NYT A Case For Something That Doesnot Exist

Opinion/Editorial



 

   I have a question How can you I or anyone else for that matter tax something that doesnot exist?

Well you apparently can if you follow and buy into the bullshit of the leftist media liberal establishment crap.

  The NYT thinks you can tax something that doesnot exist.The Case for a Carbon Tax is the title of a recent oped and yes it has to do with Global warming wait I mean Climate change no wait ummm oh ok.

  It begins "In a welcome development, businesses are asking world leaders to do more to address climate change. This week, the top executives of six large European oil and gas companies called for a tax on carbon emissions.

These companies — the BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total — are not taking a bold environmental stand. They are being pragmatic. They want an efficient and predictable policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions because they realize something must be done. Numerous scientists, economists, environmentalists and political leaders have previously proposed similar ideas.

A carbon tax would raise the price of fossil fuels, with more taxes collected on fuels that generate more emissions, like coal. This tax would reduce demand for high-carbon emission fuels and increase demand for lower-emisson fuels like natural gas. Renewable sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric would face lower taxes or no taxes. To be effective, the tax should also be applied to imported goods from countries that do not assess a similar levy on the use of fossil fuels."

  Oh ok now its climate change lmao just another point what will it be tomorrow lol.Once again taxing something that doesnot exist.

  It goes on "Many countries already have some version of carbon taxes. In the United States, for example, federal and state taxes on gasoline and diesel, which are used to pay for road and transit projects, are effectively carbon taxes. But at the federal level, those taxes have not been increased since 1993, which has eroded their effectiveness.

Revenue generated by carbon taxes could be used for a variety of purposes. A lot of the money should surely be given to households, especially the poorest, through tax credits or direct payments to offset the higher prices they would have to pay for gasoline, electricity and other goods and services because of the tax. Some of the money could be used to invest in renewable energy and public transportation, or to lower other taxes.

British Columbia started phasing in a carbon tax in 2008 and used the revenue to reduce income taxes. The province’s fossil fuel use fell after the tax was put in place, even as fuel consumption increased in the rest of Canada, and the economy of British Columbia has grown faster than that of the rest of the country. The tax is currently capped at 30 Canadian dollars per ton of carbon, or about 24 cents per gallon of gasoline.

A carbon tax would also be much easier to administer than some of the other climate change policies that many leaders, including President Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, have backed. One of those policies is cap-and-trade, an approach that limits overall emissions and allows businesses to buy and sell permits that entitle them to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The United States used cap-and-trade successfully in the 1990s to reduce the pollution that causes acid rain. But a European Union trading system for greenhouse gas emissions has not been as effective.

Even energy companies like Exxon Mobil that did not sign the letter have previously said they can support a carbon tax if lawmakers cut other taxes by an equal amount. In addition, oil companies in Alberta, the home of Canada’s tar sands, have endorsed a carbon tax. Exxon Mobil and other large energy companies potentially stand to benefit from a carbon tax, because a tax on emissions would force many electric utilities to use more natural gas, which those businesses produce.

Of course, getting lawmakers to adopt a carbon tax will be difficult. In the United States, many Republican lawmakers, the coal-mining industry and politically powerful corporations like Koch Industries oppose it. Just last year, Australia repealed its carbon tax after a new conservative government came to power.

But world leaders, who will meet in Paris later this year to negotiate a climate change agreement, cannot give up in the face of this opposition. Carbon taxes are one of the best policies available to solve this global problem."

  Now gasoline taxes are a form of a carbon tax here we go.And the blame game continues.

How about this since the left and the liberal media want carbon tax gas tax whatever they want to call it why dont they pay it for us.Oh wait do I hear the crickets chirping

 

 

Ireland's Mistake NYT Tries To Capitalize

Opinion/Editorial

    Wow for the first time in God knows how long the New York Times has left the race issue alone hip hip hooray its about time.But they still have this morbid leftist stance as always including this morning.
   This morning the NYT is trying to make a big deal on Ireland's vote to make same sex marriage legal in their country.Entitled "The Victory for Same-Sex Marriage in Ireland."
   It begins "Months ago, it seemed to some like a long shot that love, common sense and justice would prevail as voters in Ireland began contemplating whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry under their Constitution. On Friday, love didn’t just prevail across Irish cities and villages. It triumphed.By becoming the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, Ireland gave a powerful boost to the quest for gay equality, a movement that has achieved a string of victories around the world over the past decade but remains a distant goal in many countries where intolerant attitudes remain entrenched.In a deeply Catholic nation that decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 and still bans abortion under most circumstances, proponents of same-sex marriage appeared to face an uphill battle when they set out to convince voters that the Constitution should give people the right to marry “without distinction as to their sex.”
  Love,common sense and justice ok a grotesque so called love style never meant to be and saying its common sense defies common sense and no soical justice according to the warped NYT.
  It rambles on "Leaders of the victorious Yes campaign appealed to voters of all ages, generations and backgrounds by keeping their message simple. They billed marriage as a fundamental right that should be available to all people in love. They produced compelling short videos that asked straight Irish citizens in a nation of close-knit families to do right by their gay relatives.

The Yes victory was resounding. With more than 60 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, a phenomenal turnout, the referendum was approved by roughly two to one.

The opposition, aided by some Catholic bishops who campaigned for No votes, peddled the hollow arguments that have same-sex marriage opponents around the world on a losing streak. They warned that legalizing same-sex marriage would undermine unions between a man and a woman and argued that marriage has an inherently reproductive purpose.

In a statement conceding defeat, the Iona Institute, the main opposition group, said it would continue to affirm “the importance of biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood.” The absurdity of that statement speaks for itself."

  No NYT you all are absurd lmao.

   It ends with "As soon as the referendum is ratified by Parliament, Ireland will join 19 nations that have legalized same-sex marriage — an honor roll that does not include the United States.

The Irish path to legalizing same-sex marriage was remarkable because advocates have long seen courts and legislative initiatives as easier paths to prevail on an issue that continues to trouble many people on moral and religious grounds. Lawmakers in the United Kingdom approved same-sex marriage in 2013. In the United States, the expanding recognition of marriage rights in 36 states and the District of Columbia has been achieved through lawsuits and legislatures. The Supreme Court is expected to rule next month on a case that could establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

The outcome in Ireland sends an unmistakable signal to politicians and religious leaders around the world who continue to harbor intolerant views against gays and lesbians. It also should offer hope to sexual minorities in Russia, the Arab world and many African nations where intolerance and discriminatory laws remain widespread.The tide is shifting quickly. Even in unlikely places, love and justice will continue to prevail.

   Any way the NYT can continue to put this country down they will

 

 
 

NYT This Fixation With Race Is Unreal

Opinion/Editorial


 

   This fixation of race with the New York Times has reached epidemic levels its sickening to see even they can't get over it.

   I'm tired of blogging about it I remember way back in 2008 when the very night Obama won the election to become President-elect the not so Rev.Jesse Jackson cried alleged tears of joy that finally to him and his racist followers that an African -American has become the next President.Of course forgetting that Obama is half white how conveinent.

  The NYT still isnt over the race issue with this Sundays lead oped crap "Housing Apartheid, American Style" is the title.

  It begins with the latest incursion into Bullshit "The riots that erupted in Baltimore last month were reminiscent of those that consumed cities all over the country during the 1960s. This rage and unrest was thoroughly explained five decades ago by President Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission. The commission’s report was released in 1968 — the year that the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. touched off riots in 125 cities — and contains the most candid indictment of racism and segregation seen in such a document, before or since.

The commission told white Americans what black citizens already knew: that the country was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” It linked the devastating riots that consumed Detroit and Newark in 1967 to residential segregation that had been sustained and made worse by federal policies that concentrated poor black citizens in ghettos. It also said that discrimination and segregation had become a threat to “the future of every American.”

  Umm the race riots in Baltimore was over a convicted felon named Freddy Gray who died in police custody had he not been a convict he'd be alive.

  Back to the rigormarole "As part of the remedy, the commission called on the government to outlaw housing discrimination in both the sale and rental markets and to “reorient” federal policy so that housing for low- and moderate-income families would be built in integrated, mixed-income neighborhoods, where residents would have better access to jobs and decent schools.

Soon after the King assassination, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, which banned housing discrimination and required states and local governments that receive federal housing money to try to overcome historic patterns of segregation and to “affirmatively further” federal fair housing goals. But the effort was hampered from the beginning by local officials who ignored or opposed the goal of desegregation and by federal officials, including presidents, who simply declined to enforce it.

A growing body of evidence suggests that America would be a different country today had the government taken its responsibility seriously. For example, a Harvard study released earlier this month found that young children whose families had been given housing vouchers that allowed them to move to better neighborhoods were more likely to attend college — and to attend better colleges — than those whose families had not received the vouchers. The voucher group also had significantly higher incomes as adults.

But little of the promise of progressive-sounding laws was truly realized. The government’s failure to enforce the fair housing law can be seen throughout much of the country; metropolitan areas with large black populations have, in fact, remained highly segregated.

   Oh about the Harvard study I would do better to if  I had a free leg up common sense durr. It doesnt take a Harvard study to prove the facts lmao.

   It continues "George Romney served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Richard Nixon. He set out to dismantle segregation and what he described as a “high income white noose” formed by the suburbs that surrounded black inner cities. Under his Open Communities initiative, he instructed HUD officials to reject applications for sewer and highway projects from cities and states with segregationist policies. He believed that ending residential segregation was “essential if we are going to keep our nation from being torn apart.”

As Nikole Hannah-Jones reported in a 2012 investigation for ProPublica, Nixon got wind of Romney’s plan and ordered John Ehrlichman, his domestic policy chief, to shut it down.

In a memo to his aides, Nixon later wrote: “I am convinced that while legal segregation is totally wrong that forced integration of housing or education is just as wrong.”

He understood the consequences of his decision: “I realize that this position will lead us to a situation in which blacks will continue to live for the most part in black neighborhoods and where there will be predominately black schools and predominately white schools.” Nixon began to ostracize Romney and eventually drove him out of his administration. Over the next several decades, presidents from both parties followed the Nixon example and declined to use federal muscle in a way that meaningfully promoted housing desegregation.

Ronald Reagan was openly hostile to fair housing goals, as the sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton have shown in their book, “American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.” The Justice Department under President Reagan challenged the ability of civil rights activists to sue for fair housing violations. The administration also conspired with the National Association of Realtors to undermine HUD’s already feeble enforcement authority.

Bill Clinton tried to bring pressure to bear on states and localities to further integration. But the bureaucracy at HUD resisted these efforts, and, as usual, the politics of the issue became treacherous.

Mr. Clinton’s second HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, tried in 1998 to retrace the path that George Romney had walked exactly 30 years earlier. He proposed rules that would have denied federal housing money to communities that flouted fair housing laws. This drew outrage and opposition from local governments that were accustomed to getting billions of dollars from HUD with no preconditions attached. Weakened by scandal and impeachment, Mr. Clinton lacked the political capital for a big fight over fair housing.

In the absence of strong federal leadership, the task of securing fair housing has largely fallen to housing and civil rights groups, which have routinely taken cities and counties and the federal government itself to court for failing to enforce anti-discrimination laws. Their lawsuits have changed the lives of many citizens who were once trapped in dismal neighborhoods.

The Obama administration has proposed new fair housing enforcement rules, which should be finalized soon, that make states, cities and housing agencies more accountable for furthering fair housing.

But for these rules to be meaningful, the federal government will have to restructure its own programs so that more affordable housing is built in low-poverty, high opportunity neighborhoods. Federal officials must also be willing to do what they have generally been afraid to do in the past — withhold money from communities that perpetuate housing apartheid.

Given what we now know about the pervasive harm that flows from segregation, the country needs to get on with this crucial mission.

  So in a nut shell with their own words in blue as I always show in every blog lol the New York Times fixation with the race issue

 

How About Some Personal Responsibility

Editorial

 

    This is the epitome of the blame game from the media this is why no one reads this crap shit sheet called the New York Times. The lead OPED this morning "Forcing Black Men Out of Society" just in the title the blame game starts.

    It begins "An analysis in The Times — “1.5 Million Missing Black Men” — showed that more than one in every six black men in the 24-to-54 age group has disappeared from civic life, mainly because they died young or are locked away in prison. This means that there are only 83 black men living outside of jail for every 100 black women — in striking contrast to the white population, where men and women are about equal in numbers.This astounding shortfall in black men translates into lower marriage rates, more out-of-wedlock births, a greater risk of poverty for families and, by extension, less stable communities. The missing men should be a source of concern to political leaders and policy makers everywhere."

  I guess that what the NYT is saying without saying it is that the Caucasian people are to blame for the ills of the racist black people out there.

  It goes on "While the 1.5 million number is startling, it actually understates the severity of the crisis that has befallen African-American men since the collapse of the manufacturing and industrial centers, which was quickly followed by the “war on drugs” and mass imprisonment, which drove up the national prison population more than sevenfold beginning in the 1970s.

In addition to the “missing,” millions more are shut out of society, or are functionally missing, because of the shrinking labor market for low-skilled workers, racial discrimination or sanctions that prevent millions who have criminal convictions from getting all kinds of jobs. At the same time, the surge in imprisonment has further stigmatized blackness itself, so that black men and boys who have never been near a jail now have to fight the presumption of criminality in many aspects of day-to-day life — in encounters with police, in schools, on the streets and on the job.

The data on missing African-American men is not particularly new. Every census for the last 50 years has shown the phenomenon.

In earlier decades, premature death played a larger role than it does today. But since the 1980s, the rising number of black men who were spared premature death was more than offset by the growing number shipped off to prison, many for nonviolent drug offenses. The path to that catastrophe was paved by what the sociologist William Julius Wilson described as “the disappearance of work,” which devastated formerly coherent neighborhoods.

As deindustrialization got underway, earnings declined, neighborhoods grew poorer and businesses moved to the suburbs, beyond the reach of inner city residents. As Mr. Wilson wrote in his 1996 book, “When Work Disappears,” for the first time in the 20th century, most adults in many poor inner-city neighborhoods were not working."

  Just more and more bullshit drabble.

 Continuing "Joblessness became the norm, creating a “nonworking class,” that lived in segregated areas where most residents could not find jobs or had given up looking. In Chicago, where, Mr. Wilson carried out his research, employers wrote off the poor by not advertising in places where they could see the ads. The situation was so grave in 1996 that he recommended the resurrection of a Works Progress Administration-like strategy, under which the government would provide public employment to every American over 18 who wanted it.The stigmatization of blackness presents an enormous obstacle, even to small boys. Last year, for example, the Department of Education reported that black children were far more likely to be suspended from school — even from preschool — than white children. Federal cases also show higher rates of public school suspensions for minority students than for white students for identical behavior, suggesting that racial discrimination against black males starts very early in life.

The sociologist Devah Pager, a Harvard professor who has meticulously researched the effect of race on hiring policies, has also shown that stereotypes have a powerful effect on job possibilities. In one widely cited study, she sent carefully selected test applicants with equivalent résumés to apply for low-level jobs with hundreds of employers. Ms. Pager found that criminal convictions for black men seeking employment were virtually impossible to overcome in many contexts, partly because convictions reinforced powerful, longstanding stereotypes.

The stigma of a criminal record was less damaging for white testers. In fact, those who said that they were just out of prison were as likely to be called back for a second interview as black men who had no criminal history at all. “Being black in America today is just about the same as having a felony conviction in terms of one’s chances of finding a job,” she wrote in her book, “Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration.”

In recent months, the many grievous cases of unarmed black men and boys who were shot dead by the police — now routinely captured on video — show how the presumption of criminality, poverty and social isolation threatens lives every day in all corners of this country."

  How many more handouts and so called lift ups do so called "Minorities" need to blame white folks is a bullshit cop out

NYT More Useless Bile In Race Issue

Opinion/Editorial

 

   It seems more and more the New York Times is living in the past in reference to the race issue.I was under the impresssion that racism was a dead issue now that we have supposedly the first (as the left throws in our faces all the time) African-American President in Obama. But I will let the truth get in the way his mother was caucasian so but as always the left seems to have forgotten that fact. But then again when has the left or RINOS ever delt in the facts.

 Today's lead Opinion crap piece is no different in this mornings NYT entitled "Voting Rights, by the Numbers."

 Dont let the title deceieve you though it brings up racism right out of the gates.

"When the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, its main argument was that the law was outdated.

Discrimination against minority voters may have been pervasive in the 1960s when the law was passed, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” In this simplistic account, the law was still punishing states and local governments for sins they supposedly stopped committing years ago.

The chief justice’s destructive cure for this was to throw out the formula Congress devised in 1965 that required all or parts of 16 states with long histories of overt racial discrimination in voting, most in the South, to get approval from the federal government for any proposed change to their voting laws. This process, known as preclearance, stopped hundreds of discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and deterred lawmakers from introducing countless more."

  See what I mean.

 It goes on "But Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, invalidated the formula because “today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.”

Well, do they? A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.

It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win.

Mr. Kousser acknowledges that the law’s formula, created without the benefit of years of data, was a “blunt tool” that focused on voter turnout and clearly discriminatory practices like literacy tests. Still, he says, the statistics show that for almost a half century it “succeeded in accurately homing in on the counties where the vast majority of violations would take place.”

Members of Congress had seen some of this data in 2006 when, by a near-unanimous vote, they reauthorized the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. In fact, the legislative record contained more than 15,000 pages of evidence documenting the continuation of ever-evolving racially discriminatory voting practices, particularly in the areas covered by the preclearance requirement.

But the Roberts opinion showed no interest in actual data. Nor did it seem to matter that the law was already adapting to current conditions: Every one of the more than 200 jurisdictions that asked to be removed from the preclearance list was successful, because each showed it was not discriminating.

Instead, the court said the coverage formula had to be struck down because it failed to target precisely all areas with voting rights violations in the country.Mr. Kousser’s study does not solve this problem, in part because there is no easy way to compare discrimination in places that are under a federal microscope with those that are not. But the study provides the most wide-ranging empirical evidence yet that Congress was amply justified in finding that voting discrimination remains concentrated in the covered states and regions. In other words, the tactics may have changed, but the story remains largely the same. Voting discrimination no longer takes the form of literacy tests and poll taxes. Instead, it is embodied in voter-ID laws, the closing of polling places in minority neighborhoods, the elimination of early-voting days and hours, and much more.

The Supreme Court suggested that Congress could fix the law by updating the coverage formula to more closely reflect where violations are occurring today — and a bipartisan bill introduced in 2014 and reintroduced this year has done just that. So far it has gone nowhere because most Republicans oppose it. Even if it were to pass, there is no guarantee it would survive before a Supreme Court that is highly skeptical of any race-conscious efforts to reduce discrimination.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department and private groups are doing what they can to combat the flood of new discriminatory laws with the surviving provisions of the Voting Rights Act. But without preclearance requirements for places with the worst records on racial discrimination, they will always be a few steps behind.

  It's sad to see that the left wing media can't get over the race issue we can't get over it because its always going to be a crutch to them and their allies in the liberal media Democrat RINO establishment

Bigotry Where Is It?

Opinion/Editorial


 

 Of all days on Resurrection Sunday a day when we celebrate a Risen Lord Jesus Christ the New York Times has to muck it all up with another dozzie a.k.a crap filled Opinion piece.

 Frank Bruni one of their brain-dead oped columnists tries to make an obsurd point entitled "Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana."

 He begins his garbage "THE drama in Indiana last week and the larger debate over so-called religious freedom laws in other states portray homosexuality and devout Christianity as forces in fierce collision.They’re not — at least not in several prominent denominations, which have come to a new understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t decree, of what people can and cannot divine in regard to God’s will.And homosexuality and Christianity don’t have to be in conflict in any church anywhere.That many Christians regard them as incompatible is understandable, an example not so much of hatred’s pull as of tradition’s sway. Beliefs ossified over centuries aren’t easily shaken."

 Drama thats the only thing I agree with lol. The homosexuality followers are putting themselves at odds with God not exactly a good place to be.Oh and its not about hatred.

 He rants on "But in the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It’s a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing.

 cultures and eras.It ignores the extent to which interpretation is subjective, debatable.

And it elevates unthinking obeisance above intelligent observance, above the evidence in front of you, because to look honestly at gay, lesbian and bisexual people is to see that we’re the same magnificent riddles as everyone else: no more or less flawed, no more or less dignified.

Most parents of gay children realize this. So do most children of gay parents. It’s a truth less ambiguous than any Scripture, less complicated than any creed.

So our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.

“Human understanding of what is sinful has changed over time,” said David Gushee, an evangelical Christian who teaches Christian ethics at Mercer University. He openly challenges his faith’s censure of same-sex relationships, to which he no longer subscribes.For a very long time, he noted, “Many Christians thought slavery wasn’t sinful, until we finally concluded that it was. People thought contraception was sinful when it began to be developed, and now very few Protestants and not that many Catholics would say that.” They hold an evolved sense of right and wrong, even though, he added, “You could find scriptural support for the idea that all sex should be procreative.”

Christians have also moved far beyond Scripture when it comes to gender roles."

Correct me if I'm wrong but didnt God destroy two cities because of the sin of homosexuality Sodom and Gemorrah hence the term Sodomy.

 It goes on “In the United States, we have abandoned the idea that women are second-class, inferior and subordinate to men, but the Bible clearly teaches that,” said Jimmy Creech, a former United Methodist pastor who was removed from ministry in the church after he performed a same-sex marriage ceremony in 1999. “We have said: That’s a part of the culture and history of the Bible. That is not appropriate for us today.”And we could say the same about the idea that men and women in loving same-sex relationships are doing something wrong. In fact the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have said that. So have most American Catholics, in defiance of their church’s teaching.And it’s a vital message because of something that Indiana demonstrated anew: Religion is going to be the final holdout and most stubborn refuge for homophobia. It will give license to discrimination. It will cause gay and lesbian teenagers in fundamentalist households to agonize needlessly: Am I broken? Am I damned?“Conservative Christian religion is the last bulwark against full acceptance of L.G.B.T. people,” Gushee said.Polls back him up. A majority of Americans support marriage equality, including a majority of Catholics and most Jews. But a 2014 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that while 62 percent of white mainline Protestants favor same-sex marriages, only 38 percent of black Protestants, 35 percent of Hispanic Protestants and 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants do."

 The issue has nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination.

  Bruni goes on "And as I’ve written before, these evangelical Protestants wield considerable power in the Republican primaries, thus speaking in a loud voice on the political stage. It’s no accident that none of the most prominent Republicans believed to be contending for the presidency favor same-sex marriage and that none of them joined the broad chorus of outrage over Indiana’s discriminatory religious freedom law. They had the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary to worry about.

Could this change? There’s a rapidly growing body of impressive, persuasive literature that looks at the very traditions and texts that inform many Christians’ denunciation of same-sex relationships and demonstrates how easily those points of reference can be understood in a different way.

Gushee’s take on the topic, “Changing Our Mind,” was published late last year. It joined Jeff Chu’s “Does Jesus Really Love Me?” published in 2013, and “Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships,” by James Brownson, which was published in 2013.

Then there’s the 2014 book “God and the Gay Christian,” by Matthew Vines

, who has garnered significant attention and drawn large audiences for his eloquent take on what the New Testament — which is what evangelicals draw on and point to — really communicates."

Evaluating its sparse invocations of homosexuality, he notes that there wasn’t any awareness back then that same-sex attraction could be a fundamental part of a person’s identity, or that same-sex intimacy could be an expression of love within the context of a nurturing relationship.

“It was understood as a kind of excess, like drunkenness, that a person might engage in if they lost all control, not as a unique identity,” Vines told me, adding that Paul’s rejection of same-sex relations in Romans I was “akin to his rejection of drunkenness or his rejection of gluttony.”

And Vines said that the New Testament, like the Old Testament, outlines bad and good behaviors that almost everyone deems archaic and irrelevant today. Why deem the descriptions of homosexual behavior any differently?Creech and Mitchell Gold, a prominent furniture maker and gay philanthropist, founded an advocacy group, Faith in America, which aims to mitigate the damage done to L.G.B.T. people by what it calls “religion-based bigotry.”

Gold told me that church leaders must be made “to take homosexuality off the sin list.”

His commandment is worthy — and warranted. All of us, no matter our religious traditions, should know better than to tell gay people that they’re an offense. And that’s precisely what the florists and bakers who want to turn them away are saying to them.

 

 

Commentary

 

In the end its common sense God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve

 

 

 

 

NYT Oped Trying To Carry Econonomic Hope In Spring

Opinion/Editorial

 

 

 Talk about being a waterboy for the Obama regime the New York Times fits the bill to a tee.

This mornings lead OPED entitled "No Seasonal Fix for the Economy."

The water carrying begins "Some economic forecasters have pinned their hopes for an improvement in the economy on this year’s early Easter to boost consumer spending after a brutal winter.

That outlook has a dispiritingly familiar ring to it. In recent years, bad weather has often been blamed for weaker than expected economic performance while the prospect of Easter shopping and warmer weather has been seen as a sure catalyst for growth.

To some extent, the economy does move up and down with the seasons. But time and again in the current recovery, seasonal upswings have not heralded sustainable improvements. The economy faces tougher problems than the weather, and there are no easy or automatic fixes.

For instance, the economy was supposed to take off as unemployment fell. But unemployment is way down from its recession-era high, and there has been no big upsurge. Similarly, exports were supposed to help lead an economic revival. But the expected growth in exports has not occurred of late."

 I don't believe numbers anymore all bullshit.

 It continues "To its credit, the Federal Reserve is facing those issues. In its latest statements and projections, issued last week, it did not flinch from marking down its earlier projections for economic growth and price inflation through 2017 — signaling that the economy is weaker than was thought to be the case only a few months ago. The markdowns also reflect underlying weaknesses in the economy that will not be corrected without fundamental changes.

Accordingly, the Fed embraced a fundamental change last week when it acknowledged that unemployment can fall further than previously believed without causing inflation. That acknowledgment will allow the Fed to keep stimulating the economy, and encourage job growth, with loose monetary policy for the foreseeable future.

What the Fed cannot directly affect is how much employers pay their workers. Stagnant and low pay is a decades-long phenomenon, but in the past its negative economic effects were masked partly by the growing participation of women in the work force and by easy credit for cash-strapped households. The former has run its course, and the latter has justifiably been curtailed.Moreover, in the current recovery, rising economic growth and rising job growth have so far failed to push up pay appreciably. Without higher wages, the needs and wants of everyday life, let alone the luxuries, remain out of reach for many families, and as a result the economy remains in low gear. Changing that dynamic will require policy changes beyond the Fed’s purview, including a higher minimum wage, updated rules for overtime pay, stronger support for collective bargaining, better enforcement of wage and hour laws and tougher trade pacts."

 No shit Sherlock the economy is weaker than ever under this Obama regime. It's common sense.

Congress has thus far not moved in any of those areas, though many lawmakers appear prepared to demand provisions in upcoming trade deals that would prevent currency manipulation that disadvantages American businesses and workers. States have a mixed record, with several of them raising their minimum wages, but others working to weaken collective bargaining.

Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, has made it clear that she wants to see wage growth before she declares the labor market healthy. But where is that wage growth going to come from?

 Oh when all else fails blame Congress but they are no different than Obama

 

NYT OPED On Iran Nuclear Issue Very Unclear

Opinion/Editorial

 

 It's as the old saying goes "It's better to be thought of as a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt" the only difference here is the opening of one's mouth is this fooilsh opinion piece of crap this morning from the New York Times.Entitled "Sabotaging a Deal With Iran."

 The only reason why the NYT oped board is commenting on the Iran nuclear issue is because the Prime Minister of the great nation of Israel the great Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington last week to address his concerns to our lame brained idiots in Congress both Houses at the behest of RINO House Speaker John Boehner (RINO-Oh) only to be bereated by President Barack HUSSEIN Obama and the back turning House Mniority leader Nancy "the witch" Bellalegosi Pelosi.

 The BS begins "Congressional critics of an emerging international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program moved with uncommon speed last week to force a vote that could have blown up the negotiations, which are now at a delicate stage. Cooler heads prevailed, and action was delayed. But Congress could still sabotage the deal.Apparently hoping to capitalize on the fiery denunciation of Iran by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to Congress, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday pressed for a vote this week on a bill that would require congressional review of any deal. But he backed down when the bill’s supporters insisted on delaying any vote until after March 24, the target set by the United States, five other major powers and Iran for reaching a framework agreement."

 Yeah negotiations that the NYT wants because they are o so diplomatic my ass they are.And of course blame congress game.Congress should be able to review any so called deal with Iran but that would involve something called transparency from the Obamaites but that isn't going to happen any time soon just the usual BS lip service.

 The rant goes on "The agreement is intended to offer Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for tough restraints on its nuclear program for at least a decade. In the administration’s view, the agreement will not be a treaty requiring Senate ratification but a political commitment that is well within Mr. Obama’s authority to enter into without congressional approval. Congress’s chief power is that while Mr. Obama can waive certain sanctions on Iran on national security grounds, only Congress can permanently remove them. Congress also can enact new sanctions if Iran violates its commitments.The bill before the Senate could well scuttle any deal. Within five days of concluding an agreement, the president would have to submit the text to Congress as well as an assessment of Iran’s compliance and a certification that the deal does not jeopardize American security. That is an absurdly short timeline.More damaging, the bill would bar the president from easing sanctions on Iran for 65 days so Congress could hold hearings and decide whether to support the deal.

The bill would also eliminate the presidential authority Mr. Obama used in 2013 to lift some sanctions against Iran under an interim agreement, thus calling into question America’s credibility and its ability to fulfill its promises under any new deal. And it would add onerous new conditions that have not been part of the negotiations so far.Congress can play a role going forward. One useful way for it to weigh in would be to support legislation introduced by, among others, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both California Democrats, that would require Mr. Obama to report to Congress every 90 days on Iran’s compliance with the deal and that sets up an expedited process for Congress to reimpose sanctions if Iran violates its commitments.

After more than a year of negotiations, the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany can take credit for an interim deal that has sharply limited Iran’s nuclear activities, and they are on the verge of a more permanent agreement that could further reduce the risk of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon. Congress needs to think hard about the best way to support a verifiable nuclear deal and not play political games that could leave America isolated, the sanctions regime in tatters and Iran’s nuclear program unshackled.

 Yeah tough restraints on Iran's nuclear program if sanctions are lifted keep them in place Iran is just going to give us the middle finger.Hello NYT you actually think Iran gives a shit about commitments

but then again you guys don't think at the NYT.

NYT Waterboys for Obamney Care

Opinion/Editorial

 

 Now the New York Times lead Oped this morning is delving into the hotly and controversial debate of Health Care.The title of the crap piece is "The Phony Legal Attack on Health Care" of course if their line is a phony attack it is a legitimate attack.

 It begins "On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the most anticipated cases of the term: King v. Burwell, a marvel of reverse-engineered legal absurdity that, if successful, will tear a huge hole in the Affordable Care Act and eliminate health insurance for millions of lower-income Americans — exactly the opposite of what the law was passed to do.

The central claim of the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of four Virginians by a small group of conservative activists who have long sought to destroy Obamacare, is that the law does not allow tax-credit subsidies to be made available to anyone living in the 34 states whose health care exchanges are operated by the federal government, which stepped in when those states declined to set up their own.

This is, to put it mildly, baloney.

In the long, tangled history of the debate over the Affordable Care Act, no member of Congress ever indicated a belief that the law would work this way. To the contrary, the law explicitly provides for “quality, affordable health care for all Americans.”

And it has accomplished a good deal of this goal: More than 11 million people now have coverage under the law, and more than eight in 10 of them qualify for subsidies. In other words, broad availability of the subsidies is central to the functioning of the act. Without them, it collapses.

But because of the opponents’ purposefully blinkered reading of four words in the 900-page law the case is now before the Supreme Court.

The four words — “established by the State” — appear in a subsection of the law dealing with the calculation of tax credits. The law’s challengers say this means that credits are available only in the 16 states that have set up their own exchanges.

The challengers did not innocently happen upon these words; they went all out in search of anything that might be used to gut the law they had failed to kill off once before, on constitutional grounds, in 2012. Soon after the law passed in 2010, Michael Greve, then chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is helping to finance the current suit, said, “This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene. I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it.”

After the challengers found the four-word “glitch,” as they initially called it, they worked backward to fabricate a story that would make it sound intentional. Congress, they claimed, sought to induce states to establish exchanges by threatening a loss of subsidies if they did not. (Not coincidentally, the challengers also traveled state to state urging officials not to set up exchanges, thus helping to create the very “crisis” they now decry.) Of course, if Congress intended to introduce a suicide clause into a major piece of federal legislation, it would have shouted it from the mountaintops and not hidden it in a short phrase deep inside a sub-sub-subsection of the law. So it is no surprise that no one involved in passing or interpreting the law — not state or federal lawmakers, not health care journalists covering it at the time, not even the four justices who dissented in the 2012 decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act — thought that the subsidies would not be available on federal exchanges.

Many legal observers were surprised that the court agreed to hear the case at all. But despite several justices’ clear dislike for the health care law, it is hard to imagine how they could disregard their longstanding approach to interpreting statutes, which, as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 1997 case, requires them to consider “the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.”

Reading the Affordable Care Act as a whole, it’s clear that Congress meant to provide subsidies on both federal and state exchanges. For one thing, why establish a federal exchange that doesn’t actually work? As an amicus brief submitted by a group of legal scholars put it, “Congress does not write statutes to fail.”

And yet the challengers insist that their bizarre, noncontextual reading of the law is the only possible one. A majority of federal judges who have reviewed the case have thrown out this argument. So should the Supreme Court. Even if the court were to consider the law ambiguous, under its own precedent it must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of the statute’s wording. Here, that agency is the I.R.S., which has issued a rule affirming that subsidies are available no matter who establishes the exchange.The challengers disingenuously say that Congress can go back and change the wording, knowing full well that Republicans on Capitol Hill hate the law almost as much as they do. The states that currently rely on federally operated exchanges could set up their own, but many — egged on by the challengers — have already refused to do that.

Whatever legal games the challengers play, this case has never been more than a ginned-up, baseless attack on one of the most important pieces of social legislation of the last generation. The health of millions of Americans hangs in the balance. And now it is not even clear that the four plaintiffs have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

So how did the suit get so far? That is an excellent question, and only the Supreme Court can answer it.

 Words in pink going back to what at the time House Speaker Pelosi said about passing the bill before reading it.