February 19-24, 2016::End of the day round-up

An Op-Ed by David Bernstein centered around Justice Robert Jackson's one-year leave of absence from SCOTUS to serve as chief prosecutor at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg.

Temporarily having an eight-justice Supreme Court is not ‘sacrificing a single interest of importance’

I came across this article not long after listening to the following episode of TRC. Turns out, this is the article referenced in the pod,,,

Melting Greenland ice changing ocean circulation, Earth's gravitational field

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet due to climate change is having an impact on ocean circulation and rising sea levels, according to new studies from university researchers across North America.

"It was well known that Greenland's ice was melting, it was well known that that melting was accelerating, and it was well known that extra melting was changing the salinity of the North Atlantic Ocean," said Tim Dixon, a Canadian professor in the department of geophysics at the University of South Florida, who recently co-authored a study published in Nature Communications.

Dixon said that when ice melts, it deposits fresh water into the ocean that dilutes the salt in the North Atlantic. "What was not known is what effect if any that would have on ocean circulation," he said.
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 "In the extreme case of a breakdown in this global ocean circulation pattern, equatorial regions could become much hotter than they are today and polar regions could become much colder than they are today, and significant fractions of the globe might become unlivable."
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Colgan said that just like the moon pulls tides around the Earth with its gravity, by being relatively massive, Greenland pulls water towards it. As Greenland gets smaller, the ocean water flows farther away towards the equator, in what is called a gravitational far-field.

I know I have posted concerning the so-called conspiracies surrounding Scalia's death. This one take the cake, it's NPR for god's sake. The Jones Effect in full force,,,


Scalia And Leonard Nimoy: Justice's Death Spurs Conspiracy Theories

In the world of conspiracy theories it's hard to separate the parody from the true believers. But if you believe these notions are all sound and fury signifying nothing, think again. They eventually compelled Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara to make public Scalia's private health information as told to her by the justice's doctor, Rear Adm. Brian Monahan. The doctor told her Scalia had a history of heart disease and high blood pressure so significant that surgery to repair an injured shoulder couldn't be risked.

This may be why his family was not interested in an autopsy, simply grateful for the peaceful circumstances of his demise.

Subaru recalls 77,000 Tribecas

Subaru is recalling 77,000 Tribeca SUVs due to a defective hood latch that can open unexpectedly while driving. The recall affects 2006 - 2014 models.

Help Chassé Overcome Challenges by Vyckie Garrison - GoFundMe

The only good that can come from this, PA tax payers won't have to pay for his care. I have no sympathy for this man or his family in regards to his conviction and jail time.

Judge orders cable company founder released from prison

Prosecutors says Rigas suffers from bladder cancer that has advanced to his lungs, making it unlikely he’ll live more than six months.

February 16-18, 2016::End of the day round-up (pg 2)

Mother seeks information in 2014 murder case | WAVY-TV https://t.co/QCvpHXAxUL My nephew,,,almost 2 yrs,,,and still nothing :(

I have watched with interest the GOT/P reaction and rhetoric to the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia. At first glance, one may think that Paul has a valid point,

Rand Paul: It’s A ‘Conflict Of Interest’ For Obama To Nominate A Supreme Court Justice

“The president has said he has the power basically to create immigration law out of nothing,” Paul said. “He says he has the power to basically cripple entire industries like coal without ever having been given that power by Congress. So see, we have a Constitutional debate on whose powers is it, the president or Congress? And I think the president sort of has a conflict of interest here in appointing somebody while we’re trying to decide whether or not he’s usurped power.”

But, as noted by Steve Benen http://www.msnbc.com/rac…/important-debate-ridiculous-start…, Senate has a conflict of interest as well.

Let that sink in for a moment. There’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court; the Constitution empowers the president to nominate a prospective justice; it’s the Senate’s job to consider that nominee. In Rand Paul’s mind, however, President Obama “sort of has a conflict of interest” because the court is sometimes asked to adjudicate the limits of the executive branch’s powers.

If only the Constitution’s framers had been as wise as Rand Paul, they might have thought of this.

Of course, the flaw in the senator’s argument – well, one of them, anyway – is that the Supreme Court also considers the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. Indeed, it’s one of the institution’s principal functions. By Rand Paul’s reasoning, the confirmation responsibilities shouldn’t rest in senators’ hands at all, since they too “sort of have a conflict of interest.”

If it wasn't such a serious issue, it would be laughable.

I wasn't going to, but I had too,,,,this IS the best one yet. PSH gets Jones and Trump as well!

Christian Conservatives Claim Obama Killed Scalia In Pagan Sacrifice

Wiles explained that the “Luciferian” “devil-worshipers” who control the government are out for blood, noting that Lupercalia is observed between February 13 and 15. Scalia’s body was discovered on the 13th. “There’s always human sacrifice involved,” he said, claiming that Scalia was “killed” to mark the beginning of pagan fascism ruling over the U.S.

“The 13th was the 44th day of 2016, Obama is the 44th president of the United States,” Wiles said, “so you have this numerology thing taking place.”

Wiles said that the assassins who killed the conservative justice “deliberately left the pillow on his face as a message to everybody else: ‘Don’t mess with us, we can murder a justice and get away with it.’ And I assure you, there’s a lot of frightened officials in Washington today, deep down they know, the regime murdered a justice…. This is the way a dictatorial, fascist, police state regime takes control of a nation.”

“The day the justice died, the day justice in America died,” he continued, “they got away with it.”

Wiles, declaring that he has “a pretty good sniffer for finding crimes” based on gut feelings, said that the “murder” of Scalia proves that “we’re being sucked into a police state where anybody who opposes this regime will be at risk of extermination.”

He also speculated that Scalia’s purported assassins put chloroform on the pillow and burned all of the evidence in his hotel room.

“Like the Soviet Union in Stalin’s day, it’s like any police state and now we’re in it,” Wiles said. He then speculated that he might be the next victim of Stalinist pagan assassination: “It was a message to everybody out there: ‘Don’t mess with us.’ That’s the message. And it’s a message to people like me.”

Wiles is an idiot. Whether or not he is sincere in his crackpot conspiracy theory is up for debate.

Just plain disturbing and Vyckie seems to hit a nerve by the many responses and follow-up reports. This coming after Al Jazeera America's report http://america.aljazeera.com/…/does-america-need-saving-fro… that has left a sour taste as well. There no way to introduce this but to say that a farmer doesn't always give things away, you got to pay for your apples. The lesson, fathers have lots of daughters so you can sell them.

Christian conservatives push child marriage with creepy meme comparing girls to apples

The onerous quote above, which likens daughters to apples and their fathers to farmers, is an apt representation of the creepy objectification of young girls and women by their own fathers which pervades the Christian purity movement. The message is clear: the value of a young woman is in her virginity — a consumable commodity owned by her future husband, kept in trust by Daddy.
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Kunsman adds, “A good father loves and cares for his daughters and sees these apples of his eye as beloved people, not objects. This meme reduces girls (who are assumed to be daughters if not all women) to products for consumption and men the devourers. But even the suitors who desire them (because of nature, not the farmer’s nurture) are subject to bounded choice. It appears that young men procure apples to devour, but they are also subjects of the farmer. It’s amazing to me just how many dynamics of thought reform and spiritual abuse this homegrown meme illustrates in just a short narrative.”

More on the Creepy Apple Analogy

Regretfully Cenk kinda of gets it wrong and kind of gets it right,,, The Young Turks::Christian Website: No "Quivers" Until Marriage 

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks offers his disgust at the several of the blatantly obvious elements of the offensiveness of the meme that appeared on the Let Them Marry website, and in the process of expressing his disdain for the ideas conveyed, he misinterprets the origin of the name of what has become a whole belief system and lifestyle. Suzanne Titkemeyer offers a nice summary of his misinterpretations in the comments following an article at No Longer Quivering:

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Uygur’s disgust at the meme highlights can be a wake up call to some who are still QF minded. I always hope that such expressions will help followers recognize how others outside of their bubble view these examples which they have learned to take for granted over time. If you know QF followers who find the podcast offensive, this is actually a good opportunity to get them talking and thinking for themselves. Uygur can be a mirror for them and can mark how striking the contrast in their lifestyles has or can become. You can also be a mirror for them.

Conservative Christians Think Girls Are A Crop, Should Be Married Off As Children (IMAGE)

Bad Apples or Bad Barrels? A Final Look at the Apple Meme with Philip Zimbardo 

January 5, 2016::End of the day round-up

This Pastafarian just schooled Georgia officials for refusing to respect his spaghetti-worshipping religion

A so-called “Pastafarian” who claims to worship the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” is fighting Georgia officials for the right to wear a spaghetti colander in his official driver’s license photo.

Chris Avino said the state’s decision to bar him from wearing the religious headgear violated his First Amendment rights — and on Twitter he suggests he’s preparing legal action against the state.

The state initially allowed Avino to wear a colander on his head for a temporary driver’s license photo, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained, but officials recently decided that he would need to take a new photo — without the colander.

A follow-up to a story posted previous,,,

Raw Story Uses Video Editing To Defame Kent Hovind

The section that Raw Story excerpted from starts around 4:56 and runs to around 8:00 for a total of over 3 minutes of which Raw Story included less than half. The part that Raw Story left out was Kent explaining why he did not think the particular passages from Acts under discussion were contradictions. Kent's riff, included by Raw Story was about what purpose apparent contradictions might serve. There is a bit of Hovind grandiosity there as he indicates that the heavenly father is doing things much as Kent would if he were the big guy, but Kent Hovind is not saying that there are contradictions in the bible,

 Pennsylvania Man Fakes Tumor To Swindle Church, Friends: Cops

To pay tribute we wanted to reflect on what she meant to others and listen to their stories and experiences with this amazing individual who has passed away on December 25, 2015. To honor her legacy, a panel made up of Aron Ra, David Fitzgerald, Miguel Conner, and Dr. Robert Price along with the Mythicist Milwaukee team, discussed the impact that Acharya’s work and friendship had on their lives.



A New Year's Resolution For Science Advocates: Don't Cry Wolfe

A Challenge to WND and David Barton on Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Let me issue a challenge to Barton and World Net Daily: Allow me space to rebut these promo pieces. Stop misrepresenting my arguments and the evidence and link to this post. Right now, your behavior is a right wing version of the liberal bias you assert is true of the mainstream media. If you are so sure you are correct, then have the courage to back it up.

 Gordon Klingenschmitt Blames Demonic Influence For Failure To Defund Planned Parenthood

"So you see the invisible spirits, the Holy Spirit of God with his angels and the demonic spirits are speaking to each of these human actors in this scenario. And we can discern, for example, upon those who promote a pro-abortion agenda the demonic spirit of murder who is influencing them and forcing us, as taxpayers, to collaborate with them to fund the killing of innocent children and that is wrong and that is evil and that is demonic."

Pondering,,,

We all know that Ray Comfort is an idiot and any other adjective you would like to assign to him. I like to "know thine enemies" and came across this gem whilst looking for something else. I didn't make it past the first 10 minutes of the promo before vomit began to rise.

Anyways, I know this hack job is a few years old but the first thing that jumped out was Comfort's attempt to equate evolution to a religious belief.. But there is no "faith" involved (something he tries to make a point of further along). 

One either accepts the evidence for evolution or one does not. Evolution is based in the scientific method, religion is not. Religion is based on revelation and can not be objectively verified.

Evolution answers "how" life came to be where it is today. Religion tries to provide an answer for "why" we are here. Two distinct questions. Regardless of whether Creationism or ID, evolution is scientific fact.

I know I'm speaking to the choir but there is a point that I hope to get to later in the month (maybe,,,lol) that goes along the line of, "woo" never saved anyone's ass but science does. It is something I am reminded of every morning since July when I wake up and pop my pills that keeps my brain from exploding again

Theocracy alert! Justice Scalia says U.S. honors ‘God,’ not religious neutrality

Clearly, Justice Antonin Scalia does not understand what the framers understood. In a speech Saturday at a Louisiana Catholic high school, he claimed that the Constitution doesn’t require governmental religious neutrality. He also made an embarrassing show of “God is on our side” hubris by proclaiming:

“God takes care of little children, drunkards and the United States of America. I think that’s true. God has been very good to us. One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor.” (The first part of the quote was lifted from a very similar one that first appeared in 1856 in Harper’s magazine.)

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Scalia told a small audience at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie that just because the First Amendment forbids the government from playing favorites among the various sects, that doesn’t mean the government can’t favor religion over nonreligion.

If people want strict prohibition against government endorsement of religion, let them vote on it, Scalia said, adding ungrammatically, “Don’t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it.”

Scalia thus denied that the Bill of Rights was adopted, in part, to ensure that some rights, such as freedom of conscience, would be placed above the vicissitudes of tyranny of the majority.

 Kim Davis Predicts She Is 'Just The First Of What's Going To Be Very Many'

“The stand I took affects every church, every person that lives and loves God, that holds the word of God precious and dear and intimate in their lives,” Davis told EWTN’s Catherine Szeltner in an interview broadcast on December 17. “I’m just the first of what’s going to be very many. You can rest assured of that. And it’s not if it happens, it’ll be when it happens. And maybe my stand will encourage others who will be in the same position.”

Szeltner reported that Davis told her that her time in jail was a “joyful and peaceful time” and that she “knows that it is a possibility” she’ll return.

 

5th Annual International Day of Protest Against Hereditary Religion - taking place on January 23rd of 2016

Cancer quack Dr. Stan Burzynski is attempting to dodge his court hearing date. He brought a doctor's note. Really, it's a note. "Please excuse Stanley (sic) from gym, I mean, the hearing." He is suffering from heart artery blockages. See the court filling here. https://t.co/NcsRq8MLUG

Georgia Republican: State-sponsored religion will end big-government tyranny

Hice wholeheartedly endorsed Scalia’s remarks, in spite of the fact that the words “under God” were not added to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance until it was more than 60 years old and in spite of the Constitution’s First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which explicitly forbids the U.S. government from endorsing any religion.

“To be in the midst of a fight against secularists who are trying to impose on all of us that it is unconstitutional to acknowledge God and to honor God,” said Hice, “the secularists want to tell us that that’s unconstitutional. And Scalia is arguing that not only is that, in fact, constitutional, but it is in the best interests of who we are.”

“One of the biggest dangers that we are facing today,” Hice continued, “is judges who think that the Constitution is some sort of living document that changes with the times.”

This is a problem, Hice said, because for Americans to view the Constitution through “the lens of secularism” is not what God intended.

“Folks, that is problematic, that is an enormous danger,” said Hice.

“When it comes to the idea of religious liberty,” he said, “it is not constitutional for the state, if you will, just to be neutral towards religion.”

Religion, Hice said, is “an entrenched part of who we are” as Americans “and a necessary part of who we are.” God-fearing governments, he said, produce “a moral people who are self-governing of their own lives and thus don’t need the big arm of intrusive government all over us. Because we are self-governing people.”

“You remove God and you remove religion,” he said, “and you remove the state from encouraging religious belief and you get more secularism, you get more problems, you get more crime, you get all, whatever, fill in the blank out there.”

“End result,” Hice said, “you get bigger government.”

“Government has a responsibility to encourage religious belief,” he concluded, “because that is is the foundation, as I said earlier, of how limited government can exist.”

Georgia Republican: State-sponsored religion will end big-government tyranny

Everyone’s God Is No One’s God: Antonin Scalia And The Scourge Of ‘Ceremonial Deism’ | ACS

State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other fai ths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unrespons ive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. 

— Thomas Jefferson, in a speech to the Virginia Baptists, 1808

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This god should be offensive to believers and non-believers alike. To believers, the god of ceremonial deism is little more than a cheerleader for national policies and goals. It is a god whose chief function is to remind other nations, “We’re number one!” This god provides a balm for all of a nation’s policy matters, even the ones that turn out to be misguided. In many ways, it is a god created in man’s image.

For non-believers this god is a constant reminder – as close as the nickel in your pocket – that there is something wrong with you. After all, real Americans believe in god, this one god in which our nation declares collective trust. Indeed, our nation is under this god. The message is not subtle: It is a natural, good and wise thing to honor this god. This god looms over you whether you acknowledge it or not and is linked to your status as an American citizen. If you choose not to honor this god, you are sending the message that you’re not quite as good as the rest of the nation. In short, atheists may say they love their country, but they are to be constantly reminded that it doesn’t love them back.

This is the “tradition” Scalia would have us honor. This is the practice he has spent 28 years defending. This is his vision of the proper interplay between religion and government.

All of that is bad enough, but the real tragedy is that he seems to sincerely believe it’s good for both institutions.

Everyone’s God Is No One’s God: Antonin Scalia And The Scourge Of ‘Ceremonial Deism’ | ACS