Lies the secularists tell: "Secular people are more supportive of sex education, which reduces sexually transmitted diseases"

Phil Zuckerman in the failing Los Angeles Times, owned since 2018 by a biotech billionaire who invented Abraxane:

Op-Ed: Why America’s record godlessness is good news for the nation :

"Secularity is highly correlated with a host of moral orientations that will markedly improve our nation. ... Secular people are more supportive of sex education, which reduces sexually transmitted diseases".

The lie here isn't the support of sex education. It's that sex education has that effect.

Notice the "will" in the claim, however, anticipating anyone with the temerity to bring up the facts. You know, the science. Despite record STDs in now secular America they would doubtlessly respond that sex education still hasn't failed. Like Keynesian economics hasn't failed, we just haven't had enough sex education yet.

Progressives sell a this-worldly version of hopium no less fantastic than the promised imminently coming army of angelic legions appearing in the heavens lead by the Son of Man in ~ A.D. 30.

Just give it a little more time and a new age of dignity, liberty and well-being will dawn.

"Research shows that secular people are more likely to support women’s reproductive rights, universal healthcare, gay rights, environmental protections, death with dignity, gun safety legislation and treating drug abuse as a medical rather than criminal problem — all of which will serve to increase dignity, liberty and well-being in America." 

At least until the Muslims take over.

Sexually Transmitted Disease Cases Reach Record High In The U.S. [Infographic]

Trump hasn't lied 5,000 times, he's just channeling Norman Vincent Peale's power of positive thinking and the prosperity gospel's power of positive confession

Too bad more people don't understand this.

This guy certainly doesn't. 

Meet Daniel Dale, the man with the Herculean job of keeping track of Trump’s lies:

Usually, the lying is Trump ad-libbing — it’s him deviating from his text. In that [campaign] case, immigration lies in particular were being written into his rally speeches.

In many cases, I think it is unstrategic. I think it’s just Trump being Trump. I don’t know if it’s his natural state, or if it’s a learned behavior, after lying successfully as a real estate guy and lying successfully as a playboy celebrity to get his name in the tabloids. ...

I do use the word lie, but for my database, I call it a database of false claims, because I think while a significant percentage are lies, I'm not sure about all of them.

As we know with this president, he’s often confused or ignorant of policy specifics. And so I don’t know that he intentionally attempted to deceive with all 4,900-plus. So many of those are lies, but I can’t say that for all of them.

This guy, on the other hand, does.

Commentary: Prosperty gospel may be United States' new civil religion:

In terms of religion, this inauguration exhibits the confluence of two major currents of indigenous American spirituality.

One stream is represented by Norman Vincent Peale's longtime bestseller "The Power of Positive Thinking" (1952). The famous Manhattan pastor is Trump's tenuous connection to Christianity, having heard the preacher frequently in his youth. For Peale and his protege, the late Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame, the gospel of Christ's death for human sin and resurrection for justification and everlasting life was transformed into a "feel-good" therapy. Self-esteem was the true salvation.

Another stream is represented by the most famous TV preachers, especially those associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen and Paula White are the stars of this movement, known as Word of Faith. ...

Besides throwing out doctrines like the Trinity and confusing ourselves with God, the movement teaches that Jesus went to the cross not to bring forgiveness of our sins but to get us out of financial debt, not to reconcile us to God but to give us the power to claim our prosperity, not to remove the curse of death, injustice and bondage to ourselves but to give us our best life now. White says emphatically that Jesus is "not the only begotten Son of God," just the first. We're all divine and have the power to speak worlds into existence. ...

Some representatives, like Osteen, offer an easy-listening version that seems as harmless as a fortune cookie. It's when he tries to interpret the Bible that he gets into trouble, as in his latest book, "The Power of I Am." "Romans 4 says to 'call the things that are not as though they were,' " he says, but the biblical passage is actually referring to God.

But it's not really about God. In fact, one gets the impression that God isn't necessary at all in the system. God set up these spiritual laws and if you know the secrets, you're in charge of your destiny. You "release wealth," as they often put it, by commanding it to come to you.

"Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan," White told a TBN audience in 2007. Oops. It was Jesus who said "anyone who would come after me" must "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24).

Most evangelical pastors I know would shake their heads at all of this.

"Merry Christmas!": The mocking shout of the drunken anti-Puritans

Discussed here:

For most of its history, the Christian church regarded Christmas as a small event on its calendar not requiring much observation. Puritans in England and later the American colonies went one step further, banning the holiday altogether since they could find no biblical support for celebrating the day. As the historian Stephen Nissenbaum has explained, the Puritans imposed fines on anyone caught celebrating and designated Christmas as a working day. These strict rules were necessary since so many men and women engaged in the drunken carousing that accompanied winter solstice festivities, an ancient tradition that the church had failed to stamp out when it appropriated Dec. 25 as a Christian holiday.

In this setting, “Merry Christmas” was born. The greeting was an act of revelry and religious rebellion, something the uncouth masses shouted as they traveled in drunken mobs. Troubled by such behavior, the New Haven Gazette in 1786 decried the “common salutation” of “Merry Christmas.” “So merry at Christmas are some,” the paper lamented, “they destroy their health by disease, and by trouble their joy.”

Changing diapers is such a drag: Employee gives birth at work, tries to flush the boy down the toilet

From the story here:

Police arrived later to find the baby in Lockner’s arms, San Mateo County Dist. Atty. Steve Wagstaffe told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The baby had no pulse and was not breathing, so officers performed CPR and rushed the infant to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, he said.

The infant is alive and in stable condition, but the extent of the baby’s brain injuries was not known, Wagstaffe said.