Is It a Lie or Just Ignorance?

      The latest YouGov poll finds Hillary Clinton of the five remaining POTUS candidates as the least honest in the OPINION of American. However, how reasonable is that opinion or is it just the result of an effective smear campaign?  She has been in the public eye and on the Republican radar longer than any of the other candidates. Also, the Republicans spent $70 Million of public funds in an attempt to destroy Clinton credibility.

      In order to judge the reliability of public opinion, consider statements of these candidates as they compete for POTUS. The analysis by Politifact shows a different story.

      We heard another argument regarding the truthfulness of the candidates. Maybe they weren’t lying when making false statements. Maybe they actually believed what they were saying was truthful. That could certainly be the case. It demonstrates which candidate is more knowledgeable of POTUS matters. The order of expertise is Clinton, Kasich, Sanders, Cruz, and Trump. That is reasonably consistent with the findings of Politifact.
     Here is the whole story

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B37Sbk8kmcPdOXVJSlJLNTlMY0E

Efficacy of Vitamin Supplements

     With billions of dollars spent annually, vitamin supplements are probably the con-game of the century, as scientific evidence continues to prove.  In most cases such indiscriminate use is probably useless and potentially harmful.  
     Not all vitamin and mineral supplements are useless. When used appropriately, based on scientific evidence, and a specific medical issue some help. Few debate that we need dietary vitamins to live. But the most common reason for taking vitamins -- our desire to “improve overall health” -- is generally a waste of money.  Quality testing doesn’t validate health claims.

For more information check out
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-evidence-that-routine-multivitamin-use-should-be-avoided/ 

Romney on Trump

      We normally try to avoid the "politics" of politics, but the situation with Donald Trump is serious and needs that attention. This speech by Romney needs to be taken to heart and mind by ALL Americans. He tells it "like it is" and not like too many people imagine it is.

John Oliver on Donald Trump

     So many people hate the “ruling class” so much they are either 
- willing to throw their country in the sh-t can in order to make a point or 
- they are too stupid to recognize the folly of their actions. 

     I have had so many debates with Republicans over the last decade that I think it is a lot of both. Facts don’t matter; what they “feel” does. This video has been viewed by over 8 million at 7AM and growing by a quarter million by the hour. 
     Several people have repeated, “I never left the Republican party; the Party left me.” Amen to that!

Brains Hardwired for Religion

Is belief in God a matter of choice, or is it a result of evolution.  

CINO?

Christian In Name Only.  Donald Trump is hardly the first to wear that badge.  Some say he can wear it next to his RINO badge.  The issue to which "the Donald" seems oblivious is - participation goes deeper than "claims".   It also involves "practice". Pope Francis seems to question Trump's sincerity. 
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/politics/pope-francis-trump-christian-wall/

Trump is hardly alone in his ignorance.  Nevertheless, we are surprised that Trump who claims expertise in everything, missed the following Bible entry

15"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16"You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17"So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.…
Matthew 7:16

Will this change the mind of any Trump supporter?  We doubt it.  As in our experience in most matters religious, cognitive dissonance will prevail.

How Presidential Candidates Get Science Wrong

Popular Science has distributed by email its analysis about "How Presidential Candidates Get Science Wrong."  http://www.popsci.com/primarytruth?cmpid=enews&spPodID=030&spMailingID=24699335&spUserID=MTEzNTgyOTYxMzQ4S0&spJobID=741915294&spReportId=NzQxOTE1Mjk0S0

This notice is kind of like "the pot calling the kettle black."  Without going into the all the details about how Popular Science has contributed to the discrediting of science through its frequently exaggerated expectations about potential impact of preliminary science discoveries, we focus on one claim in this latest "exclusive."

[Popular] Science says

Why People See Ghosts

Here is a brief primer on the science behind why people see ghosts, gods, angels, demons, and aliens plus some experiments in near-death and out-of-body experiences.

http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/why-people-see-ghosts.pdf  

Evolution: What the Fossils Say (by Donald Prothero)

Freedom of Religion?

Freedom of religion as insured by the First Amendment to the Constitution apparently means everyone is free to practice their religion as long as it conforms to the religion of the majority. 

FOX News reports that Arizona lawmakers are scrambling to change the rules regarding prayer at council meetings in an effort to keep The Satanic Temple from delivering an invocation at a February session.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/31/lawmakers-work-to-block-satanist-group-from-saying-prayer-at-council-meeting.html?intcmp=hppop 

The current rules allow for anyone who wants to deliver a prayer to simply make a request. The Satanist Temple made such a request in December and is expected to attend the Feb. 17 council meeting.  But lawmakers are planning to vote this week on a possible change to the rules, effectively making it impossible for Satanists to deliver the opening invocation.  The new rules reportedly would only allow people invited by elected officials to deliver the prayers at the opening of meetings.

Support Blocking Robo-Calls

You probably get fewer unwanted robocalls to your cell phone than you get on your landline phone.

That's because there's a law — the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — that prohibits most robocalls to cell phones. It could not be more clear.

But that could soon change if we don't take action!

A provision in last fall's Federal budget bill allows debt collectors to robocall cell phones to find people who owe student debt, back taxes and much more — unless we pass the “HANG UP” Act — and repeal this provision!

Tell your Senators to cosponsor the “HANG UP” Act and repeal robocalls to cell phones.

When we started our “End Robocalls” campaign, hardly anyone believed robocalls could be stopped.

Checking Sources

Never repeat a quote from a secondary source

Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

      Numerous published reviews have appraised the role of vitamin and mineral supplements in primary or secondary prevention of chronic disease have consistently found null results or possible harms. With respect to multivitamins, the published studies indicate no substantial health benefit. Supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful.
      Nevertheless, the use of multivitamin supplements increased among U.S. adults from 30% between 1988 to 1994 to 39% between 2003 to 2006, while overall use of dietary supplements increased from 42% to 53%.  Sales of multivitamins and other supplements have not been affected by major studies with null results, and the U.S. supplement industry continues to grow, reaching $28 billion in annual sales in 2010. 
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1789253

Politician And Environmentalist Lies about Climate Change

      In Senator Cruz's opening statement in the Science Sub-Committee of Commerce Committee he emphasizes the need to stick to the science in considering policy.  As an example, he shows the wild exaggeration made by some politicians, such a past-senator and current Secretary of State John Kerry.
      Likewise, in his essay about the Sophistic Nature of the Defense of Global Warming Alarm, Dr. Lindzen, MIT Professor Emeritus warns of similar disingenuous reporting of statements made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Specifically,

• The IPCC does not claim that the ‘science is settled'
• The IPCC does not claim “that there is an urgent need to fight climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.
• The IPCC does not claim that climate change is mostly due to human activities  

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/26/lindzen-a-recent-exchange-in-the-boston-globe-clearly-illustrated-the-sophistic-nature-of-the-defense-of-global-warming-alarm/ 

Senate Committee on Climate Change

Polar Bear Numbers Increased

Survey Results: Svalbard polar bear numbers increased 30% over last 11 years

Posted on December 23, 2015 | Comments Off on Survey Results: Svalbard polar bear numbers increased 30% over last 11 years

Results of this fall’s Barents Sea population survey have been released by the Norwegian Polar Institute and they are phenomenal: despite several years with poor ice conditions, there are more bears now (~975) than there were in 2004 (~685) around Svalbard (a 30% increase) and the bears were in good condition.
http://polarbearscience.com/

Religious Freedom: What It Is and What It Is Not

      Religious freedom has traditionally been construed as an individual right to pray and worship as one sees fit. But Religious Right activists are working to change religious liberty into something else—a device to be used to control others and a vehicle to enlist government support to further fundamentalist dogma. In this talk, Rob Boston discusses why the Religious Right's view of religious freedom isn't really religious freedom at all and why, ultimately, changes in the American religious landscape will lead to a less dogmatic, more secular nation.

Real X-Files

Okay we'll try this one again.  The last time I transfer the "embed code" from the producers, it disappeared from their website and from our embed.  Their new embed code didn't work any better so we saved a the video to You Tube

http://www.vice.com/video/the-real-x-files

This was featured again in Cause and Effect Newsletter, Issue #46 — December 18, 2015. Cause & Effect is the biweekly newsletter of the Center for Inquiry community.

Religious Freedom?

This one goes under the column, "In America you are free to have a religious belief as long as it is the same as mine." 

      Schools in Augusta County in central Virginia were temporarily closed due to outrage over a lesson in Arabic calligraphy. Riverheads High School teacher Cheryl LaPorte asked students to practice calligraphy by copying an Islamic statement of faith known as the shahada as shown below.

Have any idea what it means?  Neither did the students.  It may have not been the best choice of study material, but the lesson was hardly deserving of the response. 

      Eric Bond, Virginia Department of Education and Superintendent, LapOrte's lesson was consistent with state standards and didn't violate students' rights. They weren't asked to "translate it, recite it, or claim it as a belief." The County Sheriff reported an abundance of "profane" and "hateful" calls and emails as a response. It was the "tone and content" of this "fanatical Christian Terrorism" had the school district announce the Friday closure. 
http://www.newser.com/story/217726/entire-school-district-closed-over-calligraphy-lesson.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=united&utm_campaign=rss_home 

Yale Petitions to Repeal First Amendment

Yale fail: Ivy leaguers sign 'petition' to repeal First Amendment
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/16/yale-fail-ivy-leaguers-caught-on-video-clamoring-to-kill-first-amendment/?intcmp=hpbt4  

Looking to understand just how controversial the debate over free speech on our college campuses really is, filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz recently traveled to Yale University, one of our nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, to speak directly to students.

“I decided to take this campus free speech debate to its logical conclusion,” said Horowitz, who asked students if they’d sign a petition calling for an outright repeal of the First Amendment. “The result was this unbelievable display of total stupidity.”

In fact, Horowitz discovered a solid majority of the students asked willingly signed the petition, with several expressing their enthusiastic approval for his anti-First Amendment efforts.

{Emphasis above added by us}  
Watch the video to find out just how many supported the petition, and how willing many students were to sign away their more basic rights of free speech and expression.

And does ANYONE question why Trump has such support!  Thomas Jefferson knew an educated populace was critical to democracy.  So help us!