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PAT ROBERTSON, THE fire-and-brimstone evangelical preacher who helped turn America’s Christian conservatives into the powerful constituency they remain today, has died at the age of 93.
The longtime TV host, religious broadcaster and one-time presidential candidate died at his home in Virginia Beach, according to a statement from the Christian Broadcasting Network.
An avuncular presence on the daily talk show The 700 Club, which he started in 1966 and which is still on air today, Robertson was a master at using the media to promote Christian right values, including his anti-gay, anti-liberal ideals.
“He shattered the stain glass window,” TD Jakes, a Dallas pastor said in CBN’s statement. “People of faith were taken seriously beyond the church house and into the White House.”
He was also known for throwing the kind of rhetorical hand grenades that have inflamed America’s decades-long culture wars.
In 2001, as America reeled from the September 11 attacks, Robertson got into trouble after appearing to agree with comments by sidekick Jerry Falwell that America’s tolerance for lesbians, gays and abortionists had drawn God’s wrath.
The Christian Coalition, which Robertson founded, helped mobilise US evangelicals in the political arena, corralling them into a major voting bloc which continues to hold considerable sway over the Republican Party.
The organisation, from which Robertson resigned as president in 2001, pressured Congress and the White House on moral and religious issues such as abortion and the separation of church and state.
Robertson – who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in 1988 – went on to play an important role garnering conservative support for Republican candidates.
The Christian evangelical movement would become a key base of support for Donald Trump, helping to propel him to the presidency – and Robertson himself interviewed Trump on his network after he won the White House.
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Giving them away according to the vulture funds who purchased them at 21 cents in the euro! Keep the Recovery going! Or keep the recovery recovering! #Election 2017
@Jarlath Murphy: a bargain these days in south Dublin is 500k for a 2 bed apt.
@Jarlath Murphy: I’ll wait for the next crash before I buy
Well at that rate everyone’s going to end up being travelers.
@Mick Tobin: as in have everything paid for including housing.
Well also be able to shout and roar through A&E to get seen before the taxpayer saps.
I’m good with that
@Seamus McSpud:
The real parasites reside at the top of the pyramid in areas like banking. For example, most people are completely unware that the nation states authorize their commercial banks to create money from nothing and charge interest on it.
All commercial banks create new money from nothing each and every time they issue a loan. Around 97% of the money in circulation in the world today is created electronically by the commercial banks when they issue loans. In issuing credit, banks simultaneously create a brand new deposit in the recipients bank account.
Quite simply, the loan itself creates new money. The banks bring this new money into existence by pressing a computer keyboard, nothing more. Money doesn’t grow on trees but if you hold a banking license it grows on your IBM. The money is extinguished/retired as the borrower pays back the loan and the outstanding principal amount falls. The bank of course gets to charge interest on the loan which it created with a casual wag of a finger. This interest which the borrower must also find is not extinguished but is held by the bank as retained profits.
The bank is only authorized by the state to create new money in order to meet a loan request and cannot simply add the money to their balance sheet in a single entry as profit. When a bank issues a new mortgage for €200k for example, the mortgage loan is entered on the Asset side of the bank balance sheet while the newly created deposit of €200k appears on the Liability side of the balance sheet. This is how the new money is recorded in the double entry accountancy system. €200k of new money has now been brought into existence which didn’t exists before the bank created it. The bank deposit is then sent out into circulation in the economy when the builder or seller is paid for the house for example.
For most people, the biggest purchase of their lives will be the family home and so the mortgage will be the largest debt they ever undertake. A bank can create a €200,000 mortgage in a couple of seconds with a few keystrokes. Over a term of 25 years at an interest rate of 4% to 5%, you will pay somewhere between €110k and €150k in interest payments to the bank on top of the principal repayment. This means that a person on an average annual wage of €25k net will work for 4 to 6 years and hand every single cent that they earn in that time to the bank to repay interest on the money which the bank created from nothing in a matter of seconds.
This is the enormous power that has been granted to the private banks which they have used to massively exploit the rest of us through the debt mechanism. The banking function needs to be taken from the failed, endemically corrupt and grossly profiteering parasite banks and returned to the rightful democratic control of the people.
http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-money/
Excellent. We can then go ahead and marry our cousins.
Crash coming, 197,000 empty houses in the country and yet there is a lack of property, remember that when the bust comes. FG/FF lining their own pockets.
@Dean Burroughs: mo
@Dean Burroughs: mo
My great grandad won his house in Dublin after winning a (legally binding) game of twister in 1904. €230,000? I simply cannot afford that. I’ve decided I’m going to live in the forest for the rest of my life.
@O Swetenham: There is nothing wrong with living in the sticks…..
I’m giving sinn fein a vote in the next election. A lot of their TDs have sent back there pay increase..there worth 1 term to try something new..FF/FG have been in too long.we will never have change unless we vote change. Most of the cost to build a house is tax.lower the tax and make sure the builder passes on the saving or fine him.this is a way to reduce prices so many can not afford to get the deposit together while renting.
I feel sorry for anyone living in Dublin. Pay isn’t that much better yet rent or buying a roof over your head is out of reach. Well Noonan you’ve ripped off another generation.
Why do I feel like that this is a ” deja vu ” except the Lpt comes into play now…
@sparky: enda said ” ah sure it’s only 2 euro a week” coniiving b#####d
Country’s broke bankrupt and borrowing to pay the nine billion euro interest alone on our two hundred billion bankster bailout of nasty dead-tree euro-money thingummies printed up and sold in exchange for Irish sovereign and indefensible destines..
Vin Mises 101: “Countries that cannot tax or borrow their way out of trouble have to devalue their currencies. That way lies hyper-inflation.”
Anyone notice their insurance increasing unaccountably? Never got a penalty point nor cause an accident in your life? Snap. Insurance companies are the nearest we got to Nostradamus in hard pounds shillings and pence terms. House prices, insurance prices, all increasing in a bankrupt country.
Now might be a good time to make contacts in payroll divisions and corner the maker in wheelbarrows.
“Von” not “Vin” sorry going a little 2 fast and 2 furious there.
@John O’Driscoll: Think yourselves lucky that you don’t have to pay rates on a modest house like they do up north. In excess of £1000 per annum.
“The combined effect of the tweaks to Central Bank mortgage rules and the new help-to-buy scheme has been to significantly stimulate first-time buyer demand. This is seen in renewed house price growth, particularly in and around the major cities”.
So from that statement, it appears as if the Central Bank “tweaks” increased demand and that demand was met with the prices rising? This would lead me to believe that the more the desperation to get a house increases, the more unlikely affording one becomes for the majority of people.
I must be naive, i just don’t get how that’s progress. I don’t understand how that can end any other way but badly.
Keep voting in Coppinger and Murphy and the “sure the working man deserves everything for free” brigade. They’re the real solutions people. Populist champagne socialist “get me reelected” nonsense
@Cathal: what the f*ck you talking about their not the ones in government and have been in government since the beginning of the state, that would he FG/FF
This is no coincidence. This is how FF FG operate. High prices suit elite society. Affordable means little profit. As with health, a working Heath service would mean private health would not be able to jump the low life! Nearing 100 years of FF and FG now. Is it not time to rid ourselves of these parasites. Bankers tax after bankers tax to keep the status quo. Raise for them again yesterday… How much more ?
The average mean income in ireland is around 18- 19 grand. That means most people earn 18-19 grand a year. Don’t mind what the unions tell you about it been around 39 grand. They can’t tell you this otherwise they couldn’t justify looking for pay increases for their higher paid members. Now multiply 3 by 18-19 grand and try buy a house out of your answer…………there’s another property crash on the way people.
Except you are ignoring the people who do earn enough to buy property. Averages and means have no meaning to the people that can buy. There has been a massive change in Ireland as it becomes more like the rest of the world. We had the highest home ownership in the world before the last crash. Now the reality is not everybody will be able to buy a property.
A crash is not an inevitability demand is high and there is a lack of supply. There were too many houses being built before but now we aren’t close to meeting demand and it will take decade to catch up. When was the crash before the last one? How far apart are crashes?
Ah sure Coveny’s on the job. It’s grand.
@Cillian McCormick: it be all sorted by July
I believe in honesty , give me a house..let me pay as much as I can as I can’t take it with me & averages is for the immortals.. Good night
Or you could just go on the housing waiting list ….
Fantastic…..
Any talk about houses,adds about houses etc should be banned.Will we ever fuc*ing learn.
Unless you’re from Dublin or based there a long time, you’re a mug for wanting to move there. Don’t get me wrong, I like the place but prices are ridiculous and I don’t get people’s obsession with wanting to join the rat race, paying 300k for a box apartment in some place like Rialto or Kimmage.
Places like Limerick, Killarney, Sligo, etc offer much better value for money and as good a standard of living.
Im gonna buy a wendy house and live in it
Your damned if you do and damned if you don’t when it comes to this whole housing / house buying
have your say