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31 December 2010

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables

When will evolutionists finally realize that there were no "primitive men"?


NEANDERTHAL Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef?

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined due to an Ice Age.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what”

End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.

Study: Couples who delay having sex get benefits later

So does either method lead to better marriages?

A new study in the American Psychological Association's Journal of sides with a delayed approach.

The study involves 2,035 married individuals who participated in a popular online marital assessment called "RELATE." From the assessment's database, researchers selected a sample designed to match the of the married American population. The extensive questionnaire includes the question "When did you become sexual in this relationship?"

A showed the following benefits enjoyed by couples who waited until compared to those who started having sex in the early part of their relationship:

  • Relationship stability was rated 22 percent higher
  • was rated 20 percent higher
  • Sexual quality of the relationship was rated 15 percent better
  • Communication was rated 12 percent better
For couples in between – those that became sexually involved later in the relationship but prior to marriage – the benefits were about half as strong.

"Most research on the topic is focused on individuals' experiences and not the timing within a relationship," said lead study author Dean Busby, a professor in Brigham Young University's School of Family Life.

"There's more to a relationship than sex, but we did find that those who waited longer were happier with the sexual aspect of their relationship," Busby added. "I think it's because they've learned to talk and have the skills to work with issues that come up."

Sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved with this research, read the study and shared his take on the findings.

"Couples who hit the honeymoon too early – that is, prioritize sex promptly at the outset of a relationship – often find their relationships underdeveloped when it comes to the qualities that make relationships stable and spouses reliable and trustworthy," said Regnerus, author of Premarital in America, a book forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Because religious belief often plays a role for couples who choose to wait, Busby and his co-authors controlled for the influence of religious involvement in their analysis.

"Regardless of religiosity, waiting helps the relationship form better communication processes, and these help improve long-term stability and relationship satisfaction," Busby said.

Source


Just like everything else, when God's Moral Code is followed, things usually work far better.

Reading what science has to say about this, one has to wonder what other things the Bible says we will onlky find out as true later on. Unless if you put your trust in God now.

How to improve Muslim PR?

Well they could
  • Quit exterminating Bangladesh's Hindus and apologise for the 40,000,000 Hindus 'missing' from their census, ditto with Pakistan's Hindus and Christians, ditto with Christians and Jews in every Middle Eastern country where they still remain
  • Quit exterminating Sudan's blacks
  • Free the chattel slaves in Mauritania and Niger
  • Quit raping Scandinavian women at rates comparable only to sub-Saharan warzones
  • Apologise for the general epidemic of rape, crime and welfare parasitism they're responsible in all civilized nations fool enough to let them in
  • Quit fighting against efforts to raise the age of consent to over 9 across the Muslim world
  • Quit mutilating the genitals of their own daughters
  • Quit forcing them into paedophilic incestuous marriages and threatening them with death if they don't comply
  • Quit murdering people who no longer want to be part of their cult
  • Call off and apologise for the fatwas against Rushdie, Lars Vilks et al
  • Quit and apologise for the princess hissyfits they throw every time someone publicly criticises their paedo prophet and generally quit behaving like seventh century barbarians.

Or they could make a Muslim version of the Cosby show.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/12/30/katie-couric-maybe-we-need-muslim-version-cosby-show

by Smorfia48 at December 31, 2010 8:22 AM, via Moonbattery

Poll: Most Americans Won’t Party or Go Out on New Year’s Eve, But They Will Say a Prayer

prayer, mary magdalene

Mary Magadalene praying. (Wikipedia Commons)

(CNSNews.com) -- A new Rasmussen Report poll shows that while most Americans are not planning to attend a party or go out to dinner on New Year’s Eve, a strong majority, 66 percent, say they will say a prayer before midnight that day.

The percentage of those who plan to pray (66 percent) on New Year’s Eve is larger than the respective percentage of those who are going to drink (42 percent), attend a party (21 percent), and go out for dinner with friends or family (18 percent) to celebrate the new year, the survey found.

“This New Year’s Eve, most Americans don’t plan on attending a party or even a dinner, but a sizable number intend to enjoy a drink. Even more will offer up a prayer as 2010 becomes 2011,” stated the poll , which was released today.

In contrast, 25 percent of Americans say they will not pray before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to the poll.

While men are more likely than women to party on New Year’s Eve, women are more likely than men to say a prayer that day, the poll revealed.

Furthermore, “Black Americans are also more likely than whites to say a prayer before 2011 begins,” the survey found.

The national telephone survey of 1,000 adults was conducted December 26-27. It has a +/- 3 percentage points margin of error with a 95% level of confidence.

Christmas is still rated the number holiday by most Americans, according to the poll.

28 December 2010

Very Religious Americans Lead Healthier Lives

Relationship holds when controlling for key demographics

by Frank Newport, Sangeeta Agrawal, and Dan Witters

This is the third article in a special multipart series on religiosity and wellbeing in America. The first article explored the relationship between religiosity and wellbeing across the Well-Being Index and sub-indexes. The second article examined religiosity and emotional health. This piece explores specific components within the Healthy Behavior Index.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Very religious Americans are more likely to practice healthy behaviors than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious. The most religious Americans score a 66.3 on the Gallup-Healthways Healthy Behavior Index compared with 60.6 among those who are moderately religious and 58.3 for the nonreligious. This relationship, based on an analysis of more than 550,000 interviews, is statistically significant after controlling for major demographic and regional variables.

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For the purposes of this analysis, an American's relative degree of religiousness is based on responses to two questions asking about the importance of religion and church attendance, yielding three specific groups:

  • Very religious -- Religion is an important part of daily life and church/synagogue/mosque attendance occurs at least every week or almost every week. This group constitutes 43.7% of the adult population.
  • Moderately religious -- All others who do not fall into the very religious or nonreligious groups but who gave valid responses on both religion questions. This group constitutes 26.6% of the adult population.
  • Nonreligious -- Religion is not an important part of daily life and church/synagogue/mosque attendance occurs seldom or never. This group constitutes 29.7% of the adult population.

Previous research has shown that religiosity, defined either as church attendance or self-reported importance of religion, is related to age, gender, race and ethnicity, region and state of the country, socioeconomic status, marital status, and child-bearing status. Because wellbeing is also related to these variables, this analysis statistically controls for all of these characteristics.

Very Religious Smoke Less, Exercise More, and Eat Healthier

Very religious Americans make healthier choices than their moderately religious and nonreligious counterparts across all four of the Healthy Behavior Index metrics, including smoking, healthy eating, and regular exercise. Smoking is one area of particular differentiation between the very religious and less religious Americans, with the nonreligious 85% more likely to be smokers than those who are very religious.

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Very religious Americans also outperform the moderately religious and nonreligious in terms of eating healthy and getting frequent exercise.

Implications

There are a number of factors that could contribute to very religious Americans' healthier lifestyle choices. Some of these factors are likely overt products of religious doctrine itself, including rules related to smoking and substance abuse. Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, strictly adhere to vegetarian lifestyles free of alcohol and smoking, while orthodox Mormons and Muslims do not drink alcohol. In some Christian denominations, gluttony and sloth are considered two of the seven deadly sins, and many evangelical faiths frown on drinking and smoking. The Bible indicates that one's body is the "temple of God," which could in turn help explain the relationship between religious orthodoxy and exercise and certain types of food consumption.

It is possible, of course, that the noted relationship between health and religiosity could go in the other direction -- that people who are healthier are the most likely to make the decision to be religious. This could be particularly relevant in terms of church attendance, one of the constituent components of Gallup's definition of religiousness. Healthier people may be more likely and able to attend religious services than those who are less healthy.

It may also be possible that certain types of individuals are more likely to make healthy lifestyle choices and more likely to choose to be highly religious. The most parsimonious explanation, however, may be the most intuitive: Those who capitalize on the social and moral outcomes of religious norms and acts are more likely to lead lives filled with healthier choices.

Gallup will continue to explore the relationship between wellbeing and religion in future articles.

About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks U.S. wellbeing and provides best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. To learn more, please visit well-beingindex.com.

The Soviet Story - Why killing is essential to communism

27 December 2010

Feminist Naomi Wolf Complaints That Porn Makes Average Women Less Apealing

The Porn Myth

In the end, porn doesn't whet men's appetites—it turns them off the real thing.

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.

The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.

But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.

Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene. Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices.

The porn loop is de rigueur, no longer outside the pale; starlets in tabloids boast of learning to strip from professionals; the “cool girls” go with guys to the strip clubs, and even ask for lap dances; college girls are expected to tease guys at keg parties with lesbian kisses à la Britney and Madonna.

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.

The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

So Dworkin was right that pornography is compulsive, but she was wrong in thinking it would make men more rapacious. A whole generation of men are less able to connect erotically to women—and ultimately less libidinous.

The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.

“For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”

After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.

Other cultures know this. I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions.

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. “Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”

“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”

26 December 2010

The Pink Swastika



Welcome to The Pink Swastika 5th (Internet) Edition.

It has been several years since we published the fourth edition of this book. In that time we have accumulated a substantial amount of new documentation supporting our thesis that the Nazi Party was conceived, organized and controlled throughout its short history by masculine-oriented male homosexuals who hid their sexual proclivities from the public, in part by publicly persecuting one group of their political enemies: out-of-the-closet effeminate-oriented homosexuals aligned with the German Communist Party.

During that same time, our detractors, mostly "gay" political activists, have increased their attacks on the book, primarily by ridiculing its premise, but occasionally by challenging certain facts or sources. They are rightly concerned that this book threatens their long-standing public-relations strategy of posing as victims to win public support for their political agenda.

When the first edition of The Pink Swastika was published in 1995, the homosexual community was heavily invested in a campaign to equate homosexuals with Jews as Nazi victims in order to exploit the Holocaust for their political advantage. The primary symbol of their movement at that time was the inverted pink triangle, which had been used by the Nazis to identify homosexuals interned in German work camps during the Third Reich, and it was common to hear "gay" activists talk about "the Gay Holocaust."

The Pink Swastika was written to challenge that campaign. Because, while there certainly were some homosexual victims of the Nazi regime, and a record of harsh public condemnation of homosexuality by the Nazi Party, the true, complete story of homosexuality in Nazi and pre-Nazi Germany does not in the least help the "gay" cause.

If The Pink Swastika were the "pack of lies" the homosexual movement claims it is, the book would not have influenced their "Gay Holocaust" strategy in the smallest degree. It would have been easy to discredit and disregard. Instead, how did the "gay" leaders respond to its challenge? They stopped talking about the Nazis almost entirely and changed their symbol from the pink triangle to the rainbow flag.

We prevailed in our campaign. And our research was implicitly vindicated. However, the attacks continued and now various, ostensibly non-homosexual surrogates have taken up the "gay" effort to discredit the book.

This edition of The Pink Swastika is designed to once-and-for-all silence the critics by emphasizing the strength of our documentation. The Internet is particularly helpful in this task because we can provide direct links to supporting documents and websites, pictures, graphics, video clips and other resources right alongside the text in an interactive format.

We hope you find The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party 5th (Internet) Edition useful and informative.

Prayer Relieves Mind in Many Ways, Study Finds

Getting on your knees and looking to the heavens may really bring comfort during tough times, new research finds.

This will come as no surprise to many Americans, as 75 percent say they pray on a weekly basis in order to manage hard situations, including illness, and emotions such as sadness and anger, according to the study researcher citing Pew Research Center data. And most Americans also think God is involved in their everyday lives and concerned with their personal well-being.

The new study aimed to find out how prayer leads to mental relief. Results suggested prayer can serve as a distraction and even as sort of a punching bag.

Always available

Lead researcher Shane Sharp, a graduate student studying sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted in-depth interviews with 62 victims of violent relationships with intimate partners. Participants ranged in age from 19 to 72 (averaging 41) and represented a wide swath of the United States in geographic, educational and racial terms, with largely Christian backgrounds.

Results showed that in general that God or another figure from religion acted as a support system for the participants. The figure had certain perceived characteristics, such as being loving, powerful and caring, that influenced why participants sought him or her out. But unlike a flesh-and-blood shoulder to cry on or an abusive partner to rail at, God was available whenever and wherever the participant reached out, Sharp said.

"If they vented their anger to that abusive partner, the result was likely to be more violence," Sharp told LiveScience. "But they could be angry at God while praying, without fear of reprisal."

For those who are not religious, Sharp said, the findings of the study may not apply unless they look to another "virtual" friend, such as a celebrity, in times of crises. [Thinking of God Calms Believers, Stresses Atheists]

Victims' stories

One participant, Monica, a white 25-year-old, said she used prayer to manage her anger over being abused by a loved one. It's "kinda like getting something off your chest, you know. I mean, you're kinda talking about it with somebody, you know. I mean, it's just a way to kinda voice your opinion, you know, about something, or, you know, let the Lord know, you know, how you would like something," she was quoted as saying.

Sharp added that prayer seemed to help self-image. "During prayer, victims came to see themselves as they believed God saw them. Since these perceptions were mostly positive, it helped raise their senses of self-worth that counteracted their abusers' hurtful words," Sharp said.

Marianne, a white Southern Baptist in her early 50s who had been married to an abusive man for nearly 20 years, sighed as she said: "I guess the number one thing for me would be the realization that there's, there was, the God out there the whole time where I'm out thinking, well, 'This is my life so screwed up. I need to get drunk. No, I need to take drugs. No, I need to kill myself.' ... And just to, to be able to just sit down and think that God wanted to communicate with me and that I'm not a scumbag in front of his eyes no matter what. Wow, how cool is that?"

Prayer also served as a handy distraction for some, Sharp found. Folding one's hands and focusing on this conversation provided a reprieve from the anxiety of an abusive relationship.

Yet the consequences of prayer weren't always positive. "For some, through prayer they told me they learned to forgive their abusive partners, to let go of their anger and resentment," Sharp said. "But that's a double-edged sword. It's good for those who are out of that violent relationship to let go of it to a certain extent. But if they're still in their violent relationship, it may postpone their decision to leave, and that can be bad."

Religion is complicated

That double-edged sword highlights the complexity of religion and its effects. "Religion is often pointed to as a mostly positive or mostly negative thing. It's way more complicated than that," said Sharp, whose results are detailed in the current issue of the journal Social Psychology Quarterly.

Other research out this month shows that religious people are happier because of the social networks they build by attending religious services. Past research has shown that teen birth rates are higher in highly religious states, and another study suggested kids with religious parents are better behaved than others.

The findings have practical implications for mental health experts and researchers who study well-being. Sharp said future research should consider prayer as an interaction instead of a one-sided act.

In addition, "psychotherapists and other mental health professionals can try to develop similar, non-prayer ways to accomplish these tasks," Sharp told LiveScience. "Since one way that prayer helps is by providing another who will provide positive, self-esteem-boosting feedback, mental health professionals can develop therapy programs that will be sure to include positive, self-esteem-boosting feedback that can counteract negative feedback in patients' lives."

Eric Clapton, In the Presence of the Lord

The bluesman has been haunted by God through his early years, his born-again period, and his recovery.



If testimony and evidence mean anything, Eric Clapton is in a good place. In February, he earned his 19th Grammy (for The Road to Escondido) and reunited with Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood for three widely acclaimed concerts at Madison Square Garden. The North Korean government invited Clapton to become the first rock musician to play the last bastion of true Communism; he has yet to decide whether to accept the invitation.

In 2007, Clapton completed a 133-date world tour, hosted the second Crossroads Guitar Festival to raise money for his substance abuse center in Antigua, and hit The New York Times bestseller list with Clapton: The Autobiography. He's been happily married to Melia McEnery Clapton for six years, and they have three little girls who think the world of their daddy, without a thought for his troubled past.

This all seems pretty sedate for the man whose work with a Gibson Les Paul led counterculture enthusiasts to declare on subway walls that "Clapton is God," the man "adopted" by Muddy Waters and commissioned to carry on the legacy of the blues. But his road has seldom been smooth.

From the age of 9 when he learned that he was born out of wedlock to his "auntie" and an unknown Canadian soldier, he struggled to find a safe place. Feelings of isolation and insecurity haunted him throughout life, drawing him to the gritty alienation of the blues. But there is a spiritual side of Clapton that was scarcely known. It almost always influenced what he thought and did, and the kind of music he wrote and played.

Clapton never set himself up as a model of Christian faith, and admits as much. He grew up in rural Surrey attending a local congregation of the Church of England, and in his autobiography, wrote that he "grew up with a strong curiosity about spiritual matters, but my searching took me away from church and community worship to the internal journey." The foundation of his minimalist faith is reflected in the favorite hymn of his youth, "Jesus Bids Us Shine":

Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness, we must shine,
You in your small corner, and I in mine.

That implicit recognition that we serve God individually — in our own "small corner" — made sense in a working-class neighborhood where Clapton found little spiritual encouragement.

By 1969 he was drawn to the genuine warmth of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, who opened for Blind Faith on their 1969 tour. Delaney's "persona of a Southern Baptist preacher, delivering a fire and brimstone message … could have been off-putting," observed Clapton, "if it wasn't for the fact that when he sang, he was … absolutely inspiring." One night, Bramlett challenged Clapton to start singing: "God has given you this gift, and if you don't use it he will take it away." Clapton, always unsure of himself, followed his advice.

Just days later, two Christians came to Clapton's dressing room after a show, probably drawn by the performance of "Presence of the Lord," the showstopper on the Blind Faith tour. To young believers, the song seemed like a tentative response to 1 Samuel 6:20 — "Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this Holy God?":

I have finally found a place to live
Just like I never could before
And I know I don't have much to give
But soon I'll open any door.
Everybody knows the secret,
Everybody knows the score.
I have finally found a place to live
In the presence of the Lord.

The two Christians asked Clapton to pray with them. As they knelt, he saw "a blinding light" and sensed God's presence. His testimony was open and honest; he told "everyone" he was "a born-again Christian." But the nature of his faith was tinged with a kind of superstition that would remain suspect in light of any systematic theology.

As Clapton's legend grew, so too did his destructive behaviors. Within a year of his conversion he became addicted to heroin, kicked it, but moved on to alcohol, sexual promiscuity, and a string of failed relationships. "Bad choices were my specialty," he said. In 1987 he hit the bottom. Failing through a month of rehab, he fell to his knees and finally "surrendered" to God, dedicating his sobriety to his newborn son, Conor.

Four years later, when Conor died in a fall from the window of a 53rd floor of a Park Avenue apartment, Clapton admitted, "There was a moment when I did lose faith." Still, he found the strength to present a session to his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on "handing your will over to the care of God." Afterward, a woman confessed that he had taken away her "last excuse" for drinking, a confirmation to Clapton that "staying sober and helping others to achieve sobriety" is "the single most important proposition" in his life.

In his autobiography, Clapton elaborates on the beginnings of his prayer life — that 1987 rock-bottom moment at the rehab treatment center.

"I was in complete despair," Clapton wrote. "In the privacy of my room, I begged for help. I had no notion who I thought I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether … and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered. Within a few days I realized that … I had found a place to turn to, a place I'd always known was there but never really wanted, or needed, to believe in.

From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and, most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray, and with my ego, this is the most I can do. If you are asking why I do all this, I will tell you … because it works, as simple as that."

John Powell is associate professor of history at Oklahoma Baptist University.

Chris Matthews Mocks Republicans Who Believe In Creation, Leaves Out 1/3 of Dems, Independents Believe Same

By Ken Shepherd
Ken Shepherd's picture

A new Gallup poll is out showing that 40 percent of Americans believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" while 38 percent believe "God guided [the] process" of evolution and only 16 percent believe evolution happened without any help from God.

Among the poll's findings was that a full 37 percent with a college degree and a full 22 percent with a postgraduate degree believe in creation.

Yet today, MSNBC's Chris Matthews sought to seize on another demographic stat from the poll to make the issue a partisan one and to mock Republicans as scientifically illiterate. In doing so he made a gaffe illustrating how behind the times he is when it comes to anthropological discoveries scientists link to human evolution:

Now to tonight's Big Number.

In a new Gallup poll, 40 percent of Americans say they believe in strict creationism, that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years, as in the Bible.

Well, how do you explain all those dinosaur bones, I ask? How do you explain your oldest living relative, our oldest living relative? Don't you love Lucy?! No surprise, that number is higher among Republicans, by the way. How high? Fifty-two percent!

A majority of Republicans, more than half the Republicans reject the science behind evolution. Fifty-two percent, tonight's Big Number.

Think about that one during the [2012 presidential] primaries.

Let's first look at Matthews' dopey gaffe -- calling the "Lucy" fossil human beings' "oldest living relative."

For one thing, Lucy is a) a fossil which means she's no longer living and hasn't been for a long, long time, and b) not even the oldest one scientists theorize is related to homo sapiens.

That distinction would go to Ardi, a fossil that is 1.2 million years older than Lucy.

Ardi was discovered in 1994, Lucy in the 1970s. Apparently Chris hasn't gotten the memo these 16 years.

More importantly, the same poll found that 34 percent of both Democrats and independents believed in the creationism, six points lower than the national average but still a respectable full third of those voting groups.

It's impossible for Matthews to mock Republicans for believing in creation without also attacking a fair plurality of Democrats and independents, many of them liberal, for similar beliefs.



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2010/12/20/chris-matthews-mocks-republicans-who-believe-creation-leaves-out-13-de#ixzz18jtqrnTE

25 December 2010

Apollo 8 Christmas

Deborah Schlussel and Christian America

By Debbie Schlussel

To all of my Christian Readers & Friends, I wish you a very joyous and merry Christmas, full of family, good food, and fun. Enjoy your holiday.

rabbisantatogether.jpg

Even though I believe very strongly in my own religion, I am thankful that, for now, America’s strong Christian tradition remains because it means that I will be able to practice my religion freely, G-d willing. As I’ve said so many times before, even though I do not believe in Christ, I do believe that America has resisted becoming a Muslim nation the way most of Europe has become and will ultimately be, because it has a strong Christian backbone and heritage. Even though Jews were an active part of every step of American history, from it’s founding to all of its battles (we fought in every one, including the Revolutionary War–American history is inextricably part of Jewish history and vice versa), and America is really a Judeo-Christian country, for all intents and purposes, it is a Christian nation.

So long as we are a Christian nation–which continues to be based on its Judeo-Christian roots–and haven’t fallen to Islam in the way Europe has, I will be safe to be a Jew. Europeans have lost most vestiges of the Christian faith. Many Europeans are atheists a/k/a future Muslims. And for these reasons, Islam is strong and growing there. Sadly, we are only a few decades behind Europe, as more and more Americans become less involved with their Christian faith and more concerned with the Kardashians.

About 75% of Americans are still Christians. While some try to erase references to Christmas in America–whether in commerce or in education, whether in Hollywood or in trying to decimate Nativity scenes at the local city hall lawn–I am not among them. I do not share your religion nor some of your religious beliefs, but I celebrate that you celebrate. Because the day that Ramadan or Eid Al-Fitr or Eid Al-Adha is a national holiday is the end of days. At least, it’s the end of days for me to be able to live in peace. And, sadly, we are heading there.

rabbiandsanta.jpg

Even Christian America hasn’t had the necessary resistance to Islamic immigration that we need and the fight against Muslims’ refusal to be absorbed in American culture that is required to preserve our freedoms and our American way of life. In that, many churches and Christian organizations have failed. They have maintained their status quo, but aren’t working on sustenance for future generations. That’s something to think about as you marvel over your Christmas tree and open your presents. Will your great-grand-children and their children be able to do the same? Will their great-grandchildren be forced to say Midnight Mass in a basement hiding from the Mukhabarat (“Secret Police) and Mutaween (“Muslim religious police)? You are celebrating the birth of Christ, tomorrow, but in future tomorrows, our progeny may all be forced to “celebrate” Ramadan and the Eids because we did not do enough to stop from becoming Eurabia, American Annex.

Regardless, for me for right now, a strong Christian America is a strong America where religious Jews can celebrate our Sabbath as you celebrate your Christmas, tomorrow.

I wish you a wonderful holiday, full of joy, family and loved ones, friends, good health, sustenance, warmth, and shelter. And even though I do not celebrate your holiday, I appreciate the gift you give me every day: your readership (and comments and tips, too). And your support. Thank you and, again, Merry Christmas.

Zeitgeist refuted em 7 minuts

God vs. Prozac : Prominent scientists show the efficacy of trust in God to treat anxiety.

Aish.com http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/48964651.html
God vs. Prozac
by Sara Yoheved Rigler

Prominent scientists show the efficacy of trust in God to treat anxiety.

David Rosmarin was a sophomore in college in 1999 when he began to feel anxious. His nervousness -- about academic stresses and social woes -- was probably typical of all college students everywhere, but when David experienced difficulty falling asleep at night, he considered going to the campus psych to get medication.

After one of his weekly Torah learning sessions, David consulted Rabbi Nissan Applebaum about the sleep he was losing. "Rabbi, would it be a good idea for me to speak to a mental health professional like a psychologist or psychiatrist about my anxiety?"

Without replying, Rabbi Applebaum rose from his seat and ran out of the room. Confused yet intrigued, David followed him. "I watched," recalls David, "as he proceeded to photocopy pages from a book, preparing a sheath of papers for me that would change my life."

When he was finished, Rabbi Applebaum placed a copy of a 61-page document into David's hands. The first page read: "The Gate of Trust in God." The pages were an excerpt from the book Duties of the Heart, written by Rabbi Bachaya Ibn Pekuda in 11th Century Spain. "I don't know if you should speak to a mental health professional about your anxiety," the rabbi said to David, "but I do know that reading these pages will help you. Learn them for 10-15 minutes each night before you go to bed, and contemplate deeply what is written here."

David followed the rabbi's "prescription." As he recalls:

To my surprise, within 8 weeks, not only was I able to fall asleep without difficulty, but my anxiety had almost completely vanished. Even more remarkable was that the improvement in my psychological state had occurred despite the fact that none of the anxiety-producing factors in my life had been ameliorated. In actuality, at this later period of time, I was faced with a grueling exam schedule, worse social woes than before, and I remained completely uncertain about my future! What had changed was my attitude towards my difficulties and towards life in general. I had increased my level of trust in God, and had gained the spiritual acumen necessary to navigate through the world of anxiety. In the same way that a medical patient faithfully places himself in the hands of a highly skilled and competent physician, I had realized that the events of my life were ultimately controlled by God's highly capable hands and that at the end of the day, I had little to worry about.
This ancient piece of Jewish wisdom elucidated a secret method of eliminating human anxiety based on spiritual wisdom.

After graduation, David entered an MA program in psychology. When faced with preparing a Master's Thesis, David remembered his own experience contending with anxiety. He started re-reading "The Gate of Trust in God," this time analyzing the text from a psychological perspective. "Less than three pages into my reading," David remembers, "I realized that the text could be understood as a complete psychological theory of the etiology of human anxiety. This ancient piece of Jewish wisdom elucidated a secret method of eliminating human anxiety based on spiritual wisdom. I presented the material to my academic supervisors who were equally impressed by Rabbi Bachaya's insights."

DO RELIGIOUS BELIEFS HELP HANDLE STRESS?

In fact, David had stumbled into the growing field of the psychology of religion, which has published almost 1,800 psychological studies in the past two decades, investigating questions such as:

  • Can religious beliefs/practices be a source of coping in times of stress?
  • Is weekly attendance of religious services linked to levels of anxiety and depression?
  • Do religious individuals have better or worse outcomes in psychological treatment than non-religious individuals?
  • Can spirituality and religiousness be integrated into clinical practice for the treatment of psychological problems?

A recent example of one such study was reported in Canada's National Post on March 4, 2009. The study, led by Michael Inzlicht, a University of Toronto psychology professor, had been published in the journal Psychological Science. The researchers measured activity in the part of the brain - the anterior cingulate cortex - that registers stress. Subjects were asked to perform a stressful exercise, called a "Stroop task."

Prof. Inzlicht said that initially they were simply trying to understand what factors would activate these brain waves, not investigate religious belief. At first, they asked people to describe themselves as being liberal or conservative. Then they asked others to describe their level of self-esteem. Neither of those parameters correlated with the activation of the "stress brain waves." Only when the researchers asked about a belief in God and religiosity did a pattern develop. Those with the deepest religious belief were more likely to let mistakes roll off their backs, while those who tend toward atheism were more likely to suffer stress and anxiety after committing an error. Prof. Inzlicht reported that no atheist in the study showed low anxiety and no religious person showed high anxiety.

Prof. Inzlicht called the study "statistically significant," and said that the results could act as a predictor to how people might react to real-world stress situations, such as today's crumbling stock markets.

THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH ABOUT RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY

Freud insisted that religion was inversely associated with positive psychological health. Esteemed psychologist Albert Ellis, ranked by his peers as the second most influential psychotherapist in history, in the 1980s claimed that people who have strong religious convictions are going to have less tolerance to uncertainty, be less resilient, suffer more from anxiety, and be more prone to neuroses.

In the 1990s, psychologist Kenneth Pargament faced off with these giants and suggested testing their claims scientifically by conducting actual psychological experiments, without a religious or anti-religious agenda. Dr. Pargament made an empirical science of the psychology of religion, and has published two books and over 150 scientific papers. He has received numerous awards from the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. In general, his studies have shown that spirituality is an important resource for people in times of stress, and connection with God can be ameliorative for symptoms of stress, worry, and depression. After reviewing Dr. Pargament's research, Dr. Ellis publicly retracted his statements and grudgingly admitted that, from a psychological standpoint, religion is "not necessarily a bad thing."

"The average child today between the ages of 11 to 13 is as anxious as the average psychiatric patient was in the 1950s."

In truth, as secularization in society has increased, so have the levels of anxiety and depression. As Robert Leahy, clinical professor in psychiatry at Cornell University, recently pointed out in an interview with Dennis Prager: "We're experiencing a major historic trend In the increase in anxiety... The average child today between the ages of 11 to 13 is as anxious as the average psychiatric patient was in the 1950s." Dr. Leahy also noted: "There is research that shows that people having a belief system and a community that supports that have actually a better and happier life."

For the past five years, David Rosmarin has worked in a PhD program with Dr. Pargament, and recently received an appointment at the Harvard Medical School as a Clinical Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry. Rosmarin has published numerous studies in academic peer-reviewed journals and presented at several national conferences on the relationship between religion/spirituality and anxiety, stress, and depression. [See http://www.jpsych.com] Although many such studies have been done among Christians, Rosmarin has pioneered studies in the Jewish community. Consistently, his research has found that trust in God as well as religious practices (e.g., prayer, religious study, attending services) is associated with lower levels of psychological distress.

SKY ROCKETING PRESCRIPTIONS

Prescription rates for all psychotropic [mood-altering] medications among non-institutionalized adults in the U.S. have steadily increased over the past 20 years. In fact, their use doubled in less than a decade between 1994 and 2002. The use of multiple psychotropic medications almost tripled in the same short period.

These anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications have side effects such as sexual dysfunction, nausea, and -- ironically -- nervousness and insomnia. Other common medications for mood/anxiety disorders such as tri-cyclic anti-depressants and MAOI's can have much more serious side effects, such as coma and death.

While medication may sometimes be necessary to help people in distress, in light of these dangers, David Rosmarin wondered whether his own experience with increasing trust in God could help others. "I decided that I must try to use the knowledge I have to help people to reduce the amount of anxiety they experience in their lives."

Together with Rabbi Leib Kelemen, Rabbi Noach Orlowek, and Dr. Pargament, David Rosmarin developed a program for treating stress and worry in the Jewish community. The program is a spiritually-based intervention founded on the same "Gate of Trust in God" that helped him so much as a nervous college student, as well as other classic Jewish texts. The program is done through the Internet, so it can be completed anonymously by anyone at any location and at any time. It requires no therapist, just the commitment of a half hour every day for two weeks.

For his dissertation, David Rosmarin has built a free, online portal that is testing the program's efficacy against an established and well-utilized intervention called Progressive Muscle Relaxation (See www.jpsych.com/dr for information). Currently, about 60 people have completed their involvement with the study, and many of the individuals receiving the spiritually-based treatment have attested to the benefit they received from it. I did the first half-hour segment, and personally found it life-changing.

To test the efficacy of the program by statistical analysis, David Rosmarin needs another 30-50 Jewish people to participate in his study. If you are interested in participating, please visit: http://www.jpsych.com/dr/

BELIEF IN GOD AND THE EXODUS

The "trust in God" fostered by this program has three key components:

  1. Belief that God is all-knowing (and therefore knows what you need)
  2. Belief that God is all-powerful (and therefore can change physical reality)
  3. Belief that God loves you (and therefore acts for your benefit)

As Mr. Rosmarin points out, it makes sense that a person who believes in an omniscient, omnipotent, and loving God will not be consumed by worry or depression.

Or does it? Isn't it possible to believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, and loving God who created the world, but doesn't care if I lost my whole pension fund in the meltdown? Isn't it possible to believe that God loves the world, but isn't going to intervene in my unemployment troubles?

Here's where the Exodus comes in. As any observer will notice, Judaism is obsessed with the Exodus. While the salvation from Haman's genocidal scheme is mentioned only once a year at Purim, and the salvation from the Syrian-Greeks is mentioned only once a year at Chanukah, the redemption from Egypt is mentioned not only at Passover, but every Shabbat in the Kiddush and every day in the morning prayers. In fact, it is a mitzvah to remember the Exodus every day. Why?

The Jewish belief in God has two essential parts:

  1. God created the world.
  2. God intervenes in human history.
God intervenes not only in epic global events, but also in the daily circumstances of your life.

Just as the first principle means that God created not only the Himalayas, but also your fingernails, so the second principle means that God intervenes not only in epic global events, but also in the daily circumstances of your life. In Judaism, the Exodus is a code word for the far-reaching concept that God micro-manages the world, that Divine Providence oversees and intervenes, that God is a hands-on God Who cares.

From the human side, the Exodus is a testimonial to the Jewish People's trust that God would indeed take care of them. Between Egypt and the Promised Land was nothing but a vast desert, without sufficient water or food to sustain a multitude. Exiting from slavery in Egypt was like escaping Alcatraz by jumping into the shark-infested ocean. As God would say to Israel centuries later through His prophet: "I remember the love of your youth, how you followed me into the wilderness, into an unsown land." Thus, on Passover, we recall not only how God intervened to save us, but how we trusted that the mega-miracles of the Exodus would be followed by God's protracted daily sustenance.

Passover is indeed the holiday of faith in God. The matzah represents both "the bread of affliction" and "the bread of freedom." The Seder is full of symbols of both suffering and redemption. The message we must imbibe is that suffering and redemption are inextricably linked, that God gives us suffering in order to make us spiritually fit to receive redemption. On Seder night, we rise to a level of faith where each one of us affirms: "You know our suffering, You can act to redeem us, and I trust that because You love us, You will do what is for our ultimate good."

As David Rosmarin declares: "With the financial markets in crisis and with growing security concerns around the world, stress and worry have gone through the roof -- particularly in the Jewish community. Increasing belief in God may help to decrease a lot of distress."


This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/48964651.html

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24 December 2010

"I am an atheist. Debate me!"

The bottom part says: "Atheist. The wiseguy of the local neighbourhood"

Abortion

Upcoming NFL star left the NFL for the Lord Jesus

Original

I find this story very inspiring. Here is a young man of 23 who walked away not only from a promising career with the 49ers, but the lavish lifestyle that the NFL offers because he knew that it wasn’t what God wanted for him. And while it took him a bit of time to get to that very point, he left it all behind for Jesus. What an amazing story!

I hope you are inspired by this as I am to find out and do what God has for you. Like Glen Coffee, God likely has a future for us that may be different than the one we are living now.

Liberals care more for the foreskin than for the whole body

The people of San Francisco may vote on a ballot measure that would outlaw circumcision.

Supporters of the bill say the decision to permanently remove a boy’s foreskin should not be made by parents.


The Huffington Post reported:

San Francisco residents may vote on a ballot measure next year that would outlaw circumcision.

The initiative, which requires 7,000 signatures before it can be added to next November’s ballot, would make it a misdemeanor to “circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of all minors, and would not make exceptions for religious reasons.

The decision to permanently remove a boy’s foreskin should not be made by parents
, says Lloyd Shofield, the proposal’s author.

“People can practice whatever religion they want, but your religious practice ends with someone else’s body,” Schofield told CBS affiliate KCBS. “It’s a man’s body and…his body doesn’t belong to his culture, his government, his religion or even his parents. It’s his decision.”

Enrique Inglesias Releases New Christmas Single: "Tonight (I'm F***ing you)"

Because nothing symbolizes better the spirit of the season than vulgarity.

By Ace.

Enrique Inglesias Releases New Christmas Single: "Tonight (I'm F***ing you)"

I like the parentheses. It makes it classy.

The song is just plain awful, but it's the first intended "mainstream commercial" song with the f-word (in its literal sense) in the title.

I sort of thought this was going to happen, inevitably, once Cee-Lo demonstrated that one could get a major, major mainstream hit with the F word right in the title and the main chorus. (Big difference: That song's great.)

Once is innovation and novelty; twice is repetition and ripoff; three times it's hackneyed and empty and they'll have to wait a couple of years to figure out the next hot button they can push.

Safest Restaurant in the World

From Moonbattery



23 December 2010

Barney Frank: Straight Soldiers Must Shower With Gays, But Not Women With Men

Homosexual Barney Frank says that heterosexual men cannot refuse to take a shower with sodomites. Somehow that would be descrimination or something....
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) says he agrees with the recommendation of a Department of Defense (DOD) working group that straight and gay military personnel of the same gender should be required to shower together when the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law goes into effect.

Frank, however, said Armed Forces personnel of opposite sexes should not shower together.

What do you think happens in gyms all over America?" Frank said when asked by CNSNews.com about the working group's recommendation that straights be required to shower with gays. "What do you think happens in the House of Representatives? Of course people shower with homosexuals. What a silly issue. What do you think goes wrong with showering with homosexuals? Do you think the spray makes it catching? I mean people shower with homosexuals in college dormitories, in gyms where people play sports; in gyms elsewhere. It is a complete non-issue.

Then why are we even talking about it?!
CNSNews.com then asked Frank why he thinks it is a non-issue.

To accept the principle that homosexuals can’t shower with other people is a degree of discrimination that goes far beyond this. We don’t get ourselves dry cleaned. We tend to take showers when we go to the gym; when we play sports,” he responded.

Nice try in moving away from the issue. The point is not that homosexuals can't shower with other people. They can shower amongst themselves. The problem is that, due to the homosexual atraction for people of the same gender, having showers with openly homosexuals makes people unease. That's like forcing a woman to have a shower with men.
Rep. Frank continued, “The notion that knowing that someone is gay or lesbian as opposed to knowing that they are gay or lesbian people that have to pretend who they are; that that somehow makes a difference is pretty silly,”

Frank was also asked if he thinks male and female military personnel should be able to shower together.

No that would disrupt people,” he said.

hahaha! And having a shower with an open homosexuals won't "disrupt" men with NORMAL sexuality?
As previously reported by CNSNews.com, a special DOD working group appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in anticipation of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, said in its November 30 report-- “Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’” --that permitting heterosexuals to use separate showers, bathrooms and bunking facilities from homosexuals of the same gender would “stigmatize” homosexuals and be “reminiscent of ‘separate but equal’ facilities for blacks prior to the 1960s.”
Nonsence! Do women feel "stigmatized" because they can't have showers with men? No. The principle that caused men and women to shower in diferente places is the same for homosexuals and heterosexuals.
The working group recommended that separate showers, bathrooms and rooming facilities for homosexuals and heterosexuals be "expressly prohibited" by the military.

Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people?” Frank told CNSNews.com when asked about the recommendation. “Do you think that there ought to be separate showers in gyms? If not, then why are you in the military?

Rep. Frank also said he agrees with the DOD working group’s recommendations. “I don’t have a problem with the recommendation. If people don’t want to shower with gay people, then they better not play sports, they better not belong to gyms, they better not go to colleges where not everybody has their own bathroom,” said Frank

If women don't want to shower with men, then don't play sport, don't go to gyms and don't go to colleges!

(Source)

Ann Coulter: Conservatives are more generous then liberals

SCROOGE WAS A LIBERAL
December 22, 2010


It's the Christmas season, so godless liberals are citing the Bible to demand the redistribution of income by government force. Didn't Jesus say, "Blessed are the Health and Human Services bureaucrats, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"?

Liberals are always indignantly accusing conservatives of claiming God is on our side. What we actually say is: We're on God's side, particularly when liberals are demanding God's banishment from the public schools, abortion on demand, and taxpayer money being spent on Jesus submerged in a jar of urine and pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with pornographic photos.

But for liberals like Al Franken, it's beyond dispute that Jesus would support extending federal unemployment insurance.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible, but it does nicely illustrate Shakespeare's point that the "devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

What the Bible says about giving to the poor is: "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians (9:7)

Being forced to pay taxes under penalty of prison is not voluntary and rarely done cheerfully. Nor do our taxes go to "the poor." They mostly go to government employees who make more money than you do.

The reason liberals love the government redistributing money is that it allows them to skip the part of charity that involves peeling the starfish off their wallets and forking over their own money. This, as we know from study after study, they cannot bear to do. (Unless they are guaranteed press conferences where they can brag about their generosity.)

Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks' study of charitable giving in America found that conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than liberals do, despite the fact that liberals have higher incomes than conservatives.

In his book "Who Really Cares?" Brooks compared the charitable donations of religious conservatives, secular liberals, secular conservatives and "religious" liberals.

His surprising conclusion was ... Al Franken gave the most of all!

Ha ha! Just kidding. Religious conservatives, the largest group at about 20 percent of the population, gave the most to charity -- $2,367 per year, compared with $1,347 for the country at large.

Even when it comes to purely secular charities, religious conservatives give more than other Americans, which is surprising because liberals specialize in "charities" that give them a direct benefit, such as the ballet or their children's elite private schools.

Indeed, religious people, Brooks says, "are more charitable in every measurable nonreligious way."

Brooks found that conservatives donate more in time, services and even blood than other Americans, noting that if liberals and moderates gave as much blood as conservatives do, the blood supply would increase by about 45 percent.

They ought to set up blood banks at tea parties.

On average, a person who attends religious services and does not believe in the redistribution of income will give away 100 times more -- and 50 times more to secular charities -- than a person who does not attend religious services and strongly believes in the redistribution of income.

Secular liberals, the second largest group coming in at 10 percent of the population, were the whitest and richest of the four groups. (Some of you may also know them as "insufferable blowhards.") These "bleeding-heart tightwads," as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls them, were the second stingiest, just behind secular conservatives, who are mostly young, poor, cranky white guys.

Despite their wealth and advantages, secular liberals give to charity at a rate of 9 percent less than all Americans and 19 percent less than religious conservatives. They were also "significantly less likely than the population average to return excess change mistakenly given to them by a cashier." (Count Nancy Pelosi's change carefully!)

Secular liberals are, however, 90 percent more likely to give sanctimonious Senate speeches demanding the forced redistribution of income. (That's up 7 percent from last year!)

We'll review specific liberals next week.

Needless to say, "religious liberals" made up the smallest group at just 6.4 percent of the population (for more on this, see my book, "Godless").

Interestingly, religious liberals were also "most confused" of all the groups. Composed mostly of blacks and Unitarians, religious liberals made nearly as many charitable donations as religious conservatives, but presumably, the Unitarians brought down their numbers, making them second in charitable giving.

Brooks wrote that he was shocked by his conclusions because he believed liberals "genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did" -- probably because liberals are always telling us that.

So he re-ran the numbers and gathered more data, but it kept coming out the same. "In the end," he says, "I had no option but to change my views."

Every other study on the subject has produced similar results. Indeed, a Google study of philanthropy found an even greater disparity, with conservatives giving 50 percent more than liberals. The Google study showed that liberals gave more to secular causes overall, but conservatives still gave more as a percentage of their incomes.

The Catalogue for Philanthropy analyzed a decade of state and federal tax returns and found that the red states were far more generous than the blue states, with the highest percentage of tightwads living in the liberal Northeast.

In his book "Intellectuals," Paul Johnson quotes Pablo Picasso scoffing at the idea that he would give to the needy. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong," Picasso explains, "we are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."

Merry Christmas to all, skinflint liberals and generous Christians alike!

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

22 December 2010

Maryland Man Gets Life Sentence, Girlfriend Shot After Abortion Refusal

Source

A Maryland man was given a life sentence in prison after a court convicted him of attempting to have his pregnant girlfriend killed because she refused to have an abortion.


Charles Brandon Martin, 33, arranged to have Jodi Torok killed when she told him he was pregnant. He has four children with Torok and two children with another woman.

Jerold Raymond Burks was allegedly the triggerman in the incident but he tried to convince police officials someone named Maggie pulled the trigger. But, at Burks’ trial, prosecutors made a case that Burks shot Torok to work off a $400 drug debt to Martin.

Martin was found not guilty in May of soliciting murder, according to the Baltimore Sun, but he was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and related charges. That came when a DNA expert testified in court that Martin’s DNA was found on a homemade silencer Burks used on his gun to conceal the shot that injured Torok.

Martin’s attorney, Leonard Stamm, had hoped the court would keep Marin in prison for 9 or 10 years, but Anne Arundel County judge Pamela L. North gave him a life sentence after officials acquired a letter Martin tried to send to acquit Burks.

The letter attempted to pin the blame on the shooting on “Maggie.”

Anastasia Prigge, an assistant Anne Arundel County state’s attorney prosecuting the case, told the Sun the life sentence was appropriate.

“Life. He is a very dangerous man,” Prigge said.

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