Free Republic

Futurism is when experts make educated, knowledgeable predictions about where humanity is going in the future. It is a growing and important field used by many national and transnational organizations to help give them an edge over competitors. The military is deeply involved in futurism, trying to gain an advantage over future potential enemies. Banks and hedge funds, also for similar reasons. Nation-states and governments spend substantial amounts of money in futurist-orientated research each year. Futurists examine trends and attempt to extrapolate where these trends may lead. It is a fascinating field and anybody who spends any time looking at...

Anyone seen the new Pixar movie Inside Out? What did you think? Something for 12yr olds? Would older adults like it?

For the first time in Vatican history, the pope allowed for the reading of Islamic prayers and Koran readings from the Catholic facility. The readings and prayer came as Pope Francis met with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Vatican City, a gathering designed to pray for Middle Eastern peace. A Holy See spokesman said the prayers were supposed to be a “pause in politics,” Breitbart reported. The pope said, too, that he hoped the interfaith prayers would foster peace specifically between Israelis and Palestinians, the news outlet said.

Free Trade: Thirteen years and 11 free trade deals after Congress last gave a president "fast track" trade authority, it's unclear whether President Obama will get it back. Misleading claims from the right aren't helping.

Roman Catholic “presuppositions” on the early papacy are in retreat Galileo: “If I can do it, Bergoglio can do it” A “presupposition” is an elementary assumption in one’s reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed… [In the case of Protestant/Catholic discussions], a “presupposition” is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide-ranging foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one’s thinking,...

I am a student of history, and consider myself fairly well read on the subject. No expert by any means, so I ask the rest of you, particularly those who are older and/or wiser: are there not strange contrasts to the Cultural Revolution imposed by Mao and the race riots of Obama's tenure? Acknowledging some differences, too, I still think there may be some eerie parallels. I invite your input.

Roman Catholics often assert that Protestantism operates under the principle that Scripture is open to private interpretation because Protestants deny the need for an infallible magisterium to interpret Scripture. Is historic Protestantism really a religion of "me and my Bible?" Do the tenets of historical Protestantism really deny 2 Peter 1:20, which informs that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation? An honest and informed Roman Catholic understands that Protestants do not think that Scripture has no need for an interpreter. 1. An honest and informed Roman Catholic understands and will gladly concede that historic Protestantism affirms that Scripture is the interpreter...

I'm going to transcribe an article that Jerry Walls wrote when he was a grad student at Notre Dame: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am nearing the end of three very happy (with a brief interlude) years as a graduate student in the philosophy department at Notre Dame. The philosophy department is quite lively and stimulating and I have learned a great deal about my discipline. Along the way, I have also acquired an education of another sort–namely in the ways of the Roman Catholic Church. My education in this regard has been informal and piecemeal, to be sure. My insights have been...

Within Roman Catholicism (and within some other churches as well) there are prayers that are made for, through, and to the dead. We, as Reformed believers, reject all three of these categories but on different grounds. In discussing these issues with Roman Catholics it may be useful to be able to understand the different categories and to explain why it is that we reject each. We should pray for the living, to the living and true God, through the merits and intercession of Christ alone. 1. Prayers For the Dead In Roman Catholicism, there is a belief in Purgatory. Although...

A Dean at Cornell University proclaimed on camera he’d give the green light for an ISIS club on campus in which actual members conducted training exercises. I’m curious if this demonstration of humanitarianism would be preempted by recent video of ISIS soldiers beating, raping, torturing, mutilating, and beheading countless men, women and children in the name of Allah? I also wonder if American Christians would enjoy an equally enthusiastic welcome if similar proof existed of their ranks committing mass atrocities. Oh, that’s right, Christians or Jews really aren’t welcome because the Crusades, which ended over 700 years ago, were a...

<p>Hillary Clinton is a polarizing, calculating, disingenuous, insincere, ambitious, inevitable, entitled, over confident, secretive, out of touch candidate who represents the past, and will do anything to win.</p> <p>Hillary Clinton is a polarizing, calculating, disingenuous, insincere, ambitious, inevitable, entitled, over confident, secretive, out of touch candidate who represents the past, and will do anything to win.</p>

This is why I use the word “attempted” in describing the pope’s desire to eradicate capital punishment: because he lacks the authority to make such a change. Shocking, I know, but I said it before and I’ll repeat it again: the teaching on this matter is settled. In order to advance this position, Pope Francis would have to declare several of his predecessors as well as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More (who prosecuted heretics in an England where that was a capital offense), a papal decree, an apostolic constitution, and also St. Paul’s own divinely-inspired writing in...

Former Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Kuperwasser, who attributed a great deal of importance to Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress, calls on Israelis to take action. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Israelis should take to the streets and protest in front of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv against the emerging Iranian nuclear deal, former Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Yossi Kuperwasser said Tuesday. Kuperwasser, who before the ministry job he left at the end of 2014 was a senior officer in Military Intelligence, attributed a great deal of importance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress. He told...

Nearly a century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s...

Despite the president's low approval ratings, and the continuing cacophony of hate directed toward him by Republicans and racists, any reasonable assessment of Barack Obama's accomplishments to date would conclude that his presidency could well go down as a time of historic achievement. The Affordable Care Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation Bill -- the largest since the New Deal -- and his economic policies bolstered by yeoman's work of the Federal Reserve, place Obama solidly in the company of presidents like FDR and LBJ. Despite widespread Republican disinformation about and unrelenting opposition to the Affordable Care...

Approval tanking, world in flames... Best of the week's conservative news/opinion/humor from  the new media right at Reaganite Republican...

More at Reaganite Republican...

A quick jaunt around the best of the right-wingtip of the blog-o-sphere  this week (while the world collapses around us) at Reaganite Republican...

photo: On The Step  Best of week's news/opinion from the new media's right wingtip at Reaganite Republican...

Before it gets pulled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-L2hUkeqJ0