Man Based Global Warming....

The level of default on loans made within the Community Reinvestment Act rules have a significantly LOWER default rate than other loans.

Do some research,

Icarus

 

Ignorance abounds. I have voted Libertarian more often than not since 1996. If there no viable Libertarian candidate, I choose between the available others. It may surprise you to know that the occasional, rational, conservative Democrat still exists.

 

Leftist and atheist ideologes yearn to cast everything as black and white, the better to cleave to their own religions. That's right, atheism, a religion.

Ignorance of Christianity's role in the abolition of slavery is no excuse to manufacture sweeping falsehoods. While one may point to certain areas and bodies within 'Christendom' which failed to alter official opinion, the role of certain other Christians - citing theur faith as reason - cannot, and should not be discounted.

From Wikipedia:

Christian abolitionism
Main article: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism"]Abolitionism[/ame]
Although many abolitionists opposed slavery on purely philosophical reasons, anti-slavery movements attracted strong religious elements. Throughout Europe and the United States, Christians, usually from 'un-institutional' Christian faith movements, not directly connected with traditional state churches, or "non-conformist" believers within established churches, were to be found at the forefront of the abolitionist movements.[87]
In particular, the effects of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening"]Second Great Awakening[/ame] with freedom of speech were principal causes in many evangelicals working to see the theoretical Christian view, that all people are equal, made a practical reality. Prominent among these in England was [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian"]Parliamentarian[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce"]William Wilberforce[/ame], who wrote in his diary when he was 28 that “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade"]Slave Trade[/ame] and Reformation of [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals"]Morals[/ame].â€[88] With others he labored, against much determined opposition, to finally abolish the British slave trade. The famous English preacher [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon"]Charles Spurgeon[/ame] had some of his sermons burned in America due to his censure of slavery, calling it "the foulest blot" and which "may have to be washed out in blood."[89] Methodist founder [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley"]John Wesley[/ame] denounced human bondage as "the sum of all villainies," and detailed its abuses.[90] In Georgia, primitive Methodists united with brethren elsewhere in condemning slavery. Many evangelical leaders in the United States such as [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian"]Presbyterian[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Finney"]Charles Finney[/ame] and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Weld"]Theodore Weld[/ame], and women such as [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe"]Harriet Beecher Stowe[/ame] (daughter of abolitionist [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Beecher"]Lyman Beecher[/ame]) and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth"]Sojourner Truth[/ame] motivated hearers to support abolition. Finney preached that slavery was a moral sin, and so supported its elimination. "I had made up my mind on the question of slavery, and was exceedingly anxious to arouse public attention to the subject. In my prayers and preaching, I so often alluded to slavery, and denounced it.[91] Repentance from slavery was required of souls, once enlightened of the subject, while continued support of the system incurred "the greatest guilt" upon them.[92]
Quakers in particular were early leaders in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism"]abolitionism[/ame]. In 1688 Dutch Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, sent an antislavery petition to the Monthly Meeting of Quakers. By 1727 British Quakers had expressed their official disapproval of the slave trade.[93] Three Quaker abolitionists, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet, devoted their lives to the abolitionist effort from the 1730s to the 1760s, with Lay founding the Negro School in 1770, which would serve more than 250 pupils.[94] In June of 1783 a petition from the London Yearly Meeting and signed by over 300 Quakers was presented to Parliament protesting the slave trade.[95]
In 1787 the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Effecting_the_Abolition_of_the_Slave_Trade"]Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade[/ame] was formed, with 9 of the 12 founder members being Quakers. During the same year, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce"]William Wilberforce[/ame] was persuaded to take up their cause; as an [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP"]MP[/ame], Wilberforce was able to introduce a bill to abolish the slave trade. Wilberforce first attempted to abolish the trade in 1791, but could only muster half the necessary votes; however, after transferring his support to the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whigs"]Whigs[/ame], it became an election issue. Abolitionist pressure had changed popular opinion, and in the 1806 election enough abolitionists entered parliament for Wilberforce to be able to see the passing of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807"]1807 Slave Trade Act[/ame]. The [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Navy"]Royal Navy[/ame] subsequently declared that the slave trade was equal to piracy, the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron"]West Africa Squadron[/ame] choosing to seize ships involved in the transfer of slaves and liberate the slaves on board, effectively crippling the transatlantic trade. Through abolitionist efforts, popular opinion continued to mount against slavery, and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833"]in 1833 slavery itself was outlawed[/ame] throughout the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire"]British Empire[/ame] - at that time containing roughly 1/6 of the world's population (rising to 1/4 towards the end of the century).
Though facing much opposition - from violence to the U.S. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postmaster_General"]Postmaster General[/ame] refusing to allow the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South [96][97] - many Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian members freed their slaves and sponsored black congregations, in which many black ministers encouraged slaves to believe that freedom could be gained during their lifetime. After a great [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_revival"]revival[/ame] occurred in 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, American Methodists made anti-slavery sentiments a condition of church membership.[98] Abolitionist writings, such as "A Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument" (1845) by George Bourne,[99] and "God Against Slavery" (1857) by George B. Cheever,[100] used the Bible, logic and reason extensively in contending against the institution of slavery, and in particular the chattel form of it as seen in the South.
Roman Catholic statements also became increasingly vehement against slavery, during this era. In 1741 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XIV"]Pope Benedict XIV[/ame] condemned slavery generally; in 1815 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_VII"]Pope Pius VII[/ame] demanded of the Congress of Vienna the suppression of the slave trade; in the Bull of Canonization of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit"]Jesuit[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Claver"]Peter Claver[/ame], one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_IX"]Pope Pius IX[/ame] branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders;[85] in 1839 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_XVI"]Pope Gregory XVI[/ame] condemned the slave trade in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Supremo_Apostolatus"]In Supremo Apostolatus[/ame] [3]; and in 1888 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIII"]Pope Leo XIII[/ame] condemned slavery in In Plurimis [4].
Roman Catholic efforts extended to the Americas. The [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic"]Roman Catholic[/ame] leader of the Irish in Ireland, Daniel O'Connell, supported the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and in America. With the black abolitionist [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lenox_Remond"]Charles Lenox Remond[/ame], and the temperance priest Theobold Mayhew, he organized a petition with 60,000 signatures urging the Irish of the United States to support abolition. O'Connell also spoke in the United States for abolition.
A more radical abolitionist, John Brown, was considered to have been either a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr"]martyr[/ame] or a zealot, depending on one's point of view.
Other Protestant missionaries of the Great Awakening initially opposed slavery in the South, but by the early decades of the 1800s, many Baptist and Methodist preachers in the South had come to an accommodation with it in order to evangelize the farmers and workers. Disagreements between the newer way of thinking and the old often created schisms within denominations at the time. Differences in views toward slavery resulted in the Baptist and Methodist churches dividing into regional associations by the beginning of the Civil War.[101]
In 1917, one hundred and ten years after the official abolition of the slave trade in most of the rest of the world, the Papacy finally abolished the Canon Law support for the slave trade.

 

Please do a little reading. First of all, there is not a scintilla of evidence that CO2 causes 'global warming'. There are only fantasists and computer models.

Instead of telling us why people who wear jump-suits are more discerning than beret-wearing pseudo-intellectuals, why not listen to Icarus, who just made a post for which I feel indebted to thank him.

 

Meanwhile, on the weather front, the number of scientists who confront the alarmists continues to rise:
Open Letter to the American Physical Society

and the signatories:
Signatures as of 22 July 2009

These are qualified men in their fields who are taking the APS to task for an alarmist view. I'm betting that the APS comes around and changes its statement on climate change. Will you change your view? Or, when temperatures continue to fall in the face of rising CO2, will you rush to realclimate for their latest rear-gaurd equivocation?

 

CO2 is a known greenhouse gas. You're alluding to the fact that in the past, CO2 rise followed global warming, in a kind of positive-feedback loop, but was not the trigger. This time humans are raising CO2 first, and we don't have history to guide us on what could happen, therefore we need to use predictions and models. We are also increasing methane and CFC and other known greenhouse gases, possibly including water vapor, a weak but very common greenhouse gas.

For me, it's not so much the global warming, although that is a definite cause for concern. The CO2 levels are changing the acidity of the oceans, affecting coral reefs and fish populations, which feed a significant proportion of the human population (including me at times). Coral bleaching and algae blooms (caused by lawn fertilizers in large part) are causing serious food & income problems.

But in the short term, in order to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, Americans must buy 60% of our oil from the international market. Even though most of that comes from Canada and Mexico (the latter of which is in serious decline right now), this is a global commodity and prices are largely controlled by OPEC production. Not only do we support unfriendly and unstable countries through this, we put our economy completely under their control (think of the 70's). This is completely an unpatriotic action in my mind, and everybody who drives a gas-guzzling SUV to commute to their white-collar jobs should be charged with treason. (Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme, but this is one area I don't see much gray on).

Funny, I always saw the extremists on both ends and the religious right in particular, as casting things as black and white, and the center/moderates seeing the full spectrum. You are right about atheism being a religion, and obviously for some, their god is money, or celebrities, or fashion...

 

Who is responsible for refusing to allow drilling of our own oil? Who is responsible for foot-dragging on nuclear projects? Who is responsible for blocking the construction of more refineries? Who will oppose more coal plants to utilize our own coal? Who will demonize burning our own natural gas? Who will be there in the future decrying the use of a desert to put up solar panels or wind generators?

Ask yourself these questions before you go overboard on the charges of treason for driving an SUV. Environmental extremists pose grave dangers while crusading under a banner to 'save the planet.'

 

Mr. Ickes,

Here is what my research turned up:

In Plain English: How Did The Biggest Financial Scandal in History Happen? – UPDATED! The IUSB Vision Weblog

Would you be kind enough to post a link to your source? Thanks.

 

My favorite conservative:

Thomas Sowell Asks: Do Facts Matter?

Posted by iusbvision on October 4, 2008
Famed Author and Economist Thomas Sowell

by Thomas Sowell
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain– which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years– including the present year– denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration “right-wing ideology” of “de-regulation” that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn’t.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the “greed” of CEOs and for “the people.” Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the “lynching” of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae’s financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.

Rabbi Dennis Prager makes the same case

​

Facts don’t matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don’t seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
Our complete coverage of the mortgage bailout crisis, who got paid, who benefited and who is lying, is HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. – Editor

 

Breaking my own rule not to respond,

but only to give people a counter to your right wing drivel!

Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis - BusinessWeek

Don't Blame the Community Reinvestment Act | The American Prospect

Felix Salmon Blog Archive John Carney’s bizarre crusade against the CRA | Blogs |

Media conservatives baselessly blame Community Reinvestment Act for foreclosure spike | Media Matters for America

Just to name a few of the thousands!

Some how I will take my sources over the University of Indiana's (by their own own admission) right wing student clubs publication! I don't believe that Business week is know for pushing a left wing political bias!

Icarus

 

How can it be a religion to not believe in something for which there is no evidence? That's just common sense unless lack of belief in unicorns is also a religion.

 

I liked the third signature:

Stuart B. Berger
Research Fellow and Divisional Time-to-Market Manager
Xerox Corporation (Retired)

 

ufourya,

Your list of anti-slavery christian leaders is well known to me. What you fail to understand is that exceptions are not the rule. 10 scientists who continue to dispute AGW does not credence to denialism give. In 20 years a future ufourya will declare that republicanism in the US was at least mainstream in it's heterogenous opinion regarding AGW, by trotting out a short list of republican officials like the governor of CA and the mayor of Salt Lake. People who read history will know that progress was retarded decades by mainstream republicanism (and libertarians, to add a joke to this post).

I would feel sorry for you, but I know one of your singular strengths is self-deception.

 

Liberal bias in blogs and a magazine that has recently leaped leftward. I'll stick with the folks who tell the truth.

 

There aren't a lot of people frantically writing books or recruiting adherents to bolster their non-belief in unicorns. The same cannot be said of atheists.

 

In 20 years, after AGW will have been proved another hoax foisted on the world by leftists, a future sagebrush will have subscribed to some other boondoggle. By the way, it doesn't even take 10 scientists to burst tha bubble of a so-called consensus. One will do. Facts are facts. Computer models predicting climate a hundred years in advance, when you can't count on weather predictions a week out, are the sheerest folly. Yet, even educated scientists allow themselves to be swayed by what they want to believe.

Stunning that a person can look at history and ignore that the earth has been warmer in the past than it is now and conclude that man's puny contribution to the greenhouse gases is going to cause disaster - and this while CO2 continues to rise as temperatures fall.

While all humans are subject to self-deception, it is particularly sad that most allow themselves to be deceived by others and keep coming back for more. Wake up.

 

Well, I wouldn't have selected Berger for any special consideration, but since you have:

esp@cenet — Bibliographic data

you'll notice that he actually took part in inventing something useful and appears to know enough to have become a member of the APS.

On the other hand, we've got Al Gore. the career politician who 'created the internet' and makes up other facts to put in entertaining fantasist movies.

 

So is any subject about which books are written about a religion? That describes any interesting field of knowledge.

 

Al Gore doesn't have anything to do with the scientific consensus of global warming. Scientist base their consensus on peer-reviewed papers not on Al Gore. The opposite is true of contrarians that base their view on personality and opinion rather than on publications.

 

Here's a little something to ponder:

LAW OF THE LAND
[FONT=Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][SIZE=+2]Court rules atheism a religion[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino, Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][SIZE=+1]Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate's right to start study group[/SIZE][/FONT]

[SIZE=-1]Posted: August 20, 2005[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]1:00 am Eastern[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com {Watch out, now, you may find yourself agreeing with a religious organization}[/SIZE]



A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.


"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]study[/color][/color] group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]attorney[/color][/color] for the American Family Association Center for [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]Law[/color][/color] & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.
Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."
"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.