Month: September 2014

by

Our Daily Thread 9-9-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1836 Abraham Lincoln received his license to practice law. 

In 1898, in Omaha, NE, Tommy Fleming of Eau Claire, WI won the first logrolling championship.

In 1911 Italy declared war on the Ottoman Turks and annexed Libya, Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica in North Africa. 

And in 1957 the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction was signed into law by President Eisenhower. 

______________________________________________

Quote of the Day

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Leo Tolstoy

______________________________________________

 Today is Girolamo Frescobaldi’s birthday.

______________________________________________

Anyone have a QoD?

by

Prayer Requests 9-9-14

Anyone have something they’d like to share?

Psalm 70

¹Make haste, o God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.

2 Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.

3 Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha.

4 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.

5 But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O Lord, make no tarrying.

by

News/Politics 9-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

I’m a little under the weather, so just a few from me today.

1. Sadly, it’s Mission Accomplished for the Obama admin. The new wussified version of the US Army Drill Instructor is officially complete. They’re no longer fearsome, just fabulous. 🙄 

From StarsAndStripes  “In the old Army, this probably would be accompanied by a torrent of curses and oaths. Butts would be kicked. But this is the new Army and Brooks just shakes her head, sternly calls the group together and starts instructing the recruits on the right way to do the exercise.

“I don’t like to yell and scream a lot,” said Brooks, who has trained recruits for nine 10-week cycles over the past three years. “If you’re yelling and screaming all the time, when are you going to teach them? Patience is a virtue when you are trying to instill discipline.””

“Brooks doesn’t fit the image Hollywood usually assigns to Army drill sergeants or Marine drill instructors. They most often are portrayed as hulking, red-faced, profanity-spewing brutes, a terror to any recruit unfortunate enough to enter their universe.

Conversely, Brooks is 5-foot-41/2-inches tall, and proud of the half inch. She lives in Northeast Richland with her wife, Shakerian. And she spent five years as a vocalist with the U.S. Army Europe Band and Chorus.”

“”We don’t smoke people anymore,” said Brooks, meaning using excessive physical training — running or push-ups — to break or wash out a recruit. “But sometimes you have to give them a little extra TLC.”

🙄

_______________________________________________

2. Just like the Boston bombers, they operate in plain sight with no fear of the authorities. You’d think after the bombers, the feds would keep an eye on them, but I guess that’s asking too much from this administration.

From TheNYPost  “When it was revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers attended a Cambridge, Mass., mosque, its leaders were quick to disavow their actions.

Elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ideology was not their own, the leaders of the Islamic Society mosque claimed. In fact, he was admonished for an extremist outburst he made during one sermon.

So, one crackpot in a congregation. Who can blame the mosque?

But what about eight — including a prominent member of ISIS?

“Now it can be revealed that another regular worshipper at the Islamic Society mosque was Ahmad Abousamra, who is now the top propagandist for ISIS.”

_______________________________________________

3. Sacrificing the 1st Amendment to rally the base. That’s low, even for Democrats.

From HotAir  “Democrats have a real problem with their base voters. Heading into a contentious midterm election season in which the party faces headwinds and the increasingly likely prospect of losing control of the Senate, this condition is forcing the “in-party” to act in a peculiar and erratic fashion.

President Barack Obama rendered the judgment of Solomon over the weekend when he decided to save vulnerable red state Democrats a headache and postponed the issuing of an executive order which would have extended legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. While a handful of embattled incumbent Democrats are breathing easier today, a number of progressive activists, liberal lawmakers, and immigration groups are hyperventilating.

This decision will only exacerbate the problems Democrats have mobilizing their traditionally unenthusiastic base voters to turn out in a midterm year. To satisfy the wounded liberal ego, Democrats in Congress are turning to another progressive bête noire in order to gin up some enthusiasm among their supporters: That pesky First Amendment to the Constitution.

Yes, the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights has been driving Democrats nuts ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, which would have prohibited the airing of a corporately-financed documentary critical of Hillary Clinton within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, were unconstitutional. The decision paved the way to allow corporations, unions, and other groups to spend unlimited sums on political speech and advocacy. To prohibit such activities would constitute a violation of the First Amendment.”

_______________________________________________

 

by

Our Daily Thread 9-8-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1664 the Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the British, who then renamed it New York. 

In 1892 an early version of “The Pledge of Allegiance” appeared in “The Youth’s Companion.” 

In 1945, in Washington, DC, a bus equipped with a two-way radio was put into service for the first time. 

In 1952 the Ernest Hemingway novel “The Old Man and the Sea” was published. 

And in 1966 NBC-TV aired the first episode of “Star Trek.” 

______________________________________________

Quote of the Day

“The power of noble deeds is to be preserved and passed on to the future.”

Joshua Chamberlin

______________________________________________

 Today is Patsy Cline’s birthday.

And it’s also Peter Furler’s. From NewsboysVEVO

______________________________________________

Anyone have a QoD?

by

Prayer Requests 9-8-14

 Does anyone have a request or praise they’d like to share?

Psalm 68:1-5

¹Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.

2 As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

3 But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.

4 Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name Jah, and rejoice before him.

5 A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.

by

News/Politics 9-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s start today with a good news story.

From FoxSports  “Still learned back in June that his daughter, Leah, has stage-four pediatric cancer. Since the diagnosis, Still’s mind understandably hasn’t been completely on football as he missed parts of organized team activities and minicamp this offseason to be with his daughter, which is why he understood the team’s decision to cut him.

“I completely understand where the Bengals were coming from when they cut me because I couldn’t give football 100 percent,” Still told ABC News.

But when Still received the call this morning that he had been signed to the practice squad and would receive health insurance as well as a weekly salary of $6,300, he was incredibly grateful. Still also will remain in the game he loves, for the team that drafted him, without all of the traveling, meaning he can be closer to his daughter as she undergoes treatments.”

______________________________________________

2. Providing cover for vulnerable Dems is more like it.

From ABCNews  “President Barack Obama said Saturday that the surge of immigrant children entering the U.S. illegally changed the politics surrounding the issue of immigration and led him to put off a pledge to use executive action that could shield millions of people from deportation.

Immigration reform advocates criticized Obama after White House officials said that the president would not act at summer’s end as he promised in June but would take up the matter after the midterm elections in November. In an interview taped for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama rejected the charge that the delay was meant to protect Democratic candidates worried that his actions would hurt their prospects in tough Senate races.

By Obama’s own calculations, politics did play a role in his decision. In his remarks to NBC, which were to be aired on Sunday, he said a partisan fight in July over how to address an influx of unaccompanied minors at the border had created the impression that there was an immigration crisis and thus a volatile climate for taking the measures he had promised to take.

“The truth of the matter is — is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” he said. “I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”

Good luck with that.

______________________________________________

3. They can’t even handle the ones already here.

From YahooNews  “The backlog of pending deportation cases in federal immigration court has risen to nearly 400,000 amid a crush of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and families caught crossing the Mexican border illegally this year, according an analysis of court data released Friday.

 The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said in its latest report that as of the end of July, 396,552 cases were pending in the Justice Department’s 59 immigration courts. TRAC collects and studies a variety of federal prosecution records.

The backlog has grown by more than 75,000 cases since the start of the budget year in October, according to TRAC.”

______________________________________________

4. Meet the President’s excuses.

From TheWashingtonPost  “In his Sunday interview President Obama was not asked some fundamental questions: Where does he get the authority to change laws unilaterally? He bragged about pulling troops out of Iraq and then denied it was his call–so which is it? Didn’t his failure to act in Syria allow the Islamic State to grow? When the next GOP president wants to unilaterally change the tax code, what is he going to say? Hasn’t he lost Ukraine? 

It is not that new “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd did not try to be aggressive, but opening with a sharp question, letting the president ramble and moving on to the next question is not going to pin the president down. The reason Tim Russert was so good was that he dove into particulars and then went back and back, challenging and debunking. He would not have let the president falsely say he was not referring to the Islamic State when he called them the “jayvee.” team. That excuse has already gotten four Pinocchios from my colleague Glenn Kessler. Todd was clearly an improvement over his predecessor, but he was, to be blunt, not all that effective.

Such is the state of left-leaning politicians and the MSM. The former feel they need not be constrained by facts or laws, and the latter are not sharp enough to pin them down. But on immigration, the president certainly has gone too far, and perhaps he has underestimated both the anger among Hispanic activists and those genuinely upset by a breakdown in constitutional order.”

______________________________________________

5. A PA. mom who gave her daughter abortion pills is going to prison.

From MSNNews  “A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison for obtaining so-called abortion pills online and providing them to her teenage daughter to end her pregnancy.

Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, of Washingtonville, a single mother who works as a nursing home aide, pleaded guilty in August to obtaining the miscarriage-inducing pills from an online site in Europe for her daughter, 16, who did not want to have the child.

Whalen was sentenced on Friday by Montour County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Norton to serve 12 months to 18 months in prison for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians.

She was also fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service after her release. The felony offense called for up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.”

______________________________________________

by

Our Daily Thread 9-6-14

Good Morning!

Welcome to the weekend. 🙂

On this day in 1620 the Pilgrims left on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England to settle in the New World. 

In 1876 the Southern Pacific rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco was completed. 

In 1901 President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by Leon Czolgosz. He died 8 days later. Czolgosz, an American anarchist, was executed the following October. 

In 1941 Jews in German-occupied areas were ordered to wear the Star of David with the word “Jew” inscribed. 

And in 1975 Martina Navratilova requested political asylum while in New York for the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. 

______________________________________________

Quote of the Day

“I don’t know why my brain has kept all the words to the Gilligan’s Island theme song and has deleted everything about triangles.”

Jeff Foxworthy

______________________________________________

 Today is Dolores O’Riordan’s birthday.

And since it’s his birthday too, a short educational piece from Mr. Foxworthy and his redneck dictionary. 🙂

From Jeff Foxworthy

______________________________________________

Anyone have a QoD?

by

Prayer Requests 9-6-14

Anyone have something they’d like to share?

Psalm 67

¹God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah.

2 That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.

3 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.

4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.

5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.

6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.

7 God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.