By 1700 good world maps were resembling the geographic world as we know it today. This hand colored engraved map was done by German cartographer A. F. Zürner (1679 – 1742). His father was very bright and Adam’s schooling was done mostly at home. A family friend and minister Nicholas Spanger filled in some educational gaps with more instruction in geography, history and sciences. Adam eventually became a – what we would call today a civil servant. Zurner came to improvise and interesting way to measure the boundaries around two towns for which he was assigned to map. He constructed a geographic test coach. A rod attached he to the wheels acted as a counter for the distance traveled.
Magnate Steps Into 2012 Fray on Wild Pitch
Word that Mr. Ricketts had considered bankrolling a $10 million advertising campaign linking President Obama to the incendiary race-infused statements of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., brought waves of denunciation from Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign and much of the rest of the political world.
Highlighting the perils of mixing partisan politics and corporate citizenship, the reverberations also swept through the Ricketts family’s business empire.
Liberal groups encouraged like-minded investors to drop their accounts with TD Ameritrade, the brokerage firm Mr. Ricketts founded.
I don’t know that the Ricketts family is that unusual in having family members hold a variety of political opinions. They just happen to have a lot of money. Sons of the senior Ricketts seem to lean far Right, while he has a daughter who is a member of the Obama campaign’s national finance committee. From bitherism to the birther curious to a variety of conspiracy theories that many conservatives cling, part of the deranged glue that holds them all together is the belief that President Obama was never fully vetted. This is actually the subject of Brietbarf’s coverage of Ricketts and the attempted revival of the Rev. Wright nonsense and the recent discovery of a mistake by a literary agent who said that Obama was born in Kenya. If only the lame stream media would do its job and tell everyone what conservatives know deep in their highly disturbed brain stems, Obama would never have been voted into office in the first place. The senior Ricketts is apparently coming to this twisted reality a bit late,
Associates of Mr. Ricketts acknowledged that upon seeing a commercial Mr. Davis produced in 2008 for Mr. McCain featuring Mr. Wright, which Mr. McCain rejected, Mr. Ricketts said. “If the nation had seen that ad, they’d never have elected Barack Obama.” The quote was highlighted in the proposal.
Mr. Ricketts was shown the commercial at an initial meeting at Mr. Davis’s offices in California, which Mr. Ricketts requested as he sought to build a team of top Republican strategists to lead his foray into the presidential campaign. (Aides acknowledge that a second meeting followed in New York, where, they say, he gave Mr. Davis general directions to move ahead with a proposal that would create maximum impact for $10 million but did not specifically approve one based on Mr. Wright.)
If conservatives want to play this game – and they might regardless of what Mitt Romney wants or feels on any given day – than bring it. There is the obvious race politics down side. The other is that Mormonism is not exactly without a history of some tenets that many American find way outside the mainstream. The Obama campaign would never go there, but if outside conservative groups such as Ricketts and Ending Spending Political Action Fund, than Democratic leaning groups probably will as well. The modern Mormon church does not subscribe to them as official church doctrine since at least 1978, but The Journal of Discourses (often abbreviated J.D.) have and still are used in church teachings. The JD include writings by church founders including Brigham Young, John Taylor, Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, and George Q. Cannon.
“Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned,” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, p. 266). Also, “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy,” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269).
Clear enough. If you do not subscribe to polygamy you’re headed for eternal damnation. Catholics and Evangelicals might find the proclamation that Jesus was not conceived in a virgin birth a bit disturbing:
The birth of the Savior was as natural as the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood–was begotten of his Father, as we “I have given you a few leading items upon this subject, but a great deal more remains to be told. Now, remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 51). were of our fathers.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 8, p. 115).
Since i grew up in the South, had some fairly conservative religious instruction and it is on TV, and radio constantly, like many southerns the fire breathers of the far right become so much background noise. The media has done their part to make the fire and brimstone crowd mainstream. Though if the national spotlight is going to be pushed that way by far Right Republicans the general public may take a longer look and not find conservative’s take on religion all that mainstream. I tend to think the whole Rev. Wright matter got more press than it deserved. On the other hand in the 2008 campaign the right’s zealots were left off the hook – McCain’s Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam
The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the “spiritual desperation” of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual “culture” (“homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree”), the “abortion industry,” and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.
In a chapter titled “Islam: The Deception of Allah,” Parsley warns there is a “war between Islam and Christian civilization.”
The public is generally not fond of the idea of some never ending war with a third of the world’s population ( there are a little over 2 billion Muslims). Just this past March the public seems a little tired of the holier than thou acts put on by some politicians, “Nearly four in 10 Americans (38 percent) say there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders… Most Americans (54 percent) continue to say that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics.” During the 2008 campaign Palin appeared with far Right Republican pastor John Hagee and tried to cover it up – Palin to Staff: Delete Right-wing Pastor John Hagee
In internal emails with her communications staff, then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin tried to censor a press release put out by an independent organization linking her to controversial Texas pastor John Hagee, the influential Christian-Zionist leader whose statements on Catholicism and Hurricane Katrina caused Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to publicly repudiate him in 2008.
Hagee said that New Orleans pretty much asked for Hurricane Katrina because of all the “gays” and claimed the Catholicism is a “cult”. So let’s have a campaign where religion is front and center. What do conservatives have on Obama – Rev. Wright and some wacko urban myths. On the other hand conservatives have some real baggage, and video and texts of their baggage does not require any sinister scheming or wild-eyed interpretation – it is all out there for anyone to read. The who has the most radical religious affiliations is part and parcel of the conservative Republican playbook. They find one or two Democrats and hammer over what they said, gross exaggerations of what they said, distortions of what they said and just make up quotes. A recent example of how conservatives play the game: You know why all Democrats are racists? Because the late Senator Robert Byrd was in the KKK when he was young. Never mind the next sixty years and his voting record. Never mind his constant apologies. Never mind that he was man enough to truly repent for his wrongs and redeem himself. I learned this on Twitter from a actor named Adam Baldwin. He played the wing-nut on “Chuck” ( one assumes as balance to Chuck’s liberalism). Baldwin does not even try to pass himself as knowledgeable. He has memorized every imbecilic conservative talking point. Twitter is the perfect place for him to express his views, they can all be summed up in 140 characters and have all the depth of a bumper sticker. I’ve said before that obviously not all conservatives are racists, but they continue to have a large contingency of people with race issues. And they are happy to exploit that segment of conservatives – in sometimes coded language, sometimes not so coded , to get votes. Baldwin is for” small government”. Well, so am I, that is why I’m not a conservative. Every conservative presidency since Eisenhower and every conservative Republican Congressional majority has made government bigger. That is how to play the game. They use a few people to paint in very broad strokes of radicalism. It is difficult to find a conservative is actually moderate and reasonable. This just came in as I was writing: CNN’s Erick Erickson Calls Obama A “Composite Kenyan” While Praising Breitbart.com For Continued “Vetting” Of Obama.
Women have been under economic assault in Washington for months. Deficit hawks have taken aim at social programs and civil rights protections that help keep women safe, healthy and able to participate in work and community life. To some lawmakers, none of that is more important than “saving” taxpayer dollars—which is often shorthand for robbing working women of both their earnings and their safety net.
The hostility toward women crested this week as conservative lawmakers pushed legislation that would gut the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). House Bill 4970 isn’t just oppressive to survivors; it attacks the civil and social rights of all women. By raising barriers to economic assistance and legal recourse, the legislation sends the message to countless women living in violent households that their place is still in the home.
[ ]…The economics of intimate partner violence shape the impacts of abuse as well. According to a 2007 analysis by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:
The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
Victims of intimate partner violence lost almost 8 million days of paid work because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends and dates. This loss is the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity as a result of violence.
There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion.
But conservatives are not the ones who have declared war on women because….Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary, so there. It does not come naturally to make absurd deflections like that, but I might get better at it with practice.
If only conservatives currently in Congress were genuinely for smaller government. If they were you would think this would be an issue where they could team up with civil libertarians in the Democratic Progressive Caucus. The Kafkaesque Terrorist List Our Government Keeps
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski had a simple question for the government attorney: what would you do if you found yourself on the No Fly List? After some hemming and hawing, the attorney said that he would seek “redress” from the Department of Homeland Security – even though DHS does not place people on the No Fly list and has no authority to remove them (that’s the FBI’s job). Because, the lawyer conceded, DHS would not be able to confirm or deny whether he was on the list, he would then seek review in a federal appellate court. And what would the court be able to do?, asked Judge Kozinski. Not much, said the government lawyer. In fact, the lawyer would not even concede that a federal court possessed the authority to order someone removed from the No Fly List. In other words, according to the United States government, the only redress that is available to a watch-listed citizen is to hope that some government bureaucrat will correct a mistake or change his mind.
The Long Goodbye 