Coups and Civil War

September 2009, Obama had been President for less than a year, when John L. Perry wrote his piece about the military taking down the President with a "bloodless coup".

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Newsmax took down the commentary so that it would not be "misinterpreted".  According to them Perry was not advocating for a "bloodless coup", but merely describing that scenario.

Fast forward to 2013, World Net Daily writes about a rising star in the Tea Party movement, retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely who wants to make citizen's arrests of the President and members of Congress.  A couple of days ago in my news feed, a post by Conservative Tribune came up, SPREAD THIS: U.S. General Calls for Immediate Arrest of Barack H. Obama for ‘Treasonous Activities’.



This time Vallely says that Republicans will not arrest Obama, because they are afraid of a "black uprising".  He claims that Obama is trying to form his own police force and could enforce marshal law anytime.  He agrees with the host that the lower ranks in the military will rise up if Obama tries to shoot civilians.

The writer at Conservative Tribune interprets the general's remarks in a more extreme fashion.

Failing that, Vallely essentially recommended a military coup d’état, which is probably only justified in the most extreme circumstances.

But the general passionately believes that these are extreme circumstances because Obama is a traitor. Given that scenario, jail time for the president would be appropriate.

Moving from military coups, Allen West is warning the left that Christians may rise up and revolt in a civil war, Why the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage could lead to civil war.

I know there are folks on the liberal progressive left who frequent this website. So here is my message. The Christian church community is a lot bigger and more powerful than you think — they kept a Republican from winning the White House. And these aren’t just old white men – there’s a growing young Christian constituency. You can criticize the Christian right all you want, but surrendering one’s faith principle for political gain is not a viable proposition. And in the case of prosecution of the Christian church, there could be a rallying of churches, regardless of race, the likes of which this nation has not seen.

The SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage is not about the issue itself — it is about individual religious freedom and the imposition of the State’s will against faith. After all, it is the original reason why the Pilgrims fled England. And since there is no place for men and women of faith to retreat — they will make a stand. This ain’t first century Rome.

I just wanted to document this, in case anyone accuses me of making up the fact that there is talk on the conservative side about over throwing the government.

ICR uses a fifteen year old article against Jurassic World

ICR put out, What Would Need to Change for a Dinosaur to Evolve into a Bird?, in response to Jurassic World.  It was lacking.

"Feathers: Feathers are not at all similar to scales. Even if scales were frayed, they would not be interlocking and impervious to air as are feathers. Actually, feathers are more similar to hair follicles than scales. Could such precise design arise by mutation? In all the recent discoveries of dinosaur fossils with "feathers," the "feathers" are merely inferred. What is actually present is better described as thin filaments which originate under the skin."

Who is still advancing the idea of frayed scales evolving into feathers?

"Birds have delicate, hollow bones to lighten their weight while dinosaurs had solid bones."

Not all dinosaurs had solid bones.

"Lungs: Birds are unique among land-dwelling vertebrates in that they don't breathe in and out. The air flows continually in a one-directional loop supporting the bird's high metabolism. Reptilian respiration is entirely different, more like that in mammals."

Unidirectional breathing has been discovered in crocodiles.

"A recent "mummified" dinosaur, with soft tissue fossilized, proved to be quite like a crocodile, and not at all like a bird."

Which one? Without citing which dinosaur mummy this argument is meaningless, especially when crocodiles are proving more bird-like.

Citation at the bottom of the article

I noticed this article was written in 2000. We know in 2015 that some dinosaurs had hollow bones and another archosaur, ie crocodile, has unidirectional breathing. Especially since the discovery of unidirectional breathing in crocodiles, I have been extremely frustrated in the reluctance of creationists to update their media. Why knowingly share fifteen year old outdated incorrect info?

Times are changing...

The Texas Republican Party platform of 2010 included the following line.

Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.

The 2014 platform however has no mention of "sodomy" and replaced the arrest the homosexual portion with a line about reparation therapy.

Reparative Therapy- We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.

 There is no scientific data promoting the efficacy of reparative therapy.  A small minority of those that identify as homosexual will identify later as heterosexual whether they attend therapy or not.  There is no reliable evidence that reparative therapy is the cause.  The vast majority of people who attend reparative therapy continue in their orientation.

It took the Texas GOP just four years to give up on arresting homosexuals.  Hopefully in four years they will either produce studies that reparative therapy works or abandon it as well.

What Robert Jeffress wants us to forget

In 2011, Robert Jeffress preached that the word "religion" in the First Amendment only applied to Christians. He has taken down both his sermon video on the subject and his blog from his Twilight Last Gleaming series.  However he did not delete his book or it's forward by Mike Huckabee.

 Given his recent Nazi comments, it is interesting that he specifically writes about Judaism by name as a faith that is not a constitutionally a  "religion" according to his interpretation.  Below are the comments that he made on Hannity.

I want to remind people that the Nazis weren't able to take the Jews to the crematoriums immediately. The German people wouldn't have allowed for it. Instead, the Nazis had to change public opinion. They marginalized the Jewish people, disparaged them, and made them objects of contempt.

Basically his argument in his book rests on the idea that contextually the word "religion" would have meant only Christianity to the Founding Fathers.

Jeffress argues that Freedom of Religion only applies to Christians, because the Founding Fathers only meant Christianity by the word "religion".  I dealt somewhat with this argument in a blog I wrote in 2011, Need help convincing your friends that Islam is a religion?  I gave examples of the Founding Fathers who used "religion" to refer to the non-Christian faith of Islam.  Perhaps the most concise take down of this position was done by the American Family Association (also in 2011) to counter their spokesman, Bryan Fischer, making the same argument that Jeffress makes.  Even though the AFA has increased their opposition to their own employee both in writing and by removing him as spokesman, they have strangely deleted their epic take down.  It has however been preserved by Rightwingwatch.

Pertinent to the topic of  "marginalized the Jewish people", Jeffress specifically mentions Judaism and Islam as his two examples of non-Christian religions OK to be excluded by the state, because they are not legally "equally valid as Christianity". 

There is no mandate in the Constitution that requires the government to prohibit expressions of the Christian faith in the public square.  In fact, as I have demonstrated in several examples, the First Amendment does not even require that the government treat all faiths equally.  Although the Constitution demands that the government allow expressions of all faiths, the government can (and for more than 150 years did) show a preference for the Christian faith.  A high school principal does not have to have both a Christian and a Muslim student offer a prayer at graduation.  A city mayor is not obligated to balance a nativity scene in the town square with a Jewish menorah.  True tolerance allows for preferences by individuals.

Jeffress believes that schools should be engaged in daily leading prayer for their students.  Given this background, he specifically argues that a Muslim student does not have to be allowed to lead prayer at a graduation.  He is using Muslim and Jewish interchangeably here so my hypothetical scenario that I wrote in 2011 is not too far off what he has already said. 

Pastor Jeffress believes that the First Amendment says that a teacher can select a 6 year old Christian boy to lead his public school first grade class in prayer. However, when the boy's practicing Jewish best friend volunteers to lead the following day, the teacher can say, "I am sorry Ben you can't, because you are a Jew."

He specifically even says that a mayor would be within his rights to ban a Jewish menorah from the town square.

There is no secret that Jeffress preaches that Christians should usually vote for Christians.  In 2011, he endorse Rick Perry over Mitt Romney because Perry was "born again". Electing a Mormon was to invite the judgment of God on America.  Apparently God changed his mind when Romney won the primary. Jeffress doubled back arguing that Romney was preferable to Obama who had his "Fist in the Face of God"

Sadly this evangelical idea about not voting for Jews became tragic when a Missouri Republican Party chairman started a whisper campaign to suggest that one of the primary candidates for Governor was actually Jewish instead of Christian.

You know where Judaism not having full religious rights and not voting for Jews, does not play well? Israel.  Fischer was ultimately fired from his job as spokesman for this and other views.  (The AFA sent the Southern Poverty Law Center a list.)  Still Jeffress has never repudiated his same views. He just stopped talking about them.  How can he go around from show to show and never get asked about this portion of his book?

As mentioned, Huckabee wrote the forward.

Huckabee is running for President again.  How can he avoid questions about Jeffress' view on how Judaism should be treated under the law?

Kirby Delauter is no fan of freedom of the press.

The First Amendment wins again over "conservative" opposition. 

• Last year, a Georgia Baptist College President argued in court that only "people that are qualified to render those opinions i[n] the market place and exchange of ideas in academia and elsewhere" were allowed to use fair use to criticize him. (This was after he tried to get a six year old, five year old, and a four year old to sign non-disparagements.) He lost. 
• The then Senate Minority Leader argued that a blogger could not use fair use criticism to point out his mistake. He lost. 

This year, a Maryland Republican is threatening to sue his local paper if they even mention his name. The paper's response is priceless.  Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter

Blanks? Sure, we sometimes use hyphens in the case of expletives. Perhaps we could do that: "K---- D-------." Or, perhaps, "Councilman [Unauthorized]." We giggled a bit more than we should have when we came up with "the Councilman Formerly Known as Commissioner Kirby Delauter," which doesn't seem as funny written down in black and white and includes his name, which defeats the point. Maybe we should just put his initials, "KD," with an asterisk to a footnote (KD*), or refer to him as GLAT, the acronym for his campaign: "Govern Like A Taxpayer." We could even make it sound a little hip-hop with a well-placed hyphen: G-Lat. Speaking of, could we get away with "K-Del"? Or we could simply go with the Harry Potter-esque "He Who Shall Not be Named." (Cue the lightning strike and peal of thunder.)

Will the Ark Encounter be exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Update 12-31-14 After rereading the section of North Carolina law, I have decided that it did not claim what I thought it did.  For readability, I just deleted the argument that I made using it.

I am still trying to find a statute that requires that "religious organizations" be non-profits.  So far it seems to me to be more of a recommendation than a requirement. 

However Answers in Genesis's claim that the Ark Encounter LLC is a religious organization may also have more consequences than whether or not they decide to not hire Catholics or Episcopalians as life guards.   "Religious organizations" are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

SEC. 307. EXEMPTIONS FOR PRIVATE CLUBS AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS.

The provisions of this title shall not apply to private clubs or establishments exempted from coverage under title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000-a(e)) or to religious organizations or entities controlled by religious organizations, including places of worship.

Maybe the ADA should be the next line of questioning that AiG receives.  I am still waiting on this question:

So you say that Kentucky wants you to hire people who aren't Christians, but is it not true that most people in Christian sects like Catholicism and Episcopalianism would not be allowed to work at your park?

Do these statistics bother you?

Right Wing News posted this to their facebook this April.  First off there was no sourcing.  Second miscarriage is far more likely than abortion.  Years ago, I wrote a summary.

At an hour old, this single cell has an up hill battle. About 19.6 out of every 1000 women annually will have an abortion. This means that 22% of pregnancies will end in abortion [4], but this embryo only has about a 30-70% of even implanting in the uterus to transition from conception to pregnancy. [6] Even if she implants, she may not implant in the uterus. Ectopic pregnancies occur at 19.3 out of every 1000 pregnancies or about 2% of pregnancies. [7] Once implanted correctly, she still has about a 31% chance of miscarrying. [8] Things get a little more dicey when you considered that one out of eight embryos form twins, but only one out of 80 twins make it to birth. [9] All of this adds up to the embryo having as great as a 70% chance of not surviving to birth [8].

 The abortion rate used to be higher, but I think that it is safe to postulate that miscarriages are about twice as likely than abortions since 1973.  So the image should look something like this.

Now, I cannot vouch for the other statistics.  I know enough to know that AIDS, cancer, and heart disease survival rates have been increasing while violent crime has been decreasing.  However. miscarriage is never mentioned even though it is far more prevalent.

The War on Christmas is Over

The War on Christmas is over.  With Michael W. Smith releasing a version of Irving Berlin's Happy Holidays this year, Happy Holidays has officially won. :)

Citations please II

This December, I have written a few blogs on the Ark Encounter controversy.

AiG or the Ark Encounter versus Kentucky

A couple of more points on the Ark Encounter

Citations please

Last night, I started to examine Ken Ham's claim which had one of it's most recent iteration in a video he posted to facebook. 

We even looked into building in Indiana, but Kentucky’s incentive encouraged us to build here. Yet most secular bloggers and many in the media would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark. So let me say again, that’s simply not true.

I am at a lost to find secular bloggers who are saying this.  At best, they are arguing like Ham himself that the tax incentives would offset the creation of the park.  I cited five secular bloggers that are not claiming this.  These were not low level no names, they were some of the main bloggers arguing against Ham on this issue.  Two of them, PZ Myers and Dan Arel have gotten personal responses from Ham.  Ham knows that at least these two are not making this claim.

I also called into question, Ham extrapolating a particular meaning from an infinitive used by Maddow when he used the same infinitive in his recent video.  Infinitives can have multiple meanings depending on the context.  For some reason, Ham assumes an interpretation that makes Maddow's statement false, when most interpretations would make the statement true.

Well, it is time to add another secular blogger that is not claiming that the Ark Encounter is "asking the state for money to complete the Ark."  The Sensuous Curmudgeon has written a December 18, 2014 blog, Is Opposing Ken Ham’s Tax Breaks Anti-God? on Ham's criticism, Lexington Herald versus God!, of a recent editorial in the Lexington-Herald, Few questions for Answers in Genesis. The Sensuous Curmudgeon wrote:

That newspaper has previously opposed tax benefits for Hambo’s new theme park — see Problem for Ken Ham’s Ark Park? That was back in August, before Hambo was officially notified that the state wouldn’t provide sales tax rebates for his Ark project.

 So the number is up to six which means Ham must provide seven to support his claim.  However Ham's line of evidence is found wanting. He questions whether tax incentives are "tax breaks".  He even parses infinitives for the worst possible interpretations.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon does a great job discussing Ham's over reaction (with even an exclamation mark) to the Lexington-Herald editorial.  He did not deal though with Ham's citation of someone in the media claiming the Ark Encounter "is asking the state for money to complete the Ark", so I will deal with it here.

Ham starts out claiming that the Lexington-Herald "[f]or years, it has spread untruths and misleading information about Answers in Genesis and our life-size Noah’s Ark project."  He then begins the next paragraph:

I suggest that the editors of the Herald-Leader have an anti-Christian agenda. It has resulted in inaccuracies in its stories and editorials concerning the Ark project.

 In the third paragraph, he triples down.

In a recent typical anti-Christian editorial against the work of AiG, we read considerable misinformation and downright untruths. Actually, I believe it’s clear that the editors are really shaking their fist at God.

OK, so he is claiming that the editorial is saying things that are so untrue that they are "shaking their fist at God." What are these untruths?  Well he cites two examples from the editorial which he criticizes by specifically using the word true ("not true" and "doesn't tell the truth here").

Perhaps Answers in Genesis should give up thanking God that intolerant liberals “can’t sink this ship,” and ask the deity instead whether it can be built without more government handouts.

Ham does not quibble over whether or not these tax incentives are "government handouts".  He does argue that "[t]his certainly implies that AiG has already received government funding to build the Ark."  Even for Ham, he can only claim that this "implies" this falsehood.  It only does if you take the worst interpretation.

Ham also accuses this point as being untrue.

Since the Ark park would rely on such secularists [sic] services as highways, sewer systems, and police and fire protection to attract and accommodate its visitors, the $18.25 million in taxes it wouldn’t pay to support those services would fall on other taxpayers.

 Ham's response is strange.  He argues that this is untrue, because the rebate "would [only] be given is if the park is operational and is having a positive economic impact, bringing significant dollars into the state." Ham is right, but he is beside the point.  The point is the rebated sales tax would not go to fund  "highways, sewer systems, and police and fire protection to attract and accommodate its visitors".  Since Ham is not funding them as much as he would, someone else would need to.  The statement is clearly true.

Ham also disputes the nature of the bonds and his property tax discount.  He disputes that the Ark Encounter has not hired anyone yet and we do not know what the standards would be (even though they are claiming that it is legal for them to follow AiG's standards.)  I am not dealing with those claims, because they are beside the point to this discussion.

Ham argues:

Yet most secular bloggers and many in the media would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark.

I am searching, but I still cannot find support for his claim.  Remember, to be true someone must now provide seven examples of individual bloggers.

Citations please

About a week ago, Ken Ham made the following claim in a video he posted to Answers in Genesis' (AiG) facebook. 

We even looked into building in Indiana, but Kentucky’s incentive encouraged us to build here. Yet most secular bloggers and many in the media would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark. So let me say again, that’s simply not true.

Now I have tried to validate this claim and find out what in the world Ham is talking about.  I admit about three years ago, there was some confusion for me about the nature of the tax incentives.  After doing some research, some on AiG's website, I learned that the incentives were a rebate on sales tax at the park.  The state would only give this rebate if the Ark Encounter (AE) generates a required amount of sales tax and even then they would only refund a certain amount.  There are no tax breaks from Kentucky until after the park has been opened.  Still Ham admits, like any good businessman, he was counting on those rebates similar to how people count on their tax returns.  You do not have to have them, but they sure help.

Still, I find it hard to believe that "most secular bloggers...would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark."  Who are these bloggers?  They are certainly not PZ Myers, Hemant Mehta, Dan Arel, JT Eberhard, and Michael Stone.  So who is Ham talking about?  I have listed five bloggers, Ham would need to list at least six to validate his claim.  Ham knows that Myers is not one of them, but more on that later.

Ham has taken issue with some in the media, particularly Rachel Maddow.  However, as far as I can tell, Maddow has never said that AiG is using tax dollars to build the Ark.  In this 2010 video, she said "tax breaks" which is what rebates are, though Ham disagrees.  May 28, 2014, Ham had this to say about a May 2014 Maddow segment. (The bold is in the original.)

First—and I don’t know how many times we’ve had to correct the urban myth that is being spread by the secular media and bloggers—no Kentucky taxpayer money is being used to “build” (her word) the Ark Encounter. It’s a lie that won’t die, and the journalists at MSNBC should know better.

So Maddow should know better according to Ham.  Though Ham provides the entire video, he only quotes in this blog one word, "build", that he takes exception.  This word is a "lie" according to Ham. This is the full quote that Ham is referring.

And when the creationist group Answers in Genesis announced their plans to build their Noah’s Ark theme park, the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park.

No where does Maddow claim that "Kentucky taxpayer money is being used" to build AE.  She said, "the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park."  The Christianpost in their May 28, 2014 article seemed to try and help Ham out by providing another quote that Maddow could have meant that "taxpayer money" was being used to build the AE.

There will be dinosaurs on Noah's ark, just as soon as the creationists finish finding the dinosaurs in piles of leaves and plant debris, and putting them on the ark with little assist from state government – 43 million in tax incentives. Your tax dollars at work – amazing.

Still here, Maddow is very clear, saying that AE has received tax incentives. "Your tax dollars at work" is a well known chastisement of government officials and government programs. It does not necessarily mean giving tax dollars to a program.  In his May 28, 2014 blog post, Myers took issue with Ham's rebuttal to Maddow.

[Ham] declares that no Kentucky taxpayer money is being used to construct the Ark Encounter, but that is a claim no one made. Maddow says quite clearly several times that the Ark Park has been given $43 million in tax incentives — that is, Answers in Genesis has been exempted from a requirement to pay taxes on their for-profit enterprise, and will also receive rebates on sales taxes. So all Ham has done is rebut a claim that Rachel Maddow did not make.

May 30, 2014, Ham used his facebook to rebut Myers. After citing the first Maddow quote he wrote,

You can hear Maddow say it for yourself at around the 1:55 mark of the video captured at https://answersingenesis.org/…/media-co…/rachels-rant-msnbc/ . The atheist blogger has once again, as such secularists often do, did not tell the truth—and of course Rachel Maddow didn't tell the truth, either. These atheists realize that if you "throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick." Others sadly believe their lies and then continue to spread them.

Ham is convinced that the infinitive, "to build", makes the sentence a lie. In the comments he states that he does not even want to call the tax incentives, "tax breaks" like Maddow did in 2010.

Like with the ChristianPost, someone tried to help Ham out, but Ham was having none of it.

Further even while rebutting a secular blogger who continues to claim that no one is saying AE is receiving money for constructing the Ark, he concluded with this point.

Now that we've pointed this out for the "millionth time," I fully expect the atheists to simply ignore it and just continue to disseminate untruths--it's the nature of the spiritual battle in which we're engaged.

It shouldn't be surprising that in a sinful world, those who oppose our Christian message will take what is an obvious situation and claim the opposite is true!

Myers responded with a blog entitled, Is Ken Ham literate?

I said, and Rachel Maddow said, that Ham received $43 million in tax incentives. We know exactly what that means: he got tax exemptions and rebates that would total $43 million as an incentive to construct his monument to idiocy...Which I also clearly said in that bit of mine that he quoted.

You know, on the cop shows when a suspect is accused of X, and he immediately starts blustering “I did not do Y!”, you kind of suspect that he’s guilty of something. What is Ken Ham hiding?

 Remember Ham's big fuss is over the word "build".  Do you remember what he said in the quote that I started?

We even looked into building in Indiana, but Kentucky’s incentive encouraged us to build here.

A little over a week ago, Ham said essentially the same thing that he chided Maddow for saying.  There is not much difference between Ham's comments and this contested quote:

And when the creationist group Answers in Genesis announced their plans to build their Noah’s Ark theme park, the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park.

 So far Ham cannot back up his claim that most secular bloggers "would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark."  If most secular bloggers would have me believe that, then citations should not be hard to come by.  His argument about Maddow rests on stretching an infinitive that he himself has been caught using.  If these things are really being said, you should not need to rest your arguments on parsing verbs.