VideoTapir posted:

One of my friends doesn't know what a straw man is, and one of his friends articulates one of the main reasons I stopped watching The Walking Dead.

Poizen Jam posted:

Ask him if he thinks the poor and downtrodden will politely lay down and die without welfare.

I believe someone in this thread said it earlier but: 'Welfare is for the rich, not the poor.' There's nothing that motivates a revolution better than starvation and mass poverty.

Poizen Jam posted:

Ask him if he thinks the poor and downtrodden will politely lay down and die without welfare.

I believe someone in this thread said it earlier but: 'Welfare is for the rich, not the poor.' There's nothing that motivates a revolution better than starvation and mass poverty.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah but how much of the right is drooling for a revolution?

Chimera-gui posted:

Less than they make it sound since, because of the Right's history of loving over the poor, they would be the ones meeting the business end of a guillotine.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

But they're the real America and the revolutionaries would obviously support their love of freedom.

Neowyrm posted:

Today is gonna be terrimazing. Can't wait to see the content in the thread today.

PhazonLink posted:

Fulchrum just skip next weeks LL101 and post rainbows.

Cowslips Warren posted:

All the gay marriage hate has covered over the paragon of No Sex Before Marriage Abstinence Only Palin girl, who is now onto Baby Number 2 without a ring on her finger.

At this point she seriously just needs to do a PSA: I like having sex but if you want to have sex, you need to use protection. That is all.

Instead of NO SEX EVER and the crumpled paper poo poo.

Brennanite posted:

I get once, but twice? It's not like you don't know what happens or have some glamorized idea of single motherhood. And all that talk about "disappointment," ugh. You know what wouldn't bring shame upon your family? Using birth control.

Mr E posted:

The straight white people on my facebook keep sharing this .

http://rightwingnews.com/democrats/breaking-gay-group-demands-christian-churches-be-shut-down/

Mr E posted:

The straight white people on my facebook keep sharing this .

http://rightwingnews.com/democrats/breaking-gay-group-demands-christian-churches-be-shut-down/

Mo_Steel posted:

Troll the poo poo out of them for being paranoid fucks?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Yeah but how much of the right is drooling for a revolution?

gradenko_2000 posted:

Megaschmoo posted:

DarkHorse posted:

And the Civil War wasn't because of slavery, but because some dudes wanted to further their political careers?

Megaschmoo posted:

Guavanaut posted:

There's an argument that you could view the Civil War as part 2 of the English Civil War (1642–1651), in that the Royalists, who believed in feudal hierarchy by divine mandate, High Church, fancy clothes, and a code of honor/chivalry were often granted lands in Virginia and Carolina as a reward for service, whereas the Parliamentarians, who were more disposed towards unadorned Low Church services, austere clothing, and moral Puritanism settled in New England, creating a persistent difference of cultures.

That doesn't take away from the fact that the way in which that cultural difference was perpetuated and eventually broke into hostilities was via the importation and enslavement of millions of Africans.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

There's an argument you could make that the sky is actually green, doesn't make it valid.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

There's an argument you could make that the sky is actually green, doesn't make it valid.

quote:

At the core of left-wing thought is a rejection of painful realities, the rejection of what the French call les faits de la vie: the facts of life. Conservatives, on the other hand, are all too aware of these painful realities of life and base many of their positions on them.

One such example was the subject of my first column on Left-Right differences: whether people are basically good. When liberals blame violent crime in America on poverty, one reason they do is that liberal beliefs since the Enlightenment have posited that human nature is good. Therefore, when people do truly bad things to other people, liberals believe that some outside force — usually poverty, racism and/or unemployment — must be responsible, not human nature.

Liberals find it too painful to look reality in the eye and acknowledge that human nature is deeply flawed. This is especially so because left-wing thought is rooted in secularism, and if you don’t believe in God, you had better believe in humanity — or you will despair.

The entire concept of “political correctness” emanates from the Left’s incapacity to acknowledge painful truths. The very definition of “politically incorrect” is an idea or truth that people on the Left find too painful to acknowledge and therefore do not want expressed.

Avoiding pain at almost all costs is at the heart of left-wing ideas and policies. That’s why kids can no longer run around during recess at so many American schools. They may get hurt. That’s why child protective services take children away from parents who allow their children to walk home alone or even play alone in the family backyard for 90 minutes without a parent at home.

quote:

Bishop E. W. Jackson, during an interview on Fox News, called for pastors to carry firearms in the church.

“If someone comes into my church to hurt my members I have an absolute obligation to defend them, to protect them,” said Jackson.

This notion isn’t without some merit. Concealed carriers inside of churches have stopped armed criminals before. Jackson’s advice comes as President Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday after the shooting, which seem to have many thinking he was gearing up for a push on new gun control laws.

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” Obama said. “It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it, he also added.”

Bishop Jackson is a GOP politician, an ordained bishop, and was a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 – 73.

quote:

The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through ObamaCare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts.

“[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made,” the OIG said.

“CMS’s system of internal controls could not ensure that CMS made correct financial assistance payments,” they said.

The OIG reviewed subsidies paid to insurance companies between January and April 2014. The audit found that CMS did not have a process to “prevent or detect any possible substantial errors” in subsidy payments.

quote:

The California Labor Commissioner’s Office decided that Barbara Berwick, a driver for Uber, should be defined as an employee of the company, not an independent contractor.

“This ruling—if it stands—could force Uber out of California,” said James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation. “Uber drivers use their own vehicles, set their own hours and are free to work for competitors like Lyft at the same time. Under federal law that makes them independent contractors.”

Uber has appealed the ruling, hoping to win against California as it has in five other states that attempted to reclassify the company’s drivers as employees. But California state law explicitly states employers must reimburse employees for businesses-related expenses, setting it apart from previous lawsuits.

If Uber loses its appeal, the company would be required to pay its drivers minimum wage and overtime, along with mandated employee benefits. Uber would also be required to strictly control its drivers’ schedules, upending the flexibility the company has used to attract employees.

“It destroys Uber’s business model,” Sherk said. “I would expect them to leave California rather than comply.”

quote:

Liberal tactics: Repeat what the Conservative just said, but pretend you’re just now saying it and it’s something the Conservative is against, then when the Conservative tries to explain their point, talk over them. Gutiérrez seems oblivious that Ann just said “let’s worry about the people here…” and starts whining that she’s not worried about the people here.

Ann says that the immigration polices prior to 1970 were sane, but became bad after that. Joy Reid claimed Ann insulted her since she(Joy) is the daughter of immigrants. Joy graduated from Harvard in 1991, which would put her age at that time at around 22, meaning she was born prior to 1970. Since she was born here, her parent then immigrated prior to 1970.

But the most priceless bit is when Joy Reid claims that “one of the things we have to do in this country is stop lying…” just as we’re told that she works for MSNBC. Priceless…

quote:

PHILADELPHIA – Ten people were wounded, including a toddler and two other children after a shooting Saturday night at a West Philadelphia block party. The party along the 4100 block of Ogden Street ended with chaos after there were at least two blasts from a shotgun around 10 p.m., police say.

Lieutenant John Walker says an 18-month-old girl was hit in the neck, an 11-year-old boy was shot in the leg and back and a 12-year-old-boy was struck in the chest. Seven adults, ages 22-59, were wounded as well and Walker says all the victims are stable. This violence, police say, may have been due to an ongoing feud between two “groups”.

DETROIT— Decrying the no-snitch silence that descended over a west side neighborhood after a block party erupted in violence, leaving one dead and 11 others shot, Police Chief James Craig on Sunday pleaded with witnesses to come forward and identify the “urban terrorists.”

The chief and detectives canvassed the area of Dexter and Webb looking for clues to the shooting that marred the start of summer in a barrage of gunshots Saturday. Police called the shooting retaliatory and labeled the shooters “cowardly thugs.”

Craig said officers are seeking two men believed to have exchanged gunfire with the victim, 19-year-old Malik Jones.

Apparently if it can’t be blamed on white people, then it’s not worth mentioning race, even if that fact might actually help solve the shootings and prevent future incidences.

quote:

This is “Pride” month for a community that enjoys the most protection of any people group by news organizations. There’s no journalistic objectivity, only subjectivity drenched in happy rainbow colors and an ever-expanding acronym. The LGBT activist movement enjoys its immunity as it brands any dissenters as haters, bigots, and homophobes.

The LGBTQ movement decries the “inequality” and the epidemic of “hate violence” that touches the homosexual, bisexual and whatever-you-want-to-be-sexual community. (I’m not going to go into the absurd self-cited “hate violence reports”, pseudoscience, and trumped up statistics right now; that will have to be a whole other Radiance Foundation article). No one deserves to be physically harmed (unless it’s self-defense, of course). Yet, at the same time leading “gay rights” groups cry “discrimination” they actively, and aggressively, promote the most violent form of discrimination: abortion.

Nearly every major LGBTQxyz group (Human Rights Campaign, Act Up, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and GLAAD, just to name a few) promotes the violence of abortion. Many of them see “gay rights” and “abortion rights” as a united front.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, often discussed homosexuality. Her organization promoted it as a means to curb population. After her death, Planned Parenthood Vice President, Frederick S. Jaffe, issued what is referred to as the Jaffe Memo, which encouraged “increased homosexuality” as a means to reduce U.S. fertility. The nation’s soon-to-be-leading-national-abortion-chain promoted homosexuality as a means to reduce our population, not to illuminate any kind of equality or worth of an individual.

I can’t see the (co-opted) rainbow colors of the LGBT movement’s flag without seeing the blood that drips from the fabric of its hypocrisy. You can’t demand “equality” while proudly stripping it away from millions of others. No one should ever take pride in violence. It diminishes all of us—born and unborn.

quote:

President Obama and other black leaders called for tighter access to firearms last week in reaction to the mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, but not Kenn Blanchard.

A former Marine, Christian pastor and author of “Black Man with a Gun,” Mr. Blanchard wants more black people to protect themselves by embracing the Second Amendment and learning to use firearms, instead of reflexively siding with the gun control movement.

“It hit too close to home, being a former pastor of a church, knowing that you’re almost a sitting duck because you open your church up to the herding, you don’t question people, you don’t have adequate security,” said Mr. Blanchard, who hosts a podcast through his website, BlackManWithAGun.com.

“Biblically, it’s kind of out of context, too,” he said. “If you’re going to be the shepherd of a flock — the shepherd had a really big stick. And the shepherd protected the sheep from the wolf and the bear. And the sheep felt safe because the shepherd was armed.”

quote:

COLUMBIA, South Carolina – A black U.S. college student who drew complaints for displaying a Confederate flag in his dorm room window said he sees the banner as a symbol of pride and not racism.

Byron Thomas, 19, said university officials asked him in late November to take the down the banner associated with pro-slavery secessionist forces during the 1861-1865 U.S. Civil War after students and parents complained. They have since told him he can put it back up.

“When I look at this flag, I don’t see racism. I see respect, Southern pride,” he said. “This flag was seen as a communication symbol” during the Civil War, he said.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Thomas said a class research project made him come to the belief that the flag’s real meaning has been hijacked. He said he wants people to thoughtfully consider issues of race and not just knee-jerk reactions to such symbols.

The freshman from North Augusta said his generation can eliminate the flag’s negative power by adopting the banner as a symbol of Southern pride.

quote:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a federal program designed to regulate raisin supply and prices is unconstitutional.

The court sided with Fresno, Ca., raisin farmer Marvin Horne who challenged the 1949 marketing order that allowed the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to seize raisins from producers to ensure high prices. Justice John Roberts delivered the 8-1 decision of the court, joined by Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito in full, and in part by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan.

“The reserve requirement imposed by the Raisin Committee is a clear physical taking,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Actual raisins are transferred from the growers to the government. Title to the raisins passes to the Raisin Committee. The Committee disposes of those raisins as it wishes, to promote the purposes of the raisin marketing order.”

The decision struck a blow against one of the New Deal era’s most enduring principles—that the government can confiscate or destroy crops to preserve prices and reserves.

The Obama administration defended the USDA order as a “win-win proposition,” claiming that prices remain high for farmers allowing them to donate excess supply.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas said the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits the Raisin Administrative Committee from seizing the raisin and, among other things, gives them away or sells them to exporters and foreign governments.

quote:

“If Congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after Newtown,” President Obama said during a visit to San Francisco on Friday, “we don’t know if it would have prevented what happened in Charleston.” Actually, we do know: Had the bill to which Obama was referring been enacted, it would not have done anything to prevent Dylann Roof from murdering nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night. But as is usually the case with the policies that gun controllers push in response to horrendous crimes like this one, logic is optional.

Obama was talking about legislation proposed following the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut—in particular, “reforms that 90 percent of the American people supported,” meaning expansion of the background check requirement for gun buyers to include sales that do not involve federally licensed dealers. But as CNN reported the day of Obama’s remarks, Roof bought the .45-caliber Glock Model 41 handgun he used in the church attack from a Charleston gun store in April, shortly after his 21st birthday (which was on April 3), with money his father had given him as a present. That means he passed a background check.

Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, which bans firearm sales to someone who “is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” (i.e., a felony). Based on the Times report, The Washington Post‘s Jeff Guo claimed (as J.D. Tuccille noted here on Friday) that “because of his criminal record, Roof would not have been able to buy a gun from a store.” Clearly that’s not true, since Roof did buy a gun from a store. And if A.P. and the Observer are right that Roof was charged with a misdemeanor rather than a felony, his drug arrest would not have barred him from buying a gun, even assuming that the information would have made its way into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in the month or so between the arrest and the purchase.

quote:

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Bells tolled across the city, thousands linked up on a towering bridge and a historic sanctuary reopened in displays of unity as Charleston heals from a church massacre and gets set for a week of victims’ funerals.

Area residents repeated messages of solidarity, love and even defiance of evil at the remembrances, hopeful their expressions would drown out the hate embodied in the slayings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Authorities say a white gunman was welcomed into a bible study last week at the historic black church before making racially offensive remarks and shooting nine people to death.

“Because the doors of Mother Emanuel are open on this Sunday, it sends a message to every demon in hell and on earth,” said the Rev. Norvel Goff, who led the first Sunday service since the killings at the church known as “Mother Emanuel” because it is one of the oldest black congregations in the South.

Goff, a presiding elder of the 7th District AME Church in South Carolina, was appointed to lead the historic Charleston church after Pinckney’s death. A black sheet was draped over Pinckney’s usual chair, which sat empty. At least one parishioner kneeled down in front of it and prayed.

quote:

Hey, Liberals; stop pretending you care about women and actually believe rape is serious?

Just days after he gave up his license to do abortions at one of his Indiana-based abortion clinics, abortion practitioner Ulrich Klopfer faces a medical board hearing on 1,833 alleged abortion violations, including cases of rapes of teen girls he failed to properly report.

On Thursday,the Indiana Medical Licensing Board will consider Klopfer’s motion for summary judgment. Klopfer faces an administrative licensing complaint by Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller’s office. He does abortions in Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana but recently stopped doing them in Gary and previously stopped doing them in Fort Wayne.

According to information Indiana Right to Life presented LifeNews.com today, Klopfer’s 1,833 alleged violations stem from recording keeping and advice and consent law errors he made while doing abortions. According to the alleged violations in the Attorney General’s complaint, Klopfer submitted 1,818 termination of pregnancy reports with missing or incorrect information. He failed to submit two termination of pregnancy reports on time for 13-year-old girls — which likely put the girls at further risk because state officials were unable to follow up on the rapes in a timely manner.

Six times, he failed to ensure informed and voluntary consent was obtained through appropriate counselors. Finally, he failed to obtain informed and voluntary consent for seven patients at least 18-hours prior to the abortion procedure, the pro-life group noted.

“Dr. Klopfer has displayed poor practices for years, putting his patients at risk,” said Mike Fichter, President and CEO of Indiana Right to Life.

quote:

In a recent discussion on racism in America, President Obama used the n-word, but viewers of MSNBC (and later Fox News) didn’t hear him say it. Both cable channels bleeped the president in the clip that aired Monday morning.

“We have a warning for our viewers,” MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski said as she introduced the soundbite. “He (Obama) uses strong language, some of which may be considered offensive.”

In the “Morning Joe” discussion that followed Obama’s comments, host Joe Scarborough said, “I’m curious about the president being beeped out there. I mean, the president of the United States — obviously said that word because he wanted to make a point. I just — I find it curious that there was a decision by somebody that–

“I think there’s a lot of worry maybe it will be misused or whatever,” co-host Brzezinski said.

“It’s the president of the United States making a point,” Scarborough repeated.

“I know. I would love to have a bigger conversation about that,” Brzezinski said.

“Yeah, nobody likes having conversations,” Scarborough responded. “Nah, they don’t like having conversations about race. They just don’t. Everybody says they do, nobody ever does.”

quote:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott made it official over the weekend as he signed a bill that cuts $1.2 million in taxpayer funding from the Texas affiliate of the nation’s largest abortion business.

After a month of negotiating the state’s two-year budget, the Texas Legislature’s new proposal cuts Planned Parenthood from its Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program. The decision to cut the abortion giant from the program makes sense, in part because Planned Parenthood does abortions and abortions have been linked in dozens of studies to increasing the risk for breast cancer.

Planned Parenthood received $1.2 million in taxpayer dollars under the program last year — but no longer now that Abbott has signed the budget into law.

Despite Abbott signing off on the proposal, Planned Parenthood vowed to keep a presence in Texas. In this plan, lawmakers added a provision to prohibit clinics affiliated with abortion providers from receiving breast and cervical screening funding.

The Breast and Cervical Cancer Screenings provision nixes the last taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood will receive in Texas.

The budget plan eliminating Planned Parenthood from the screening program takes effect Sept. 1.

According to Planned Parenthood’s own figures, it is doing more abortions and helping fewer women with cancer screenings.

quote:

Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed a person to lead the State Board of Education during his time in office. But he’s now being criticized for selecting someone whose own kids have never attended a public school.

For the last two years Houston Republican Donna Bahorich served as a member of the State Board of Education. Before that she worked for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s previous state senate campaign, and she was one his top choices when asked who should succeed outgoing chair Barbara Cargil.

“My research and my work and my desire and interests have all been in education, so when there was an opportunity for me to run for office it seems like such a natural fit for me because of my intense interest in this area and because of the relationships I had formed while serving in then-Senator Patrick’s office, Bahorich said.

Read more at TPR.org…

In other news the nation’s ophthalmologists are under criticism for treating blind people when they themselves are not actually blind.

quote:

Cleveland, Ohio – Despite indisputable evidence that a broken elevator at Preterm, a Cleveland abortion clinic, contributed to delays in emergency care for two patients, including Lakisha Wilson, who died of a fatal abortion at Preterm last year, the Fire Marshall has concluded that “no serious life safety violations were found” during a recent inspection.

The inspection was prompted by a formal complaint by Denver Sallee of Lake County Right to Life.

“This decision is completely to ignore the dangerous elevator situation is unacceptable, and continues to place women’s lives at risk. We are joining with pro-life groups in Ohio to call for the immediate closure of Preterm,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

All five of Preterm’s abortion procedure rooms are located on the third floor. Paramedics depend on the elevator to move patients from the third floor to ambulances on the street below. Stair wells in the building are inadequate to ensure that patients can be accessed and transported quickly when minutes can mean the difference between life and death.

Attached to the letter seeking Preterm’s closure was a recording of a 911 call placed on March 31, 2012. That recording indicated that a 300-pound woman was hemorrhaging after a second-trimester abortion.

quote:

Ten years ago testerday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of the most destructive and appalling decisions of the modern era. In Kelo v. City of New London, a 5-4 majority allowed a local government to bulldoze a working-class neighborhood so that private developers would have a blank slate on which to build a luxury hotel, a conference center, and various other upscale amenities. The city’s goal was to erase that existing community and replace it with a new commercial district that would (hopefully) fill the local coffers with more abundant tax dollars. According to the Supreme Court, this unsavory land grab qualified as a legitimate use of the city’s eminent domain powers because the city “has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community.”

Never mind the fact that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids the government from taking private property via eminent domain for anything less than a legitimate “public use.” Traditionally, the concept of public use has been understood to apply to things like roads, bridges, or tunnels—not to fancy hotels operated on a for-profit basis by private businesses. But that public-private distinction was lost in the eyes of the Court. “The disposition of this case,” declared the majority opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens, “turns on the question whether the City’s development plan serves a ‘public purpose.’ Without exception,” Stevens asserted, “our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field.”

Writing in dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor observed that under the Court’s dangerous rationale, “the specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

Read more at Reason.com…

Oh, the first two stupidest SCOTUS decisions? #1 is Roe v Wade and #2 is Dred Scott v. Sandford.

quote:

Reversing what historians call the Great Migration of 1910-70, hundreds of thousands of blacks have migrated to the South in the last generation. Every year, more blacks move into the South than move out.

States that were the biggest Great Migration destinations — New York, Illinois, Michigan and California — are now contributing to the states with the biggest black population gains: Florida, Georgia and Texas.

quote:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, after joining with other state leaders in calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from Statehouse grounds, could be in for a drawn-out legislative battle.

Under the state’s own rules for even touching that Confederate flag, any changes are easier said than done.

“I would be shocked if there wasn’t considerable or even vehement opposition from legislators, particularly from small rural towns,” William Gaston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told FoxNews.com.

On Monday, Haley, surrounded by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state Capitol. Her comments came less than a week after Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, confessed to gunning down nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

But Haley, in calling for the flag’s removal along with the state’s top congressional representatives, must get the legislature to agree — which could be an uphill climb. And the current push to remove the Confederate symbol is just the latest twist in a storied saga that has pitted Palmetto State lawmakers against one another for decades.

quote:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, after joining with other state leaders in calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from Statehouse grounds, could be in for a drawn-out legislative battle.

Under the state’s own rules for even touching that Confederate flag, any changes are easier said than done.

“I would be shocked if there wasn’t considerable or even vehement opposition from legislators, particularly from small rural towns,” William Gaston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told FoxNews.com.

On Monday, Haley, surrounded by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state Capitol. Her comments came less than a week after Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, confessed to gunning down nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

But Haley, in calling for the flag’s removal along with the state’s top congressional representatives, must get the legislature to agree — which could be an uphill climb. And the current push to remove the Confederate symbol is just the latest twist in a storied saga that has pitted Palmetto State lawmakers against one another for decades.

quote:

St. Francis of Assisi’s hymn Laudato Si’ spoke of “Brothers” Sun and Fire and “Sisters” Moon and Water, using these colorful phrases figuratively, as a way of praising God’s creation. These sentimental words so touched Pope Francis that he named his encyclical after this canticle (repeated in paragraph 87 of the Holy Father’s letter).

Neither Pope Francis nor St. Francis took the words literally, of course. Neither believed that fire was alive and could be talked to or reasoned with or, worse, worshiped. Strange, then, that a self-professed atheist and scientific advisor to the Vatican named Hans Schellnhuber appears to believe in a Mother Earth.

The Gaia Principle, first advanced by chemist James Lovelock (who has lately had second thoughts) and microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, says that all life interacts with the Earth, and the Earth with all life, to form a giant self-regulating, living system.

This is what we might call “scientific pantheism,” a kind that appeals to atheistic scientists. It is an updated version of the pagan belief that the universe itself is God, that the Earth is at least semi-divine — a real Brother Sun and Sister Water! Mother Earth is immanent in creation and not transcendent, like the Christian God.

What’s this have to do with Schellnhuber? In the 1999 Nature paper “‘Earth system’ analysis and the second Copernican revolution,” he said:

Ecosphere science is therefore coming of age, lending respectability to its romantic companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis. This hotly debated ‘geophysiological’ approach to Earth-system analysis argues that the biosphere contributes in an almost cognizant way to self-regulating feedback mechanisms that have kept the Earth’s surface environment stable and habitable for life.

Geo-physiological, in case you missed it. Cognizant, in black and white. So dedicated is Schellnhuber to this belief that he says “the Gaia approach may even include the influence of biospheric activities on the Earth’s plate-tectonic processes.” Not the other way around, mind you, where continental drift and earthquakes effects life, but where life effects earthquakes.

quote:

Longtime political journalist and pundit Mark Halperin says he owes his Republican sources “an apology” after apparently doubting their claims that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber played a major role in crafting ObamaCare.

Halperin, Bloomberg Politics managing editor, addressed the controversy on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, after a Wall Street Journal report first revealed emails showing Gruber playing a deeper role than previously thought.

“I owe all my Republican sources an apology because they kept telling me he was hugely involved, and the White House played it down,” Halperin said. “They were right. The Republicans were right.”

He said he does not think the White House has been “fully forthcoming” about Gruber’s role.

quote:

The East Texas firefighter who lost his position after a Facebook comment on the Charleston shooting says the post was taken out of context.

The former Mabank Volunteer Firefighter wrote, “He needs to be praised for the good deed he has done,” on a South Carolina newspaper’s Facebook page about a story on the shooting. Kurtis Cook, in an exclusive interview, spoke about the comment that cost him his position and reputation.

Cook is a veteran firefighter of 23 years and was eager to sit down with us to explain that controversial comment.

“When I was looking at the threads and, you know, I was just reading down and there was a person there that posted, was donating a large sum of money to the victims, so I just said ‘This person ought to be praised for his good deed,’” Cook explains.

He said headlines across the country portrayed the comment as a reference to the Charleston shooter, Dylann Roof, but Cook said that was not the case at all.

“Making me look like I’m standing with this comment, like I’m supporting this Dylann guy, and I would never do that. I’m not racist, never been racist.” Cook said.

A screenshot that went viral doesn’t show any of the comments above Cook’s comment and we were unable to find the original thread on that news outlet’s Facebook page. We called the newspaper and they were unable to find it either. Cook has since deleted his Facebook, too, and has no way of showing us the comment about donations he said he was referring to.

With remarks and threats against the family, the Cooks are preparing to move away.

“And now I’ll never be a fireman again. I’m going to lose my full time job and I’m going to have to relocate,” he said through tears. “I’m not trying to just ‘do damage control.’ I’m just telling you the side of the story where I came from on this.”

quote:

Following the South Carolina church shooting, stores including Amazon, Walmart and eBay stopped selling Confederate flag merchandise. Media from USA Today to ABC covered the move as well as the three broadcast networks, with CBS’ Adriana Diaz recognizing the “pressure” that is “mounting in the business community” on June 24.

In defense of the decision, Walmart spokesperson Brian Nick explained his company’s reasoning. “We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer. We have taken steps to remove all items promoting the Confederate flag from our assortment – whether in our stores or on our web site,” he told CNN.

But the stores aren’t afraid of offending everyone.

Amazon sells Swastika covers for Playstation 4, books denying the Holocaust and swastika-decorated knives and pendants. For Soviet Union fanatics, Amazon advertises hammer and sickle pins, aprons and baby bodysuits. Amazon has something for everyone, offering Satanic goat head pendants and “Hail Satan” wristbands.

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The debate over the rebel flag that began anew after last week’s church shootings in Charleston, S.C., has morphed into a full-blown Confederate controversy.

While Stars and Bars have long been associated by many with slavery, the latest campaign to remove Confederate emblems has extended beyond the flag to statues, memorials, parks and even school mascots. Never has the debate over what symbolizes heritage and what stands for hate covered so much ground, as efforts to strip icons that have been part of the visual and cultural landscape of the South for decades are afoot at national, state and local levels.

In one Arkansas town, the school board voted unanimously Tuesday to ban the song “Dixie” for the next school year and phase out “Rebel,” the school’s mascot.

“It came to our attention that the public has been pretty upset about the Confederate flag, which has already been removed, the rebel mascot [and] the playing of the ‘Dixie,’” Fort Smith, Ark., school board member Susan McFerran told reporters after the board voted for the changes.

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Matthew 5:9 says “Blessed are the peacemakers” and it would appear Pastor Clementa Pinckney was definitely one of those.

While the mainstream media is decrying the fact that the Charleston shooting victim’s body was carried past a Confederate flag today, the good pastor may not have found it all that offensive.

In 2000, during his first term in the South Carolina State Senate, Pinckney actually voted in favor of H5028, the May 2000 compromise which placed the flag at its current location.

H5028 related to THE PERMANENT PLACEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES FLAG, THE SOUTH CAROLINA STATE FLAG, AND THE SOUTH CAROLINA INFANTRY BATTLE FLAG OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

You can see here that Pinckney’s name is among the “93 yeas.”

Read more at AllenBWest.com…

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ASHEVILLE, NC (WYFF) – Hours after “Black Lives Matter” was spray-painted on a Confederate monument in Asheville, North Carolina, H.K. Edgerton stood with a Confederate flag, telling those passing by why he wanted it to continue to fly.

Edgerton, a former president of the North Carolina NAACP and one of few African-American members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, was outside the monument waving the Confederate flag soon after the graffiti was removed.

He said the graffiti artist protested incorrectly.

“I’m not going to blame it on a Yankee, because I’ve seen some southern folk around here that are real questionable too, that don’t know anything about who they are and their families and the honorable people in the southland of America… red, yellow, black, white and brown!” Edgerton said.

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Children are creating their own black markets to trade and sell salt due to First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules.

During a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, chaired by Rep. Todd Rokita (R., Ind.), a school administrator told Congress of the “unintended consequences” of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

“Perhaps the most colorful example in my district is that students have been caught bringing–and even selling–salt, pepper, and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food,” said John S. Payne, the president of Blackford County School Board of Trustees in Hartford City, Indiana.

“This ‘contraband’ economy is just one example of many that reinforce the call for flexibility [with the rules],” he said.

Payne noted other problems with the “one-size-fits-all” approach to providing healthier meals to students, including fewer kids participating in the program and higher food waste. The trend started in 2012, when the school lunch law, which was championed by Mrs. Obama, went into effect.

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OKLAHOMA CITY – Authorities confirmed Wednesday morning that a man, accused of causing a crash that killed local sports journalist Bob Barry Jr., had previously been deported three times.

Gustavo Castillo Gutierrez, 26, has been charged with causing an accident without a valid driver’s license and drug possession on Tuesday.

The fatal crash occurred on Saturday. According to police, Barry was on his motorcycle in the left lane on May Ave., near Memorial, when Gutierrez was driving in the right lane. Police said Gutierrez made an illegal U-turn in front of Barry, and Barry was thrown from the motorcycle after crashing into Gutierrez’s car.

On Sunday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed a detainer with Oklahoma County on Gutierrez from Mexico, following his arrest on criminal charges. ICE officials confirmed that Gutierrez had been voluntarily returned to Mexico three times, twice in 2010, and once in 2013.

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed two bills loosening his state’s gun laws on Wednesday, including one ending the state’s 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases.

The timing of the bill signing comes amid a renewed debate over gun control and race relations after the fatal shootings at a Charleston, S.C., black church on June 17; a white man faces multiple murder charges.

But the measures on Walker’s desk predated the massacre and passed earlier this month in the GOP-majority Legislature with bipartisan support. The second measure would allow off-duty, retired and out-of-state police officers to carry firearms on school grounds.

Walker, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said the bill-signing event was scheduled on June 11. After June 30, the measures would have become law without his signature.

Read more at FoxNews.com…

Some background: Most waiting period laws for firearm purchase were created at the insistence of the lobbying group Handgun Control Inc. (now renamed the Brady Campaign, to hide from their previous failures). At the time HCI demanded waiting periods, while the NRA argued against waiting periods, but for a comprehensive background check. HCI won and waiting periods without background checks was implemented. Without the background checks the waiting period did nothing to keep guns out the hands of bad people and simply annoyed good people. Eventually the NRA’s comprehensive background check was implemented and of course HCI claimed credit for it.

Fulchrum posted:

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This is “Pride” month for a community that enjoys the most protection of any people group by news organizations. There’s no journalistic objectivity, only subjectivity drenched in happy rainbow colors and an ever-expanding acronym. The LGBT activist movement enjoys its immunity as it brands any dissenters as haters, bigots, and homophobes.

The LGBTQ movement decries the “inequality” and the epidemic of “hate violence” that touches the homosexual, bisexual and whatever-you-want-to-be-sexual community. (I’m not going to go into the absurd self-cited “hate violence reports”, pseudoscience, and trumped up statistics right now; that will have to be a whole other Radiance Foundation article). No one deserves to be physically harmed (unless it’s self-defense, of course). Yet, at the same time leading “gay rights” groups cry “discrimination” they actively, and aggressively, promote the most violent form of discrimination: abortion.

Nearly every major LGBTQxyz group (Human Rights Campaign, Act Up, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and GLAAD, just to name a few) promotes the violence of abortion. Many of them see “gay rights” and “abortion rights” as a united front.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, often discussed homosexuality. Her organization promoted it as a means to curb population. After her death, Planned Parenthood Vice President, Frederick S. Jaffe, issued what is referred to as the Jaffe Memo, which encouraged “increased homosexuality” as a means to reduce U.S. fertility. The nation’s soon-to-be-leading-national-abortion-chain promoted homosexuality as a means to reduce our population, not to illuminate any kind of equality or worth of an individual.

I can’t see the (co-opted) rainbow colors of the LGBT movement’s flag without seeing the blood that drips from the fabric of its hypocrisy. You can’t demand “equality” while proudly stripping it away from millions of others. No one should ever take pride in violence. It diminishes all of us—born and unborn.

Fulchrum posted:

Fulchrum posted:

Mo_Steel posted:

Yes? Sometimes in democracy you don't get what you want, or have to pay for things you don't personally need or want. I'm sure your preferred form of governance is either anarchy or tyranny depending on whether we're discussing taxes on your earnings or gays / Muslims respectively, but gently caress right off to the middle of a desert if you don't like being part of society. The Founding Fathers you so venerate would balk at your selfishness; know some loving shame for your terrible beliefs.