To which post are you referring?

I think that the point that Lisa is making is that there are beliefs stated in Mormonism that are seriously at odds with what Christians have traditionally believed and therefore would preclude Mormons from being defined as Christians by mainstream Christian churches. Mormons are free to claim that they are Christians, but that doesn’t mean that Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists are required to accept them.

To give a related example – Messianic Jews claim to be Jewish while accepting Jesus as the promised Messiah. I doubt that you would find any branch of Judaism accepting their claim to being authentically Jewish.

Take the example the that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. Traditional Christians believe that Jesus is God and therefore not a created being. Lucifer (the Devil) is believed to be a fallen angel. Angels are not divine (not gods); they are believed to have been created by God as purely spiritual beings. Therefore, the Mormon belief is not compatible with traditional Christian thought. Even without making a judgment as to which could be right or wrong it is clear that they are not the same thing. This is also true concerning Mormon beliefs about the nature of God. Traditional Christians believe that God is a Spirit, Mormons teach that God the Father has a physical body. Thus they believe that Jesus was conceived by the physical union of God the Father and Mary (no virgin birth), a situation more akin to the birth of the classical demigods like Hercules or Perseus than anything that traditional Christians believe.

One of the things that makes dialogue between Mainstream Christians and Mormons so difficult is that often the latter group is not always straightforward in acknowledging the existence of the obvious differences. Believing one thing precludes believing its opposite. “A” cannot be “Not-A” at the same time.

In the best of circumstances, what you are on the inside should comport with what you do. To do less is hypocritical.

Actually Series E Bonds and EE Bonds continue to mature past the date that they reach their face value and continue to accrue that interest until they are 30 years old. I have experienced this both personally in cashing in bonds held by my mother and in assisting clients probate estates.

I agree that some aspects of the ownership society that put average citizens at risk. Certainly the watering down of regulation and the failure by officials to enforce those that remained created the destruction of savings for the middle class. There is an argument in favor of some forms of the ownership society. Home ownership does provide security that renters do not have. Landlords do have the inherent right to refuse to renew at the end of the term and this does happen.

While I accept your assertion that the wartime bond programs probably did have instances in which nonparticipants were suspected of disloyalty, this is only a small portion of the timeline of government savings bonds. The postwar payroll savings plan ensured that millions of blue-collar workers had a government guaranteed investment vehicle. Kept to full maturity (30 years), those bonds became worth three or four times their face value which enabled those workers to retire comfortably. classmates of mine in the 1970′s were able to cash in partially matured bonds purchased for them by their parents or other relatives as a means of paying for college or making a down payment on a first home. At the same time the funds these bonds represented helped to build the interstate highway system, maintain national parks and most other government programs. The government bond story is not as one-sided as portrayed.

Given your rhetoric in the face of what has hitherto been Philadelphia’s supportive response in contrast to Occupy events in other cities I’m curious if you may have something in common with Patrick Howley.

http://my.firedoglake.com/cgrapski/2011/10/09/american-standard-editor-admits-to-being-agent-provacateur-at-d-c-museum/

As my original post mentioned there is division in the Occupy Philadelphia group. Members of “Reasonable Solutions” are occupiers. They represent a compromise viewpoint. The reality is that Philadelphia is a city that does experience life-threatening winter conditions and has a long-standing program called Code Blue operated through the Office of Supportive Housing (OSH). Here is a description of the program -

“During extremely bitter cold conditions, (this is when the temperature, wind chill and precipitation combined together result in ‘real feel’ temperatures near or below 20 degrees Fahrenheit), the City implements extraordinary measures to preserve the lives of chronically homeless individuals. A Code Blue emergency triggers the following:
Twenty-four hour outreach coverage, to include the teams extending hours until 12 am or later.
Access to beds that are vacant within the existing emergency housing network funded by OSH
Outreach teams and the police will be able to implement the COTS (Court Ordered Transportation to Shelter) procedure by alerting the on-call City Solicitor and Common Pleas Court Judge.
OSH funded emergency housing providers will allow clients to remain indoors throughout the day. “

There were negotiations to allow an occupation of Thomas Paine Plaza across the street north of the current site.

As a current resident of Philadelphia, I can say that things are very different from the Rizzo era. It should be noted that the Occupy Philly residents have divided into two factions over whether to accept the City’s proposal to relocate to an alternative public space or to remain on DIlworth Plaza.

I’m not sure that Canada and the BRIC countries will be spared a slowdown. China and Canada are experiencing a slowdown in the real estate market (which is arguably overheated in both countries). If growth slows or reverses the German export market will definitely suffer.

True. Even back in the ’70′s (the last time I was in Germany) the Germans by and large didn’t buy VW and Mercedes. There were lots of German Fords and Opels and Renaults. They did depend on the rest of the world buying the high-quality (and therefore high-priced) goods they produced.

The difficulty with that scenario is that Germany moved to an export-dependent economy. If the rest of the world isn’t buying its high-priced precision goods how does it sustain itself?

At the risk of igniting a firestorm on this post, I’ll try to explain the reason that Avila’s column was incompatible with Catholic teaching and had to be retracted. It has to do with Catholics’ view of the nature of Good and Evil and the power of God and the lack of power of Satan.

Catholics (and traditionally, most Christians) believe that everything that is created is created by God. No other being has the power to create, that is, make something out of nothing. That means everything and everyone that is originates with God. Catholics also believe that everything that is created is created as being good. They rely on the statements in Genesis for this. (As an aside, I want to clarify that Catholics are not Fundamentalists. No Catholic is required to believe that either of the two Creation stories recorded in the first chapters of Genesis is literally true.)

Second, although Catholics believe that Satan exists, they believe that he is a fallen angel. Catholic belief holds that angels are pure spirits created by God. Like humans, the Church teaches that angels have been given free will, that is the right to choose to do good or not to do good. An angel can therefore never be God’s equal. An angel cannot create anything.

This brings us to the question of evil. For Catholics, Evil is the absence of good. Evil cannot create anything. It is the misuse of a good thing.

Avila’s heresy (and I do mean heresy – He put forth a belief that is incompatible with Catholic theology) was to imply that Satan can create anything. He posed the theory that homosexual inclination has Satanic origins. The Catholic Church grants that homosexuality is innate, not learned and that people who are homosexual are not evil people.

Actually, the Catholic Church has a long history of speaking out on social issues other than abortion. Specifically, documents written by Popes have endorsed workers’ rights to organize unions (Pope Leo XIII in 1891 in his Encyclical (Letter) Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), called attention to the dangers inherent in international financial markets and the institution of wages based on family needs (Pope Pius XI in 1931 in Quadragesimo Anno (“Forty Years”) on the anniversary of Leo’s letter), the state’s role in ensuring adequate support for education, healthcare and housing (Pope John XXIII, in 1961 in Mater et Magistra (“Mother and Teacher”) and that wage earners deserve special protection by the state (John Paul II in 1991 in Centesimus Annus (“One Hundred Years”).

While none of these letters declare infallible teaching (in the church’s history there are definitively only two instances of declared infallible teaching and the issue of birth control isn’t one of them), they do reflect the church’s long-standing concern for what we call the 99%.

You missed my point. Before the mid-20th century the Saudis didn’t have the capital to pay for anyone’s relocation. Also that money came from a very cozy relationship with the West, specifically the British and the Americans.

I agree with you that the rule of law is always to be preferred. I do think that sometimes events prevent the best case scenario from being implemented.

While I would have preferred a trial I think we have to recognize that Gaddafi had a rendezvous with his karma.

I’m not sure that the U.S. is currently playing the role of the world’s cop but the Saudis certainly weren’t paying anyone before oil was discovered. And wasn’t Gaddafi deposed by his own people?