January 22, 2016::End of the day round-up

Your Worst Day Ever: David Avocado’s Himalayan Salt Debunked

Before I dig into this lineup, it’s of utmost importance to understand one of Wolfe’s key claims about his product. To wit: even though the salt contains only trace amounts of 84 elements, it’s their very presence that makes the product beneficial to your health, and it’s their removal during commercial salt processing that makes regular table salt “toxic“. Speak to us, oh wise one:

“In order to make table salt, natural salt is heated to high temperatures and cleaned chemically, reducing all the important minerals and leaving only sodium and chloride” –David Wolfe

Never mind that the salt you buy from Wolfe is still, by and large, nothing more than sodium chloride. He’s telling us that the mere presence of these 84 trace elements is important to our health. All of them. Uh oh.

Pass the Salt (But Not That Pink Himalayan Stuff)

In the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, three new studies about the role of salt in cardiovascular disease were published. Instead of providing clear answers, they raise more questions. In a cute NEJM QuickTake cartoon video they summarize the findings of the studies. If you’d rather spend three minutes watching cartoons than reading my explanation, feel free.
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None of this really sheds any light on what we should do as individuals. Should we continue asking “pass the salt?” Should we abstain from adding salt at the table? Should we read labels and monitor the total amount of salt in our diet? Should we aim for 3–5 g a day?

These studies found associations, but they couldn’t determine causes, and they did not even attempt to measure what would happen if people changed the amount of sodium and potassium in their diets. If anything, they suggest that existing guidelines for salt restriction for the general population may be too extreme.

They also suggest that “moderation in all things” and “eat your vegetables” are still good advice.
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I found a website that reports the results of a spectral analysis of Himalayan salt. I think this is where the claim comes from. Even if this analysis is accurate, it is meaningless for health and if anything is worrisome. The amount of minerals in it is too minuscule to make any difference, and we already get plenty of the same trace minerals from other foods. They claim that two double-blind studies were done, but no such studies are listed in PubMed. There is no evidence published in peer-reviewed journals that replacing white salt with pink salt makes a shred of difference or leads to any improvement in health.

VA GOP Bill Would Require Inspection of Children’s Genitals

A state-level Virginia GOP politician (Del. Mark Cole) just proposed transphobic legislation dictating men, women and children must all use public restrooms correlating with their “correct anatomical sex.” Specifically, the legislation targets public schools where in order for the legislation to work, adults would be required to inspect children’s genitals before they use the bathroom.

HB 663 – otherwise known as “Use of restroom facilities; penalty” – defines anatomical sex as “the physical condition of being male or female, which is determined by a person’s anatomy.” Relating to schools, the bill would change current law by requiring:

Local school boards shall develop and implement policies that require every school restroom, locker room, or shower room that is designated for use by a specific gender to solely be used by individuals whose anatomical sex matches such gender designation. Such policies may also provide that a student may, upon request, be granted access, to the extent reasonable, to a single stall restroom or shower, a unisex bathroom, or controlled individual use of a restroom, locker room, or shower.

What You Need to Know About David Barton’s New Edition of The Jefferson Lies (Press Release) 

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - MRFF EXPOSES, DENOUNCES UNLAWFUL CHRISTIAN PROSELYTIZING IN U.S. ARMY::  Is Col. Hundley an active duty senior Army officer or an evangelical Christian missionary?

Apparently, Colonel Thomas Hundley can't figure out whether he's an active duty senior Army officer or an evangelical Christian missionary? Further, DoD can't seem to, likewise, decipher whether they are paying him to be one or the other. Where the hell is the adult supervision for senior, active duty officer, Constitutional compliance at DoD? Colonel Hundley has absolutely no business or authority under American law to be conflating his Army officer rank, title and position with his professed evangelical Christian faith. He's doing it with some pretty powerful helpers. Indeed, the DoD and the United States Army are unlawfully allowing him to concomitantly push or spread his religious faith to everyone over the internet and, especially, to his many subordinates. Well over 99% of DoD personnel are of lower rank than Colonel Hundley.

Five GOP Candidates To Join Pastor Who Says AIDS Is God's Punishment For Gay People

In yet another example of what the Religious Right’s recent focus on “religious liberty” is really about, five Republican presidential candidates are scheduled to speak this weekend at a “religious freedom” event hosted by a conservative pastor who has repeatedly declared that AIDS is God’s punishment for gay people’s “immoral act” and has called for a “class action lawsuit” against homosexuality.

Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee are scheduled to join a “Free to Believe Broadcast” on Saturday, hosted by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and Vision America’s Rick Scarborough, two of the most outspoken anti-gay activists in the country.

Both, even while attempting to curtail the rights of LGBT people, have claimed that it is their rights that are being violated by the LGBT movement: Perkins has said that the supposed persecution of anti-gay Christians in America is inspiring ISIS, and Scarborough has declared that he is ready to burn to death in the fight against gay marriage.
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Also appearing at the event will be Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, who has warned that gay people seek to “groom” and “entrap” children, and David and Jason Benham, brothers who became Religious Right martyrs when they lost a TV show they were set to star in after their anti-gay activism came to light.

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