Pope Frankie Forgets Who He Is. Asks Other "Who Am I...."

Don't get me wrong.  The current Pope Francis is clearly better than the pompous little peacock otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI.  Pope Frankie is actually embarrassed by all the pageantry and aristocratic silliness of the Papal office.  For example, not many people remember that, before the "Popemobile", the pope was carried on a cushion seat with poles and 12 people acting as human horses.  In that sense Pope Frank may be OK.
But when he tries to spin the church's position on homosexuality by saying, "Who am I to judge..." one is tempted to ask, did Pope Frankie really just forget who he was right now or what?  Either he forgot his name tag at home or he thinks the rest of us are dumb enough to buy this transparent dodge.  Clearly the Catholic Church judges homosexuals, and as his leader is the the Judger-in-Chief.  So don't give us that B.S. line about not judging them, especially when you go on, in the same interview to talk about it being a sin, and how they need to be forgiven for being born to be attracted to the same sex, just like straight people are born to be attracted to the opposite sex.  All the rest of his sideshow of carrying his own luggage and being a man of the people can't distract from 1600 year record of the Church being very judgmental indeed.
Who am I to judge...yeah right and I bet the check's in the mail too and I won't cum in your mouth....

Texas women using $2 miscarriage pill to get around new anti-abortion laws

Anti-abortion theocrats have passed new copycat laws anti-abortion laws in Texas designed to restrict womens' access to abortions.  As critics have pointed out, this will not stop women from seeking to end unwanted pregnancies.  Instead, they will probably use a pill that is available in Mexico and Latin America for about $2 called cytotec or "star pills".  Its technical name is misoprostol, and it's usually used in combination with mifeprestone, which together is commonly known as RU486.  By itself Cytotec is only 30% effective at inducing abortions, but it is cheap and easily available.  More importantly, it can be used to make it look like a miscarriage took place, in which case the woman can go to the emergency room and get taken care of, most likely on the taxpayer's dime.  It's popular in Latin America where abortion is largely illegal due to sharia-style restrictions demanded by the Roman Catholic Church.  However, even the RCC can't put every woman in jail who has a miscarriage.  While insurance will not pay for abortions, even under Obamacare, insurance will pay for "miscarriages".  So all Rick Perry and Co have effectively done is forced women to game the system and potentially created even more expense, and more big government than ever before.

Zimmerman Acquitted! Prayer Fails Again. Trayvon no Angel Either.

The Zimmerman trial was a ridiculous farce from start to finish, but news reports finally say the farce is over and that Zimmerman has been acquitted of all charges, including manslaughter.  Every clear-thinking person could see that he never should have been charged with murder of any kind.  Everyone could see that the influences of the media circus, and racial political agendas were distorting and exaggerating a fairly clear cut case of self-defense.  We all knew it was Zimmerman's voice on the 911 call too.  Even Trayvon Martin's mother knew it, but she refused to admit it, because it would require that she accept the obvious fact that her son was the aggressor, and unfortunately ended up paying for his poor decision with his life.

But this case had an even more absurd element, which was the over-the-top, in-your-face, holier-than-thou religious histrionics of Trayvon Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton, "pleading the blood of Jesus" on the witness stand.  She almost certainly does not recognize how self-righteous and phony she comes across, but delusional true-believers seldom are capable of seeing themselves as the rest of the world does.   The facts, of course, speak for themselves.  All her praying and invoking of Jesus could not convince anyone (including herself) that Trayvon was an "angel" or that Zimmerman acted any differently than anyone else would have if someone jumped you in the middle of the night.

I know that, if anyone tried to jump me in the middle of the night, like Trayvon Martin jumped George Zimmerman, and I had a gun that I would have emptied my magazine into that stupid punk before he could take a second swing.  Most of you all would have done the exact same thing, regardless of your skin color.  Trayvon Martin picked the wrong person to attack, thinking that this person couldn't defend himself.  If course he was a teenager, and teenagers don't always make smart decisions, especially when they are rich, spoiled jocks, and pot heads with a history of such things.  Trayvon is hardly the only teenager pay for his poor decision-making skills with his life.  It happens to teens all the time, who think they are invincible until reality suddenly reminds them that they are not.

Of course, we all hope it wouldn't come to that.  Presumably when Trayvon first jumped out and yelled "what's your problem", Zimmerman should have shouted, "I have a gun and I'll defend myself!", followed by drawing it in rapid order.  That too is perfectly legal according to several retired cops that I know.  It is not "brandishing" a firearm, because you are not making an illegal threat when you draw it in self-defense.  It is possible, that, at that stage, pulling the gun would have prevented further escalation.  But it may not have, because some teens, like Trayvon, from the sound of things, probably still would have acted in a menacing manner, and unfortunately for Trayvon, he lived in Florida, the redneck capital of "stand your ground" laws.  It wasn't because of the skittles.  It wasn't because of his hoodie, and it wasn't because of his skin color.  It was because he believed that he could physically assault someone with impunity.  Most of the time such confrontations don't lead to death, but you have to consider the worst case scenario.  It's the same thing that we tell people about road rage.  You never know if the other person might be crazy, or might be armed.  It's just not worth it to find out.  Your best bet is to get away as quickly as possible, get to a public place, and call 911 yourself.  Of course, that's what an adult would do.  Kids usually don't think that way.  Because they think they are invincible, sometimes right up to that moment where they discover they're not.

Proof that John 9 and other blind/deaf Jesus "miracle" cures were frauds

We have all heard the stories of the gospel claiming that Jesus could cure people who were blind or deaf since birth.  But science has yet again demonstrated that these stories are nonsense.  Here is the problem.  Now that we really can fix the problems that cause many people to be born blind or deaf, as in the case of this article in _Scientific American_ about Project Prakesh, we are confirming that a person who is born blind can't just start "seeing" right away and be as good as new, like the blindness never happened.  That is, just causing the "scales to fall away" from one's eyes, as the Bible frequently depicts the cure for blindness, would not result in  a person with functional vision.  Indeed, research reveals that when we do remove the "scales" (or cataracts in actual fact) from some of these Indian children, and allow them to see for the first time, that they lack the ability to make sense of the shapes and colors all around them.  In other words, they have never learned how to see, and the longer they have gone through life without learning how to recognize shapes and patterns, the more difficulty they will have being able to function, if ever, in a normal way.  They have missed a critical period of brain development and learning, and it is a similar phenomena when it comes to hearing.  Indeed, now that we have cochlear implants, we can let adults hear for the first time, when they have been deaf for their whole lives.  However, cochlear implants are generally not indicated for adults who were born deaf, because again, the outcomes are often not good.  Just as with the congenitally blind whose brains have never learned to make sense of visual patterns, the congentially deaf adult has never had an opportunity to learn how to recognize and make sense out of auditory patterns.  As a consequence, even though the cochlear implants allow these individuals to "hear", they often find it difficult to understand the world around them through sound or even to master normal speaking.  They too have missed a critical period of development.

Now, of course, we can invoke yet more miracles and say that, behind the scenes, without telling anyone, Jesus also magically altered the brains of these individuals so that they could instantly learn how to understand the sights and sounds around them. But if Jesus was just going to magically alter people's brains then he wouldn't have needed to do any preaching in the first place.  He could have just magically altered everyone's brain so that they agreed with him.  No, sorry, it doesn't pass the smell test.

What seems more likely is that Jesus never cured anyone of blindness or deafness, especially those born with the condition, since the gospels seem unaware that these secondary difficulties might develop as the result of restored vision or hearing.