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Ah science, sweet science. The creationists wish they had some. Oh sure, they claim they do but they are creationists, so they are apt to lying. But you guys get a reprieve for the next few days as I’ll be in Denver. So suck up the science that supports the irrefutable fact of evolution while you can.
Diamonds May Have Been Life’s Best Friend On Primordial Earth
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2008) — Diamonds may have been life’s best friend. Billions of years ago, the surface of these gems may have provided just the right conditions to foster the chemical reactions believed to have given rise to life on Earth, researchers in Germany report.
Their study is scheduled for the August 6 issue of ACS’ Crystal Growth & Design, a bi-monthly journal.
In the new study, Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu, and Hans-Joerg Fecht point out that scientists have theorized for years that the chemical precursors of life gradually evolved from a so-called “primordial soup” of simpler molecules. But the details of how these simpler amino acids molecules, the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers, remains one of science’s long-standing mysteries.
To find out, the research team studied diamonds, crystallized forms of carbon which are older than the earliest forms of life on Earth. In a series of laboratory experiments, the scientists showed that after treatment with hydrogen, natural diamond forms crystalline layers of water on its surface, essential for the development of life, and involved in electrical conductivity. When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, researchers say.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080728220324.htm
The full moon is sliding to towards the western horizon to set at about 7:30 this morning. For some reason, the August full moon is known as the “full Sturgeon moon.” Even though yesterday, Saturday, was the official day of the full moon, it will still appear full tonight for all intents and purposes.
Good Morning Mpunk, great science you have there.
“Diamonds ‘may’ have been. . .” “. . . gems ‘may’ have provided . . .” “. scientists have ‘theorized’ for years. . .” “. . .science’s long-standing ‘mysteries’.” “. . .reaction ‘may’ have been. . .”
HEHEHEHE
I always like to start the day with solid ’science’!
Wind Woes: Living close to wind turbines can cause ’sleep disorders, difficulty with equilibrium, headaches, childhood night terrors’
Regrettably, carbon dioxide seems to induce the same disorders in some people
Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., coined the phrase “wind turbine syndrome” for what she says happens to some people living near wind energy farms. She has made the phrase part of the title of a book she’s written called “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on the Natural Experiment.” It is scheduled for publication next month by K-Selected Press, of Santa Fe, N.M.
In contrast to those who consider wind turbines clean, green and an ideal source of renewable energy, Pierpont says living or working too close to them has a downside. Her research says wind turbines should never be built closer than two miles from homes. Pierpont, 53, is a 1991 graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has a doctorate in population biology from Princeton University. Her interest was piqued by a wind farm being built near her upstate New York home, and she studied 10 families living near wind turbines built since 2004 in Canada, England, Ireland, Italy and the United States.
Pierpont’s findings suggest that low-frequency noise and vibration generated by wind machines can have an effect on the inner ear, triggering headaches; difficulty sleeping; tinnitus, or ringing in the ears; learning and mood disorders; panic attacks; irritability; disruption of equilibrium, concentration and memory; and childhood behavior problems.
Concerns also are coming out of Europe about low-frequency noise from newly built wind turbines. For example, British physician Amanda Harry, in a February 2007 article titled “Wind Turbines, Noise and Health,” wrote of 39 people, including residents of New Zealand and Australia, who suffered from the sounds emitted by wind turbines. According to Pierpont, eight of the 10 families in her study moved out of their homes.”All these problems were resolved as soon as these people got away from the turbines, got in the car and drove away from the house,” she said.
Mike Logsdon, director of development for Invenergy, developer of the 48 wind turbines under construction in the Willow Creek Wind Project, said he’s heard of Pierpont’s findings, but his 5-year-old company doesn’t find them credible.”We’ve had a number of other wind farms over the country and residents living by them and never had any problems,” Logsdon said. Invenergy has built and operates wind farms in Canada and Poland and in 12 states in the United States, Logsdon said. The company has 1,200 megawatts in production and is building 600 megawatts this year. The 72-megawatt Willow Creek Wind Project near the Eatons’ home is scheduled to start producing electricity Jan. 1.
If Pierpont’s theories gain acceptance, decisions on where future wind energy farms are built could be affected. Last year, more than one-third of all new power capacity in the United States, roughly 5,000 megawatts, was generated by wind turbines, said Joseph Beamon, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington.Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Energy report said demand for electricity is likely to grow 40 percent in the next 22 years in the United States alone, with 20 percent of the nation’s power generated by wind turbines, he said.
The Eatons and their neighbors have more to worry about than the Willow Creek Project. Approval was given July 25 by the Oregon Facilities Siting Council for construction of as many as 400 more wind turbines in the nearby Shepherds Flat Wind Project spanning parts of Gilliam and Morrow counties. The planned 909-megawatt project by Caithness Energy of Chicago is expected to be the largest wind farm on Earth, generating enough peak energy to power 225,000 homes.
“Man, this whole country is going to be windmills,” said a dismayed Denny Wade, 59, a railroad worker and neighbor of the Eatons. He and his wife, Lorrie, a 53-year-old schoolteacher, live three-quarters of a mile from one of Willow Creek’s turbines. The Wades had planned to sell the home where they’ve lived for four years and build a retirement home on a knoll 200 yards away with a view of Mount Hood. “Now, the view that it had is all windmills,” Wade said. “I didn’t move out there to view windmills.”
But Denny Wade’s larger concern is his vulnerability to migraine headaches. Although not everyone living near wind turbines experienced headaches, Pierpont’s research suggests “everyone with pre-existing migraines” developed headaches by living near the wind generators. The Wades scrapped plans to build a new home and hope to sell their 42 acres and move, they said.
Morrow County planner Carla McLane said potential health issues never were raised during the planning process in her county, and the opportunity to appeal has passed. The potential effects of turbines on the scenic values of Oregon 74 never were brought up in hearings he attended, said Terry Tallman, Morrow County Commission chairman. Generally, wind energy farms have been welcomed in this sparsely settled corner of the state, Tallman said. Tax revenues from the wind farms will be distributed to the counties, public schools, park and recreation districts and fire departments, he said.”Everybody that I’ve talked to has been very happy,” he said, adding that some on whose property the turbines are being built intend to retire on the income they receive. “I think it’s a good thing,” Ron Wyscaver, 40, a neighbor of the Eatons and Wades, said of the wind turbines.
Caithness first proposed a 105-megawatt Shepherds Flat Project in 2002, then applied to the state for the larger project two years ago, McLane said. The project was so large it went to the Energy Facilities Siting Council, where it received the go-ahead to start construction.
Potential medical problems aside, wind turbines will wreck the tranquillity that Mike and Sherry Eaton came to this remote place to find, Sherry Eaton said. She drives 90 miles a day to and from her job in Hermiston so they can live in the high-desert setting.”When you come home from work, everything drains away from you because it’s so quiet and peaceful,” she said, adding that’s about to end.”Now we are going to have to listen to those windmills: Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!” she said
Source:
http://www.newhouse.com/wind-turbines-whip-up-health-fears-2.html
When did talking on a cell phone become legal?
Talking while driving could be declared irresponsible driving.
Cell phone driving is equated to drunk driving because it is a huge distraction.
Is there an ordinance declaring irresponsible driving legal?
If my memory serves me well there is an ordinance in against irresponsible driving.
Barack Obama’s liberal agenda has remained hidden this election year, but David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama exposes Obama’s leftist leanings. Rounding out the top ten examples of Obama’s overwhelming partisanship are:
1) TAXES
* Obama recently voted in step with his liberal colleagues to raise taxes on single people making more than $32,000 a year, by increasing the 25% bracket to 28% in the Democratic budget.
2) ENERGY
* Obama has been one of ethanol’s greatest champions in the U.S. Senate, supporting the kind of systemic subsidies that have driven food prices up while not producing any real energy independence benefit. His energy plan would outlaw new cars that cannot run on a high ethanol blend, a fuel that requires direct and indirect subsidies in the range of $8 billion.
3) ABORTION
* Obama supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which places all regulation of abortion at the federal level, effectively banning things like parental notification and allowing late-term abortions, while forcing all taxpayers to fund abortions.
4) FOREIGN POLICY
* Obama voted the Democratic Party line on 16 out of 18 foreign policy bills that came before the Senate in 2007, contributing to his “most liberal senator” title.
5) EDUCATION
* Obama pays lip service to the idea of merit pay for teachers, but in fact would take all the teeth out of such reform by promising the unions that “merit” will be based on a measure of their choosing rather than on student achievement.
6) ABORTION
* Obama voted against Illinois’ born-alive bill which guarantees medical care to babies that survive a failed abortion.
7) TAXES
* Obama proposed a tax on small businesses without insurance, in order to pay for the high cost of his proposed big government health plan—a plan that would place an enormous burden on small businesses.
8) EDUCATION
* Though he sends his own children to private schools, Obama opposes school choice through vouchers or tax credits that could be used for private school, programs which represent the only hope for poor children trapped in failing inner-city schools.
9) ENERGY
* Obama has consistently opposed drilling in the United States, claiming that it shouldn’t be tried because our proven supply wouldn’t be able to cover our entire demand, despite support for drilling among American voters—until two weeks ago when he flip-flopped and said he would consider it.
10) GUN RIGHTS
* During his campaign for the Senate, Obama supported federal legislation that would ban citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement officers.
Human Events
Are you saying life is a chemical reaction, Maggotpunk.
Sorry Hank, science doesn’t talk in certainty since the results are always open to be challenged. Paradigms can talk in certainty. But if the science isn’t solid then feel free to present some evidence to the contrary. You never do so science continues to win in the absence of any contradictory evidence. Gee, that kinda makes you look foolish doesn’t it? BTW, are you ever going to present that scientific evidence that lizards were instantly created out of nothing?
Sorry Maggot man,
Scientists have been trying for years to find the origin of life. This ‘diamonds in the goo’ theory is merely the latest hook they have provided for idiots like you to hang your religion bashing hopes on.
There was no ’science’ evident in your original post or your link this morning.
nitwit
Religion creates another victim.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26242454/
BALTIMORE – After denying Javon Thompson food and water for two days because he wouldn’t say “Amen” after meals, the 1-year-old’s caretakers waited for a divine sign that their message had been heard: a resurrection.
For more than a week, police say in charging documents describing the scene, the child’s lifeless body lay in the back room of an apartment. Queen Antoinette, the 40-year-old leader of a group that called itself 1 Mind Ministries, brought in her followers and told them to pray. God, she said, would raise Javon from the dead.
Instead, Javon’s body began to decompose…
“Sorry Maggot man,
Scientists have been trying for years to find the origin of life. This ‘diamonds in the goo’ theory is merely the latest hook they have provided for idiots like you to hang your religion bashing hopes on.
There was no ’science’ evident in your original post or your link this morning.
nitwit”
Funny how this “nitwit” can present evidence to support my case and you present nothing. Try again.
Present evidence? What evidence? Your diamonds in the goo crap is goofier than the debunked 1953 Miller-Urey experiment you were defending the other day.
What’s next? Life from alien fairy dust?
nitwit
As for life, I’m just saying it’s difficult to discuss the origin of something we can’t explain. It may be true that life arose from completely natural processes but it may be magic, too. No one really knows.
There’s a guy out there who’s trying to make a bacteria. Maybe he’ll tell us. And virus can be made from off-the-shelf components, but they aren’t really alive, I guess.
http://godisimaginary.com/i50.htm
Proof #50 – Ask Jesus to appear
Just about everyone knows the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The story is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed. Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he arose again from the dead.
There is only one way for Jesus to prove that he rose from the dead. He had to appear to people. Therefore, several different places in the Bible describe Jesus’ appearances after his death:
* Matthew chapter 28
* Mark chapter 16
* Luke chapter 24
* John Chapter 20 and 21
1 Corinthians 15:3-6 provides a nice summary of those passages, as written by Paul:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
As you can see in this passage, Jesus appeared to hundreds of people a number of different times.
Being like Paul
This proof generated so many rationalizations and excuses that we had to create a separate page to rebutt them all. See the Excuses page for a complete list.
When we look at 1 Corinthians 15:3-6, there is a question that comes to mind — why did Jesus stop making these appearances? Why isn’t Jesus appearing today?
It really is odd. Obviously Paul benefitted from a personal meeting with the resurrected Christ. Because of the personal visit, Paul could see for himself the truth of the resurrection, and he could ask Jesus questions.
So… Why doesn’t Jesus appear to everyone and prove that he is resurrected, just like he appeared to Paul? There is nothing to stop Jesus from materializing in your kitchen tonight to have a personal chat with you. And if you think about it, Jesus really does need to appear to each of us. If Paul needed a personal visit from Jesus to know that Jesus was resurrected, then why wouldn’t you?
It is an important question for the following reasons:
* We are told by the Bible that Jesus appeared to hundreds of people.
* We therefore know that it is OK for Jesus to appear to people — it does not take away their free will, for example — because it was OK for Jesus to appear to hundreds of other people.
* We know that it would be easy for Jesus to appear to everyone all through history, since Jesus is all-powerful and timeless.
* We know that, if Jesus did reappear to everyone, it would be incredibly helpful. We could all know, personally, that Jesus is resurrected and that Jesus is God. If Paul (and all the other people in the Bible) needed a personal visit to know that Jesus was resurrected, then why not you and me?
* Yet, we all know that Jesus has not appeared to anyone in 2,000 years.
In other words, there is nothing stopping Jesus from appearing to you, and several good reasons for him to appear.
In addition, Jesus promises that he will appear to you. All that we have to do is pray to Jesus like this: “Dear Jesus, please appear to us, as you did to Paul and the 500 brethren, so that we can see the evidence of your resurrection. In your name we pray, amen.” Here is what Jesus has promised us in the Bible:
Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:
Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
In John chapter 14:14:
Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
In Matthew 18:19:
Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Jesus is actually in our midst. So he is right here already, supposedly. Yet when we pray to him to physically materialize, as he did to hundreds of others, nothing happens.
Isn’t it odd that Nothing happens, given the fact that Jesus promises us that something will happen? Isn’t it odd that Nothing happens when, supposedly, Jesus is right here with us already, and materialization would be trivial for him? Isn’t it odd that Nothing happens when, supposedly, Jesus was happy to appear to hundreds of others?
What you will find, if you think about it, is that the situation we see here is the kind of unambiguous situation described Proof #9. We have created a situation where coincidence cannot “answer” the prayer. The only way for this prayer to be answered is for Jesus to actually, unambiguously, materialize. In this situation, we also know that:
1. It is trivial for Jesus to materialize
2. There would be many benefits if Jesus did materialize
3. Jesus has supposedly materialized to other human beings
4. Jesus has promised to answer our prayer that he materialize
How do we explain the fact that this prayer goes unanswered, no matter who prays, despite Jesus’ promise that he will answer our prayers?
As you think about this, you will realize that Paul’s story in the Bible is false. Simply look at Paul’s story like any judge in a courtroom would. What Paul’s story in 1 Cor 15 is suggesting is entirely unprecedented – a man dead three days with mortal wounds came back to life. Yet there is no evidence that it is true, and there are many alternative explanations for what Paul is saying. Paul could be fabricating the story, Paul could have hallucinated or dreamed the meeting, Paul could have seen an imposter, etc. In addition, no one is seeing Jesus today, even though it would be trivial and obvious for Jesus to appear to people today just like he did with Paul, and Jesus promises in the Bible that he will answer our prayers.
What about Jesus’ famous statement in the Bible, “Happy are those who have not seen yet still believe”? What you realize is that this statement creates the perfect cover for a scam. Let’s say you are Jesus, you are a normal human being, you realize that you are going to die (everybody does) and you want to cover for this fact. Here is what you would say: “Happy are those who have not seen yet still believe.” What you are saying is, “the way I am going to show you that I exist is by not showing that I exist.” For every other object in the universe, the way that we know it exists is because the object provides evidence of its existence. If there is no evidence for an object’s existence, we call it imaginary (e.g. Leprechauns). But with Jesus, the lack of evidence is turned into evidence. Quite clever, but obviously a scam.
Thought-provoking post, “annie_moose” –
Prepare for the loving “Christians” to attack you.
They hate being provoked into thought.
Perhaps we’ll get some classic twice-born theology like last weeks missive from the prophet “Nathaniel” who gave us, “Taking the Bible literally does not mean taking every word literally.”
I guess the NIMBY crowd would rather live with coal plants putting out mercury and other heavy metals than have a windmill in their back yard. So much for the American pioneering spirit. Apparently, the me-first crowd still prevails. Too bad.
HLP
Posted August 17, 2008 at 7:48 am | Permalink
What’s next? Life from alien fairy dust?
—
Isn’t that what your side believes? :wink:
Monkeyhawk,
What surprises me is the way the good Christians go after Chas. He must improperly practice the rituals or says the magic words in the wrong order.
Chas isn’t a pastor.
As this forum’s resident lapsed agnostic (I’m not sure what it is I don’t believe in) I thought I’d share this little humanist sermon this morning before the holy-rollers show up –
Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
By Naomi Shihab Nye
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? We told her the flight was going to be 4 hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu-beduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late.
Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of
It. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.
And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.
Chas isn’t a pastor.
Why not?
It’s obvious.
It’s obvious.
not to me
Not surprising.
Some things on this website are obvious, some not.
That Chas is not a pastor ain’t one of ‘em.
That KSGolfnut is angry about something, on the other hand, that’s obvious.
Does somebody need a hug? :D
Not to worry annie. Nutboy has a habit of saying something is true because he says it is true. Typical wingnut.
And on the campaign for preznit, it seems obama is taking advise from Micheal Moore about how to lose the election. I love it. If he loses, it will be the fault of Hillary, her supporters, all feminists, all women, and uh, probably gay people.
Anyone’s fault but obamas.
If you’d like to see Moore’s five ways for obama to lose, check it out here.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1036
Like I said, obama is following the advise closely.
Not surprising.
Should I touch the computer screen so I can read your mind?
IF you haven’t figured it out I’m not religious. I also do not presume to know your thoughts. What is it about Chas. that bugs you guys so much?
Good story MonkeyHawk. Interesting, Annie. Thanks. It’s nice to have good folks bringing good things to the WEBlog.
On science, which seems to be one of the topics of the day, here is one of about a hundred articles I found describing my son and his colleagues most recently published work. Ya know, embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998 — only 10 years ago! And look at the progress made. This work is done with iPS cells which will be shared with other scientists and increase our chances of cures and treatments.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080807130834.htm
farmgrrl, I am beginning to picture the day when I will ask you to take me by the shoulders shake really hard and yell, “I tried to tell you!” :-(
Linda, ya know I love ya girl, but that day will never come. I just dont care that much anymore. People believe what they WANT to believe. It is rarely based on evidence or logic. I cant change that.
We get what we deserve.
Of the “takes” I read on last night’s “interview,” this one seemed most accurate to me.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080807130834.htm
NO, no, no!
HERE:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/17/saddleback/
Sorry! Guess you actually have to copy the link and not repaste one you’ve already posted!
Obama’s performance last night at Saddleback bordered on pathetic. I have to ask myself if Hillary wouldn’t have done a much better job.
_____________________________________________
ksfarmgrrl
Posted August 17, 2008 at 9:18 am | Permalink
If he loses, it will be the fault of Hillary, her supporters, all feminists, all women, and uh, probably gay people.
Ya got that right. While you’re at it, add the rest of the Democrats, too. There’ll be plenty of blame to go around.
Obama and Democrats are going to lose this election. They can’t pull together; they can’t work for everybody’s interests, only their own personal interests.
Get ready for Bush 3.
Several times Warren stated directly to Obama, “I don’t want to hear from your stump speech,” but he allowed John S (for senile) McCain the Third (for Shrub’s 3rd term) to recite slogans from his stump speech.
Obama came off as thoughtful and conversational. McC*nt reminded me of your crazy coot grand dad who tells the same stories over and over again.
(And, btw. That was the same cup. Obama used it to drink from; McBush used it to drool into.)
Those who have little to say, often repeat it.
“Good Morning Mpunk, great science you have there.
“’Diamonds may have been. . .’ ‘ . . gems may have provided . . .’ ‘. scientists have theorized for years. . .’ ‘. . .science’s long-standing mysteries.’ ‘. . .reaction may have been. . .’
“HEHEHEHE
“I always like to start the day with solid ’science’!”
Sigh. Hank, Hank, Hank.
Several things deserve comment on this post.
First of all, the language of science is filled with “maybes”, “appear to be”, etc. The scientific method, at its best, is designed to compensate for flaws in human biases and perceptions, and generally good scientists and science journalists are conscientious about pointing out uncertainties. To mock that uncertainty is to communicate on no uncertain terms an ignorance on how science is done (regardless of the level of technical training the person doing the mocking has). You aren’t helping your case with the scientifically literate here.
Secondly, it should be noted as general comment that this article discusses a hypothesis on abiogenesis, not evolution.
Third, an aside to ksfarmgrrl, imitiation is the sincerist form of flattery (and, btw, I know that is some respect between ksfarmgrrl and Hank-so I am not attempting to fling a snarky insult here-well, maybe JUST a little bit ;-) ).
“Chas isn’t a pastor.”
KsGolfnut is a troll.
Therefore, the appropriate response:
Re: KsGolfnut
DNFTT
Have a pleasant Sunday
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece
Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.
Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.
The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.
“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.
He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.
The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.
Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”
He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.
Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.
He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.
“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.
“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”
“Sorry Maggot man,
“Scientists have been trying for years to find the origin of life. This ‘diamonds in the goo’ theory is merely the latest hook they have provided for idiots like you to hang your religion bashing hopes on.”
Bullsh*t (probably of the self deceiving sort in this case). There are multiple hypotheses that all have evidence to support them (with regards to abiogenesis), and the reality is probably a mixture of some of the hypotheses. And the engine ehind none of them is to bash religion.
“There was no ’science’ evident in your original post or your link this morning.”
As I have pointed out before, your very posts reflect ignorance on how science is presented. Given this reality, your implied claimed ability to evaluate whether there is science in a quoted post is discredited.
“nitwit”
Once again, you are in no position to make this insult in a way that sticks.
The faith-based tend to dismiss the importance of “proof” then construct a straw man argument that science somehow claims it.
Science never claims to prove anything; only to cite and explore and explain the evidence at hand.
Scientists never attempt to prove things. Religionists never bother. It takes a lot less thinking and the twice-born like that.
Come to think of it testicle never ever offers anything other than a bunch of junk space on the board. Has anyone ever seen him post anything of substance?
he comes here not to learn, not to participate in debate, for that would require effort to actually look up stuff. No. He’s here merely to antagonize. And that fits the definition of a troll.
Pee,
You despise my views on business owners’ rights and the fact that labor unions are poison in the US economy.
I also don’t take this board very seriously.
=)
“troll-ize” me all you like.
“Pee,
“You despise my views on business owners’ rights and the fact that labor unions are poison in the US economy.
“I also don’t take this board very seriously.
=)
“‘troll-ize’ me all you like.”
Translation: Notice meeeeeeeee! Respoooooond toooooooo meeeeeeeeeeee! Iiiiiii aaaaaam provoooooooking yoooooooooooou!
Nah. Don’t give the stalker troll any more soup.
Oh…
And you absolutely HATE that I don’t accept pathetic excuses for those (like you) that CHOOSE to not purchase healthcare insurance, but waste their money on cigarettes and other vices. AND expect those (like me) to pay FOR the deadbeats.
Yep, you hate it.
Evolution vs. creationism. Religion vs. non religion. How many days/months is this going to go on? Nobody is going to change anyone’s mind on any of these, y’know?
Makes for lots of scroll overs for me. Borrrrring same old, same old….
Don’t forget “Life vs. Choice”
“KSGolfnut” —
That would be Pro-Illegal Abortion vs. Pro-Choice.
Oh yeah..thanks Golf…another endless, and monotonous discussion
depends on your definition of life, quality and who’s life you’re talking about.
Note: Monkey and Pee trying to perpetuate the mindless and endless arguement.
*shock*
You advocate illegal abortion, “KSGolfnut.”
Simple as that.
Raptor I couldn’t agree with you more. And I have been reading this all morning thinking the libs will stope arguing among themselves and move on to something substantive. Didn’t happen.
What about Michael Phelps! What an accomplishment. A single mom who looked at a dyslexic son who was ADHD and decided not to medicate but to direct his energies. She gets my vote for a gold medal for her victory.
MonkeyHAwk,
Science doesn’t attempt to prove anything?
Well, I hope you forward that little tid bit of information to the thousands upon thousands of scienctists who are out there trying to prove stuff.
And if that is the case, why do you ask those of us who believe in God to prove something when sit here asserting that the very thing you believe is not proven either nor do you attempt to do so?
I think, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt here, that what you meant to say was the science doesn’t speak in absolutes.
Either way, it doesn’t make much sense in the context of this discussion.
The Same Liberal Socialists who yesterday posted in favor of the Global Poverty Act are also complaining about the Billions of Dollars that should be spent in the US on more Socialist programs here at home.
These Same Liberal Socialists are so generous with Other Peoples Money, are NOT willing to pony up more tax dollars out of their own back pocket, yet they think Someone Else should have their money taken away and given not only to other Americans, but to the Whole Wide World!
Socialists – Full of Hypocracy and Greed, and outright Stupidity in thinking money grows on trees.
Annie,
You post doesn’t prove anything. All you do is beg for speculation and doubt.
If that is your argument, then why bother with Jesus Resurection?
We could ask why God would do any of the things that He has done and you could sit here wondering why.
You don’t believe in God, ok. Why do you seek to cause doubt and disprove that what many others do believe?
Actually, that’s how the DemoRats buy votes – voting for free money for almost everybody.
You know, the money comes from the money trees.
Remember folks, there’s still $5 Trillion left to take.
National Income – $9 Trillion
Federal Taxes – $3 Trillion
State/Local Taxes – $1 Trillion
$5 Trillion of the Peoples Money is Left to Spend!
Nathan,
Annie = Chas
This $845 BILLION foreign aid bill is an example of the type of Global Socialism that Obama will bring.
It’s not enough for the Democrats to advance Socialism in the USA, they want to make the entire planet Socialist.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56405
He said the legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years he said would amount to $845 billion “over and above what the U.S. already spends.”
Annie,
I would tell you what my problem with Chas is, but then your fellow liberals will go on and on and on endlessly and Chas will do the same.
Several will end up asking me to stop while ignoring all the crap that everyone else is posting.
I will have to point out that once again I was not the one who started this crap.. again… and then I will be the one to stop.
Meanwhile, the others will continue to ramble on for a bit and even the ones who asked me to stop will still keep it going.
Then someone like you will start it all over again the next day.
Meanwhile, I am the one who is “causing” all this crap.
Yeah right.
The Phony Pastor is the one causing all the religious crap.
First It claims to be a Christian Expert. Then after spewing It’s sacriligious BS, It gets challenged. THEN IT GETS PO AND WHINES AND CRIES ALL DAY LONG ABOUT IT!
I see annie making a couple of posts that mention no names.
I see Nathan seeming to see his name in those posts and trying to pick a fight.
I see Max crawl out from under the bed, accuse annie of being chas (rediculous, but that’s Max) and try to pick a fight.
BlueJay,
MonkeyHawk, just after her post, mentioned my name.
When you are posting things which question Christianity, of course you are “picking a fight.” Names need not be mentioned to do so.
BJ go back and read annies post. She very clearly asks why people don’t like Chas and why they don’t think he is a preacher. Who on here has told that to Chas over and over again. Nathan and Regular. Don’t be obtuse.
She/he was attempting to incite a discussion about religion. Surprise, surprise. Nathan very wisely said I won’t play that game anymore.
Monkeyhawk whines:
You advocate illegal abortion, “KSGolfnut.”
It’s always refreshing to when the opposition declares to know more about what I support than I do. Naturally, he’s wrong.
I don’t advocate illegal abortion at all. In fact, I don’t think all abortion should be outlawed. I DO think late term abortion and the so-called “partial birth” abortion should be illegal.
End of discussion.
spewing It’s sacriligious BS,
—————————-
What sacriligious bs is that?
Nathan very wisely said I won’t play that game anymore.
—————————————-
What game is that? Your religion can’t stand up to the light of day?
Annie as Chass says ‘flame on’. I choose not to play that game either. Argue with yourself. Libs can do that quite well.
Fact: Chas is not a pastor.
oh maxie,
annie equals Charles,
even a limp wrist twit like you really doesn’t believe that. I’m a proud member of the growing atheist community. I have no need for an imaginary deity to justify my existence. Charles I believe is a man of the cloth. I’m merely wondering what it is in wingnut world that causes your side to hate Charles, after all he belongs to your flock.
“Even though yesterday, Saturday, was the official day of the full moon, it will still appear full tonight for all intents and purposes.”
99% full, to be exact. Full moon on Saturday (100%) was at 2:59 a.m., if I have my Eastern/Central correct.
BTW, this full moon is also called the Blessing Moon. :) It’s believed by some that the power of the full moon encompasses 3 days prior to and 3 days after the day of the full moon.
Religion, ethics experts comment on forum
Comments from five religion and ethics experts asked by USA TODAY to observe the forum broadcast.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-08-17-forum-experts_N.htm
Wind Woes: Living close to wind turbines can cause ’sleep disorders, difficulty with equilibrium, headaches, childhood night terrors’
Interesting. But isn’t it said that living near those huge electric lines causes cancer? I knew a couple who lived directly across the road from one of those towers, and the woman died of brain cancer, so…
I think I can deal much better with sleep disorders, equilibrium problems, headaches, and childhood night terrors. In fact, I’ve dealt with all at some time or other, and there are no wind turbines anywhere near! Okay, we did have an old windmill in the back yard that creaked and whined when the wind blew, but it became soothing after a time.
Six days of blessings! Don’t think anyone will turn down that possibility. ;-)
Annie,
By claiming to be an athiest, you are taking side by not only not believing in the existence of any supernatural being, you are claiming that none exist.
A belief which you can no more prove than what I believe and you mock me for not being able to prove.
Linda,
I was checking out your link (2nd one) and accidentally went past it to find the following in Open Salon by Liz Emrich, who admitted to being a Christian Democrat. :)
And when I talk about “people of faith” here, I am not just talking about Christians. Because Jews and Muslims have faith just like I do. I work in an interfaith bookstore owned by practicing pagans. They too, are people of faith. Just because the object of faith differs from my own, it does not change the fact that anyone who believes, no matter what the subject of the belief, is a person of faith.
I found this interesting, as she was talking about what faith is in her comments. What makes one person’s faith right above all others? Well, their faith. Nothing more. Faith isn’t proof that you’re right about anything except that you believe in something, whether it be religious or any number of things.
What we have with some is the insistence that their belief must be held above all others by everyone. That’s just not possible. Each perceives things in his or her own way. No one is an exact copy, especially mentally or faith-wise, of any other.
So why must we question the faith of others? To bolster our own belief? And if that’s so, why does our faith need bolstering?
Can any of you answer those questions?
And I’m still waiting for answer to the location of Heaven and Hell, without all the cutesy stuff. Can anyone be honest enough to say they don’t know?
Nathaniel,
Was Annie mocking? Or was Annie pointing out some things she found to be worthy of thought? If someone questioning those things you believe in makes you uncomfortable, why does it?
Oops, I meant to add the link to Liz Emrich’s post on Open Salon. Thought provoking, for those who can deal with it.
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=9927
“Predestined” asked the boy prophet “Nathaniel” —
“… If someone questioning those things you believe in makes you uncomfortable, why does it?”
Because the boy doesn’t like to think about stuff. Especially about stuff he doesn’t like to think about.
He doesn’t like to bother with what he believes (other than, perhaps, “I believe I’ll take my Glock to church this morning.”
He believes in the literal truth of the Bible expect when you’re not supposed to take it, y’know, literally literally.
Thanks for that link, Pre. Glad you looked around and found that! The more information we have, the better informed our decisions and choices.
Reading this thread confirms my impression that the self-proclaimed atheists at this forum seemingly can’t exist without trying to trash what they have rejected and those who believe it. Why is that?
It’s like you are afraid you are wrong and are trying to bury it.
They tried to do that to Jesus.
“Predestined” provided this link –
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=9927
Thanks for that.
It’s just the kind of thoughtful piece that’ll make the boy bat his head with his paw like a dog with an ice cream headache.
Why is that?
You reject our science we reject your magic.
I don’t reject science, I reject bad science. :)
It’s not magic, it’s called faith.
“outlander” –
Just to reiterate. I am not an atheist. I’m a lapsed agnostic.
And I’m just about positive I am wrong about anything and (especially) everything about god-ness.
A “God of my understanding” doesn’t fit the job requirement.
faith magic
tomato tomatoe
atheist = dead man walking
yawn
“Regular” = half-dead man sitting in an adult diaper
Now that Robert Kagan, William Kristol (who seems not to be discredited in the eyes of the New York Times, which just made him a columnist) and a host of other neocons have hitched their fortunes to McCain, the neocons are poised for a fresh comeback
I think that one should reject bad science. I reject bad faith. A bad faith is one that must use a fear or uncertainty in order for one to start belief.
Example: If you don’t start believing (fill in the blank), then, (fill in the blank) will happen to you. That won’t cause a person to believe it. Rather, it would cause suspect to the belief.
Just my opinion. That is how I see the term “magic” rather than “faith”
“Lapsed agnostic”. Good one.
I don’t pretend to understand the ways of God, Monkeyhawk. He has even told us it is futile. (Isaiah 55:9) We can only try to recognize what is right and what is true.
Dog, I think McCain will be even more of a neocon than the others! He lives in his past, puts all his eggs in the basket of “war hero.” Sounds like he has a need to “redo” that part of his life he is stuck in.
It’s laughable that when you ask what qualities useful to being president one would gain from being a prisoner of war, no one can name anything. They veer off to character. Yet we know McCain’s more recent character isn’t exemplary. Being shot down and spending time as a prisoner of war denotes character, dumping your wife and children doesn’t. His conduct, the language he uses, times of drunkenness, his meanness have no impact on his character. Guess it’s true as farmgrll said earlier, we see what we choose to see.
You are right that the neocons are poised for a fresh comeback. They do their evil right in front of our eyes and too few see anything.
Christian by Maya Angelou
When I say… “I am a Christian”I’m not shouting “I’m clean livin.”I’m whispering “I was lost,”Now I’m found and forgiven.
When I say…”I am a Christian”I don’t speak of this with pride.I’m confessing that I stumbleand need CHRIST to be my guide.
When I say… “I am a Christian”I’m not trying to be strong.I’m professing that I’m weakand need HIS strength to carry on.
When I say… “I am a Christian”I’m not bragging of success.I’m admitting I have failedand need God to clean my mess.
When I say… “I am a Christian”I’m not claiming to be perfect,My flaws are far too visiblebut, God believes I am worth it.
When I say… “I am a Christian”I still feel the sting of pain,I have my share of heartachesSo I call upon His name.
When I say… “I am a Christian”I’m not holier than thou,I’m just a simple sinnerwho received God’s good grace, somehow.
~Maya Angelou~
—–
She says it so well.
This is why I won’t argue religion with you anymore. I’m secure in my faith. Don’t have to justify my faith with you anymore than you have to justify your lack of faith to me.
Linda I am just curious. I know many people on this blog who are divorced. I don’t look at it as having dumped their spouse and children. I am in no way justifying McCains actions. It was his largest moral failing as he himself said. He did support his ex and took care of his children so did what many ex husbands do.
Why is there a double standard on the left. No one made these claims when John Kerry ran and he basically did the same thing. Left his wife and children and married a very rich woman.
Just curious.
For me it was seeking and finding another trophy to replace the one who wasn’t any longer a trophy. Once he found the new one, then he dumped the damaged one.
I won’t defend him. This is one thing I don’t admire about him. There are others. It will be a difficult election for me. I just feel we have lowered the standards and now we are reaping the results.
Hank lies:
“Present evidence? What evidence? Your diamonds in the goo crap is goofier than the debunked 1953 Miller-Urey experiment you were defending the other day.”
How was the study debunked? You challenged me to present one scientist with a study that confirmed Miller-Urey and I did. Your response was silence. Now you wait and claim it is debunked with typical creationist lack of evidence.
It just goes to show your are out of your league. You can’t present anything that refuted the irrefutable fact of evolution (hence the reason I continually say it’s irrefutable), all you can do is whine.
It must suck to be as uneducated as you. I’m sure when I’m away in Colorado absolutely no scientific evidence will be presented that challenges the irrefutable, established fact of evolution.
Mad man in the white house
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room.
Erik Jacobs for The New York Times
John McCain said he had consulted Henry A. Kissinger on foreign policy before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.
“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.
Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”
Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America’s security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new “opportunity” to deter other potential foes by punishing not only Al Qaeda but also Iraq.
“Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom,” Mr. McCain told a NATO conference in Munich in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein. “A better world is already emerging from the rubble.”
To his admirers, Mr. McCain’s tough response to Sept. 11 is at the heart of his appeal. They argue that he displayed the same decisiveness again last week in his swift calls to penalize Russia for its incursion into Georgia, in part by sending peacekeepers to police its border.
His critics charge that the emotion of Sept. 11 overwhelmed his former cool-eyed caution about deploying American troops without a clear national interest and a well-defined exit, turning him into a tool of the Bush administration in its push for a war to transform the region.
“He has the personality of a fighter pilot: when somebody stings you, you want to strike out,” said retired Gen. John H. Johns, a former friend and supporter of Mr. McCain who turned against him over the Iraq war. “Just like the American people, his reaction was: show me somebody to hit.”
Whether through ideology or instinct, though, Mr. McCain began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same. He drew on principles he learned growing up in a military family and on conclusions he formed as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He also returned to a conviction about “the common identity” of dangerous autocracies as far-flung as Serbia and North Korea that he had developed consulting with hawkish foreign policy thinkers to help sharpen the themes of his 2000 presidential campaign.
While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi’s opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein’s supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. McCain’s supporters note that he became an early critic of the administration’s execution of the occupation, and they credit him with pushing the troop “surge” that helped bring stability. Mr. McCain, though, stands by his support for the war and expresses no regrets about his advocacy.
In written answers to questions, he blamed “Iraq’s opacity under Saddam” for any misleading remarks he made about the peril it posed.
The Sept. 11 attacks “demonstrated the grave threat posed by a hostile regime, possessing weapons of mass destruction, and with reported ties to terrorists,” Mr. McCain wrote in an e-mail message on Friday. Given Mr. Hussein’s history of pursuing illegal weapons and his avowed hostility to the United States, “his regime posed a threat we had to take seriously.” The attacks were still a reminder, Mr. McCain added, of the importance of international action “to prevent outlaw states — like Iran today — from developing weapons of mass destruction.”
Formative Years
Mr. McCain has been debating questions about the use of military force far longer than most. He grew up in a family that had sent a son to every American war since 1776, and international relations were a staple of the McCain family dinner table. Mr. McCain grew up listening to his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., deliver lectures on “The Four Ocean Navy and the Soviet Threat,” closing with a slide of an image he considered the ultimate factor in the balance of power: a soldier marching through a rice paddy with a rifle at his shoulder.
“To quote Sherman, war is all hell and we need to fight it out and get it over with and that is when the killing stops,” recalled Joe McCain, Senator McCain’s younger brother.
Vietnam, for Senator McCain, reinforced those lessons. He has often said he blamed the Johnson administration’s pause in bombing for prolonging the war, and he credited President Richard M. Nixon’s renewed attacks with securing his release from a North Vietnamese prison. He has made the principle that the exercise of military power sets the bargaining table for international relations a consistent theme of his career ever since, and in his 2002 memoir he wrote that one of his lifelong convictions was “the imperative that American power never retreat in response to an inferior adversary’s provocation.”
But Mr. McCain also took away from Vietnam a second, restraining lesson: the necessity for broad domestic support for any military action. For years he opposed a string of interventions — in Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, and, for a time, the Balkans — on the grounds that the public would balk at the loss of life without clear national interests. “The Vietnam thing,” he recently said.
In the late 1990s, however, while he was beginning to consider his 2000 presidential race, he started rebalancing his view of the needs to project American strength and to sustain public support. The 1995 massacre of 5,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica under NATO’s watch struck at his conscience, he has said, and in addition to America’s strategic national interests — in that case, the future and credibility of NATO — Mr. McCain began to speak more expansively about America’s moral obligations as the only remaining superpower.
His aides say he later described the American air strikes in Bosnia in 1996 and in Kosovo in 1999 as a parable of political leadership: Mr. McCain, Senator Bob Dole and others had rallied Congressional support for the strikes despite widespread public opposition, then watched approval soar after the intervention helped to bring peace.
“Americans elect their leaders to make these kinds of judgments,” Mr. McCain said in the e-mail message.
It was during the Balkan wars that Mr. McCain and his advisers read a 1997 article on the Wall Street Journal editorial page by William Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard — both now Op-Ed page columnists at The New York Times — promoting the idea of “national greatness” conservatism, defined by a more activist agenda at home and a more muscular role in the world.
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘eureka’ moment, but there was a sense that this is where we are headed and this is what we are trying to articulate and they have already done a lot of the work,” said John Weaver, a former McCain political adviser. “And, quite frankly, from a crass political point of view, we were in the making-friends business. The Weekly Standard represented a part of the primary electorate that we could get.”
Soon Mr. McCain and his aides were consulting regularly with the circle of hawkish foreign policy thinkers sometimes referred to as neoconservatives — including Mr. Kristol, Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, a former aide to Mr. Dole who became a McCain campaign adviser — to develop the senator’s foreign policy ideas and instincts into the broad themes of a presidential campaign. (In his e-mail message, Mr. McCain noted that he had also consulted with friends like Henry A. Kissinger, known for a narrower view of American interests.)
One result was a series of speeches in which Mr. McCain called for “rogue state rollback.” He argued that disparate regional troublemakers, including Iraq, North Korea and Serbia, bore a common stamp: they were all autocracies. And as such, he contended, they were more likely to export terrorism, spread dangerous weapons, or start ethnic conflicts. In an early outline of what would become his initial response to the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. McCain argued that “swift and sure” retribution against any one of the rogue states was an essential deterrent to any of the others. But Mr. McCain’s advisers and aides say his “rogue state” speeches stopped short of the most sweeping international agenda put forth by Mr. Kristol, Mr. Kagan and their allies. Mr. McCain explicitly disavowed direct military action merely to advance American values, foreswearing any “global crusade” of interventions in favor of relying on covert and financial support for internal opposition groups.
As an example, he could point to his 1998 sponsorship of the Iraqi Liberation Act, which sought to direct nearly $100 million to Iraqis who hoped to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The bill, signed by President Bill Clinton, also endorsed the ouster of Mr. Hussein.
Mr. McCain said then that he doubted the United States could muster the political will to use ground troops to remove the Iraqi dictator any time soon. “It was much easier when Saddam Hussein was occupying Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia,” the senator told Fox News in November 1998. “We’d have to convince the American people that it’s worth again the sacrifice of American lives, because that would also be part of the price.”
Hard Calls
Mr. McCain spent the afternoon of Sept. 11 in a young aide’s studio apartment near the Capitol. There was no cable television, nothing but water in the kitchen, and the hallway reminded him of an old boxing gym. Evacuated from his office but stranded by traffic, he could not resist imagining himself at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “There are not enough Secret Service agents in the world to keep me away from Washington and New York at a time like this,” Mr. McCain told an adviser.
Over the next days and weeks, however, Mr. McCain became almost as visible as he would have been as president. Broadcasters rushed to him as a patriotic icon and reassuring voice, and for weeks he was ubiquitous on the morning news programs, Sunday talk shows, cable news networks, and even late-night comedy shows.
In the spotlight, he pushed rogue state rollback one step further, arguing that the United States should go on the offensive as a warning to any other country that might condone such an attack. “These networks are well-embedded in some of these countries,” Mr. McCain said on Sept. 12, listing Iraq, Iran and Syria as potential targets of United States pressure. “We’re going to have to prove to them that we are very serious, and the price that they will pay will not only be for punishment but also deterrence.”
Although he had campaigned for President Bush during the 2000 general election, he was still largely frozen out of the White House because of animosities left over from the Republican primary. But after Mr. Bush declared he would hold responsible any country condoning terrorism, Mr. McCain called his leadership “magnificent” and his national security team the strongest “that has ever been assembled.” A few weeks later, Larry King of CNN asked whether he would have named Mr. Rumsfeld and Colin L. Powell to a McCain cabinet. “Oh, yes, and Cheney,” Mr. McCain answered, saying he, too, would have offered Mr. Cheney the vice presidency.
Even during the heat of the war in Afghanistan, Mr. McCain kept an eye on Iraq. To Jay Leno in mid-September, Mr. McCain said he believed “some other countries” had assisted Osama bin Laden, going on to suggest Iraq, Syria and Iran as potential suspects. In October 2001, when an Op-Ed page column in The New York Times speculated that Iraq, Russia or some other country might bear responsibility for that month’s anthrax mailings, Mr. McCain interrupted a question about Afghanistan from David Letterman on that night’s “Late Show.” “The second phase is Iraq,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.” (The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it came from a federal government laboratory in Maryland.) By October, United States and foreign intelligence agencies had said publicly that they doubted any cooperation between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda, noting Al Qaeda’s opposition to such secular nationalists. American intelligence officials soon declared that Mr. Hussein had not supported international terrorism for nearly a decade.
But when the Czech government said that before the attacks, one of the 9/11 hijackers had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official, Mr. McCain seized the report as something close to a smoking gun. “The evidence is very clear,” he said three days later, in an Oct. 29 television interview. (Intelligence agencies quickly cast doubt on the meeting.)
Frustrated by the dearth of American intelligence about Iraq, Mr. McCain’s aides say, he had long sought to learn as much as he could from Iraqi opposition figures in exile, including Mr. Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. Over the years, Mr. McCain often urged support for the group, saying it had “significant support, in my view, inside Iraq.”
After Sept. 11, Mr. Chalabi’s group said an Iraqi emissary had once met with Osama bin Laden, and brought forward two Iraqi defectors who described terrorist training camps and biological weapons efforts. At times, Mr. McCain seemed to echo their accusations, citing the “two defectors” in a television interview and attesting to “credible reports of involvement between Iraqi administration officials, Iraqi officials and the terrorists.”
Growing Impatient
But United States intelligence officials had doubts about Mr. Chalabi at the time and have since discredited his group. In 2006, Mr. McCain acknowledged to The New Republic that he had been “too enamored with the I.N.C.” In his e-mail message, though, he said he never relied on the group for information about Iraq’s weapons program.
At a European security conference in February 2002, when the Bush administration still publicly maintained that it had made no decision about moving against Iraq, Mr. McCain described an invasion as all but certain. “A terrorist resides in Baghdad,” he said, adding, “A day of reckoning is approaching.”
Regime change in Iraq in addition to Afghanistan, he argued, would compel other sponsors of terrorism to mend their ways, “accomplishing by example what we would otherwise have to pursue through force of arms.”
Finally, as American troops massed in the Persian Gulf in early 2003, Mr. McCain grew impatient, his aides say, concerned that the White House was failing to act as the hot desert summer neared. Waiting, he warned in a speech in Washington, risked squandering the public and international support aroused by Sept. 11. “Does anyone really believe that the world’s will to contain Saddam won’t eventually collapse as utterly as it did in the 1990s?” Mr. McCain asked.
In retrospect, some of Mr. McCain’s critics now accuse him of looking for a pretext to justify the war. “McCain was hell-bent for leather: ‘Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, we have got to teach him, let’s send a message to the other people in the Middle East,’ ” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.
But Mr. McCain, in his e-mail message, said the reason he had supported the war was the evolving threat from Mr. Hussein.
“I believe voters elect their leaders based on their experience and judgment — their ability to make hard calls, for instance, on matters of war and peace,” he wrote. “It’s important to get them right.”
“Annie,
“By claiming to be an athiest, you are taking side by not only not believing in the existence of any supernatural being, you are claiming that none exist.”
This is actually an incorrect, or at least incomplete, definition of atheism. Yes, some strong atheists make the positive claim that no god exists, but most simply make the claim with regards to their belief state, which is, that they lack a belief in god and do not see a god as a necessary explanation for existence or the observed world. But you go further:
“A belief which you can no more prove than what I believe and you mock me for not being able to prove.”
Arguing against a belief in god, or even a particular god, much less simply stating that one is an atheist, does not necessarily equal being mocked. That is in the thin skinned perspective of the beholder.
“Annie,
“By claiming to be an athiest, you are taking side by not only not believing in the existence of any supernatural being, you are claiming that none exist.”
When I read this post again, I realized that your argument was even worse than I initially thought it was. It basically makes the claim that declaring oneself an atheist is an act of aggression against believers. While that is a very wide perception, it is also very wrong. It is, in fact, offensive.
“Reading this thread confirms my impression that the self-proclaimed atheists at this forum seemingly can’t exist without trying to trash what they have rejected and those who believe it. Why is that?”
Because you are looking for it.
“It’s like you are afraid you are wrong and are trying to bury it.
“They tried to do that to Jesus.”
Looks like a case of projection to me.
I’m not sure how much McCain supports or supported his former wife. He pays her medical bills.
As for their children, have they stepped up in support of him? I honestly don’t know.
Taking his experience with his former wife and current wife in and of its own is not quite fair. He had a reputation as a womanizer, even before marrying his first wife. Right or wrong, it appears to be a fact. As Linda pointed out above, it’s a weakness in many men. (BTW, Linda, I can relate.)
As for John Kerry, I don’t see the correlation with McCain’s divorce, except that they are both divorced and married monied women.
Here’s what wikipedia has about Kerry:
Kerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: Alexandra and Vanessa. Alexandra was born on September 5, 1973, days before Kerry began law school. A graduate of Brown University, she received her M.F.A. in June 2004 from the AFI Conservatory. She is a documentary filmmaker. Vanessa was born on December 31, 1976. She is a graduate of Phillips Academy (like her grandfather) and Yale University, and attended Harvard Medical School and a master’s program in health policy in London. Both daughters were active in their father’s 2004 Presidential campaign.
In 1982 Thorne, who was suffering from severe depression, asked Kerry for a separation.[80] They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in 1997. “After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness” she wrote in A Change of Heart, her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry’s 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.
Kerry and his second wife, Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III, a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter, as well as a member of the Skull and Bones Society, were introduced to each other by John Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. They did not meet again until after John Heinz’s death, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. John Kerry’s stepsons — Teresa’s three sons from her previous marriage — are H. John Heinz IV, André Heinz and Christopher Heinz, who was married to Alexandra DeRuyter Lewis on February 10, 2007.
According to the above dates, Kerry and his first wife divorced in 1988. Kerry met Teresa in 1990, 2 years later, and they married in 1995.
In contrast, McCain divorced his first wife in 1980 and married his second wife one month later.
So where do you see the “same” in these two? I’m just wondering…
Agnatha:
Whereas, I can agree with the premise of your thoughts. I think a bit of housekeeping may be in order.
From my view, I think that it was Nathaniel who was responsible for those views. It looks as if Annie was the “target” of those claims rather than the “responsible party” of those claims.
Outlander,
Just to set the record straight, I am not an atheist either. I just don’t share the same faith you have. Does that make me right? Only for me, just as your faith is right for you.
oko/ksgrm,
It’s good that you’re secure in your faith. In that respect, you have nothing to fear from questions. I won’t argue religion either, but debate and questioning are, I believe, spiritually enlightening. I also believe those things can strengthen your faith, if you are honest with yourself and others. On the other hand, for some, it can weaken faith. I was asking Nathaniel, not meaning to argue, but as a serious question. I have at times disagreed with him, but I don’t recall that I’ve ever attacked him. If I have, I apologize.
But you’re free to disagree with me. :)
“Agnatha:
“Whereas, I can agree with the premise of your thoughts. I think a bit of housekeeping may be in order.
“From my view, I think that it was Nathaniel who was responsible for those views. It looks as if Annie was the ‘target’ of those claims rather than the ‘responsible party’ of those claims.”
Correct, and I am and was clear on that. The quotation of Nathan included the address Annie, but I was definitely responding to Nathan. In this case, it probably would have been better if I had said to the effect of “Nathan posted:” followed by the quotation with the address to Annie.
Outlander mentioned something about “self-proclaimed atheists”. Where does one get an official proclaimation or certification? Since the term, self-proclaimed Christian isn’t used there must be some institution where a person gets officially declared a Christian (substitute one of the other equally valid religions if you like)
“Correct, and I am and was clear on that.”
And just to be clear on THIS, I meant simply that I knew that I was addressing Nathan, not that I thought that it should have been clear to everyone that I was addressing Nathan. I think LLVT’s point was well taken.
A belief which you can no more prove than what I believe and you mock me for not being able to prove.
Hmmmm Nathan can always count on you to pick a fight
Some Atheists, when asked what their religion is, will answer, simply, “Atheist.” Others will say that they have no religion, they are an Atheist.
Note that:
*Atheism relates to a belief in the existence or non-existence of a deity, or whether the person associates any meaning to the terms “God” or “deity.”
*Atheism can involve the positive assertion that there is no deity; this is sometimes referred to as “strong Atheism.” It is the most common dictionary definition for the term “Atheist,” and is probably the definition used by most theists.
bullet Atheism can be the absence of a belief that there is a deity. This is the belief promoted by the American Atheists group and many individual Atheists.
*Atheism often promote the belief that all Gods and Goddesses (as well as angels, demons, ghosts, etc.) are nonexistent entities created by human minds.
In one way, most people in North America are Atheists. Christians will generally deny the existence of the Mayan, Hindu, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Sumerian, Sikh, and many hundreds of other Gods and Goddesses, even as they assert their belief in the Christian Trinity. Thus, the difference between a typical Christian and a typical Atheist is numerically small: The strong Atheist believes that none of the many thousands of Gods and Goddesses exist; the Christian believes that one God exists in a certain structure — a Trinity — whereas all of the other thousands of deities are nonexistent, artificial creations by humans. Although the numerical difference is much less that 0.1%, the philosophical difference is immense.
Annie,
If there aren’t some heads spinning over that, I don’t know what would make them do it. LOL
I 2ND THAT PRE-D
So if I’m a Spiritualist (probably the closest I come to any -ist or -ian at the moment), I take it Annie’s definition above means I am definitely not an atheist.
That’s good to know. :)
AnnieM–
I think there’s a reason for “religious” societies suffering from more social ills.
A lot of the most vociferous and growing religious sects (cults, actually) have many proscriptions on behavior. Baptists and Mennonites aren’t supposed to drink alcohol. Mormons can’t even drink Cokes (caffeine).
There’s no middle ground. Either you don’t drink or you’re a drunkard. Either you don’t have premarital sex or you’re a fornicator. Either you don’t use drug or you’re a drug fiend.
Once religious people break their vows, there’s no model for responsible “sinful” behavior.
I’ve had friends from Germany who’ve been drinking beer since they were 8 years old who were appalled at the keggers they saw in local colleges. People drink to excess in Germany, yes, “but not like that,” they said, “not getting sh!tfaced and puking.”
It’s like there’s no middle ground here.
KSGolfNut–
I’ve talked with Chas in person several times.
He is indeed an ordained pastor.
You’re a liar if you say he’s not.
Apparently, McCain said that he was cheered up by a guard who “drew a cross in the dirt” when he was imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton.
Turns out, the story was lifted from a book by Alexander Solzynetien (sp).
Oops . . .
You can’t present anything that refuted the irrefutable fact of evolution… –MaggotPunk
————–
Maggie is using that ill-defined, elastic word, “evolution” in his sweeping proclamation. “Evolution” as it is commonly used, can mean anything from simple, observable modifications in bacteria all the way to the theory of common descent (and in some cases beyond that). So if anyone denies the theory of evolution, it can be argued (disingenuously) that they are denying what can be demonstrated. And further, in his post, Maggie messily mixes in evolution with his speculation about how life began. Let’s be more precise in these discussions.
Regarding the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment, it has been shown that the guesstimated makeup of earth’s early atmosphere in their experiment was incorrect. But regardless, I think it is telling that he is referring to a 55 year old science experiment. If it had any validity as to the process by which life began surely 55 years of directed efforts at creating life in a lab would have yielded something he thinks just happened by incredible happenstance.
Be sure to let me know when that occurs. I won’t hold my breath.
A lot of the most vociferous and growing religious sects (cults, actually) have many proscriptions on behavior. Baptists and Mennonites aren’t supposed to drink alcohol. Mormons can’t even drink Cokes (caffeine).
————
Capn is making stuff up again.
So, Mennonites are one of the most vociferous and growing religious sects? I’m sure the Mennonites will be glad to here that.
And “Baptist” churches are about as diverse a group in beliefs that as you will find. To make a blanket statement about any subject, including drinking, is to demonstrate your ignorance.
Hey Capn,
You might find this interesting I posted it the day. Click the link the whole article is interesting.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9506E5D71139F935A15754C0A96E958260&fta=y
Ideas & Trends: Southern Curse; Why America’s Murder Rate Is So High
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
Published: July 26, 1998
MURDER in the United States has been dropping dramatically for years, to the lowest level since the modern crime wave began in the 1960’s. But this encouraging decline has masked a fundamental fact — that there is no such thing as an American murder rate.
In fact, there are sharp regional differences in homicide, with the South having by far the highest murder rate, almost double that of the Northeast, a divergence that has persisted for as long as records have been kept, starting in the 19th century. The former slaveholding states of the old Confederacy all rank in the top 20 states for murder, led by Louisiana, with a rate of 17.5 murders per 100,000 people in 1996. The 10 states with the lowest homicide rates are in New England and the northern Midwest, with South Dakota’s the lowest at 1.2 murders per 100,000 people.
It’s Personal
Experts note, in addition, that much of the disparity in murder rates between the South and other sections of the country stems from a difference in the character of Southern homicide. In the South, many murders are of a personal and traditional nature: a barroom brawl, a quarrel between acquaintances or a fight between lovers. Elsewhere, homicides usually begin with another crime, like a robbery gone bad, and typically involve strangers.
Most important, the experts say, the high Southern murder rate is a key factor behind America’s disproportionately high homicide rate compared with other democratic, industrialized nations. In 1996, the last year for which data are available, the United States murder rate was 7.4 per 100,000 people. The next closest country was Finland, at 3.2 per 100,000 people, with France at 1.1, Japan at 0.6 and Britain at 0.5.
While the United States has much more murder than comparable countries, it does not necessarily have much more crime. England has a higher rate of burglary. France has a higher rate of auto theft. The Netherlands and Australia have about the same total crime rate.
”The whole American scandalously high homicide rates are Southern in origin,” says Roger Lane, a professor of history at Haverford College and author of ”Murder in America: A History” (Ohio State University Press, 1997). Until the 1960’s, Professor Lane said, America’s big cities actually had murder rates lower than the national average, since the national rate had been skewed upward by Southern homicides.
The question of why murder is so prevalent in the South has fascinated observers as far back as Alexis de Tocqueville, who in the early 1830’s recorded a remark by a young lawyer he encountered in Alabama. ”There is no one here but carries arms under his clothes,” the lawyer said. ”At the slightest quarrel, knife or pistol comes to hand. These things happen continually; it is a semi-barbarous state of society.”
A study of 19th century judicial records completed in 1980 by Michael Hindus, a lawyer, found that from 1800 to 1860 the murder rate in South Carolina, an overwhelmingly rural, agrarian area, was four times higher than that of Massachusetts, then the most urban, industrial state. More than a century later, the difference persists in almost the same magnitude. In 1996, the murder rate in South Carolina was 9 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; in Massachusetts it was 2.6 per 100,000 people.
High Southern homicide rates challenge a central theory of criminology, which predicts more murder in densely populated urban areas where crowding and poverty break down traditional social ties and values.
Southern homicide was typically rural, and over the years many theories have been advanced to explain it. Frederick Law Olmsted, who traveled through the South in the 1850’s and wrote about it in ”Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom,” pointed to the persistence of frontier conditions in the region. Southern plantation agriculture, characterized by widely scattered settlements and a lack of roads and schools, left the region a frontier until after the Civil War, helping to breed lawlessness.
‘Primal Honor’
Contemporary historians have suggested other sources of Southern bellicosity. David Hackett Fischer, a professor of history at Brandeis University, says a critical factor was the heavy settlement of the South by immigrants referred to today as Scotch Irish — people from the north of Britain, the lowlands of Scotland and the north of Ireland.
These settlers, whom Benjamin Franklin described as ”white savages,” brought with them a culture based on centuries of fighting between the kings of England and Scotland over the borderlands they inhabited. They had a penchant for family feuds, a love of whisky and a warrior ethic that demanded vengeance, Professor Fischer said.
The mother of Andrew Jackson, herself an immigrant from the north of Ireland, advised her boy: ”Andrew, never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself.” He did, becoming a famous pistol dueler.
Behind such toughness was an ethic of ”primal honor,” according to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, a professor of history at the University of Florida. Above all, honor meant reputation. ”You identified yourself on the basis of what others think of you, so appearances mattered,” Professor Wyatt-Brown said.
Capn,
Your post above is the reason I no longer believe in organized religion. Not for me, anyway. However, those who need it should have it.
Faith in a God, a Creator, or a Supreme Being who has control over my life just doesn’t fit for me. Either I have free will or there’s someone up there orchestrating everything. I tend to go with the former.
I believe people shouldn’t need religion to know right from wrong. I don’t think my early religious upbringing (Catholic to Protestant to whatever) has a lot to do with how I treat others or expect to be treated by others. That, for me, has formed over the entirety of my life, not just one belief or faith.
There are and have been religous people who have committed atrocities against others, and on the other hand, there are those without religion or faith who have committed kindesses in abundance. Those are the extreme ends of the spectrum, and all others fall in-between. (The opposite is true, too, of course.) Being non-religous doesn’t make you a bad person anymore than being religious makes you a good person.
I respect the faith of others, although I will question some aspects, perhaps searching for something I feel is their weakness OR that is mine.
I will continue to question and search until I am no more on this earth. Beyond that? I don’t know, but I guess I’ll see you all there when the time comes…if that is possible. ;)
More false attacks of Senator Obama?
Freddoso’s lies begin on the very first page of his book (repeated on the back cover) when he proclaims that Obama is “the least experienced politician in at least one hundred years to obtain a major party nomination for President….”(ix) Freddoso seems to be conveniently forgetting that George W. Bush in 2000 had served only six years as governor, far fewer years of experience as an elected public official than Obama’s 12 years of experience (eight as state senator, four as US senator). Obama’s experience in politics also exceeds that of Ronald Reagan (eight years as governor), Jimmy Carter (four years in state senate, four years as governor)..
MORE AT \www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k-wilson/david-freddosos-hatchet-j_b_118410.html
Wow.
Interesting posts from Annie and PreD.
Thanks for those.
I don’t know if I’m an agnostic.
“Atheism often promote the belief that all Gods and Goddesses (as well as angels, demons, ghosts, etc.) are nonexistent entities created by human minds.”
So was math.
Confusing the ‘gay marriage’ issue
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. – Guest Columnist – 8/13/2008 12:50:00 PM
The fact that the Los Angeles Times favors “same-sex marriage” is not a new revelation. To the contrary, the paper has positioned itself in support of “same-sex marriage” for some time.
Furthermore, no informed reader will be surprised to find that the paper’s editorial position is quite liberal. Given our cherished commitment to the freedom of the press, the paper has every right to position itself this way. Intelligent readers are responsible to be aware of this fact, and take this editorial posture into account when considering the paper’s coverage of controversial issues — like “same-sex marriage” and Proposition 8.
Proposition 8 will appear on the November ballot in California. The proposition — put on the ballot by public support — is an attempt to return the state’s marriage law to where it stood earlier this year, with marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman.
California’s state constitution does not mention “same-sex marriage.” In 2000 the people of California voted by an overwhelming margin to pass an initiative, Proposition 22, which stated: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
That is where the matter stood until May 15 of this year, when California’s Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 4-3 that “same-sex marriages” must be legalized and recognized in the state. Thus, Proposition 22 and all similar laws were struck down by the court, and the court ordered that the state must allow and recognize same-sex marriages effective approximately one month later.
Proposition 8 is a citizen-initiated response to that Supreme Court decision and an effort to return marriage in California to the legal definition effective as recently as May 14 of this year. The language of Proposition 8 mirrors that of Proposition 22, but differs in that it would amend the state constitution to define marriage.
The editors of the Los Angeles Times want voters to defeat Proposition 8 and, in effect, to confirm the action of California’s Supreme Court that overturned the will of voters expressed in 2000. The fact that the paper wants to see Proposition 8 defeated is not surprising, but the arguments employed by the paper’s editors are nothing less than breathtaking.
The paper speaks to the issue in an editorial published on Aug. 8. The editors began their arguments with this introductory paragraph:
“It’s the same sentence as in 2000: ‘Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.’ Yet the issue that will be put before voters Nov. 4 is radically different. This time, the wording would be used to rescind an existing constitutional right to marry. We fervently hope that voters, whatever their personal or religious convictions, will shudder at such a step and vote no on Proposition 8.”
The editors argue that Proposition 8 would “rescind an existing constitutional right to marry.” The California Constitution still does not mention “same-sex marriage.” No such right existed before May 15. The right exists now only by judicial action, not by any amendment to the constitution. But, even after referring to the marriage of same-sex couples as “an existing constitutional right,” the editors went even further to declare same-sex marriage a “fundamental right.”
In their words:
“The state of same-sex marriage shifted in May, when the California Supreme Court overturned Proposition 22, the ban on gay marriage that voters approved eight years ago, and ruled that marriage was a fundamental right under the state Constitution. As such, it could not be denied to a protected group — in this case, gay and lesbian couples.
“What voters must consider about Proposition 8 is that, unlike Proposition 22, this is no longer about refining existing California law. In the wake of the court’s ruling, the only way to deny marriage to gay and lesbian couples is by revising constitutional rights themselves. Proposition 8 seeks to embed wording in the Constitution that would eliminate the fundamental right to same-sex marriage.”
Indeed, the court did rule that the right of same-sex couples to marry is a “fundamental right” — a right that is either enshrined within the constitution, drawn from the notion of natural rights, or a necessary implication of the constitution. The court also defined homosexuals as a protected group and thus deserving of a special attention in questions of rights.
But the California Supreme Court is not the final authority in such matters — the people are. The court and its decisions are ultimately accountable to the people, who can, when motivated by great concern or outrage, change the court’s composition or amend the constitution itself.
The editors of the paper write as if the decision of the California Supreme Court is unassailable, unchangeable and irreversible. None of these things is true. The court did declare “same-sex marriage” to be a fundamental right, but that decision is now, by definition, tentative and potentially temporary. California’s voters must keep this firmly in mind. The voters of California now have the opportunity to define and defend marriage and to return the state’s definition of marriage to where it stood just three months ago.
This entire controversy, illustrated by the paper’s editorial, is an illustration of the legal, cultural and moral breakdown described by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon as “rights talk.” In her 1991 book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, Glendon defined the problem as “our increasing tendency to speak of what is most important to us in terms of rights, and to frame nearly every social controversy as a clash of rights.”
Further:
“The most distinctive features of our American rights dialect are the very ones that are most conspicuously in tension with what we require in order to give a reasonably full and coherent account of what kind of society we are and what kind of polity we are trying to create: its penchant for absolute, extravagant formulations, its near-aphasia concerning responsibility, its excessive homage to individual independence and self-sufficiency, its habitual concentration on the individual and the state at the expense of the intermediate groups of civil society, and its unapologetic insularity. Not only does each of these traits make it difficult to give voice to common sense or moral intuitions, they also impede development of the sort of rational political discourse that is appropriate to the needs of a mature, complex, liberal, pluralistic development.”
“Rights talk” is what remains when deeper questions of right and wrong are taken off the table. The most important right at stake in Proposition 8 is the right — and the responsibility — of California voters to define and defend marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Originally published on August 12, 2008, this is posted by permission of AlbertMohler.com and Baptist Press.
Opinions expressed in ‘Perspectives’ columns published by OneNewsNow.com are the sole responsibility of the article’s author(s), or of the person(s) or organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff or management of, or advertisers who support the American Family News Network, OneNewsNow.com, our parent organization or its other affiliates.
http://www.summit.org/
Wow a 10 year old article Annie!
Try this one:
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/homicide/region.htm
Yup, murder rates are higher in the South, and declining still today.
Note the downward Nationwide trend in homicide rates. Also note, the huge increase in the number of States passing Concealed Carry laws – During This Same Time Period!
http://www.gun-nuttery.com/rtc.php
Funny, all those Scotch Irish who settled in the South, THAT is why murder rates are higher there! (As Annie would have us believe!)
Ya right.
I have to share this video. It’s priceless, funny, and a shows how those from other countries see us in the center of the country (Midwest?). The explanation for the video and why it was created is in the very brief article above the video. The video is around 20 minutes long, but definitely worth watching.
P_mama and KSGolfNut, the video was made in Salina, so you might find it especially interesting and fun…and maybe see someone you know in it! If you haven’t already seen it. :)
http://www.saljournal.com/rdnews/story/YouTube-of-Salina-8-15-08
Pred, Capn, Annie and anyone else who is interested. My faith brings peace to my life, it keeps me grounded in my life, it gives me hope when things around me look hopeless, it comforts me when life looks bleak, it gives me someone to talk to in the middle of the night when some problems overwhelm me. I believe that my faith in Jesus Christ fills a void in my life.
I don’t feel the need to ‘argue’ my faith with those who don’t share my belief. I won’t change their minds and they won’t change mine.
Now politics, I’ll argue that all day long.
Now this all started because someone wondered why Christians didn’t believe Chass is a Christian. Fundemental of the Christian faith is an abiding belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. I personally don’t see that in Chass.
Nuff said.
BTW Capn in my life I have been Southern Baptist, Catholic, Penecostal and am now a non-demoninational Christian. In all of those denominations I have participated in social drinking. It is a personal preference. You are trying to paint with a broad brush and that hardly ever paints the whole picture.
American,
This gay marriage/no gay marriage thing in California could go back and forth ad nauseum until Hell freezes over…if indeed there is a Hell and if Global Warming has had an effect on it. :)
#
CapnAmerica
Posted August 17, 2008 at 7:29 pm | Permalink
KSGolfNut–
I’ve talked with Chas in person several times.
He is indeed an ordained pastor.
You’re a liar if you say he’s not.
———————————-
Jim Jones was a Pastor.
Chas claims he met Jim Jones.
Chas is a Pastor.
Chas is like Jim Jones.
Pass the koolaid.
Now this all started because someone wondered why Christians didn’t believe Chass is a Christian. Fundemental of the Christian faith is an abiding belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. I personally don’t see that in Chass.
No, it is not “‘Nuff said”. And I’ve not said anything regarding your and others continual lambasting and harrassing of Chas. But now I will.
As a Christian, your faith tells you not to judge others, yet you have judged Chas on what he does or doesn’t proclaim regarding his faith on a public forum. Why should he? Whatever he says will not be believed by any of you. You have formed your opinion and are now judge and jury, when your faith tells you that only God has the right to judge.
Just because you and others do not see eye to eye with Chas doesn’t mean he isn’t Christian or a pastor or not.
Obviously you haven’t, but I have seen Chas’s “abiding belief in Jesus Christ as (his) Lord and Savior.” Just because he hasn’t stated it in so many words, which you wouldn’t accept anyway, is not proof of anything. The proof, gram, is in the pudding. How can you call yourself Christian when you practice the opposite of what Christ taught?
No need to argue with me on it. I’m only stating MY views in response to YOURS.
Regular has physical disabilities, therefore Regular is a retard.
… Record low maximum temperature set in Denver for August 16th…
The high temperature at Denver International Airport today was 58
degrees.
This 58 degree reading will replace the previous low maximum
temperature record for August 16th which was 63 degrees set 118
years ago in 1890.
————-
Pre the folks in Denver are wondering about the global warming.
Pre what you and others refuse to see is that Chass has turned his back on Jesus Christ in many of his statment and stands. His attempts to please the left has led him to stand for nothing and fall for anything. Because you have no belief in Christ you would hardly be the person to be the resident expert on this subject. That would be like me trying to advise you on rocket science a subject I know nothing about.
My own personal opinion and I am entitled to that. You and others have no need to defend Chass he is perfectly capable of doing that for himself.
How about Climate Change, gram? If you can’t see the change in climate over your lifetime, you haven’t been paying attention. Even my grown children see it, and they’re half my age.
Global Warming is nothing more than the reason for Climate Change. Whether we humans are responsible for it or not completely or only partially and whether it is cyclical or not, it’s as plain as the nose on your face that it IS. (Not to be confused with Clinton’s IS.)
Sorry, gram, your comments on Chas are nothing but hypercritical, holier-than-thou b.s. It has nothing to do with conservative or liberal, except that you all have ganged up and made it that way.
Global Warming 1/10th of 1 degree increase every 10 years, that’s 1 degree in 100 years for you non-math majors.
Can ya feel the heat!
Of course, it’s not even doing the 1/10th degree now, which would be…
Pre have you just blanked out Chass and his treatment of me and others. Do you really have a mental block where this kind gentle man is concerned?
The global warming post was in humor. I forgot the left has no sense of humor unless they are telling the joke.
You are right about Chass though – he isn’t worth the discussion we are having. Sorry I got in one about him.
Pre for someone of your sensibilities why did you call Reg a retard. I don’t even have that word in my vocabulary. Are you and Chass the same person or do you have a connection to him?
Well Reg I can only assume that if Pre and her kids both feel it it can’t be a hot flash.
Pure, B.S., but please continue.
It’s okay okobserver, I’m used to the Libs on this blog mocking my physical disabilities.
You know how sensitive they are and the need for them to insult with every opportunity that avails them.
The are the ‘feel good’ crowd after all. :)
Pre for someone of your sensibilities why did you call Reg a retard.
Are you really that obtuse?
Tit for tat, dear gram. Tit for tat. One ridiculous comment to an equally ridiculous one. That’s the answer to your question. Or statement, rather.
And don’t start with the personal crap, gram. It isn’t becoming, but then it never is with you.
#
Predestined
Posted August 17, 2008 at 9:25 pm | Permalink
Pre for someone of your sensibilities why did you call Reg a retard.
Are you really that obtuse?
Tit for tat, dear gram. Tit for tat. One ridiculous comment to an equally ridiculous one. That’s the answer to your question. Or statement, rather.
And don’t start with the personal crap, gram. It isn’t becoming, but then it never is with you.
—————————————–
In other words, I will never apologize for my remarks. Roxie is a Lib after all! They don’t do those sort of things. :)
When a poster asks that s/he be called by their nic but ALWAYS uses an extra “s” with a certain poster you know that person didn’t make a typo and doesn’t deserve to have their request honored.
ksgrm / okobserver, you should pay attention to the talk you talk, or try walking the walk before you ask that of others.
Why don’t you worry less about Chas okie grmie?
And more about policing “Regular”?
I mean I have SEEN the guy and we see his obvious social difficulties here.
Pre please tell me what about your last few posts were anything but demeaning to both Reg and myself? Why do some on the left think they are exempt from civilized conversation? Why should I let Chass call me every name he can think of, demean me in ways I would never talk to him and yet you give me a hard time because I talk back.
You are the writer of stories. Maybe you have let fiction override your good sense where Chass/Sqpeg/::/sugar is concerned. And you have the audacity to demean me because I changed to my second nic and fessed up in short order.
You are as silly as poor Chass.
Linda when Chass stops referring to me in the demeaning ways that he does then I will use his nic. He insists on calling me Grannie eventhough I have repeatedly asked him not to. Not to mention the other names he calls me by with no provocation other than when he is obviously wrong and his pride gets hurt. You know he does that.
Sorry that all of Chass protectors don’t see him for what he is.
BJ you really shouldn’t refer to that shameful trick you and StevenDavis played on Regular. It made you both look very small in several peoples eyes. Showed you up to be the coward and ner do well I had suspected all along.
I keep thinking that on this entire blog they has to be a liberal with the ability to have a civilized conservation. I guess I was wrong.
Well you would have that wrong there germie.
And I really do not care if I have your respect.
“It made you both look very small in several peoples eyes. ”
Uh huh. Not anyone I care about impressing I am sure.
Nathan insinuated himself on a meeting he was not invited to.
Nathan has a habit of disrupting meetings.
Steven and I decided it would be better if I did not attend.
But was I going to miss a chance to get a glimpse of the blog pariah that is Regular and so many OTHER nics? How often DO I get the chance to see a genuinely insane person? So, on my own decision, I took a peak.
Hey at least I showed up. Nathan didn’t.
#
BlueJay
Posted August 17, 2008 at 9:48 pm | Permalink
Well you would have that wrong there germie.
And I really do not care if I have your respect.
“It made you both look very small in several peoples eyes. ”
Uh huh. Not anyone I care about impressing I am sure.
Nathan insinuated himself on a meeting he was not invited to.
Nathan has a habit of disrupting meetings.
Steven and I decided it would be better if I did not attend.
But was I going to miss a chance to get a glimpse of the blog pariah that is Regular and so many OTHER nics? How often DO I get the chance to see a genuinely insane person? So, on my own decision, I took a peak.
Hey at least I showed up. Nathan didn’t.
———————————–
Bawk bawk bawk
Hey James?
Now I’m sure a shave and a haircut is way more than 2 bits these days.
But HEY you’re on the government dime. You could afford it.
BJ I really didn’t think you could make yourself look smaller in my eyes but unfortunately I was wrong.
When were you and Steven appointed as god. And if you were man enough why didn’t you step up and introduce yourself when it was apparent that Nathan wasn’t there?
You are pathetic and the sad thing is you are raising a child in your shadow.
#
BlueJay
Posted August 17, 2008 at 9:54 pm | Permalink
Hey James?
Now I’m sure a shave and a haircut is way more than 2 bits these days.
But HEY you’re on the government dime. You could afford it.
————————————
Actually, I got a haircut two weeks ago at McConnell, that’s about average for me.
The only excuse you had not getting out of your truck when you drove by and introducing yourself, is because you are a coward.
Nathan, on the hand, had to work.
You were within 20-30 feet of me and didn’t have the courage to climb out of your truck to meet me.
But please do continue with the insults and personal attacks on me to make up for your deficit in character and courage.
“okobserver” –
“…when Chass stops referring to me in the demeaning ways that he does then I will use his nic. He insists on calling me Grannie eventhough I have repeatedly asked him not to….”
So the fact that I refer to other participants in the forum by their publish nym is why you, “okobserver,” hold me in such high esteem?
You literally go out of your way to be haughty and judgmental; like the old SNL character “The Church Lady”. On acid.
Whatever happened to the twice-borns’ concept of “…a personal relationship with Jesus”? Seems to me that if that is important to Christians, the whole question is pretty much up to “Chas” and Jesus.
Chances are Jesus can figure it out better than you can. Odds are Jesus doesn’t need you nor “Nathaniel” nor “Regular” nor “Boxlock” or anybody to get it right. It’s a personal relationship with Jesus.
And, by all indications, “Chas” seems to be pretty comfortable with it. If Jesus weren’t, perhaps He’d take it up with “Chas.” Not you, “okobserver.” Not the boy prophet “Nathaniel.”
‘Cause, y’know, that’s His job.
Not yours.
“And if you were man enough why didn’t you step up and introduce yourself when it was apparent that Nathan wasn’t there?”
I told my friend Steven I would not attend. I keep my word to my friends.
Your opinion of me? I don’t worry on that much.
The direction this thread has taken is beyond stupid.
Of course Regular. I lived up to my word. I sent an email of goodwill to your Bible Expert. I am always willing to discuss the topic. Thus far, (5 weeks later) no word. What I got from you is an accusation that I have a hidden agenda to mock your religion.
OKOB. I wasn’t aware that “grannie” was offensive to you. I have heard many other names (JR, James, Ben etc.) I thought you were comfortable with that. I won’t use it again.
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 10:10 pm | Permalink
Of course Regular. I lived up to my word. I sent an email of goodwill to your Bible Expert. I am always willing to discuss the topic. Thus far, (5 weeks later) no word. What I got from you is an accusation that I have a hidden agenda to mock your religion.
==============================
Sorry, I don’t control the life on an 80 year old Pastor.
You already qualified your agenda with several posts, Bible College – bad experience, blah blah.
Whatever bed you made, you have to lay down in it, I didn’t make it.
Jim Jones was a Pastor.
Chas claims he met Jim Jones.
Chas is a Pastor.
Chas is like Jim Jones.
Pass the koolaid.
Heh heh
Hey James “Regular”?
Care to predict some doom for me? Like you did yesterday for another poster?
Kook.
Trying that one again Monkey? I admire your tenacity. Trying to tell some on here that defining the standards of religion isn’t their role is like trying to convince someone that the sun rises in the west.
BlueJay
Posted August 17, 2008 at 10:17 pm | Permalink
Heh heh
Hey James “Regular”?
Care to predict some doom for me? Like you did yesterday for another poster?
————————
Sure,
Dead Man Walking.
And, of course, that is NOT a basis of fear.
why don’t you put a gun to BJay’s head Regular. Then he might be frightened enough to believe.
Just for the record I don’t care if Chass worships the spagetti monster. I personally don’t like his attitude on the blog and I don’t like him by extension. He is arrogant and will never admit it when he is obviously wrong. The left lets him skate on this even when I know you are aware he is wrong. That’s fine but I don’t respect him and therefore have a hard time having a civilized conversation with him. And then when he starts calling others names to hide his mistake he is really annoying.
I should go back to that thread I referenced there irRegular James.
I wonder if you ever came back after you messed on the rug with your butt in your hands.
Dead man living.
Observer: I don’t know what the issue is with Chas. There are many occasions that I know Regular is wrong. That I know you, Nathaniel, and definitely my man Franklin. But why would I hate any of them because they won’t “admit” they are wrong. They “know” that they are right. That’s the thing about paradigms. Nobody will leave their paradigm very often. They know it is true. Almost as strongly as you know you are sitting on (Whatever you are now sitting on)
#
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 10:34 pm | Permalink
Observer: I don’t know what the issue is with Chas. There are many occasions that I know Regular is wrong. That I know you, Nathaniel, and definitely my man Franklin. But why would I hate any of them because they won’t “admit” they are wrong. They “know” that they are right. That’s the thing about paradigms. Nobody will leave their paradigm very often. They know it is true. Almost as strongly as you know you are sitting on (Whatever you are now sitting on)
==============================
There is a difference between being wrong with facts, which Chas often is and having your own opinion.
People think I’m wrong, if I give an opinion. That has nothing to do with the fact I was giving facts and correct ones.
As I said before, Chas often gives incorrect facts or wallows in the ambiguity of word play and hides behind, “I didn’t say that!” except in all caps.
You know, like the meaning of STFU. Chas can’t even admit he created that from pure fiction the phrase “Stand the Floor Up.” Chas won’t admit that he knew what STFU and what it stands for – a real loser weasel you got there.
Chas is actually as okobserver describes him.
“Regular” raises the intellectual stakes with –
“…like the meaning of STFU!”
Oh, yeah.
That’s such a true measure of a man and his personal relationship with Christ.
Did you study theology with the boy prophet “Nathaniel?”
Come on Regular: You have done the same thing. Knowing that the only bloggers typing spanish were you and I, you typed (in decent spanish) “Your mother is a whore.”
Then you weasled out. As if to say. I didn’t technically say that “LLTVET your mother is a whore.” You know you did that wheasel game. What now? You were just joking? You play the same game Regular to save face. What makes you better than how Observer describes Chas?
oops weasle (typo)
#
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 10:47 pm | Permalink
Come on Regular: You have done the same thing. Knowing that the only bloggers typing spanish were you and I, you typed (in decent spanish) “Your mother is a whore.”
Then you weasled out. As if to say. I didn’t technically say that “LLTVET your mother is a whore.” You know you did that wheasel game. What now? You were just joking? You play the same game Regular to save face. What makes you better than how Observer describes Chas?
—————————
I never denied writing that, now did I? Only in your mind did you make up your own turn of events.
Besides, I can always claim it was satire like you Libs often claim, now can’t I?
I rest my case.
I don’t hate Chas. I just allow him to annoy me to distraction. I really try to keep it real. Chas on the other hand as he did yesterday with that World Proverty crap he was peddling will never admit that he misspoke on something. I have had to back down when I posted something that was wrong and even when I have WS rides me unmercifully. As does BJ for that matter. Never heard you jump on him. Buts that OK. I’m a big girl and can defend myself.
I will back off of Chas unless he starts in on me and then all bets are off.
Monkeyhawk
Posted August 17, 2008 at 10:47 pm | Permalink
“Regular” raises the intellectual stakes with –
“…like the meaning of STFU!”
Oh, yeah.
That’s such a true measure of a man and his personal relationship with Christ.
————————–
Chas was the one using the term often, not me.
Then he denied what it actually meant, so he could maintain his holy (cough) status.
Chas claims that STFU means “Stand the Floor Up.”
Even Steven Davis saw through that and admitting laughing with his wife about it.
Chas is a world class, bottom feeding, fecal-eating weasel.
Well nothing left on but the track events and I would rather just read the results so until tomorrow Buenos tardes.
#
Regular
Posted August 16, 2008 at 1:38 pm | Permalink
I’m predicting personal disaster in your life.
Enjoy.
#
XXX
Posted August 16, 2008 at 1:43 pm | Permalink
#
Regular
Posted August 16, 2008 at 1:38 pm | Permalink
I’m predicting personal disaster in your life.
Enjoy.
_______________________________________________
OOOOOOOOh, is that a threat? Or did you look into your Christal Ball to come up with that?
What a fine Christian attitude.
More proof that you’re the blog a$$hole.
#
XXX
Posted August 16, 2008 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
And by the way, Regular, just to show you the difference between people like you and me, I wish only the best for you. I hope that something so good happens in your life that you no longer feel the need to be the blog a$$hole.
(snickers)
#
Regular
Posted August 16, 2008 at 2:07 pm | Permalink
#
XXX
Posted August 16, 2008 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
And by the way, Regular, just to show you the difference between people like you and me, I wish only the best for you. I hope that something so good happens in your life that you no longer feel the need to be the blog a$$hole.
(snickers)
——————-
No you don’t.
And I meant what I said.
die.
Heh. I should email my pal X and make sure he is ok!
I wouldn’t worry Blue Jay. He was probably only joking and you liberals don’t have a sense of humor.
YEAH, That’s the ticket. And Morgan Fairchild is my wife “whom I’ve seen naked.”
Come on, that wasn’t THAT old of a Saturday Night Live skit.
Too bad you can come with anything original Junior.
XXX claims to be a Christian doesn’t he?
Look at his conduct towards me and others.
Hypocrite
#
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 11:05 pm | Permalink
I wouldn’t worry Blue Jay. He was probably only joking and you liberals don’t have a sense of humor.
YEAH, That’s the ticket. And Morgan Fairchild is my wife “whom I’ve seen naked.”
Come on, that wasn’t THAT old of a Saturday Night Live skit.
============================
So, you can’t admit that Chas is a ridiculous man to even claim that STFU is a German term for “Stand the Floor Up.”???
That’s what I thought, defend Chas at all costs.
Why anyone in their right mind would defend that mutt, is beyond me.
Regular: I am asking you how you are any different? You can try to save face all you like. But if your version of satire is “your mother is a whore” then, I don’t think I will believe your claims about Chas. And if you want to claim that you took responsibility for your post, then you have even less credibility.
So here is your chance. Show everyone how you are not like Chas.
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 11:18 pm | Permalink
Regular: I am asking you how you are any different? You can try to save face all you like. But if your version of satire is “your mother is a whore” then, I don’t think I will believe your claims about Chas. And if you want to claim that you took responsibility for your post, then you have even less credibility.
————————
The difference is that I never denied what it meant.
And as I recall that day, we were both going back and forth with nonsense Spanish phrases.
Your argument is weak and without merit, because I admitted to the meaning and have admitted to several things in the past and even when i was wrong. I’ve apologized and done several amends in the past.
Has
Chas
ever
apologized
or
made
amends
to
being
wrong?
The answer is a defined “no” and everyone knows it, but keep arguing that Chas is this pure human that can commit no error.
Even Jesus Christ doesn’t get as much credit as you Libs give Chas on this thread.
So now you are going to claim that you apologized for “your mother is a whore?” HMMMM
Or are you going to claim that “your mother is a whore” is appropriate humor?
You can claim that my argument lacks merit all you want.
Show me now that you are better than Chas.
It’s been stimulating, but I must go to bed. The thread is yours James. You can now win the argument and save face.
LLTVET
Posted August 17, 2008 at 11:27 pm | Permalink
So now you are going to claim that you apologized for “your mother is a whore?” HMMMM
Or are you going to claim that “your mother is a whore” is appropriate humor?
——————————–
You didn’t ask for an apology and besides we were both just playing around or I thought.
Guess I was wrong and I apologize.
I didn’t know you were so tender and susceptible.
Of course, LLVET will forget by tomorrow that I made an apology and admitted I was wrong.
Both of which (apologies and admitting he’s wrong) is something that Chas has never done on this blog.
And I do claim your argument lacks merit when it comes to you defending Chas.
That goes without question.
“Too bad you can come with anything original Junior.”
Yeah too bad for you too there James.
The appelation “junior” was applied to me by the blogs voted dumbest poster fleetwood.
The poster who frequently references masturbation?
A simplistic corruption on my old nic J R. Picked up and fronted by the kept man Hank Price aka HLP.
Hey I’m all for recycling.
And I can deal with being called “junior” by a kept man and an invalid psychopath.
Good night; Good luck; God bless —-
Whatever you conceive God to be!!
Blessings ALL!!
WHAT A BLAST THIS OLYMPICS IS!!
So mote it be!!
Pennsylvania Dutch English / Standard English
Make wet? / Is it going to rain?
Outen the lights. / Turn off the lights.
The candy is all. / There is no more candy.
Don’t eat yourself full. / Don’t fill yourself up.
There’s cake back yet. / There is leftover cake stored.
Red up the room. / Clean the room.
It wonders me. / It makes me wonder.
Hurrieder / Faster
Spritzing / Lightly raining
Rutsching /Squirming
Schushlich / Clumsy with things
Doplich / Clumsy with self
Yah, well. / Whatever, or It makes no difference.
Good Re-Cap >>>>
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FROM THE ABOVE LINK >>>>
About the OECD
The OECD brings together the governments of
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The OECD also shares expertise and exchanges
views with more than 100 other countries
and economies, from Brazil, China, and Russia
to the least developed countries in Africa.
All you need to know in 15 slides: English, French,
Italian, Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean, Czech
Fast facts
Established: 1961
Location: Paris, France
Membership:
30 countries
Budget: EUR 342.9 million
(2008)
Secretariat staff: 2 500
Secretary-General:
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Publications:
250 new titles/year
Official languages:
English/French
OECD
OECD JOHANNESBURG CONFERENCE, 2002
http://www.oecd.org/document/62/0,3343,en_2649_33721_2503486_1_1_1_1,00.html
Okobserver–
Would you call a man who’s never been baptized a Christian?
I wouldn’t.
BTW, John McCain has never been baptized.
John McCain apparently got the questions ahead of time (at the Saddleback Church forum) but then lied about it.
Here’s proof from the transcript, as posted on TheDailyKOS:
Obama’s questions on education
Q. OKAY LET’S GO TO EDUCATION. AMERICA RIGHT NOW RANKS 19TH IN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION. WE’RE FIRST IN INCARCERATIONS.
A. (from Obama) NOT GOOD.
Q. NOT GOOD. 80 PERCENT OF AMERICANS RECENT POLL SAID THEY BELIEVE IN MERIT PAY FOR TEACHERS.
1. I’M NOT ASKING, DO YOU THINK ALL TEACHERS SHOULD GET A RAISE?
2. BUT, DO YOU THINK BETTER TEACHERS SHOULD BE PAID BETTER?
3. AND SHOULD THEY BE MAKING MORE THAN POOR TEACHERS?
So, essentially on this topic, there were technically only two questions, the ones I’ve labelled 2 and 3. But one COULD make the argument that the comment labelled as 1 was also a question.
Now to McCain:
Q ALL RIGHT. LET’S TALK ABOUT EDUCATION. AMERICA RANKS 19TH IN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATIONS, BUT WE’RE FIRST IN INCARCERATION. EVERYBODY SAYS THEY WANT MORE ACCOUNTABILITY IN SCHOOLS?
A UH-HUH.
Q ABOUT 80 PERCENT OF AMERICA SAYS THEY SUPPORT MERIT PAY FOR THE BEST TEACHERS. NOW, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR STUMP SPEECH ON EDUCATION.
A (McCain says) YES. YES. AND FIND BAD TEACHERS ANOTHER LINE OF WORK.
Q YOU KNOW –
A CAN I –
Q YOU ARE ANSWERING SO QUICKLY.
A CAN I –
******
Read that carefully. Even though McCain supposedly had not heard Obama’s questions and his campaign indignately vowed that he had not cheated, McCain answered the three part question that Obama had been asked!”
So much for the old “straight talk express.”
“Even Steven Davis saw through that and admitting laughing with his wife about it.”
What do you mean “even”? There may be a Penn. Dutch term as he claims; I am no German expert by any means, but it sounds possible. I am and was doubtful that Chas meant that when he was posting his capitalized STFU with exclaimation marks.
Chas doesn’t do apologies. I feel bad about that in a way. I have met him and I like him. Like many, he is a better person, I suspect, than he sometimes acts here.
James, I think the all-time winner for classlessness was you providing the graphic descriptions (and later admitted lies) about Clark digitally penetrating his granddaughter. That behavior, eliminates your ability to scold anyone here. Sorry, you just have no grounds whatsoever to be critical of anyone after that.
Night.
#
StevenEDavis
Posted August 18, 2008 at 2:05 am | Permalink
“Even Steven Davis saw through that and admitting laughing with his wife about it.”
What do you mean “even”? There may be a Penn. Dutch term as he claims; I am no German expert by any means, but it sounds possible. I am and was doubtful that Chas meant that when he was posting his capitalized STFU with exclaimation marks.
Chas doesn’t do apologies. I feel bad about that in a way. I have met him and I like him. Like many, he is a better person, I suspect, than he sometimes acts here.
James, I think the all-time winner for classlessness was you providing the graphic descriptions (and later admitted lies) about Clark digitally penetrating his granddaughter. That behavior, eliminates your ability to scold anyone here. Sorry, you just have no grounds whatsoever to be critical of anyone after that.
Night.
———————————
Sorry old boy, but I never made a remark like that towards Clark. I made the implication of lap sitting, not penetration.
Besides, I apologized for that remark twice, which Libs never accept or acknowledge as Libs like you keep bringing it up.
So Steven Davis, you’re a sad sack for even bringing that distorted view up and bringing something up that was apologized for by me.
Again Steven Davis, you have nothing and you have to keep making stuff up, in order for it to be something.
So when has Chas ever apologized or admitted an error?
When?
Where?
The answer is never.
What exactly do you CONS want meto apologize for?? Personal beliefs??? What??? Make a nice, non-accusatory list…. then we can discuss it…. Your constant barrage of CRAP gets very OLD!!!
#
Chas
Posted August 18, 2008 at 4:05 am | Permalink
What exactly do you CONS want meto apologize for?? Personal beliefs??? What??? Make a nice, non-accusatory list…. then we can discuss it…. Your constant barrage of CRAP gets very OLD!!!
———————
That’s the sad part Chas, you don’t even want to realize when you write bad things, it has consequences.
Insulting a woman, like okobserver daily and sometimes multiple times a day is something I would never do. I mean I do some ugly stuff, but I generally don’t disrespect women. I might argue with them, but I don’t call them names or abuse their names like call them “granny” when they have asked you not to many times.
Jerkoids like Crapn America, yeah, I’ll lay the wood to him every time, because he is a soul-less skull and deserves no mercy.
Oh, to be the paragon of virtue “Regular” deems himself to be!
“He makes the blind to walk again!
He makes the lame to see!”
Regular
Posted August 17, 2008 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
Too bad you can come with anything original Junior.
XXX claims to be a Christian doesn’t he?
______________________________________________
Indeed I do. I’m a proud Christian unlike you. You give us all a bad name. Unlike you, I don’t wish disaster and death on anyone.
Look at his conduct towards me and others.
______________________________________________
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. You exibit the absolute worst conduct of anyone on the blog.
That’s why you’re the blog a$$hole.
Hypocrite
_________
A$$hole
(snickers)
#
XXX
Posted August 18, 2008 at 6:53 am | Permalink
Regular
Posted August 17, 2008 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
Too bad you can come with anything original Junior.
XXX claims to be a Christian doesn’t he?
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Indeed I do. I’m a proud Christian unlike you. You give us all a bad name. Unlike you, I don’t wish disaster and death on anyone.
Look at his conduct towards me and others.
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People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. You exibit the absolute worst conduct of anyone on the blog.
That’s why you’re the blog a$$hole.
Hypocrite
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A$$hole
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Judgmental, calling names, mocking, all of which you have just stated are the attributes of a Christian eh XXX?
I think not.
“I might argue with them, but I don’t call them names or abuse their names like call them “granny” when they have asked you not to many times.”
[Regular]
I already said I went over the line… What more do you want??
Regular
Posted August 18, 2008 at 8:50 am | Permalink
#
Judgmental, calling names, mocking, all of which you have just stated are the attributes of a Christian eh XXX?
I think not.
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But that’s not really what I said, is it?
Pot, meet kettle.
A$$hole
(snickers)
“Sorry old boy, but I never made a remark like that towards Clark. I made the implication of lap sitting, not penetration.”
Sorry assh0le, your apology was not much was it? Shaking my head at what absurd hypocrite you are.
chuckles…
I had thought about saving that really stellar post you made, but I decided I did not want porn like that in my word processing program. I wrote to Phillip Brownlib [your term for him] and asked him how he could keep crap like that posted on this blog and expect it to survive? Did not get an answer. Wonder what that means…?
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