Whale Study Confirms Evolutionary Trees Don't Work

Institute For Creation Research

"Phylogenies," or evolutionary trees, are diagrams that illustrate how certain plants or animals supposedly evolved and branched out from common ancestors. Charles Darwin drew one, usually referred to as his "tree of life," in one of his notebooks. Scientists since then have compiled thousands of phylogenies, but they continue to conflict with one another, presenting a confused and contradictory picture of evolutionary history.

Authors of a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted that most evolutionary trees do not show extinctions, but instead depict an ever-increasing diversification of species over time. However, the fossil record does show extinctions, and the study authors wrote that this inconsistency "is puzzling, and it casts serious doubt on phylogenetic techniques [using evolutionary trees] for inferring the history of species diversity."1

This admission should signal the fundamentally flawed nature of Darwinian evolution's premise that complex life evolved from simpler forms. Are the countless published phylogenies all to be distrusted? Other evolutionists have thought so, since "an onslaught of negative evidence" consistently plagues the whole tree-building enterprise.

Since patterns drawn from evolutionary trees contradict patterns drawn from the fossil record, the scientists of this particular PNAS report proposed a new method of building evolutionary trees that they thought might fix this problem. They factored into their phylogeny-building equations rapid evolution, slow evolution, no evolution (called "stasis"), and even reverse evolution (extinctions). This should supposedly help build more historically accurate phylogenies in cases where groups of animals or plants "lack a reliable fossil record."

The researchers attempted to demonstrate their new technique by applying it to cetaceans, an order of swimming mammals that includes whales and dolphins. They formed phylogenies for five "primary cetacean groups" and then averaged the results to depict the total number of species over evolutionary time.1 But why couldn't they just have analyzed all cetaceans at once? In the end, their analysis appeared to manipulate the data until they very loosely fit the cetacean fossil record.

Both the cetacean fossil "history" and phylogeny used in the PNAS study were built on evolutionary assumptions. That circular reasoning was far removed from the actual data and hardly represents an objective approach. Despite its effort to rescue the use of evolutionary trees in tracing evolutionary histories, this report merely succeeded in emphasizing their consistent failure to match even evolutionary interpretations of the fossil record.

Since the fossil record does not contain any hints of molecules-to-man evolution, it makes sense that evolutionary trees continually conflict with it. Fossils instead show that creatures were created as distinct life forms from the beginning.

See original article with references here.

After demise of ‘don’t ask,’ activists call for end to military ban on transgenders

Washington Times


With homosexuals now able to serve openly in the military, the gay rights movement’s next battleground is to persuade the Obama administration to end the armed forces’ ban on “transgenders,” a group that includes transsexuals and cross-dressers.

“Our position is that the military should re-examine the policy, the medical regulations, so as to allow open service for transgender people,” said Vincent Paolo Villano, spokesman for the 6,000-member Center for Transgender Equality.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which pushed to end the military’s gay ban, is urging President Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity.”

It had wanted the order to happen on Sept. 20, the official date “don’t ask, don’t tell,” as the gay ban was called, ended via repeal legislation signed by Mr. Obama.

SLDN’s goal is contained on a Web page with the headline, “Working toward transgender military service.” The page states that a decision to remove the ban must be made at the Pentagon. “Relationships between transgender organizations, medical associations, and military allies will be crucial for advancing this issue,” it says.

“SLDN will continue to urge President Obama to issue an executive order to prohibit discrimination and harassment in the military based upon sexual orientation and gender identity, and we will work closely with our allies to educate and create greater awareness of this inequity,” SLDN spokesman Zeke Stokes said.

“SLDN supports the revision of medical regulations to ensure that transgender Americans may serve.”

SLDN has raised the possibility of filing lawsuits to attain its goals, which include housing and other benefits for the partners of gay military members.

A White House spokesman declined to provide Mr. Obama’s position on transgenders in the military, referring a reporter to the Pentagon.

“Transgender and transsexual individuals are not permitted to join the military services,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez. “The repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will have no effect on these policies.”

The SLDN says “transgender” is commonly identified as an umbrella term for “transsexuals, cross-dressers, gender-queer people, intersex people, and other gender-variant individuals.”

Transgenders are not banned by law, but rather by a Defense Department instruction, “Medical Standards for Appointment, Enlistment or Induction in the Military Service.”

It lists scores of medical conditions that make one ineligible, including: “Current or history of psychosexual conditions, including but not limited to transsexualism, exhibitionism, transvestism, voyeurism, and other paraphilias.”

The instruction was last updated by the Obama administration. Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, signed the new 52-page version in April 2010. If the administration did desire to lift the ban, it could have done it then, in theory.

SLDN has set up a website on Change.org for a petition asking Mr. Obama to issue a nondiscrimination order on transgenders.

Dick Morris: 'Very Possible' Obama Will Bow Out of Presidential Race - For Now

CNS NEWS


In an interview with conservative radio icon Sean Hannity, former President Clinton adviser and campaign manager Dick Morris stated that, after speaking with a Democratic strategist, he thinks it is “very possible” that President Obama might acquiesce to requests from the Democratic leadership in Congress and bow out of the 2012 race, leaving the door open for him to return sometime in the future.

“I asked a top Democratic strategist the other day and he thought that it was possible that, in January, Harry Reid comes to Obama and says, ‘Look you cost us control of the House last year, you’re going to cost us control of the Senate this year. For the good of the party you have to step aside’” said Morris.

“And, then, (Obama) pulls a Lyndon Johnson, he says ‘I’m fighting to solve the recession, and problem is because of partisanship and my re-election people reject everything I say because of partisanship, so I’m going to not run for president and focus my full time attention on solving this recession’ and then go out popular,” Morris added.

The strategy proposed here is an interesting one. With his approval ratings at an all time low, Obama is looking at a very high likelihood of a defeat in the 2012 elections and forecasters, using the examples of the 2011 special elections in New York City and Nevada, have forecast a very high probability of losses across the nation for the Democratic Party because of Obama.

A withdrawal by President Obama, with a statement that the reason he’s bowing out is to solve the recession, would likely allow the Democratic Party to recover some of its popularity and allow the president to present himself as rising above the partisan fights in Congress with a higher goal in mind. This would help the Democrats to better portray the Republicans, and especially the Tea Party, as the stubborn, non-compromising party uninterested in truly solving the nation’s problems.

Morris added that he thinks that this strategy could also set up Obama for a presidential run in a later election.

“The twenty second amendment does not preclude non-consecutive terms, he is young, (he could) preserve himself as a possible candidate down the road” said Morris. “We’ve seen how Bill Clinton is much more popular now then he was when he was leaving office, same with Jimmy Carter.”

Intriguing as that possibility is, however, non-consecutive presidential terms have only happened once before in American politics, though they have been attempted by a few former presidents. The only president to successfully serve non-consecutive terms was Democrat Grover Cleveland who won election in 1884, lost in 1888, and won in 1892.

New Life Origins Theory Has Old Problems

Institute for Creation Research

Evolutionists have yet to figure out how life could have spontaneously developed from non-living chemicals. Richard Dawkins told New Scientist in 2009 that "the most profound unsolved problem in biology is the origin of life itself."¹

Stanford University recently claimed that a team of its geologists "hasn't quite solved the problem, but they've come closer."² However, such rhetoric is misleading because the researchers' new ideas add no real hope for a naturalistic origin for life.

The team speculated that the chemicals of life could have coalesced, concentrated, and coordinated themselves into a reproducing proto-cell in microscopic "pore spaces" found in serpentinite, which is a rock type that comprises some deep ocean vents. The researchers guessed that the rock walls of the tiny pores could have protected the chemicals they contained, perhaps even allowing "the resultant organisms to survive without cell membranes."²

How feasible is that, really?

According to a university new release, "this model of life's origins is only feasible under very specific conditions. Serpentinite, a cool Earth, and an acidic ocean all must have coexisted for a time."² But many more specific conditions would have been required, including an intelligent designer. For example, the chemical building blocks of RNA—nucleotides named Adenine-5'-triphosphate, G-5'-triphosphate , C-5'-triphosphate, and Uracil-5'-triphosphate—do not all occur naturally. And when they are exposed to nature, they quickly break down.

Nevertheless, Stanford reported that "the nucleic acids that make up RNA may have occurred naturally in vent fluids."² However, there is no evidence that they ever could have and plenty of evidence that they could not. For example, nucleotides are more prone to separating than they are to joining together into RNAs, especially in water. "Vent fluids" at the bottom of the ocean would include water.

Scientists have not been able to synthesize all the nucleic acids that make up RNA, even in experiments designed to replicate conditions most favoring the imaginary life-from-non-life chemistry. In fact, origin-of-life researchers must now satisfy themselves with mere facsimiles of real RNA nucleotides.³

And what about the meaningful organization of nucleotides into biologically functional structures? That requires an input of detailed, blueprint-like information that serpentinite cannot supply. Serpentinite substitutes for a real Creator about as well as a blob of oil substitutes for a master painter.

Stanford's news release proclaims that its scientists "lend geophysical support to a theory of life's origins."² But scientific-sounding announcements like this one are deceptively ambiguous, because they have no real scientific substance to back their bold claims. Serpentinite-assisted life formation has the same problems as all previous naturalistic life origins theories—when all is said and done, they only offer empty speculations that further highlight the need for an intelligent, supernatural Creator as the source of life.
See original article with references here.

Cantaloupe illnesses and deaths - pestilences prophesied by Jesus

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
Matthew 24:7

YAHOO NEWS

Federal health officials said Wednesday more illnesses and possibly more deaths may be linked to an outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe in coming weeks.

So far, the outbreak has caused at least 72 illnesses — including up to 16 deaths — in 18 states, making it the deadliest food outbreak in the United States in more than a decade.

The heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said consumers who have cantaloupes produced by Jensen Farms in Colorado should throw them out. If they are not sure where the fruit is from, they shouldn't eat it.

Neither the government nor Jensen Farms has supplied a list of retailers who may have sold the fruit. Officials say consumers should ask retailers about the origins of their cantaloupe. If they still aren't sure, they should get rid of it.

"If it's not Jensen Farms, it's OK to eat," said Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. "But if you can't confirm it's not Jensen Farms, then it's best to throw it out."

Jensen Farms of Holly, Colo. says it shipped cantaloupes to 25 states, though the FDA has said it may be more, and illnesses have been discovered in several states that were not on the shipping list. A spokeswoman for Jensen Farms said the company's product is often sold and resold, so they do not always know where it went.

The recalled cantaloupes may be labeled "Colorado Grown," ''Distributed by Frontera Produce," ''Jensenfarms.com" or "Sweet Rocky Fords." Not all of the recalled cantaloupes are labeled with a sticker, the FDA said. The company said it shipped out more than 300,000 cases of cantaloupes that contained five to 15 melons, meaning the recall involved 1.5 million to 4.5 million pieces of fruit.

The FDA said none of the cantaloupes had been exported, reversing an earlier statement that some of the tainted melons had been shipped abroad.

Frieden and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said that illnesses are expected for weeks to come because the incubation period for listeria can be a month or even longer. That means that someone who ate contaminated cantaloupe last week may not get sick until next month. Jensen Farms last shipped cantaloupes on Sept. 10. The shelf life is about two weeks.

"We will see more cases likely through October," Hamburg said.

The Food and Drug Administration said state health officials found listeria in cantaloupes taken from Colorado grocery stores and from a victim's home that were grown at Jensen Farms. Matching strains of the disease were found on equipment and cantaloupe samples at Jensen Farms' packing facility in Granada, Colo.

Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser in the FDA's Office of Foods, said the agency is looking at the farm's water supply and possible animal intrusions among other things in trying to figure out how the cantaloupes became contaminated. Listeria bacteria grow in moist, muddy conditions and are often carried by animals.

The health officials said this is the first known outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe. Listeria is generally found in processed meats and unpasteurized milk and cheese, though there have been a growing number of outbreaks in produce. Hamburg called the outbreak a "surprise" and said the agencies are studying it closely to find out how it happened.

Cantaloupe is often the source of outbreaks, however. Frieden said CDC had identified 10 other cantaloupe outbreaks in the last decade, most of them from salmonella.

Listeria is more deadly than well-known pathogens like salmonella and E. coli, though those outbreaks generally cause many more illnesses. Twenty-one people died in an outbreak of listeria poisoning in 1998 traced to contaminated hot dogs and possibly deli meats made by Bil Mar Foods, a subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp. Another large listeria outbreak, in 1985, killed 52 people and was linked to Mexican-style soft cheese.

Listeria generally only sickens the elderly, pregnant women and others with compromised immune systems. The CDC said the median age of those sickened is 78 and that 1 in 5 who contract the disease can die from it. Symptoms include fever and muscle aches, often with other gastrointestinal symptoms.

Unlike many pathogens, listeria bacteria can grow at room temperatures and even refrigerator temperatures. It is hardy and can linger long after the source of the contamination is gone — health officials say people who may have had the contaminated fruit in their kitchens should clean and sanitize any surfaces it may have touched.

The CDC said Tuesday that 13 deaths are linked to the tainted fruit. State and local officials say they are investigating three additional deaths that may be connected.

The death toll released by the CDC Tuesday surpassed the number of deaths linked to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts almost three years ago. Nine people died in that outbreak. The CDC reported four deaths in New Mexico, two deaths each in Colorado and Texas and one death each in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Maryland.

New Mexico officials said Tuesday they are investigating a fifth death, while health authorities in Kansas and Wyoming said they too are investigating additional deaths possibly linked to the tainted fruit.

The CDC reported the 72 illnesses and deaths in 18 states. Cases of listeria were reported in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The most illnesses were reported in Colorado, which has seen 15 sickened. Fourteen illnesses were reported in Texas, 10 in New Mexico and eight in Oklahoma.

While most healthy adults can consume listeria with no ill effects, it can kill the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. It is also dangerous to pregnant women because it easily passes through to the fetus. The CDC's Frieden said that two of those sickened were pregnant women but they have since recovered.

Al Qaeda slams Iran for peddling 9/11 conspiracy theories

YAHOO NEWS

It's not often foreign leaders are chastised by al-Qaeda for going too far in their critique of the United States--but Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has somehow managed the trick. Ahmadinejad is already facing bruising attacks at home from conservative Iranian clerics and politicians on several fronts--and now al Qaeda representatives are assailing him for peddling conspiracy theories that deny the terrorist group's culpability for the Sept. 11 attacks.

According to the new issue of "Inspire" magazine--the English-language propaganda outlet put out by the group's Yemeni affiliate al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)--Ahmadinejad insulted the terrorist group by renewing past conspiratorial claims about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon during his speech before the United Nations last week.

"The mysterious September 11 incident" merits an investigation into possible "hidden elements involved" seeking a pretext for America's invasion of the Middle East, Ahmadinejad suggested in his Sept. 22 address to the world body--prompting an immediate walk-out by the United States and several European delegations.

And it seems that this was all a bit much for al Qaeda.

"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government," an article in Inspire's latest issue argued, according to ABC News' Lee Ferrin. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

For Iran, "al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world," the rant continued. "Al Qaeda... succeeded in what Iran couldn't. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories."

Iran is committed only to carrying out "lip-service jihad" against the United States, it added.

(Whether the Inspire article author is aware that his rant echoes a skit by the satirical media outfit "the Onion" in 2008 is unclear.)

Ahmadinejad's 9/11 conspiracy theories were hardly anything new--nor was the American and European walkout that they provoked. Indeed, both have becoming staples of recent years' annual gathering of world leaders for the UN General Assembly opening session.

So too has Ahmadinejad's flurry of media interviews on his New York trips.

In such a meeting with journalists following his UN address, the Iranian leader was more restrained--if not more conciliatory--as he sought to draw equivalences between the West's economic troubles and those of Iran, the target of international sanctions over its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad also responded to questions about his own reported domestic political problems with Iran's hardline parliamentarians, suggesting that the divided political scene in Tehran is not all so different from the partisan rancor faced by the American president in Washington.

The Iranian leader went on to press other supposed analogies between Iran and the West. When several journalists in attendance asked him about the treatment of Iranian political prisoners, human rights abuses and political repression, Ahmadinejad countered that violence involving law enforcement kills 30 Americans every week, and spoke of the independence of Iran's judicial system. And when another reporter queried him about Iran's alleged military and financial support for Bashar al-Assad's crackdown in Syria, Ahmadinejad denied playing such a role, going on to argue that the successful Arab rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia overturned autocrats long allied with the United States. And so on.

Some of America's "jobless, hopeless youth see no alternative but to join the armed forces," Ahmadinejad said. "We are not happy" when American soldiers die in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Why do they need to die in Afghanistan? . . . Some wish to accuse others. Yet they are ignoring their own fundamental role."

Whether Ahmadinejad will get many further opportunities to portray such narratives on the world stage is not as assured as it once perhaps seemed. The UN gathering in New York this year was missing several autocrats who had become perennial fixtures--Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and Tunisia's Ben Ali among them. And Ahmadinejad, currently in his second presidential term, is also a lame duck, as Iran is due to hold presidential elections in 2013.

World opinion swings back against Israel

Israel Today Magazine

Even when the Palestinian regime openly identifies itself as an impossible peace partner, it never takes long before the international community finds an excuse to again blame Israel for the lack of a peace agreement.

Earlier this week, the world was taken aback by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' brash unilateral push for statehood at the UN. For a brief moment, the world sided with Israel as it pleaded in vain for Abbas to return to the negotiating table.

But already on Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned to the familiar rhetoric, suggesting that the construction of a few apartments in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem is what's really blocking peace.

"We believe that this morning's announcement by the government of Israel approving the construction of housing units in east Jerusalem is counter-productive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties," Clinton told reporters. "We have long urged both sides to avoid any kind of action which could undermine trust, including, and perhaps most particularly, in Jerusalem, any action that could be viewed as provocative by either side."

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and British Foreign Secretary William Hague also condemned what they called "provocative settlement activity."

The three diplomats were referring to Israel's approval of the construction of 1,100 new apartments in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which is already home to tens of thousands of Jews. The Palestinians claim Gilo as part of their future state, as it lies on the side of Jerusalem that was illegally occupied by Jordan prior to 1967.

It is worth pointing out that while Clinton is quick to jump on Israel for building a few apartments, she has not been consistent in calling out the "kind of action which could undermine trust" when it comes to the Palestinians.

For instance, Palestinian police forces have been operating in eastern Jerusalem in violation of signed agreements for the past couple of years. The Palestinian Authority has also resumed political activity in Jerusalem, again in violation of signed agreements.

UK Atheists Push to Censor Academic Freedom

Institute for Creation Research

An atheist group is petitioning the British government to issue policy to censor academic freedom and push evolution-only indoctrination on primary school students in the United Kingdom.

Celebrity scientists such as David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins have joined the British Humanist Association (BHA) in the campaign, alleging that organizations like Truth in Science and Creation Ministries International (CMI) "are encouraging teachers to incorporate 'intelligent design' into their science teaching."¹

Students in the UK are not forced to learn about evolution until the age of 14 or 15. But the campaign supporters want teachers to teach evolution at both the primary and secondary level in all publicly funded schools.

Meanwhile, Truth in Science maintained that it "has never advocated the teaching of creationism in science lessons in schools. It has consistently advocated, promoted and distributed materials that encourage a more critical approach to the teaching of Evolution as an important component of science education, allowing individuals to follow the evidence wherever it leads."²

CMI commented:

There's no doubt that such a regime of indoctrination [as demanded by the BHA] would ensure that very few would leave school knowing that considerable dissent about evolution exists among scientists, or that many of the top evolutionary scientists admit that they have no idea how inanimate matter could have evolved into living organisms.³

The BHA coordinated the campaign with the help of several other organizations that are committed to keeping under wraps important facts about Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent with modification, such as that it is incapable of being verified through testable, repeatable scientific observations,⁴ and that it contradicts both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.⁵

While the British government under former Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued guidance that creation science should not be taught to students in publicly funded schools, the measure was never made statutory. If BHA and its supporters have their way, anyone who questions the scientific validity of Darwin's theory could be punished under the law.

But there is plenty about the theory to question. From soft dinosaur tissue and fossil feather pigment discoveries⁶ to scientists finding more useful—and vital—functions in "junk" DNA,⁷ observable scientific investigations by (supposedly) non-partisan entities are raising more questions for evolution. And isn't that the role of good science? To ask questions and try to find the answers "wherever the evidence leads"?

The BHA's campaign is yet another political effort to quash scientific inquiry, and thus innovation, for the sake of outdated philosophical preferences.

See original article with references here.

Ray Comfort's "180 Movie" - a horrific exhibition of human depravity

54 countries allow abortion, which is about 61 percent of the world population. Canada has exactly no laws governing or restricting the killing of unborn children... none. A mother's womb should be the safest place on earth for a child and yet women are killing their babies by the millions.

Adolf Hitler killed deformed, mentally ill and disturbed people by virtue of their imperfectness. Western societies are no better than he when determining that a child found to have the exact same defects in the womb are given the same treatment afforded to those with similar afflictions under Hitler's reign of terror.

Additionally, as a matter of convenience, millions of babies are murdered in the mother's womb every year because the mother decides that her immediate situation has no room in it for another human being - entirely similar to the decision made by the Nazi's regarding the "inferior" persons known as the Jews.

Should the world stand up for the millions of people slaughtered in the mother's womb every year? - slaughtered because, like the Jews in the eyes of Hitler, the child is simply not wanted? If not then there was no moral reason the stop Hitler from bulldozing millions of people into the ground alive. There is currently no moral reason to stop any slaughter going on anywhere in the world if there is no moral reason to stop the slaughter of innocent people inside what is supposed to be the safest place on earth. Watch this powerful expose' - it will change your life.

SIXTH TRUMPET WATCH! Iran says could deploy navy near U.S. coast: report

YAHOO.COM

Iran raised the prospect on Tuesday of sending military ships close to the United States' Atlantic coast, in what would be a major escalation of tensions between the long-standing adversaries.

"Like the arrogant powers that are present near our marine borders, we will also have a powerful presence close to American marine borders," the head of the Navy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the 31st anniversary of the start of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, Sayyari gave no details of when such a deployment could happen or the number or type of vessels to be used.

The declaration comes just weeks after Turkey said it would host a NATO early warning radar system which will help spot missile threats from outside Europe, including potentially from Iran. The decision has angered Tehran which had enjoyed close relations with Ankara.

And it comes a few months after Iran sent warships through the Suez canal, after the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the first time the Islamic Republic had deployed navy vessels in the Mediterranean.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to stop it getting nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it is developing nuclear arms saying its atomic program is for purely peaceful purposes.

Iran has dismissed the threats, warning that it will respond by hitting U.S. interests in the Gulf and Israel if any such attack happened.

Analysts say Tehran could retaliate by launching hit-and-run strikes in the Gulf and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway where about 40 percent of all traded oil passes.

The Islamic state often launches military drills in the country to display its military capabilities amid persistent speculation about a possible U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Germany (LEOPARD) slams 'stupid' US plans to boost EU rescue fund

TELEGRAPH

Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe's debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a "stupid idea" and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU's bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.

"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense," he said.

Mr Schauble told Washington to mind its own businesss after President Barack Obama rebuked EU leaders for failing to recapitalise banks and allowing the debt crisis to escalate to the point where it is "scaring the world".

"It's always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government," he said.

The comments risk irritating the White House. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been a key driver of plans to give the EFSF enough firepower to shore up Italy and Spain, fearing a drift into "cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk" without dramatic action.

Planting a seed... N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggests suspending elections!

Newsobserver.com

Speaking to a Cary rotary club today, N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggested suspending Congressional elections for two years so that Congress can focus on economic recovery and not the next election.

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that," Perdue said. "You want people who don't worry about the next election."

(Read her full remarks below.)

The comment -- which came during a discussion of the economy -- perked more than a few ears. It's unclear whether Perdue, a Democrat, is serious -- but her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea.

Later Tuesday afternoon, Perdue's office clarified the remarks: "Come on," said spokeswoman Chris Mackey in a statement. "Gov. Perdue was obviously using hyperbole to highlight what we can all agree is a serious problem: Washington politicians who focus on their own election instead of what’s best for the people they serve."

The Republicans sure are taking it seriously as they look to score political points. Here's a statement from GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood:

“Now is a time when politicians need to be held accountable more than ever. To suspend an election would be removing the surest mechanism that people have to hold politicians accountable: the right to vote. Does the Governor not believe that people of North Carolina have the ability to think for themselves about whether or not the actions of elected officials are working?"

UPDATED: GOP House candidate Paul Coble didn't think much of Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue's idea that congressional elections be suspended for two years so Congress can concentrate on the economy.

“That’s a proposal that only the politicians that have worsened our economic mess could appreciate,” said Coble, who is chairman of the Wake County commissioners. “Governor Perdue and the politicians in Washington may fear the message voters send next November.”

Perdue's full statement:

"You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It's a little bit more contentious now but it's not impossible to try to do what's right in this state. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

Israel: Palestinians leave little hope for peace

ISRAEL TODAY MAGAZINE

For Israelis, the unilateral motion by the Palestinian Authority to gain admittance to the UN as a sovereign nation epitomized the Palestinian approach to the peace process over the entirety of the past 15 years.

In short, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in numerous interviews while visiting the US this week, "the Palestinians want a state, but don't want to give us peace."

On top of seeking to achieve their political goals in the absence of an agreement with Israel, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' speech to the UN was, in most Israelis' eyes, an act of incitement.

Abbas' speech, during which he all but labeled Israel as illegitimate, "distorted the historical record and showed open hatred and hostility for the Jewish state," Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin told Japanese Ambassador Haruhisa Takeuchi on Monday.

Prior to his speech, Abbas' delegation handed out maps of "Palestine" to UN members. The maps erased Israel completely and replaced the entire Jewish state with a Palestinian one.

Rivlin concluded that Abbas' actions "leave little hope [for peace]."

Nevertheless, Netanyahu and Western leaders continue to urge Abbas to return to the negotiating table.

At the weekend, the Middle East Quartet - the US, EU, Russia and the UN - submitted a proposal for the immediate resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The proposal calls on both sides to set aside their differences and return to the negotiating table without preconditions. The Quartet plan envisions a rapid series of meetings, including a summit in Moscow, concluding with a final status peace deal to be signed no later than December 2012.

Israeli officials responded favorably to the proposal, while the Palestinians rejected it outright.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki called the Quartet proposal "incomplete" because it failed to incorporate the Palestinians' preconditions - that Israel immediately halt all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria and agree to the pre-1967 armistice lines as the future border even before negotiations have begun.

The Palestinian side's intransigence was clear for all to see.

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro told Army Radio on Tuesday that the Palestinian insistence on preconditions is not consistent with the terms of the peace process or American policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said she spoke to Abbas by telephone "insisting" that he reopen peace talks with Israel based on the Quartet's proposal.

Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres on Monday urged Abbas to "not waste time."

Netanyahu expressed in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press his concern that Abbas and the Palestinians are trying to "detour negotiations" in such a way as to make a genuine peace impossible to achieve.

"They're trying to get a state to continue the conflict with Israel rather than to end it," stated Netanyahu.

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the Palestinian motion for statehood in the coming weeks, but there are rumors it may purposefully delay the issue. If it does come to a vote, the US has vowed to veto the motion.

Foreign Arabs clamor to join Mossad, IDF

ISRAEL TODAY MAGAZINE

Beneath the revitalized layer of exaggerated hatred for Israel spreading over the Middle East dwell thousands of Arabs who are willing to help and even love the Jewish state.

Thanks to the "Arab Spring" revolutions in surrounding nations, a growign number of Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, etc are realizing just how good and decent Israel is compared to their own totalitarian societies, despite the fact that many were raised from childhood to view Israelis as blood-thirsty monsters.

Acting on that realization, and desirous of fleeing new regimes that may actually be worse than the previous rulers, thousands of foreign Arabs have sent requests to Israeli government agencies requesting asylum, visas to visit and even offering to serve the Israeli army and Mossad.

Israel's Foreign Ministry told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that it is receiving requests even from "members of Arab parliaments, members of political movements and other important political figures."

Many of the letters arriving demonstrate that those Arabs not content to simply be spoon-fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda have come to understand the reality of the Jewish state.

"You are the only country [in the region] that respects personal freedom," wrote Dawoud, a computer technician from Iraq seeking political asylum in Israel.

"The people of Israel are the strongest and most cultured in the region," wrote another young man from Iran who wants to move to the Jewish state with his whole family.

Houmam from Iraq wrote in to ask for a loan for treatment for his sick father, noting that "I know you [Israelis] love to help others."

Many more wrote in simply wanting to do business with or travel to Israel, activities that are currently forbidden by their own governments.

Most of the requests are submitted via the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Arabic website, though others also write directly to the Mossad and IDF.

The phenomenon is yet further evidence that while it may be far from perfect, Israel is recognized even by many Arabs as the most decent nation in the region, and certainly not deserving of being singled out as some kind of pariah.

It is also reminiscent of the Arab immigration to the British Mandate area from 1922-1947 as a result of the prosperity being created by the growing Jewish community. British records show that during those years the Arab population in the area increased by 120 percent, far outpacing the community's rate of natural growth.

Jew arrested for praying on Temple Mount

ISRAEL TODAY MAGAZINE

A 76-year-old Jewish man was arrested and questioned for the crime of reciting a brief blessing over a bottle of water while touring Jerusalem's Temple Mount on Sunday.

Israel National News reports that Yosef Hacohen was part of a group of religious Jews visiting the most holy site in Judaism when he began to feel ill. Being religious, he wanted to say a quiet blessing before drinking his water in hopes that both the prayer and the refreshment would help him feel better.

The Muslim watchmen who were trailing the group were having none of it, and immediately complained to nearby Israeli police officers that a Jew had dared to pray atop the Temple Mount, which is today occupied by two mosques.

The officers arrested the elderly Hacohen and another group member who had helped him recite the blessing and took them both in for questioning.

The group leader, Rabbi Menachem Shouraki, said other Muslim guards had been taunting the Jewish visitors prior to Hacohen's arrest. He noted that the Muslims seemed more agitated and hostile than usual, and attributed it to this week's Palestinian statehood bid at the UN. Shouraki believe's Hacohen's arrest was the result of the Israeli authorities trying to appease the Muslims in order to avoid an outbreak of violence.

Jerusalem's Temple Mount remains one of the only places on earth where a Jew is legally forbidden to pray, simply because he is a Jew (Christians are also forbidden to pray there). What makes that fact all the more despicable is that the Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site.

HAMAS says NO to Palestinian State - Would rather keep fighting

IMRA

Hamas concerned Palestinian state will not attack Israel

Abbas to soon launch ‘in-depth’ talks with Hamas

25-09-2011,09:37
http://www.qassam.ps/news-4944-Abbas_to_soon_launch_in_depth_talks_with_Hamas.html

Al Qassam website - De facto Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he
would launch “in-depth talks” with Palestinian resistance group Hamas on
issues pertaining to the government and “Palestinian horizons”.

This came in remarks by Abbas during his return trip from the UN General
Assembly after applying for full membership in the United Nations for the
Palestinians.

“We will hold in-depth talks with Hamas in the coming period not only to
address reconciliation but the in-depth talks will be around the general
horizons of the Palestinians’ action,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s refugees’ affairs department has criticized Abbas’s move
at the UN, saying it bolstered the Palestinians’ recognition of Israel as
never before.

The statement also predicts that Abbas would ask the Palestinians to refrain
from all armed resistance against Israel, because if recognized as a state
by the Palestinians, acts of armed resistance against Israel would be
classified as aggression from one state against another and could draw heavy
response from Israel and possibly result in a renewal of occupation.

The statement says that by conferring legitimacy to Israel and officially
recognizing it as a state with pre-1967 borders the right of the Palestinian
refugees ejected from beyond those borders to return is put at risk.

The statement also criticizes Abbas’s historic speech at the General
Assembly for not attaining guarantees from any country protecting the
fundamental rights of the Palestinians.

Heckler calls Obama "Antichrist" in California - here's why.

A heckler shouting about Jesus Christ interrupted President Barack Obama at a fundraiser in West Hollywood California before security dragged him out. As he was taken out the man called out that Obama is an antichrist. What evidence could this man possibly have to make such an accusation? Here is the raw video of the event. This article continues below the video.



This "heckler" is by no means alone in his findings. The evidence in favor of Obama being the End Time prophesied "Antichrist" is staggering. Here is a series of videos we created detailing the overwhelming similarities between Barack Hussein Obama and the Antichrist profile given in scripture written thousands of years ago. Get some popcorn, sit down, get comfy, and be amazed.

































So - still not convinced? Oh!... what about when he agreed that "Jesus is the lord"? Remember that the heckler actually said "Jesus Christ is God - creator of the universe"... so not exactly the same as saying "Jesus is the lord". So no, Obama did NOT agree with the heckler. But even if he did it would not matter. There is a principle that exists in Islam called Taqiyya: Lying In Order To Spread Islam, is why non-Muslims cannot trust Muslims. And why Sunni cannot trust Shiite and visa versa. Islam is a religion of deception. It is all about dominating the world so that Muslims might go to paradise instead of hell. The greatest thing a Muslim could do, is to infiltrate the White House using Allah's given right to deceive his way to the top, in order to destroy America and it's non-Muslim allies, and allow for Islam to once again dominate the world. Watch this!

Trace Metals Study Refutes Evolution

Institute for Creation Research

In 1993, a fossil of a long-tailed bird was found in China that still contained feathers and bones. The fossilized Confuciusornis sanctus is supposedly 120 million years old, but observation has shown that original organic materials such as bones and feathers break down in just thousands of years, even if bacteria aren't present.

Analysis of the fossil's specific metals has yielded some spectacular results, confirming that the bird couldn't possibly have died millions of years ago. In a study appearing in Science, researchers used a new imaging technique to record the distribution of specific metal elements, like copper, across the surface of the fossil and compared that with modern feathers. Copper gives color to modern bird feathers and is held in place by carbon-rich organic molecules called melanins.

They found that the copper in extant feathers was in the same layout as the visible fossil feather outline and was highly concentrated right where they observed tiny barrel-shaped pigment-bearing structures called eumelanosomes.

To confirm that the copper was still integrated with the original organic melanin, the researchers used a scanning technique called XANES on three fossils, including C. sanctus. And indeed, the copper-melanin structures in the fossils resemble those of a living species of cuttlefish.1 In short, even after the more than 100 million years since the C. sanctus feathers and bones were supposedly buried, their molecular structures still match those of currently living creatures.

If this fossil is 120 million years old, its original copper and calcium should have, by virtue of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, leached out from the fossil into the surrounding rock layers.2 Instead, the scientists verified that almost no leaching has occurred.

In only half a million years, these very highly organized biomolecules would have completely broken apart, and their associated copper should now appear randomly distributed among the rocks, having naturally diffused into the surroundings. However, the original organic molecules have hardly decayed.

Overall, the study authors concluded that "the trace metal detail shown in Figure 1 is most likely derived from original eumelanin chelates [metal-holding molecules] in the feathers."1 Their use of the word "original" is significant, because it means that the fissile organic molecules had not been altered into more resistant chemicals. This means that the dead bird must have been fossilized in a recent catastrophe3 thousands—not millions—of years ago.

Original Article with references here.

Lesbian's removal from plane shows CONSERVATIVE values still prevail

Associated Press

A lesbian actress who starred in "The L-Word" said she kissed a girl — and got escorted off of a Southwest Airlines flight on Monday for doing it.

Leisha Hailey took to Twitter to call for a boycott of the carrier after a flight attendant told them other passengers had complained after witnessing the affection.

Her first tweet said: "I have been discriminated against." She later added, "Since when is showing affection to someone you love illegal?"

Southwest Airlines Co. responded on its website that Hailey was approached "based solely on behavior and not gender." The airline's four-sentence response said passengers were characterizing the behavior as excessive.

A discussion followed on the flight, and the airline said it "escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground."

Hailey was a musician before joining the cast of the Showtime drama featuring the lives of lesbian friends and lovers living in Los Angeles. She played the character Alice Pieszecki.

The actress and her unidentified girlfriend were on a flight from Baltimore to St. Louis. The kissing occurred in the air and a discussion followed when the plane landed.

Hailey said the encounter between the couple and a flight attendant was recorded.

A message seeking comment from Halley's spokeswoman, Libby Coffey, was not immediately returned.

Southwest's website says it is the official airline of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Herndon Graddick, senior director of programs at GLAAD, said in an email that "GLAAD contacted Southwest to call for additional actions beyond tonight's statement that ensure all customers feel comfortable and welcomed while traveling."

Earlier this month, the Dallas-based airline kicked off Green Day's lead man Billie Joe Armstrong for wearing his pants too low. The Grammy winner was escorted off a plane after failing to follow a flight attendant's directive to pull the pants up.

Southwest also removed director Kevin Smith from a flight last year because he didn't fit properly in a single seat. His first tweet read, "Dear (at)SouthwestAir I know I'm fat, but was (the) captain (...) really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?"

Halley is preparing to launch a 21-city tour to promote breast cancer awareness.

Federal Reserve wants to be YOUR big brother

Economic Collapse

The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution". In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any "positive" feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.

You can read this "Request for Proposal" right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes....

"The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal ("RFP") was created in an effort to support FRBNY's Social Media Listening Platforms initiative."

A system like this is not cheap. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important. In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet. It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.

"Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document."

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on "billions of conversations" and to actually determine the "sentiment" of those that are participating in those conversations.

Of course it will be those conversations that are "negative" about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.

"Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers"

Uh oh. So they plan to "identify" key bloggers and influencers?

What exactly do they plan to do once they "identify" them?

"The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube."

Hopefully you understand this already, but nothing posted on the Internet is ever anonymous. Everything on the Internet is gathered by a vast host of organizations and is used for a wide variety of purposes. Data mining has become a billion dollar industry, and it is only going to keep growing.

You may think that you are "anonymous" when you criticize organizations like the Fed, but the truth is that if you are loud enough they will see it and they will make a record of it.

"The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations. It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics."

Why do they need to perform "sentiment analysis"?

If someone is identified as being overly "negative" about the Fed, what will they do about it?

"The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger."

This sounds very much like the kind of "keyword" intelligence gathering systems that are currently in use by major governments around the globe.

Very, very creepy stuff.

Are you disturbed yet?

For those of us that write about the Federal Reserve a lot, this is very sobering news.

I wonder what the Fed will think about the following articles that I have posted on this site....

*Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant: The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once Again

*Celebrating Independence Yet Enslaved To Debt

*19 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is At The Heart Of Our Economic Problems

*Is Ben Bernanke A Liar, A Lunatic Or Is He Just Completely And Totally Incompetent?

*10 Things That Would Be Different If The Federal Reserve Had Never Been Created

What is their "Social Media Monitoring Solution" going to think about those articles?

Unfortunately, this is all part of a very disturbing trend.

Recently, a very creepy website known as "Attack Watch" was launched to gather information on those saying "negative" things about Barack Obama.

Suddenly, everyone seems obsessed with what you and I are saying.

This just shows how the power of the alternative media is growing.

Not only that, but it seems as though the government also wants to gather as much information on all of us as possible.

For example, a new rule is being proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would force health insurance companies to submit detailed health care information about all of their customers to the federal government.

Every single day our privacy is being stripped away a little bit more.

But now it is often not just enough for them to know what we are doing and saying. Instead, the "authorities" are increasingly stepping in to silence important voices.

One of the most recent examples of this was when Activistpost was taken down by Google. We are still awaiting word on why this was done.

Sadly, the silencing of Activistpost is far from an isolated incident.

Hordes of YouTube accounts have been shut down for their political viewpoints.

Quite a few very prominent alternative media websites have been censored or attacked because of what they stand for.

So why is this happening? Well, it turns out that the power of the alternative media is growing. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, 43 percent of Americans say that they get their news on national and international issues from the Internet. Back in 1999, that figure was sitting at just 6 percent.

The American people are sick and tired of getting "canned news", and they are increasingly turning to the Internet in a search for the truth.

As I have written about previously, the mainstream media in this country is overwhelmingly dominated by just 6 very powerful corporations....

Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don't really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The "news" that we get from various mainstream sources seems to always be so similar. It is as if nearly all mainstream news organizations are reading from the same script. The American people know that they are not getting the whole truth and they have been increasingly looking to alternative sources.

The monopoly over the news that the mainstream media once possessed has been broken. The alternative media is now creating some huge problems for organizations that were once very closely protected by the mainstream media.

The American people are starting to wake up and they are starting to get very upset about a lot of the corruption that has been going on in our society.

But it turns out that the "authorities" don't like it too much when Americans try to actually exercise free speech in America today. For example, you can see recent video of female protesters in New York City being penned in by police and then brutally maced right here.

Are you sickened by that?

You should be.

What the "authorities" want is for us to shut up, sit in our homes and act as if nothing wrong is happening.

Meanwhile, they seem determined to watch us more closely than ever.

So are you going to be afraid to talk negatively about the Federal Reserve now that you know that they are going to be watching what you say on the Internet?

Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below....

Obama confuses Jews with janitors

LA Times

President Obama spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus awards banquet over the weekend.

Those folks will stick with him in 2012, of course.

But they've been somewhat miffed in recent months that the first post-partisan president is doing too many deals with those Republicans and seeming to give in.

So, Obama needed to give the crowd some presidential love. He even brought his wife along. As with virtually all of Obama's speeches recently, the Democrat's remarks dealt with selling his jobs legislation, as if it wasn't DOA on Capitol Hill.

The first black president got to reminiscing about some other struggles in the past familiar to African Americans.

His 28 minutes of remarks had a strange tone to them, as if somehow Obama was equating support for his jobs program legislation with the far more important and historic civil rights movement.

He got into the usual yada-yada about rich people paying their fair share of taxes.

And then, deep into the speech, according to the White House transcript, the president said:

When you start saying, at a time when the top one-tenth of 1 percent has seen their incomes go up four or five times over the last 20 years, and folks at the bottom have seen their incomes decline -- and your response is that you want poor folks to pay more?

Give me a break.

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

That's what the transcript says he said.

Here is what the president actually said, catching himself almost in time but not quite:

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

The president has been muffing lines all over the place recently. Last week, also peddling his jobs plan at a bridge that won't qualify, he hailed America's building of "the Intercontinental Railroad." You don't seem to hear much about these gaffes in the media for some reason.

Maybe in Saturday night's speech Obama was thinking about all those talks on Israel in New York.

Video of the president's full CBC speech, via C-SPAN, of course, is available right here.

Obama is on the West Coast now, harvesting money again and closing roads in Los Angeles after doing the same in Seattle and San Jose Sunday.

Biblical Devastation in the Wake of a 'Tranquil Flood'

INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Floods are destructive—just ask the thousands of displaced families who each year are devastated by floodwaters. Genesis 6–8 gives the historical account of a truly global flood unleashed by God in judgment for the sins of mankind. Only eight people were saved, along with representatives of the animal kingdom. The language of the Genesis record is clear—the Flood was the most terrifying and destructive event ever to fall upon the earth since the creation of the world, and no flood since has ever matched its devastating power.

But there are those who suggest, like Charles Lyell and others since, that the Genesis Flood was “tranquil”—a kind of gentle rise of the waters. This erroneous theory was exposed 50 years ago in The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, yet decades later scientific error still pervades the teaching of geology and earth history, with the strategy to drive a wedge between biblical and natural revelation, thus pushing the Bible aside as irrelevant.

The Tranquil Flood theory clashes with Scripture.

To imagine our whole planet being gently smothered by a “tranquil” flood is as silly as the idea of serenely dropping a “tranquil atomic bomb” on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But worse than that, the Tranquil Flood theory revealed at least two consequences that could be called Trojan Horses: 1) The theory was used as a strategy to deny the authoritative relevance of the Bible, and 2) the theory was used to deny the testimony of Genesis regarding the manner and timing of the Genesis Flood.

The Tranquil Flood theory denies the Bible’s authoritative relevance.

Deists of the 1700s and 1800s who rejected the Bible were faced with a predicament that hindered their efforts to explain earth’s history in ways that directly contradicted the Genesis account.¹ In short, many influential scholars, especially in Great Britain and America, professed serious respect—even reverence—for the Bible. Thus, if a new scientific theory directly clashed with what Scripture taught, it would suffer at least some immediate and principled opposition.

Accordingly, many who proposed new theories that opposed the Bible chose to teach their theories in ways that deceptively paid lip service to the authority and accuracy of the Holy Bible.² Clearly, it was a strategy to avoid public conflict with biblical teaching.

One of the most successful conflict-avoidance strategies was to promote the idea that a particular new theory did not “disagree” with the Bible because the new theory addressed a scientific topic not governed by biblical revelation. Thus, the theorist could argue, in effect, that his idea didn’t clash with Scripture because it addressed a topic not covered in Scripture.

People knew that if the new theory clashed with the information of Scripture, a conflict of authority would exist. However, skirting the informational conflict offered them escape from biblical accountability. The Bible, it was maintained, was simply not “relevant” on the topic.

In the Tranquil Flood theory, the Bible’s information was not loudly bashed as false; rather, it was casually sidestepped (and then ignored) as scientifically irrelevant.

[While] Lyell’s first blast of the uniformitarian trumpet was sounded as early as 1830…a new theory was rapidly gaining acceptance in Great Britain, which was intended to dislodge completely the Genesis Flood as a factor to be taken into consideration by geologists [for explaining flood deposits].…This was the “tranquil [flood] theory,” which maintained that the universal Flood was far too “tranquil” a phenomenon to leave any deposits whatever. Although first suggested by the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the “tranquil theory” was introduced to the British public in 1826 by a Scottish minister named John Fleming…[who alleged that] “the simple narrative of Moses permits me to believe, that the waters rose upon the earth by degrees…that the [Noachian] flood exhibited no violent impetuosity, displacing neither the soil nor the vegetable tribes which it supported….With this conviction in my mind, I am not prepared to witness in nature any remaining marks [i.e., geologic effects] of the catastrophe, and I find my respect for the authority of [biblical] revelation heightened, when I see, on the present surface, no memorials of the [Flood] event.” Charles Lyell eagerly grasped at this new theory as being in perfect harmony with his uniformitarian philosophy of nature: “I agree with Dr. Fleming that in the narrative of Moses there are no terms employed that indicate the impetuous rushing of the waters, either as they rose, or when they retired upon the restraining of the wind over the earth.”³

So, if the biblical Flood had left no global marks in nature, as Tranquil Flood advocates claimed, scientists could confidently speculate any imaginative idea—keeping their Bibles closed—about what the observable marks were, because any such marks could not be evidence of the global catastrophe that Moses described. Once again, the Bible was seen as irrelevant to geology and earth history.

Today, the so-called Tranquil Flood theory continues to leave its mark.

One day after class I [John Morris] got word that two Christian scholars were coming to ICR a few days later to discuss our view of the young earth. One of them, astronomer and big bang/old earth advocate Dr. Hugh Ross, had announced he was coming to ICR for a “biblical confrontation.”…The other scholar, philosopher/theologian Dr. Norman Geisler, also an advocate of the old earth, was coming in support of Ross….

But then came the question: What do you think about Noah’s Flood? [Ross argued for a local flood.]…At this point, Geisler chimed in to correct Ross. He insisted that the Bible clearly taught a global, worldwide Flood. But, Geisler said, it did not do the geologic work claimed for it by young-earth creationists. He held that it must have destroyed all the pre-Flood human inhabitants, but left little geologic trace on the planet. It rose, covered the world, drowned all of life on land, and then simply drained off. No rocks, no fossils. I asked how he could hold such a position, since even the minor, local floods of today do tremendous geologic work. How could a flood, which he admitted was much larger and more dynamic than any observed flood, do no geologic work? Thus, he proposed a tranquil Flood.⁴

The “tranquil theory” wedge denies that the Genesis Flood account is true.

Not only did the Tranquil Flood theory deny that the Genesis Flood account was authoritatively relevant for interpreting the rock layers of the world, that theory effectively denies that the Genesis Flood account was historically true. This sleight of hand was accomplished using the following sweeping generalizations:

a) The Tranquil Flood theory asserts that earth never experienced a global catastrophe that violently destroyed the earth’s geomorphology and its natural vegetation, but it does assert that the earth is eons old.

b) The Bible does not clearly describe a catastrophic global Flood,⁵ and never provides chronological data that negate the earth being eons old.⁶

c) Therefore, the Tranquil Flood theory does not suggest that the Bible is untrue.

But the second premise in this misleading syllogism is false, so the conclusion is faulty and false. By asserting a supposed earth history that contradicts the one described in Scripture, the Tranquil Flood theory effectively denies that the Genesis Flood account is true.

Adam sinned and the whole planet bears the Curse. The antediluvians were wickedly violent and the whole earth bears their judgment. God punished sin and His judgment was not at all “tranquil.” Only Noah and his family accepted God’s redemption.

Scripture describes the Genesis Flood as a violent judgment of our planet because of the unprecedented and unsurpassed violence on the earth—quite the opposite of “tranquil.”

Many names over the centuries have supported the Tranquil Flood theory: Charles Lyell, Carolus Linnaeus, John Fleming, William Buckland, J. Laurence Kulp, and Norm Geisler. But Moses did not, and it was he whom God chose to prophetically record the account about what happened during the one and only worldwide catastrophic Flood.

See here for original article with scientific references

Study Shows BIBLICAL sex remains the only SURE answer

REUTERS

Young people across the globe are having more unprotected sex and know less about effective contraception options, a multinational survey revealed on Monday.

The "Clueless or Clued Up: Your Right to be informed about contraception" study prepared for World Contraception Day (WCD) reports that the number of young people having unsafe sex with a new partner increased by 111 percent in France, 39 percent in the USA and 19 percent in Britain in the last three years.

"No matter where you are in the world, barriers exist which prevent teenagers from receiving trustworthy information about sex and contraception, which is probably why myths and misconceptions remain so widespread even today," a member of the WCD task force, Denise Keller, said in a statement with the results of the study.

"When young people have access to contraceptive information and services, they can make choices that affect every aspect of their lives which is why it's so important that accurate and unbiased information is easily available for young people to obtain," Keller said.

The survey, commissioned by Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals and endorsed by 11 international non-governmental organizations, questioned more than 6,000 young people from 26 countries including Chile, Poland and China, on their attitudes toward sex and contraception.

The level of unplanned pregnancies among young people is a major global issue, campaigners say, and the rise in unprotected sex in several counties has sparked concern about the quality of sex education available to youngsters.

In Europe, only half of respondents receive sex education from school, compared to three quarters across Latin America, Asia Pacific and the USA.

Many respondents also said that they felt too embarrassed to ask a healthcare professional for contraception.

"What young people are telling us is that they are not receiving enough sex education or the wrong type of information about sex and sexuality," spokeswoman for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Jennifer Woodside said in a statement.

"The results show that too many young people either lack good knowledge about sexual health, do not feel empowered enough to ask for contraception or have not learned the skills to negotiate contraceptive use with their partners to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies or STIs (sexually transmitted infections)," she said.

More than a third of respondents in Egypt believe bathing or showering after sex will prevent pregnancy, and more than a quarter of those in Thailand and India believe that having intercourse during menstruation is an effective form of contraception.

But the fact that many young people engage in unprotected sex and the prevalence of harmful myths should not come as a surprise, Woodside said.

"How can young people make decisions that are right for them and protect them from unwanted pregnancy and STIs, if we do not empower them and enable them to acquire the skills they need to make those choices?" she said.

EVOLUTION SLAMMED AGAIN - Tiktaalik NOT a missing link

CMI

Tracks of footprints found in a quarry in Poland have turned the palaeontological world upside down.¹ For years there has been a neat evolutionary story about how fish evolved four legs and came out of the ocean onto the land (figure 1). Probably the most famous fossil in this sea-to-land icon of evolution is Tiktaalik roseae, a fish with fins that was claimed to have had features intermediate between fish and tetrapods.

Creationists consistently rejected the evolutionary spin put on the fossil and showed that it had nothing to do with any alleged sea-to-land transition.² All the same, evolutionists promoted Tiktaalik relentlessly. It has its own website, ³ features in evolutionary diagrams (e.g. figure 1), stars on the covers of books about evolution⁴ and was even the theme of a song to promote evolution.⁵ Richard Dawkins, in his latest book The Greatest Show on Earth,⁶ claims “Tiktaalik is the perfect missing link—perfect, because it almost exactly splits the difference between fish and amphibian, and perfect because it is missing no longer.” (See Jonathan Sarfati’s refutation of this book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth?)

But now this footprint evidence from Poland consigns Tiktaalik and all its companion fossils onto the garbage heap. From being stars of the show they have suddenly become an evolutionary dead-end. So the creationists were right all along.

At first glance the evidence does not look very impressive. The tracks are preserved as shallow indentations on the surface of large limestone slabs from Zachelmie Quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. The rough surfaces have an array of roundish indentations arranged in lines (figure 2). But, with the use of lines and diagrams (figure 3), the authors have argued a strong case that these indentations are indeed trackways of four legged animals that resembled large lizards

The authors were even able to show the shape of the foot within some of the individual prints and identify the toe marks (figure 4). From the dimensions of the prints they concluded that some animals were more than 2 metres long.

These trackways are a remarkable find but tracks are not particularly unusual in the fossil record. Thousands of trackways of land animals have been found in many different locations all over the world. What has captured world attention is that that these tracks are dated (using evolutionary assumptions) at 397 million years, which makes them fully 18 million years older than Tiktaalik (again, by evolutionary thinking). If four-legged animals existed 18 million years earlier, then Tiktaalik can’t be the transitional fossil it has been claimed to be.

It’s suddenly been demoted to an evolutionary dead end along with all the other fossils connected with it. In other words, all those neat evolutionary diagrams that vividly displayed the transition from fish to four-footed animal ancestor (such as figure 1) need to be disposed of. The evolutionary house of cards, so proudly paraded before the world, collapses with a breeze of evidence from Poland.

A total upset

This is not some small correction or a minor detail. It has turned the paleontological world upside down. Something of the magnitude of the upset can be gleaned from statements made about the find.

• “They force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish-tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record.”⁷
• “[It] will cause a significant reappraisal of our understanding of tetrapod origins.”⁸
• “[They] could lead to significant shifts in our knowledge of the timing and ecological setting of early tetrapod evolution.”⁹
• “We thought we’d pinned down the origin of limbed tetrapods. We have to rethink the whole thing.”¹⁰
• “That’s surprising, but this is what the fossil evidence tells us.”¹¹
• “These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals.”¹²

Note the terms “radical reassessment”, “reappraisal”, “surprising”, “reconsider … whole picture” and “rethink”. We are given the impression that paleontologists scratch around in the sediments and the evidence for evolution just pops out. Creationists are castigated because they are accused of working by faith and not evidence. Well, this Polish upset demonstrates that evidence does not speak for itself. It takes thought, ingenuity, mental exercise and interpretation to make sense of it. The paleontological world is going to take quite some time to rethink its stories.

Remember that all scientists come to the evidence with their own beliefs, biases and … vested interests. Those who have dedicated their lives and careers to the standard fish-to-beast story will not be very enthused by the implications of the latest find. They will be reluctant to change, especially since they have nothing to replace it with.

Curiously, there are a few different ways they could choose to rework the evidence and hold onto Tiktaalik at the same time. If that doesn’t work they may simply ignore it. Time will tell.

For original article with references see here.