********************************************
Morality is doing right,

no matter what you are told.

Religion is doing what you are told,

no matter what is right.

--H.L. Mencken

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From tickld: Pastor shocks his congregation with love, tolerance, and reason

Pastor Just Said Something That Blew His Entire Congregation Away... Wow.

Words of wisdom from Penn Jillette

"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, 'Without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want?'

"My answer is, ' I do rape all I want, and the amount I want is zero. I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.'

"The fact that these people think that, if they didn't have this person watching over them, they would go on killing and raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine."

From ThinkProgress: Failed Republican predictions about Obama's economy

4 Predictions Republicans Made About The Economy That Are Really Embarrassing Now

by Judd Legum

Nov 6, 2015 10:48am

 

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., get ready to order as they make an unscheduled stop at a Wendy's restaurant in Richmond Heights, Ohio, on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012.

Republicans have consistently claimed that President Obama’s policies will kill jobs. Today, the Department of Labor announced that 271,000 jobs had been created. Overall, there have been 68 straight months of job growth creating 13.5 million new jobs. It is the longest streak of job growth on record in American history.

Here are some predictions Republicans made that are pretty embarrassing in light of the new data.

1. Obamacare will “destroy our economy… It’s going to push us into a total economic collapse.”

These are the words of Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), in 2013, just before the official start of the health care exchanges.




The notion that Obamacare is a job-killer has become a rallying for Republicans from the moment it became law. In 2011, former Speaker John Boehner predicted that Obamacare “will bankrupt our nation, and it will ruin our economy” during a press conference where he used the phrase “job-killing” once every two minutes.

The entire Republican leadership in the House, including current Speaker Paul Ryan, signed onto this report:



On Twitter, columnist Dan Diamond charted the actual very positive trend.

2. Wall Street reform is “a symbol of government overreach that is killing jobs.”

On the campaign trail in 2011, Mitt Romney and other top Republicans blasted Dodd-Frank, a Wall Street reform bill signed by Obama, as “a symbol of government overreach that is killing jobs.” The legislation was signed into law in July 2010.

Republicans say Dodd-Frank is the root of some of today’s economic problems. It has stopped banks from lending to “job creators,” they contend, and is a direct cause of high unemployment. “It created such uncertainty that the bankers, instead of making loans, pulled back,” said Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, speaking at a South Carolina rally over Labor Day weekend where he again called for the law’s repeal.

Other candidates who called for the immediate repeal of Dodd-Frank, blaming it for high unemployment, include Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann.

3. “Burdensome and ineffective” EPA regulations are “creating barriers for needed capital investment and job growth.”

In his 2012 budget, Rep. Paul Ryan wrote that the EPA’s “[b]urdensome and ineffective regulations on businesses in the service of dubious environmental goals have driven up the prices of many products and services, while creating barriers for needed capital investment and job creation.”

The inflation rate in 2015 is near zero.

Ryan’s running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney, blasted the “the job-crushing over-regulation of the EPA.”

4. The 2009 stimulus bill is “affirmatively job killing” and “about to get worse.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also a candidate for President in 2012, blasted the 2009 stimulus bill — a package designed to save the American economy when it was losing 750,000 jobs per month — as an example of “the Obama administration’s job-killing policies [that] are hurting America.”

Romney described the stimulus as a “bill that gave us Solyndra but left us with record unemployment.”

The White House estimated that the stimulus “saved or created an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years through the end of 2012.”


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Mitt Romney claimed that by rolling back these policies — repealing Obamacare, replacing Dodd-Frank, reining in the EPA, cutting government spending — he could reduce unemployment to 6 percent by January 2017.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 5 percent.

From Crooks and Liars: Rubio's deer-in-headlights mansplaining

Smart Move, Cajun!    

By Juanita Jean

 

11/06/15 8:04am

Yesterday James Carville said that he thought Marco Rubio was the best bet for the GOP to nominate for President. And that’s because James Carville is a sneaky little sumbitch.

I’d rather eat a Univac 500 computer machine than be Marco Rubio right now. Bless his heart, he is teat deep in hog scat right now trying to explain how he went from making $90,000 a year to $414,000 a year after he got elected to the Florida State House.

Then there’s his use of credit cards from the Republican Party of Florida. And how he could pay $14,000 to his family members for “courier services” from his PAC.

Honey, teevee is not this fella’s friend. However, to his credit, he remembered to take a drink of water first. And to top it off, he makes People Magazine this week, and not as the Sexiest Man Alive.

And the chatter on the internet is that he’s got a zipper problem. I know. I know. Bill Clinton had a zipper problem, but Bill told you upfront that he’s a rounder. He never claimed to be Mr. Holiness. That was the difference between Bill Clinton and John Edwards. And I kinda have a feeling that Marco and John can team up and open a campaign consulting business called Anything But Authentic.

 

So, congratulations to the Ragin’ Cajun for tricking Republicans. Again.

 

This is gonna be so much fun.

From Raw Story: Indiana Carson and the Temple of Grain--#BenCarsonWikipedia

Twitter invents hilarious #BenCarsonWikipedia facts to mock candidate’s battle with reality

An image mocking GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson (Twitter)

 

November 5, 2015

Jackie Salo
Posted with permission from International Business Times

 

While on campaign trail, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has made some questionable remarks that have some voters asking whether he may need to sign up for remedial classes in history and science. Most recently, the retired neurosurgeon defended his own lack of experience in Washington in a Facebook post Thursday, arguing that the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no political experience either (they did).

 

Just one day earlier, a 1998 video surfaced that shows Carson claiming that Joseph, an Old Testament figure, built the Egyptian pyramids to store grain. [Evidence points to the structures serving as tombs.]

 

Both of these remarks made their way around social media and have now sparked a viral hashtag #BenCarsonWikipedia, which Twitter users attach to tweets mocking Carson, and joking about what false, outrageous claims the Republican might make next.

 

Here are some of the many "BenCarsonWikipedia" jokes:

All the stone inside the pyramids is petrified wheat. Duh. What do you think dinosaurs ate in the desert?

--Scott Poole

 

Roombas are cyborg anchor babies.

--Erika Hall

 

God created Fossils on Day 7, because he works in mysterious ways

--TrivWorks

 

The Berlin Wall was erected because of the great popularity of racket ball in Germany.

--Juan

 

The square root of any number is always four, because a square has four sides

--Saint Brian

 

A pony must eat 57 apples before it becomes a horse.

--Mike Monteiro

 

Dogs are just tiny bears.
--Jan Warren

Some respected scientists believe that aliens built Mount Everest to get closer to heaven.
--Wil Wheaton

 

And the wonderful image opening this piece was supplied by ATHEISTPOWER/Kriz in response to Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian: "A new Film for #bencarsonwikipedia?"

Editor's note: these are just scratching the surface. You really need to go to #bencarsonwikipedia and see for yourself--it is hilarious!