World News Korner

I was really only subjected to a limited amount of this as a kid, but my daughter was exposed to the whole enchilada.

Christian homeschool instruction, Bible camps, overnight church sleepovers for teens, trips to the water park, paintball games, you name it she has done it.

My second wife lived a life like that as a kid as well, and told me they were not even allowed to go to the movies, watch television, or listen to modern music. Of course none of that stopped her from becoming a teen mom.

My personal feeling is if your religion is so worthy of acceptance then people should be introduced to it after they are in their late teens or early twenties and have some maturity and frame of reference. If they can be convinced at that stage of their life, then the church really has something valuable to offer.

If not then it deserves to die out.




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Courtesy of The Big Story:

The Boy Scouts of America will accept openly gay youths starting on New Year's Day, a historic change that has prompted the BSA to ponder a host of potential complications — ranging from policies on tentmates and showers to whether Scouts can march in gay pride parades.

Some churches are dropping their sponsorship of Scout units because of the new policy and some families are switching to a new conservative alternative called Trail Life USA. But massive defections haven't materialized and most major sponsors, including the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, are maintaining ties.

"There hasn't been a whole lot of fallout," said Haddock, a lawyer from Wichita, Kan. "If a church said they wouldn't work with us, we'd have a church right down the street say, 'We'll take the troop.'"

Of course the Boy Scouts have already openly accepted the idea of LGBT members as demonstrated by the fact that Sand Lake City Boy Scouts brought pizza to city workers who were working through lunch to process marriage licenses for gay couples.

I think this is going to be a REALLY big year for progressive agendas.

I just feel that in my bones.

My liberal, liberal bones.

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Here is a transcript of the exchange:

"This is a city where it's all politics all the time," Cruz told Karl in an interview that aired on Sunday. "And I'm trying to do my best not to pay attention to the politics, to focus on fixing the problems."

"Really?" Karl exclaimed, clearly not buying that the Texas Republican was not paying attention to politics.

"I know that's hard to believe because no one in this town does that," Cruz explained. "This is a time for people to step up and do the right thing. And that's what I'm trying to do."

And when it came to the government shutdown over President Barack Obama's health care reform law — that even House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) blamed on tea party-backed Republicans — Cruz insisted that his hands were clean.

"You have had a couple of months to think about this whole government shutdown strategy," Karl said. "Now that it's over in hindsight, are you prepared to say that it was a mistake, it wasn't the right tactic?"

"I think it was absolutely a mistake for President Obama and Harry Reid to force a government shutdown," replied a defiant Cruz.

"No, I mean, but come on," Karl shot back. "I mean we're a couple months away from this, the only reason why this happened is because you insisted, Republicans insisted that Obamacare be defunded as a condition of funding the government. If you didn't — if you took away that insistence, there would be no shutdown. I mean, really."

But Cruz refused to accept responsibility: "You've got conservatives who stood strong and said let's stop the train wreck that is Obamacare, and you've got Democrats in the middle of the shutdown, President Obama called every Senate Republican to the White House, sat us in a room and said, 'I called you to tell you, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to compromise on anything.'"

"Repeatedly Republicans were compromising, trying to find a middle ground. And repeatedly Democrats said, no compromise, shut it down," he said.

You know if Darrell Issa was the slipperiest POS in the House, and he is, then Cruz certainly deserves that designation in the Senate.

The fact that this asshole has the temerity to blame the government shutdown on the President and the Democrats, for refusing to allow him into bullying them into dropping the Affordable Care Act, should serve as an embarrassment to any reasonable Republicans.

If in fact any of those still exist.




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Courtesy of Politico:

Nearly 1 million people signed up for health insurance through the federal Obamacare exchanges between Dec. 1 and the Dec. 24 deadline for getting coverage by the start of the new year, according to figures released by the administration Sunday.

The 975,000 people who enrolled during that window bring the total number of federal sign-ups to more than 1.1 million since the rocky rollout of the government’s Healthcare.gov website on Oct. 1.

“We experienced a welcome surge in enrollment as millions of Americans seek access to affordable health care coverage through new Health Insurance Marketplaces nationwide,” Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, wrote in a blog post announcing the numbers.

Tavenner reported a late spike in enrollment in which the last few days before the deadline saw nearly twice as many people sign up as had done so in the first three weeks of the month.

This of course was the what was predicted all along by the administration.

And from here on the numbers will only start increasing.

On a personal note I really wish I was one of these 975,000 but I'm not.

I tried to be. I signed up for the exchange, started putting in my information in order to find the best rate for insurance, only to discover that the website thought that my birth date meant that I was not eighteen years old yet. It literally asked me to find an adult in the home to assist me.

I tried to get somebody to help but this was only a few days before the deadline and I got nobody.

Anyhow I will totally try again once a personal family matter has been dealt with, and this time I will stick with it until I get the goddamn Obamacare I voted for in two different elections.

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