redbloodedamerica:

BACK IN JANUARY, THE NEW YORK TIMES AGREED WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP THAT CALIFORNIA NEEDED TO IMPROVE ITS FORESTRY MANAGEMENT

Editorial by Kevin Ryan

The deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history was finally brought under control by firefighters yesterday, more than two weeks after it erupted. So far 87 people are confirmed to have been killed in the blaze, and many are still missing.

But the media firestorm continues over President Trump’s assertion that poor forest management contributed to the disaster. After Trump tweeted that better forest management could have prevented, or at least mitigated, the damage caused by the devastating wildfires, the media and California politicians said his assertion was false.

A spokesman for California Governor Jerry Brown said that the president’s assertion was “inane” and “uninformed.” The New York Times wrote a piece entitled “Trump’s Misleading Claims About California’s Fire ‘Mismanagement’”

Yet just a few months back, both Governor Brown and The New York Times said basically the same thing as Trump.

In a January article, the Times wrote that “A group of scientists warned in the journal BioScience that [100 million] dead trees could produce wildfires on a scale and of an intensity that California has never seen,” and that “scientists say they cannot even calculate the damage the dead-tree fires might cause; it exceeds what their current fire behavior modeling can simulate.”

“‘It’s something that is going to be much more severe,’ said Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at Berkeley and the lead author of the study. ‘You could have higher amounts of embers coming into home areas, starting more fires.’”

The Times article even pointed the finger at California’s forestry regulations, saying “California forests are much more vulnerable now because, paradoxically, they have been better protected. In their natural state, forests were regularly thinned by fire but the billions of dollars that the state spends aggressively fighting wildfires and restrictions on logging have allowed forests to accumulate an overload of vegetation… That’s a scenario that could nudge the state into rethinking its forest management.“

And yet, fast forward to today, and The New York Times is suddenly interviewing “experts” to contradict its previous assertions now that President Trump has also questioned California’s forest management.

“President Trump’s statements, which drew outrage from local leaders and firefighters, oversimplified the cause of California’s wildfires.” The Times says that the logging advocated by Trump, Republicans, and, apparently, The New York Times last January, would not have helped because “logging gets rid of trees, but it does not get rid of the kindling — brush, bushes and twigs. Logging does, however, enable the spread of cheatgrass, a highly combustible weed, which makes a forest more likely to burn.”

That’s basically the opposite of what the Times’ said earlier this year.

And it’s not just the media reversing itself to discredit Trump. Governor Brown’s office was calling for the same changes to logging regulations just a few months ago. In order to mitigate the fire danger from dead trees, Brown proposed that landowners be permitted to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter, a jump from the current 26 inches, on properties that are 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit and would also be able to build roads up to 600 feet long.

Of course the environmental lobby opposed it. And now huge swaths of land that environmentalists were “protecting” are now embers.

But Brown, and the media, would rather reverse their recent calls for safer forestry management than to agree with the president.

SOURCES: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/california-today-100-million-dead-trees-prompt-fears-of-giant-wildfires.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/us/politics/fact-check-trump-california-fire-tweet.html
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-hammered-for-california-wildfire-claims-but-gov-brown-has-also-backed-new-forest-management-measures

that-catholic-shinobi:

takineko:

npr:

When at 19, Mehnaz became pregnant for the fifth time, she panicked. She already had four daughters, and her husband was threatening to throw her out if she had another. So she did what millions of Pakistani women do every year: She had an abortion.

Like many of those women, her abortion was partly self-administered. “I kept taking tablets — whatever I laid my hands on,” she says. “I lifted heavy things” — like the furniture in her tiny living room. She drank brews of boiled dates — many Pakistanis believe the beverage triggers labor.

Mehnaz says she felt “a terrible pain in my stomach.” Her husband took her to a midwife, who told him the baby was dead. “She gave me injections and it came out,” Mehnaz says.

That was eight years ago. Since then she has had two more abortions, each time because she feared the baby would be a daughter.

Mehnaz, whose last name is being shielded to protect her identity, is one of millions of Pakistani women who have abortions each year. The deeply conservative Muslim country is estimated to have one of the highest rates of abortion in the world, based on a 2012 study by the New York-based Population Council, a nonprofit that advocates family planning. The rate that year was 50 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 — roughly four times higher than in the U.S.

Why The Abortion Rate In Pakistan Is One Of The World’s Highest

Image: Diaa Hadid/NPR
Caption: Mehnaz sits inside her home in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan. She has one son and six daughters. She has also had three abortions, fearing she would have more girls.

Horrible

This is horrible. abortion enables shitty societies.

tradfems:

Christianity is not a democracy. Catholicism is not a democracy. “But X Catholics do it!” Is not good reasoning. “But X Catholics think it should be okay!” Is not good reasoning. Catholics do terrible things all the time, and even if most Catholics decided they wanted to change the Chruch’s teaching tomorrow, it still doesn’t matter.

Jesus didn’t say “Go and do what you think is right.” He said “Go and sin no more.”

patron-saint-of-smart-asses:

johnny-jacobite:

bewareimfrench:

crownedpatriot:

bransrath:

Don’t act like a wahabi.

It’s okay for people to believe that, after Christ, Mary was a normal wife to Joseph.

Turn your location on

Bitch it’s implied that Mary had children with Joseph after Jesus’s birth

Bruh I don’t know about you, but if I were St. Joseph, I don’t think that after my wife carried God’s Literal Son in her womb that I would make any claims to the conjugal debt, given His self-professed “jealousy” (see the OT) and the fact that people who touched the Ark of the Old Covenant were killed instantly; how much more would one be punished who touched the Ark of the New Covenant?

People still using modern English to read the Bible, I see

patron-saint-of-smart-asses:

Friendly reminder that honoring your parents does not require dishonoring yourself and your relationship with God. The commandment to obey and love our parents is meant to respect them as elders with wisdom to advise and guide us, not to lord over us and use it as an excuse to bully us, disrespect our decisions as legal adults, etc. Don’t let abusive/manipulative/toxic parents micromanage or restrain your life, that is NOT what God wants.