GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party.

[Bfgrn]

sensible Tea Partyers are replacing the neocons and crazy holy rollers....

Sensible? You mean the ones who used extortion during the debt ceiling debate? You mean the ones who pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections and endanger public health??

The Tea Party: Same Old Authoritarian Conservatives With a New Label

by John Dean - former counsel to the president Nixon

The debt-ceiling debate, better described as an extortion ploy by the Tea Party-controlled Republicans of the U.S House of Representatives, has raised a question: Who, exactly, are these largely anonymous troublemakers? When I did a little digging, I realized that I know these people all too well. Indeed, I had actually written about them before they morphed into their current form. They are, in fact, both old and new authoritarian conservatives.

These authoritarians are a notoriously nasty crew. If you have not noticed, they are delighted with what is happening in Washington, the chaos they have created. Actually, they are thrilled that they have been able to turn the Nation’s Capital upside down, as they actively work to screw up federal government in the hope of literally destroying it.

If you look closely, it is obvious that most of these Tea Party people have no real idea about the potential consequences of their actions, and they do not care to inform themselves. These are people who will pick a fight for the sake of picking a fight, refusing to compromise about anything that conflicts with their collective agenda, just because that feels to them like the right thing to do.

Who Are the Tea Party People?

They call themselves the Tea Party patriots, apparently seeing themselves in the tradition of the American colonists who resisted Parliament’s Tea Act tax in 1773 by dumping three boatloads of tea in the Boston Harbor, rather than returning it. The Tea Party’s effort to find a historical connection, however, does not work.

There is no real Tea Party, by any definition of the term “party.” This is merely a label, a colorful (albeit historically-distorted) rebranding of the GOP’s right wing. The Tea Party is really a new amalgamation of radical conservative groups who have been around a long time: evangelical bible-thumpers of the religious right; extreme anti-abortion and anti-women’s-rights groups; those who want guns (if not well-stocked arsenals) in every home and office with annual tithes to the National Rife Association; the sons and daughters, as well as a few grandchildren, of the John Birch Society loonies (who knew all along that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist); people who oppose any inter-marriage of races, and, God forbid, same-sex marriages between those they see as perverts; groups who would end the separation of church and state; and people who get most of their political information from right-wing radio, the Fox News Channel, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, their prayer groups, or a few select right-wing Internet sites. Ironically, few in this movement understand that those who provide the money that is spreading the messages that are manipulating them probably believe them to be fools for following an agenda that is not in their best interests.

The Tea Party movement is an orchestrated undertaking that is underwritten by big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. The puppeteers here are pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government. They believe that, by making government fail, they will ensure that Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, will lose future elections. And the Tea Party backers and supporters utterly despise our first African-American president.

more

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, an associate director of a law reform commission, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice.

His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before he entered Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books: Blind Ambition (1976, with new extended afterword in 2010) and Lost Honor (1982). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker, he returned to writing best-selling books and lecturing, not to mention being a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010).

Other books include: The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court (2001), Warren G. Harding (2003), Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004), Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches (2008), and Pure Goldwater (2009).

While working on his next book, John continues as a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications (since 2003), and he is an occasional television commentator. John is currently engaged as well in an extended continuing legal education (CLE) series that examines impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events of Watergate with surprising results – The Watergate CLE.

yep....some damn sensible stuff.....

debt-ceiling debate.....raising the debt ceiling is just Obama's way to fund things because he doesn't have a BUDGET.....this is not right....

environmental protections.....you mean the choking regulations that prevent JOBS.....?

Where were these 'patriots' when Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times, started two unpaid for wars that were not even IN the budget? Or when Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times and turned our government from pay as you go to BORROW as you go?

WHAT jobs? Undertakers, chemotherapy technicians and grave diggers???

Maybe you mean the 'pipeline' that Republican governor Dave Heineman sent a letter to President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the federal government to deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline?


Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along

Here are six facts about the proposed Keystone XL deal that make clear why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected:

1. Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency

The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

2. Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices

Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland.

In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

3. Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created

In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

4. Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year

The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.

5. The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified

Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

6. Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Read more: Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along | Fox News

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Sensible? You mean the ones who used extortion during the debt ceiling debate? You mean the ones who pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections and endanger public health??

The Tea Party: Same Old Authoritarian Conservatives With a New Label

by John Dean - former counsel to the president Nixon

The debt-ceiling debate, better described as an extortion ploy by the Tea Party-controlled Republicans of the U.S House of Representatives, has raised a question: Who, exactly, are these largely anonymous troublemakers? When I did a little digging, I realized that I know these people all too well. Indeed, I had actually written about them before they morphed into their current form. They are, in fact, both old and new authoritarian conservatives.

These authoritarians are a notoriously nasty crew. If you have not noticed, they are delighted with what is happening in Washington, the chaos they have created. Actually, they are thrilled that they have been able to turn the Nation’s Capital upside down, as they actively work to screw up federal government in the hope of literally destroying it.

If you look closely, it is obvious that most of these Tea Party people have no real idea about the potential consequences of their actions, and they do not care to inform themselves. These are people who will pick a fight for the sake of picking a fight, refusing to compromise about anything that conflicts with their collective agenda, just because that feels to them like the right thing to do.

Who Are the Tea Party People?

They call themselves the Tea Party patriots, apparently seeing themselves in the tradition of the American colonists who resisted Parliament’s Tea Act tax in 1773 by dumping three boatloads of tea in the Boston Harbor, rather than returning it. The Tea Party’s effort to find a historical connection, however, does not work.

There is no real Tea Party, by any definition of the term “party.” This is merely a label, a colorful (albeit historically-distorted) rebranding of the GOP’s right wing. The Tea Party is really a new amalgamation of radical conservative groups who have been around a long time: evangelical bible-thumpers of the religious right; extreme anti-abortion and anti-women’s-rights groups; those who want guns (if not well-stocked arsenals) in every home and office with annual tithes to the National Rife Association; the sons and daughters, as well as a few grandchildren, of the John Birch Society loonies (who knew all along that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist); people who oppose any inter-marriage of races, and, God forbid, same-sex marriages between those they see as perverts; groups who would end the separation of church and state; and people who get most of their political information from right-wing radio, the Fox News Channel, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, their prayer groups, or a few select right-wing Internet sites. Ironically, few in this movement understand that those who provide the money that is spreading the messages that are manipulating them probably believe them to be fools for following an agenda that is not in their best interests.

The Tea Party movement is an orchestrated undertaking that is underwritten by big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. The puppeteers here are pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government. They believe that, by making government fail, they will ensure that Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, will lose future elections. And the Tea Party backers and supporters utterly despise our first African-American president.

more

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, an associate director of a law reform commission, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice.

His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before he entered Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books: Blind Ambition (1976, with new extended afterword in 2010) and Lost Honor (1982). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker, he returned to writing best-selling books and lecturing, not to mention being a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010).

Other books include: The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court (2001), Warren G. Harding (2003), Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004), Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches (2008), and Pure Goldwater (2009).

While working on his next book, John continues as a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications (since 2003), and he is an occasional television commentator. John is currently engaged as well in an extended continuing legal education (CLE) series that examines impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events of Watergate with surprising results – The Watergate CLE.

yep....some damn sensible stuff.....

debt-ceiling debate.....raising the debt ceiling is just Obama's way to fund things because he doesn't have a BUDGET.....this is not right....

environmental protections.....you mean the choking regulations that prevent JOBS.....?

Where were these 'patriots' when Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times, started two unpaid for wars that were not even IN the budget? Or when Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times and turned our government from pay as you go to BORROW as you go?

WHAT jobs? Undertakers, chemotherapy technicians and grave diggers???

Maybe you mean the 'pipeline' that Republican governor Dave Heineman sent a letter to President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the federal government to deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline?


Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along

Here are six facts about the proposed Keystone XL deal that make clear why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected:

1. Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency

The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

2. Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices

Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland.

In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

3. Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created

In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

4. Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year

The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.

5. The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified

Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

6. Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Read more: Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along | Fox News

stupid republicans/rinos.......that's why the Tea Party is busy replacing them....

as for Obama's excessive regulations.....you need to wake up....

The Heritage report found that Obama has outdone his predecessors in that “no other president has burdened businesses and individuals with a higher number and larger cost of regulations in a comparable time period.”

And the worst is yet to come when you look at the job-killing, business-quelling regulations under Obamacare’s 159 new government offices and programs, the EPA’s seven new environmental regulations that will cost businesses $38 billion annually, in addition to compliance costs of $100 billion, and the 2400-page Dodd-Frank bill the Harvard Business Law Review cites as “the most significant regulatory overhaul since the New Deal.”

Over-Regulation Is Choking The Life Out Of Business | Susan Stamper Brown

 

[Bfgrn]

yep....some damn sensible stuff.....

debt-ceiling debate.....raising the debt ceiling is just Obama's way to fund things because he doesn't have a BUDGET.....this is not right....

environmental protections.....you mean the choking regulations that prevent JOBS.....?

Where were these 'patriots' when Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times, started two unpaid for wars that were not even IN the budget? Or when Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times and turned our government from pay as you go to BORROW as you go?

WHAT jobs? Undertakers, chemotherapy technicians and grave diggers???

Maybe you mean the 'pipeline' that Republican governor Dave Heineman sent a letter to President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the federal government to deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline?


Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along

Here are six facts about the proposed Keystone XL deal that make clear why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected:

1. Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency

The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

2. Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices

Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland.

In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

3. Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created

In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

4. Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year

The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.

5. The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified

Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

6. Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Read more: Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along | Fox News

stupid republicans/rinos.......that's why the Tea Party is busy replacing them....

as for Obama's excessive regulations.....you need to wake up....

The Heritage report found that Obama has outdone his predecessors in that “no other president has burdened businesses and individuals with a higher number and larger cost of regulations in a comparable time period.”

And the worst is yet to come when you look at the job-killing, business-quelling regulations under Obamacare’s 159 new government offices and programs, the EPA’s seven new environmental regulations that will cost businesses $38 billion annually, in addition to compliance costs of $100 billion, and the 2400-page Dodd-Frank bill the Harvard Business Law Review cites as “the most significant regulatory overhaul since the New Deal.”

Over-Regulation Is Choking The Life Out Of Business | Susan Stamper Brown

You need to wake up. You and the Heritage Foundation are anti-free market.

The Heritage Foundation is just a mouthpiece for big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. They are puppeteers pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

 

[tinydancer]

Only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

Why?

Because science involves facts.

Most of the greatest scientists were Christian you moron.

 

[Avatar4321]

.

Mitch Daniels had it right, a truce on social issues.

Less Bachmann, less Palin, less Santorum, less Beck, more reason and logic to stop our decay.

So much for THAT one, huh?

.

Reason and logic? ignoring the underlying issues is illogically and unreasonable now?

 

[Avatar4321]

.

Mitch Daniels had it right, a truce on social issues.

Less Bachmann, less Palin, less Santorum, less Beck, more reason and logic to stop our decay.

So much for THAT one, huh?

.

And mitch totally backed off that position, which probably put an end to any hope he had of getting the nomination this year.

Im pretty sure that not running is what put an end of any hope he had of getting the nomination this year. But hey, im unreasonable and illogical, what do I know?

 

[Avatar4321]

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

NO, they are religious whackjobs, though. (Except Bush, he was just playing the idiots.)

the fact these people are even given a seat at the table, that we are having national supports for homophobic chicken resturants, shows just how far the crazy has infected the GOP.

so if someone disagrees with you they should not be given a seat at the table?


Nice...................

Well, why on earth would he want to actually deal with someones position when they disagree with him. Much easier to just call names and deny them access to the table.

 

[Avatar4321]

we all eat Chik a Fil because Robertson came in second in Iowa back in 1988.

I had no idea.

That religious right, sure has some power.

 

[Katzndogz]

The republicans have had their own momentum to the left stopped by republican voters who decided to do their own purge of leftists in the republican party.

This is no different than what happened when communists took over the democrats and started opposing moderate democrats.

 

[tinydancer]

Religion is the problem is it?

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who put forward the first mathematically based system of planets going around the sun. He attended various European universities, and became a Canon in the Catholic church in 1497.

His new system was actually first presented in the Vatican gardens in 1533 before Pope Clement VII who approved, and urged Copernicus to publish it around this time. Copernicus was never under any threat of religious persecution - and was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise, Cardinal Schonberg, and the Protestant Professor George Rheticus.

Copernicus referred sometimes to God in his works, and did not see his system as in conflict with the Bible.


Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627)
Bacon was a philosopher who is known for establishing the scientific method of inquiry based on experimentation and inductive reasoning. In De Interpretatione Naturae Prooemium, Bacon established his goals as being the discovery of truth, service to his country, and service to the church. Although his work was based upon experimentation and reasoning, he rejected atheism as being the result of insufficient depth of philosophy, stating, "It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." (Of Atheism)


Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Kepler was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer. He did early work on light, and established the laws of planetary motion about the sun. He also came close to reaching the Newtonian concept of universal gravity - well before Newton was born! His introduction of the idea of force in astronomy changed it radically in a modern direction.

Kepler was an extremely sincere and pious Lutheran, whose works on astronomy contain writings about how space and the heavenly bodies represent the Trinity. Kepler suffered no persecution for his open avowal of the sun-centered system, and, indeed, was allowed as a Protestant to stay in Catholic Graz as a Professor (1595-1600) when other Protestants had been expelled!


Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Galileo is often remembered for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. His controversial work on the solar system was published in 1633. It had no proofs of a sun-centered system (Galileo's telescope discoveries did not indicate a moving earth) and his one "proof" based upon the tides was invalid. It ignored the correct elliptical orbits of planets published twenty five years earlier by Kepler.

Since his work finished by putting the Pope's favorite argument in the mouth of the simpleton in the dialogue, the Pope (an old friend of Galileo's) was very offended. After the "trial" and being forbidden to teach the sun-centered system, Galileo did his most useful theoretical work, which was on dynamics. Galileo expressly said that the Bible cannot err, and saw his system as an alternate interpretation of the biblical texts.


Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Descartes was a French mathematician, scientist and philosopher who has been called the father of modern philosophy. His school studies made him dissatisfied with previous philosophy: He had a deep religious faith as a Roman Catholic, which he retained to his dying day, along with a resolute, passionate desire to discover the truth.

At the age of 24 he had a dream, and felt the vocational call to seek to bring knowledge together in one system of thought. His system began by asking what could be known if all else were doubted - suggesting the famous "I think therefore I am". Actually, it is often forgotten that the next step for Descartes was to establish the near certainty of the existence of God - for only if God both exists and would not want us to be deceived by our experiences - can we trust our senses and logical thought processes. God is, therefore, central to his whole philosophy. What he really wanted to see was that his philosophy be adopted as standard Roman Catholic teaching. Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) are generally regarded as the key figures in the development of scientific methodology. Both had systems in which God was important, and both seem more devout than the average for their era.


Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and theologian. In mathematics, he published a treatise on the subject of projective geometry and established the foundation for probability theory. Pascal invented a mechanical calculator, and established the principles of vacuums and the pressure of air.

He was raised a Roman Catholic, but in 1654 had a religious vision of God, which turned the direction of his study from science to theology. Pascal began publishing a theological work, Lettres provinciales, in 1656. His most influential theological work, the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was a defense of Christianity, which was published after his death. The most famous concept from Pensées was Pascal's Wager. Pascal's last words were, "May God never abandon me."


Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
In optics, mechanics, and mathematics, Newton was a figure of undisputed genius and innovation. In all his science (including chemistry) he saw mathematics and numbers as central. What is less well known is that he was devoutly religious and saw numbers as involved in understanding God's plan for history from the Bible.

He did a considerable work on biblical numerology, and, though aspects of his beliefs were not orthodox, he thought theology was very important. In his system of physics, God was essential to the nature and absoluteness of space. In Principia he stated, "The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."


Robert Boyle (1791-1867)
One of the founders and key early members of the Royal Society, Boyle gave his name to "Boyle's Law" for gases, and also wrote an important work on chemistry. Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "By his will he endowed a series of Boyle lectures, or sermons, which still continue, 'for proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels...' As a devout Protestant, Boyle took a special interest in promoting the Christian religion abroad, giving money to translate and publish the New Testament into Irish and Turkish. In 1690 he developed his theological views in The Christian Virtuoso, which he wrote to show that the study of nature was a central religious duty." Boyle wrote against atheists in his day (the notion that atheism is a modern invention is a myth), and was clearly much more devoutly Christian than the average in his era.


Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith who became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His work on electricity and magnetism not only revolutionized physics, but led to much of our lifestyles today, which depends on them (including computers and telephone lines and, so, web sites). Faraday was a devoutly Christian member of the Sandemanians, which significantly influenced him and strongly affected the way in which he approached and interpreted nature. Originating from Presbyterians, the Sandemanians rejected the idea of state churches, and tried to go back to a New Testament type of Christianity.


Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Mendel was the first to lay the mathematical foundations of genetics, in what came to be called "Mendelianism". He began his research in 1856 (three years before Darwin published his Origin of Species) in the garden of the Monastery in which he was a monk. Mendel was elected Abbot of his Monastery in 1868.

His work remained comparatively unknown until the turn of the century, when a new generation of botanists began finding similar results and "rediscovered" him (though their ideas were not identical to his). An interesting point is that the 1860's was notable for formation of the X-Club, which was dedicated to lessening religious influences and propagating an image of "conflict" between science and religion. One sympathizer was Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, whose scientific interest was in genetics (a proponent of eugenics - selective breeding among humans to "improve" the stock). He was writing how the "priestly mind" was not conducive to science while, at around the same time, an Austrian monk was making the breakthrough in genetics. The rediscovery of the work of Mendel came too late to affect Galton's contribution.

Famous Scientists Who Believed in God

 

[bodecea]

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

...and Huckabee is that crazy chicken huckster....and Bachmann and Santorum are today's "crazy" religious right 'whackjobs'....

we all eat Chik a Fil because Robertson came in second in Iowa back in 1988.

I had no idea.

Using Rightwing logic....I see how you'd get that idea.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Where were these 'patriots' when Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times, started two unpaid for wars that were not even IN the budget? Or when Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times and turned our government from pay as you go to BORROW as you go?

WHAT jobs? Undertakers, chemotherapy technicians and grave diggers???

Maybe you mean the 'pipeline' that Republican governor Dave Heineman sent a letter to President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the federal government to deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline?


Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along

Here are six facts about the proposed Keystone XL deal that make clear why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected:

1. Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency

The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

2. Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices

Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland.

In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

3. Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created

In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

4. Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year

The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.

5. The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified

Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

6. Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Read more: Six reasons Keystone XL was a bad deal all along | Fox News

stupid republicans/rinos.......that's why the Tea Party is busy replacing them....

as for Obama's excessive regulations.....you need to wake up....

The Heritage report found that Obama has outdone his predecessors in that “no other president has burdened businesses and individuals with a higher number and larger cost of regulations in a comparable time period.”

And the worst is yet to come when you look at the job-killing, business-quelling regulations under Obamacare’s 159 new government offices and programs, the EPA’s seven new environmental regulations that will cost businesses $38 billion annually, in addition to compliance costs of $100 billion, and the 2400-page Dodd-Frank bill the Harvard Business Law Review cites as “the most significant regulatory overhaul since the New Deal.”

Over-Regulation Is Choking The Life Out Of Business | Susan Stamper Brown

You need to wake up. You and the Heritage Foundation are anti-free market.

The Heritage Foundation is just a mouthpiece for big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. They are puppeteers pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

environmentalists are like watermelons........greenies on the outside and red inside.....

i am one for reasonable regulations for clean air and water just like most people.....however i do not see how Obama's repressive environmental laws are "retoring free-market capitalism".....

on the other hand i see global doings that look like world socialism in the making......have you any idea as to what the "environmentalists" are really up to.......? have you ever heard of "sustainability....? or the "green world order".....?

wakey....wakey....

The Real Agenda Behind UN ?Sustainability? Unmasked

 

[tinydancer]

stupid republicans/rinos.......that's why the Tea Party is busy replacing them....

as for Obama's excessive regulations.....you need to wake up....

You need to wake up. You and the Heritage Foundation are anti-free market.

The Heritage Foundation is just a mouthpiece for big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. They are puppeteers pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

environmentalists are like watermelons........greenies on the outside and red inside.....

i am one for reasonable regulations for clean air and water just like most people.....however i do not see how Obama's repressive environmental laws are "retoring free-market capitalism".....

on the other hand i see global doings that look like world socialism in the making......have you any idea as to what the "environmentalists" are really up to.......? have you ever heard of "sustainability....? or the "green world order".....?

wakey....wakey....

The Real Agenda Behind UN ?Sustainability? Unmasked

I'm a Delingpole addict. He hammers them daily. I believe he actually was the one who came up with "watermelons". Green on the outside red on the inside.

Anthony is brilliant of course. I adore his blog. I'll have more time up and coming but we've really been working at trying to find out where all the $$$$$$$$ are coming from.
Tides Foundation up here is backed by Soros attempting to stop all drilling.

Just recently we've flushed out Suzuki's cash donations from all sorts of US "donations to the environment" which includes Hewlitt and the Rockefeller Brothers.

Geithner and others are now involved in trying to stop a Chinese firm from purchasing a Canadian Oil firm. Politics both sides of our borders are desperate to keep all of us dependent on ME oil. We're still your number one supplier but the story line politicians always need is the ME.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

Why?

Because science involves facts.

Where is that stat from? I know of several republican scientists and several christian scientists an several jewidsh scientists and some muslim scientists.

 

[buckeye45_73]

...and Huckabee is that crazy chicken huckster....and Bachmann and Santorum are today's "crazy" religious right 'whackjobs'....

we all eat Chik a Fil because Robertson came in second in Iowa back in 1988.

I had no idea.

Using Rightwing logic....I see how you'd get that idea.

No he was mocking left wing "logic", thats why it was funny

 

[Full-Auto]

A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party - Salon.com


Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

The Constitution notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: Major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to share their feelings about their faith in a revelatory speech, or a televangelist like Rick Warren will dragoon the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, offering himself as the final arbiter. Half a century after John F. Kennedy put to rest the question of whether a candidate of a minority denomination could be president, the Republican Party has reignited the kinds of seventeenth-century religious controversies that advanced democracies are supposed to have outgrown. And some in the media seem to have internalized the GOP’s premise that the religion of a candidate is a matter for public debate.


More in article

So who is the repub...........???????

 

[Full-Auto]

A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party - Salon.com


Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

The Constitution notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: Major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to share their feelings about their faith in a revelatory speech, or a televangelist like Rick Warren will dragoon the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, offering himself as the final arbiter. Half a century after John F. Kennedy put to rest the question of whether a candidate of a minority denomination could be president, the Republican Party has reignited the kinds of seventeenth-century religious controversies that advanced democracies are supposed to have outgrown. And some in the media seem to have internalized the GOP’s premise that the religion of a candidate is a matter for public debate.


More in article

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

He is a staffer.

 

[Katzndogz]

Only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

Why?

Because science involves facts.

Where is that stat from? I know of several republican scientists and several christian scientists an several jewidsh scientists and some muslim scientists.

That's because the entire 6% statement is a total lie.

What do scientists think about religion? - Los Angeles Times

According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue. In 1914, 11 years before the Scopes "monkey" trial and four decades before the discovery of the structure of DNA, psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 U.S. scientists about their views on God. He found the scientific community evenly divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not. Scientists have unearthed many important fossils since then, but they are, if anything, more likely to believe in God today.

Everything democrats say has to be checked because it is likely a lie.

 

[Avatar4321]

Only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

Why?

Because science involves facts.

Where is that stat from? I know of several republican scientists and several christian scientists an several jewidsh scientists and some muslim scientists.

That's because the entire 6% statement is a total lie.

What do scientists think about religion? - Los Angeles Times

According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue. In 1914, 11 years before the Scopes "monkey" trial and four decades before the discovery of the structure of DNA, psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 U.S. scientists about their views on God. He found the scientific community evenly divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not. Scientists have unearthed many important fossils since then, but they are, if anything, more likely to believe in God today.

Everything democrats say has to be checked because it is likely a lie.

I dont see how you can look at the order in the universe and say there isn't a God. The more I learn about the world around me, the more evidence I see

 

[Katzndogz]

Where is that stat from? I know of several republican scientists and several christian scientists an several jewidsh scientists and some muslim scientists.

That's because the entire 6% statement is a total lie.

What do scientists think about religion? - Los Angeles Times

According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue. In 1914, 11 years before the Scopes "monkey" trial and four decades before the discovery of the structure of DNA, psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 U.S. scientists about their views on God. He found the scientific community evenly divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not. Scientists have unearthed many important fossils since then, but they are, if anything, more likely to believe in God today.

Everything democrats say has to be checked because it is likely a lie.

I dont see how you can look at the order in the universe and say there isn't a God. The more I learn about the world around me, the more evidence I see

51% of scientists agree with you.

If you consider order to the universe, you understand how Anthony Flew, the most outspoken atheist ever in history concluded the same thing. Flew spent his entire life trying to disprove, by scientific methods, the existence of God and finally concluded that not only was there a God, but nothing else could explain the why of why.