The beginning of the universe is more at home in a theistic worldview than an atheistic one
The beginning of the universe fits in well with the Bible, e.g. – Genesis 1, Titus 1, etc.
In case you are wondering about what the evidence is for the Big Bang, here are that are most commonly offered:
Three main observational results over the past century led astronomers to become certain that the universe began with the big bang. First, they found out that the universe is expanding—meaning that the separations between galaxies are becoming larger and larger. This led them to deduce that everything used to be extremely close together before some kind of explosion. Second, the big bang perfectly explains the abundance of helium and other nuclei like deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) in the universe. A hot, dense, and expanding environment at the beginning could produce these nuclei in the abundance we observe today. Third, astronomers could actually observe the cosmic background radiation—the afterglow of the explosion—from every direction in the universe. This last evidence so conclusively confirmed the theory of the universe’s beginning that Stephen Hawking said, “It is the discovery of the century, if not of all time.”
(Above Video) The caller notes that the narrative is that the Islamic State would have still come to power even if we kept troops in Iraq. Which is true, they would have still come to existence, in Syria. But Iraq would not have lost any cities or territories if we still had a presence in Iraq. The caller mentioned a force of 10,000 troops, it would have been closer to 30,000 troops. And having a base of operations in country would have allowed the administration to deal more effectively with the Islamic State in Syria (flying sorties, and supporting quick reaction [spec-ops] units activity), and the like.
(Above Video) Megyn Kelly Destroys Jen Psaki who can’t get off talking points.
(Above Video) Larry Elder (and Paul Bremer) dismantle older as well as new mantras flying around via our friends on the left. In the interview that is the centerpiece of the segment[s] here via Larry Elder, Erin “Monkey” Burnett gets all of her talking points smacked down. The only thing Miss Burnett accomplished was showing her bias/sarcasm well.
Here Bremer educates Erin with facts she knew, but refuses to deploy in her logic because it would ruin her defense of her Master Obama, “The planning in 2011, leaked very heavily from the Pentagon and the White House was to keep 20 to 30 thousand troops after 2011, the White House leaked that it wanted to only keep 3,000 troops, then they said to al-Maliki not only do we want a Status of Forces Agreement but you have to get it through your Parliament. So for the first time, to my knowledge, since 1945, we have 84 SOFA agreements around the world, we were telling the host government how to they proceed in approving that Status of Forces Agreement. That put al-Maliki in an impossible situation.”
….A dandy little edit here by the Free Beacon, via Ace. I know I’ve linked it before but the piece you want to read as accompaniment is Iraq hawk turned dove Peter Beinart lamenting all the ways Obama screwed up post-Bush American policy in the country. O wants you to believe at the end of the video here that he pushed hard to keep a residual American force inside Iraq for counterterrorism (i.e. counter-ISIS) operations but it’s simply not true. He didn’t push hard for it; when Maliki initially resisted his demand that U.S. troops be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, O took that as his cue to pull everyone out. And that wasn’t the only time he indulged Maliki’s dumbest impulses. The story of the U.S. vis-a-vis Iraq after 2009, writes Beinart, is a story of disinterest and disengagement:
The decline of U.S. leverage in Iraq simply reinforced the attitude Obama had held since 2009: Let Maliki do whatever he wants so long as he keeps Iraq off the front page.
On December 12, 2011, just days before the final U.S. troops departed Iraq, Maliki visited the White House. According to Nasr, he told Obama that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, an Iraqiya leader and the highest-ranking Sunni in his government, supported terrorism. Maliki, argues Nasr, was testing Obama, probing to see how the U.S. would react if he began cleansing his government of Sunnis. Obama replied that it was a domestic Iraqi affair. After the meeting, Nasr claims, Maliki told aides, “See! The Americans don’t care.”
In public remarks after the meeting, Obama praised Maliki for leading “Iraq’s most inclusive government yet.” Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh al-Mutlaq, another Sunni, told CNN he was “shocked” by the president’s comments. “There will be a day,” he predicted, “whereby the Americans will realize that they were deceived by al-Maliki … and they will regret that.”
And now the day has come. Remember that the next time O walks out to the podium and acts indignant about Maliki clinging to power.
One more bit, this from Dexter Filkins, on just how much of a fight O put up in demanding a residual troop presence:
President Obama, too, was ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq. For several months, American officials told me, they were unable to answer basic questions in meetings with Iraqis—like how many troops they wanted to leave behind—because the Administration had not decided. “We got no guidance from the White House,” Jeffrey told me. “We didn’t know where the President was. Maliki kept saying, ‘I don’t know what I have to sell.’ ” At one meeting, Maliki said that he was willing to sign an executive agreement granting the soldiers permission to stay, if he didn’t have to persuade the parliament to accept immunity. The Obama Administration quickly rejected the idea. “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Sami al-Askari, the Iraqi member of parliament, said…
Obama’s Apologists: The president isn’t going to Louisiana because he “detests theatrical politics.” (Really, they want us to believe the president who staged a photo–op with a bunch of faux-doctors in white lab coats to sell ObamaCare hates theatrical politics.)
Really, though, Obama supporters don’t give a damn about Obama’s response to the disaster, and they never really cared about Bush’s expect to the extent they could use the latter as a political cudgel against him. Leftists care about power, andnothing else.
President Barack Obama has come under criticism from Republicans for refusing to interrupt his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to visit or even personally comment on the devastating flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that has killed more than a dozen and devastated the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, but he’s gotten a pass from Democrats and the mainstream media.
In 2008, however, then Senator Obama was much less forgiving of President Bush’s handling of the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, attacking him for flying over the flooded city rather than visiting it.
Supporters of President Obama have not criticized him for golfing during the crisis, saying a presidential visit would be logistically problematic considering the security requirements in the midst of rescue efforts. No such understanding was extended to President Bush during Katrina, even though he visited the area only a few days later.
Barack Obama offered no such understanding when Bush occupied the Oval Office….
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan (search), who was camped outside President Bush’s Texas ranch for the past few weeks, says Hurricane Katrina (search) is all President Bush’s fault, insisting that the president is “[now] heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (search), son of the late New York Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy, says Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour (search) is the one to blame for Hurricane Katrina. In a column posted online, Kennedy says Barbour played a “central role … in derailing” international efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Kennedy says a 2001 memo from Barbour — then a lobbyist — to the Bush administration persuaded the president to oppose carbon dioxide restrictions. So, Kennedy insists, “Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged.” (FOX – Sept 2005)
Record flooding of the Mississippi River and its tributaries has already left at least 20 dead in Missouri and Illinois and forced thousands in the Midwest to evacuate their homes. Local, state, and federal agencies as well as the Red Cross are assisting in the rescue and evacuation efforts in what is turning out to be the worst flood in the region since 1993. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is monitoring 19 area levees at risk as the flood waters continue to rise. Follow us for live updates below. (Breitbart – Dec 2015)
EAST BATON ROUGE, La. — More than 20,000 people have been rescued after massive floods swept across Louisiana, and officials warned Sunday that even though the rain had subsided, dangers loomed. “It’s not over,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Sunday. “The water’s going to rise in many areas. It’s no time to let the guard down.” Edwards said crews had already rescued more than 20,000 people and hundreds of pets. More than 10,000 people — many in the Baton Rouge area — were in shelters on Sunday night, Edwards said during a news conference. The flooding killed at least four people. The latest casualty was reported Sunday night, with officials confirming that a 59-year-old man was swept away by the current while walking along a road in Tangipahoa City on Friday. The man, who was not identified, drowned, said Devin George, director of the state registrar. (ABC – Aug 2016)
(Originally posted 12-7-2011)
(You have to know a little bit about the furor over Katrina and Bush hatred to get the following.)
I received an email a many years ago noting that because of the Federal Governments response to Katrina in New Orleans… then President Bush showed his dislike for black people. In other words, he is racist.
Following through with that line of thinking then, can we conclude — then — that because Iowa was flooded and Obama lagged in getting help to the flooded portion of this state… does Obama dislike white people, thus, being racist himself?
Where are the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and North Dakota and helping the folks affected by the floods? Where is good old Michael Moore?
Why is the media NOT asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved this problem? ….
….Asking where the FEMA trucks and trailers and food services are?
Why isn’t the Federal government moving Iowa people into free hotels in Chicago and Minneapolis ?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines ?
Where are Sean Penn, Bono, and the Dixie Chicks?
Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes, cases of beer and television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa like Mayor Ray Nagin wanted to rebuild “chocolate” New Orleans… because that’s what God wants? [As Nagin said]
Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of shootings at rescuers, of rapes and murder?
Where are all the people screaming that Barack Obama hates white, rural people? My God, where are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Oprah, and Ray Coniff Jr?
How come you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again? Where are the gov’t. bail out vouchers? The government debit cards?
Ivanka Trump reportedly purchased an ear cuff Tuesday from the Lady Grey Jewelry website only to be mocked by the company’s owners on social media.
Sabine Le Guyader and Jill Martinelli, who released their first Lady Grey collection in 2009, posted on Instagram a handwritten note addressed to the Republican presidential nominee’s daughter after she reportedly purchased an $84 gold Helix Ear Cuff online.
The YOUNG CONSERVATIVES note some dissenting Tweets that show this breaking of privacy between the company and one it’s customers shows a lack of professionalism:
SNOPES brings in the idea that Lady Grey may have fabricated this story to increase sales, and that Ivanka never actually ordered from them. That being said, here are some more posts from FaceBook showing the distaste left in the general publics mind about such a thing:
For longer examples of Tweets that show disapproval to what Lady Grey did, see BIZPAC REVIEW.
For all its talk of being a street uprising, Black Lives Matter is increasingly awash in cash, raking in pledges of more than $100 million from liberal foundations and others eager to contribute to what has become the grant-making cause du jour.
The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy recently announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund [BLMF], a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition.
That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.
“The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America,” said the Borealis announcement.
In doing so, however, the foundations have aligned themselves with the staunch left-wing platform of the Movement for Black Lives, which unveiled a policy agenda shortly after the fund was announced accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state” guilty of “genocide.”
Released Aug. 1, the platform also calls for defunding police departments, race-based reparations, breaking, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a “universal basic income,” and free college for blacks.
As far as critics are concerned, the grab-bag platform combined with the staggering underwriting commitment offer more evidence that Black Lives Matter is being used as a conduit for left-wing politics as usual.
“It’s about time people woke up to the fact that big money is using people as pawns to stoke racial hatred and further their global agenda,” said the Federalist Papers Project’s C.E. Dyer.
Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said corporations and others may want to think twice about partnering with the Ford Foundation, the fifth-largest U.S. philanthropy with $12.4 billion in assets.
Here is another example of media correctness [bias].
CNN is editing the footage from the sister of victim Sylville Smith to make it seem as though she is calling for peace. When in reality she wants to “burn down the suburbs”.
Here is some of the WALL STREET JOURNAL article “The Sage” was reading from (followed by a portion of his article):
….As a historical phenomenon, this is not unique. In a 2005 essay in Commentary, historian Paul Johnson noted that wherever anti-Semitism took hold, social and political decline almost inevitably followed.
Spain expelled its Jews with the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The effect, Mr. Johnson noted, “was to deprive Spain (and its colonies) of a class already notable for the astute handling of finance.” In czarist Russia, anti-Semitic laws led to mass Jewish emigration as well as an “immense increase in administrative corruption produced by the system of restrictions.” Germany might well have won the race for an atomic bomb if Hitler hadn’t sent Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller into exile in the U.S.
These patterns were replicated in the Arab world. Contrary to myth, the cause was not the creation of the state of Israel. There were bloody anti-Jewish pogroms in Palestine in 1929, Iraq in 1941, and Lebanon in 1945. Nor is it accurate to blame Jerusalem for fueling anti-Semitism by refusing to trade land for peace. Among Egyptians, hatred of Israel barely abated after Menachem Begin relinquished the Sinai to Anwar Sadat. Among Palestinians, anti-Semitism became markedly worse during the years of the Oslo peace process.
In his essay, Mr. Johnson called anti-Semitism a “highly infectious” disease capable of becoming “endemic in certain localities and societies,” and “by no means confined to weak, feeble or commonplace intellects.” Anti-Semitism may be irrational, but its potency, he noted, lies in transforming a personal and instinctive irrationalism into a political and systematic one. For the Jew-hater, every crime has the same culprit and every problem has the same solution.
Anti-Semitism makes the world seem easy. In doing so, it condemns the anti-Semite to a permanent darkness.
Today there is no great university in the Arab world, no serious indigenous scientific base, a stunted literary culture. In 2015 the U.S. Patent Office reported 3,804 patents from Israel, as compared with 364 from Saudi Arabia, 56 from the United Arab Emirates, and 30 from Egypt. The mistreatment and expulsion of Jews has served as a template for the persecution and displacement of other religious minorities: Christians, Yazidis, the Baha’ i.
Hatred of Israel and Jews has also deprived the Arab world of both the resources and the example of its neighbor. Israel quietly supplies water to Jordan, helping to ease the burden of Syrian refugees, and quietly provides surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to Egypt to fight ISIS in the Sinai. But this is largely unknown among Arabs, for whom the only permissible image of Israel is an Israeli soldier in riot gear, abusing a Palestinian.
Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs….
And here is Larry’s aforementioned article excerpt:
Recall that the United Nations commissioned Arab scholars and analysts to publish the Arab Human Development Report. What causes the backwardness, the scholars wondered, of 22 Arab states, covering nearly 300 million people? Their conclusion? Of all world regions, the Arab countries scored the lowest in freedom, media independence, civil liberties, political process and political rights. The report found 65 million illiterate adults. Half of Arab women still cannot read or write. Ten million children between 6 and 15 years of age are not in school. The report points to a “severe shortage” of new writing. In the last 1,000 years, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year. Only 1.2 percent of the population uses a computer, and only half of those access the Internet. In short, the peoples of these countries lack economic and political freedom.
[….]
Democracies tend not to attack each other. The future of Iraq, the defense of America, and a successful prosecution of the War on Terror mean this: repressive, brutal, un-free, non-transparent governments must fall. A free Iraq threatens to ignite what the president called, in this most historic inaugural address, the “fire of freedom.”
Professor Peter Navarro (business professor at the University of California-Irvine – his books are here) is one of the specialists informing Donald Trump on his trade policies. This was a very informative interview and I plan on watching the documentary mentioned in this interview.
This conversation took a big step in elucidating me on the issue. I wish I could have heard a response to us (the U.S.) manipulating our currency and why this is an issue that I haven’t heard dealt with. In other words, if it is bad and really unlawful for China… why not us?
Previously the two (Prager and Axe) were discussing why people in the end reject God in light of the evidence… this is the opening challenge of the caller. (For FULL context, the entire interview is here)
The second part of the caller’s challenge is responded to first by Dr. Axe ~ well ~ and then Prager lightly tackles the first part of the caller’s “jab.”
Prager has been working on a book on this exact topic, and so I am sure we will hear more of this in the future.
I would write the Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce and just let them know this would be a bad decision for business to the wider county… maybe this will put pressure on the Arlington Fire District in the town of Poughkeepsie?
American flags were removed from three Arlington Fire District trucks Tuesday, sparking heated discussion on social media and disappointment from union members.
Fire Chief Tory Gallante was directed by the Board of Fire Commissioners to remove the flags from the backs of the trucks during Monday’s meeting. He declined to comment on specifics of why the decision was made but said he is “very disappointed with their direction.”
Arlington Fire Commissioner Chairman Jim Beretta said the board majority feel the flags are a “liability during normal operations for our people and other motorists,” and that the board had not been consulted before the flags were mounted.
The flags, which were only recently mounted on the trucks at the request of the union, were removed during a ceremony at Arlington headquarters in the Town of Poughkeepsie Tuesday.
Union President Joseph Tarquinio said he’s disappointed in the board’s direction, but “if we had to take them down, they had to be taken down the right way. At the time when the country needs unity, to do something like this … it’s next to flag-burning in my mind.”
There was an open discussion about the issue at Monday’s meeting “and each board member gave their opinion,” Beretta said.
Two board members “had no problem with it as long as it was safe and not in the way of operations,” Beretta added. Three board members “did have a problem with it for normal operations, citing liability and distraction to other motorists.”
Tarquinio is pleased with the outpouring of support — Gallante said dozens and dozens of messages have poured in from around the nation, decrying the board’s direction.
“I think (for) a lot of people … (the issue) crosses political lines, moral lines, religious lines,” Tarquinio said. “It’s the flag of this country.”…
