Eat Your Heart Out Americans: 10 Remarkable Facts You Didn’t Know About Australia


Eat Your Heart Out Americans: 10 Remarkable Facts You Didn’t Know About Australia

The land Down Under has a lot more to offer than just picturesque scenery and Crocodile Dundee.

When Americans think of Australia they generally imagine a vast and arid desert, inhabited by killer wildlife and famous for Crocodile Hunter, Sydney Opera House and glorious beaches. However, the land Down Under is far more progressive than many countries care to understand and in fact could actually teach the United States a thing or two about how to look after its own population. Here are some interesting facts and policies found in Australia that you probably haven’t head about.

1. Minimum full-time wage is almost $17 per hour.

For those seeking a good excuse to move to Australia, look no further. Australia’s minimum wage is $16.38 an hour ($15.77 USD), demonstrating that high wages do not necessarily hamper a country’s economic growth. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in May 2013 the average full-time adult weekly earnings were $1,105.20.

While the minimum wage for youth is still on the lower side, the hourly rate actually increases by $2 every two years between the ages of 15 and 21. Casual workers are covered by a national minimum wage and paid an extra 24 percent, which equates to up to $20.30 an hour. In the state of New South Wales, the average hourly rate for a 21-year-old is $18.30 an hour, with casual employees paid an extra $4 an hour: $22.33 per hour.

Despite the fact that Australia is comparatively more expensive to live in than the United States (a Big Mac costs approximately 53 cents more), the system is working to Australia’s advantage with unemployment in the country sitting at only 5.6 percent.

2. Youth are paid to study and look for jobs.

For Australian youth aged between 16 and 24 years currently studying, undertaking an apprenticeship or looking for work, the Australian government rewards them by providing a generous monetary allowance, which is income-tested. A person under 18 years of age and living at home with her parents can earn up to $223 biweekly, which increases to $268.20 ($258.30 USD) once she reaches 18 years of age.

Yet, the benefits do not end there. If or when a youth decides to leaves the parental home for study reasons or to look for work, her youth allowance can be increased to $407.50 biweekly. Alternatively, if a youth is single, lives away from the family home and has a child, the government will pay her up to $533.80 ($514.10USD) biweekly.

3. Healthcare is a universal right.

Australia’s public health system, called Medicare, is one of the best in the world providing universal basic coverage to all citizens and free treatment at public hospitals. The Department of Human Services branch of the federal government pays for Medicare benefits and includes coverage for dental, optho, and mental health as well as services for the elderly and disabled.

There is some cost-sharing at private hospitals and for certain doctors but even then the government foots the majority of the bill (up to 75%). Medicare is funded partly by a 1.5% income tax Medicare levy. An additional levy of 1% is imposed on high-income earners without private health insurance. In addition to Medicare, there is a separate Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that considerably subsidizes a range of prescription medications.

4. Aussies receive up to 30 paid days of vacation per year.

Unlike the United States, where mandatory paid holidays for employees simply do not exist, Australia is the vacation nation capital. At the minimum, each Australian is legally entitled to 20 days (4 weeks) of vacation per year, plus 10 paid annual public holidays, with public servants receiving even more generous vacation benefits.

Two weeks of vacation can be “sold” or cashed-out. Australians also get “Long Service Leave” to encourage Aussies to stay with a company which is payable after 10 years service at the same employer or seven years in the public service—accumulated at one week leave for every 60 weeks of employment or 8.5 weeks additional leave for 10 years service.

5. The government pays people to have babies…plus additional allowances.

To encourage population growth, Australians can apply for the “Baby Bonus,” an income-tested payment of up to $5,000 which is made in 13 biweekly installments to help with the cost of a newborn baby or adopted child under 16 years of age. This scheme has been criticized in the past for being “wasteful middle-class” welfare and was almost abolished by the Labor government this year, but to date is still alive and kicking much to the delight of many clucky young couples.

The government also offers a number of civilized allowances for its citizens with financial help available at every corner to assist with rent assistanceage pensionbereavement allowancecarer paymentdisability support pensionorphan pensionfamily tax benefitpartner allowancesickness allowance and widow allowance.

6. Prostitution is legal.

Australia has some of the most modern prostitution laws in the world and often cited as a success storyin an effort to make sex work a safe and reasonable job for women. Unlike the United States where prostitution is outlawed, in Australia the state governments regulate prostitution generally.

From complete decriminalization in some states to licensing and regulation of legal brothels in others, Australia is constantly reviewing its prostitution laws with sex workers considered to be service providers who can even file “unfair dismissal” employment claims in New South Wales and have the right to receive pay.

In Victoria, licensed commercial brothels are legal and single-owner managed brothels with one additional worker are also legal if the owners obtain a license to work. Pimping is also legal as non-sex workers are allowed to manage licensed brothels and benefit economically from prostitution.

Some organizations such as Scarlett Alliance Australian Sex Workers Association view prostitution as a legitimate occupation. While the system has its flaws—obtaining brothel permits can be tough; sex workers still don’t have civil protections to the same degree as other occupations; and licensed brothels have to compete with unlicensed operations—the laws are definitely headed in the right direction in recognizing the rights of sex workers.

7. Bikie-gangs are outlawed.

Australia is currently in the midst of “bikie warfare” with a number of states recently having outlawed motorcycle gangs following a series of violent incidents involving notorious bikie gangs Hells Angels and the Finks (affiliated with the US bikie gang Mongols MC).

Queensland is the latest state to criminalize bikie gangs declaring 26 motorcycle gangs to be “criminal organizations” under tough new laws which provide mandatory sentences of up to 15 years for serious offenses committed as part of a motorcycle gang activity. The state has also introduced “bikie-only” maximum-security facilities.

Such laws, which are now being followed in other states such as Victoria, have been criticized for being draconian, particularly for likening gang members to terrorists. Nonetheless, efforts to tame the “Bikie Wars” in Australia are gaining momentum.

8. Gun laws have been “hailed” by Obama.

President Barack Obama recently commended Australia on its gun laws at the Navy Yard Shooting Memorial. Since Australia’s gun laws were reformed in 1996 following the Port Arthur Massacre in which a lone gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle killing 35 people in Tasmania, there has not been a single shooting massacre in the country’s history, whereas prior to the gun law reforms, there had been 13 massacres in 18 years.

Australia’s gun laws prohibit all automatic and semi-automatic weapons and impose strict licensing rules. Even paintball guns need a permit. There are also background checks and lengthy waiting periods for all purchases. Following the laws, more than 600,000 prohibited weapons were destroyed at a cost of half a billion dollars. Consequently Australia’s homicide rate is 1.1 murders per 100,000, while the United States’ murder rate remains at 4.7 murders.

9. Ranked #1 “Happiest Developed Country” in the world.

Despite the United Nations World Happiness Report this week declaring Denmark as the happiest country, earlier this year Australia took the title as the World’s Happiest Developed Country for 2013 for the third year in a row as ranked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Better Life Index.

Australia fares exceptionally well in the following areas: safety, income, housing (on average each person has 2.3 rooms), life expectancy (which stands at an average age of 82 years) and lifestyle—more than 80 percent of the population live on the coast and 84 percent say they are satisfied with life.

Australia also ranks high in having a strong sense of community and high levels of civic participation with 94% of people believing they know someone they could rely on in a time of need. In Australia, 71% of people say they trust their political institutions, in direct contrast to the United States where polls show Americans have high general distrust in government institutions.

10. Aussies don’t do diets well…with majority exceptionally fat.

Despite the image of the bronzed, muscled and tanned beach babe depicted in pop culture, Australia is in fact one of the most obese countries in the world. According to a new report, 40% of the country is “dangerously fat” with 75 percent of the northeastern state considered to be grossly overweight. As a result, last week the federal government announced a plan to launch a major anti-obesity advertising campaign to fight the obesity epidemic.

The best part? For those Americans seriously considering moving to Australia, while you won’t necessarily be entitled to the same degree of benefits as an Aussie, the government does offer new arrivals a range of payments and services to help out while you settle, subject to certain waiting periods, as well as extensive information on job resources and visa options. Best be packing your bags!

No Surprise; Atheist Marriages Last Longer Than Christian Ones


Surprise! Atheist Marriages May Last Longer Than Christian Ones

Conservative Christians see themselves as the last defenders of traditional marriage. Yet many don’t quite live up to the ideal.

  

Conservative Christians think of themselves as the last line of defense for a time-honored and holy tradition, marriage. In the conservative Christian view, marriage is a sacred union ordained by God. It binds one man and woman together so that the “two become one flesh” until they are parted by death.

This view of marriage is unbiblical, to be sure. See Captive Virgins, Polygamy, Sex Slaves: What Marriage Would Look Like If We Actually Followed The Bible. But hey, who actually reads the Bible? Surely, what God meant to say is that marriage should take the form that is most familiar and traditional to us: One male plus one female who is given to the male by her father–that part is biblical–for life.

In this worldview, Christian marriage is under assault by an anti-trinity of powerful and dark forces: feminism, homosexuality and godlessness. Faith, on the other hand, saves both souls and marriages. When I was young, a slogan made its way around my church: The family that prays together stays together. Tom Ellis, former chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Council on the Family boldly claimed that “born-again Christian couples who marry…in the church after having received premarital counseling…and attend church regularly and pray daily together… experience only 1 divorce out of nearly 39,000 marriages.”

But then came data. According to research by the Barna Research Group over a decade ago, American divorce rates were highest among Baptists and nondenominational “Bible-believing” Christians and lower among more theologically liberal Christians like Methodists, with atheists at the bottom of the divorce pack. When the findings were made public, George Barna took some heat because Christians expected the difference to be more dramatic and to favor believers. Ellis suggested that maybe Barna had sampled badly. Perhaps some people who called themselves born again had never really devoted their lives to Christ. But Barna held his ground, saying, “We rarely find substantial differences” [in the moral behavior of Christians and non-Christians].

Fancy that.

In 2008, Barna again sampled Americans about divorce rates. The numbers fluctuated a bit, but once again atheists came out painfully good from a prays-together-stays-together perspective. Thirty percent reported ever being divorced, in contrast to 32 percent of born-again Christians. Slicing the U.S. by region, the Bible belt has the highest divorce rate, and this has been the case for over a decade, with the institution of marriage faring better in those dens of blue-state iniquity to the north and west.

What is going on? Even some secularists are puzzled. Churches provide strong communities for families. Many offer marital counseling and parenting classes. Love, they say, is a commitment, not a feeling. God hates divorce. They leverage moral emotions in the service of matrimony: a righteous sense of purity rewards premarital abstinence and post-marital monogamy—replaced by guilt and shame when nonmarital sex is unveiled or a marriage dissolves. Couples who split may find themselves removed from leadership positions or even ostracized. On the face of it, even if there were no God, one might expect this combination to produce lower divorce rates.

The reality, however, appears complex. Churches do honor and support marriage. They also may inadvertently promote divorce, especially—ironically—those churches which most bill themselves as shining lights in a dark world.

To prevent that greatest-of-all-evils, abortion, such communities teach even high school students to embrace surprise pregnancies as gifts from God. They encourage members to marry young so they won’t be tempted to fornicate. But women who give birth or marry young tend to end up less educated and less financially secure, both of which are correlated with higher divorce rates.

After marriage, some congregations, such as those in the “quiver-full” movement, encourage couples to leave family planning in God’s hands. Leaders echo the chauvinistic beliefs of Church fathers like St. Augustine and Martin Luther or the Bible writersWomen will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety (1 Timothy 2:15). Such teachings grow congregations, literally, from the nursery up, but the very same attitudes that help to fill church pews can erode marital bliss. Ample research shows that for couples under age 30 marital satisfaction declines with the birth of each child. (Parenting tends to make couples happier only after age 40, when kids become more independent, and only in countries with comparatively weak social supports for aging adults.)

Secular couples tend to see both marriage and divorce as personal choices. Overall, a lower percent get married, which means that those who do may be particularly committed or well-suited to partnership. They are likely to be older if/when they do formally tie the knot. They have fewer babies, and their babies are more likely to be planned. Parenting, like other household responsibilities, is more likely to be egalitarian rather than based on the traditional model of “male headship.” Each of these factors could play a role in the divorce rate.

But a bigger factor may be economics, pure and simple. In the words of some analysts, marriage is becoming a luxury good, with each partner, consciously or subconsciously looking for someone who will pull their weight financially and declining to support one who won’t. “The doctor used to marry the nurse,” says Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “Today the doctor marries the doctor.” Sixty percent of college educated women get married, as compared to 50 percent of women who hold only high school degrees or lower. Couples who stay married also tend to be wealthier than those who divorce. In Barna’s 2008 sample, couples with an income of less than $20,000 a year broke up almost twice as often as those earning $75,000 or more (39 percent vs 22 percent). Advocates who want to promote traditional marriage might do well to foster broad prosperity.

Even if they did, though, they might be swimming upstream. In 1960, almost three quarters of American adults were married; by 2008 that number had fallen to a half. The difference came from a combination of two factors—more divorce and more people who had never married. The concept of family isn’t becoming less important, but Americans are increasingly flexible in how we define the term. Over 80 percent say that a single parent living with a child or an unmarried couple with a child is a family. Over 60 percent say that a gay couple with a child is a family. A growing number say that marriage is obsolete.

In one of those peculiar twists of fate, conservative Christian obsessions with abortion and sexual purity may be accelerating this trend. Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, authors of Red State, Blue State, propose that Bible-belt opposition to abortion has increased the non-marital birthrate and acceptance of single parent families:

The working class had long dealt with the inconvenient fact of an accidental pregnancy through the shotgun marriage. As blue-collar jobs paying a family wage have disappeared, however, so has early marriage. Women are then left with two choices: They can delay childbearing (which might entail getting an abortion at some point) until the right man comes along or get more comfortable with the idea of becoming single mothers. College-educated elites have endorsed the first option, but everyone else is drifting toward the second.

Conservative Christians thought they could have it all by promoting abstinence until marriage. But virginity pledges and abstinence-only education have failed. If anything, they have once again accelerated the trend, leaving Christian leaders fumbling for answers. Some hope that more flexible, egalitarian roles for Christian wives and husbands may be the answer. Others think that doubling down on traditional gender roles is where it’s at. Either way, gone is the bravado that once proclaimed marital salvation by faith alone. “Marriages and families within faith communities are no healthier than in the rest of society,” concedes Christian author Jonathan Merritt. “Faith communities must provide support systems to salvage damaged marriages.” Whether the institution of marriage itself can or should be salvaged is, perhaps, a question none of us are prepared to answer.

Do atheists do it better? That is unlikely. Divorce rate differences between theists and nontheists tend to depend on how you slice the demographic pie, and for both groups, the shape of marriage itself is changing. As culture evolves, we’re all in uncharted territory together.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of “Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light” and “Deas and Other Imaginings.” Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

God Halts Apocalypse so Crackpot Tom DeLay can Scrawl a Book


DeLay: ‘God Created This Nation And God Created The Constitution’                 
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla

New illustrations!

During a service last weekend, John Hagee spent a half hour interviewing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay during which DeLay revealed that God has commissioned him to write a book and promised him that he’ll play a role in the coming spiritual revival.

Hagee praised DeLay for being victorious over the Devil by beating the corruption charges that ended his political career, while DeLay asserted that God was the author of the United States Constitution.

“Jesus died for our freedom,” DeLay said. “And Jesus destroyed Satan so that we could be free and that is manifested in what is called the Constitution of the United States. God created this nation and God created the Constitution; it is written on biblical principles.”

DeLay went on to recount a recent experience he had in which he spent four hours “on a conference call with the Lord” during which God told DeLay that he is to write a book called “Shut It Down” about the need for Constitutional revival. On top of that, God also told DeLay that He has heard the voice of His people and that “my awakening is beginning,” in which DeLay will play a role:

 

What’s Wrong With That Story About Obama Knowing That Your Health Care Policy Would Get Cancelled?!


More manufactured, fake outrage, from the Republican swill geyser
Here Is What’s Wrong With That Story About Obama Knowing That Your Health Care Policy Would Get Cancelled

By Igor Volsky

obama-sad

The NBC News investigations unit is reporting that “50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law” — a fact administration officials knew but kept from the public.

The cancellations are a result of so-called grandfather rules promulgated by President Obama’s Health and Human Services. The rule exempts health insurance plans in existence before March 23, 2010 — the day the Affordable Care Act became law — from many of the new regulations, benefits standards and consumer protections that new plans now have to abide by, but says that policies could lose their designation if they make major changes. From NBC:

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

This all sounds very ominous until you consider that the naturally high turnover rate associated with the individual market means that it’s highly unlikely that individuals would still be enrolled in plans from 2010 in 2014. In fact, the Obama administration publicly admitted this when it issued the regulations in 2010, leading Republicans like Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) to seize on the story in order to push for repeal of the grandfather regulations. Here is a story in The Hill from Sep. 22, 2010 pointing to this very same 40 to 67 percent range:

Hill screengrab

The debate was widely covered in the press, so it’s unclear what exactly the NBC investigation unit has uncovered.

The goal of grandfather regulations is to allow a consumer to keep their existing policies, while also ensuring that there are some basic patient protections built into these plans. If insurers make changes that significantly burden enrollees with lower benefits and increased costs they have to come into compliance with all consumer protections. Therefore, policies lose their grandfathered status if insurers cancel coverage when a person becomes ill, impose lifetime limits on benefits, eliminate all benefits for a particular condition and reduce the cap for covered services each year, among other changes. (In fact, in November of 2010, the federal government loosened some of these standards.)

So yes, individuals can keep the plans they have if those plans remain largely the same. But individuals receiving cancellation notices will have a choice of enrolling in subsidized insurance in the exchanges and will probably end up paying less for more coverage. Those who don’t qualify for the tax credits will be paying more for comprehensive insurance that will be there for them when they become sick (and could actually end up spending less for health care since more services will now be covered). They will also no longer be part of a system in which the young and healthy are offered cheap insurance premiums because their sick neighbors are priced out or denied coverage. That, after all, is the whole point of reform.

Update

 

Here is how Marilyn Tavenner — the head of CMS, the agency responsible for implementing the law — responded to questions about what she would tell an American who has received a cancellation notice during Tuesday’s health care hearing:

The Tea Party; Deluded Misfits, Vandals and Extortionists


The Tea Party is fixated on destroying what is salvageable and necessary

By Patrick White

We had out-of-town company over the weekend and planned a BBQ yesterday for them with a couple of our kids and their families. Since our weather has cooled we knew we needed to use our patio heater plus several other gas electric appliances most homes have. So far, so good.

At the appointed time, I started setting up the patio heater and found a couple of bird’s nests I’d missed earlier, so I cleaned those out. But, as soon as I opened the propane tank I smelled gas…not a good sign, shouldn’t be a gas smell. I needed to find the leak since I’m not a fan of gas explosions.

GOP-TP

I asked one of our kids (well, officially he’s one of our kids even though he’s about 46) to start the BBQ while I tried to find the gas leak.

Ok, leak fixed. Lit the pilot and turned the unit on, all is well and we’ll have heat soon. Then checked on the BBQ and, well, it wouldn’t start. I checked the pressure gauge I have on the unit and it showed about 50 percent full, but, well, it wouldn’t start. I put on my “one” spare (and full) tank and it lit, but the gauge was stuck at 50 percent. In the middle of this I was informed that the patio heater quit. Well, guess what…empty propane tank. In my mental calculations the day before, I thought that we had enough propane to use the heater. Wrong! Hint: don’t ask me to do mental calculations and deliver opinions on important things.

My wife told me that we were moving everything except the cooking inside. She also told me that she was using the microwave to melt butter and it shut off the kitchen lights, not once, not twice but three times! Never happened before!

Believe it or not, I made it through all that without turning the air blue…not even one little, tiny bad word. Ah, what fun am I?

Now, had I been a Teabagger, the BBQ, patio heater and microwave would all be in the creek and the kitchen lights would still be off. Because, you see, their position is to destroy not fix. Destroy the ACA, destroy the government, destroy voting and women’s rights, destroy, destroy, destroy.

Today our newspaper published a column titled, “Inarticulate republicans keep missing their audience” by Thomas Sowell. When we cut through the verbiage we really see that Thomas thinks it’s perfectly fine for republicans to use continuing resolutions (“CR” Thomas…he hates the use of the term “CR”) to manage the government. In my opinion, every time congress uses a CR they are telling the world that they can’t do their job and pass a budget. Back to Thomas…he refers to the ACA when he writes, “We are in the midst of a national crisis, immediately affecting millions of Americans and potentially affecting the kind of country this will become if ObamaCare goes into effect…” The bold and italics are mine, the “national crisis” belongs to Thomas. A national crisis? Affordable health care is a national crisis? Dismantling the government and using extortion to accomplish political goals isn’t a crisis? Thomas, what planet did you just visit?

In another column from today’s paper titled, Obamacare is Sick, But Worth Fixing”, Clarence Page gives us an opposing view and it seems that the ACA isn’t the crisis Thomas declares it to be. Any time a program is enacted by congress, any time a program is coded, there are going to be problems because it’s virtually impossible to anticipate every situation. Smart people move to correct the errors, congress doesn’t. Congress is the only organization I know that will use multiple cruise missiles to kill a single fly.

Republicans articulating their position? How do you convince people that slicing cheese by taking big swings with a splitting mall is the best way to accomplish the goal of getting smaller slices. It ain’t gonna happen. The Teabaggers are driving the republican train and they aren’t interested in governing, just destruction anyway they can get it and they are dragging the Republican Party down with them. How do you articulate that position Thomas?

Seth Andrews Interviews Richard Dawkins


Seth Andrews Interviews Richard Dawkins   

On September 24th, Richard Dawkins’ new book, “An Appetite For Wonder: the Making of a Scientist” released worldwide.

Four days later in Washington DC, Dawkins sat down for a one-hour conversation with Seth Andrews, host of the online community and radio show “The Thinking Atheist,” to talk about a variety of subjects…including childhood, music, evolution, apologist “fleas,” Christopher Hitchens and the memoir itself.

Thanks to The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science for making this interview possible.  (http://www.richarddawkins.net)

A Reminder Just How Not Racist, the “We’re Not Racist” Tea Baggers, Are Not Racist, Not


Tea Party Politician on Obama: “Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey children”

By Anomaly

Tea Party candidate and Libertarian Jules Manson just called for the assassination of President Obama and his children on Facebook, but I’m sure it was just a ‘misspeak’ (wink wink).

In an unnerving display of racism and violence today, this Ron Paul supporting libertarian, who ran for a seat on the City of Carson’s City council last march, and thankfully failed, wrote:

“Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey children”

What’s a fucken? Grammar ‘misspeaks’ aside, behold the world of Jules Manson (no relation to Marylin Mason, who apparently is a kinder, gentler person):

Manson posted his visceral diatribe on his Facebook wall apparently angry over the passing of NDAA, however, someone should enlighten him that 86 Senators passed that abomination of a bill, which makes vetoing it successfully problematic; more than 2/3rds of the Senate majority supported this bill. But hey, don’t let the facts stop the racist rhetoric. Manson removed his offensive (and illegal) post when hundreds of Facebook users poured out their outrage. At this point, Manson (and no, this is not bad satire) felt compelled to explain that he is not really a racist. No, really.

Examiner.com’s Michael Stone reports, “Manson argued that using the word “nigger” does not make him a racist.” Sane America would beg to differ.

Americans Against the Tea Party‘s Facebook page posted a screen capture of the offensive remarks and recived over a 100 angry and outraged comments in a little over an hour. The following is a small sample of those remarks:

sure hope the Secret Service and FBI get this creep, he is dangerous to everyone! We can thank the Republicans for this brand of extremism.

reported to secret service…who seemed interested enough to ask for the url and a screen shot

“And his monkey children” smfh. That part bothers me the most.

I’d like to see how Fox News will defend THIS!

I hope the FBI has seen what he has said and will be showing up at his door soon.

The best way to stick it to idiots like this is vote to re elect Obama and then Warren in 2016.

Manson will be running for Senate next year (I joke). The failed politician’s Facebook page has since been removed and he’s most likely in a fetal position on the floor sucking his thumb waiting for the Secret Service. Good luck on that.

Big thanks to Michael Stone

In God’s Name; Faith-Healing Homicide


Arrogant ignorance In the Name of God: Book Review

Posted by idoubtit

Christian Science-based faith healing communities in U.S. today are failures of their own self-destructive ideas. At least that’s the conclusion you can’t help but make when a group sacrifices their own children to be “pious” and respected. I found this disturbing tale laid out in In the Name of God:The True Story of the Fight to Save Children from Faith-Healing Homicide by Cameron Stauth . I recommend this book for anyone even remotely curious about faith healing in the U.S. and about the practices of Christian science churches. It’s important to recognize the stories behind the news of children who die from medical neglect.

INOG

I don’t recall how the author or publisher decided to send me a review copy of this book. I suspect it was because on Doubtful News I cover the charges, trials and sentencing of parents who practice withholding health care. I didn’t understand. I could not wrap my head around it. How can you be in the 21st century and eschew the standard of care for sick kids? This book helped me understand that these are people who think that religious freedom trumps all else, even their child’s right to live.

While examining stories for Doubtful News, I noticed a wave of faith healing deaths or near deaths coming out of Oregon City, OR from a religious community known as The Followers. The Followers of Christ had their roots in the teachings of the Christian Science church founded by Mary Baker Eddy. Mary grew rich and famous by teaching others how to heal without officially practicing medicine. This method had no overhead. But it had consequences. Many people recovered normally or had illnesses that make life difficult but not end it. If they died, it was “God’s Will”. And, it is their choice, thanks to religious freedom, to allow their child or themselves to die. God takes all of the credit, none of the blame. The Followers of Christ turned out to be one of the most lethal churches in America basing their teachings on literal interpretation of the Bible, medical avoidance, shunning, and fear of Hell. There is also the Faith Tabernacle church who has seen a pattern of dead children. Even repeat offenders.  (Schaible case) Read the rest of this entry →

Reality Check: We all need it (Book review)


Reality Check: We all need it (Book review)

Posted by idoubtit

There are some writers for which you know pretty much exactly what you are going to get. Donald R. Prothero is one of those writers. I expect a well-researched, comprehensive treatment of the topic with a flavor of emotion here and there. That’s what I got with Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future, 2013, Indiana Univ Press.

The core of the book is summed up in the John Burroughs quote given on page 1:

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.

RC

Once you observe the methods of creationists as the classic example of science denialists, you can recognize the same tactics in those that reject climate change. I have also noted the same tricks in environmentalists or those holding contrarian views about vaccines, the paranormal, and various consumer products.

The premise of Reality Check is that when “a well-entrenched belief system comes in conflict with scientific or historic reality” the believers in this system will actively discount, ignore or distort the facts that go against it. They may stop at nothing to defend their belief – they will lie, hide evidence, manufacture evidence, pay people off, bully, harass, discredit, and even threaten the scientists who are  supporting the “inconvenient” conclusion.

The book highlights denialism rampant in the fields of environmentalism, global warming, evolution education, vaccine information, AIDS treatment policy, medical claims, energy policy and population size and growth. Each chapter exposes the hidden agendas of those who reject the scientific consensus and provides the reader with the solid, established evidence.

As one example, Reality Check exposes the devious doings of the tobacco industry. I learned the history of the manufactured controversy surrounding the dangers of smoking about 5 years ago in my Master’s degree program in Science and the Public. I was appalled. I had no idea that there were people running an industry that was knowingly making people addicts and killing them just so they can keep their profit margins. The lies and deceptions were hard for me to accept but it was real! The facts are out there now and we know the truth about tobacco.

Citizens and consumers would be smart to learn the pattern of denialism as outlined in this book. Democracies need well informed citizens. Instead, we have a population that seems to prefer their news spoon fed from the internet or television, choosing outlets that support only their worldviews to begin with. There is no deliberation taking place, no deep thinking. Many are happy to exist only in their echo chambers never hearing the whole story.

The absolute strongest part of the book is the second chapter entitled “Science, Our Candle in the Darkness”. It enlightens the reader about what science is, what it isn’t, and how some exploit the public’s weakness in understanding how science works to convince them that the consensus is inaccurate. The “Baloney detection” section was particularly pointed, as Prothero explains the harm in false claims: “Pseudoscience robs people of their time or money or resources they really need in moments of stress and hardship and sells them phony answers and snake-oil just for temporary reassurance.” (Page 19)

Fake claims anger me. Fake claims backed by an agenda are even more devious and dirty. This compels me to do skeptical advocacy as I do. I know Don Prothero feels the same. Don is a wealth of knowledge.  What he has to say is important, not because it provides him income or notoriety. It’s because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what society needs to know in order to function to its highest purpose. I would pull out Chapter 2 and make it required reading in all senior high school classes. Kids need to be armed with information that can save them from losing money, health or wits by falling for nonsense ideas, quack cures and fast-talking dealers.

I learned many new things from this book, which is why I read books in the first place. Reality Check can be used as a college textbook and students will find their own personal well-entrenched belief system challenged. I recommend it for anyone interested in science, society or politics.

Paranoia-Rama: This Week In Right-Wing Lunacy


Paranoia-Rama: This Week In Right-Wing Lunacy

Submitted by Brian Tashman

We here at Right Wing Watch regularly observe how strange conspiracy theories and absurd right-wing nightmares percolate through conservative message boards and fringe websites all the way up to Fox News and the Republican Party, until they eventually become “mainstream.”

In a new feature, we’ll look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories and maniacal claims.

5. Satan Behind Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Herman Cain

Herman Cain has finally put all those allegations of extramarital affairs and sexual harassment from different women to rest, saying that all of them were lying and are working the Devil. Cain told Real Clear Religion that Satan was behind the charges of sexual misconduct, several of which were made long before he even ran for president, as part of a plot to bring down his campaign, which he suspended before the Iowa caucus. After explaining how he was the real victim, Cain said that he now preaches about his experience in fighting the demonic spirits which supposedly manufactured the scandal.

4. Grover Norquist Is Palling Around With Terrorists

In an interview with Glenn Beck, Center for Security Policy head Frank Gaffney said that he saw terrorists meeting with Grover Noquist back when they shared an office in Washington, D.C. Rather than alert the authorities, apparently, Gaffney instead decided to wait over a decade to reveal Norquist’s terrorists allies. Norquist notes that on the date of his supposed meeting with terrorists, he wasn’t even in Washington.

Gaffney’s claims that Norquist is a terrorist fellow traveler are so farfetched that leaders of the American Conservative Union decided to kick Gaffney out of the annual right-wing summit CPAC, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning over Beck and other anti-Muslim zealots such as Jerry Boykin, David Horowitz and Pamela Geller. Cathie Adams of Eagle Forum has found even more definitive evidence that Norquist is a secret Islamic agent: “he has a beard.”

3. Obama Will Nuke Charleston

After the right-wing conspiracy that President Obama was planning to set off a nuclear bomb in Washington, D.C. and blame it on Syria, we now have gotten word that Obama has shifted his menacing plan to Charleston, South Carolina. Survivalists have been fretting about a secret plan to nuke Charleston that went awry after generals refused and, as a result, were swiftly fired by Obama.

This conspiracy theory follows claims made by Alex Jones of InfoWars, who cited comments made by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about how Iran could give nuclear weapons to terrorists targeting US cities like Charleston, of an imminent false flag attack: “Graham is quite literally saying that if we do not launch a war with Syria, South Carolina may be nuked. And this ultimately reeks of yet another false flag being orchestrated by the United States government in order to send us into war, or at the very least a threat.”

2. Military, NFL Facing Feminization

Did you know that President Obama is personally selecting new hats for the Marines to make them look “feminine” and “French”? The New York Post story about Obama’s wretched plan to make male Marines seem “girly” was quickly picked up by Fox News, the Washington Times, Newsmax, all the news sources you’d expect not to do basic research to see if Obama was actually involved in uniform cover design process.

Shockingly, he wasn’t.

But maybe that was all a plot to take away attention from the “chickification” of the NFL, which Rush Limbaugh bravely exposed. “You don’t put the NFL in pink for a month!” Limbaugh said, referring to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, “I don’t think there’s any question, folks, that there is an attack on masculinity. And it’s not new. Basically the modern era of feminism, that’s what it is, is a critique against masculinity.”

1. Fainting Lady An Obama Plant

When a pregnant, diabetic woman nearly fainted during President Obama’s press conference in the Rose Garden, “Lady-Patriots” was on the case to expose her as an Obama plant! Naturally, Sarah Palin, Matt Drudge, and Fox News were happy to join the usual suspects like WorldNetDaily and InfoWars. “Lady Patriot” Sharon Scheutz foiled Obama’s false flag fainting to “take the focus off the disastrous website” and make people “feel warm and fuzzy for our hero President.”

“There are a lot of idiots out there,” she writes.

Indeed there are.
– See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/paranoia-rama-week-right-wing-lunacy#sthash.yu9jhdoP.dpuf

Atheists can’t be Republicans | The secular have no place in today’s GOP — and libertarian atheists should realize that now


Atheists can’t be Republicans
The secular have no place in today’s GOP — and libertarian atheists should realize that now

By CJ Werleman

Atheists can't be Republicans

Enlarge (Credit: AP/Reuters/J. Scott Applewhite/Manuel Balce Ceneta/Jonathan Ernst/Stacy Bengs/WDG Photo via Shutterstock/Salon)

We atheists like to chastise the religious for their child-like belief in an imaginary friend, but, equally, the time has come for the atheist movement to grow up. It’s understood that the so-called new atheist movement began at the start of the new millennium with the mainstream emergence of luminaries Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others.

For much of the first decade of the new century, the atheist movement behaved like a curious child in search of meaning to its own existence. Now that the child is a teenager on its way to adulthood, it needs to start acting like a grown up. The atheist movement comprises more than 2,000 groups and organizations in the U.S. today, but the movement, in composition and purpose, has failed to establish a coherent cause outside of validating non-belief and offering platitudes towards protecting the separation of church and state. Another thing one notices with the atheist movement is the fact it is predominantly upwardly middle-class, white and male. Sikivu Hutchinson writes, in her essay “Prayer Warriors and Freethinkers”: “If mainstream freethought and humanism continue to reflect the narrow cultural interests of white elites who have disposable income to go to conferences then the secular movement is destined to remain marginal and insular.”

The movement has an image problem. An image that isn’t helped by the ceaseless and over-simplified fear-mongering over Islamic terrorism from the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins — rhetoric that not only ignores our long history of foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, but also echoes the neo-conservatives, the Israel lobby and the entire right-wing echo chamber. Nathan Lean, author of “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims,” writes, “The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason.”

It’s time for the movement to address bigger and real issues, and the biggest issue of our time is income inequality. Of all the developed nations, the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of income. In the past decade, 95 percent of all economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent. A mere 400 individuals own one-half of the entire nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, median household income keeps falling, and our poverty levels resemble that of the Great Depression era. In other words, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being decimated. Atheists like to talk about building a better world, one that is absent of religiosity in the public square, but where are the atheist groups on helping tackle the single biggest tear in the fabric of our society — wealth disparity?

They are nowhere. Its absence on the most pressing moral issue of our time makes it difficult for the movement to establish meaningful partnerships with other moral communities. To remain white, middle class, intellectually smug and mostly apolitical will not only serve to alienate atheism from minorities and the poor, but will also ensure it remains a politically impotent movement that is incapable of building a better America. Growing up means less time and money spent on self-righteous billboard campaigns, and, instead, more resources allocated to fighting the political conditions that have caused this nation’s middle class and infrastructure to resemble that of a hyper-religious Third World nation.

Christopher Hitchens wrote that the intellectual advantage of atheism is its ability to reject unprovable assertions on face value. It’s why we don’t believe in the supernatural. Equally, it’s why we shouldn’t believe in a myth that is causing greater harm than creationism — the myth of trickle-down economics, which remains the economic blueprint for today’s Republican Party, despite the world’s leading economists lampooning it as an abject failure. In the four decades that followed FDR’s New Deal, our middle class became the envy of the world. In an op-ed titled “Abject Failure of Reaganomics,” Robert Parry writes, “It was the federal government that essentially created the Great American Middle Class — from the New Deal policies of the 1930s through other reforms of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, from Social Security to Wall Street regulation to labor rights to the GI Bill to the Interstate Highway System to the space program’s technological advances to Medicare and Medicaid to the minimum wage to civil rights.” But then came the period of Reagan’s holy trinity — privatization, deregulation, and free trade. Now here we are today — facing the largest economic crisis since the 1930s. Atheists are secularists, and a secularist cannot be a member of today’s Republican Party. You’re either one or the other.

You cannot be both. Now, I am acutely aware that a great number of atheists identify with the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but this is comical. A lack of evidence is why atheists don’t believe in God. But to believe in libertarianism is in itself an act of faith, because libertarianism has not only never been tried anywhere, but an overwhelming number of economists reject the philosophy as little more than “capitalism with the gloves off” — a condition that would only exacerbate the winner-takes-all society we have today. If an atheist is looking for political evidence, the evidence we have is that not only is today’s Republican Party a theocratic sponsor, it’s also a party that has been proven wrong on just about everything in the past three decades or more: from evolution to climate change, trickle-down economics, that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, that the Bush tax cuts would lead to jobs. It didn’t. It added $3 trillion to the debt.

They were wrong that the stimulus would trigger inflation, that austerity stimulates an economy and that universal healthcare is worse than slavery. It’s time for the atheist movement to get off the political sidelines. It’s time to truly help this country become a better place to live for all its citizens. The recent Values Voter Summit demonstrated that the likely 2016 GOP frontrunners and its base wish to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy — a nirvana absent gays, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and science books. If the atheist movement doesn’t evolve into a politically agitated, unified and mobilized Secular Left, then the Christian Right might just get its way. In fighting for truly meaningful social justice, such as income equality and the rights of minorities, the movement can form partnerships with communities that share common causes. For instance, building a bridge with certain religious communities that are equally concerned with fighting against class inequality and social injustice.

This would broaden the appeal of the atheism movement, and might just get people to like us a little more. Walter Bristol, an atheist interfaith activist, wrote, “Economic inequality is one of the most imminent issues facing Western society today. Any progressive movement that chooses to dismiss it is and will be rightfully dismissed themselves.” Atheists are the fastest growing minority in the country. We now have the critical mass to shape elections and policy. Either we seize our potential political power, thus acting like the grown up in the room, or we can continue to focus on the ‘pettier’ or issues, thus continuing to act like a petulant child.
CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America, and God Hates You. Hate Him Back. You can follow him on Twitter:  @cjwerleman

“You’re a Pathetic Fucking Douchebag” | Sons of Anarchy Creator Goes Off on Conservative Halfwit


‘You’re a Pathetic F*cking Douchebag’: Sons of Anarchy Creator Goes Off on Conservative Activist

by Andrew Kirell  

Suffice it to say, Sons of Anarchy screenwriter Kurt Sutter does not like conservative media activist and author Brent Bozell.

In response to an opinion piece written by Bozell last week, Sutter tore into the Parents Television Council (PTC) founder in an open letter, calling him a “pathetic fucking douchebag” and deeming PTC a “hate group” with “no real interest in the betterment of children.”

Bozell’s piece criticized Sutter and his FX series Sons of Anarchy for “milk[ing] a fictional Catholic school shooting for commercial gain” despite Hollywood’s broad anti-gun sentiment following December 2012′s Newtown school shooting. According to Bozell, Sutter “made a complete fool of himself” by claiming the episode in question was not done for “shock,” but rather as part of the series’ slow development of consequences for its anti-hero biker gang.

-RELATED: Brent Bozell On Anderson Cooper Being Gay: ‘Can He Give Us His Expert Opinion On Teabagging Now?’

In return, Sutter took to WhoSay to post the following letter:

Dear Mr. Bozell,

Yes, I often make a fool of myself, that’s the risk one takes for being outspoken and passionate about one’s creative freedom. And no, I don’t think everyone I meet is an idiot, that wouldn’t make sense. I do however think you are an idiot and your not-for-progress organization, idiotic.

Anyone with half-a-cup of brain cells can filter out the noise of your conservative bellowing and hear the truth – it’s all about your own political agenda. You are desperately trying to create a lobby that matters. But you cannot. And it fucking kills you that after all these years, you and your hate club are still flaccid and impotent. And the reasons, sir, are quite obvious. You are not very bright, your message is archaic and loving parents can innately sense that the PTC has no heart and no real interest in the betterment of children.

You reek of McCarthyism and holy water. And right-minded folks can smell you coming a mile away.

So keep holding your non-attended press conferences and writing your little Fox blogs. Because with every post you solidify your true message: I’m just an angry white guy with an exclusionary plan, using fear and god to spread a gospel of ignorance.

And just so you have something to quote from this, to work up the four other members, tell them that the tattoo-covered, liberal freak who writes that baby-killing, urine dunking show, said this: “You’re a pathetic fucking douchebag and I bet your own kids fucking hate you.”

Godspeed.

ks

[images via YouTube/NewsBusters] [h/t Daily Caller]

Priest Condemns Homophobia as Anti-Christ, Religious Right Freaks Out


Religious Right calls priest who condemns homophobia anti-Christ

Is the Very Reverend Gary Hall a tool of Satan?

Jennifer LeClaire, who writes for the conservative Christian magazine Charisma, quotes Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), as saying “Gary Hall of the National Cathedral is sinning when he claims that opposition to homosexuality is a sin. This is counterfeit Christianity in action—transferring the guilt before God from those who are committing sins (of which homosexuality is one) to those who oppose those sins.” LaBarbera calls this an example of a new heretical ‘sin-affirming Christianity’ that poses a danger of spreading within the evangelical Church. Jennifer LeClaire adds that she thinks LaBarbera is “spot-on” and declares she is shocked by the kind of deception the Very Reverend Hall is perpetrating.

Yesterday (Oct. 22), Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (another hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center) added his two cents worth in the FRC’s Washington Watch Daily Commentary. He compared the Very Rev. Hall to one of the “false prophets” from the biblical Book of Jeremiah: “they encourage those who do evil, and as a result, no one turns from doing evil.”

So what did Gary Hall say that has the Religious Right so upset? Here’s a sample:

“We must now have the courage to take the final step and call homophobia and heterosexism what they are. They are sin. Homophobia is a sin. Heterosexism is a sin. Shaming people for whom they love is a sin. Only when all our churches say that clearly and boldly and courageously will our LGBT youth be free to grow up in a culture that totally embraces them fully as they are.”

“It’s more than tragic—in fact it’s shameful–that faith communities, especially Christian ones, continue to be complicit in putting our children at risk and abetting the attitudes that oppress them, thereby encouraging the aggressors who would subject our children to pain, humiliation, and violence.”

And after same-sex marriages became legal in Washington DC earlier this year, Hall announced that the National Cathedral would begin to perform the wedding ceremonies.

Mezmerizing drops of water levitate their way to stardom


Humble drops of water levitate their way to stardom

by Sandrine Ceurstemont

Video: Levitating to stardom

A bunch of drips just got their ticket to stardom. Weiyu Ran and colleagues from Clemson University in South Carolina have levitated droplets of water using an ultrasonic fieldMovie Camera – and then messed with the field to give the drops starry spikes (see video above).

First the researchers increase the strength of the field, which flattens the floating drops into discs. They then turn the drops into stars by tuning the field to the resonant frequency of the drops – or exact multiples of that frequency. Using a particular multiple produces a star with the corresponding number of spikes.

The starry shapes may look cool but have no known use. However, Ran’s team produced them while playing with a set-up that makes drops hover, with the aim of coming up with new ways of removing particles from air. In mines, for example, sprays are commonly used to eliminate dust. However they aren’t effective at removing tiny, micrometre-sized particles that are harmful to lungs.

The team’s device is too small for such applications – and would need to be scaled up. “Using current techniques would require excessive power so an alternate design would be needed,” says team member John Saylor. “It’s a proof of concept.”

The research will be featured at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, next month.

Reference: arxiv:1310.2967

Conspiracy Theories Explain the Right


Conspiracy theories explain the right                                                    

The conservative mindset is in decline.

Stories of cabals and secret plots provide comfort as its power wanes  

By Arthur Goldwag

Conspiracy theories explain the right

What just happened in Washington?

Ask a true conservative believer, and they’ll tell you that it was the birth of a terrible beauty. They’ll say the GOP’s true leaders, our nation’s future leadership, revealed itself in all its splendid, futile glory—only to be stabbed in the back by a “thundering herd of chicken-hearted Republicans in Name Only (RINOs)  galloping to the Left.”

If you asked me, I would say that we witnessed a recrudescence of a nihilistic tendency that has never been far from the surface in American politics—a conservatism that is as far from the dictionary definition of conservatism as Obama is from being a socialist. Last fall, on the eve of the election, I wrote in Salon that “America is becoming more multicultural, more gay-friendly and more feminist every day. But as every hunter knows, a wounded or cornered quarry is the most dangerous. Even as the white, patriarchal, Christian hegemony declines, its backlash politics become more vicious.” Was it vicious enough to strap a figurative suicide vest to its chest and threaten the U.S. with default? If you had asked me at the time, I would have said no. Little did I know.

Some of the Republican jihadists who pressed for default feel so personally violated by the presence of a black family in the White House that they would just as soon burn it down as reclaim it. And some live in such a bubble of denial—an alternate cognitive universe in which the poor lord it over the rich and white Christians are a persecuted minority, in which a president who was twice elected by an overwhelming popular majority is a pretender, and a law that Congress attempted to overturn more than 40 times was “never debated”—that they have convinced themselves that a default would have actually been a good thing, that it would have restored the U.S. economy to a sound foundation.

It is a triumph not so much of a conspiracy as of conspiracist thinking. As John Judis wrote in The New Republic last week, even “lobbyists I talked to cited….Richard Hofstadter’s essay on ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ to explain the rise of the populist right. It’s the kind of reference you’d expect to read in a New Republic article, but not necessarily in a conversation with a business lobbyist.”

Lest I be accused of falling for a left wing conspiracy theory myself, I want to say a few words about “conspiracy theory” before I continue. “Conspiracy theory” is a loaded and frankly a bad term, one that unfairly besmirches any and all theorizing about conspiracies.

Bracketing all thinking about conspiracies with tall tales and outright delusions about secret societies whose leaders toast each other with blood drunk out of human skulls is unfair and misleading. Some anti-government conspiracy theories—that the Tonkin Gulf Incident didn’t happen as reported, for example, or that the CIA was involved with international dope dealers, are so far from being ridiculous that they turn out to be true. The NSA does have access to your emails. For that matter, a certain amount of toasting with skulls (if not actual blood) has been reliably reported to go on in some quarters.

Still, there are theories and then there are theories. Scientists know the difference between unfalsifiable ones like intelligent design and genuinely scientific ones like evolution. Theories about political conspiracies are harder to put to the test; absence of evidence, as Donald Rumsfeld once said, is not evidence of absence. In fact it’s the whole point.

I do think most people know the difference between a “conspiracy theory” in its pejorative sense—say, that the Fed takes its orders from a secret society of Jewish elders, who cause depressions and wars to further their plan of ruling the world—and its literal sense, such as a serious inquiry into Oswald’s relationship to the CIA.

Still, truth can be stranger than fiction and we need to respect that.

If I were to tell you that a cabal of Congressional Republicans had been quietly working with a roster of little-known political organizations since the last election, many of them funded by a pair of shadowy billionaire brothers, to bring the country to the brink of financial ruin, I’d understand it if you thought I was talking about a conspiracy theory. But really I’d be describing the sausage making that goes on in politics today and the blurry lines between lobbying and influence peddling—and even more than that, about the behavior of people who are so blinded by rage, so driven by their own fever dreams about Obama’s plot to turn the U.S. into a Third-World, multi-racial, socialist, Muslim, atheist paradise, that they would pay any cost to ruin his presidency.

But if there is still any question about what a bad conspiracy theory is, I’d like to submit as Exhibit A one proposed by an anonymous author at the Canadian website Press Core, which was promoted a couple of weeks ago by World Net Daily columnist and Fox News contributor Erik Rush (sometimes known as “the other Rush”) on his radio show. Part of what makes it a classically “bad” conspiracy theory, besides its tendentiousness, is its meanness. It’s like a push poll; its sole purpose is to propagate a meme that demonizes and delegitimizes the president. I think it also provides insight into the mindset that characterizes far-right thinking these days.

The Navy Yard shootings in D.C., this theory goes, was a false flag incident perpetrated by the Obama administration to stop the Navy from arresting the president for treason. The victims of the shooting, who were all NCIS commanders, the story continues, had discovered that Obama was planning an even more horrific false flag—he was going to explode a nuclear device in Washington, D.C., to justify going to war with Syria. Some of this “sounds like a conspiracy theory,” the other Rush admitted, but “a lot of stuff that seemed to some of us like conspiracy theories years ago turned out to be true over the last few months.”

One way to judge a theory is to look at its source. Is it a generally respected news gatherer or a propaganda mill?  Scanning the headlines at Press Core, I couldn’t help noticing another article, this one with the byline Paul W. Kincaid, the site’s editor. The piece reveals that the Vatican, the U.N., and the Third Reich have been working together on a covert and sinister plan to exterminate, and I am quoting now, “as many as 3 billion people through Vatican unholy wars of terror against Muslim and Jewish states, designer diseases, and famine.”

This story really astounded me, because it sees both Jews and Muslims as victims rather than perpetrators. That’s not what you usually read on websites of this kind, trust me. Some of the most virulently anti-Islamic websites today, many of them run by Jews, feature stories that could have been written by 1930s anti-Semites like Elizabeth Dilling or Gerald Burton Winrod, except the word Shariah replaces the word Kehilla, and instead of out-of-context quotes from the Talmud about the necessity of lying to the gentiles they are pulled from the Koran and refer to the supposed doctrine of Tawriya. Of course a major theme at those sites is Obama’s suspicious sympathies toward the Muslim world.

The theories that we file under the unfortunate rubric of conspiracy theories are theories of everything. They have a kind of metaphysical authority, and, in their confidence that everything is ultimately connected, a scope and a moral framework that is almost theological.

Most of all, they are reactive. Conspiracists are people who feel threatened—in their pocketbooks, their status, or both. Conspiracy theories explain what is happening to them and why, assigning blame to an adversary who is consciously and deliberately carrying out an evil intention.

Conspiracists use the word “evil” as a noun as well as an adjective; they believe that their adversaries are literally demonic. Much as a Kabbalist believes that God fashioned the world out of Hebrew letters, many conspiracists believe that their enemies sign the catastrophes that they cause in visual, numeric or symbolic codes.

They look backward nostalgically to what they’ve lost, they look forward with anxious expectation to a bloody reckoning. As a political candidate once said in an unguarded moment, they cling to their guns and their religion.

Conspiracism turns chaotic events into coherent narratives—surprisingly often, one that hews to the storyline of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an early 20th-century anti-Semitic pastiche that was cut and pasted together by Eastern Orthodox defenders of the absolute monarchy of the Tsar.

Conspiracy theories’ narratives unfold much as the storylines of massive multi-player online games do. They take place in a universe that’s bounded by hard-and-fast rules and peopled by broadly drawn, cartoon-like characters. Whatever happens is either part of the algorithm or something that one of the player gods has intentionally caused to happen.

You see this kind of thinking when you read claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged by “actors,” or that purport to identify the fake blood and prosthetic limbs in the carnage after the Boston Marathon “false flag” bombing. Like the ancient Gnostics, or the characters in “The Matrix” or “The Truman Show,” they believe that God is a Satanic impostor—that the world is a deliberately constructed illusion, the opposite of the place that its designated authority figures purport it to be.

The Left, I freely admit, is not immune to conspiracy theories. If many of the “false flag” claims originate with quasi-Bircher populists like Alex Jones, they resonate in some leftist quarters as well. Communist dialectics and the theory of history that undergirds Premillennial Dispensationalism share some attributes; party propaganda was as filled with paranoid conspiracy theories (some of them true) as anything that the organized right has ever produced. But I do tend to think that the very reactiveness of reactionary thinking predisposes it to conspiracism a bit more. This is why as many extreme ideas resonate within the Republican mainstream as they do.

Conservatives, especially conservative white men of a certain age, many of them living in the states of the Old Dominion and the mountainous West, are feeling beleaguered in this fifth year of the Great Recession. As conservative as his governance has turned out to be in practice, the election of an African American president has tended to exacerbate their feelings of victimization.

Public Policy Polling has issued a couple of surveys on conspiracy theories this year. And belief pretty clearly breaks down along partisan lines:

  • 34 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Independents believe a global power elite is conspiring to create a New World Order—compared to just 15 percent of Democrats.
  • Fifty-eight percent of Republicans believe global warming is a hoax; 77 percent of Democrats do not.
  • Sixty-two percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Independents believe the Obama administration is “secretly trying to take everyone’s guns away.” Only 14 percent of Democrats agree.
  • Forty-two percent of Republicans believe Shariah law is making its way into U.S. courts, compared to just 12 percent of Democrats.
  • More than twice as many Republican voters (21 percent) as Democrats (9 percent) believe the government is using “false flag incidents” to consolidate its power.
  • Forty-four percent of Republicans and 21 percent of Independents believe that Obama is making plans to stay in office after his second term expires. Only 11 percent of Democrats agree.

Most elected officials who traffic in conspiracy theories are too rich and successful themselves to believe in them; they deploy them opportunistically, to push voters’ emotional buttons. As Michael Tomasky wrote in The Daily Beast last week, “The rage kept the base galvanized….The rich didn’t really share the rage, or most of them. Even the Koch Brothers probably don’t….But all of them have used it. And they have tolerated it, the casual racism, the hatred of gay people, and the rest….because they, the elites, remained in charge. Well, they’re not in charge now. The snarling dog they kept in a pen for decades has just escaped and bitten their hand off.”

Back in the winter of 2012, a couple of weeks before my book “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right” was published, I was at a party at my sister’s house, and she introduced me to the husband of a friend of hers, a lawyer active in the Democratic party. I told him how conspiratorial memes about the Illuminati have echoed down to us from the 1790s, and how the influence of fringe groups like the John Birch Society extends beyond marginal figures like Alex Jones and Ron Paul and can even be discerned in the GOP’s campaign rhetoric.

He just laughed derisively. “What possible relevance do those nuts have today?” he said. “Nobody cares about them.” Judging from the recent events in Washington, I think it’s safe to say that his complacency was a bit premature.

Arthur Goldwag is the author, most recently, of “The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right”

Jerky Treats Killing Hundreds of Dogs, Thousands Affected


The FDA has No Idea Why Jerky Treats Are Killing  Hundreds of Dogs

600 dogs and 10 cats have died after eating the  treats.

By Laura  Stampler

Getty Images

Getty Images

About 500 dogs and nine cats died from the Chinese treats as of January.

But in spite of running more than 1,000 tests and visiting multiple  manufacturers, the FDA still isn’t sure what it is in the chicken, duck, and  sweet potato jerky that is making the animals sick. “To date, testing for  contaminants in jerky treats has not revealed a cause for the illnesses,” said  deputy director for the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine Martine  Hartogensis.

Nestle Purina PetCare Co. and Milo’s Kitchen withdrew some of its popular dog  treats in January after New York state agricultural official found potential antibiotics contamination. Maybe stick to making  your own dog treats for now.

[NBC]

Michele Bachmann’s End TIme


Michele Bachmann’s End TIme

Michele Bachmann - Mad  :   http://mariopiperni.com/

You’ve heard them all. Barack Obama is: a Muslim, a socialist, a communist, the anti-Christ and a Kenyan. And, as Fox News has repeatedly noted, Obama hates white people/America/Christmas/Israel and puppies. All this while ‘Barry’ pals around with terrorists and plots to take away your guns and bibles in his fervent attempt to usurp the Constitution and impose sharia law on America.

Michele Bachmann, determined to keep her ‘I’m a Total Idiot’ status all the way through to her own end time in Congress, proposes a new anti-Obama, made-up piece of nonsense to add to the mix. E.A. Blair explains.

___

On the 5 October broadcast of the Christian radio show Understanding the Times our favorite batshit crazy member of congress lied about the President again by saying that “Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition. Your listeners, U.S. taxpayers, are now paying to give arms to terrorists including Al-Qaeda.”

Of course this is a lie. What the President actually did was let the U.S. Government “…provide or license, where appropriate, certain non-lethal assistance inside or related to Syria.”

However, ol’ Charlie Manson Eyes can’t, as usual, handle the truth. She let the lie roll on and on, laced with Christian gobbledegook:

“This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists. Now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s End Times history. Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”

Apparently the Representative of Vaccine Hysteria forgets the words of Genesis 9:11: “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” In other words, Yahweh ain’t gonna do no more what he did to Noah. That’s also why the first nine generations of the bible never saw a rainbow.

Michele Bachmann - Crazy - Reagan quote : http://mariopiperni.com/

So now Bachmann has become an eschatologist (for those of you who are not theologically inclined, eschatology is the religious study of the end of the world), and claims that Obama is leading us into the end times. I guess she hasn’t heard that all good and true Christians are supposed to want the End Times, and to do everything they can to bring them about (this is the religious rationale for supporting Israel). Instead of hating President Obama, she should be supporting him.

Bachmann is in fine company. Thousands of people have predicted the end of the world, and sometimes, people actually paid attention and wrote these predictions down. Fortunately, these would-be prophets are about as right as Republicans when it comes to the future. I just looked out my front door, and, providing reality is not purely subjective, none of them have come true so far. I wonder what makes Bachmann think she can do any better than her predecessors. A partial list is given for your consideration (My source is Wikipedia; the snark is mine). I leave it as an exercise for the reader to pick the most plausible one.

634 BCE – Romans feared the city would be destroyed in the year 120 AUC. The first known round number prediction.

389 BCE – Romans again feared that the city would be destroyed in the year 365 AUC. Doomsayers also like the number 365.

33 CE – Jesus tells his Apostles that the End will come “within their lifetimes”. Since that didn’t happen, how true can the rest of the New Testament be?

66 CE – Essene Jews saw revolt against Rome as the end times battle.

365 – Hilary of Poitiers also bases his prediction on the number of days in a year.

400 – Martin of Tours says that the Antichrist had already been born. Someone should have told him that wouldn’t happen until 4 August 1961.

500 – Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus and Irenaeus expects the end of the world on a round number (reinforcing a habit).

793 – Spanish Monk Beatus of Liébana says Christ will return on 6 April.

800 – Sextus Julius Africanus revises his date of 500 to 800, sticking with round numbers.

799–806 – Gregory of Tours calculates a date between 799 and 806. History records that he could never balance his checkbook, either.

992–995 – Various Christians decide that since Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation happen on the same day, something bad is going to happen, like when payday is on a Friday the 13th.

1000 – Pope Sylvester II expects the end of the world on a really nice round number.

1033 – Since the world didn’t end 1000 years after Christ was born, various Christians figures it would end 1000 years after his death.

1186 – John of Toledo predicts the end times based on astrology (a practice forbidden by the church and the Bible).

1260 – Joachim of Fiore says that the Millenium would begin sometime between 1200 and 1260. His descendants all now hold jobs scheduling cable TV installation appointments.

1284 – Pope Not-so-Innocent III predicts the end 666 years after the rise of Islam. 666 will come back to haunt doomsayers.

1290 – Joachim of Fiore’s followers, preparing for their hereditary careers, reschedule doomsday to 1290…and 1335.

1335 – Joachim of Fiore’s prediction fails again.

1346-1351 – Black Plague: still not the end – unless your immune system isn’t up to snuff.

1370 – Jean de Roquetaillade says that the Antichrist is already here and the Millennium would begin in 1368 or 1370. The Joachimites were jealous.

1378 – Arnaldus de Villa Nova: another Joachimite who doesn’t do any better than his leader.

1504 – Sandro Botticelli believes the end times have already begun, and that the Millennium would come along sooner or later. God must not have been paying attention.

1524 Feb 20 – London astrologers predict a second Great Flood on 1 February, apparently forgetting Genesis 9:11 (and the biblical prohibition against forecasting the future). 20,000 Londoners leave town and King Henry VIII takes the opportunity to expand the palace grounds over the now-vacant lots.

1524 Feb 20 – Astrologer Johannes Stöffler predicts the end on the basis of a planetary alignment in Pisces. It turned out to be a bit fishy.

1524–1526 – Thomas Müntzer says that these years are the start of the Millennium. His followers were killed by government troops and he was tortured and beheaded, meaning that he was partly right, just limited in his scope.

1528 – Johannes Stöffler fails again, his stars slowly setting.

1533 – Melchior Hoffman, a member of the same cult sect denomination as Müntzer says that 144,000 people would be saved, while the rest of the world would die by the eventual invention and consumption of fast food (death by frying).

1534 – Jan Matthys makes a cheesy forecast that the world would end on 5 April and only the city of Münster would survive.

1555 – Pierre d’Ailly says the end of the world would be in the 7000th year after creation. Another round number freak but with a different approach.

1585 – Michael Servetus claims, in his book The Restoration of Christianity, that the devil had taken over the Church and the council of Nicea in 325CE, and that the intervening years had been the expected Tribulation. No, Mike, it only seemed like a tribulation.

1600 – Martin Luther predicts the end no later than 1600…but he isn’t really sure. He was still trying to clean up after nailing his ninety-five feces to the church door in Wittenberg..

1624 Feb 1 – London astrologers fail again with their next flood.

1648 – Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi uses the kabbalah to predict the arrival of the Messiah, who is more than fashionably late.

1654 – Astronomer Helisaeus Roeslin bases his prediction on a 1572 Nova. Nobody knows how he got his hands on a time-traveling Chevrolet.

1654 – Bishop James Ussher publishes his calculation of the date of the Creation the night preceding 23 October 4004 BCE. His followers later assert that the world would end exactly 6000 years later.

1656 – Christopher Columbus had predicted in 1501 that the world would end in 1656.

1658 – Christopher Columbus later revised his 1501 prediction and regurgitated Pierre d’Ailly’s prediction with a different creation date. He said the world was created in 5343 BCE, and would last 7000 years. Remember, he also thought that he had reached India.

1666 – Rabbi Zevi, having failed to recognize the Messiah if he had, indeed come eighteen years earlier, tries again for 1666. Again, no soap.

1666 – The Fifth Monarchists get their undies in a bunch over a year with the numbers 666, 100,000 Londoners dying of plague and the Great Fire of London. Their descendants rename US highway 666 to U.S. Route 491 in 2003.

1688 – John Napier, mathematician and inventor of “Napier’s Bones”, an early mechanical calculator himself calculates the end for this year from information in the Book of Revelation

1694 – John Mason (Anglican priest), Johann Heinrich Alsted (German Calvinist minister) and Johann Jacob Zimmermann (German theologian and mathematician). A banner year for failed predictions everywhere.

1697 – Cotton Mather makes first American prediction.

1700 – John Napier, after his first prediction failed, maybe used his “Bones” calculator for a second try. He should have waited for Texas Instruments.

1716 – Cotton Mather tries again.

1736 – Cotton Mather proves a third time that he’s no better at eschatology than he was at theology.

1780 May 19 – Connecticut General Assembly think smoke from a forest fire and fog on a cloudy day was the skies turning dark, heralding the end of the world. And you thought the Republican Party didn’t get going until 1854.

1789 – Pierre d’Ailly’s revised 14th-Century prediction said the Antichrist would be born in this year. No Antichrist, but the US Constitution did get ratified.

1792 – In two shaky predictions, the Shakers look for the end in both 1792 and 1794. So why was their furniture built to last?

1793–1795 – Retired sailor Richard Brothers keeps annoying people by insisting the Millennium will begin between 1793 and 1795.

1795 – While campaigning for the release of retired sailor Richard Brothers from an insane asylum, Nathaniel Brassey Haled says that the world would end on 19 November.

1836 – John Wesley, Methodist church founder says that Revelation 12:14 means that Christ would come sometime between 1058 and 1836. He was running out of time. Revelation 12:14 says, ” And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.” Wesley was as batty as Bachman is.

1843 Apr 28 – The Millerites, followers of Adventist/Baptist preacher, predict the end on this day.

1843 Dec 31 – Millerites again.

1844 Mar 21 – William Miller cons the Millerites one more time

1844 Oct 22 – Millerites prove they can be fooled again – lack of doom and destruction become known as the “Great Disappointment”. Too bad all predictions don’t adopt the title.

1847 – George Ramp, founder of the Harmony Society, declares that Jesus will return before he died. It is 7 August, and he is on his deathbed. As it turned out, Jesus wasn’t the one doing the traveling.

1853–1856 – Crimean War thought to be Battle of Armageddon. Maybe Jesus was busy reading Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

1862 – Scottish minister John Chumming decides that since it was 6000 years since Creation, the world would had passed its “use by” date..

1874 – Charles Take Russell predicts Jesus would return. When nothing happens, Russell claims Jesus is here but “invisible”.

1881 – 15th-century soothsayer Mother Shipton was quoted”The world to an end shall come, In eighteen hundred and eighty one”. A book of her “prophecies, published in 1862, was later proved to be a forgery, but this didn’t stop people from believing it. That volume is now use as the factchecking handbook at Fox News, whose followers also believe even when proven wrong.

1890 – Native American spiritualist Wovoka expects the end of the world on a somewhat round number. He’s late, as the Native Americans’ world ended in 1492.

1892 – Pyramidologist Charles Piazzi Smyth bases his research on the dimensions of the Great Pyramid and concludes that the End will happen sometime between 1892 and 1911. He goes into a deep depression when he discovers that his calculations should have been based on the pyramid of Sneferu. On being informed that the Giza pyramid had been built by space aliens and its dimensions actually encoded the directions to the home planet, his depression becomes fatal.

1901 – The Catholic Apostolic Church, founded in 1831, hold that the world would end when the last of its founders died. Since their main purpose was bringing The immediate Second Coming of Christ, it’s a wonder that the elders weren’t bumped off to hurry things up. The CAC is still in existence, but its members wonder why.

1910 – French astronomer Camille Flammarion says Halley’s Comet would poison the Earth’s atmosphere. People buy “Comet Pills” to counteract the poison.

1914 – Charles Take Russell mistakes a secular war (WWI) for Armageddon.

1918 – The International Bible Students Association hold that their church will be “glorified” in the spring on 1918. The students spend the entire summer in detention.

1920 – Jehovah’s Witless elder Raymond Franz says that the world will descent into anarchy in 1920. The anarchy arrived, but it remained confined to the Witlesses.

1925 – Seventh-day Adventist Margaret Rowen says the angel Gabriel told her the world would end at midnight 13 February (incidentally, a Friday). On 28 November the Grand Ole Opry debuts on radio, which amounts to the same thing. Gabriel was only off by 288 days.

1935 – Evangelist Wilbur Voliva says “the world is going to go ‘puff’ and disappear” in September. On the fifteenth, the Nuremberg Laws go into effect, making him one of the more accurate predictors in history.

1936 – Herbert W. Armstrong (Garner Ted’s daddy) says only his followers, members of the Worldwide Church of God would be saved. Present-day Tea Partiers say the same thing.

1941 – Some Jehovah’s Witnesses which broke off from the Bible Student movement, predict Armageddon for this year. Apparently the students didn’t learn.

1943 – Herbert W. Armstrong wrong again (just like the Tea Party).

1954 – The UFO cult Brotherhood of the Seven Rays told by leader Dorothy Martin that the world will be flooded on 21 December. She directs her followers to divest themselves of all worldly goods and wait for rescue from space. On 22 December, her followers quit.

1959 – 2nd Prophet of the Branch Davidians Florence Houteff predicts the apocalypse from Revelation will be on 22April. This causes a split in the group, ultimately leading to David Koresh. There was an apocalypse, but not for another thirty-four years. And thirty-six years.

1962 Feb 4 – Jeane Dixon with more astrological nonsense, says a planetary alignment will destroy the Earth. She forgets to explain why previous alignments hadn’t already done so.

1967 Aug 20 – George Van Tassel predicts Soviet nuclear strike. He is supposedly channeling an alien named Ashtar, later revealed to be ALF.

1967 – People’s Temple founder Jim Jones foretells a nuclear war. Eleven years later he tries another way.

1969 – Charles Manson tries to start it himself.

1972 – Herbert W. Armstrong swings and misses for strike three.

1973 – Children of God leader David Berg says that Comet Kohoutek will crash and burn up the world sometime between 11 and 21 January. Kohoutek ended up disappointing both Berg and comet watchers.

1975 – Three times was not a charm for Herbert W. Armstrong. Like the Tea Party, he never learns from his mistakes.

1975 – Nine years previously the Jehovah’s Witnesses publication ran an article that claimed that the fall of 1975 would be 6,000 years after creation, and, therefore, the end, shortchanging Pierre d’Ailly by 1,000 years. They also aren’t any more accurate than d’Ailly. Strike three.

1981 – Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith predicts the baby boomers will be the last generation. The boomers’ parents wish their generation had been the last.

1982 Mar 10 – John Gribbin says Jupiter’s gravity will tear the Earth apart. Like Jeane Dixon, he fails to explain why previous alignments hadn’t already done so.

1985 – Minister Lester Sumrall writes a book titled I Predict 1985. The next year, he publishes a book titled Oops 1986.

1988 – Former NASA engineer Edgar C. Whisenant writes 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988 explaining that the Rapture of Revelation will occur between 11 and 13 September 1988.

1988 – On 3 October, Edgar C. Whisenant: realizes he should have postponed publication.

1989 Edgar C. Whisenant’s book is sold with 1988 scratched out and 1989 written in magic marker.

1990 – New Age guruess Elizabeth Clare Prophet, getting carried away with her name, says a 12-year-long nuclear war will start on 23 April. She has her followers to build a shelter filled with food and weapons. Eight years later, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

1990 – Pat Robertson publishes The New Millennium, which insists destruction will occur on 29 April 2007.

1991 – Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson says the Messiah will arrive at Rosh Hashana. It turns out that the sound of the coming was just a badly tuned shofar.

1991 – Louis Farrakhan mistakes the Gulf War for the Battle of Armageddon.

1993 – David Berg, unfazed by his survival of Comet Kohoutek, gets it wrong again.

1994 Sep 6 – Harold Camping tries for the first time.

1994 Sep 29 – Harold Camping: strike two.

1994 Oct 2 – Harold Camping: strike three. He’s no better than Armstrong, the Witlesses or the Tea Party.

1995 Mar 31 – Harold Camping proves he’s no better than the Millerites.

1996 – Psychic Sheldon Nidre foresees the arrival of angels in 16 million space ships. He fails to explain why angels need to ride in UFOs.

1997 Mar 26 – Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate suicides. Proof that stupidity should be the national sport.

1997 Oct 23 – James Ussher, who calculated the time, day and year of the creation, says this would be the end (6000 years after creation).

1998 – Taiwanese cult leader Hon-Ming Chen, says God will come to Earth in a flying saucer at 10:00 am on 31 March. Not only that, but – Surprise! Surprise! God would look exactly like Hon-Ming Chen! How convenient! Supposedly, Chen would be “translated to heaven” so he wouldn’t be mistaken for a deity. On 25 March God was to appear on channel 18 on every TV set in the US. On 25 March, channel 18 in my hometown ran a Gilligan’s Island marathon.

1999 – In a banner year for End Times predictions, The Amazing Criswell says “lights out” would be on 18 August. He had also predicted that Plan 9 From Outer Space .would be a blockbuster hit and the breakout movie of 1959.

1999 – Language maven Charles Berlitz has the what, but not the how. He does say that it may involve nuclear devastation, asteroid impact, pole shift, other earth changes or sloppy enunciation.

1999 – After failing to be recognized as a deity last year, Hon-Ming Chen predicts a nuclear war.

1999 – Yale University President Timothy Dwight IV sees Christ’s millennium beginning.

2000 – Many expect the end of the world or horrible disasters (Y2K) to greet New Years’ Day on another round number, including Isaac Newton, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, Edgar Cayce, Sun Myung Moon Johnathan Edwards and the thousands of saps who built bunkers and hoarded MREs. Lester Sumrall publishes I Predict 2000.

2007 – Pat Robertson’s 1990 prediction for 29 April, like everything else he says, is wrong (What? People still listen to this senile old fart?). Nothing is mentioned on The 700 Club.

2008 – Starting up the Large Hadron Collider on 10 September will produce micro black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth. Construction delays postpone doomsday until 30 March 2010. After several years of operation, no holes yet.

2008 Nov 4 – Barack Obama (the Antichrist) elected President of the US. Republican and fundie heads explode, their world ends.

2009 – Tea Party starts a five-year whine that having a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Fascist liberal tyrant commie member of a radical Black Christian church in the White House means the United States, if not the whole world, is doomed.

2011 May 21 – Harold Camping rides again.

2011 Oct 21 – Harold Camping proves you can’t keep an old fool down. Claims that the May date was just the judgement and this date would be the end.

2012 – José Luis de Jesús, founder of Miami’s Growing In Grace International Ministry, says that governments and economies will collapse on 30 June and he and his followers will gain the ability to fly and walk through walls. Since 1 July 2012, de Jesús has been in a coma due to head injuries sustained trying to fly through a wall.

2012 Nov 6 – Obama re-elected; fundies shocked that he hasn’t revealed his horns, tail and pitchfork. Some suspect that he has no reflection.

2012- Various gullible idiots, not content with one mythology’s failed predictions, turn to misinterpreting the religion of the Mayans, about which most of them know nothing, and, spurred by a really crappy movie, decide the world will fall apart on 21 December. Other than the death of Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dorman, nothing significant happens that day.

2012- Warren Jeffs, the Fundamentalist Mormon leader, wants something to look forward to other than a life+20-year prison sentence, declares the end on 23 December..

2012- Eight days later, Warren Jeffs blames his prediction’s failure on his followers’ “lack of faith”.

2013 Oct 1 – Government enacts Affordable Care Act; Republicans shut down government in hopes of ending the world. Shocked to find out that the rest of the world doesn’t care.

2013 Oct 7 – Michele Bachman blames the end times on President Obama, not realizing that as the Antichrist, he plays a vital role in the Second Coming.

2020 – Jeane Dixon tries again. After the failure of her 1962 prediction, she settled on a date when she knew she probably wouldn’t be around to be embarrassed by it.

5,000,000,000 – Various scientists anticipate the sun will expand into a red giant and engulf the Earth. That’s hard to argue with.

5.000.000.001 – The Tea Party blames the death of the sun on President Obama.

-E.A. Blair

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The Michele Bachmann source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.

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Uber Idiot Pat Robertson Predicts ‘Nazis’ and ‘Guillotines’ Because of Atheists ‘Rejecting God’


Robertson predicts ‘Nazis’ and ‘guillotines’ because of atheists ‘rejecting God’                                

By David Edwards
CBN's Pat Robertson

Televangelist Pat Robertson started the week off by predicting that Europe could be returning to the days of “Nazis” and “guillotines” because of humanists, atheists and other liberals who reject God.

During a Monday report about a bill in Belgium that would expand the country’s euthanasia law to terminally-ill children, Robertson said that the Nazi Germany “spirit of death” still existed in Europe today.

“You know the liberals, the so called socialists, the progressives, they’ve moved away from God and when you move away from God then you say, ‘were humanists,’” he explained. “Then as a result of humanity and rejecting God, you have the orgy of the French Revolution, you have the guillotine cutting off the heads of thousands of people.

“You have the same thing going on now in Europe,” Robertson added. “You had it under the Nazis.”

“Why can’t we come back to the fact that God loves people?”

Watch this video from CBN’s 700 Club, broadcast Oct. 21, 2013.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

Statue of Noted Anti-Semite and White-Supremacist to be Removed


Statue of noted anti-Semite and white-supremacist to be removed from Georgia state capitol entrance             
By Scott Kaufman
watson

The statue of Tom Watson that graces the entrance to the Georgia state capitol will soon be removed from the grounds.

Watson was a newspaper magnate in the late 19th and early 20th century, and began his political career as a populist. In 1894, two years before he would be considered a serious candidate to accompany William Jennings Bryan on the Democratic presidential ticket, the masthead of his paper said that it “will oppose to the bitter end … Moneyed Aristocracy, National Banks, High Tariffs, Standing Armies and formidable Navies — all of which go together as a system of oppressing the people.”

He would later complain that Bryan was threatening to “turn the Democratic Party into the N****r Party.”

In the wake of his failed vice-presidential bid, and as his wealth increased, he began to speak out against populism, especially in its more socialist incarnations. He became well-known for his anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic diatribes — which he published in his papers — and openly supported the reconstitution of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Wherever the white man puts his foot, he rules,” Watson wrote at the time. “Don’t give the educated Negro the chance to register, and establish Negro Domination. MAINTAIN WHITE SUPREMACY!”

Particularly invidious was his behavior during the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent who was accused of strangling 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Despite an abundance of evidence that Frank could not have been the murderer, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. In 1915, his sentence was commuted to life by Governor John Slaton, who said he would “be a murderer if I allowed [Frank] to hang.”

Watson responded to the commutation by writing “[t]his country has nothing to fear from its rural communities. Lynch law is a good sign; it shows that a sense of justice lives among the people.” A group that included a former Georgia governor John Mackey Brown and styled itself “Knights of Mary Phagan” took Watson up on his offer and lynched Frank on August 16, 1915, a deed for which Watson proudly took credit.

When he was elected to the United States Senate in 1920, The Nation wrote that “[n]ever before has so conspicuous, so violent, so flaming an apostle of every variety of race hatred been invested with the power and dignity of the Senatorial Toga.”

The statue outside the Georgia capitol declares that Watson was “A CHAMPION OF RIGHT WHO NEVER FALTERED IN THE CAUSE.” It will be removed within the month.

 

Ann Coulter’s Latest Brain Fart


Ann Coulter has a brain fart: “The shutdown was so magnificent, run beautifully, I’m so proud of these Republicans”

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Crazy lady Ann Coulter said Monday night that Republicans were smart to shutdown the federal government in an attempt to delay or defund Obamacare. ‘Destroy’ would be a better word, since that is their motivation.

“This is why I think the shutdown was so magnificent, run beautifully, I’m so proud of these Republicans, and that is because they have branded the Republican Party as the anti-Obamacare party,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity.”

http://www.rawstory.co…

Black Babies do Better in Botswana Than North Carolina


Infant Mortality Rises in North Carolina: Black Babies do Better in Botswana

by FishOutofWaterFollow forNorth Carolina BLUE

attribution: NC State Center for Health Stats

Botswana, a 96% black African nation, has an infant mortality rate of 9.9 per 1000 live births according to the CIA. North Carolina’s infant mortality rate rose for the second year in a row in 2012 to 7.4 per 1000 for all babies and 13.9 per 1000 for black infants. Black babies in their first year of life have better prospects for survival in Botswana than North Carolina. Rural counties with high African American populations along the I-95 corridor have extraordinarily high infant mortality rates for a developed nation. Japan’s infant mortality rate is 2.2 while the rate in Pasquotank County, NC is 20.4. Yet, Governor McCrory (R) has refused to expand Medicaid to cover the working poor, rejected running a state health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, delayed funding the Women’s Infants and Children program, slashed unemployment insurance, and is attempting to privatize a state run Medicaid program that had been a national model before the great recession hit.

“It’s discouraging that the rate worsened, particularly after the past several years, where we were at record lows,” said pediatrician Peter Morris, who heads the legislative Child Fatality Task Force.  …Morris also noted that the research indicates that the state of a woman’s health before she gets pregnant is a prime predictor of how healthy her babies will be. About 12 percent of births were to women who had fewer than six months between delivery and a subsequent conception.

“If you’re trying to take care of women’s health before they’re pregnant, it’d be a really good idea to have health care coverage for their entire adulthood,” Morris said.

Even though low-income women are eligible for Medicaid when they’re pregnant and for three months after they give birth, about one in five of North Carolina’s adults under the age of 65 is uninsured.

My wife is an obstetrician/gynecologist working in North Carolina so I know the difficulties of delivering health care to pregnant women here. When the great recession hit, the state cut and delayed Medicaid payments, causing financial problems. She closed her practice and found a job in a larger town. Doctors and hospitals delivering care to lower middle class and working class women have been hit hard by the recession, just like their patients. That’s why infant mortality is rising. Rural and community hospitals in North Carolina are struggling to survive. Big city hospital systems bring in high revenues from insured patients for specialized procedures. Urban hospital centers put the profits back into improving their facilities and investing in new equipment. Rural and community hospitals are struggling to replace obsolete equipment at present revenue levels. I interviewed the CEO of Onslow Memorial Hospital, Ed Piper, about the need for Medicaid expansion to learn the details.Ed explained to me that hospitals made a deal with the federal government to accept an end to federal payments for unreimbursed care because the Affordable Care Act would expand Medicaid coverage for the working poor and provide subsidized insurance coverage for lower middle class Americans who weren’t covered by employer provided insurance plans. His hospital’s revenues are now running barely above costs, a 3.5% margin, barely enough to replace failing old equipment. But, because McCrory is rejecting Medicaid expansion, his hospital will be in trouble next year when the federal reimbursements for unreimbursed care cease. Onslow county has one of the best infant mortality rates in rural eastern North Carolina. Smaller hospitals in poor counties with out military bases will be in deep trouble. And these counties already have third-world-level infant mortality rates as high as 20 deaths per 1000 births.

North Carolina’s Rate of Uninsurance by County correlates Directly with Infant Mortality

For 30 years Democrats and Republicans worked together in North Carolina to improve the health care of women and children to cut infant mortality rates. Governor Jim Holshauser, a moderate Republican who died this summer, began efforts in the mid 1970’s to improve infant mortality rates by improving rural health care.

He supported creating a statewide kindergarten system. He backed the Coastal Management Act, regarded as national landmark environmental legislation to protect the state’s fragile seacoast. Holshouser helped start the rural health center program to provide more medical care in the countryside. He oversaw a major expansion of the state park system. He appointed several blacks and women to high-visibility posts in state government. And he supported creating black-oriented enterprises such as Soul City, the new town project started in Warren County by former civil rights leader Floyd McKissick.

To date, McCrory and the Republican legislature that took over in 2012 have implemented extreme anti-government policies that have shocked many North Carolinians accustomed to the prudent governance of Jim Holshauser and moderate Republicans. One of my wife’s cousins, a longtime Republican, and his wife just declared themselves independents in response to the extreme, inhuman policies of today’s North Carolina Republicans. He is not alone. McCrory’s popularity is plummeting.  The latest PPP poll showed McCrory’s approval rating in the low 30s.

Q2 Do you approve or disapprove of Governor Pat McCrory’s job performance? Approve …………………………………………………. 32% Disapprove ………………………………………………. 50% Not sure …………………………………………………. 19%

Governor McCrory and the Republican legislature can reverse course and expand Medicaid to prevent a disastrous decline in rural health care. At present North Carolina has one and a half million uninsured residents. About half a million of those residents would be eligible for Medicaid expansion. Because the federal government is picking up the full cost of expansion, North Carolina would bring in over a billion federal dollars to hospitals and health care providers across the state at no cost to the state. In many rural counties, community hospitals are the largest employers. Those hospitals, their workers and their communities will be slammed by rejecting Medicaid expansion. Counties will lose millions of federal dollars they desperately need.

About half a million of the uninsured earn less than 100 percent of the poverty level – $11,490 for a single person and $23,500 for a family of four. They are not eligible for insurance subsidies, and therefore are not subject to a penalty for not buying health insurance. That’s because authors of the Affordable Care Act assumed this group would get benefits through the Medicaid expansion.Mostly these people who earn too little to get subsidies are healthy adults without children. They are “literally too poor to be eligible,” said Madison Hardee, a lawyer with Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont.

Hospitals across North Carolina had embraced Medicaid expansion. It meant they would be reimbursed for treating poor people who are unable to pay hospital bills.

“This was integral to implementation of the Affordable Care Act,” said Joe Piemont, president and chief operating officer of Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte.

“These (uninsured) folks are here, and we’re taking care of them now, but it certainly would have been a benefit to have them qualify for the Medicaid expansion.”

The annual cost to North Carolina’s hospitals of not expanding Medicaid is estimated to be as much as $660 million, based on an analysis conducted for the N.C. Institute of Medicine by N.C. Division of Medical Assistance.

What the Republican ideologues and the governor don’t understand is that keeping women of child bearing age healthy saves both money and lives. For every baby that dies in the first year there are many more that require long hospital stays. One sick baby of uninsured parents can cost a hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s far cheaper to fund insurance and good nutrition for healthy mothers and babies than it is to pay the cost of caring for prematurely born infants. When women with uncontrolled blood sugar problems come into the office or hospital pregnant the damage to the baby may already be done. High maternal blood sugar levels in early pregnancy can cause heart defects and other fetal anomalies. Pregnancy Medicaid is not sufficient to prevent devastating health problems that will be apparent at birth. Blood sugar levels need to be controlled in the early weeks of pregnancy before women typically show up for care. Women need health care and adequate nutrition before they get pregnant to prevent birth defects and prematurity.North Carolina’s infant mortality rate is shameful. The infant mortality rate for black babies is beyond shameful. How can a state in the nation with the world’s largest economy have worse black infant mortality than Botswana?

I am appalled and disgusted that Governor McCrory is promoting policies that will kill even more babies. North Carolina’s rural health care is about to collapse under the load of uninsured poor people that could be covered by Medicaid expansion. Governor McCrory needs to change course to save babies and to save North Carolina’s community hospitals.

Phony “Counter Jihad” Fascist Loons Imploding


Crumbling “Counterjihad”? EDL, SION, SIOA and the Transatlantic Kerfuffle

The so-called counter jihad, like you can counter stupid with stupid

Robert Spencer - Kevin Carroll - Pamela Geller - Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - Stockholm August 2012

We have noted the unstable nature of the “counter-jihad” fascist movement since the day Loonwatch began. Cracks and fissures between various groups and websites were apparent from the start.

One of the first to depart the “counter-Jihad” was Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (LGF) who has continued to expose the extremism of former allies Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

It was Charles Johnson who first alerted us to the fact that Robert Spencer had joined a group calling for the extermination of Turks and the Reconquista of Anatolia. For this revelation Spencer and Geller have been relentless in their vitriolic demonization of Johnson, regarding him not only as an apostate but also– their favorite epithet– “dhimmi.”

The reasons for the inherent instability in the “counter-Jihad” reflects the fissures in ideological make up between the various personalities, as well as incongruities between their inflated egos.

A brief history of the internecine civil wars amongst the counter-Jihad on this point is informative: Debbie Schlussel vs.: Brigitte Gabriel, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Zuhdi Jasser, Walid Shoebat, etc. Logan’s Warning against Brigitte Gabriel. Spencer vs. Andrew Bostom. Roberta Moore of the JDL vs. the EDL and now the latest kerfuffle: Geller and Spencer vs. Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll.

All that binds them is Islamomisia and Islamophobia. On the surface their ideological backgrounds provide a motive: a belief in the need to preserve Christianity in the face of post-Modernity and a rise in Secular Humanism, a belief that it is good for Israel and Zionism, a desire to keep White Europe pure, the nostalgic belief that they are the vanguard “defenders of freedom” who will not only save the “West” from a resurgent Islam but harken in a golden age and if not–Armageddon.

When you dig a little deeper underneath the surface of ideology and identity politics one sees there is another more primitive motive at work; garnering dead presidents and Euros.

Recenlty, I have taken an interest in the famous medieval Muslim theologian Ghazali who it seems to me has identified, in universal terms, the reasons for the sickness that pervades the Islamophobia movement:

“The greatest of all desires is ravenousness, the source of all spiritual maladies, followed, in second order, by lasciviousness. Ardently seeking to fulfill these desires inevitably involves one in garnering wealth, in turn leading to indulgence in both spheres. It appears Ghazali posits a causal link between these two instincts, on the one hand, and the personal desire to acquire power and influence, on the other. To protect wealth and power, it is inevitable for the covetous individual to engage in competition and envy, which in turn engender greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, and hatred. And once these become habits of the soul, it is a short step for the individual to be implicated in morally repugnant acts.” (Hallaq, The Impossible State, p.131)

“Counter-Jihad” is a lucrative business as the reports by Fear, inc. and CAIR have made plain. The economy of Islamophobia isn’t going out of business anytime soon as long as wealthy Right-Wing foundations and individuals continue to support the industry.

Ex-EDL Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Kevin Carroll Haven’t Changed

It has been two weeks since the announcement by former EDL chief Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll that they were leaving the organization. In that time there have been several major developments, including the supposed termination of an official relationship between Geller/Spencer and Robinson and even accusations that Robinson is a poster boy for “stealth Jihad.” (h/t: Jai Singh)

Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll’s closest international allies, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, have publicly terminated their involvement with them and thrown them off the board of their “SION Presidents Council”. Geller has announced this in an article published on her Atlas Shrugs website.

The reason is partly due to Robinson and Carroll’s current involvement with Quilliam and Mo Ansar (Geller’s full article provides further details), but apparently it also has a lot to do with some statements Robinson made to The Daily Beast, specifically the reasons that he has been refusing to publicly denounce Spencer & Geller. Furthermore, Geller herself makes some accusations about the real reasons for Robinson’s resignation from the EDL.

Pamela Geller: A month ago, Tommy Robinson called me…..Not being on the ground in the UK, and having worked with him at a distance for four years, I understood his concerns, and looked forward to a new organization — perhaps even SIO-England. I did not know when he was going to make his move away from the EDL, and he did not tell me. The only thing he told me was that he was going to make the break before his upcoming court case — perhaps to incur the sympathy of the court.

Then, the night before he made his announcement, Tommy tried to contact me numerous times on Skype and by phone while I was busy with other matters. It was clear that it was urgent. Finally, we spoke on the phone, and it was on that phone call that he told me that he would be resigning from the EDL the next day, and that the Quilliam Foundation was going to be at the press conference — but he made that a minor point. I had no idea that it was a Quilliam press conference, and certainly had no idea that Tommy and Kevin Carroll would be led around like dogs 0n a leash. It was after that phone call, and before I had any idea that Tommy would be closely allying with false moderate Muslim deceivers who would crow about “decapitating the EDL,” that Robert Spencer and I composed our first statement, supporting Tommy and his decision. We never would have come out in support of him if we had known that he would soon be parroting politically correct nonsense about “extremists on both sides.”

Tommy told me that his move would not be announced until 6PM London time the next day, and asked me to hold our statement until then, but when I woke up the next morning, it was already all over the international media. That was the first indication that he had not been entirely up front with me about what was happening. Then at the press conference, both he and Kevin Carroll were the showcases of a Quilliam victory dance.

…..I only subsequently learned, after releasing our initial statement of support, that he had been meeting with Islamic supremacist deceivers like Mo Ansar for 18 months, and was taking instruction on Islam from the false moderates of the Quilliam Foundation. And I didn’t hear about it from Tommy, who never gave me any hint of any of this — I read about it in the press along with everyone else.

…..He made a deal with the devil. He didn’t want to go back to jail, and this looks like his bid to stay out.

Today at the Daily Beast, the gleeful reporter doesn’t quote Robinson, but says that he “distanced himself from some of Geller’s most egregious remarks.” I challenge the Daily Beast reporter to produce the quotes. What exactly did Tommy distance himself from? And then he quotes Tommy explaining why he won’t denounce me now: “I went to America to speak at one of their events. I feel indebted to Pamela. I have a great deal of respect for her personally because she helped my family when I was in custody. She provided a roof over our head.” This cop-out from Tommy — that he wouldn’t denounce me because I supported him financially — was the lowest blow of all. I was not supporting the EDL financially. We gave some money to his wife and kids when Tommy was in jail. And Tommy has said that before, implying that his loyalty was bought, and was not because of ideological agreement. He’s been using the quiet help I gave to his wife and kids as one mom to another. I didn’t do that for the organization. I did that as a human being.

It is clear what is happening. Now he is the poster boy for the stealth jihad. It seems they have taught Tommy well. His deception to friends and colleagues mirrors the Islamic teachings of kitman (lie by omission) and taqiyya. So Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll are no longer on the SION board.

According to the Huffington Post Robinson has claimed that the EDL’s publicly pro-Israel stance was to garnish support and “attract funding from Zionist organizations.” [which failed to materialize in the way that he had hoped]

Robinson also appeared as a guest on the BBC’s “Sunday Morning Live” program on October 13th, discussing “Does the English Defence League represent a view that needs to be heard?”:

– There is very little change in Robinson’s anti-Muslim views. He is simply expressing them more carefully. – Throughout the discussion, Robinson essentially continues accusing the entire Muslim population of collective guilt and collective responsibility. – 12m 30s: Robinson describes the Quran as “extremely evil”. – 20m 08s: Robinson claims “There are two types of Muslims: Radicals/extremists and apologists”. – 21m 10s onwards: Robinson enthusiastically praises the EDL, including its current demonstrations. – Debate continues from 53m 40s onwards: Robinson claims that he will not give the Police any incriminating “inside information” on EDL members.

Robinson has not changed, he admits that he is only shifting tactics.:

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Screenshot of Robinson’s comment on his new Twitter account on 12 October 2013, responding to a member of the EDL’s “Oldham Division”, stating “I’ll continue the fight, and wake up the nation”:

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Spencer and Geller have co-authored a detailed statement, cross-published on their respective websites. They excoriate Robinson for being an ignorant, gullible lad who has facilitated the “decapitation of the EDL” and has capitulated to the government funded Quilliam which they laughably describe as representing the “forces of Jihad and Islamic supremacism.”

Richard Bartholomew has also published an excellent article highlighting Spencer & Geller’s other statements on the matter, including Spencer’s confirmation that Robinson “has repeatedly stated that he hasn’t changed his views.”

Robert Spencer himself has now written an article on these developments. Spencer’s indignant, confused and “betrayed” reaction is definitely worth reading. Seems that Robinson’s “secret” discussions with the popular British Muslim commentator Mo Ansar during the past 18 months are a particularly sore point.

Tommy Robinson is continuing to refuse to denounce Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

TellMAMA’s new article documenting Robinson’s continuing behaviour on his new Twitter account. Take particular note of the recent screenshot where Robinson claims that his time with Mo Ansar has actually strengthened his opposition to Islam.

Note on the Quilliam Foundation:

The Guardian has an excellent summary of the plausible reasons for the organization’s new found involvement with Robinson and Carroll, specifically detailing the problems that Quilliam has recently been experiencing.

Another Guardian article includes revealing information about “the next steps” involving Quilliam and Robinson, including the fact that Robinson has contradicted his statements on the BBC regarding cooperation with the Police:

[Maajid] Nawaz said he would work to introduce [Tommy] Robinson to his own contacts in government and the Home Office in an attempt to procure government funding. Robinson said his future work would involve taking on radicalism on all fronts, although he could not support anti-fascist groups because they also subscribed to “communism” or were “anarchists”.

When pressed as to whether he would work with the police to root out criminal racists in the group he helped form four years ago, he agreed he would now talk to the authorities.

Robinson, whose financial assets have been frozen because of ongoing criminal proceedings for public order offences, said he did not doubt he would be successful again in any endeavour he pursued as long as he was passionate about it.

The Religious Right Is a Fraud — There’s Nothing Christian About Michele Bachmann’s Values


By Elizabeth Stoker  and Matt Bruenig

The Religious Right Is a Fraud — There’s Nothing Christian About Michele Bachmann’s Values

   Last week, the nation’s capital was host to Value Voters 2013 Summit, a three-day political conference for predominantly religious conservatives. Among the smattering of social and economic issues at hand, the overall tenor of the Summit focused on eliminating Obamacare, expanding the tangible presence of Christianity through the public arena and military and preventing the proliferation of easily available birth control and abortion. In speeches, lunches and breakout sessions, American’s Christian Right worked out strategies to bring the values of the federal government in line with their preferred Christian ethical dictates, using democracy as their chief tool.

It isn’t unusual for Christians living in democracies to use the vote to express their ethics, and to shape government to do the same. That the moral and ethical preferences of a given society should inform government is a foundational principle of democracy, after all. And American values voters are far from the first Christians to undertake the project of bringing their government’s policies in line with Christian ethics: European Christian parties have aimed to do the same for decades. But between American Christian voters and their European counterparts, a curious departure opens up: while European Christians generally see the anti-poverty mission of Christianity as worthy of political action, the American Christian Right inexplicably cordons off economics from the realm of Christian influence.

By all means, the American Christian Right is willing to leverage government authority to carry out a variety of Christian ethical projects, especially within the arena of family life. Michele Bachmann would make abortion illegal, and Rick Santorum has stated on multiple occasions that he supports laws against homosexual intercourse. But Christian politicians in the United States curtail their interest in making the gospel actionable when it comes to welfare. While the government should see to the moral uprightness of marriage, sex and family, the Value Voters 2013 Summit was notably bereft of talks on living wages, labor rights or basic incomes.

The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle. Quite the contrary: Just as public morality is an arena fit for intervention by a Christian-informed government, so too is welfare. Consider the British Christian People’s Alliance 2010 election manifesto, a document intended to explain the imminently Christian party’s policy goals:

“The Christian Peoples Alliance believes that Britain will return to economic prosperity when government chooses instead to put human relationships in right order. This requires power, income and wealth to be redistributed and for greater equality to be achieved. These are deeply spiritual convictions and reflect a Biblical pattern of priorities…By the end of the next Parliament, the CPA will establish the reduction of inequality as a national target, so that the ratios of the incomes of the top 20 per cent are reduced to no more than five and a half times the incomes of the bottom 20 per cent.”

The CPA election manifesto goes on to explain that their aversion to inequality arises from a uniquely Christian concern for the health of human relationships, which suffer under the weight of massive social inequality. Their position on inequality is hardly an anomaly among European Christian parties. In fact, the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), a confederation of Christian parties from different European nations operating within the European Union, states very similar goals in its own programme:

“Social justice is a fundamental Biblical teaching and Christian-democrat notion. Social justice demands an equal regard for all. That implies a special concern for the needs of the poor, refugees, those who suffer and the powerless. It requires us to oppose exploitation and deprivation. It requires also that appropriate resources and opportunities are available. In this way, we meet the basic requirements of all and each person is able to take part in the life of the community.”

Toward that end, the European Christian Political Foundation, which is the official think tank of the ECPM, recently commissioned a publication entitled ‘After Capitalism’, which is summarized thus:

“‘After Capitalism’ seeks to rethink the foundations of a market economy and argues that the Bible’s central theme of relationships is the key to rebuilding a system that promotes economic well-being, financial stability and social cohesion.”

It is notable that the multitude of parties that make up the EPCM are not necessarily leftist or wholly liberal parties. They do not generally align themselves with openly socialist parties in their home countries, though their policies toward welfare and equality would likely be branded as such by American Christians. And so the question remains: If European Christians feel the anti-poverty mission of Christianity is as worthy of political action as the ethical values relating to family life, why doesn’t the American Christian Right feel the same?

Economic policy seems a strange place to wall off consideration of Christian ethics, but when it comes to policies that would expand welfare programs or extend particular benefits to the poor, the American Christian Right recoils, and tends to fall back on the rhetoric of personal accountability and individual liberty in matters of charity. But as European Christian parties have shown, limiting economic justice to the arena of charity is a politicalchoice. If the government has a moral role — which the American Christian Right certainly believes it does — then why shouldn’t it participate in the same forms of care individual Christians are obligated to?

No principled reason can be given for the distinction the Christian Right draws between harnessing the state to pursue social objectives and harnessing it to pursue economic objectives. It is a uniquely American distinction as far as Christian politicking goes. What the distinction reveals is that so-called values voters are just a particular flavor of right-wing political culture, one that opts for Christian language and rhetoric when communicating its message. But in that case, it is their freestanding political commitments that inform their Christianity, not the other way around.

The answer to this riddle is therefore not so mysterious. Although nominally interested in harnessing the state to pursue Christian social objectives, the American Christian Right is not detached from the culture it has developed within. Their politics is not one that is Christian in origin; rather, it originates from the same place all other right-wing politics originates, but mobilizes Christian rhetoric and meanings post-hoc to justify its goals.

 

The Tea Party As A Religion


The Tea Party As A Religion

Mitt Romney Attends Tea Party Rally In New Hampshire

Dishheads know I believe that you cannot understand the current GOP without also grasping how bewildered so many people are by the dizzying onset of modernity. The 21st Century has brought Islamist war to America, the worst recession since the 1930s, a debt-ridden federal government, a majority-minority future, gay marriage, universal healthcare and legal weed. If you were still seething from the eruption of the 1960s, and thought that Reagan had ended all that, then the resilience of a pluralistic, multi-racial, fast-miscegenating, post-gay America, whose president looks like the future, not the past, you would indeed, at this point, be in a world-class, meshugganah, cultural panic.

When you add in the fact that the American dream stopped working for most working-class folks at some point in the mid 1970s, and when you see the national debt soaring from the Reagan years onward, made much worse by the Bush-Cheney years, and then exploded by the recession Bush bequeathed, you have a combustible mixture. It’s very easy to lump all this together into a paranoid fantasy of an American apocalypse that must somehow be stopped at all cost. In trying to understand the far-right mindset – which accounts for around a quarter of the country – I think you have to zoom out and see all of this in context.

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Many of us found in Barack Obama a very post-ideological president, a pragmatist, a Christian, and a traditional family man, and naively ;believed that he could both repair the enormous damage done by the Bush-Cheney administration and simultaneously reach out to the red states as well. I refuse to say the failure is his. Because he tried. For years, he was lambasted by the left for being far too accommodating, far too reasonable, aloof, not scrappy enough, weak … you know the drill by now. In fact, he was just trying to bring as much of the country along as he could in tackling the huge recession and massive debt he inherited at one and the same time, and in unwinding the 9/11 emergency, and in ending two wars and the morally and legally crippling legacy of torture (about which the GOP is simply in rigid denial).

Obama got zero votes from House Republicans for a desperately needed stimulus in his first weeks in office. So I cannot believe he could have maintained any sort of detente with the Republican right, dominated by the legacy of Palin, rather than McCain. But the healthcare reform clearly ended any sort of possibility of coexistence – and the cold civil war took off again. The first black president could, perhaps, clean up some of the mess of his predecessor, but as soon as he moved on an actual substantive change that he wanted and campaigned on, he was deemed illegitimate. Even though that change was, by any standards, a moderate one, catering to private interests, such as drug and insurance companies; even though it had no public option; even though its outline was the same as the GOP’s 2012 nominee’s in GOP Candidates Rick Perry And Michelle Bachmann Appear At Columbia, SC Veterans Day ParadeMassachusetts, this inching toward a more liberal America was the casus belli. It still is – which is why it looms so large for the Republican right in ways that can easily befuddle the rest of us.

But it is emphatically not the real reason for the revolt. It is the symptom, not the cause. My rule of thumb is pretty simple: whenever you hear a quote about Obamacare, it’s more illuminating to remove the “care” part. And Obama is a symbol of change people cannot understand, are frightened by, and seek refuge from.

That desperate need for certainty and security is what I focused on in my book about all this, The Conservative Soul. What the understandably beleaguered citizens of this new modern order want is a pristine variety of America that feels like the one they grew up in. They want truths that ring without any timbre of doubt. They want root-and-branch reform – to the days of the American Revolution. And they want all of this as a pre-packaged ideology, preferably aligned with re-written American history, and reiterated as a theater of comfort and nostalgia. They want their presidents white and their budget balanced now. That balancing it now would tip the whole world into a second depression sounds like elite cant to them; that America is, as a matter of fact, a coffee-colored country – and stronger for it – does not remove their desire for it not to be so; indeed it intensifies their futile effort to stop immigration reform. And given the apocalyptic nature of their view of what is going on, it is only natural that they would seek a totalist, radical, revolutionary halt to all of it, even if it creates economic chaos, even if it destroys millions of jobs, even though it keeps millions in immigration limbo, even if it means an unprecedented default on the debt.

This is a religion – but a particularly modern, extreme and unthinking fundamentalist religion. And such a form of religion is the antithesis of the mainline Protestantism that once dominated the Republican party as well, to a lesser extent, the Democratic party.

It also brooks no distinction between religion and politics, seeing them as fused in the same cultural and religious battle. Much of the GOP hails from that new purist, apocalyptic sect right now – and certainly no one else is attacking that kind of religious organization. But it will do to institutional political parties what entrepreneurial fundamentalism does to mainline churches: its appeal to absolute truth, total rectitude and simplicity of worldview instantly trumps tradition, reason, moderation, compromise.Francis Wilkinson has studied the scholarship of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, authors of The Churching of America 1776-1990. He wrote a passage yesterday that resonated with me:

An important thesis of the book is that as religious organizations grow powerful and complacent, and their adherents do likewise, they make themselves vulnerable to challenges from upstart sects that “impose significant costs in terms of sacrifice and even stigma upon their members.” For insurgent groups, fervor and discipline are their own rewards.

Right now, the Republican Party is an object of contempt to many on the far right, whose adamant convictions threaten what they perceive as Republican complacency. The Tea Party is akin to a rowdy evangelical storefront beckoning down the road from the staid Episcopal cathedral. Writing of insurgent congregations, Finke and Stark said that “sectarian members are either in or out; they must follow the demands of the group or withdraw. The ‘seductive middle ground’ is lost.”

In other words, this is not just a cold civil war. It is also a religious war – between fundamentalism and faith, between totalism and tradition, between certainty and reasoned doubt. It may need to burn itself out – with all the social and economic and human damage that entails. Or it can be defeated, as Lincoln reluctantly did to his fanatical enemies, or absorbed and coopted, as Elizabeth I did hers over decades. But it will take time. The question is what will be left of America once it subsides, and how great a cost it will have imposed.

(Photos: from a Tea Party rally, Ken Cucinnelli, far right candidate for governor of Virginia, and Michele Bachmann, apocalyptic prophet, by Getty Images.)

Faux “News” | Forbes, Fox News Push Conspiracy Theory About Obamacare Website Glitches


Faux “News” | Forbes, Fox News Push Conspiracy Theory About Obamacare Website Glitches
By Michael Allen,

When former President George W. Bush’s new Medicare Drug Program debuted on Jan 1, 2006, it was a technological disaster.

Similarly, Obamacare’s website Healthcare.gov has had its technical glitches, but unlike the Medicare Drug Program’s limping start, Obamacare is being accused by Forbes and Fox News of an evil conspiracy.

According to Avik Roy of Forbes, Obamacare is tricking people because it asks for their information before displaying prices set by the insurance companies. Roy believes this reverse order is some sort plot to keep Americans from seeing the insurance prices they eventually will see after they register for Obamacare.

Roy writes:

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping.

This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

However, Roy fails to mention that Obamacare doesn’t actually set the prices of the insurance rates — the insurance companies do. The Obamacare health care exchanges, which are accessed via HealthCare.gov, simply categorize different health insurance plans in different states, with prices set by the insurance companies.

Roy repeats the fallacy that Obamacare sets insurance premium prices, adding, “So, by analyzing your income first, if you qualify for heavy subsidies, the website can advertise those subsidies to you instead of just hitting you with Obamacare’s steep premiums.”

HealthCare.gov states, “Insurance plans in the Marketplace are offered by private companies,” which debunks the rumors that Obamacare is actually offering health care plans.

ThinkProgress.org reports that Fox News ran with Roy’s false claims this morning:

The network ran a segment on Tuesday morning explaining that the White House knew about potential glitches before HealthCare.gov launched on Oct. 1, “but did nothing to stop it because the White House doesn’t want to show you how expensive those plans really are.”

If that sounds too ridiculous to believe, it is. The administration may have hoped to immediately present consumers with their subsidized rates to reduce confusion, but it never tried to hide the unsubsidized cost of coverage.

Sources: Forbes, ThinkProgress.org, HealthCare.gov, Slate.com

Stephen Fry interviews “ex-gay” therapist, exposes “ex-gay” therapy as bogus and terrible


Stephen Fry interviews “ex-gay” therapist, exposes “ex-gay” therapy as bogus and terrible

Fry speaks with the founder of an ex-gay organization and one of his former patients, who is now “ex-ex-gay” VIDEO

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Stephen Fry interviews
Enlarge NARTH founder Joseph Nicolosi (Credit: YouTube)
English actor, comedian and activist Stephen Fry interviewed the founder of ex-gay organization the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) for an episode of his BBC2 program “Out There,” which explores, per the website, “what it means to be gay in different corners of the world.” Fry handles his subject with bemused though respectful patience (and, at times, humor), but his conversation with Joseph Nicolosi is pretty painful to watch. Nicolosi describes being gay as based on “trauma” and as something that can be “resolved” through the therapy he offers — for $140 a session. But perhaps the most devastating revelation in the segment is when Nicolosi tells Fry that more than 60 percent of his clients are teenagers. A growing number of states – including California, where Nicolosi practices — have banned “ex-gay” therapy for minors, citing its harmful impact and well-documented abuses among practitioners. Fry also speaks with one of Nicolosi’s former “patients,” who, surprise, is still gay and now campaigns against the dangers of “ex-gay” therapy.
Watch it here:

GE: 3D Printers To ‘Touch’ Half Of Its Manufacturing


GE: 3D Printers To ‘Touch’ Half Of Its Manufacturing

By GILLIAN RICH

General Electric (GE) is expanding the uses for 3D printers and expects the emerging technology to “touch” more than half of its manufacturing in 20 years.

With business segments in aviation, energy technology, medical equipment and home appliances, the industrial conglomerate’s increasing adoption of “additive manufacturing” could shake up printer makers 3D Systems (DDD), Stratasys (SSYS) and ExOne (XONE) as well as U.S. industry overall.

Less than 10% of GE’s manufacturing uses 3D printing in some form today, though that share should rise to 20% to 25% in 10 years and 50% or more in 20 years, the company told IBD.

Engineers at GE Global Research built this miniature model of a GEnx jet engine using an advanced 3-D printing technique called direct metal laser...Engineers at GE Global Research built this miniature model of a GEnx jet engine using an advanced 3-D printing technique called direct metal laser… View Enlarged Image

“I’m not saying that 25% of all parts will be 3D-printed, but that 3D printing will touch it in some way,” Christine Furstoss, GE’s technical director of manufacturing and materials technologies, told IBD in an interview.

“Maybe it’s the tool that we are using or the early prototypes we make,” Furstoss said. “We are committed to driving it in as many areas as we can.”

3D Already Plays Big Part

GE already uses 3D printing in a variety of areas from making medical devices and jet engine parts to prototyping components for washing machines.

Three-dimensional printing works by layering material, like plastic or ceramic, into a desired shape. Traditional manufacturing works the other way, by cutting out an object from a larger piece of material.

At GE, 3D printing isn’t just a way to make products. It’s also a way to try out new tools that could make products better.

“We don’t have to invest the time and money into making a permanent tool, but we can 3D print one and be able to see if it really has the type of benefits we dream of,” Furstoss said.

GE still plans to use conventional manufacturing techniques, especially for large components. But 3D printing, or additive manufacturing as GE calls it, is still seen playing a role, such as providing tools or repairing parts.

Big Rivals Likely To Follow

The company’s push into 3D printing could pave the way for other large-scale manufacturers to embrace the technology. GE’s use of 3D printers in jet engines, for example, could serve as a catalyst for United Technologies (UTX), which owns Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls-Royce.

“I expect engine makers Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce will follow,” said Troy Jensen, a managing director at Piper Jaffray.

Last year, GE Aviation agreed to acquire additive manufacturing company Morris Technologies, confirming its commitment to 3D printing.

But while it’s clear GE has major 3D plans, it has no plans now to make its own printers.

“We have a lot on our plates to keep us busy,” GE’s Furstoss said. “We will always work with our strategic partners to do what’s right for our collective companies. But at this point, we are focused on working on growth within GE.”

That should come as good news to 3D Systems and Stratasys, which won’t have to compete against the industrial giant. GE is also a big customer of most 3D printer makers, Jensen noted.

Tim Caffrey, an associate consultant at Wohlers Associates, doesn’t expect GE or United Tech to build their own printers.

“I don’t see that happening because they already subcontract a lot of their manufacturing to other firms.”

Citigroup analyst Ken Wong agrees: “None of these guys wants to build the printers because … that is not where their expertise is. But a lot of them are doing their own work on materials and new applications.”

GE is slated to report third-quarter earnings on Oct. 18. Analysts expect flat earnings of 36 cents a share. Revenue should dip 1.3% to $35.9 billion.

Hilarious! Game of Thrones, Medieval Land Fun-Time World!


“Game of  Thrones”

http://www.youtube.com/user/theageofblasphemy

 

Medieval Land Fun-Time  World!

Theme park manager Eddie Stark has one week to whip his lackluster group of  employees into shape before the park’s grand opening.

See outtakes here!

http://www.youtube.com/user/theageofblasphemy

 

32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown


32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown
Here’s the Republican clown car!
Meet the House conservative hardliners.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Friday was the fourth day of the government shutdown, and there’s still no sign of an exit. What’s surprising about the ongoing fight is how a small group of members of Congress have managed to bring Washington to a halt. Just months ago, Speaker John Boehner was warning that forcing the government to shut down over Obamacare or anything else was politically hazardous. Yet Boehner remains stuck, his strategy dictated by a small rump of members in the Republican caucus who refuse to budge. On Monday night, as government funding ran out, a group of around 40 hardline conservatives refused to support any resolution to fund the government that didn’t defund Obamacare. Since Monday night, their goals may have become less clear, but their resolve has not weakened. While it’s widely believed that a “clean” resolution would pass the House handily, it would also likely lead to a right-wing rebellion in the caucus that would spell the end of Boehner’s speakership.

So who are those hardliners? To compile this list, we started with a roster that the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group aligned with Ted Cruz, created of representatives who were allied with them. We cross-checked it with the list of members who signed an August letter by Rep. Mark Meadows demanding that Boehner use a shutdown as a threat to defund Obamacare, and against other public statements this week. It’s not a comprehensive roll — there’s no official “wacko bird” caucus that keeps a register — but it’s a window into the small but powerful group of men and women in the House of Representatives who brought the federal government to a standstill.


Representative: Justin Amash

Home District: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Quoted: “President Obama and Senator Reid refuse to negotiate over giving regular Americans the same breaks they give themselves, government workers, and big business.”


Representative: Michele Bachmann

Home District: Stillwater, Minnesota

Quoted: “This is about the happiest I’ve seen members in a long time because we’ve seen we’re starting to win this dialogue on a national level.”


Representative: Marsha Blackburn

Home District: Brentwood, Tennessee

Quoted: “There is some good news out of the shutdown, the EPA can’t issue new regulations.”


Representative: Mo Brooks

Home District: Huntsville, Alabama

Quoted: “America survived the last 17 government shutdowns.”


Representative: Paul Broun

Home District: Athens, Georgia

Quoted: “[The Democrats] need to look in the mirror, because they’re the ones to blame. They’re the ones that shut the government down.”


Representative: John Carter

Home District: Round Rock, Texas

Quoted: “We must postpone this overreaching and damaging law that I believe will bankrupt the hard-working every day American.”


Representative: John Culberson

Home District: Houston, Texas

Quoted: “The whole room [said]: ‘Let’s vote!’ I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!


Representative: Ron DeSantis

Home District: Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

Quoted: “It is a simple issue of fairness: Members of Congress, their staff, and the political elite should not be given special relief from the harmful effects of Obamacare while the rest of America is left holding the bag.”


Representative: Scott DesJarlais

Home District: Jasper, Tennessee

Quoted: “I remain committed in refusing to vote for any proposal that funds the president’s health-care law, and I call upon my colleagues to join me. A temporary government shutdown pales in comparison to the long-term negative consequences that Obamacare will impose on our economy and our healthcare system.”


Representative: Jeff Duncan

Home District: Laurens, South Carolina

Quoted: “I believe Obamacare has shut down America, so I’d rather shut down the government than continue doing what we’re doing, which is penalizing businesses and families in this country.”


Representative: John Fleming

Home District: Minden, Louisiana

Quoted: “This is what my constituents send me here for. This does underscore just how serious we are and how serious our constituents are about putting an end to Obamacare.”


Representative: Scott Garrett

Home District: Wantange Township, New Jersey

Quoted: “I am deeply disappointed that President Obama and the Senate refused to come to the negotiation table and failed to fund the federal government.”


Representative: Phil Gingrey

Home District: Marietta, Georgia

Quoted: “A majority of Americans think Obamacare will make health care in our country worse, and they’re right. House Republicans are listening to the American people, and I urge Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to do the same.”


Representative: Louie Gohmert

Home District: Tyler, Texas

Quoted: “There are just so many broken promises that we need to slow this train wreck, this nightmare. It’s time to put the skids on this thing and slow it down before more people get hurt.”


Representative: Tom Graves

Home District: Ranger, Georgia

Quoted: “House GOP is united around a very reasonable policy: POTUS should give families the same Obamacare delay he gave to businesses.”


Representative: Vicky Hartzler

Home District: Harrisonville, Missouri

Quoted: “The American people have spoken already on this: They do not want Obamacare …. It is hurting people.”


Representative: Tim Huelskamp

Home District: Fowler, Kansas

Quoted: “Most Americans realize the government shutdown has no impact on their daily life. They got their mail today; they’re going to get their Social Security check.”


Representative: Jim Jordan

Home District: Urbana, Ohio

Quoted: “We have to get something on Obamacare, because that — if you want to get this country on a fiscal path to balance, you cannot let an entitlement of this size that will truly bankrupt the country and, more importantly, one that’s not going to help Americans with their health care, you can’t let this happen. ”


Representative: Steve King

Home District: Kiron, Iowa

Quoted: “The American people have rejected Obamacare. The president is willing to put all of that on the line to save his namesake legislation, which I think would go down in history as the largest political tantrum ever.”


Representative: Raul Labrador

Home District: Eagle, Idaho

Quoted: To Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “You know, your boss, Tip O’Neill, shut down the government 12 different times. And you didn’t call him a terrorist.


Representative: Tom Massie

Home District: Garrison, Kentucky

Quoted: “It’s just not that big of a deal.”


Representative: Tom McClintock

Home District: Elk Grove, California

Quoted: In response to Harry Reid calling Tea Partiers “anarchists”: “When the other guy starts calling you names, you know that you’re winning the debate, and you know that he knows you’re winning the debate.”


Representative: Mark Meadows

Home District: Cashier, North Carolina

Quoted: “James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that ‘the power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon . . . for obtaining redress of every grievance.’”


Representative: Randy Neugebauer

Home District: Lubbock, Texas

Quoted: “We get tons of mail and E-mails and phone calls. And overwhelmingly, those phone calls say, ‘Congressman, do everything you can to get rid of this very onerous piece of legislation. We don’t want the government running our health care.’ And so, from my perspective, we’re doing the people’s work here.”


Representative: Matt Salmon

Home District: Mesa, Arizona

Quoted: “I was here during the government shutdown in 1995. It was a divided government. we had a Democrat president of the United States. We had a Republican Congress. And I believe that that government shutdown actually gave us the impetus, as we went forward, to push toward some real serious compromise.”


Representative: Mark Sanford

Home District: Charleston, South Carolina

Quoted: “Our society has been held together for over 200 years in no small part due to the belief that our system was fair or equitable, yet the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been anything but that.”


Representative: Steve Scalise

Home District: Jefferson, Louisiana

Quoted: “Either Obamacare is good enough that it should apply to all or it is so bad that it should apply to none. It is time for the sweetheart deals and backroom exemptions to end.”


Representative: Dave Schweikert

Home District: Fountain Hills, Arizona

Quoted: “I know it’s not comfortable for a lot of people here, but this is how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to be cantankerous. It’s supposed to be this constant grinding.” *

* A previous version of this story quoted Schweikert saying that the shutdown “is my kind of fun.” That statement was taken out of context. The congressman was referring to an interview with NPR, not with the government shutdown. We regret the error.

Representative: Steve Stockman

Home District: Clear Lake, Texas

Quoted: “Americans want Congress to do two things, work together on our national fiscal crisis and stop Obamacare. It’s time Congress started listening to them.”


Representative: Marlin Stutzman

Home District: Howe, Indiana

Quoted: “We aren’t going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”


Representative: Randy Weber

Home District: Pearland, Texas

Quoted: “When the Democrats passed [Obamacare] over 60 percent of America’s wishes three years ago, they began this government shutdown.”


Representative: Ted Yoho

Home District: Gainesville, Florida

Quoted: “It only takes one with passion — look at Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King.”


This post has been amended to clarify the context of a comment by Rep. Dave Schweikert.

All photos: Wikimedia Commons 

Conspiracy theorists, conservatives more likely to reject science


Conspiracy theorists, conservatives more likely to reject science
        Times LIVE

Image by: Thinkstock

        American conspiracy theorists and conservatives are more likely to reject scientific findings than American liberals, a recent study has found.

The study, published in the online science journal PLOS One, measured trust in science using three examples of scientific advance – vaccines, genetically modified foods and climate change.

Conservatives appeared to trust scientific findings less when they were likely to lead to regulatory outcomes, conspiracy theorists meanwhile were more likely to reject science on all three counts.

The scientists were surprised to find that liberals did not reject genetically modified foods, writing: “This result is striking in light of reports in the media that have linked opposition to [genetically modified] foods with the political Left based on statements by political figures. Our results provide no evidence that this link holds in the American population at large.”

Liberals were slightly less likely to trust vaccines however.

Conspiracy theorists, not bound by the need to make logical sense (for example, being able to buy into both the theory that Princess Diana was murdered and faked her death at the same time) were found to not only be more likely to reject science but hold more strongly to their ideas the more evidence mounted against them.

“Evidence against conspiracy theories is often construed as evidence for them, because the evidence is interpreted as arising from the conspiracy in question,” the researchers wrote.

Because evidence doesn’t really work with regards to dealing with people who believe in conspiracy theories, the scientists suggested a more indirect approach.

“Conspiracist misconceptions of scientific issues are best met by indirect means, such as affirmation of the competence and character of proponents of conspiracy theories, or affirmation of other beliefs they hold dearly.”

“Alternatively, efforts should be made to rebut many conspiracy theories at the same time because multiple rebuttals raise the complexity of possible conspiracist responses, thereby rendering it increasingly baroque and less believable to anyone outside a committed circle of conspiracy theorists,” the scientists wrote.