This may seem like a bit of an contradiction to some, but Texas legislators are sponsoring a bill to facilitate the creation of a master’s degree in Creation Science. While these degrees are traditionally called Divinity degrees, Texas politicians fighting against evolution theory want to help the Institute for Creation Research.
Behind the move is Republican Leo Berman, a member of the House Higher Education Committee of Texas, who is the sponsor of House Bill 2800. Educators in the state have balked for obvious reasons. Notably, Texas has some of the country’s leading educational institutions, but has always struggled with a misconception of the state being removed from the intellectual heartland. I am sure that this has serious academics in the state groaning as legislators rush to fulfill unfair stereotypes.
The Institute explains its certificate program as follows:
The Creationist Worldview is an innovative program of study designed to equip current and future Christian leaders with practical tools to effectively influence their world with the truths of Scripture. A formal science degree is not required, and those who can benefit from the Creationist Worldview program includes, but is not limited to, Christian men and women who hold various positions of influence within the community, educators, ministers and church leaders, business and industry experts, professionals in medicine and law, government officials, leaders in the fine arts, and high school and college students.
Designed for people on the go, the self-paced Creationist Worldview can fit into busy schedules. Course material is accessed online and through textbooks, so students can study from any computer with an Internet connection. The certificate program has been designed to be completed in under a year.
It would seem that Berman’s effort really falls short here. There are dozens of Divinity Schools that should be properly called “scientific laboratories.” More importantly, attendance at Sunday services should now be legislatively made credit worthy for science degrees.
For the full story, click here.
This should be used in any court case which alleges cs is science and not religion. “The Creationist Worldview is an innovative program of study designed to equip current and future Christian leaders with practical tools to effectively influence their world with the truths of Scripture. A formal science degree is not required,…”
There is no ambiquity in this statement. Creationism is equated with christianity and with scripture from the bible. The “no formal science degree” might be a tip off to keen observers as well.
Lots of times people who support creationism pretend otherwise. As the Dover case proved, and this proposed legislation cements, it is about a biblical literalist religious teaching.
One thing that is clear about these so-called Christians, is that they will NEVER give up, never come to their senses. Even after the legal trouncing in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District)
By the way Doug, if it turns out that the skin cells really work as well, real scientists will use them. You see, unlike right-wing Christians, a good scientist learns from experience and observation.
“A formal science degree is not required, and those who can benefit from the Creationist Worldview program includes, but is not limited to, Christian men and women who hold various positions of influence within the community, educators, ministers and church leaders, business and industry experts, professionals in medicine and law, government officials, leaders in the fine arts, and high school and college students.
Designed for people on the go….”
************
And where they’re going, well, you –and the rest of us they would inevitably drag along in their insane delusion — can get there in a handbasket!
No.
We don’t hate Christians.
We love the Constitution.
If we “hate” anything, it’s illogical foundations for governance, unconstitutional crimes, lobbyists and their corrupting influence, theocratic repression or any other form of tyranny, propaganda, weak argument and/or analytical skills and stupidity but especially willful stupidity.
If anyone is expressing hatred, it’s you expressing hatred for those who don’t believe in your fairy tale version of Christianity. Yeah, I said fairy tale. Learn about the history of the book you put so much stake in before you try to use it as a club. Otherwise, it’s like any weapon you don’t understand the function and use of – you’re likely to get it taken from you and used against you. Most here, even the non-Christians, have repeatedly expressed admiration for the teachings of Jesus and disdain for how MEN distort those teachings by using the bible out of context or as literal truth. It’s so easy to abuse teaching by parable as it is an oblique strategy. It’s even easier to tell those who are lost that you have the 411 on salvation because, hey – guess what, it doesn’t require you the sheep to personally think. Just follow blindly. Just do what the nice man in the expensive suit who asks you for money tells what to do and think. Because you are too stupid to decide what God wants from you. Or too lazy. And just like a Shepard leads lambs to slaughter, the fake prophets of fundamentalism seek your money for bad advice at best and seek the destruction of the world at worst. Free will is a gift. If you chose to squander it on some evangelical nonsense interpretation of the Bible as fact, that’s your bad decision. How about reading some history and science books before you start accusing others of the very intolerance you yourself express, carl. Because the uniformed trying to force their beliefs on others usually get eaten alive in here. This is a den of LOGIC, not hatred. We leave hatred and illogic to the fundies of all denominations and the fascist war-mongers. You are all so good at it.
You talking about turning the other cheek is hysterical, Mr. Theocrat. It makes me laugh as much as your poor skills do. Attack me all you like, because you cannot dispute what I’ve said in a cogent fashion. So you want to foam at the mouth some more about how you and you alone understand the nature of God’s will let alone the nature of science? You go right ahead. Free Speech gives you the right to say any kind of nonsense you like. It also gives us the right to debunk and ridicule your positions. I’ll keep on laughing at you. Because you’ve walked into a den of gunfighters armed with logic and fact and you’re only carrying a pointy stick.
“The Genesis Device was a sophisticated technological innovation designed to alleviate sociological problems such as overpopulation and limited food supplies. Its development was completed by a team of scientists led by Carol Marcus and her son, David Marcus, in 2285 on the Spacelab Regula I in the Mutara sector.
The device initiated a process of rapid terraforming, by which previously uninhabitable planets could be turned into class M worlds ready for colonization. This was accomplished by launching the Genesis Device, a torpedo-shaped projectile, into a lifeless planet. Upon impact, the device caused a massive explosion, reducing the entire area to subatomic particles. A preprogrammed matrix then reassembled these subatomic particles into the desired configuration, creating an atmosphere and environment habitable for humans within a matter of hours, regardless of the test area’s original composition.”
Way to go Texas!
Are we done with Texas?
I think we’re done with Texas.
BTW, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the Texas legislature isn’t familiar with Kant’s fourth antimony.
But hey; it’s Texas.
On one side there are hypocritical politicians playing/plying their fundamentalist base with nonsense like this. Then you have the base who are too gullible, or too lacking in critical judgment to realize that their pastors are con men doling out a literal interpretation of Genesis, along with an inclusion of the demented book of Revelations wrongly into the Christian Canon (to gin up the fear factor). Rather, than as those truly seeking God (as they purport to desire), through making their own judgments and shaping their religious belief based on interpreting their scripture for themselves, filtered through the lens of their own learning and experience.
We have instead a bunch of sheep, fearful of living without outside direction, being shorn financially and politically by greedy cynics who pretend belief. Can there be other answers to humans being on Earth other than evolution (i.e. Sitchin’s “Twelfth Planet”), perhaps so. However, those answers are not to be found by a starting hypothesis that this world, the universe and its’ creatures are 6,000 years old. That isn’t science it’s gross stupidity.
Wait ’til these goobers find out that them-thar atheistical “scientists” (with their highfalutin “advanced degrees” and fancy-schmancy “terms” and “words”) is a-sayin’ that th’ earth revolves around th’ sun.
Can’t figure out how these anti-science-theofascist-Texans explain the formation of oil/ petroleum, their life blood.
doglover:
Come on now, we all know God put the oil there and in Saudi Arabia ’cause the respective inhabitants are so similar in their religions and love of misogyny!
Gosh, when I lived in Texas years ago, facilities dedicated to creation research were just called whorehouses.
MIke:
“Gosh, when I lived in Texas years ago, facilities dedicated to creation research were just called whorehouses.”
***********
They still are but some upgraded to ivory towers. The “johns” just come with Bibles tucked under their arms now.
LOL all the above!
mak:
“YOU phucking Christian haters make us all sick.
You and Turley and the handfulf bunch of you: get the H out of our country.”
******************
Well I can tell you are a Christian by your love for all here. And peace be with you too, brother.
mak: Why do you hate America so much ?
The truth is that the literalist approach to the Bible has nothing to do with mainstream Christian thought or biblical scholarship. It is purely reactionary and its growth in this country is a giant leap backward. Even the phrase “Christian fundamentalism” is of modern origin, dating back no earlier than the beginning of the last century. The movement is nothing more than a fear-based reaction to Darwin and its growing prevalence reflects the dumbing down of both Christianity and education in this country. Recently, of course, fear of science and fear of change have combined to merge fundamentalism and conservative politics. Voila! We have the new Republican Party, where religious faith and patriotism are one and the same and intellectual integrity is the idol of the godless.
MikeA:
are republicans that bad? I really do think it is the evangelical wing of the party. The moral majority, Focus on the Family, those types and not the party as a whole. Although I am not a card carrying member anymore because of the commpassionate conservatism of GW. No party for true conservatives and really no party for true(read old fashioned) democrats.
Seems to me the only thing the 2 parties now disagree on is the size of the compassion.
“are republicans that bad?”
Bron,
Probably not, but as we see with the situation with Mr.Steele
the crazy wing of the party controls it, because more moderate and intelligent Republican either refuse to speak out or become independents.
Bron,
It may be time to face the fact that the true traditional conservatives need to form a new party sans the toxins that have ruined and continue to ruin the GOP. The GOP is in disarray and eating itself alive with the perpetual game of CYA trying to please their corporate masters, the religious right (their true bases, they don’t care a whit about actual conservatism or anyone not currently lining their pockets) and the stay one step ahead of prosecution themselves or meeting a torch bearing mob. If it’s any consolation, the DNC is failing liberals just as much. There is the foot dragging on bringing the Neocons to justice and ending torture. They are just as busy coddling the Wall St. criminals as the GOP was instrumental in the deregulation that allowed them to fracture the economy so they could steal everything not bolted down. If they weren’t, all the officers of AIG would be in shackles right now and their assets seized.
I say both parties need to go. It’s time for a new era.
Have you given any more thought to the analogy between the body politic and Objectivism as cancer? And did you see the Rand Illusion funny link I posted in the Roman Jokes thread?
Everything that has a beginning has a cause–so what is the cause of all things?
Clint:
“Everything that has a beginning has a cause–so what is the cause of all things?’
*********
Let’s call it “God.” Now what caused him?
Buddha:
Yes I saw it and I did laugh. It was pretty good satire.
Also I have thought about your cancer analogy. Can we look at society as a body and individuals as cells within that body? I think that if we do we are going down a path that leads to the exact tyranny that you and other members on this blog fight against. A society is made up of individuals and a free society encourages individual expression. If we look at society as the body and individuals as merely expendable cells, the cancer is whatever the body politic says it is at any given point in its evolution. So in one incarnation they may not like little green laughing men and in another they might not like blond haired jewish guys from New York City, or blue eyed conservatives from Virginia or fans of Cicero or Epicurus.
The human races entire history is one of rebellion against the state in some form or another. The US has come closest to truly believing in individual freedom and the supremecy of the individual over the state. So I think if you start calling one philosophy or another a cancer that needs to be cut out you are going to end up giving too much power to the state, which is all about power for the sake of power anyway. Even the French Revolution was controlled by a small group of men and France has had how many governments since 1799? While the US has remained fairly stable.
Individual liberty and not the body politic should be the supreme ruler of any society. The good of the one is the good of the many (to paraphrase Mr. Spok). Granted we may need to throw the rascals out from time to time but that is what we have elections for. That people are to stupid or apathetic to do this does not I think give someone carte blanche to cut the cancer out and anyway who determines what is or is not cancer? Many of you on this website would think a conservative like me is a cancer and I know from reading other posts from the trolls that you(pl) most assuradely, in their minds, are a cancer that they would cut out. So in the end individual freedom is the only bastion against the power of the state and should be protected.
I usually say a silent thank you to the founders at least once a month for my ability to live in a country such as this, it may not be perfect but it sure beats whatever is in second place by one hell of a lot.
ps How would it be to live in a country where you could not express yourself freely? Buddha, I may not know you personally but I know one thing, you would be an enemy of the state. No doubt in my mind they would consider you a cancer. You would have a printing press hidden away in your basement or a secret internet hook-up – Radio Free Buddha fighting the good fight against the power of the state.
Mespo:
He is ever was and always will be. End of discussion!
Bron98:
That’s what I say about the cosmos, and Stephen Hawking agrees with me –except for the “always will be” stuff. Bubble on Bron98, and see if you can anser Professor’s Hawking’s question: what is south of the south pole?
http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/publiclectures/94
Mespo:
the north pole!
I like the periodicity theory of the universe, it keeps expanding and contracting. Big Bang then big crunch then big bang into eternity. And that the universe is without end or beginning. And that it took many iterations for life to come forth.
I see your Stephen Hawking and raise you a John Archibald Wheeler.
Mespo:
is that bubble or babble? I used to work with a buy we called babbleon Bob because he could not stop talking. No he was not a Mesopotamian
How did our oil get under the Middle East sand? These creationist people would love to have a Taliban style religous government making all the important decisions based and the Word of the Truth. Then we could have Rick “man on dog” Santorum in the Senate or maybe in the White House and all of our problems would be solved, because God will provide all the answers.
I wonder why religious debate is always so vitriolic. Is it the topic or the people?
These people never give up, do they?
Bron,
I think you may be missing the whole analogy.
Individual cells require the freedom to perform the tasks they evolved for – their purpose. Every cell has a different purpose. Just like a cell, every person has a purpose. The body politic, like the human body, is not just a totality of independent cells, but a series of interdependent sub-systems made up of many cells. Can a heart survive if the kidneys get cancer? No. Are the blood cells that leave your body through a cut alive or dead once they leave the body proper? They are dead. The body politic and the citizen cells serve each other. Far from being tyranny, it’s symbiosis. More than that, it’s a dependent symbiosis, not a parasitic symbiosis. The respiratory system cannot survive without a circulatory system which cannot survive without a nervous system which cannot survive without an endocrine system, etc. As far as the trolls go, I’m less cancer and more like an anti-body. I seek restoration of the balance that allows the whole body to survive where those in question will kill the body to fuel their uncontrolled growth. In their shortsightedness, the cancer will be killing themselves too because a tumor cannot survive absent a host. You are correct the trollkind would have be out of their way if they had their druthers. I am counter to their growth and metastasis. I seek to undo the damage and reverse their uncontrolled spread before systemic failure sets in, but I’d rather be hanging out in the circulatory system with little to do or at least a less serious infection or malfunction to be attacking.
Individual freedom must be maintained up to the point that it threatens the survival of the whole. That’s just common sense. The behavior under discussion is an extreme (greed/lust for power) that puts the whole organism, themselves included, at great risk of failure. The way to cure this cancer is to remove those malfunctioning cells from the body. In this case, excising the tumor means removing them from the body politic (removing their right to participate) and reclaiming the resources they’ve co-opted for their own uncontrolled expansion in an effort to make the body healthy again. Whole.
To carry the analogy further, cancer cells are just like normal cells. Except for one thing. They have no shut off for growth. Those genes are damaged. In the case of Neocons, it’s their thinking that’s damaged (the gene) and it has negatively impacted their behavior (uncontrolled growth).
This is where you come in.
Say conservatism is our body politic is the medulla oblongata. It’s a very conservative system and it has to be as it controls respiration and other automatic functions like vomiting, blood pressure and reflexes. True conservatives are like a normal neuron in the medulla oblongata. They provide a valuable service to the whole. But neocons, who are mostly Rand worshipers when it comes down to it, are like a brain tumor interfering with that proper function. Their uncontrolled growth is threatening the viability of the whole organism. The trick is to remove the cancerous cells while damaging as few of the properly functioning cells as possible. That is also why traditional conservative feel like they are under fire. The immune system is swarming the area and it’s stressing all the conservative tissues because telling the good from the bad can be an imperfect process.
You and fellow true conservatives like FFLEO are the healthy cells. You perform your function and recognize that the other systems have to be free to perform their functions or the body dies and you’re out of a job and place to live. You provide value to the whole but you recognize that other do too and that you are dependent upon them just as much as they are dependent upon you. Neocons don’t care if the body dies as long as they get to grow – just like cancer.
You can see this in action now as the GOP is self-destructing. The cancer is starting to interfere with your original function as conservatives. If the GOP/Conservatives are medulla oblongata, the normal cells are feeling the negative effects of this uncontrolled but closely related cell type – the neocon. The reflexes are starting to fail and BP is soaring. The question is can we remove the cancerous cells before respiration is impacted or it metastasizes, spreading to other critical systems. I think it’s already spreading to be honest. If those who run banking are bone marrow and finance is the blood, surely what is happening now is akin to the neocon cancer spreading to infect bone marrow. Some of the cancer may be forced into remission, but some of it is going to have to come out surgically. That’s where putting Bush Co. and bad corporate actors like the boards of Halliburton, BoA and AIG in prison and stripping them of their assets comes into play. And just like cancer, the removal process may be painful and it may make us sick in the short term. It may even be drastic. For the sake of the body as a whole though, it’s got to go for equilibrium and eventually health to be restored. Part of that health is a healthy and properly function medulla oblongata free from the interference of the unhealthy doppleganger neurons currently in their midst. As an anti-body, I don’t want to destroy the healthy cells. That’s not my job. I like healthy, be it the conservative cells of the medulla oblongata or the liberal cells of the pre-frontal lobes. All are required for the whole body to be healthy.
This is also why I say our next step in evolution has to be a conscious step away from the competitive modes of behavior and adopting a more co-operative mode. The cancer is a mode of behavior, a thought process brought into action, that is the toxic carcinogen. We have to destroy some the offending tissues. That’s surgery. But making the conscious decision to change? That is chemotherapy.
I hope this clarifies the original analogy for you.
mespo and Bron,
I see your Hawking and Wheeler and raise you a Robert Caldwell.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/big_rip_030306.html
But that’s just the universe of this membrane. Life will go on elsewhere. VERY elsewhere. There are more universes than this one. I’m not sure we want to get in to m-Theory though. That water is deep and way off topic.
Buddha:
I know for certain that while NeoCons may claim to be objectivists, objectivists reject neoconservative thought. Objectivists are mostly atheists or deists at best and they are actually very close to your(pl) thoughts on individual freedom. They believe in Gay Marriage, and legalization of drugs, they think we should have more liberal immigration laws (something I personaly am against), they are pro-abortion and think that people ought to be able to sell a kidney or a lung or part of a liver. I think were they digress is the economy, they are strong believers in the free market and think what has failed is the mixed economy due to regulations and the Federal Reserve’s control of the money supply and interest rates.
On another topic, I read an article in Vanity Fair by Sebastian Junger (I have no idea who he is) about the fighting in Afghanistan. To all who are old enough to remember it sounds earily familiar to the Vietnam War. I dont know if Junger ment to do this, the article was pretty pro-troops, but the overall feel was Vietnam. After I read the article I was pretty upset.
here is the link:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/10/afghanistan200810
Buddha:
I agree with that, the universe will expand into nothing and then contract back to a single atom and Kaboom another Big Bang and another chance for life. And so the cycle goes for eternity.
You could have been here before a trillion years ago.
But then how did it all get started? Fuck it I give up!
Mespo,
I commend you on your dynamic side-step. If I view God as Creator of everything, then time would be included and He would transcend it. But, if my foundation of all that exists is eons of time, then I run into a problem.
Now, back to my original question. What says you?
Bron98, I agree with Mike S. We need a healthy and intellectually vigorous Republican Party. Overtures to the Christian right over the past 20 years produced votes for the Republicans, but at a heavy price. The evangelical wing was permitted to set the “family values” agenda and proceeded to crowd out any dissenting views. You can see the result geographically. The remaining core Republican states are now dominated by this wing. I suppose there is a sort of poetic justice in this. After all, the people who devised and fine tuned the southern strategy were only seeking votes. There was never any intention of permitting Christian conservatives to control all policy decisions. But it backfired, and the result is not good for the country in the long run.
Bron,
While I agree with most of that, let me continue the analogy just a bit further. Consider objectivism as a genetic expression, a recessive trait if you will. When properly expressed in healthy cells, it results in say blue eyes. When improperly expressed, it results in Neocons, the cancer. While not all of objectivism is bad, it is a key component to the cancer because it’s (I’m going to coin a word here, if Patty knows a better one, I’ll take it) malexpressed. Much like mespo said earlier, there is a lot about objectivism to like . . . up to a point. That tipping point is where self-determination strays into blind selfishness that endangers us all. No, my point wasn’t to totally discredit objectivism, merely to point out that a key feature of it has been and continues to be used as a rationale for the actions of evil men. That’s why I called Neocons “Rand worshipers” and not objectivists. They are true objectivists like they are true conservatives or true anything for that matter. They use whatever they can hide behind to justify their sociopathic behavior – including your philosophy of choice. It’s not the use of objectivism that’s dangerous, it’s the abuse. It has been my contention all along that Neocons as sociopaths. They are, as my grandfather used to say, “crippled where a crutch won’t help.” It’s time to start judging them not by the position that that have attained or how much money that they have made, which is what they want us to do, but to call their evil what it is – a sickness in the body politic that must be forcibly removed.
It may be that I hold out too much hope for humanity. Self-destructive selfishness may be too intermeshed into our genetics to overcome by conscious choice. But I’d sure like to try.
Buddha:
I understand that and I wont disagree. Objectivism though, and maybe this is where I go wrong in my thinking, is about rational selfishness. And following the golden rule-namely treat others as you would want to be treated. The Bernard Madoff case is a good example of anti-objectivism. Mr. Madoff was not being rationaly selfish when he scammed those people, he was not practicing any form of objectivism that I know, he was merely being stupid and greedy. An objectivist would say that what Madoff did was not rational self interest it did him no good in the long run as he is a ruined man and will go to jail for the rest of his life. Now this is where I might diverge from objectivist thought in that I would not have done it because it was just not the right thing to do if one has a conscience not because of rational self interest.
And maybe this is where others Like Mike S. and Rcampbell diverge too. It is too self oriented and maybe this is why I am not a 100% objectivist, I have a good deal of empathy for other people. So I honestly believe that free market capitalism does the most good for the most people, granted some people are going to get lost in the cracks and I agree they need to be helped. I can only imagine what Mike S has dealt with in his career. But do we reduce the standard of living of everyone so we are all in the same economic boat? This I just cant rap my mind around.
I think Mike S would agree that some people are beyond help whether for emotional or organic mental health problems. These people need our help of that I have no doubt or problem with, we as a society need to take care of them. But there are many people that dont need to be taken care of, they need a kick in the ass to jump start them, they dont need our help they are perfectly able to fend for themselves they just dont want to do it.
The one thing I do know is that people/intellectuals want to control their environment. I dont think people can control something as big or as complex as an economy and this is where I think most of the diagreement lies with conservatives and objectivists and liberals. And maybe because liberals are more intellectual than conservatives you think you can control human action. But maybe conservatives are smart enough to not try.
Bron,
My only objection is the use of the word “control”. Control is an illusion, not just in economics, but anything. A human perceptual fallacy, probably rooted in the Savannah trait of aggression as a problem solving mechanism. I return to Heisenberg as the source that randomness rules the quantum and therefore everything else. I would prefer the term “influence”. Influence is possible whereas control is not. To suggest otherwise implies there is no such thing as free will. No amount of law would stop a bad enough actor operating out of choice. Other than that, I think we’re close to the same page.
Buudha:
I dont think a government can “influence”, which in my mind is a benign term. they must by their nature coerce because they have the power. For example one of the reasons for the housing problem is that the federal government made a recommendation for financial institutions to make loans to people that could not afford them and they kept rates artificially low (probably for a good economy to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. so there is another reason to have free markets and not allowing governments to jigger the interest rates with no thought to market forces.) to expedite this among other reasons. So what do people do when something that should cost $10 costs $2, they buy more of it than they need. This is simplistic of course but it is generally true that people are always looking for a free lunch and a free market dicourages a free lunch.
“Objectivism though, and maybe this is where I go wrong in my thinking, is about rational selfishness. And following the golden rule-namely treat others as you would want to be treated”
Bron,
Where you go wrong is in thinking that in believing in the Golden Rule as you and I do, Objectivism also believes in the “Golden Rule.” I’ve read all of Ayn Rand as you know, there is no sense of the “golden rule” in there, actually Objectivism believes in “The Rule of Gold.” The concept of altruism on any level is an anathema to Ayn Rand.
“one of the reasons for the housing problem is that the federal government made a recommendation for financial institutions to make loans to people that could not afford them and they kept rates artificially low (probably for a good economy to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. so there is another reason to have free markets and not allowing governments to jigger the interest rates with no thought to market forces.) to expedite this among other reasons.”
Two points to ponder:
1. The housing problem came about because in the absence of regulation, banks which had morphed into “financial institutions” had discarded the need to loan prudently in favor of a pirate mentality. They then took the money they made and put it into speculation that was akin to playing Blackjack in Vegas. When the housing bubble burst they didn’t have the assets to back these bad bets up, as they should have had under regulation and then needed the government to bail them out.
2. When you are talking about low interest rates you are not really talking about the Federal Government, but the Federal Reserve over which neither President nor Congress have control. As you know the low interest rates the Fed was giving were complements of Alan Greenspan, lifelong Objectivist and onetime member of Ayn Rand’s inner circle. Oh
yeah, what Greenspan the Objectivist was good at doing was raising the interest rates every unemployment got lower than 5% in order to suppress wages and maintain unemployment.
Don’t take my word for it. Look it up. With your inquiring mind I think you might be astonished.
Mike
Bron,
I submit that influence consists of three components. Rules, carrots and sticks. The rules must be fair and just, the carrots must be sufficient incentive to encourage fair and just behavior in compliance with the rules, and the stick must hurt like Hell when used. That’s just pragmatic. What deregulation did is make carrots meaningless because the stick went from being a club to a willow branch. Coercion in the pursuit of criminals is no vice unless it violates the Bill of Rights.
Clint:
“I commend you on your dynamic side-step. If I view God as Creator of everything, then time would be included and He would transcend it. But, if my foundation of all that exists is eons of time, then I run into a problem.
Now, back to my original question. What says you?”
*********
I say simply if you are willing to believe a being predated time, why not accept that time has no beginning or end as Hawking et als contend. In essence you are asking the wrong question (or making the wrong assumption), it is not whether time exists independently of space but rather does everything have a beginning and necessarily an end. If God doesn’t why not the same characteristic for the cosmos, which would of course render God irrelevant. Just for the record if we accept the notion of God as the creator of the universe that would not add one iota of support for the foolishness of most religious tenets and practices; it would merely prove the deists like Jefferson correct when they contend God may have made us but he quickly moved on to bigger and better things.
Mike Spind:
any suggested reading on that issue?
sigh
Yet more Texas . . .
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29724424/
Buddha,
The hits just keep on coming from that bastion of American Justice, Texas. That was an interesting article about the Animal House jail. Actually, this place looks worse than the Animal House I saw in the movies. It sounds like the prior Sheriff is the John Belushi equivalent and deserves a road trip to a Federal institution.
Bron,
Thom Hartmann, David Sirota, Dean Baker, Joseph Stiglitz and to do it quickly those two links below:
http://www.scionofzion.com/federalreserve.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Nic5AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Federal+Reserve+history
MikeS:
I agree the Fed is illegal and should never have been created. It is what gave us the great depression. It has also caused the current problem due to artificialy low interest rates.
People do need to rise up and abolish it. And if those are the guys Buddha is talking about I can design a French Razor for him and we can forge the blade from some of the steel from the Twin Towers.
Is anyone else tired of living in a parody of a real country?
a primer on evolution for creationists: http://google.com/search?q=Milancovich+Wilson+supercycles
Freedom is wrong for it’s the freedom to be, do, and believe wrong. Freedom is the root of every mistake, lige, and crime. Freedom is the refrain of scum, trash, and scoundrels. The body works wherefore the cells are not free (as a gas would be) but do very narrow tasks, in bondage and servitude. The antibodies and other radicals only do what they know; sometimes the former attack their own body when the host has autoimmune diseases; sometimes the latter forestall more-aggressive pathoghens.
Buddhism debunked: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Discipline_Group/message/15201
There are no illusions, only delusions.
American patriots were British criminal fugitives.
I guess they will only have one text book… hahaha