‘Real’ Unemployment Rate Shows Far More Jobless – US Business News – CNBC
Consider: Nevada’s U-6 rate is 22.1 percent, up from just 7.6 percent in 2007. Economically troubled California has a 20.3 percent real rate, while Rhode Island is at 18.3 percent, more than double its 8.3 percent rate in 2007.
Those numbers compare especially unfavorably to the national rate, high in itself at 14.9 percent though off its record peak of 17.2 percent in October 2009.
Mitt Romneys Camp Dismisses Tax Analysis, Dings Jim Messina | At the Races
Mitt Romneys campaign ripped a tax analysis that found his proposals would raise taxes on the middle class as a joke on a conference call with reporters today, while also suggesting that President Barack Obamas campaign chief broke the law while he was a White House aide.
Obama Campaign Sues to Restrict Military Voting
On July 17th, the Obama for America Campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Ohio Democratic Party filed suit in OH to strike down part of that state’s law governing voting by members of the military. Their suit said that part of the law is "arbitrary" with "no discernible rational basis."
Currently, Ohio allows the public to vote early in-person up until the Friday before the election. Members of the military are given three extra days to do so. While the Democrats may see this as "arbitrary" and having "no discernible rational basis," I think it is entirely reasonable given the demands on servicemen and women’s time and their obligations to their sworn duty.
Where some are happier waiting an hour for waffle fries than others
Stacy McCain goes alt-steam-punk on Charles Johnson
Having Persevered Through Those Days of Horse Drawn Computers . . . : The Other McCain
In his own words from the conclusion of his book, Righteous Indignation:
I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, andfamouslyI enjoy making enemies.
Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. Ive lost friends, perhaps dozens. But Ive gained hundreds, thousandswho knows?of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.
John Turner: Mormons and Baptism by Proxy – WSJ.com
John Turner plays a fair hand on this contentious topic, but ignores some fairly significant information in the process in claiming that
Baptism by proxy has its roots in early Mormonism, when adherents were troubled by the fact that their ancestors had died before the 1830 founding of what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith taught that baptism was necessary for salvation and that only those baptisms performed by the true, restored church counted. That left the vast bulk of humanity on the outside looking in.
Smith wanted to offer a second chance to those who had died. Bringing to life an obscure New Testament passage about believers being "baptized for the dead," he announced that his followers could seek baptism on behalf of their departed kin.
Much of the commentary repeats the usual outrage, but one Ken Kuykendall adds the missing information in his comments. This should be more widely known, but sadly, will be ignored.
Baptism by proxy, your columnist asserts, has its roots in early Mormonism .
Please then explain these references to baptism by proxy, dating not only from the time of Paul in the first century A.D., but winding through at least 12 centuries of Christian history:
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they baptized for their dead? 1 Corinthians 15:29 (New Revised Translation) This verse is part of Pauls argumentation against those who denied a future resurrection. The text seems to speak plainly enough about a practice within the [1st century Christian] Church of vicarious baptism for the dead. This is the view of most contemporary [scholars]. –Krister Stendahl, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School
In about 225 A.D., an early church leader taught that part of the calling of John the Baptist was not only to be born on earth before Christ, but also to die before Christ, so that he could be the forerunner of the Savior in the spirit world, where they were to preach the gospel as they had in this world. Hippolytus, On Christ and the Antichrist 5, 45, in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca (Paris: 1857-66, 161 volumes) (10:764).
In about 240 A.D., the philosopher Celsus, mocking the doctrine of salvation for the dead, asked one of the early church leaders: Dont you people actually tell about [Christ], that when he had failed to convert the people of this earth he went down to the underworld to try to convert the people down there? The answer was a detailed, Yes. Origen, Against Celsus II, 43, in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca (Paris: 1857-66, 161 volumes) (11:864-65).
From about 350 A.D.: It is necessary for them to come up through the water in order to be made alive; for otherwise none can enter the Kingdom of God therefore even the dead receive the seal. The seal is of course, the water [baptism]. Shepherd of Hermas, Similitudes III, 9, 16; following texts given in Max Dressel, Patrum Apostolicorum Opera (Leipzig, 1863), 548-49, 631.
In about 380 A.D., the Bishop of Milan wrote: Fearing that a dead person who had never been baptized would be resurrected badly or not at all, a living person would be baptized in the name of the dead one. Ambrose, Commentaria in Epistolam I ad Corinthios in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris: 1844-64, 221 volumes) (17:280).
In about 400 A.D., the Bishop of Salamis wrote: From Asia and Gaul has reached us the account of a certain practice, namely that when any die without baptism among them, they baptize others in their place and in their name, so that, rising in the resurrection, they will not have to pay the penalty of having failed to receive baptism. Epiphanius, Against Heresies I, 28, 6 in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca (Paris: 1857-66, 161 volumes) (41:384).
In the 9th century, the Bishop of Halberstadt said this of the primitive church: If their loved ones happened to depart this life without the grace of baptism, some living person would be baptized in his name: and they believed that the baptism of the living would profit the dead. Haymon Halberstatensis, Expositio Sancti Pauli in Epistolam I ad Corinthios, in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris: 1844-64, 221 volumes) (117:598).
At the end of the 12th century, St. Bruno recalled that certain of the early Christians in New Testament times would baptize themselves in the place of a dead parent who had never heard the gospel, thereby securing the salvation of a father or a mother in the resurrection. Expositio in Epistolam I ad Corinthios xv 29, in Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris: 1844-64, 221 volumes) (153:209).
