Homosexuality Is Not A Sin According To These Christian Denominations

Here is a list of Christian denominations that do not consider homosexuality or transgenderism to be sins. Take a close look at the list and you may find some surprises. There are some very mainstream faiths that think that the Hebrew text and history that the word sodomy literally means "male temple prostitute", and not a translation for homosexual.

The Keystone Report

The State Department has released its report on the Keystone Pipeline. There is no recommendation one or another on whether the pipeline should be built. It noted that even with some sort of governmental blockage on the line, it would accomplish very little to slow the expansion of Canada's vast oil sands. The report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed the idea that Canada's heavy crude reserves require more energy to produce and process - and therefore result in higher greenhouse gas emissions - than conventional oil fields.

So where does that leave us? In my view, still undecided. I don't see any convincing evidence that Keystone is going to do massive environmental harm, as activists claim. Yet I also don't see a negligible impact on the environment either. I guess I'm wondering why we are having this debate in the first place. Arguing about oil is like having a debate over the viability of the cassette tape versus Mp3s. We should be spending our time on bringing down the cost of renewable energy and making it as cheap as coal and oil. The entire debate over Keystone reminds of past arguments over the NEA (a loser for both sides who just want something stupid to club each other over the head with).

So, John Kerry is going spend the next three months consulting with government agencies when he should be doing other things like...oh, I don't know...an actual peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Yay!

Who Was Ronald Reagan's Infamous Welfare Queen?

Remember when President Reagan used to go on about a woman who “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year?" It turns out that the woman was very much real after all.

Small problem, though. She wasn't a lazy black woman from the ghetto as the story morphed into over the years. She was Linda Taylor, master con artist and feared criminal. President Reagan left out that part about how she was a kidnapper, baby trafficker, and possible murderer. Apparently, she also once impersonated a heart surgeon. Read the entire piece and see that she was far more than the poster child for government abuse that Reagan made her out to be.

Essentially, it was like saying that government is bad because Al Capone was a tax dodge.

Economy Gearing Up

From the Wall Street Journal...

A potent mix of rising exports, consumer spending and business investment helped the U.S. economy end the year on solid footing. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services churned out by the economy, grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2% in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said. That was less than the third quarter's 4.1% pace, but overall the final six months of the year delivered the strongest second half since 2003, when the economy was thriving.

Many economists see the U.S. economy moving into a higher gear. Federal Reserve officials, in further pulling back on a bond-buying program meant to spur growth, noted this week that the economy has shown "growing underlying strength." Consumer confidence is rising, and manufacturers are getting busier to meet increased demand. A big driver of growth in the fourth quarter was a rise in consumer spending, which grew 3.3%, the fastest pace in three years. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of economic activity.

Really great news.

Take a look at this graphical representation of the Obama years.  Note the downward trend of government investment (i.e. spending).

Considering this is the Wall Street Journal, will anyone believe the BS being peddled by the Right about how awful the president is for the economy and how he is a big government spender? 

Another 1 Percenter Comes Around

As I have previously predicted, the wealthy are starting to come around on inequality. Bill Gross, the most powerful bond manager of his generation and co-head of a $2 trillion investment management firm, has joined Nick Hanauer and other members of the 1 percent on the perils of this much inequality.

"We're not just experiencing a new Gilded Age, but a Bitcoin Age," says Mr. Gross, referring to the digital currency. "Artificial money, corporate K Street, and Wall Street interests are producing one world for the rich and an entirely different world for the working class," says the founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO in Newport Beach, Calif. "It can't go on like this, either from the standpoint of the health of the capitalist system itself or the health of individuals and the family," he adds.

Why not, Bill?

"For the past 10, 20, 30 years, capital has moved away from labor and towards corporations and investors," Gross says. "I'm not sure capitalism can thrive in a system in which ... [labor] has a declining interest, in terms of percentage of the pie. Then ultimately the pie itself can't grow, because consumption can't be supported."

Exactly right. Capitalism can't thrive, most lose their percentage of the pie and the pie itself can't grow. And to think someone as wealthy and knowledgeable about finance as Gross is saying the same things I am...what on EARTH is going on??!!??:)

So what do we need to do?

When Gross highlighted many of these trends and others in an investment outlook piece posted on his company's website in late October, he told his peers that maybe they should be willing to pay higher taxes. More provocatively, he challenged the orthodoxy on capital gains taxes, saying they should be taxed at rates as high as that for income.

Oh no he DI INT!!!

Based on some of the other testimonials in the article, it seems like we have finally turned a corner and that makes me very happy.

One other part of this piece I found interesting...

Just over two years ago, growing inequality was the rallying cry of the "Occupy" movement. Its "we are the 99 percent" slogan has since become part of the cultural lexicon, and many of its members have moved on to fast-food strikes and protests calling for a higher minimum wage.

Again, just as I have been saying..

Burning a Million Dollars a Day

Across the country there's been a lot of controversy over opening up new natural gas fields to fracking, as the technology makes it possible to extract gas from places not feasible till now. Drillers have been madly opening up new fields, often without regard to environmental consequences or if they can make a profit in a market flooded with cheap natural gas.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota oil drillers are flaring off a million dollars a day worth of natural gas:

"People are estimating it's about $1 million a day just being thrown into the air," says Marcus Stewart, an energy analyst with Bentek Energy. Stewart tracks the amount of gas burned off — or flared — in the state, and his latest figures show that drillers are burning about 27 percent of the gas they produce.

Natural gas is frequently associated with oil deposits (you see methane flares at oil drilling sites all the time), so this shouldn't have been a surprise. 

Part of the problem is the energy industry's focus. As drillers arrived to tap the riches of the Bakken shale formation under western North Dakota, they were looking for oil, not natural gas.

Now that they've found gas, it's taking time and money to build the pipelines and processing plants to use it. Meanwhile, infrastructure for the oil rush needs to be built, too, and oil prices are relatively high, while natural gas prices are really low. That means companies are investing in oil infrastructure first.

"Where would your emphasis be?" asks Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. "If you've got a barrel of oil that's worth $95 and you've got [1,000 cubic feet] of gas ... that's worth $4.25, which infrastructure would you build first?"

The oil companies are being sued by mineral rights owners who should be getting royalties from this natural gas. They could simply wait until they developed the necessary infrastructure to handle all the gas and oil. But instead they're pumping oil out as fast as they can, shipping it in completely inadequate rail cars that explode in giant fireballs.

In their haste to get that oil out right now, the oil companies don't care that they're screwing mineral rights owners out of millions of dollars in royalties. They don't care that they're pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the air, completely wasting natural gas at a time when utilities are advising customers to turn their thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using gas appliances. They don't care that people are dying and towns are burning because their oil can't be safely transported.

And these same oil companies are telling us that global warming isn't real, that climate scientists are promoting climate change theories in order to get research grants. Through their dark money channels conservative groups like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobile are spending a billion dollars a year denying the facts of climate change. This completely dwarfs the research budgets of all climate researchers the world over.

But I guess they have the money to burn.

The Nazi Attack on the 1 Percent

I guess recent attacks on the wealthy are just like the Nazis. Look out!!

 "Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" he wrote, opening a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?" he concluded.

Yes, Tom, it is just like Kristallnacht. Just the other day I saw my wealthy friends being hauled off to the local internment camp for reprogramming, experimentation, and ultimately execution. Good grief, what a fucking moron...

A Dying Party

Half of Fox News' Viewers Are 68 and Older

Pay attention to Fox over the next few years and watch how their content shifts to favor younger viewers. They are in the ratings business after all and if they are losing younger viewers, they will change or lose advertisers.

How Many Conservative Responses Were There To The State Of The Union?

Three. 

I guess there was the official one from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Senator Mike Lee from Utah delivered the Tea Party response and then Rand Paul delivered the double awesome super duper Tea Party response.

Wow. They are really fucked, aren't they?

State of the Union A Go Go

As is usually the case, the president delivered an excellent speech in front of the nation calling for action in multiple areas of our society that would improve our nation a great deal. His main focus was inequality, citing multiple areas in which we could improve the disparity between the very wealthy in this country and everyone else. He spoke of his health care law, tech hubs, improving the tax code, immigration, and a whole host of other issues, ending with a very poignant and moving tribute to a wounded Afghan vet named Cory Remsburg.

But cynicism is the rule of the day presently in Washington and with good reason. We still have a Congress full of Republicans who will never allow the president to succeed on anything. Their maturity level (see: 12 year old boy) simply can't stand that someone they don't feel is befitting of the office of president will be viewed positively in any way. They are so insecure that even a small degree of success somehow translates into a boiling pit of sewage for them. The only possible movement we might see this year is on immigration and that's because GOP leaders know they are fucked in the election if they don't do something. The Latino vote has become far too important to disregard any longer. So, I suppose I should happy for at least that.

Yet I am not. We used to be a nation that got things done and strove for higher ground. We weren't held back by petty adolescents whose only conviction was their vanity. People who were..well...nuts didn't win elections. People like Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY).



Or people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said after the SOTU speech last night that "The world is literally about to blow up." Boiling pit of sewage indeed.

Or people like Fox News analyst and retired Army general Paul Vallely who have called openly for a coup d'etat.

Seriously, what a fucking clown show. And there are millions of people that fall for this shit?

The political press and beyond have talked extensively over the last week or so about how important this speech was for the president if he hopes to tread water in the 2014 elections and not lose any ground. Given the jack wagons on the Right and their behavior, I'm wondering how long it will be before the dam bursts and we can finally be rid of the right wing blogger mentality that seems to overshadow the GOP these days.

Honestly, it can't come soon enough.

Scuhmer V The Cult

Senator Charles Schumer has a great piece up on the Tea Party which is a nice front loader to the SOTU tonight. Here are some of the highlights.

The tea party elites -- with little rebuttal -- have been able to make "government" the boogeyman. They have convinced too much of America that government is the explanation for their ills. Even though most Americans and even most tea party adherents like much of what the government does, the tea party elites proclaim that everything that is wrong, even non-economic and private sector problems, can be blamed on the government.

Yep, it's all the government. And don't you forget it, mister!! In fact, I think it's somehow the government's fault that conservatives have such poor relationships with their parents:)

So, how why are they really like this?

The first and most important force is a phenomenon that Democrats have recently begun to address: the decline in middle-class incomes. It's time we deal with the reality that, for the first time in American history, middle-class American incomes have declined for almost a generation. If middle-class incomes continue to decline, we will have a dramatically different America, a less optimistic, more sour America. 

The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it. We have entered "the second machine age," a transformation of work, leisure, and life that wouldn't have been recognizable when Reagan entered the White House. The distribution of power is changing to include more women, more African-Americans, and more Latinos.

Those two issues have created the atmosphere we have today. As Senator Schumer notes, we are doing something about the first point. Of course, the resistance to his first point speaks volumes. Take away this inequality and you take away what little raison d'etre the leaders of the conservative movement have. The second point is where the fear comes from. They just can't accept change of any kind and the new world is very, very frightening to them. Schumer draws a correlation to the shift from an agrarian society to a industrial one and I think he is right on the mark here.

Look for the president to hit inequality hard tonight in his speech, touching on the points that Senator Schumer mentions in this piece.

Sign O' The Times

A Better Solution to the Abortion Debate

It's good that Mark is searching for a compromise on abortion. However, his plan will not work. In the first place, the anti-abortion crowd will never accept anything except a total ban, with "life beginning at conception," because they've already set that stake in the ground. For reasons I'll go into below, we've probably already arrived at the compromise position on abortion, and there is likely very little wiggle room for more restrictive abortion bans than the viability test that the Supreme Court has blessed.

As a practical matter, your proposal of six weeks would essentially outlaw abortion. Many women do not have periods regularly enough to know they're pregnant at week six. I knew a girl who once went 98 days between periods (I'm not sure why she shared that with me since we never had sex; I guess it was a matter of pride).

Athletic women frequently suffer from amenorrhea, which means it's not unusual for them to go without periods for months. Unless they have some kind of other physical indication of pregnancy, such as morning sickness, they'll never have a clue they're pregnant until they have significant weight gain. Some women have even gone to term without realizing they're pregnant.

Rather than just picking numbers like six and ten out of a hat, we should base limits on abortion on something meaningful.  What difference does it make whether the heart is beating, or there is a brain? Earthworms have brains and beating hearts. The real question is whether the fetus is a person.

We have standards for determining whether someone is alive when they've suffered brain trauma. We call it brain death, but it's really a test of personhood. What it boils down to, is there enough brain function that something of that person still remains? Do they still have their memories and their personality? Can they breathe on their own? Can they recognize and communicate with loved ones? Can they still think?

Many religious people reject outright the notion of brain death. They want to keep brainless corpses on life support forever, in the vain hope they'll wake up some day. Certainly there are instances of people who are in a coma, or locked in silence, who are still in there. We should do everything we can to help them recover. But brain scans will reveal whether there is any chance of recovery. If there is no brain activity, you are dead. The recent case in Texas in which a hospital was keeping a brain-dead woman on life support because she was pregnant with a non-viable fetus is an example of how misguided these "pro-life" laws can be.

The anti-abortion crowd's stance that life begins at conception is demonstrably false. Life begins before conception. Egg and sperm cells are as alive as any fertilized ovum: sperm cells can swim! For centuries the Catholic Church held that every sperm was sacred; man was the source of the child, he planted the child in the woman. Her womb was just an incubator, and man was the creator of life, just like god.

It was only when we understood the science that they had to back down, admit the primacy of the woman's role in childbearing. Men produce sperm by the millions; almost all of them just die off in the epididymis if you're celibate, or elsewhere if you're not. The woman's egg and womb provide everything for the fetus; the sperm is tiny compared to the egg, providing just a squirt of DNA. The male of the species can be totally dispensable: some complex creatures can reproduce by parthenogenisis (virgin birth), including snails, some reptiles and sharks, and even a few turkeys.

If you look at a fetus at various stages of development, it's clear that a zygote is not a person. It's just a blob of stem cells. As it develops the fetus resembles various creatures: worm, tadpole, possum, salamander. At 44 days the fetus still has a sizable tail. It's not until 60 days that the human fetus actually looks like a human.

Pig, bull, rabbit and human fetuses

We have known that human fetuses are almost indistinguishable from animal fetuses for centuries. In the late 1800s Ernst Haeckel raised the ire of the Catholic Church with a series of drawings comparing fetuses at various stages of development, showing humans and animals to be indistinguishable to the layman.

Some of Haeckel's drawings were inaccurate, and claims that human and animal fetuses were "indistinguishable" were false: there are extremely subtle differences that more astute observers could discern. Haeckel used these comparisons as evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. Anatomical comparisons have also been used for the same purposes (humans and horses have pretty much all the same bones in their bodies, they're just rearranged.)

But the key point is that the brain in all these fetuses is tiny. Our immensely huge brains give us the capacity to be persons. Until the brain is sufficiently developed, a human fetus simply does not meet the criteria by which we judge someone to be a person.

Thus, the question is not "What is life?" but rather "What is a person?" The answer to that is a human with a functioning brain. (Though that question may become cloudy if we ever develop self-aware computers.)

The general test for whether an abortion should be legal has been whether the fetus is viable outside the womb. The chance for survival is zero percent at 21 weeks or less. It rises to about 50% at 24 weeks. The reason is clear: before that the fetus is not an independent organism; it has human DNA, but it is not a separate person in any meaningful way. It is totally dependent on the mother for providing oxygen, nutrition, antibodies and waste disposal through the umbilical. It is essentially another organ, an egg that has taken up residence outside the ovary.

Some day preemies may survive being born even earlier. That would require artificial wombs that provide sustenance through the umbilical, rather than the primitive incubators we have today. This technological development would require new legal definitions: it should be based on brain development. A fetus is a person when it has a brain that is sufficiently large enough to function as a person's brain.

This is the inverse of being brain-dead. A fetus has no memories, no personality, no emotional connection to other people. There is really nothing there to call a person. At some point, however, it will have a large enough brain to be capable to form memories and a personality, even though it may not have one yet. At that point I would call the fetus a person, and would accept an abortion ban at that stage.

I don't know what week of development this equates to; that requires research. Premature babies can suffer permanent brain damage (causing autism among other things) because brain development is interrupted. That may suggest that the 20-24 week period is the turning point in fetal brain development. Which means that the current viability deadline may just happen to coincide with brain development.

Some states have passed laws banning abortions at 20 weeks because fetuses can feel pain. This is a bogus argument. Animals feel pain, yet we slaughter them by the billions. Inmates on death row can feel pain, but many anti-abortionists have no problem killing them. The "innocence" of the fetus is also cited frequently. But many abortion opponents favor stand-your-ground laws, where you can get away with shooting anyone who you think might harm you, even if that person is completely innocent. They call killings of innocent victims by gun-toting fraidy cats "unfortunate accidents."

The motivation behind abortion bans has nothing to with the personhood of the fetus. The tone of Mark's post shows what's really going on: it's moral outrage against people perceived as promiscuous and lazy. People want to hold dagger at women's throats to force them to be more careful. They want women to pay for their mistakes. They want women to be more responsible.

But getting pregnant is not just a matter of being forgetful, lazy, licentious or irresponsible. The pill can fail. Condoms can tear. Diaphragms can slip. Vasectomies can fail and men can lie about having them. Men get women drunk and have sex with them while their judgment is seriously impaired or they're unconscious. Women are forcibly raped.

Responsible women can get pregnant through no fault of their own. Why do we want to force them to bear children they don't want?

In the final analysis, having an abortion when you're in no condition to raise a child is being responsible.

The Solution to the Abortion Issue

With the passing of another anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on Roe V Wade, it occurred to me that solution to the abortion issue is really not all that difficult. Unfortunately, the two deeply entrenched sides make it seemingly impossible move on the issue. As I have gotten older, this issue has crept up my priority list and I think our nation needs to change the law as it stands today. There are still far too many abortions that happen every year (mostly by single women in their 20s) and this sad fact illustrates that people are being horribly irresponsible with sex. So how do we shift the paradigm?

The first thing that needs to happen is we need to tackle the demand side of the equation. Why do so many women in their 20s get abortions? Do they not know about birth control? Are they stupid? Part of this may be that sex education programs two decades ago were not what they are today. Teenagers today are taught that sex should only happen in loving, committed relationships with serious attention paid to birth control and family planning. The falling teen pregnancy rate shows that kids are abstaining until they are older or using birth control effectively and that is a good thing. A young person's mind isn't fully developed until they are 25 anyway. Honestly, I don't think people are ready to be parents on just about every level until they are 30. Younger parents are part of the reason why we have the problems we do today (see: The Michael Jordan Generation). So, single women in their 20s need to be targeted with marketing, community support, and social pressure to practice healthy sexual habits. That would eliminate some of the demand.

We can also look at the supply side of abortion and curtail it more than we are doing right now. We shouldn't outlaw it completely as that would give rise to a criminal element that would raise more problems, cost more money, and essentially create a whole new series of headaches. A woman's womb should not be a ward of the state. An embryo does not have 14th amendment rights. Here is where the question of "what is life?" needs to be answered. Prenatal development shows us that the heart isn't even beating until week 6. There is no brain function until week 7. It really isn't even a fetus until week 10. Given these facts, I'd say all abortions should be completely illegal after week 10 at least. I'd go as far back as week 6 if it means gaining concessions from the pro life crowd (more on that in a bit). In sum, it's not a human being without a functioning heart and brain.

With abortion legal only up until week 6 period, most people would pay more attention to their sexual habits and be more careful. I realize that Democrats would be loathe to embrace this but if they are truly the party of making laws that prevent people from hurting themselves or others, they should fall in line with this. Of course, they won't be the only ones that should concede on the issue. If the Right truly wants to be pro life, they should put their money where their mouths are and raise Medicare taxes to include free coverage for every child under a certain age. If changes to the abortion law were implemented as I describe above, there would inevitably be more unwanted children. We already have too many now so steps would have to be taken that these kids were taken care of outside of the womb as well. Aid could be given out based on salaries via Medicaid if need be but women who would have had an abortion because they couldn't afford to care for their kid will need some kind of assistance...certainly more than we have now.

I think that if all these steps are taken, our country would see abortion rates fall dramitally. Perhaps we would eventually see demand drop to such a point that few places would even offer them anymore. Take away the demand, you take away the supply. People would be forced to think more seriously about their sexual choices. But if mistakes are made, if a woman is raped, has sex with a family member, or is in a life threatening situation, they should have some sort of an option that won't detrimentally alter their life (and the life their child) forever. There is a way we can ALL be pro life and I sincerely believe the path I have outlined here is the best option.

It's not completely foolproof and perfect but it's better than what we have now which is, quite simply, a tragedy being perpetuated by hubris filled ideologues.

Some Art To Warm You Up

Second from the left is my favorite.

Something to warm you up for another frigid day (and the 4th cancelled school day) in the North Woods.

Good Words

"There is no sin past, present, or future that has more power than the cross of Jesus Christ. No one alive has the ability to out-sin the grace of God. No one in this room celebrates that we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. That's not what we believe at a fundamental level."  (Matt Chandler, Pastor, The Village Church)