Not At All Surprised

Haggard faces more gay-sex accusations

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay-sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard

This man's faith taught him that homosexuality is a vile sin and then he, as a leader of his faith, spreads that gospel of hate. At the same time he speaks against our gay population, a very weak kneed Haggard is engaging in gays sexual acts (with prostitutes and young members of his congregation). Haggard denounced gays from his pulpit, on the political battle fields he fought to deprive gays of most civil rights all the while he was working very hard to keep the truth about his own sexuality buried, from America, his church, his family and maybe even himself.

Nothing new, it is common, seen among many christian sects but it is a vile behavior none the less.

What is most disgusting, both on the part of Haggard and his old church, is the on going effort to 'rehabilitate' his image. Haggard seems claim that he was the hurt party and has been made to suffer, at the same time he and his old church are still aggressively covering up his homosexual and predatory behavior. He has preached hate toward homosexuals, he has made claims that gays were involved in disgusting sinful actions and they they where not worthy of being full members of our society. At the same time he engaged in the very activity he claimed was a great wrong. When discovered he first lied, then when presented with overwhelming evidence of his actions, he fled; leaving behind him a vaguely worded confession and an ongoing cover-up at his old church.

Just another indicator that homosexuality is a natural part of the spectrum of human sexuality, and that any damage done to society on this issue comes not from the out gays, but from those who preach that homosexuality is wrong.


Tags
Sexuality

1/4 Inch of Snow

It's time for the whole of the midlands to freak out.

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Weather

Our House Is Burning Down

And we are offered stale failed old ideas.

Governor pushes budget cap, ending corporate income tax, proposes truce with Legislature

...

Gov. Mark Sanford outlined a mix of new and old ideas in his annual State of the State address he felt would improve the state economy, improve education and streamline state government.

Lets see what our leadership has offered. He wants more tax cuts, school choice, a budget cap and more power for the executive branch. That sounds a whole lot like it Stanfords plan when things were working well. This is an amazing one size fits all solution, no matter what it happen in our state, nation or world, these are the steps we need to take to advance. The economy is going great, cut taxes and give us state paid access to private schools, economy is tanking, well, lets see, lets cut taxes and give us state paid access to private schools.

In addition, these ideas sounds a lot like what we have been doing in DC for the last few years, and we all see how well that worked out.

What I find most interesting is the insistence on more tax cuts. In light of the impact of last years tax cuts, they were the direct cause of our current budget crisis,.

Economists suggest that worst effects of national economic downturn have yet to hit state

The hundreds of millions of dollars that have been cut thus far this year from the state budget have more to do with recently approved tax cuts than the faltering economy, state economists say.

Ominously, they think the worst of the nation’s economic problems have not yet hit South Carolina.

it takes great courage (or a firm adherence to dogma over reality) to continue to push this idea when considering the national economic situation.

I guess they think that our the last tax cuts were so successful that another is obviously a great idea. Of course you have to understand the goal of those who want these cuts, they do not like government, they want to kill government, and the surest way to do that is to keep it so poor it is impotent that it is useless.

and it appears to be working.


Tags
South Carolina, Tax

Evolution, In Action

Creationist and the rest of the anti-science crowd are a funny bunch. They denounce evolution as a lie, as imposable, as never occurring. Then we see something like this.

Tamiflu, the Roche Holding AG drug for influenza, can’t fight most infections that have been diagnosed in the U.S. flu season so far, health experts said.

More than half of the flu viruses that have been analyzed in the U.S. this season are of the H1N1 strain, said Joseph Bresee, chief of influenza epidemiology and prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Virtually all the H1N1 viruses the agency has tested, 72 of 73, are Tamiflu-resistant, he said.

The emergence of Tamiflu-resistant strains that can spread easily from one person to another makes it more difficult for doctors to use drugs to treat people who are at high risk of severe flu complications, such as pneumonia, he said.

Yep, that's evolution. The environment changes (Tamiflu is created) and the species (the H1N1 virus) has to adapt. The members of the species that can change and resist the new threat (Tamiflu) continue on, those who don't die off.

These changes occurred over the time frame of just a few years, imagine the changes that can be seen over millions (hundreds of millions) of years. It is quite simply evolution, the same forces that enabled the virus to change to survive exposure to Tamiflu have, over the eons, created the great diversity of life that we see on out planet.

I am left wondering just how ill-informed or downright dishonest all the evolution deniers are. How can you ignore all the evidence to pretend something so obvious is not occuring?



Tags
Evolution, Science

Fantastic Judicial News

Enron’s Skilling loses appeal

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld former Enron Corp. CEO Jeff Skilling's convictions for his role in the once-mighty energy giant's collapse

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Enron

Al Franken Beats Coleman

The votes have been counted, the counts have been checked and the disputed ballets reviewed. Now that it is all done it is clear that Al Franken (D-Saturday Night Live) wins by 225 votes.

Now it's off to court we go, since Coleman has made it clear that if he lost he would sue to overturn the result.

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Senate

They Lie Like Rugs

Since the moment that the Discovery Institute lost its Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case ( the lawsuit that beat back the efforts to force a scientific lie onto the children of the Dover area ) the fine folks behind the effort to sell Intelligent Design to the schools of the United States have been trying to spin their defeat as the result of anything but it's base cause; The idea they are trying to sell (Intelligent Design) is a silly fantasy with no scientific basis.

Their most current effort has been an attack on one of the expert witnesses. As is the normal case when dealing with these people, the attack is BS and is quickly debunked.

The scientific reality, of course, is entirely different. First, there’s a perfectly good reason why I compared the clotting treatment in Pandas to Darwin’s Black Box (DBB). They are indeed nearly identical, and that’s because Behe himself wrote both of them. Second, Behe actually did state that the entire pathway is irreducibly complex in DBB. Casey might have skipped over those pages, but I didn’t. Third, as a result, the absence of any components of the cascade in any organism is indeed a direct contradiction of Behe’s formulation of ID. And finally, even Luskin’s “irreducible core” has fallen apart as the result of the most recent research findings on the system.

Casey seems to forget — or to ignore — the fact that Behe has never even attempted to do any scientific research to show that he is right. He ignores the fact that ID’s critics have produced a boatload of research showing Behe to be wrong while Behe himself has done no research on the system that might support Luskin. As a result, his attempts at rehabilitating the clotting cascade as an “icon” of ID are a complete failure. So, for the umpteenth time, let’s go through this again

.

Read the whole bit, it is quite good.




Tags
Intelligent Design, Lies

A Measured Response?

Hamas has been lobbing an occasional small rocket into Israel, a rare few of these rockets actually hit something and a few civilians have been injured or killed. Hamas claims that these rocket firings are in response to Israels past actions, using this as a very thin justification to excuse their actions.

Israel has been bombing Gaza in retaliation to Hamas' retaliation of past Israeli retaliations. So far Israel has killed almost 500 people in Gaza, the vast majority civilians. The exchange of fire is clearly not balanced, and even the Israeli defense ministry has indicated that they do not think this action will stop the missile fire.

All this blood is being spilled for very little gain. In the end I suspect that all Israel has actually done is create a few thousand more very angry people, some of who will eventually seek to retaliate against Israel for the attacks they have had to endure over the last week.

And in reply Israel will again overreact and create a few thousand more radicals for Hamas (or Hezbollah or some other group) to use to keep their cycle of violence going.

Maybe one day someone will notice that this type of behavior has a history of limited success.

Tags
Israel, Palestine

Happy New Year

After a long break to re-charge the batteries, vacation, attend to family issues, hold thanksgiving and Christmas and time to do nothing, it is time to get back to work.

Let 2008 rest in peace and lets us all welcome 2009, praying for a far better and more equitable future for all of mankind.


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Holiday