Muda69
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Posts posted by Muda69
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Quote
In recent years, the deep division over sexuality in the United Methodist Church has led many in the church to use a word they hadn’t heard since their European history classes: “schism.”
A schism, the splitting of a church over irreconcilable differences, has sometimes seemed imminent. Yet in an extraordinary meeting of church leaders in St. Louis that begins Saturday, the 12 million-member denomination will try to reach a plan to hold their church together while also deciding the church’s stance on LGBT issues.
“It is very difficult to be the church in the same way in Monrovia, Liberia, and in San Francisco and in Austin, Texas, and in Peoria, Ill., and in Montgomery, Ala.,” said Bishop Kenneth Carter of Florida, one of the three moderators of the 32-member Commission on a Way Forward that has been preparing plans since 2016 for the denomination to consider. “From a political perspective, we are a church that has among its members Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush and James B. Comey and Jeff Sessions. … How much unity can we achieve? And how much separation do people need from each other?”
The United Methodist Church is, in the United States, the third-largest faith group in the nation and the largest mainstream Protestant group. Here, many Methodist pastors want to perform same-sex marriages and ordain gay men and women as clergy. They look to their counterparts in other mainstream churches that have long allowed gay weddings, like the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church, as far ahead of their own denomination. But the issue of sexuality remains deeply divisive among both clergy and believers across the nation.
Furthermore, the United Methodist Church is not just an American church but a global one. About a third of the denomination’s churches are in Africa, where the church is rapidly growing and where leaders tend to deeply oppose the idea of being part of a church that sanctions homosexuality.
How to hold all this together? In St. Louis from Saturday through Tuesday, more than 800 clergy and lay leaders will vote on several options — including, perhaps, ending the unity in the 50-year-old denomination’s name.
“When I’m realistic, I realize our denomination probably will break apart. We will most likely split,” said the Rev. Frank Schaefer, one of the highest-profile ministers involved in this debate. Schaefer, a father of three gay children, was put on church trial for officiating the wedding of his son and was defrocked by United Methodist officials in Pennsylvania, then hired again as a pastor at a United Methodist church in Santa Barbara, Calif., under a different bishop. “We’re spending resources debating and fighting each other. It’s like a bad marriage. Sometimes it’s better to break up and move on.”
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This meeting is the first time the church called a special session on a single topic, outside of the every-four-years format for global meetings, since 1970. That year, the topic was merging another denomination into the United Methodist Church.
This time, the topic is whether to break apart.
I expect a split as well. Probably along the lines of a "United States UMC" and then the rest of the world.
My spouse and I are good friends with a homosexual couple that was forced out of an area UMC church by a minority of hateful parishioners, afraid that somehow these two individuals would "infect" the youth of the church or something. It was all quite sad.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/catholic-church-sex-abuse-scandal-pope-francis-weak-response/
QuotePope Francis is conducting his extraordinary summit with cardinals on the problem of sexual abuse in the Church. And we can expect it will go nowhere.
The summit is happening in light of two events outside of it. The first was Pope Francis’s recent laicization of the former cardinal archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore McCarrick, a man who was notorious for his sexual abuse of seminarians and other priests, while at the same time he was the public-relations face of the Church’s response to sexual abuse and cover-up in the early 2000s. McCarrick was finally publicly exposed when an investigation into his abuse of a minor became public last year.
The second is the publication of a sensationalist book by sociologist Frédéric Martel, In the Closet of the Vatican, which claims to document the sexual hypocrisy at the top of the Roman Catholic Church. The book is fascinating because it relies on scores of interviews with cardinals and is written in a loose, gossipy style. Some of the pope’s trusted confidantes were sources for the book. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
These two events also reveal the problems inherent to Pope Francis’s summit. The laicization of McCarrick is held up as a victory of accountability, even justice, but actually amounts to a public-relations move. McCarrick was not afforded the normal forms of defense given to men in his position. And far from solving the McCarrick issue, his laicization avoids the main question: How did McCarrick rise to his position while “everyone knew” of his sordid reputation? Why was he able to maneuver around the restrictions put on him by Benedict XVI? Why did Francis make him an informal adviser in his anxious desire to reshape the American episcopate? And how is it that his associates (co-conspirators?) continue to rise in the Church? Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who lived and worked with McCarrick for years (and claims to have noticed nothing unusual), was recently appointed cardinal camerlengo, who will govern the Vatican during the next interregnum.
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Then there is the matter of the book, which replicates the same error. Martel’s methodology for determining whether certain churchmen are gay is to stereotype them. Churchmen whom he deems to oppose homosexuality too much are deemed homosexual themselves. This logic does not apply, however, to Pope Francis, who has occasionally urged gay men to leave the priesthood or not enter it at all. Francis is held up as a hero to Martel. But the influence of Francis’s inner circle is evident in the choice of targets.
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Martel’s preferred story is one of moral hypocrisy. That may be a real moral problem for some churchmen. But because this is Martel’s bias, he is incapable of looking at the crisis through the lens of moral indifference, moral lassitude, and moral cronyism, which are the major factors in the crisis of sexual abuse and predation in the Church.
That Martel was helped in this sordid endeavor of cover-up and baseless accusation by the pope’s closest advisers should be a source of immense scandal to those in the Church and outside of it. He likes opera. He must be gay. He likes vestments. Must be gay. He has a pleasant voice. Gay. This is the kind of moral enlightenment that Pope Francis’s allies have brought to the Church? The only stereotype that Martel doesn’t use is the one about men who engage in constant salacious sexual gossip and speculation, as it would indict all his sources.
The book is trash. The supposed justice meted to McCarrick amounts to a cover-up. The pope’s summit is trash and a coverup. These men do not fear the justice of God or men. All their training in theology, and their great insight about man’s depravity, is the schoolyard taunt “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.” To hell with them all.
Strong words. And he is probably right; this summit will go nowhere. When will the vast majority of members of the Roman Catholic church rise up and demand real change?
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Meh. I hear the University of California at Berkeley is where its at: http://reason.com/blog/2019/02/22/uc-berkeley-student-punched-face-conserv
QuoteA stranger punched a University of California–Berkeley student in the face after becoming enraged at his posters, which said "Hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims" and "this is MAGA country."
The University of California Police Department is attempting to identify the attacker, and a spokesperson for the university said it would take action if he turns out to be a student.
"Let me state in no uncertain terms that this university strongly condemns violence and harassment of any sort, for any reason," Dan Moguluf, assistant vice chancellor for communications, tells Campus Reform. "That sort of behavior is reprehensible and intolerable. We have, in recent years, spent millions of dollars to ensure that students from across the ideological/political spectrum can safely and successfully promote and discuss their beliefs. Our commitment to freedom of expression and belief is unwavering."
The student, Hayden Williams, is a field representative for the Leadership Institute, and he was helping with recruitment for Turning Point USA. Both organizations promote conservatism on college campuses.
The altercation, which was captured on video, took place at a public square near Williams' recruitment table. The video clearly shows a young man in a black shirt punching Williams directly in the face. Williams' only crimes, it seems, were promoting a conservative cause and attempting to record his interactions with students on his phone.
The video shows another person attempting to knock Williams' phone out of his hands and accusing Williams of "fucking encouraging violence" just before the man in the black shirt attacks him. I gather that this person believed Williams' provocative signs—which allude to the allegedly fake Jussie Smollett hate incident—were not mere speech but actually a kind of assault on marginalized communities.
The idea that words are themselves violence is regrettably popular among student activists. If words are violence, then punching somebody who says something offensive isn't wrong; it's just self-defense. The idea's results are on display in the video:
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In a time of dwindling resources government school corporations have to focus those resources on their core mission.
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1 hour ago, Bobref said:
I’ll be interested to see if there’s any blowback on Nike for this incident. My advice: if Nike stock takes a hit because of this, buy all you can.
It was down slightly yesterday, but I'm guessing would take some kind of pending legal action for any significant movement in the stock price:
QuoteNike's stock on Thursday morning was trending downward after Duke star Zion Williamson blew out his Nike PG 2.5 shoe in the opening minute of the Blue Devils' 88-72 loss to North Carolina on Wednesday.
At around 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nike stock was trading at 83.93 dollars per share, down nearly 1.1 percent on the day. It was trading at 84.86 when the market closed on Wednesday, only hours before Williamson blew out his shoe and suffered a right knee sprain.
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A ‘KKK’ twist in the ‘Keep Dayton Small’ saga riles town just east of Lafayette: https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/02/21/bangert-kkk-twist-keep-dayton-small-saga-riles-town-just-east-lafayette/2936438002/
QuoteWhat do you see when you pass the billboard installed in March 2018 along Indiana 38 across from Lafayette’s Subaru plant as a towering poke in the eye in a small town’s neighbor-vs.-neighbor struggles?
It’s the one that riffs on a motto found on the prolific, red-and-white signs planted in yards in the town just on the other side of Interstate 65:
“Keep Dayton Small.
“Keep Dayton Friendly.
“Keep Dayton Dayton.”
One interpretation, featured on postcards that started making the rounds this week, starts at the beginning of each line for a take that had both sides in the long-running Keep Dayton Small feud up in arms and pointing fingers on Thursday.
On the postcard’s front, over a picture of the billboard: “No matter how you justify it, it still says KKK.”
On the back is a pre-printed address of Lamar Advertising, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, company that leases the billboard space.
The creator, Brian Dilkes, a Purdue biochemistry professor living in Lafayette, said his point isn’t meant to accuse anyone of Ku Klux Klan membership or stake a claim in the fight over whether to limit annexation and housing growth in the town of 1,550 people.
“It states, quite simply, that billboard spells ‘KKK’ down the left side,” Dilkes said. “That’s it. … I just don’t like a billboard that spells, ‘KKK,” sitting on (Indiana) 38 that I see every time I go to Indianapolis.”
Dilkes, as of Thursday, hadn’t mailed any of the postcards he had made, either to Lamar Advertising or to anyone in Dayton. But he did share a few with people one evening this week at The Spot, a tavern just south of downtown Lafayette.
That’s how the “KKK” reference filtered eight miles to Cindy Marsh, who has been front and center with Dayton Watchdog and the Dayton Area Community Coalition, sister groups that have been fighting town council efforts to annex and rezone land along Dayton Road for a proposed, 110-home subdivision.
Things escalated from there.
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IMHO yet another example of people looking for something to offend them. I have driven by the billboard in question literally hundreds of times since it was put up and never even once thought about what Mr. Dilkes is implying. Perhaps if the letter K in each sentence was highlighted, bolded, in a larger font, etc. then yes, one could make the connection.
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Nike Fires 8-Year-Old Shoemaker Responsible For Zion Williamson Injury: https://sports.theonion.com/nike-fires-8-year-old-shoemaker-responsible-for-zion-wi-1832801206
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7 minutes ago, foxbat said:
So if you question some, then I suspect that you don't question others that they identify as such? If that's the case, then why all the rigamarole earlier?
Depends on the group. Do you take the "hate group" designation handed out by the SPLC as sacrosanct? Why or why not?
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1 minute ago, Wabash82 said:
Ah, Muda, you may have finally hit on a good signature for yourself! This seems to be a common refrain from you.
Like I've said before, I guess I am just stupid.
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4 minutes ago, gonzoron said:
There are many, many alternatives in choosing post-secondary education. There always have been.
Like I've said before, I guess I am just stupid.
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16 minutes ago, foxbat said:
You make it sound like these various terror groups are made up.
I question whether some groups identified by the the SPLC as "hate groups" really are as such.
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6 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:
I have not seen where the Post actually make any false assertions of fact about Sandman.
https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/21/nick-sandmann-covington-lawsuit-libel
Quote...
There is one statement that does look like a potential assertion of fact rather than opinion. From The Post:
"It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: 'I've got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,' " Phillips recalled. "I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way, and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn't allow me to retreat."
This strikes me as potential grounds for a libel claim. It may indeed be considered a statement of fact rather than opinion, and one that was incorrect. The false assertion certainly portrays Sandmann in a negative light, and The Post made little effort to corroborate it before the author went ahead and subjected a previously unknown teenage boy to all the negative publicity that comes with being the subject of hit piece in a major media outlet. But this is far from open and shut, as the media's failures in the Covington case, while substantial, are more open to interpretation than Rolling Stone's failures in the Virginia story.
Of course, there's a broader philosophical problem with trying to resolve the Covington debacle via lawsuit, even if Sandmann may have a case (albeit an extremely narrow one): It raises serious free speech concerns, and it could have significant repercussions for the media.
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2 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:
Well, in Darwinian terms, there's nurture... and then there's nature.
I don't understand.
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8 minutes ago, swordfish said:
As the definition of hate crimes expands, so do the number of incidents......FY end 2017 - Around $432,000,000 in assets operating on about $45,000,000 in revenue. https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/103117_afs.pdf
Bingo. With the power/influence of the KKK pretty much eliminated (thank goodness) the SPLC had to find other groups to attack in order to justify it's continued existence, and of course bring in the cash.
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17 minutes ago, gonzoron said:
Such as why you didn’t choose an alternative that was available at the time.
There wasn't. ISU was the only school that accepted my application, and the only one I could afford.
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Did you guys hear about the Jussie Smollet hate crime?
Fake Noose
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1 minute ago, Wabash82 said:
Well, you may be right in blaming your education. But before besmirching a fine institution like ISU, we should probably consider some alternative theories.... 😉
Such as?
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15 minutes ago, foxbat said:
Please feel free to discuss the content.
I believe I already did.
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1 minute ago, foxbat said:
So you are agreeing that the numbers were gamed? The number's not all that important ... just interesting that someone obfuscating story content by going after the source would be so "comfortable" with sporting a less-than-honest accounting of "reputation" ... whether gamed personally or not.
Yes, they were altered by a GID administrator. Not at my personal request however.
And again, please elaborate on how I was "obfuscating story content by going after the source" when I was simply pointing out the bias behind the SPLC?
Funny how when somebody starts whining about or questioning the reputation +/- and you then ask why it is so important to them the answer is invariably "but it's not".
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1 hour ago, foxbat said:
Yep ... so meaningless that you found a way to game them.
I personally did not game them. Why is this number so important to you, foxbat?
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11 minutes ago, foxbat said:
Obfuscation. Kind of like those uptick counts, eh?
I don't understand how my statements concerning the definitions of hate groups and hate crimes are obfuscating. Please enlighten me.
Goes to show how meaningless those 'upticks' really are.
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6 minutes ago, foxbat said:
Yes, by all means, let's ignore the FBI stats or the input from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino in the article to take a shot at the SPLC. If you've got contradicting/contrary numbers, then by all means please post them.
I don't recall ever stating that we should ignore FBI statistics, or input from this CSU entity.
If you want to talk about contradicting/contrary numbers, we first have to all agree on the definition of "hate group", don't we?
One may also have to support the concept of a "hate crime" in the first place.
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14 minutes ago, foxbat said:
Just in yesterday evening ...
FTA:
American hate groups had a bumper year in 2018 as a surge in black and white nationalist groups lifted their number to a new record high, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report issued Wednesday.
The Alabama-based legal advocacy organization recorded 1,020 active hate groups last year, up 7 percent from 2017. The previous record tallied by SPLC was 1,018 in 2011 amid a white extremist backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president.
The increase was driven by growth in both black and white nationalist groups, the SPLC said. The number of white nationalist groups jumped from 100 to 148, while the number of black nationalist groups — typically anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and anti-white — rose from 233 to 264.
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Hate crimes have followed a similar trajectory in recent years. After falling for three consecutive years, attacks on blacks, Jews, Muslims and other minorities increased by 30 percent in the three-year period ending in 2017, according to the latest FBI data.
The uptrend continued into last year, with hate crimes in America's 30 largest cities surging by an additional 10 percent, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
The majority of hate crimes are nonviolent, but some incidents were deadly. White supremacists in the U.S. and Canada killed at least 40 people last year, up from 17 people the year before, according to the SPLC's tally.
While most bias-motivated offenses are not committed by members of hate groups, the perpetrators of hate crimes draw inspiration from ideas put out by hate groups, said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project and author of the report.
[emphasis in last sentence of the article is mine]
Meh, the SPLC has it's own biases:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/southern-poverty-law-center-bias-hate-group-labels-scam/
QuoteThere was a time when the Southern Poverty Law Center did useful work reporting on actual hate groups such as the KKK. These days, though, the SPLC is simply a MoveOn or Media Matters–style outfit. Its core mission now is trying to marginalize and shut up even mildly right-of-center voices by calling them instruments of hate, making increasingly strained attempts to tie conservative commentators, authors, political figures, and professors to the alt-right or neo-Nazism. At the same time it elevates absurd bloggers to the level of potential leaders of lynch mobs.
The equivalent of a Drudge-siren moment for SPLC is when it rolls out yet another faux-neutral report on hate, which is always getting worse and threatening to engulf the republic. The SPLC’s report on “Male supremacy,” which it calls “a hateful ideology for the subjugation of women” and ties to the men’s-rights activists lurking on 4Chan and Reddit who boast about their supposed dominance of women, lists as pernicious allies the psychologist, author, and PJ Media columnist Helen Smith and the American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, calling them “anti-feminist female voices” who “give the men’s rights movement a veneer of even-handedness” and lend a “mainstream and respectable face to some MRA concerns.”
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SPLC, founded by a direct-mail zillionaire named Morris Dees, spends far more on direct-mail fundraising pleas ($10 million) than it ever has on legal services, according to an analysis by Philanthropy Roundtable, and has never passed along more than 31 percent of its funding to charitable programs, sometimes as little as 18 percent. Meanwhile it has built itself a palatial six-story headquarters and an endowment of more than $200 million. In essence it is a machine for turning leftist hysteria into cash that portrays itself as a non-partisan, fact-finding group and has long been treated as such by media institutions such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/8967/7-things-you-need-know-about-southern-poverty-law-aaron-bandler
QuoteThe reality is that the SPLC is a leftist hack advocacy group which picks and chooses what standards to apply to its labels, consistently turning a blind eye to leftist and pro-Democrat groups and individuals while targeting, often unfairly, their enemies on the right. Here are seven things you need to know about the SPLC.
1. The SPLC was founded by a leftist who sought out leftist donors to enrich himself.
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2. The SPLC vastly overstates the number of hate groups in the country. One of the reasons for this is that the SPLC has a bad habit of labeling groups with conservative positions as hate groups.
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3. The SPLC is not interested in classifying a leftist organization as a hate group. In 2011, National Review's Charles Cooke pressed the SPLC as to why they weren't tracking the Occupy Wall Street movement after a group affiliated with the movement plotted to blow up a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. After a back-and-forth with a male representative from the SPLC, Cooke got the representative to admit: "We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left."
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4. A shooting occurred at the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012 after the organization was labeled a hate group by the SPLC. The shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, admitted that he wanted to "kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard" after he saw the FRC listed on the SPLC's website as a "hate group."
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5. In 2014, the SPLC actually listed Dr. Ben Carson under their "Extremist Files" list. Via The Christian Science Monitor:
In February 2015, after criticism of his inclusion, the group apologized to the candidate. The SPLC said that while some might consider Dr. Carson’s statements, including several that referenced Adolf Hitler, and comments on gay marriage, to be extreme, he should not have been branded an extremist.
The Hitler comments are a reference to when Carson said, "The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed." This is hardly an extreme comment, in fact it's accurate. Carson's opposition to gay marriage is also not a viewpoint worthy of being put on an extremist list.
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6. The FBI removed the SPLC as a "resource" in 2014 for their "hate crime Web page." The FBI refused to comment on it, but according to The Blaze, the move came "after 15 conservative groups lobbied Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey to end the endorsement."
7. The actual hate group is the SPLC. As Human Events concluded in 2011:
All of which begs the question: Is the SPLC, by its own criteria, the real hate group? It still carries weight in plenty of circles here in America, and so when it categorizes an organization as a hate group, many people of good conscience are influenced by that designation, one which is quite stigmatizing and destructive, as evidenced by the recent events involving FOTF and AFA mentioned above. Yet it is the leaders of the SPLC who are either irresponsibly attacking other fine organizations, or worse still, knowingly defaming them.
Who then deserves the title of “hate group,” Focus on the Family or the Southern Poverty Law Center? Who has been guilty of demonizing others and spreading hurtful, inaccurate information? Whose actions and words have been hateful? The record speaks for itself.
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https://deadspin.com/zion-williamsons-knee-is-stable-but-he-should-pack-it-1832782881
QuoteZion Williamson busting through his shoe and twisting his knee in the first minute of a storied rivalry game on national TV made for a neat encapsulation of everything that’s broken with big-time college sports. Here was an unpaid player that everyone with one functioning eye can agree belongs in the NBA right now, playing in a game that had ticket prices on par with the Super Bowl, suffering a scary-looking injury because the apparel company that has a multi-million-dollar deal with the school he plays for put an exploding shoe on his foot.
The good news, according to Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, is that Williamson only suffered a “mild knee sprain” and that his knee is “stable.” We’re supposed to find out more today about when Williamson might be able to return to action, but whatever recovery timetable Duke’s doctors come up with should be moot. Williamson has nothing left to gain from college basketball.
So long as the NCAA goes on refusing to pay athletes for their labor and the NBA adheres to its bullshit one-and-done rule, the only sensible argument to be made in favor a player like Williamson participating in college basketball (rather than going to play in Europe or taking a year off) is that it a provides a talent showcase. Everyone knew that Williamson was a spectacular athlete based on his high-school clips, but one could argue that he didn’t become the consensus future No. 1 pick until he showed his dominance in Division I college games.
It’s almost March now, and Williamson is averaging 21 points and eight rebounds per game while routinely producing highlights that appear to be CGI-aided; his undeniable abilities have been fully showcased, and he will absolutely be the No. 1 pick in June even if he never plays another game for Duke. Sure, it’s possible that some NBA GMs would rate him lower for “quitting” on his team, but that would just mark them as incredible morons.
The decision of whether or not to play another college basketball game is ultimately Williamson’s to make. By all accounts, he is a great competitor and teammate who loves playing basketball and would surely want to keep doing so as long as he is healthy. In a fair system, his decision would be a simple one, based only on his own desire and physical health. But because college sports are designed to take everything from players like Williamson while offering no safety net in return, his choice becomes complicated. Having to weigh his desire to play against his health and professional prospects is just another cruel aspect of amateur sports that Williamson will now be forced to navigate. That’s how you can tell this whole scam is an effective one: The inequities just keep compounding, and it’s always the players who end up in the most vulnerable and least desirable positions.
Yep. It's nothing but a giant meat market.
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Police: Patriots owner Robert Kraft solicited prostitute
in The Next Level
Posted
https://apnews.com/19254313af36441395cec4123f5e89a8
Uh oh. Shouldn't be a crime though. Mr. Kraft is a consenting adult, and most likely the individual whom he allegedly solicited for sex was a consenting adult as well.