Odds n’ Ends (12)

1. Hamas Declares End of Ceasefire with Israel. GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas Islamists Thursday declared the end of a six-month-old Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip, raising the prospect of an escalation in cross-border fighting. This is done likely because they've managed to stockpile enough weapons and ammunition to feel brave again.
   

 

1. President Elect Obama Planning a Billion Dollar Bailout of the Abortion Industry. http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=356962; Last week, the Obama-Biden Transition Project posted a report on its website that calls for dramatic policy reversals on abortion, including $1 billion in taxpayer money for international abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. The report, titled "Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration," also calls for a 133-percent increase in funding for the Title X program, which funds Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
   

   
    

   
    

2. Climate Change Chicanery. Stubborn thing, truth. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "You can resent it, ignore it, deride or distort it—but there it is." Truth, as Al Gore eagerly lectures, is an inconvenience to people content with their cherished beliefs. Interesting how some of the most inconvenient truths are those that keep cropping up about global warming. For example:
   

• NASA's latest tabulation shows a general cooling trend over the last decade with only three years in that time frame among the 10 hottest years on record.
  
• NASA measurements indicate that the world's oceans—believed to contribute up to 90 percent to global temperature—have been cooling, not warming, for the last five years.
  
• Antarctic ice has been growing steadily since the late 1970s and, in 2008, the extent of Arctic ice increased over 9 percent from the previous year.
  
• According to NOAA scientists, the winter of 2008 was the coldest since 2001.
  

  
   

One way to turn unwelcome findings into corroborative facts is to run them through the spin cycle of computer modeling—like the German scientists who recently announced their new climate-change model. After running the latest data through the model, the researchers found that—voila!—it predicts a 10-year cooling period before temperatures resume their sizzling climb to global meltdown. Now even cooling trends are claimed to support global warming! That's one way to protect a "cherished belief." http://salvomag.typepad.com/blog/2008/12/climate-change-chicanery.html; I hope this answers Mr. Oleander's recent question to me on whether I am now accepting Global Warming – I say hah, to Gorewinism!

 

 

1. More People Believe in Hell Than in Darwinism. "Overall, more people believe in the devil, hell and angels than believe in Darwin´s theory of evolution," said a Harris Poll released Thursday. The numbers clearly favor the proverbial Big Man Upstairs: 80 percent say they believe in God; among those who attend church weekly, the number is 98 percent. Three-quarters believe in miracles, 73 percent believe in heaven, 71 percent say Jesus is the Son of God and 71 percent believe in angels, the survey found. Seven out of 10 say Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that the Bible is, all or in part, the "Word of God."
   

   More than two-thirds - 68 percent - believe in the "survival of the soul after death" and would describe themselves as religious. About 62 percent think that hell exists, 61 percent believe in the Virgin Birth and 59 percent say the devil exists. In contrast, fewer than half - 47 percent - said they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/12/beliefs-in-god-ufos-prevail/;