Friday, September 13, 2013

Fri Sep 13th Todays News

As the day ends and Yom Kippur begins for 2013, Australia has found out she is participating in Syria. An Australian with the Aussie name 
Abu Asma, along with about 80 others, is fighting in Syria, and Abu performed the traditional terrorist assault with a truck bomb. It is unlikely Abu will atone for this sin. The eighty other participants seem to be delaying their atonement. Meanwhile it appears the Christian friendly Assad has gassed his people again. Maybe he hasn't, maybe it was a release of chemicals he didn't authorise. That can happen. It is unlikely Obama will be able to dither more, but he can dither longer. Putin is the strong man of these times, and he will facilitate talks. 

Meanwhile, the party that invited many of Abu's country folk to come to Australia uninvited, and call themselves Australian while fighting for their land overseas, is fighting over its' leadership. Albanese saw caucus before announcing he will not change previous policy. Meanwhile, Shorten went straight to the press with the message he would not change any policy. It is strange because the ALP lost the election with unpopular policy underpinning their bad administration, and these two had voted for every dud. Without a leader, nobody knows what the ALP stands for, but one things is certain, regardless of who becomes leader, policy won't change. 
There is a call in the US to defund Obamacare. A Democrat Senator is upset with the democratic recall process. California still burns. Two thugs who tried to steal a car mistook a victim who was actually armed. Clearly concealed weapons are a threat to thugs. Still, time for the living to atone.
===

Happy birthday and many happy returns Warwick Poulsen and A K Navarro Robles-Encenarial. Born on the same day, across the years as Julia Flavia (64), K'inich Ahkal Mo' Naab' III (678), William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1521), Samuel Wilson (1766), Clara Schumann (1819), Milton S. Hershey (1857), Claudette Colbert (1903), Mae Questel (1908), Roald Dahl (1916), Maurice Jarre (1924), Donald Mackay (1933), Fiona Apple (1977) and Robbie Kay (1995). On your day, Feast Day of Saint John Chrysostom (Western Christianity); Yom Kippur begins at sunset (Judaism, 2013)
1759 – Seven Years' War: British forces defeated the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City, New France, though General James Wolfe was mortally wounded.
1814 – War of 1812: Fort McHenry in Baltimore's Inner Harbor was attacked by British forces during the Battle of Baltimore, later inspiring Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner", which later became the national anthem of the United States.
1933 – Elizabeth McCombs became the first woman elected to the Parliament of New Zealand.
1988 – Hurricane Gilbert reached a minimum pressure of 888 mb (26.22 inHg) with sustained flight-level winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), making it the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record at the time.
2008 – Five synchronised bomb blasts took place within a span of few minutes in Delhi, India, resulting in 30 deaths and 130 injuries.
Quebec became forever divided. Bombs bursting in air gave proof, through the night, that our flag was still there. NZ won the gender wars. Gilbert was intense. Radical Islam attacked India, again. With or without robes, enjoy your day.
===

Labor left to foot a big carbon tax, Bill

Piers Akerman – Thursday, September 12, 2013 (7:17pm)

The crushed Labor Party has learnt nothing from last Saturday’s trouncing.

===

STABBY vs WEEPY

Tim Blair – Friday, September 13, 2013 (1:47pm)

Bob Ellis’s latest prediction, at 10am today: 
Albo won’t stand. 
Wrong again, comrade. A month-long battle for Labor leadership is now underway between Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten.

===

ROUTINE HARD TO BREAK

Tim Blair – Friday, September 13, 2013 (12:18pm)

Forgetful Labor senator Kate Lundy pulls a Lewis Hamilton:

image 

===

Albo runs, too

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (11:54am)

It’s on - Albanese vs Bill Shorten for the Labor leadership:

Anthony Albanese has decided to contest the Labor leadership, paving the way for a nationwide ballot to decide who will be opposition leader.

===

The reason the Left is jeering at Mirabella

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (9:45am)

If you are puzzled by the Left’s cheering at the defeat of Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella in Indi at the hands of a Nationals-backed “rural independent” here’s the reason.
It’s not just that Mirabella is a conservative. It’s that independent Cathy McGowan is not.
Anthony Coralluzzo tried to warn:

Cathy McGowan is a Greens-like candidate of the far-left, but that’s not the image the “independent” candidate wants out there in the electorate…

The origin of McGowan’s campaign is a small group calling itself “Voice 4 Indi” (V4I), which was formed in September 2012. The group is full of activists of the far-left.
There’s Anthony Lane, a green activist who was the inaugural chair of the Wangaratta Sustainability Network. The organisation is a recipient of taxpayer’s money, and advocates a 100% renewable energy mandate. They even go so far as to say “It’s criminal to keep supporting non-renewable energy"…
Rowan O’Hagan is also a green activist, and was founder and secretary of the Wangaratta Sustainability Network. She ... pushes for cultural change to achieve “a more socially just global environment"…
Alana Johnson is a board member of the ultra-feminist Victorian Women’s Trust, who were vocal supporters of Julia Gillard.. Johnson actually went further on her twitter account and blamed the whole of Australia for Gillard’s demise, saying she was ashamed of the country.
There is also a fellow called Ben McGowan, who I presume is related to Cathy McGowan.
He is a green activist, a supporter of “sustainability” (Agenda 21), and a believer in the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. He has tweeted his support for socialism, and also his opposition to free-market economics, calling it “nonsense"…
And then, of course, there is Cathy McGowan herself who, with Mr Lane, was co-convener of the organisation. That’s right, the “grassroots organisation” that chose to endorse Cathy McGowan, was started by Cathy McGowan.
Much more at the link, including more links.
UPDATE

That said, McGowan has far more class than some of the Left supporting her:

Cathy McGowan...says her electorate and Australian politics more broadly are not being well served by the vitriol being heaped on Ms Mirabella as she confronts a slow, humiliating, political demise…
When the Labor Party intervened midway into the Indi campaign, funding a series of robocalls carrying a quote from Tony Windsor in which he gives Ms Mirabella the “nasty prize” from the last parliament, Ms McGowan objected on two grounds: that negative, Canberra politics were intruding on her campaign and that the ALP was sticking its beak where it didn’t belong.
More recently, the protracted Indi count, which is now expected to result in Ms McGowan winning by between 300 and 500 votes, has been accompanied by incessant retweeting of two-year-old stories about Ms Mirabella’s dispute with the family of her former partner, the late constitutional lawyer Colin Howard, and about her involvement in a notorious rally in Canberra…
“I have got great sympathy for her, I really do. It is not about taking revenge and it is not about being nasty. You need to respect people who stand for office.”
Contrast that with the sliming of Mirabella by The Age

===

Left wants armistice in the culture war now that the tide has turned

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (9:06am)

Labor in government created the Left-wing Grattan Institute, funded the new Left-wing The Conversation and presided over the expansion of the Left-wing ABC.
It stage an show-trial into the “hate media” that criticised it, threatened newspapers which dug into Julia Gillard’s past and proposed new laws for a state-backed media censor.
Labor also drafted new laws against free speech and ensured no conservatives sat on the ABC board. It created a new national curriculum with a Leftist slant on history, promoted and funded the global warming scare, and created a Climate Commission to spread warming alarmism. It promoted Big Government through attacks on smokers and drinkers, and expanded the entitlement culture with handouts.
Labor inspired a dictionary to redefine “misogyny” after a vicious personal attack on Tony Abbott, and preached identity politics as it launched a “Women for Gillard” campaign and pitted workers against bosses, poor against rich.
But only now that a conservative government replaces one of the Left does Fairfax writer Gay Alcorn suddenly call a halt to the culture war - by which she actually means the Left’s advances should not now be reversed:

Mr Abbott, if you care about us at all (and we know you do because your daughters say you care about everybody), please spare us a rerun of the ‘’culture wars’’.
Spoken like a true Leftist. Only conservatives have a bias. Leftists propose “reforms”, but conservatives only want “war”.
Doesn’t work that way, Gay. 

===

From the S-bend of the media Left

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (8:56am)

How casually vicious and crude is the culture of the “cultural elite”. Well, here is how one ABC show deals with a conservative commentator for calling for a cut in funding for the ABC. From Wednesday’s Hamster Wheel, broadcast on ABC 1, this photoshopping of Chris Kenny:

image
And, yes, the word “dogf...er” went unedited to air.
I am astonished the ABC would broadcast that kind of abuse - and thus endorse it. This, from a media organisation whose journalists hyperventilated endlessly over the Daily Telegraph photoshopping Kevin Rudd as Colonel Klink.
UPDATE
More sneering viciousness from The Age, the one newspaper to have backed the return of the Rudd Government, but now gloating over the one Liberal likely to lose her seat. Among the abuse of Sophie Mirabella, more fitting for a student newspaper:  “caustic”, “incendiary”, “hard-faced”, “disdain”, alumni of “a finishing school for those who could not afford Europe”, former lover of a man who “combined sneering superiority with social awkwardness”, “Mirabella learnt at his knee and then some”, and more slime besides.

What sanctimonious and pitiless boors. Oh, and congratulations to The Age for further humiliating Mirabella by running a deliberately unflattering picture of her on yesterday’s front page in a further excess of gloating. And this paper, too, was infuriated by the the Daily Telegraph for not showing Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard more respect. Hypocrites.
Imagine these people had Rudd won. To her credit, Liberty Sanger, Labor party loyalist and wife of Labor MP David Feeney, protests the vile abuse of Mirabella now raging on the Left:

image
UPDATE
Also from The Age, this gratuitous fishing of filth from the sewers of the Internet, so the writer - an academic - can have one of a million anonymous trolls say of Tony Abbott’s daughters what she’d rather not come out of her own mouth:

Louise, Bridget and Frances were so prominent in the campaign that there are now several Facebook pages with tens of thousands of “likes” devoted to them. (One of which perverts Abbott’s pride in his daughters’ looks by purporting to encourage masturbation to their photos.)
The savagery of the cultural elite, quoting in glee the kind of misogyny it purports to denounce, just to sexually demean Abbott’s daughters. And all printed in The Age.
With so many in the tribalist Left, it’s not the principle but the side.
And doesn’t the author’s position announce unmistakably her politics?:

Dr Michelle Smith is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention at Deakin University.

===

Baddies versus beheaders - a conflict in which only a Putin can take sides

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (8:34am)

Syrian rebels, who’d be most assisted by a US strike on the Syrian regime, behead four more captives. Warning. Graphic content.
UPDATE
Thanks to Barack Obama’s astonishingly weak and vacillating leadership over the Syrian civil war, Russia’s Vladimir Putin now poses as the real leader in world affairs, presuming to lecture the United States through the pages of the New York Times:

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders…
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa..,
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government…
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? ...
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists…
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us."…
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement…

I carefully studied [Obama’s] address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Is this what Obama has brought the US to? To being giving moral lectures from the likes of Putin?
Seven hypocritical, false or misleading claims in Putin’s statement.
Peter Foster notes the rage over Putin’s intervention:

The top dogs in Congress have been howling with indignation today over Vladimir Putin’s gloating New York Times op-ed, in which he lectures the US on its true place in the world (behind Mother Russia).
John McCain says the article is “an insult to the intelligence of every American”; Robert Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he “almost wanted to vomit” after reading it. Kelly Ayotte, the Maine republican, said it was the “height of hypocrisy”; Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin dismissed it as a “lot of bluster”.
This is the (risible, hypocritical) sound of the US Congress starting to confront the mess of their own making. A mess that Mr Putin, as if house-training puppies, has certainly enjoyed rubbing their noses in.
Because while Barack Obama’s handling of the Syrian crisis has been startlingly inept, the fact is that Congress, by making clear it would not support him and cutting the President’s legs off when he asked for backing, has created a world in which Vladimir Putin gets to run the show.
Foster is of the Do Something persuasion. All very well, but do what - and with what consequences? 

===

Warmist Labor stuck with its own WorkChoices

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (8:22am)

The carbon tax is fast becoming to Labor what WorkChoices was to the Liberals, but with this difference - at least the Liberals dropped the policy that killed it:
The repeal of the carbon tax is even more dangerous for Labor with the party trapped between standing up for a tenet of Labor faith on climate change and losing more support among workers who fear for their jobs, and dumping the tax, appearing not to stand for anything and losing support to the Greens.
Labor is wedged, with Abbott claiming a clear mandate and able to cite the Coalition’s acceptance of the incoming Rudd government’s right to repeal John Howard’s Work Choices so that the industrial relations changes were “dead, buried and cremated”.
The additional problem for Labor is the electorate has clearly made a decision on the carbon tax - still its most damaging decision in the past three years. To hang on to the prospect of running the next campaign on the basis of its return is palpably ridiculous.
Labor needs another drought in the next three years. Three more years of rain and no-warming will make it look even more stupid. 

===

I mean, seriously?

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (8:12am)

Your research dollars, extracted from your wages:
ARC Research Funding, 2013:
Dr Andrew W. Gorman-Murray, A/Prof Dale T. Dominey-Howes, Queering disasters in the Antipodes: investigating the experiences of LGBTI people in natural disasters. $325,183.00. Project Summary: The purpose of this project is to investigate experiences of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex) people in Antipodean natural disasters, because they are especially vulnerable. No such work has been done in this field before. The outcomes of this project will include improved understanding of the needs of LGBTI people and improved disaster response.
And another $164, 000 here:

ARC Linkage Project 2010-2013 ... with L. Williams; K. Sharp; L. Hjorth; S. Perry and D. Redfern).
This is an interdisciplinary investigation of how urban media art can best respond to global climate change. Spatial Dialogues identifies ways artists and cultural theorists can collaborate with relevant industry partners to redefine public art as a trans-national and interactive process. In particular, the artworks will participate in civic dialogues on the significance of water as a precious global resource.
By extending the use of urban screens with public artworks engaged in a creative use of sound and social network systems, this research pioneers ways in which the arts can play a significant role in the adaptation to climate change.

===

Choosing the leader isn’t the worst of Rudd’s “reform”. Not being able to sack him is

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (7:43am)

Graham Richardson has not yet realised that what he describes is still not the worst of Kevin Rudd’s new rule for selecting Labor’s leader with a ballot of both MPs and members:
If there is a contest for the Labor leadership between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese, the Rudd landmine could wreck their careers, irrespective of who emerges as the victor…
There is a very real possibility, some would say even a probability, that Shorten could win the caucus ballot while Albanese wins the rank-and-file ballot quite easily. If Albanese wins the rank-and-file ballot overwhelmingly, he would be declared the winner. How ridiculous would he look when every member of the press gallery writes about the leader who does not have the support of his colleagues? ...
Of course, this is no bed of roses for Shorten either. To have the confidence of your caucus colleagues is one thing, but to be rejected by the rank and file of your own party is something else entirely. That would be a millstone around his neck for the rest of his career…
If [the ballot] could be done in less than eight weeks I would be surprised.
During this two-month interregnum, who would lead the party? Apparently Albanese would be ineligible because he would be a candidate in the ballot… Over those months, who would present Labor’s views on the big issues?
All that is true. But here is the biggest problem. What if Shorten, Albanese or some third option turn out to be a dud leader - as poisonous in the polls as Julia Gillard was just three months ago? Under Rudd’s rules, that leader could not be replaced by someone more likely to save the furniture unless 60 per cent of MPs sign a petition alleging he had brought the party into disrepute. Then a ballot of members must again be held. All this means Labor would find it almost impossible to replace a dud leader as it replaced Julia Gillard in June, averting an electoral catastrophe.  Remember: Rudd regained the leadership with just 56 per cent of the 102 Caucus votes, not enough under the rules he then brought in.
Rudd’s new rules are bad enough now. They could prove a complete disaster come closer to the next election.
And the irony is that rules meant to make the party more democratic could in fact increase the power of the faction bosses, making deals behind the scenes. Here is Richardson’s solution:

By the time this article is published I pray that the two protagonists will come to a deal on who will be No 1 and who will be the deputy. 
UPDATE
Dennis Shanahan says Labor is the gift that keeps giving to Tony Abbott:

Abbott is managing nicely in his efforts to get sport back on the front pages, ably assisted by the finals season for all the football codes. But the biggest assistance Abbott is getting in being squeezed from front page news is from none other than the Labor Party.
Hopelessly trapped by dilemmas of its own making, the ALP just can’t help or stop being “the story”, continuing to keep the pressure off Abbott and appearing as chaotic as it was pre-election.

===

Don’t let our jihadists come here a second time

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (7:36am)

Our first mistake was to allow them or their families into Australia. Our second would be to let them come back again:

AN Australian jihadist has reportedly blown himself up in a truck bombing in eastern Syria, amid reports about 70 per cent of Australians fighting with the rebels are known to counter-terrorism authorities.
In what would be the first known suicide attack by an Australian, counter-terrorism officials in Canberra were yesterday investigating reports a man by the name of “Abu Asma” died following a car-bomb attack in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor…
A senior counter-terrorism official said about 80 Australian nationals were believed to be fighting or involved in on-the-ground organisational roles. About 20 per cent of those were believed to be fighting with the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qa’ida-linked wing of the Syrian opposition.
A properly maintained immigration program should leave us better off and more secure. Ours seems to have left us too exposed to extremists. 

===

A “denier” gets in one word, but not one argument

Andrew Bolt September 13 2013 (7:24am)

Rolling Stone publishes exactly one word of this reply from Anthony Watts, after asking him how the upcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be received:
My view is that AR5 is going to stillborn, mainly because it is already outdated by new science that won’t be included.
There have been 19 separate peer reviewed papers published in climate sensitivity to CO2 by 42 scientists since January 1, 2012 all describing a lower climate sensitivity.

There have been recent revelations in journals (Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Xie Nature 2013 and de Freitas &McLean, 2013 International Journal of Geosciences) that demonstrate ENSO (El Niño) in the Pacific is responsible for the 15 plus years of global warming slowdown known as “the pause”. These two papers strongly suggest natural variability is still the dominant climate control.
Then there is the lack of reality matching what the climate models tell us, such as this leaked graph from an AR5 draft:

Original from AR5 draft: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc_ar5_draft_fig1-4_with.png
Annotated version: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc-ar5draft-fig-1-4.gif
All this while global CO2 emissions have been growing steadily. The lack of temperature match to models, “the pause”, combined with these new ENSO findings tell us that global warming has gone from a planetary crisis to a minor problem in a Banana Republic where only a few vocal science rebels are arguing for immediate intervention.
The costs of mitigating the perceived problem are also staggering compared to the benefit, as the 50:1 project demonstrates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5Lda06iK0

===




===




===

===

===

===

===

===

===

Phillip Jensen

Nowhere in scripture is it said that we should elect our rulers. But we are commanded to pray for them (1 Timothy 2) and submit to them (Romans 13, 1 Peter 2).
===

===


Max Brenner Australia

Today marks the most delicious celebration in the world - International Chocolate Day. Celebrate by fondue-ing everything in chocolate 
===
Remember when President Obama promised us, “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep your plan?” That was not true, and his deceptive claim falls in line with all the other lies about Obamacare – like there’d be no health care rationing.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense can understand that if it is cheaper for a company to cancel employees’ health benefits and pay the $2,000 Obamacare fine instead of providing, say, a $10,000 government mandated employee health care plan, then of course that company will choose to pay the much smaller fine.

And if companies don’t have to provide government mandated health care for part time employees, then of course that’s an incentive for them to cut back employees’ hours and make their workforce part time.

This isn’t rocket science. This is Economics 101. And it’s happening right now at companies all over the country.

We saw this coming, and now even President Obama’s union leader friends have finally 'fessed up to Obamacare lies. These union leaders betrayed their own membership by enthusiastically endorsing Obamacare, and now our good union brothers and sisters are at risk of losing the benefits they’ve worked for and counted on their whole lives. Union bosses, you owe your membership an apology, retraction, and resignation.

Union leaders are now scrambling and trying to get special carve-outs exclusively for union members. I sympathize with union members – especially when they’re led by thugs. I always do. But this is the wrong way to go about fixing the enormous train wreck that is Obamacare. More cronyism, select exemptions, and special subsidies make the problem worse.

We need to repeal the whole darn thing, and that starts with defunding it. 

Union brothers and sisters, don’t let your incompetent leadership hoodwink you again. Demand a full repeal, an immediate defunding, and some resignations.

- Sarah Palin
===

Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin

Heavenly Father,I thank You for Your favor, strength and grace at work in my life. I turn my focus on You today. I turn my thoughts on You. I set my heart and love upon You because You are good. Thank You for filling me with might and power to overcome in Jesus’ name! Amen.
===

Holly Sarah Nguyen
Through the days and through the years, through the pain and through the tears, God was there for me.

===

Matt Granz'

Castle Valley at Dusk... some flashes of lightning off in the distance that would never reach this location... the monsoon was fading and the dark of night was descending. The wind was calm and the air was warm and silent. — in Castle Valley, UT, United States.
===

Tradinno the awesome fire-breathing dragon is the world's largest walking robot. At 30 feet tall and 51 feet long, he's one gargantuan mechatronic beast you don't want to mess with:http://cnet.co/17ZSMyu
I could do it. I need a vorpal sword, and a good throw .. ed
===

Gina Rinehart

Why don't opponents of capitalism boycott Facebook?
Because hypocrites forget their reason - ed
===
FACT CHECK : 

The claim: Tim Costello says the Coalition's proposed $4.5 billion cuts to foreign aid will result in the loss of 450,000 lives.

The verdict: Mr Costello's claim is not credible

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/costello-foreign-aid-cuts-claim-not-credible/4949042
===

HISTORY IN THE HEADLINES: This week, a court in Northern Ireland announced its ruling that the 2012 discovery of a metal bracelet was in fact a rare artifact--a Viking arm ring from the 10th century, an item that was of great cultural significance in Viking society. Find out more:http://histv.co/13Tnh9J (Credit: Getty Images)
===
Writes historian Abraham Rabinovich, Golda Meir had been prepared to wait 'indefinitely' for peace with Egypt...
She had been sleeping poorly for several nights but this morning she was wakened into her nightmare – a ringing telephone at 3:45 a.m. on Yom Kippur.
Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan meet with troops on the Golan Heights, November 21, 1973 (Photo Credit: Ron Frenkel/ GPO)

  • John Tran An amazingly tough leader. The suspicions of those on the Inquiry board were the purpose of the "wait", and the cynical reason for letting the enemy strike first.. causing loss of life.

  • David Daniel Ball The headline overstates things. Egypt and Syria were not being peaceful. The chief problem and obstacle to peace, then and now, is the UN championship of Jordanians calling themselves Palestinians.

===

In 1975, Pink Floyd’s much-loved Wish You Were Here album was released. Coming at a time with some degree of strife within the band, Roger Waters noted that "most of us didn't wish we were there at all; we wished we were somewhere else…" Nevertheless, the tension gave a certain edge to the album, and amplified the central theme of absence…
===





A few of our Junior warriors busting out in last weeks snake park session!#team9lives #9lives1love #parkour #fairfield

===

Where's Woof? #keepsearching
===

HISTORY IN THE HEADLINES: Born on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama, track and field athlete Jesse Owens starred in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany. On the centennial of his birth, explore 10 surprising facts about the man who was once the fastest in the world.http://histv.co/16njXVf
===

Ramona Grahammywinningartist.

This song has over 4,000 plays. Cause I'm a genius. Or, more likely because of of a searchbot gone terribly wrong. I'm glad either way, cause I wrote all the music and I write by ear and my ears are notoriously wack. So let weirdness prevail!!!!
===

Pastor Rick Warren.

SEVEN WAYS GOD TESTS YOUR FAITHFULNESS. Do you get my weekly Ministry Toolbox? Free subscription: http://bit.ly/1g5fibY
===
Prime minister Golda Meir and cabinet members visiting the southern command, October 29, 1973 (Photo Credit: GPO/Yehuda Tzion)
Forty years after the Yom Kippur War, an eventually triumphant campaign that cost over 2,500 Israeli lives and left an enduring scar on the national psyche, Israel on Thursday released Prime Minister Golda Meir’s long-classified testimony from the commission of inquiry that investigated the actions of the military before and during the early stages of the war.
===

Pastor Rick Warren

Suicide is neither cool, nor funny. Please join me in protesting DC Comic's sick contest: http://www.namicalifornia.org/news.php?page=current-news&lang=eng&id=5044#.UjKRy8ashca …
===

===

===
A young man receiving medical treatment after what Syrian rebels claimed Thursday was a chemical weapons attack in Damascus's Jobar neighborhood. (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)
Syrian rebels claim that the army of President Bashar Assad again used poison gas in an attack on rebel forces in the Damascus area Thursday, an Israel Radio report said.
===

===

===

Largest living cat, Hercules(liger).
===

This is a Komondor, a traditional Hungarian guard dog
===

===

Is your adult child a bully? Do you feel powerless as a parent? Click here: http://bit.ly/AdultChildBully

Are you and your spouse arguing constantly and feel like you’re on the verge of a divorce? Click here: http://bit.ly/VergeofDivorce

Are you afraid of your adult child? Do you feel intimidated? http://bit.ly/AfraidofAdultChild
===

===
Unlucky Thugs Target Texas Man With Heightened Sense of Awareness…and a Concealed Carry Permit

Two unlucky thugs attempted to carjack a concealed carry permit holder in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday. The miscalculation turned out to be deadly as the would-be victim shot and killed one of the criminals and wounded the other.
After returning a movie at a Redbox kiosk outside of a local McDonald’s, the man was approached by two suspects who attempted to steal his car for the rims, according to police. The suspects also took his cellphone and car keys, KTRK-TV reports.

===

Michelle Malkin.

VIDEO: Watch/share/like my shout-out to the 2 million bikers on Fox News tonite...and my battle with Juan Williams over the rodeo clown in the White House who wants to aid and abet jihadists in the name of humanitarian intervention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FujaIwnC6b8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUzzwILIcMrcarpzNwQo6E3g
===

===

http://bit.ly/DRP091213 #DrPhil 
===
The situation on our southern border is SHOCKING. Ranchers are forced to spend day in and day out watching, guarding, and protecting their property from drug cartels. TheBlaze's Sara Carter gave me an inside look this morning on radio: http://tblz.us/oON7O

More tonight on For The Record, 8:30pm ET on TheBlaze.
===

Know that what happened was not your fault.
http://bit.ly/AdviceIfYouAreRaped
===

Pastor Rick Warren
Your deepest life message will come out of your deepest pain.
===

===
Former PM Julia Gillard may have to front an inquiry into the AWU scandal if Tony Abbott is elected on September 7.

JULIA Gillard and a raft of senior Labor figures could face being grilled by a judicial inquiry into the union slush fund scandal involving her former boyfriend.
Senior Coalition figures confirm an Abbott Government would establish a royal commission-style inquiry into the alleged misuse of up to $1 million in funds from the Australian Workers' Union.
It would have powers to compel witnesses to give evidence, with senior Coalition figures naming the former Prime Minister as one of the key political figures who would be required to appear.
Ms Gillard has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Last night, former Attorney-General, Rob McClelland - who helped to reignite the 20-year-old scandal when he gave a statement to parliament in mid-2012 - pledged to "co-operate" with any investigation.
Documents filed in the Melbourne Magistrates Court confirm Ms Gillard is a focus in the ongoing police investigation.
The court issued a search warrant in May 2013 directing police to search Slater & Gordon's Melbourne premises. They seized documents including "personnel files relating to Julia Gillard including her invoices/billings, time sheets and travel records".
They also seized "partnership meeting documents pertaining to Julia Gillard and the (AWU)".
Ms Gillard provided legal advice to her then boyfriend and former AWU official, Bruce Wilson, who was described in court as the "primary subject" of the long running inquiry.
The former PM helped to establish the Australian Workers' Union Workplace Reform Association.
Ms Gillard described this vehicle as a "slush fund" during an exit interview from Slater & Gordon in 1995.
A spokesman for Ms Gillard said she had no comment on the matter.
The former Labor leader has maintained that the allegations against her were a "smear" while Mr Wilson - who now lives on the NSW north coast - has cleared Ms Gillard of any wrongdoing.
Kevin Rudd, campaigning in Tasmania, also declined to comment on the scandal.
"I have nothing to add to this as it is an ongoing investigation," the PM told reporters.
Mr McClelland has returned to work as a partner at law firm Turner Freeman after quitting politics.
In the mid-1990s, he provided legal advice to a former AWU joint national secretary Ian Cambridge as he tried to investigate the alleged misuse of union funds.
Mr McClelland said the law firm had not been asked to hand over any documents relating to the AWU matter.
"But of course, Turner Freeman and I personally would co-operate with any police or other investigation into the matter," he said.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/tony-abbott-to-launch-inquiry-into-awu-8216slush-fund8217/story-fnho52ip-1226710059171#ixzz2elnVt2uL

===

Union brothers and sisters, demand a full repeal of Obamacare, an immediate defunding, and some resignations.
Sarah Palin
===

Here’s video of Giron’s meltdown. Giron got more pushback from CNN’s Brooke Baldwin than she wanted, and it showed:
Partial transcript:
Giron: What this story really is about, it’s about voter suppression. When Colorado has voted by mail — 70 percent of Coloradans vote by mail — and we didn’t have access to that mail ballot, I mean, I —
Host: Forgive me, but I’m going to cut you off right there because if we talk voter suppression, I’ve read reports about a lack of popularity on your behalf, let’s just not go there. Let’s get to the meat of the story, which is this gun control stance…
Giron: That is the meat of the story!
Host: … That you and your, uh, let’s talk though about the stance that you and your colleague, the head of the Senate, a former police officer, have taken. And here you have mega mega cash from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Mayor Bloomberg, versus this grassroots effort. What happened?
Giron: I’m telling you what happened is that you had only 30,000 of the voters who in the last election, um, off-year election, was 45,000. And so the people that are in support of very common sense gun legislation weren’t able to get to the polls. They vote by ballot and they have been doing that for 25 years. I mean, we have to call it for what it is. When I was talking to people at the doors and in their homes it was that, “Oh, this what this is about, because you want universal background checks so you voted for that, and because you’re limiting magazines to 15? I don’t see anything wrong with that, I don’t see any infringement on the Second Amendment.” So, people didn’t know what it was about. There was voter confusion. We didn’t even know what the rules of the game were, this is the United States of America, we didn’t even know what the rules of the game were a week out from the election. Where to vote, how to vote, were you going to get a ballot in the mail? Um, and, so it was just that confusion led to the voices of people in Pueblo County and El Paso County not having their voices heard and yet they’re going to have to pay for this election, the most expensive in the history of these two counties.
Giron still either doesn’t get it or has to force herself to pretend not to get it.

Keep it up, Democrats, and 2014 will be a great year … for the Republicans.

===
Middle-East-map

Quite a few commentators have rightly taken the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, to task for his recent absurd suggestion that the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict represents the root cause of instability in the Middle East.
Fabius’s remarkably myopic understanding of the region prompted Binyamin Netanyahu to point out the obvious: that if peace with the Palestinians were achieved today, the centrifuges won’t stop spinning in Iran, the savage civil war in Syria won’t abate, the instability in Egypt wouldn’t end, and attacks on the West will continue.
However, when I read Laurent’s comments, uttered in Ramallah after he met with Mahmoud Abbas, it reminded me of something the Guardian once claimed at the dawn of what they still were calling the “Arab Spring.” Sure enough:
A Guardian Feb. 2011 official editorial (“The Middle East: People, Power, Politics“) on Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown against protesters at the dawn of their civil war, and the broader political upheavals in the region, included this risible line:
“the Libyan leader may still be considered too valuable to lose, as US influence in the region decreases. Nowhere is that truer than in the cockpit of the crisis, Palestine.
The Guardian’s surreal editorial, which though dealing with Libya somehow managed to devote 200 of 675 words to the issue of “Palestine,” was indicative of the paper’s shameful misreading of the political upheavals which had occurred, or were to occur, in Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.
Such framing of events in the Middle East – which attributes most political maladies to Israel’s “injurious” effects on the region – represents more than mere hostility to Israel, but is part of a broader political framework which often shows itself impervious to facts, logic, and new information.
Whilst the Guardian’s editorial line no longer seems wedded to this absurd Zionist causality, the fact that their initial response was to draw a line from Tripoli to Jerusalem speaks volumes about the intellectually crippling effects of their far-left ideology.
Visit CIFWatch.

===
<Poor Julian Burnside. The election has not been kind on him. Now wants to make Tasmania into a prison colony for asylum-seekers.>
===
Mondays episode's teaser for Four Corners has a man saying he doesn't want to live like this, when told he could live for twenty more years. I get it that ALP supporters feel bad for losing. But the quality of life improves under conservative government. #auspol #youdecide9 - ed
===
Oslo victims.jpg

Twenty years ago today, Israel's so-called peace process with the PLO was officially ushered in at the White House Rose Garden. 

A year or so later, when the death toll of Israeli victims of the massive terror offensive that the PLO organized shortly afterwards reached what then seemed unbearable heights, a popular call went out to "Put the Oslo Criminals on Trial." 

Needless to say, with Shimon Peres, the architect and godfather of the so-called peace process now serving as the President of Israel, nothing ever came of the call.

The demand for an accounting was not unprecedented. There was no reason, on the face of things for those who made it to be perceived as anything other than reasonably enraged, and responsible citizens insisting that those responsible for the largest, most destructive strategic error Israel has ever made pay a personal price for their actions. 

Twenty years before that ceremony at the White House, Israel suffered the worst military defeat in its history. 

Israel did win the Yom Kippur War, in the end. It was a sloppy, painful, tragic and costly win. Victory owed to tactical errors by the Syrians; to the unbelievable heroism, and dogged determination exhibited by the IDF's junior officer corps and line soldiers, particularly on the Golan Heights; and to the emergency resupply of war materiel Israel received midway through the war from the United States.
Just as was the case twenty years later, when Israelis (having been introduced to the suicide bomber), decided their leaders had betrayed them; following the Yom Kippur War, the demobilized soldiers, the bereaved families and the general public demanded an accounting from the senior political leaders and the IDF brass that had led them down the vicious, deadly garden path.

After the Yom Kippur War, their demand was answered. The Agranat Commission was formed. And heads rolled. The prime minister, defense minister and IDF chief of general staff were all booted out. Other senior IDF commanders were relieved of their duties. And they deserved what they got. 

And just to make sure we remember how ill-served we were by our leaders forty years ago, every year around Yom Kippur, the media gives an open mike to every maudlin, angry, and indignant story they can find. Every year new documentaries are produced. Every year, new books are published. And for the most part, they are interesting and worthwhile.

Nothing even vaguely resembling the now forty year-long accounting Israel has experienced with regard to the Yom Kippur War has occurred in relation to the so-called peace process with the Palestinians that is now twenty years old. No commission of inquiry was convened. No heads have rolled. 

No television station has broadcast a serious documentary explaining the price Israel has paid on any level for a mistake that has cost us so dearly on every level. No one has given belated tribute to the millions of Israelis who foresaw the disaster that would befall us if we recognized the PLO. 

And foresee it they did. And oppose it, they did. More than two million Israelis - or nearly half the country's Jewish population in the early 1990s, and a third of the current Jewish population, have actively opposed the so-called Oslo accords and what followed.

As a portion of Israel's population, the number of Israelis who took part in protests against the so-called peace process comprised the largest protest movement in history.  

The public foresaw what was eminently foreseeable. Renowned intellectuals and decorated military leaders warned that the PLO was a terrorist organization that had no intention of making peace with Israel. They warned that the PLO would use every inch of land Israel transferred to its control as a forward base for terrorism against Israeli civilians. They warned that Yassir Arafat was a liar, a murderer and a Jew hater who would use all powers granted him to murder and legitimize the murder of Israeli civilians. 

They warned that he was not interested in the least in establishing a Palestinian state, rather wanted only to oversee the dismemberment and destruction of our state, the Jewish state.

And for the past twenty years, their warnings were borne out by events every single day. 

More than fifteen hundred Israelis have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the past twenty years. Scores of thousands of Israelis have been wounded or suffered the destruction of their families and their lives.

Diplomatically, Israel has paid an immeasurable price for the abject stupidity of our leaders' willful blindness to the rank phoniness of the PLO's commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel. The glaring obviousness of the danger of accepting the false historical narrative of our sworn enemies on our ability to defend ourselves internationally was so overwhelming that no one even bothered to mention it in the years before the so-called Oslo accord was concluded. 

But today, after twenty years of self-induced diplomatic failure has rendered Israeli leaders and representatives incapable of defending the country, it is necessary to explain it.
The PLO falsely claims that the cause for instability and violence in the Middle East is the absence of a Palestinian state in the lands Israel took control over from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War. 

Before the inauguration of the so-called peace process, Israel easily defended itself against this libel. After all, the PLO was established in 1964 - three years before Israel took control over Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Its declared purpose was and remains the destruction of Israel, not the establishment of a Palestinian state on some of the territory Israel controls. 

The absence of regional peace has nothing at all to do with Israel. It stems from the virulent Jew hatred that is endemic throughout the Islamic world. Due to this hatred Israel's neighbors seek its destruction. The centrality of their irrational, obsessive desire to seek the eradication of the Jewish people and the Jewish state is the reason there has been no true peace between Israel and its neighbors - including its Palestinian neighbors. And because their hatred is irrational and all-encompassing, there is nothing Israel can do to appease them.

Israel was able to defend itself from the PLO's lies to great effect before it accepted this terrorist organization as a legitimate actor and so accepted the legitimacy of its duplicitous narrative. But since it did, it has been unable to explain its actions, or increasingly, its right to exist at all. Because if the absence of a Palestinian state in Israel's heartland, and its capital city is what stands behind all the bad behavior of the Arab world, then everything that Israel does that impinges even marginally on the establishment of such of state is immoral, destabilizing and dangerous. 

This is why even Israel's most skilled diplomats - to the extent they still operate in Israel's PLO-besotted Foreign Ministry -- cannot defend us. This is why a generation of Israeli leaders have zero to show for their efforts to defend this country. They are trapped in a policy discourse that is founded on anti-Israel lies.

Then there is our alliance with the United States. To legitimize the single most destructive action ever undertaken by an Israeli government, the Rabin-Peres government approached the Clinton administration and asked it to sponsor this objectively insane policy, strenuously opposed by half the country. 

Bill Clinton was happy to oblige them. But once the Americans were on board, and placed US prestige behind a policy which, based as it was on lies, had no chance of success, Israel could not walk away. 

Once the Americans supported a policy that half of the public - and now two-thirds of the public - opposed, Washington necessarily found itself siding with an ever shrinking minority of Israelis against the majority of the public. Consequently for the past twenty years, US decision makers have backed policies that have become progressively more anti-Israel.

From a domestic perspective, the phony peace process has taken an enormous toll on Israeli society and democracy. To defend such a move so strenuously and reasonably opposed by such a large portion of the public it was necessary to marginalize the public. And so we were subjected to a systematic effort to purge and discredit dissident voices from the senior and later junior ranks of the IDF, from the Foreign Ministry, (although Peres had done much of the work pruning responsible voices out of the  ministry in the previous decade), and from the Justice Ministry.

Responsible opponents in the public square were castigated as extremists and enemies of peace, little different from terrorists. A new vocabulary to hide reality - like calling terror victims, victims of peace - was invented. 

Four times over the past twenty years - in 1994, 1995, 2000 and 2005 - the peace processors brought Israeli society to the brink of collapse. Lawful demonstrators and political activists - including minor children - were criminalized, and often jailed and put on trial for their civil disobedience. The corruption of Israel's legal system, which applies laws unequally to various members of the public, depending on their political views was a direct outcome of Israel's decision twenty years ago to embrace the PLO.

For the past twenty years, the party most responsible for Israel's continued abidance by a strategy that has brought us nothing but disaster is the media. The reason that Peres was elected to the presidency rather than put out to pasture like Golda Meir is because the media lionized him as the greatest statesman of all time. 

The reason that once in office non-leftist leaders embrace the positions of the radical Left, ignore the public, block every attempt to correct the damage that the Oslo accords have wrought, and embark on a new path is because they are no match for Channel 2 and all the rest. 

Our media outlets run a constant stream of post-Zionist propaganda that has reduced our elected representatives' field of action to the size of a postage stamp. They ignore knowledgeable, well-spoken representatives of the majority. They regularly invite cognitively and aesthetically challenged nationalists to their studios to embarrass into silence the majority of viewers who share their opinions. Zionists are hired to high-profile but powerless positions to make the public feel uncomfortable about complaining that its views have no voice in the media.  

Today the Obama administration plumbs the depths of strategic dysfunction. The Arab world empowers the most dangerous elements in country after country. The European Union treats Israel as a greater international outlaw than Iran, North Korea or Syria. Anti-Israel indoctrination is the norm on university campuses throughout the Western world. A new generation is coming of age that has never heard the truth about the Jewish state.

To contend with all this, the single most important step Israel must take is to end our twenty year nightmare with the PLO. As long as it continues, we will remain incapable of defending ourselves. 


The left are tribal and don't let examination of their mistakes take place. If they did, serious questions might be asked regarding WW1 reparations, WW2 firebombing of Dresden, or nuking of Japan's civilian populations. Or of Korean war conduct, Vietnam war initiation, Rwanda, Sarajevo, Burma, Khmer Rouge, North Korea, Iran .... Uganda .. South Africa .. Libya .. Egypt .. Lebanon.. - ed
===

A little something from my travels across Arizona last month. The gate was open so I drove through to this spot where everything just came together. I was lucky to have some monsoon clouds forming as I arrived. Off in the distance I could hear the crackle of lightning and the rumble of thunder soon afterwards. — at Agathla Peak.
===

So I'll let Daniel Henniger have the floor here on Syria and the rest of the Obama presidency.>
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323595004579069291111631648.html

===

4 her
===

===


Anthony Albanese never saw himself as PM, he was happy as chief Left faction poo kicker. But a week is a long time in politics and a few days counting numbers and gazing into the bathroom mirror is all Albo needed to see himself as leader of the Opposition.
 Bill Shorten believes his time has come but Caucus doesn’t feel the same way, and for damned good reasons.
Shorten wanted to bypass his Caucus “mates” and stand unopposed but now finds Albo’s epiphany has given him serious competition. If the ALP wants to recover lost ground in Opposition it needs an Albo, certainly not a Shorten.
Let’s face it, Shorten is yesterday’s man and the architect of Labor’s current malaise and he has made many enemies within the Party.
Paul (Piggy) Howes’ lustful expectation of taking Bob Carr’s Senate vacancy is now in doubt and that alone is testament to the Shorten/AWU lack of clout.
As anointed protégé of the AWU’s Big Bill Ludwig, Shorten engineered Rudd’s original demise in favour of Gillard. He continuously swore allegiance to Julia until, 20 minutes before Rudd’s final tilt at PM, he swapped sides carrying with him sufficient votes to bury Gillard.
Make no mistake, it was Shorten, with the backing of the AWU, who reinstalled the ridiculous Rudd as PM. It was Shorten who intended to profit from Rudd’s expected annihilation. It’s just that he figured Gillard would give him less of a team to work with in Opposition.
After the election Shorten expected to mount the dais to thunderous applause, but there has been nothing but silent apprehension... Labor is wary of his treacherous disloyalty.
They understand everything Bill has done has been for Bill, with the help of his corrupt AWU.
The word inside Labor now is that Bill is a gonner so Albo has publicly thrown his hat in the ring. He knows the mood of Caucus better than anyone.
Shorten would bring with him the stench of the past. He is the living symbol of all that is distasteful, corrupt and plain wrong with the Labor Party.
Albo has stayed true to his Labor ethics and his acidic tongue and derisory invective is a formidable kit to carry into Opposition.
Ask Abbott who he would prefer as Opposition leader and without hesitation he will say Bill Shorten.
And that’s why Anthony Albanese should get the job.

===


A United Nations report on global warming has been postponed as the northern ice cap expands by almost one million square miles. An increase of 60 per cent.
Arguably the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on a gullible public by income redistribution proponents is rapidly unravelling as common sense swamps the prophets of doom.
The ABC’s great aunt, Britain’s BBC, confidently claimed in 2007 that the northern ice cap would disappear by 2013. 
“Settled science” has become a little unsettling even to professors Flannery and Garnaut (it seems anyone can be a professor these days) as they go to ground rather than face an embarrassing backdown.
Those with even a rudimentary understanding of meteorology have known since the Al Gore outburst that “global warming” (later softened to “climate change”) alarmists were secreting a new world order agenda. 
Global warming was their chosen vehicle.
After viewing the original Al Gore movie many years ago I rushed home in anger and wrote a hundred page article explaining why his nonsense claims simply could not be true.
It’s far too boringly complicated to reprint here but a précis is this:
The climate is supposed to change... it has been changing for four billion years and we would not be here if it hadn’t been. 
Fraudulent Green climate “scientists” have one problem, they have no concept of time. Somehow they believe their lifespan of 70 or 80 years is significant.
Everything is a renewable resource. Even water, minerals and peat, it’s just a matter of time.
If the earth was only 100 years old, then we have been here for the last half second and during that 100 year period the earth has done, and continues to do, more “damage” to itself than man could ever do to it. Except it’s not damage. We call it “damage” only because we sometimes get in the way.
Of every species that ever lived on earth 99 per cent are now extinct. 
Those myriad species died because of a changing climate or changing environment... and we weren’t even here!
Natural selection and rapid genetic mobility have afforded us and our environment a resilience that allows us to survive for that half second and we should be bloody grateful.
I hope Abbott silently harbours global warming scepticism because it’s about time this inexplicable costly fraud was put to bed.

===

===

Aprille Love

Friday morning inspo. 

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. Lee Iacocca

Life is all about how you deal with it. 

Xxx
===

With all the threats and danger .. prayer is a good option - ed
===

===
Friend,
In the race to be Virginia's next governor, the latest poll has conservative Ken Cuccinelli trailing former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe by seven points!
Ken Cuccinelli is a good friend of mine.  He is the real deal.  A 100% pro-life, limited government conservative.
And he is getting savaged by McAuliffe and the entire liberal Democrat smear machine.
He desperately needs the help of conservatives from across America.
This election in Virginia is the most important in the nation this year.  And since Virginia is a state that Barack Obama won twice, it's doubly important for us to show that a true conservative can win there.
However, McAuliffe is one of the Democrat Party's top fundraisers, and every liberal group in the country wants to defeat Ken.  So money is pouring into the Old Dominion from all over America. 
Pro-abortion liberals hate Ken Cuccinelli because he is so staunchly pro-life.
Environmental extremists despise Ken because as Virginia's Attorney General he pushed back against the global warming sham.
And Obama loyalists really loathe Ken because he was the first state official to file suit against Obamacare.
As a result, Ken is being outspent by 2-1, and nearly every penny McAuliffe and the liberals have is going into negative ads.
It's unbelievable. 
Patriot Voices PAC is getting involved in this battle because we can't afford to let a good conservative be savaged by the liberals like this. And Ken can't win this race all by himself.
President Obama desperately wants to crush Ken this fall.  He wants revenge for Ken leading the anti-Obamacare backlash from the states.  And he wants his liberal friends in the media to be able to run stories about how Virginia's "Tea Party Attorney General" was defeated by an army of left-wing activists.
No matter where you live, this race in Virginia is important to you.
Ken Cuccinelli needs us! 
Sincerely,
 
Rick Santorum

   Paid for by Patriot Voices PAC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

===
View this email from RespectAbility in your web browser.
September 12, 2013


Friend,

The day after 9/11 we remember our freedoms and honor the opportunities that define our nation. A core freedom in our nation is the freedom of religion. It's something that helps us define ourselves, and holds us strong. 

As you know, we just released a major poll that shows how disability can impact inclusion in a faith community. It shows how people with disabilities are, all to often, denied access to their faith communities. The poll generated a lot of thinking so I wanted to be sure you saw the press clips below. You can also see the actual poll presentationHERE.

Our work takes money and we need your help. Please, click HERE now to give RespectAbilityUSA your tax deductible contribution so that we can enable people with disabilities to achieve the American dream — including participation in a faith community of their choice. WE NEED YOUR DONATION NOW!

With best wishes to you and yours,

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
President, RespectAbilityUSA

 P.S. This is personal to me. But the plight of people with disabilities is personal to millions of families and opportunities and freedoms define us as a people. Donate now so we can take the next step forward for justice, fairness, and opportunity!




Mind the Inclusion Gap: Values vs. Reality
By Michelle K. Wolf
09/10/13

How do we collectively get our community to align its high values with everyday practice?  A new poll released today demonstrates the big gap between what we desire and what we actually have when it comes to welcoming Jews with disabilities. Although 89% of the Jews polled said they "strongly supported" including people with disabilities in Jewish life, 19% of Jews with disabilities in the sample also reported that they have "been turned away or unable to participate in a Jewish event or activity because of the disability."
Read more
Survey: Support of disabled Jews doesn't translate into action
By Ian Zelaya
09/10/13

Results from a new poll conducted by RespectAbilityUSA and JerusalemU find that many Jews support the inclusion of disabled Jews in Jewish organizations and events, but suggest that many of these venues and organizations aren't practicing what their members preach.
Read more

A New Survey Reveals 'A Distance Between Words And Deeds'By Helen Chernikoff
09/11/13

Almost 100 percent of the 2,607 relatively engaged Jews polled by RespectAbilityUSA and Jerusalem U agree that "Jewish events and organizations should be as welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities as everyone else," with 89 percent of the sample agreeing strongly.
Read more

Jewish Activists Unite for RespectAbility
By Morton Landowne
08/05/13

Two prominent Jewish activists have joined forces for an unexpected cause. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder of the activism group The Israel Project, and Donn Weinberg, former chairman of mega-charity the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation (HJWF), have come together to create RespectAbility, a Washington, D.C. based non-sectarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with disabilities to achieve "the American Dream," by improving employment opportunities for the 57 million citizens with some form of disability..
Read more

The 10 Commandments Of Politics For People With Disabilities
By Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
03/21/13

President Barack Obama is in Israel. Our television screens are re-running Charleston Heston's "Ten Commandments" and we are cleaning our kitchens for Seders. Soon, even Obama will celebrate Passover with Jewish members of his staff. It's the perfect time to learn lessons from the original disability activist -- Moses -- on how to impact public policy.
Read more

Follow Us Online
Facebook
Twitter
Forward this email to a friend.
RespectAbility
4340 East-West Hwy, Suite 350
Bethesda, MD 20814

240-744-0546

===
12tribefilmstv_logo
***
Breaking News - 4
Breaking News Videos from Israel - Sign up!
joi_02
Joy of Israel Videos - Don't miss any episodes! - Sign Up
***

Special Feature Videos

Screen shot 2012-07-16 at 11.50.04 AM
Click here to watch: Rebuilding The Temple in Jerusalem
short film focused on an organization dedicated to the rebuilding of the 3rd Temple in Jerusalem today. We believe that rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem will bring peace and stability to the world.
Screen shot 2012-07-16 at 12.59.29 PM
A 40+ Minute video exploring the place where it all began- The City of David!
Facebook Icon
Follow us on Facebook for Top Jerusalem videoshttp://www.facebook.com/Jerusaleminmysoul
subscribe-button_rounded
Share this email so that others can subscribe to Top Israel and Top Jerusalem emails and videos today.
donate_now_narrow
Friday's Top 5 Videos is a project ofIsraelVideoNetwork.com and 12Tribe Films, developing the next generation of Israel activists using online video and social networking.
Join our mission - Click here to help us grow our network to reach hundreds of thousands of people to make a difference for Israel.
facebook

===

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, begins Friday night at sundown. For the next 25 hours, Jews will fast and pray, pleading with God to be sealed in the Book of Life. We pray for a year of peace, safety, good health and prosperity.

NEWS UPDATE: Jerusalem is on high security alert as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has declared war by giving the "green light" to terrorist attacks against Israelis, particularly in Jerusalem, on Yom Kippur. 

Memories of the Yom Kippur War, 40 years ago, are still fresh in our minds. We remember the heavy casualties but also the great miracles of survival and ultimate success. And it was just 40 years before that, in 1933, when Hitler rose to power. Memories of the unthinkable, horrific atrocities of the Holocaust will never escape us. And then the great miracle of 1948 - an independent Jewish state re-established in the Land of Israel after 2000 years of exile!

Our sages teach us that even one act of kindness can tip the scales. Charity, we are taught, 'saves us from death'. And it can save the entire world! Our fate as individuals and humanity as a whole, is on the line. Let's pray that we will all be sealed in the Book of Life!

It is for this reason, on the very last day before our fate is sealed, that we appeal to you for perhaps one more act of kindness.

United with Israel has been there to help the People of Israel in so many ways. Many of you have helped us to:
- Send pro-Israel messages and action items to millions of people every day
- Build 10 Portable Bomb Shelters for Israeli communities under fire
- Plant over 3000 Fruit Trees throughout the Land of Israel
- Provide thousands of IDF soldiers with warm winter gear
- Send toys, gifts and personal notes to victims of terror and their families

Your donation can help us to do much more. And perhaps this extra act of kindness, right before Yom Kippur, will make all the difference in the world. It can tip the scales and seal our fate for a year full of blessing! Amen.

Click Below to Donate to United with Israel
https://donate.unitedwithisrael.org

The People of Israel thank you for your generous support and pray for the day when peace will reign in Jerusalem, the Land of Israel and the entire world.

Please forward this email to your family and friends. Give them the opportunity to perform another act of kindness by standing united with the People of Israel.

We wish you a wonderful New Year full of blessing, hope, happiness and peace. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life.


With Blessings from Israel,

The 'United with Israel' Family


CLICK BELOW TO MAKE AN ONLINE DONATION:
https://donate.unitedwithisrael.org/


Checks can be sent to our US address:
United with Israel
PO Box 151 
Lawrence, NY 11559
United States

Checks can be mailed directly to Israel:
United with Israel
8/19 Nachal Maor St.
Box 71530
Bet Shemesh 99623
ISRAEL

To donate by phone please call:
+1-646-213-4003 (USA) 
+972-2-533-7841 (Israel)

To update your contact information or unsubscribe, please click on the link below:
https://unitedwithisrael.infusionsoft.com/app/optOut/12/e7a04143382445e1/105920067/5c368c5d3a8ca31a

United with Israel
8/19 Maor St.
Box 71530
Bet Shemesh, HaDarom 99623
Israel
+972-2-533-7841

===
HonestReporting's Israel Daily News Stream: Everything You Need to Know About Media Coverage of Israel and the MidEast

Today's Top Stories

• US, Iran, edging towards direct talks?
• IDF capabilities under scrutiny as Syria gives up chemical weapons.
• Hamas to mosque preachers: bash Israel, not Egypt.

Help Fight the Demonization of Israel

Hot Content from HonestReporting

BBC & Sky News Commentator Laments Loss of Syrian WMDs: Given his inflammatory history, why do Western news services keep Abdel Bari Atwan on board as a regular analyst? Read more . . .

Welcome to the Israel Daily News Stream

The IDNS is a daily roundup of everything you need to know about how the media is covering Israel, all in one place for easy reference, delivered directly to your inbox every morning. Want to receive weekly Bias Alerts? Manage your subscriptions. Please tell your friends to learn more and sign up here.

Tired of Seeing Israel Slammed in the Media?

Join more than 150,000 people demanding fair media coverage. HonestReporting was formed in 2000 to respond to unfair coverage against Israel in the wake of the second Intifada. Since then, it's prompted hundreds of corrections and retractions. Stay informed on all media issues by signing up to HR's weekly bias alert emails.

===
12
SEPTEMBER
2013

How to Libel Israel: A Case Study

Oxfam spreads water libel

It’s easy to produce an anti-Israel libel that is subsequently debunked after the damage has been done. Read more...

Manufacturing and Exploiting Compassion: Abuse of the Media by Palestinian Propaganda

Big Lies

An in-depth article for the JCPA examines how Palestinian propaganda has turned the media into an effective weapon, including examples from HonestReporting. Read more...

Mission to Israel Nov 18-26, 2013 - LAST FEW PLACES AVAILABLE!

Mission to Israel

Now is the time to find out what's REALLY going in on the Middle East.  Join us for a full week of meetings with policy makers, security briefings, trips to the hotspots in the news, and much more. Find out more here...

IN OTHER NEWS

HonestReporting Mission to Israel
HonestReporting's Free E-Book

SHARING IS CARING

Do you know someone who might be interested in seeing this free weekly newsletter?
Facebook Like Button
Tweet Button

WE'RE SOCIAL

HR FEATURES

CONTACT US

10024 Skokie Blvd.
Suite 202
Skokie, IL
60077-9945 U.S.A.
Speakers and Events:
Toll-free in the U.S.
Ph 1-866-50-TRUTH

===
mm banner28413-0
Screen Shot 2013-05-06 at 8.47.36 AM
Hi everyone! Here's the MichelleMalkin.com newsletter for September 12th. Enjoy!

From the Blog

T-Boned: National Review files lawsuit against Cory Booker

Go figure...

Anthony Weiner’s final gesture

Anthony Weiner lost big in Tuesday’s New York City mayoral election, but, as you might expect, he went out with class and dignity...

More From the Right Side of the Web

Featured Video

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.50.03 AM
This morning on "FOX & Friends," Michelle talked about Putin's NYT op-ed, Obama's lack of cabinet meetings, and more.

Michelle's Top Tweets

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.48.11 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.46.41 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.45.36 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.44.03 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.43.14 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.40.48 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.39.55 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.39.14 AM
Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 9.01.39 AM

And ... Our Hate Tweet of the Day

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 9.44.29 AM
Um, there is no one word that rhymes with both "punt" and "skunk." Because rhyming doesn't work that way.

===

September 13Feast Day of Saint John Chrysostom (Western Christianity); Yom Kippur begins at sunset (Judaism, 2013)
Elizabeth McCombs

===

Events[edit source | editbeta]

Births[edit source | editbeta]

Deaths[edit source | editbeta]

Holidays and observances[edit source | editbeta]


===
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"God is jealous."
Nahum 1:2
Your Lord is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did he choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did he buy you with his own blood? He cannot endure that you should think that you are your own, or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that he would not stop in heaven without you; he would sooner die than you should perish, and he cannot endure that anything should stand between your heart's love and himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh. He cannot bear that you should hew out broken cisterns, when the overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean upon him, he is glad, but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend--worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, he is displeased, and will chasten us that he may bring us to himself. He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To abide in him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, to prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret intercourse with him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord. He would fain have us abide in him, and enjoy constant fellowship with himself; and many of the trials which he sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from the creature, and fixing them more closely upon himself. Let this jealousy which would keep us near to Christ be also a comfort to us, for if he loves us so much as to care thus about our love we may be sure that he will suffer nothing to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh that we may have grace this day to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world!

Evening

"I will sing of mercy and judgment."
Psalm 101:1
Faith triumphs in trial. When reason is thrust into the inner prison, with her feet made fast in the stocks, faith makes the dungeon walls ring with her merry notes as she cries, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment. Unto thee, O Lord, will I sing." Faith pulls the black mask from the face of trouble, and discovers the angel beneath. Faith looks up at the cloud, and sees that
"'Tis big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on her head."
There is a subject for song even in the judgments of God towards us. For, first, the trial is not so heavy as it might have been; next, the trouble is not so severe as we deserved to have borne; and our affliction is not so crushing as the burden which others have to carry. Faith sees that in her worst sorrow there is nothing penal; there is not a drop of God's wrath in it; it is all sent in love. Faith discerns love gleaming like a jewel on the breast of an angry God. Faith says of her grief, "This is a badge of honour, for the child must feel the rod;" and then she sings of the sweet result of her sorrows, because they work her spiritual good. Nay, more, says Faith, "These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." So Faith rides forth on the black horse, conquering and to conquer, trampling down carnal reason and fleshly sense, and chanting notes of victory amid the thickest of the fray.
"All I meet I find assists me
In my path to heavenly joy:
Where, though trials now attend me,
Trials never more annoy.
"Blest there with a weight of glory,
Still the path I'll ne'er forget,
But, exulting, cry, it led me
To my blessed Saviour's seat."
===

Today's reading: Proverbs 13-15, 2 Corinthians 5 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Proverbs 13-15

1 A wise son heeds his father’s instruction,
but a mocker does not respond to rebukes.
2 From the fruit of their lips people enjoy good things,
but the unfaithful have an appetite for violence.
3 Those who guard their lips preserve their lives,
but those who speak rashly will come to ruin.
A sluggard’s appetite is never filled,
but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.
5 The righteous hate what is false,
but the wicked make themselves a stench
and bring shame on themselves.
6 Righteousness guards the person of integrity,
but wickedness overthrows the sinner....

Today's New Testament reading: 2 Corinthians 5

Awaiting the New Body
1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.5Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come....
===

Naomi

The Woman Who Tasted the Cup of Bitterness
Scripture Reference - The Book of Ruth
Name Meaning - Naomi means "my joy," "my bliss," or "pleasantness of Jehovah," and is a name suggestive of all that is charming, agreeable, attractive. Until deep sorrow overshadowed her, we can understand Naomi having a nature corresponding to her name. Although her character came to be purged and enhanced by her suffering, Naomi had an innate nobility that gave her personality an irresistible charm.
Family Connections - While both Naomi and Elimelech were staunch members of the Hebrew race, we are told nothing of their genealogy. Elimelech, who married Naomi, is thought to have belonged to one of the outstanding families in Israel, being a brother of Salmon, prince of Judah, who married Rahab. If this was so, then Naomi began her married life in comfortable circumstances. Naomi and Elimelech belonged to Bethlehem-Judah where two sons were born to them, namely, Mahlon and Chilion.
The Book of Ruth, which is one of the most lovely idylls in literature, and has enchanted every age, presents us with two women who are among the best-loved in history and whose story still captivates the world because of their unique devotion. Naomi and Ruth, her daughter-in-law, afford a relief after characters like Tamar, Delilah and Jezebel. In this sketch let us try to delineate the life and experience of Naomi who knew a great deal about "the ringing groove of change," to use Tennyson's phrase. Because of her manifold changes in life, Naomi came to fear God in a deeper way ( Psalm 55:19).
Her Change of Country
During the rule of the Judges, Israel suffered a serious famine which was deemed to be one of the punishments visited upon the people when they had sinned (Leviticus 26:1416 ). Driven to consternation, Elimelech the Ephrathite of Bethlehem decided to emigrate with his family to another land where food was more plentiful, and so traveled from Judah and settled in the highlands of Moab. For Naomi such an uprooting from her native home must have constituted a real sacrifice. Sincere in her faith, she loved the people of God and was strongly attached to the wonderful traditions of her race.
In taking the initiative to go to Moab - a foreign country - from Bethlehem, Naomi's husband stepped out of the will of God. If the famine was a judgment upon the nation, Elimelech should have repented, tried to have helped his fellow countrymen back to God, and prayed for the removal of the scourge (Psalm 34:9,1017 ). One may argue that Elimelech was wise in taking Naomi and their two sons out of a famine-stricken area to another land where there was sufficient food. But Elimelech was a Hebrew, and as such had the promise, "In the days of famine, thou shalt be satisfied." Elimelech means, "My God is King." Had he truly believed God was his King, he would have stayed in Bethlehem, knowing that need could not throttle God who is able to furnish a table in the desert. But Elimelech belied the name he bore when he left Bethlehem - "the house of bread" - for Moab, meaning "waste" or "nothingness." With his family he went from a place where God was honored to another land so heathen in its ways.
Although the land of Moab may sound remote it was only some 30 miles from Bethlehem-Judah - a long enough journey in those far-off days when they had no transportation. The distance, however, was not one of miles, but of mind . As H. V. Morton puts it, "Distances in the Bible are not measured from one place to another, but from God. Naomi and her husband felt they were going into a far country because Moab was a land of foreign worship." Thus Bethlehem to Moab measured the distance from God to the alien worship of an alien country. What disturbed feelings Naomi must have had as, with her family, she found herself in a strange land, unknown, and with all the problems of establishing a home in repellant surroundings.
Her Change of Connections
It was not long before Naomi discovered the error in leaving Bethlehem for in the new and heathen land nothing but misfortune dogged her footsteps. Her two sons married women of Moab. Instead of helping to support their mother they took wives of the alien country they were in. The Jewish law forbade marriage outside of the nation. Naomi's husband, Elimelech, died. He had fled to Moab to escape a possible death from famine, and died in the midst of plenty leaving his wife a widow in a land of idolaters. Bereft of her husband, Naomi loses all heart to live on in a land of foreigners.
When the stem dies, the leaf that grew
Out of its heart must perish too.
Naomi became one of the widows whom Paul describes as being "desolate." To add to her desolation and grief, she also lost both of her sons and so Naomi "was left of her two sons and husband." By this time she was old and helpless with her widowed daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to shelter. As they were not of her people, nor of her faith in God, Moab true to its name, must have been empty, desolate and inhospitable to Naomi's grief-stricken, aching heart. Doubtless, Ruth and Orpah, whose hearts too had been emptied, were a source of comfort to Naomi, even though they knew that their marriage to Mahlon and Chilion was against her religious principles. So, as George Matheson fittingly expresses it -
To all appearance Naomi was desolate. Husband and children were gone - the place of sojourn was a land of strangers - the voices of the old sanctuary were silent. Her heart and spirit were broken, her conscience was up in arms. The God of her fathers, she felt, had deserted her for her desertion of Him. She must retrieve the past - she must go back - back to the old soil, back to the favour of her God.
Bethlehem was Naomi's native land, and all her relatives and friends were there. Thus she left for Bethlehem, not so much because of her cup of sorrow in Moab, but because she had heard that "the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread."
Her Change of Character
Naomi was determined to return to Bethlehem alone, but her daughters-in-law left with her, possibly excited about a new start in a new land. But on the journey back, Naomi paused and pleaded with Ruth and Orpah to return to Moab. She knew what it would mean for them as Moabites to cross the boundary line, stressing the point that in Canaan there would be very little prospect of their finding husbands. What a moment that must have been as those three widows stood there at the parting of the ways. Orpah, without much ado, kissed Naomi, and then went back to her own idolatrous people, but Ruth clave unto Naomi and begged her to take her to Bethlehem (see Ruth).
As Naomi and Ruth entered the city together the thoughts of each must have been different. To Naomi there came flashing back thoughts of a happy youth and of a life at peace with God - thoughts which tended to aggravate her desolation. But for Ruth, there was the novelty and strangeness of a foreign people, a speech not fully understood, and youth's quest for new adventure. Naomi's arrival in the old community created a sensation. Quickly it passed from lip to lip that the well-known, beautiful and pleasant woman who had left ten years before was back, and as all the city met her they cried, "Is this Naomi?" Why the question form of their welcome? Did they detect a radical change in her appearance and demeanor? The repetition of her significant name irritated her as she cried -
Call me not Naomi [pleasant, winsome, agreeable], call meMara [bitter]: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?
Naomi could not bear the contradiction between the name she bore, and the person she was. Ten years in Moab with all its anguish, and also the loss of fellowship with God and His people had dried up her finer feelings. Once so sweet, Naomi was now sour, and blamed God for the poverty and desolation she had endured. But why chide God? Was not her cup of bitterness the result of the act of disobedience when, with her husband, she left Bethlehem for Moab? Had she stayed in her own land and maintained her trust in God, in spite of the famine, He would have undertaken for her and her family and brought them through. But the journey to Moab was a journey from God, and consequently her bitterness was the fruit of such an act of disobedience.
Her Change of Circumstances
Naomi was back in Bethlehem as a "returned empty." She went away to Moab with plenty but retraced her steps in poverty. How descriptive of her adverse circumstances is her lament! "I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty." Naomi and Ruth, then, clinging to each other, plunge into the poverty and solitariness facing them - but with a different outlook. Both women were widows and sufferers, but suffering old age often yields to hopelessness and despair, whereas suffering youth rebounds and seeks to be responsive to the life that is around. Thus Ruth felt the stir of excitement in her new surroundings. Naomi and she must eat, and knowing that her mother-in-law, whom Ruth surrounded with loving care, was too old to bend her back to work in the fields, Ruth goes out and secures work as a gleaner in the fields of Boaz. Under Jewish law the poor were allowed to glean in any harvest field, and Ruth qualified for the weary, humble task of following the reapers and gathering up the gleanings for Naomi and herself.
Boaz, related to Naomi's husband, was therefore connected by marriage to Ruth, and by Jewish custom, Boaz, as next of kin, could be regarded as Ruth's rightful betrothed. Naomi, with her bitterness now subdued and her former pleasant disposition restored, took a lively interest in the kindness of Boaz to Ruth, and advised her in the steps leading to her marriage to Boaz. The idyllic conclusion was reached as Naomi, through her tender boldness, saw Ruth lifted out of obscurity and poverty into marriage with a godly man, as well as a mighty man of wealth. For Naomi, the winter of desolation was past, and the time of the singing of birds had come. Although her natural hopes had perished, Naomi lived again in the life of her dear, sacrificial daughter-in-law, and there were loud rejoicings when Ruth's first-born, Obed, was carried to Grandma Naomi. Now her daughter-in-law who loved her was better to Naomi "than seven sons." How lovingly she would nurse Ruth's child and bless God because, as Professor R. G. Moulton expressed it -
The family she thought she had seen perish has been restored to the genealogies of Israel; for baby Obed lives to become the father of Jesse, and Jesse is father of the great King David. And in the genealogical tables of Matthew, the Moabitess who left her people for love of Naomi is duly named as an ancestress of the Messiah Himself.
===
Matthew

[Măt'thew] - gift of jehovah.

The Man Who Left All to Follow Christ

This son of Alphaeus was a Hebrew with two names, a common thing in Galilee at that time. Mark and Luke, when recording Matthew's call to discipleship, speak of him as Levi, but Matthew himself uses the name he has been loved by throughout the Christian era. In his despised occupation he was Levi, a name meaning "joined," and joined he was to the world's crooked extortionate ways and mercenary aims. He was also joined by his vocation to a hated foreign power under whose yoke orthodox Jews chafed.
Thus Levi and his craft were so detested that the very namepublican or tax-gatherer was commonly associated with sinner(Luke 15:1). His original name connected him with the tribe of Levi, the priestly house set aside for sanctuary service. But this Levi degraded his holy name. Whether the Lord changed the name to Matthew when He called Levi or whether the new found disciple chose it himself, we do not know. Meaning "the gift of God," Matthew's new name magnified the transforming power of Christ and indicated that Matthew was like the One who called him, a gift to Israel and to the world.
The call to service came when he was sitting at the receipt of custom (Matt. 9:9; Luke 5:27 ) at Capernaum, the first world center, "the Great West Trunk Road from Damascus and the Far East to the Mediterranean Sea." Matthew was a "publican," which is not to be confused with the modern usage of the term as an English innkeeper. "Publican" is from the Latin wordpublicannus , meaning the collector of Roman taxes, the gathering of which was farmed out to minor officials ready to undertake this odious duty among their countrymen. A publican's reward was that he could extort for his own benefit more than was due, so long as the extortion did not lead to revolt. This was why the publicans, as a class, were spoken of as "leeches." They gorged themselves with money in the process of gathering money for the Caesars and consequently were reckoned to be outside the pale of decent society and of the synagogue.
"Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's Son, knew Matthew the publican quite well," says Alexander Whyte. "Perhaps only too well. Jesus and His mother had by this time migrated from Nazareth to Capernaum. He had often been in Matthew's toll-booth with His mother's taxes, with other poor people's taxes." But the outcast was called by Christ to a better occupation, to better wealth than silver and gold, to serve a better King than Caesar. Without hesitation Matthew left all, arose and followed Christ (Luke 5:28).
To celebrate his surrender to Christ, Matthew entertained Christ and others to a feast in his own house ( Matt. 9:10; Luke 5:29). This feast was a token of gratitude for his emancipation from a sordid occupation, and revealed a missionary spirit. Such an "At Home" served a threefold purpose:
I. It was a Jubilee Feast to commemorate his translation into a new life. Matthew wanted all and sundry to know that he was now a new creature in Christ Jesus.
II. It was a Farewell Dinner to declare his determination henceforth to follow and serve his new found King. It was his public confession of surrender to the call of Christ.
III. It was a Conversazione to introduce his old associates and friends to his new found Saviour, that they too might have an opportunity of hearing His wonderful words of life. Matthew sought to make a dinner party an evangelistic service. He knew many would come to his house to meet Christ who would not go to the synagogue to hear Him. Doubtless many publicans and sinners learned that day that Christ did not despise them.
Matthew became not only an apostle but also the writer of the first gospel. He left behind an undying image of his Lord. Matthew has given us The Galilean Gospel -unique in every way. When he rose and left all to follow Christ, the only things Matthew took out of his old life were his pen and ink. It is well for us that he did, since he took them with him for such a good purpose.
Matthew's gospel is striking in that it alone gives us the Parables of the Kingdom. The theme of his book, known as "the Hebrew Porch of the New Testament" is The King and His Kingdom. Some fifty-six times he uses the word "kingdom." In his record of the life and labors of Christ, Matthew has given us the image of Christ as it fell upon his own heart.
Trained to systematic methods and well acquainted with Jewish character and religion, Matthew was fitted to commend Christ to the Jews. He appeals to the student of Old Testament literature. As a writer, he is before us as an eyewitness of the events he describes and as earwitness of the discourses he records. As to his qualifications, Matthew had a love of truth and was sensible of the mercy of God, and the misery of man. In self-effacing humility, he loses sight of himself in adoration of his Hero. It is thus that his book can be divided in this three-fold way:
The early days of the Messiah (Matt. 1-4:16).
The signs and works of the Messiah (Matt. 4:17-16:20).
The passion of the Messiah (Matt. 16:21-28:20).
===
September 12, 2011
Don't Scratch That Itch!
Today's Truth
"When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed" (James 1:13-14 NIV).
Friend To Friend
I once woke up with a spider bite that was the size of a quarter. It may as well have been the size of North Carolina for as much as it itched! I was half-tempted to scratch off my arm. That nasty bite was just begging to be scratched. However, I have learned a thing or two in my thirty-something years, and one thing I know for sure: it is best not to scratch this type of itch.
It would be like opening a bag of chips with the naive intention of eating only one (yeah, right!) I knew that if I started scratching my bug bite, it would be nearly impossible to stop. I would regret having ever started.
Super-itchy bug bites are a lot like temptations. Temptations are itchy! The call on us with urgent voices that scream, "Scratch me! Scratch me!" Yet, in all reality, a little scratch will not satisfy temptation's itch at all...it will just make matters worse. When we scratch the itch of temptation, the itch does not diminish. To the contrary, it increases.
The Bible teaches us that when we resist temptation, our faith is then mobilized and the muscles of our character are strengthened. Let's look at what that looked like for a guy named Joseph. (For the full account, pause here and read Genesis 39.)
Joseph was a man of integrity who did right in the eyes of the Lord, but he definitely faced some temptation! He was seduced by temptation in the form of his master's wife, Mrs. Potiphar. You see, Mrs. Potiphar wanted her husband's right-hand man to sleep with her, and she pursued him with aggression. Hers was a hand-delivered invitation for Joseph to sin that had itchy written all over it. But he flat-out refused. His heart was determined to honor God.
"My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" Though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her (Genesis 39:9-10).
Temptation chased Joseph relentlessly. Oh, how he must have longed for the itching to stop! To give in would be sinful. To give in was simply not an option for this young man of character. So on the day that Potiphar's wife caught him by the cloak and begged again for Joseph to sleep with her, Joseph ran out of the house. He ran from that tempting situation as fast as his legs would carry him.
God was honored in Joseph's response.
He ran from temptation.
We would be wise to do the same.
What do you need to run from today? Have you determined in your heart to honor God in everything? Temptation comes in all shapes and sizes. It might be calling your name from your pantry - or from your computer - or from a bottle - or from another cubicle in your office. What temptations do you face today? Name them and run the other way! Don't scratch that itch! Determine in your heart that you will choose the path that brings honor to God, and call on Him for strength.
I realize that dealing with temptation is not easy. When that nasty spider bit my arm, I struggled not to scratch the bite. I had to re-direct my thinking to persevere through the temptation. When we come face to face with temptations, God's strength is always available to us. We need God's strength. Ours will fail us. Friend, when we resist temptation, we get to experience the peace and protection of God, our faith is mobilized and the muscles of our character are strengthened.
Let's Pray
Dear Lord, I need You so much. I constantly find myself being dragged away and enticed by temptation. Please give me strength to run the other way, and give me the wisdom to run to Your arms. I want to be a woman of godly character. Help me be that woman!
In Jesus' Name,
Amen.
Now It's Your Turn
Contemplate the following questions: What have you been dragged away and enticed by in the past? How did you respond? How have you grown from those experiences?
Though our sovereign God allows trials to enter our lives, He does not ever tempt us. (James 1) Tuck that truth in your heart today, and the next time you experience a temptation - great or small - recognize that the enemy is behind the allure. Then tell him to get behind you and pray that Jesus will re-direct your thinking.
Read and memorize Psalm 105:4: "Look to the LORD and His strength; seek His face always."
More From The Girlfriends
I wish my temptations were always as simple as the itch of a pesky little bug bite! But, of course, they are not. Each of us will encounter some real whoppers in our lives. James chapter one tells us that when we persevere through trials and temptations, one rewards is maturity. That really encourages me! I hope it encourages you as well.
NEED ENCOURAGEMENT? Allow this song to lift your heart to God's. Turn your speakers up, click over to my Facebook page at: www.Facebook.com/GwenSmithMusic and listen toTAKE MY HEART CAPTIVE.
If this devotion resonated with you and if you would like to learn more about how your brokenness can be reworked into a picture of God's beauty, don't miss Gwen's book Broken Into Beautiful. Every step of transformation begins with the heart of God. Broken into Beautiful will take you there. To order Broken Into Beautiful, go to Amazon or, for a signed copy, visit Gwen's website: www.gwensmith.net.
LOVE MUSIC? Check out Gwen's new CD, Uncluttered. The songs of Uncluttered are purposed to sweep you away from life-noise and to focus your heart and mind on the one thing that matters: your relationship with Jesus Christ.
Seeking God?
Click here to find out more about
how to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Girlfriends in God
P.O. Box 725
Matthews, NC 28106
===
P31Header
Samantha Reed
September 12, 2011
Into Her Pain
Samantha Reed, Executive Assistant
"A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man's condition, his heart went out to him."Luke 10:33 (MSG)
We inhaled the muggy evening shrouding the back porch, too warm to even rock in our chairs. Not a slight breeze of mercy murmured. The quiet moment urged me to be still. Listen. Administer mercy.
Knees kissed her chin, her eyes pleaded, "I need someone to crawl in my pit with me. Someone to help me out of the pain."
A lump in my throat responded to her grief. Circumstances had beaten her down; left her half-dead on the side of life's road. Uncomfortable empathy warned,press the escape hatch quick, before awkward mercy takes over. Obvious quick fixes lunged at me:
Time heals all wounds.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
God's timing is perfect.
To everything there is a season.
But when he saw the man lying there,
he crossed to the other side of the road
and passed him by. (Luke 10:31b NLT)
I wouldn't disrespect her loss with a walk-by. Wouldn't slap thoughtless words into her pit as I stepped over her pain. A word aptly withheld is often better than a word care-lessly tossed. Be still. Listen. Administer mercy.
A Samaritan traveling the road came on him.
When he saw the man's condition,
his heart went out to him. (vs. 33 MSG)
I try not to deal in slick mercy if possible. You see, slick things don't stick. Instead I plastered a cast of mercy on her broken heart. Comfort doesn't come in clichés. It is delivered in a still presence, a listening ear, a merciful hand. Comfort ushers in healing when the truth of the Word is coupled with merciful deeds. Into the pit we're called. Into silence we wade. Be still. Listen. Administer mercy.
He gave him first aid,
disinfecting and bandaging his wounds.
Then he lifted him onto his donkey,
led him to an inn,
and made him comfortable. (vs. 34 MSG)
The Good Samaritan did more than throw a nickel, blanket or splash of water. He leaned into, learned of the need, loved the broken with what resources he had. He was the first in a line of others who attended to the man, aided him in getting up and getting well. The Good Samaritan stopped, stooped and secured additional help.
That humid night with my friend, her journey of healing began. I didn't have much, but a meager offering from a willing heart: it is capable of great things. My arm lingered still, touching hers-a reminder life begets life. I listened to her hope levels, refilling when low. Administered merciful possibilities of trusting again, believing once more. Others counseled, covered in prayer, spoke truths. We tucked arms under my friend, lifted her up and out. Onward to healing.
In the morning he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper, saying,
'Take good care of him. If it costs any more,
put it on my bill-
I'll pay you on my way back.' (vs. 35 MSG)
Years later, my heart cracked open, pieces clattered out like marbles from a jar. Flailing about, I slipped headlong into my pain.
My friend crossed the road to me, leaving convenient clichés of "chin up" and "better to have loved and lost" on the other side. Toward my pain she leaned; still, listening, administering mercy. One temperate morning on the same back porch, the breeze stirred slightly. The only thing between us, two mugs of coffee.
"You'll be whole again, you'll heal. Once more you'll believe He's always been good; has plans, a future; never left you."
With a wink my friend glimmered, "Someone once told me that and she was right. I believe again; I trust." Mercy nodded at her and together, they wrapped their arms on either side of me. Ascending out of my pain. Time to leave; time to heal.
"Now which of these three would you say
was a neighbor to the man who was
attacked by bandits?" Jesus asked.
The man replied, "The one who
showed him mercy."
Then Jesus said, "Yes, now go
and do the same."(vv. 36-37 NLT)
Dear Lord, thank You for Your healing mercy. Thank You for sharing in my pain when You died on the cross. Please give me eyes to see those hurting around me, and teach me to be still, to listen, and to administer mercy. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
Related Resources:
Need a friend to walk you out of your pit? Then you won't want to miss Melissa Taylor's Online Bible Study ofA Confident Heart by Renee Swope. Click here to sign up and click here to purchase your book!
Also consider the Four-Part Conference Call Series that accompanies this Bible study. Click here to join Melissa, Renee, and other encouraging guests!
Click here to download the first chapter of A Confident Heart for free.
Hop on over to Samantha's blog for more encouragement and enter to win a book or conference call.
When you purchase resources through Proverbs 31 Ministries, you touch eternity because your purchase supports the many areas of hope-giving ministry we provide at no cost. We wish we could, but we simply can't compete with prices offered by huge online warehouses. Therefore, we are extremely grateful for each and every purchase you make with us. Thank you!
Application Steps:
Pray and ask the Lord if there is someone in your life He is calling you to help out of their pain. With whom can you be still, listen, administer mercy?
Ask for words and deeds of mercy to show that person, rather than a quick pat on the back or cliché.
Reflections:
Are there pits in which I've stayed, not allowing in truth, help or healing? What do I fear will happen if I am still, if I listen and if I accept mercy administered by others?
Power Verses:
Micah 6:8, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (ESV)
Galatians 6:2, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." (ESV)
1 John 3:18, "Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions." (NLT)
© 2011 by Samantha Reed. All rights reserved.
Proverbs 31 Ministries
616-G Matthews-Mint Hill Road
Matthews, NC 28105
www.Proverbs31.org
===
LeadershipBible-Header-550

Personal Development: Integrity Week Two

Most concepts are easier to understand if we can see a model. Samuel is one of the Bible's greatest models of integrity. We started this study of integrity with him. Now let's take a moment and walk back through the passage which we read on that first day of this series on integrity. As you read, notice the following:
  1. How long had Samuel been Israel's leader (vv.1-2)?
  2. Every leader decides those accomplishments or values for which he or she wants to be remembered. For some this might be their decision-making genius; for others the amount of money they were able to amass; for still others the degree to which their followers loved or respected them. In verse 3 Samuel read his evaluation sheet to the people. What mattered to Samuel?
  3. Read the people's response to Samuel (vv.4-5). What does this tell you about Samuel's tenure as Israel's leader?
  4. What is the key to this kind of integrity? To discover the short answer, read verses 5-7; then jump to verses 20-24. Meditate for a few moments on these readings. Then answer the question: "What was the driving and guiding value that explains Samuel's years of integrity?"
  5. Consider this question: What is your plan, specifically, to develop the same perspective that kept Samuel on track for all of those years? Spend some time thinking about your own view of God and his role in your life of integrity.
Integrity and How It Works
Samuel's integrity places a challenge before every leader. A brief look at his character is instructive to us all. Read his character profile to gain additional insight into the value system that inspired this great leader .
Integrity and Who God Is
How many times have you struggled with your own personal integrity and resolved to do better? Jesus knew that we would struggle with hypocrisy, so in Matthew 6:1-34 he addressed a core issue which we must wrestle to the ground if we hope to increase our level of integrity.
This Week's Verse to Memorize

1 Timothy 4:15-16: Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. 
Integrity and Who I Am
Even the most spiritually committed among us will blow it at one time or another. No matter how devoted or mature we are, we will find ourselves asking, "What do I do when I have violated my commitment to God and to my own integrity?" David demonstrates what a godly person does in the face of his own failure. Read Psalm 32:1-11 and meditate your way through David's prayer of repentance.
Integrity and What I Do
Just how important to leadership is this business of integrity? David, one of history's most godly leaders, offers his view on the matter in 1 Chronicles 29:10-19. Meditate your way through this rich commentary on life, and then read Richard Baxter's penetrating statement in the note that accompanies that passage.

handbookleadership

Handbook to Leadership: Leadership in the Image of God

by Kenneth Boa
Buy the Handbook!
All the features of The Leadership Bible created by Kenneth Boa, Sid Buzzell, and Bill Perkins have been combined in this attractive and compact black leather volume. Handbook to Leadership has four parts: 52-Week Leadership Guide, Topical Leadership Guide, Leadership Character Studies, and Books of the Bible Leadership Guide.


===

No comments: