She tells them that they are parasitised by the ungrateful poor and oppressed by intrusive, controlling governments.
It is harder to see what it gives the ordinary teabaggers, who would suffer grievously from a withdrawal of government. But such is the degree of misinformation which saturates this movement and so prevalent in the US is Willy Loman Syndrome (the gulf between reality and expectations) that millions blithely volunteer themselves as billionaires’ doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she signed on for both Medicare and Social Security. She had railed furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for the realities of age and ill-health.
But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis’s documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan. Among the essays he wrote for Ayn Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Here, starkly explained, you’ll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as “the ‘greed’ of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer.”As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a “superlatively moral system”.
Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru’s philosophy to the letter, lobbying to cut taxes for the rich and repeal the laws constraining the banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US Greenspan has successfully airbrushed this history.
Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that “capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral,”he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion, and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.
Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. In the spirit of Rand, I suggest you don’t pay for it, but download it here: http://tfasinternational.org/ila/Ayn_Rand-The_Virtue_of_Selfishness.pdf
2. The just desserts are detailed on page 605 of the 2007 Penguin edition.
3. The gassing and subsequent explosion are explained on page 621.
4. Gary Weiss, 2012. Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle
for America’s Soul. St. Martin’s Press, New York.
5. This was a Zogby poll, conducted at the end of 2010, cited by Gary Weiss.
6. To give one of many examples, Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, says that “the reason I got involved in public service,
by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be
Ayn Rand.” This is a little ironic, in view of the fact that Rand abhorred the idea of public service. Quoted by Gary Weiss.
7. http://www.monbiot.com/2006/07/07/willy-loman-syndrome/
8. Gary Weiss, pp61-63.
9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011lvb9
10. Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan and Robert Hessen (Eds), 1967. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Signet, New York.
11. Alan Greenspan, August 1963. The Assault on Integrity. First published in
The Objectivist Newsletter, later in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
12. As above.
13. From an article by Soma Golden in the New York Times, July 1974, quoted by Gary Weiss.
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karl john Are you saying the word of Cod is not valid?
The 2 books go together.
Karl I am just going to deal with you calling me a liar on the homosexual issue in cult handbook #2.
Here:
Matthew 19:1-8 — Did Jesus say anything about homosexuality? Of course, when asked about marriage, Jesus issued a sweeping condemnation of all sexual relationships outside of the male/female model established in Gen 1:27, which he specifically cited.
Romans 1:18-32 —Though most of the passages deal with the male perspective, for the first time there is a specific mention of female homosexuality. And as the verdict comes in, we discover it too is a depraved condition brought on by a sinful nature.
1Cor 6:9-11—The only passage of scripture that clearly acknowledges former (ex) homosexuals in the church. They are listed along with other ex-sinners who have been changed by the power of Christ. It is certain that Pastor Paul knew there were former homosexuals in his local church and he celebrated their freedom in Christ Jesus. With a completely different tone in comparison to the volume of harsh, negative reaction to the unrepentant homosexuality, scripture here ends with the tremendous hope and goodness of God.
Galatians 5:19 — Many areas that the apostle traveled to take the gospel indeed were very accepting of homosexual practices, yet he did not back away from communicating the sinfulness of such practice. Corinth, Ephesus and Rome as well as other major cities of the ancient world, were all too often cesspools of all forms of sexual immorality. Undeterred, Paul drew from sources familiar to him and forged them with New testament teachings of God’s grace to forgive and cleanse. In the letter to the Galatians, he teaches that the “works [not plurality] of the flesh are manifest. The flesh or sinful human nature is always considered and enemy to God.
Ephesians 5:3-7— Paul repeats his warnings against “uncleaness” to the church at Ephesus.
Colossians 3:5-7 — Paul issues his third warning against “uncleaness” to the church at Colosse. This time he adds instructions on overcoming/controlling the sin. Believers are to mortify or deaden themselves and exercise self control (a fruit of the Spirit) over such actions. Homosexuals claim that denying the free expression of homosexuality is "suppressing one's true self", but scripture clearly instructs that we are hold our bodies in check and refuse it participation in sexual immorality. This passage further emphasizes that no one should expect to escape the “wrath of God” except they repent.
1 Tim 1:10 — the law was not made for the righteous, but for the “lawless and disobedient.” The law (of Moses) encompassed the ceremonial, judicial and moral components of human interaction. Christ neutralized the ceremonial aspects but upheld the judicial and moral aspects, tendered with grace and mercy. Hence, homosexuality remains a sin "worthy of death" but yet qualified for forgiveness through repentance. The phrase Paul uses “defiling themselves with mankind” is another link of homosexual behavior to disobedience and uncompatible to sound or acceptable Christian doctrine.
Titus 1:16 — This is an aggressive attack and exposure of the psychosis of those who are “defiled” and commit “abominations". Again, let us identify the source of the Apostle Paul’s strong condemnation. When one accepts what God has pronounced abominable (by God’s own definition) and rejects the created model which God has pronounced good, a process of hardening and mental perversion begins to take root in the mind. Such is the danger of justifying sin. Sin corrupts the mind and conscience (the seat of individual integrity and morality) rendering it incapable of making spiritually sound decisions.
Jude 1:4,7,19 — Jude forcefully revealed that like the Sodomites, certain men in the church had gone after “strange flesh.” I believed Jude was describing contemporary "gay christians". His choice of phraseology is a combination of two words: heteros and sarx meaning “another flesh with the same quality.” His inclusion of the word flesh pointed to the homosexuality (not the inhospitality) of the Sodomites. Similar to the Apostle Paul, Jude selected strong language to convey the serious of the charge facing the church. Allowing unrepentant homosexuals into Christian fellowship without applying the same standards of admission applied to other sinners would be a spiritual death nell for the church. Repentance is the major action a sinner must take to be accepted into the family of God.
Rev 21:27—The final book of the Bible, finalizing a complete picture stunning denouncements of all forms of homosexual conduct. From Genesis to Revelation, the Word of God firmly establishes once and for all the sinfulness of homosexuality, but also provides a wide opportunity for repentance and redemption through Jesus Christ. Homosexuality, as seen through the eyes of scripture is a spiritual aberration, a result of the fallen nature of man, a disease of the soul. It produces nothing life giving, in essence opposite of the nature of God who is life. Therefore it “worketh” or produces abomination which is death.
I can produce more if you cannot accept the above.
Also you seem to think that the new cult handbook supersedes cult handbook #1.
From my favorite site "EvilBible.com"
“Thou Shall Not Ignore the Old Testament!”
New Testament Verses Which Demand Following the Old Testament :
I hear so many Christians now a days claim that the Old Testament is defunct for Jesus was the “lamb” to clear away its rules and regulations. This is just another bullshit scapegoat that Christians use to ignore the atrocities and bizarre laws commanded by their god. Their preachers spoon feed them that the Old Testament is no longer binding so that they can excuse the majority of evil that the bible promotes. I am so tired of Christians manipulating the scriptures so that they can assign a kinder nature to their God, that I have assembled a BRIEF list of verses which clearly show that the Old Testament is not to be ignored. Its laws should indeed be adhered to, for the New Testament demands it!
1) “For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV) Clearly the Old Testament is to be abided by until the end of human existence itself. None other then Jesus said so.
2) All of the vicious Old Testament laws will be binding forever. "It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid." (Luke 16:17 NAB)
3) Jesus strongly approves of the law and the prophets. He hasn’t the slightest objection to the cruelties of the Old Testament. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)
3b) "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness..." (2 Timothy 3:16 NAB)
3c) "Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God." (2 Peter 20-21 NAB)
4) Jesus criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children according to Old Testament law. Mark.7:9-13 "Whoever curses father or mother shall die" (Mark 7:10 NAB)
5) Jesus is criticized by the Pharisees for not washing his hands before eating. He defends himself by attacking them for not killing disobedient children according to the commandment: “He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” (Matthew 15:4-7)
6) Jesus has a punishment even worse than his father concerning adultery: God said the act of adultery was punishable by death. Jesus says looking with lust is the same thing and you should gouge your eye out, better a part, than the whole. The punishment under Jesus is an eternity in Hell. (Matthew 5:27)
7) Peter says that all slaves should “be subject to [their] masters with all fear,” to the bad and cruel as well as the “good and gentle.” This is merely an echo of the same slavery commands in the Old Testament. 1 Peter 2:18
8) “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law" (John7:19) and “For the law was given by Moses,..." (John 1:17).
9) “...the scripture cannot be broken.” --Jesus Christ, John 10:35
And the law contradictions:
Law Contradictions of the Bible:
10) Shall we obey the law? Romans 13:1-7 says quite clearly that Christians are to submit to the law and regard it as the institution of God. 1 Peter 2:13-14 “Submit your self to every ordinance of man ... to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors.” Matthew 22:21 “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Also see Titus 3:1. Matthew 23:2-3 & Ecclesiastes 8:2 This leads one to assume that Christians must and should obey the law, yet look at these verses which contradicts what I just sited. Acts 5:29 “We ought to obey God rather then men.” Exodus 1:17-20 shows God punishing the midwives for following their rulers instead of God. Also see Daniel 3:16-18, 6:7-10, Acts 4:26 & 27, Mark 12:38-40, Luke 23:11, 24 & 33-35 which all say the law should be ignored. Now we know why Christians get away with their selective morality so often.
11) Should we steal? (Exodus 20:15 & Leviticus 19:13) Stealing is absolutely forbidden. Yet, Exodus 3:21-22, 12:35-36 & Luke 19:29-34 all promote stealing.
12) Should we judge? Jesus is quoted in Matthew 7:1-2: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” Also see Luke 6:37 & 1 Corinthians 5:12. Now take a look at “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). Also note 1 Corinthians 5:12 & 6:2-4.
1 3) Should we covet? Exodus 20:17 says, “Thou shalt not covet . . . anything that is thy neighbor’s,” while 1 Corinthians 12:31 says, “Covet earnestly the best gifts.” So, are we or are we not to covet?
14) Is lying okay? Exodus 20:16. Proverbs 12:22 & Revelations 21:8 all say lying is forbidden. Joshua 2:4-6, Exodus 1:18-20 & 1 Kings 22:21-22 all support lying.
15) Can we kill? Exodus 20:13 says “thou shalt not kill”. Exodus 32:27, Numbers 31, and THOUSANDS of other verses show God commanding us to kill.
16) Can we own slaves? Leviticus 25:45 “Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy … and they shall be your possession… they shall be your bondmen forever.” Genesis 9:25 “And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Exodus 21:2 & 7 “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing… And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.” Joel 3:8 “And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it.” Luke 12:47-48 [Jesus speaking] “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” Colossians 3:22
“Servants, obey in all things your masters.” So obviously the Biblical God thinks slavery is right, right? Just look at these: Isaiah 58:6 “Undo the heavy burdens... let the oppressed go free, ... break every yoke.” Matthew 23:10 “Neither be ye called Masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.” (Also see Exodus 22:21 & 21:16) Let it be known here that pro-slavery Bible verses were cited by many churches in the South during the Civil War, and were used by some theologians in the Dutch Reformed Church to justify apartheid in South Africa. There are more pro-slavery verses than cited here. I simply do not have the room to post all of them.
17) What about Improvidence? Improvidence is enjoined in Luke 12:3 “Sell that ye have and give alms.” also in Luke 6:30 & 35 “Give to every man that asketh of thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again ... And lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great.” Also note Matthew 6:28, 31 & 34. Improvidence is condemned in I Timothy 5:8 “But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. “ Also see Proverbs 13:22.
18) What does the law say about anger? Ephesians 4:26 says “Be ye angry and sin not not.” Anger is disapproved in Ecciesiastes 7:9 “Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry; for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.” Proverbs 22:24 “Make no friendship with an angry man.” Also see James 1:20.
19) Are we to let our good works be seen? Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.” This contradicts verse Matthew 6:1 , “Take heed that you do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.”
20) Should we pray in public? 1 Kings 2:22, 54 & 9:3 shows the Lord is joyed by public prayer and listens intently. Matthew 6:5-6 condemn public prayer and command people keep it a secret.
21) Can we wear long hair? Judges 13:5 & Numbers 6:5 encourages people to grow their hair and insists it is a source of strength. 1 Corinthians 11:14 calls long hair a “shame”.
22) Should we circumcise males? Genesis 17:10 “This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee: Every man and child among you shall be circumcised. Clearly this demands circumcision, yet Galatians 5:2 says “Behold, I Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.”
23) Are there certain kinds of foods we should not eat? Deuteronomy 14:2-8 lists several animals that we are NOT to eat because they are “unclean”, “chew the cud” and “divide the hoof”. Yet Genesis 9:3 & 1 Corinthians 10:25 insists there is nothing we can’t eat. Romans 14:14 says: “There is nothing unclean of itself.”
24) Can we take oaths? Numbers 30:2, Genesis 21:23-24, 31, 31:53 & Hebrews 6:13 says that we can take oaths and encourages it. Matthew 5:34 says “swear (make an oath) not at all.”
25) Can we get married? Genesis 2:18, 1:28, Matthew 19:5 & Hebrews 13:4 all insist marriage is honorable. Marriage is disapproved and scorned in 1 Corinthians 7:1 & 7:7-8.
26) Can we commit adultery? Exodus 20: 14 “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Also see Hebrews 13:4. Now look at Numbers 31:18, Hosea 1:2 & 2:1-3 where adultery is advocated by God.
27) Can we drink alcohol? Proverbs 31:6-7, 1 Timothy 5:23 & Psalms 104:15 all encourage drinking and intoxication. Proverbs 20:1 & 23:31-32 discourage drinking and intoxication.
28) Do women have rights? Genesis 3:16 “And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” 1 Timothy 2:12 says a woman must not teach, remain silent and must be subjugated to her man. 1 Corinthians 14:34 & 1 Peter 3:6 both say that women have limited rights and are under control of their men. Judges 4:4, 14-15, 5:7, Acts 2:18 & 21:9 all tell of powerful women who were not subjugated by men and were not punished for their authority of men.
29) Should we obey our masters with usurped authority? Colossians 3:22-23 & 1 Peter 2:18 says we should. 1 Corinthians 7:23 “Be not ye the servants of men.” Also see Matthew 4:10 & 23:10 which say we should not submit usurped to our masters.
30) Was the law of the Old Testament destroyed by Christ’s crucification? Luke16:16, Ephesians 2:15 & Romans 7:6 says that the old law is no longer binding. Yet Matthew 5:17-19 and MANY other verses say that the old law is forever binding. If you want to see the many verses that command we follow the old law please consult the upper portion of this page.
31) Should we swear an oath? Numbers 30:2 “If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath…he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.” Genesis 21:22-24 & 31 “…swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me…And Abraham said, I will swear…Wherefore he called that place Beersheba [“Well of the oath”]; because there they sware both of them.” Hebrews 6:13-17 “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself…for men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability ofhis counsel, confirmed it by an oath.” See also Genesis 22:15- 19, Genesis 31 :53, & Judges I 1 :30-39. So apparently it is okay to swear an oath, we even do this on the Bible in American courts. Just try and forget these verses: Matthew 5:34-37 “But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven…nor by the earth…Neither shalt thou swear by thy head…But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
James 5:12 “…swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.”
32) Do we keep the Sabbath? Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Exodus 31:15 “Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.” Numbers 15:32-36 “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day…And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses.” Each of these contradict Isaiah 1:13 “The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity.“ John 5:16 “And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. “Colossians 2:16 “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy-day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days.”
33) Should we make graven images? Exodus 20:4 “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven…earth ... water.” Leviticus 26:1 “Ye shall make ye no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone.” Deuteronomy 27:15 “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image.” Okay, I got it I shouldn’t produce a thing in fear of making a graven image, but wait: Exodus 25:18 “And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them.” I Kings 7:15-16 & 23-25 “For he [Solomon] cast two pillars of brass…and two chapiters of molten brass…And he made a molten sea…it stood upon twelve oxen ... [and so on]”
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Ryooken I posted the facts dipshit. There is no HISTORICAL record of a cod man child walking the earth. NONE.
I often wonder if religious folks understand the entire meaning and reason behind "faith". By definition it's not "fact", because if it were, then one's free will would be eliminated. The whole point of faith is to have faith despite the lack of concrete proof - i.e., despite the fact that the point in issue is not a "fact".
"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals," Hitchens said. "It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."
Christians are “brutally repressive. Christianity is a comprehensive, totalitarian, supremacist doctrine, especially bad for women, for homosexuals, for Jews, other minority, religious faiths, well, pretty much just about for all human beings, actually.
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Ash Satan the cartoon character made up by religious extremists is a hero.
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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KEYSTONE K0CH PIPELINE TRUTH
The KS pipeline (25% Koch owned) will bring oil from the Koch owned tar sands ( 2,000,000 acres Koch owned representing approx 65%) to two Koch owned Corpus Christi refineries for processing and shipment to Latin America, Europe, and China.
The benefit to the US?
Not a single drop of this oil will be used in the US
The processing will remove capacity for domestic refining and could lead to an increase in US gas prices.
It will pass over one of the largest aquifers , the Ogallala Aquifer, which is responsible for irrigating 30% of american agriculture.
2000 short term jobs, 200 long term jobs and untold thousands of jobs cleaning up spills of the dirtiest oil ,diluted with poison and heated to make it flow through our country. (the existing part of the KS pipe has already had over 12 spills)
The main benefit, the Koch brothers add $50,000,000,000 to their already $72,000,000,000 fortune.
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Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
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RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS
A report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy on Jan. 15 discusses the potential dangers of “violent far-right” organizations, which has angered some conservatives that believe the military should focus on international threats.
The executive summary of the paper, “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right,” claims that “since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating from individuals and groups who self- identify with the far-right of American politics.”
Written by Arie Perliger, Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, the paper asserts that three distinct ideologies exist in the “American violent far right.” Those are “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement,” the last of which “includes mainly Christian Identity groins such as the Aryan Nations.”
“Findings indicate that…it is not only feelings of deprivation that motivate those involved in far right violence, but also the sense of empowerment that emerges when the political system is perceived to be increasingly permissive to far right ideas,” it later reads.
The rise in attacks in the 21st century were significant, as “Although in the 1990s the average number of attacks per year was 70.1, the average number of attacks per year in the first 11 years of the twenty-first century was 307.5, a rise of more than 400%.”
The study also found that “presidential election years and the preceding year are characterized by an increase of far-right violence,” leading the author to conclude that “in general, far-right groups and individuals are more inclined to engage in violence in a contentious political climate.”
Furthermore, it found that the number of Republicans in the House was positively correlated with an increase in far-right violence, although the causes were not immediately clear. The study posits that it could mean those groups believed those legislators might be “more tolerant of their activities” or possibly that “the high expectations of far-right activists during a conservative legislature” were not “fulfilled.”
Some conservatives object to the report. The Washington Times, The National Review, and World Net Daily all report on critical reactions from the right, according to the Atlantic Wire, with blogger Pamela Geller calling it an “appalling attempt to demonize loyal Americans and whitewash the Islamic threat.”
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I am a left handed soldier for satan. No not the Great Satan Reagan. The fallen angel satan.
Satan was a freethinker. Beaten and banned from heaven by Cod as a warning against all who would follow in his footsteps and actually use their own mind.
I always wondered how Satan gets blamed for all the bad in the world, when Cod is the all powerful, all knowing creator of all. Shouldn't the one who has the power and knowledge be the one to blame, not the one who was powerless and beaten down. Just wondering.
SATAN AS HERO
"Well, it's all fiction. But I do enjoy good fiction, (although the bible is not anywhere close to what I'd consider quality reading) so I'll answer this question in the way I review all such fictional characters.
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.
If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.
Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.
Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.
Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.
If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny.
I do not look favourably upon cruel dictators.
All hail Satan! The true savior."
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EAS NJ Ronald Reagan LIAR
The lies modern-day Republicans tell about Ronald Reagan are legion. To today’s GOP, Reagan was beloved and his presidency resided over a “shining city on a hill,” as his campaign commercials portrayed America. The truth was more shaded, to say the least. Welfare cuts pushed half a million people, mostly children, into poverty; tax cuts helped the rich but not the rest of us; and unemployment during his first term hit a post-war high. Terrorists killed 220 marines in Beirut on Reagan’s watch, which Reagan responded to, not with resolve, but by cutting and running. Despite claims to the contrary, JFK, Eisenhower and even LBJ were more popular overall than Reagan (although his ratings at the very end of his second term were higher).
Reagan’s administration was filled with little lies, claims about trees being major air polluters and apartheid-era South Africa eliminating segregation. Never mind the larger distractions, like the eight senior members of his administration who were indicted. But his biggest lie came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan came to office in 1980 in large part due to the failure of the Carter administration to successfully free hostages in Iran who had been held for over a year. The hostages were finally released the day of Reagan’s inauguration—thanks to Carter’s persistent diplomacy.
In 1985, during Reagan’s second term, Iran, which had taken additional hostages in the intervening years, offered to free the hostages in exchange for missiles. A plan was hatched in which Israel would ship missiles to Iran, the U.S. would resupply Israel with the missiles, and the U.S. would receive the cash that had been paid for the missiles. That cash would then go to Nicaragua, to fund the contras, the rebels Reagan portrayed as, “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” who were fighting to take down the elected Sandinista government.
When details of the exchange leaked in 1986, Reagan was forced to explain why America was selling missiles to a sworn enemy, while intervening in Nicaragua, which Congress had forbade. Reagan’s response was to deny that arms had been traded for hostages. “We did not, I repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else [to Iran] for hostages, nor will we.” A few months later he admitted, “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” A disingenuous way of saying, “I lied.”
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el80ne Racism, theocracy and libertarianism go hand in hand, when from a philosophical point of view they should have little to do with one another. The negative effects of the lack of a central government are so obvious in developing countries that wherever the social order fails as in Somalia, it must have been due to bad religion, or the defect of having been born to an inferior race.
Ron Paul fans must reassure themselves that such things would never happen to white, Christian folk. They're immune from the Somali problem by virtue being of different stock and different values, you see.
The "Somalia" argument is a sore spot for libertarians. They either fall back on the old line of race and religious prejudice I outlined, or they claim that it isn't true Libertarianism, you see: it's anarchy. True Libertarians believe in just enough government to protect private property and personal safety; without those protections, they argue, anarchy ensues.
The only problem for libertarians is that they cannot point to even a single current or historical example of a government that functions as they imagine it should. They have no concrete, real world examples, so they ply their arguments in a theoretical construct.
Each and every example of places with little centralized government is dismissed by libertarians as an anarchistic situation, not a "true" Libertarianism. It's the "no true Scotman" fallacy, Ron Paul edition. The hellish situation in Afghanistan is blamed on 30 years of war and tribal anarchy, rather than the lack of a central government. The case of Somalia is blamed again on war, on American intervention, and again on tribal anarchy. Historical examples of feudalism arising in the absence of a centralized state, or the repeated Dark Ages that arise after civilization collapses, are dismissed as either irrelevant to the modern world or invalid because of war and anarchy. The fact that corruption and the Mafia are more prevalent in southern Italy where tax collection and central government are weaker than in the North, is again dismissed as a cultural or anarchistic issue. It's always the same argument.
Libertarianism, in other words, is infallible. Wherever it fails, it does so because the people weren't ready for it, or there was too much violence to allow it to work, or because the government wasn't powerful enough to protect people from harm.
Libertarians fail to realize that there has never been--and never will be--a government that functions according to their principles because it runs entirely contrary to human nature.
As any libertarian understands when it comes to statist authoritarians, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you decentralize and remove the modern welfare state, leaving only essentially a glorified police force in charge to protect private property and personal safety, one of two things happens:
1) The central police force turns into a right-wing military dictatorship invested in stamping out all leftist thinking, then appropriating the country's wealth for themselves and their friends (e.g., Chile under Pinochet);
or
2) All central authority and protection break down completely as power localizes into the hands of local criminals and feudal/tribal warlords with little compunction about abusing and terrorizing the local population (e.g., feudal France, Afghanistan, Somalia, western Pakistan, etc.) As I said before:
Feudalism is the inevitable historical consequence of the decline of a centralized cosmopolitan state. That's because the exercise of power by those in a position to wield it does not end with the elimination of federal authority: rather, it simply shifts to those of a more localized, more tyrannical, and less democratically accountable bent.
Urban street gangs in under-policed neighborhoods, mafias in under-taxed countries, and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon invariably step in to fill the void where government fails. When the Japanese government wasn't able to adequately help the population after the earthquake and tsunami, the yakuza helpfully stepped in to do it for them. The devolution of local authority and taxation into the hands of criminal groups willing to provide a safety net in exchange for their cut of the action is the invariable pre-feudal result of the breakdown of the government-backed safety net. It happens every single time. The people will want a safety net where utter chaos doesn't prevent it: they'll either get it from an accountable governmental authority, or from a non-governmental authority of shadowy legality. Both kinds of authority will levy their own form of taxation, be it legal and official, or part of an illegal protection scheme.
In its own way, the "No True Libertarianism" argument is very similar to the "No True Communism" of those on the far left, who argue that the fault of Communism lies not with the idea, but with the practice--despite the fact that no successful large-scale Communism has ever been implemented in the world. Neither ideology can fail its adherents. They can only be failed by imperfect practitioners.
Both ideologies run counter to human nature for the same reason: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The people with the money and guns will always abuse the people who don't have the money and guns, unless there are multiple levels of checks, balances, and legal and economic protections to ensure the existence of a middle-class tax base with a stake in maintaining a stable society. The modern welfare state didn't arise by accident or conspiracy: it evolved as a means of avoiding the failures of other models.
Libertarianism is a philosophical game played by those without either enough real-world experience of localized, non-state-actor tyranny, or enough awareness of history to understand the immaturity of their political worldview. Unfortunately, the harm they do to the social safety net and to governmental checks and balances is all too real, and all too damaging.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/29/1049619/-Why-Libertarianism-Doesn-t-Work
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el80ne Civil Rights and Libertarians
Opposition to the Civil Rights Act is supposedly based on how libertarians believe that the Non-Aggression-Principle is sacred (except of course when defending property rights). The problem is that libertarian precepts sometimes look good on paper (depending on how gullible you are), but they are simply unrealistic. The libertarian take on the Civil Rights Act tends to either ignore or dismiss outright issue like history, prevailing social attitudes (regarding certain groups that rightfully ought to be protected if one consults history), the brutal & unethical consequences and implications of not having protected groups, and the accumulation of quantifiable injustice that occurs when masses of people are allowed to act on their own prejudices. That is the problem with libertarian unreasonable adherence to fundamentally unrealistic principles.
Are you "infringing" on a person's "right" to freely discriminate? Yes, but history has demonstrated before that the good of doing such a thing greatly outweighs the "bad" of infringing on bigots' rights.
Besides, this country offers bigots ample leeway to act on their attitudes even currently in the private sector-- certainly much more so than in other developed/Western/Industrialized nations . If you don't like a job applicant's ethnic background, all your company has to say is that the individual did not fit into your company's workplace environment/culture. Private businesses always reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Even with the Civil Rights Act in place, housing discrimination (e.g., redlining) was still allowed to go on. Imagine how much worse things would be today with OUT it in place, with all the "libertarians" having their way on the issue.
None of this, of curse, gets into how, if one does happen to harbor bigoted attitudes, this libertarian position does offer people a very convenient refuge.
To be a libertarian-pusher, you'd either have to be naive enough to really believe in such a thing, or a wealthy cynic who just wants to promote ideas that obfuscate the terms of discussion and/or policies that you know will end-up hurting people in the long run while you benefit.
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Can you handle the truth?
The Myth of the Filibuster-Proof Democratic Senate
SEPTEMBER 11, 2012 BY ANDY COHEN
Republicans have magically, mystically turned 72 days into two full years.
We’ve heard it over and over and over again. Mitch McConnell has gleefully used it as a cudgel. Congressional Republicans typically can’t wait to get their mugs on camera to tell America just how inept Congressional Democrats are in order to aid their case that they should be put back in power. After all, Democrats couldn’t get anything done even with a 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate during the first two years of the Obama administration. Democrats had almost complete control of the Congress to go with the newly inaugurated Democrat to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and they couldn’t manage to address the major issues of the day.
Democrats are just plain horrible at their jobs. To hear the Republicans tell it, absolutely nothing got done between January 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections. And they blame the Democrats, because after all, the Democrats were in control.
Don’t believe it.
It sounds good and it surely gets the far right wing base riled up. But it has very little basis in reality. That hasn’t stopped Republicans and their official media apparatus, Fox News, from repeating the nonsense.
As recently as September 2nd, less than two weeks ago, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, conducting an interview with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, stated matter of factly in response to Villaraigosa’s comment on the deliberate Republican obstructionism that Obama and the Democrats had almost complete control of the Congress. “But in fairness,” Wallace pointed out, “the first two years, he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a big majority in the House.”
Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock earlier in 2012 went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and perpetuated the lie. “For two years,” he told the “Morning Joe” crew, “he (Obama) had complete, unadulterated control of the federal government, a 60 seat majority in the Senate, an 60 plus seat majority in the House. He got every—literally every—piece of legislation he wanted to try and quote turn around the economy…”
That’s right folks, for the first two full years of his presidency, Barack Obama had the benefit of a large majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate to work with in order to get whatever legislation passed that he wanted. Whatever his whimsy, he could get it passed at any time during the first two years of his first term. Full and complete, total control for two full years, if by two full years you mean 72 days.
Here’s what really happened: Yes, in the 2008 election, Democrats managed to widen their majorities in both houses of Congress. In the 110th Congress that served from January 2007 through January 2009, Democrats held a 35 seat majority in the House and a single seat advantage in the Senate, which included “independent” Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, both of whom caucused with the Democrats. The 2008 election saw that majority swell to 78 seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate.
How is that possible, you ask? Everybody says that the Democrats had a full filibuster-proof majority? The math doesn’t add up, you say. If there are 100 seats in the Senate, and Republicans, as of January 2009 had only 40 of them (technically the Republicans had 41 of them initially, but we’ll get to that), doesn’t that mean that the Democrats had the remaining 60, giving them the supermajority in the Senate?
No, not necessarily, because it was a very odd year in Congressional politics.
Remember that Minnesota Senatorial election in 2008? The one that pitted former SNL writer/cast member and Air America Radio host Al Franken against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman? That race dragged on forever, resulting in several challenges and recounts until the Minnesota Supreme Court finally concluded on June 30th, 2009, that Franken was indeed the winner. Franken wasn’t sworn into office until July 7th, 2009, a full six months after the 111th Congress had taken charge.
And it wasn’t even that easy. Even had Franken been seated at the beginning of the legislative session, the Democrats still would only have had a 59-41 seat edge. It wasn’t until late April of 2009 that Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter defected from the Republican Party to caucus with the Democrats. Without Franken, the Dems only had 58 votes.
But even that’s not entirely accurate, and the Dems didn’t have a consistent, reliable 58 votes. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was terminally ill with a brain tumor, and could only muster up the energy to vote on selected legislation. His presence could not be counted on, and thus his vote in the Senate could not be counted on. During the first year of the Obama presidency, due to his illness Kennedy missed 261 out of a possible 270 votes in the Senate, denying the Democrats the 60th vote necessary to break a filibuster. In March of 2009, he stopped voting altogether. It wasn’t until Kennedy passed away in late August, 2009, and an interim successor was named on September 24th, 2009, that the Democrats actually had 60 votes.
And even then the 60 vote supermajority was tenuous at best. At the time, then 91 year old Robert Byrd from West Virginia was in frail health. During the last 6 months of 2009, Byrd missed 128 of a possible 183 votes in the Senate. Byrd passed away on June 28, 2010 at the age of 92.
In all, Democrats had a shaky 60 vote supermajority for all of four months and one week; from the time Kennedy’s interim successor Paul Kirk was sworn in on September 24th until the time Republican Scott Brown was sworn in as Kennedy’s “permanent” replacement after his special election victory over Democratic disappointment, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. In a state that is heavily Democratic, it seems that Coakley figured she didn’t have to actually campaign for the Senate seat; that Massachusetts voters would automatically elect the Democrat to replace the legendary Kennedy. No way Massachusetts would send a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy. Brown took the election seriously, Coakley did not, and Brown won (he will, however, lose this November to Elizabeth Warren, and all will be right with the world again).
During those four months and one week, Congress was in session for a total of 72 days. So for 72 days the Democrats held a 60 seat, filibuster-proof supermajority in the United States Senate. But wait! There’s more! As Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn points out, even that was unreliable. “Even in this window Obama’s ‘control’ of the Senate was incomplete and highly adulterated due to the balkiness of the so-called Blue Dog conservative and moderate Democratic Senators such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.”
Zorn continues:
The claim that Obama ruled like a monarch over Congress for two years — endlessly intoned as a talking point by Republicans — is more than just a misremembering of recent history or excited overstatement. It’s a lie.
It’s meant to represent that Obama’s had his chance to try out his ideas, and to obscure and deny the relentless GOP obstructionism and Democratic factionalism he’s encountered since Day One.
They seem to figure if they repeat this often enough, you’ll believe it.
Seventy-two days. That’s it. That’s the entirety of absolute Democratic control of the United States Senate in 2009 and 2010. And yet Republicans want America to believe that Obama and the Democrats ruled with a tyrannical zeal to pass every piece of frivolous legislation they could conjure up. They think that the voters are dumb enough to believe it.
Given the mendacity of the Republican presidential ticket this year, it appears that they think very little of the intelligence of the American electorate, and are merely perpetuating a disturbing pattern of behavior on the part of Republican lawmakers, who have a very loose relationship with truth and the real world. And that includes their official PR apparatus, Fox News. We’ll find out on November 6th if they’re right.
All of this and we didn’t even talk about the unprecedented, deliberate, methodical obstructionism on the part of Republicans via the filibuster. Tsk, tsk, tsk….
https://sandiegofreepress.org/2012/09/the-myth-of-the-filibuster-proof-democratic-senate/
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