What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Obama’s Israel problem.
From TheWeeklyStandard “The Obama administration is angry with Israel. Here’s the administration’s house organ, the New York Times, this morning:
The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House.
The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.
The official who made the comments to The New York Times would not be named…
Of course, the official who last summer called Prime Minister Netanyahu a “coward” and a “chickens–t” would not be named either. But there is no reason to think those unnamed angry officials do not speak for an angry president.
The Obama White House usually prides itself on not getting angry. Its self-image is that it’s cool, calm, and collected. And it doesn’t get angry at, for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Obama White House understands and appreciates the complexities of the Islamic Republic’s politics and history. It is only with respect to the Jewish state that the Obama White House is impatient, peremptory, and angry.”
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2. Here’s more on what he and his friends are doing about it.
From WND “Asked directly whether his group’s intention is to topple Netanyahu, Dweck replied, “Our goal is to do change.”
Dweck said V15 aims to mobilize voters who are “more likely to support our cause,” including by getting left-leaning young residents of central Israel to sign pledge cards to vote for “change” in the upcoming election.
“We’re calling homes, going door-to-door in central Israel in places we marked as potential voters of the center-left,” he said.
If Dweck’s call for “change” sounds familiar to a U.S. audience, that may be because the chief consultant for the anti-Netanyahu election effort is 270 Strategies founder and ex-Obama campaign staffer Jeremy Bird.
Bird served as a data analyst and a deputy director for Obama’s 2008 campaign and was the national field director for the president’s massive re-election machine.”
Initial reports said there were a few former Obama staffers working on the effort. There’s actually 15 or more. No small effort here.
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3. The EPA fudged the numbers. Anybody shocked?
From TheDailyCaller “The Environmental Protection Agency inflated the monetized benefits of a major air quality rule to justify imposing a harsher smog standard on U.S. counties, according to a new report by Energy In Depth (EID).
“EPA’s ozone rule could very well be the costliest regulation in U.S. history,” said Steve Everley, spokesman for the petroleum industry-backed EID. “If a rule of this magnitude is to be imposed, then the EPA should consider providing a far more scientifically robust ‘public health’ basis — one that doesn’t rely on inflated health benefits or a lack of appreciation for the very real economic costs.”
The EPA proposed its costly smog, or ozone, standard the day before Thanksgiving 2014. The agency mandated that ambient smog levels be lowered from 75 parts per billion (pbb) to levels between 70 ppb and 65 ppb. The EPA also solicited comments for an even lower standard at 60 pbb — one which could put almost the entire country out of compliance with the rule and cost $3.4 trillion by 2040.
The EPA said its new smog standard was based on “1,000 studies” published since 2008. The agency argued the rule would also bring $23 billion in monetized net benefits. But EID found that EPA’s monetized benefit calculation is 3,100 percent higher than what the agency calculated in 2011 for the same smog standard.
In 2011, the agency estimated the “net benefits” of a 65 ppb smog standard were only $700 million, which included the “co-benefits” of reducing fine particulate matter. This means that the benefits of reducing smog alone were less than advertised.”
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4. Senator Ted Cruz is going to introduce a bill banning the political targeting of citizens.
From HotAir “A pair of measures which failed to reach daylight when the Democrats were in charge of the upper chamber should be seeing new life this year. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex) will reintroduce legislation intended to prevent another partisan debacle like the IRS scandal and to remove certain powers from the tax agency. Cruz’s office released the details this week.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today announced his intent to file two bills to protect Americans from partisan abuses and political targeting by the IRS. Both bills will be cosponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, and Sen. David Vitter, R-LA.
“In May 2013 President Obama declared the IRS’s illegal targeting of conservative groups ‘intolerable and inexcusable,’ yet to this date no one has been held accountable for it,” Sen. Cruz said. “The IRS has no business meddling with the First Amendment rights of Americans. Rather than further stifling free speech, the IRS and the Department of Justice should provide the American people with all the facts surrounding the IRS’s targeting of certain organizations based on their political activity.”…
The first measure would prohibit IRS employees from intentionally targeting individuals or groups based on their political views. The legislation would make it a crime for an IRS employee to willfully discriminate against groups based solely on the political beliefs or policy statements held, expressed, or published by that organization. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO, will also cosponsor this measure.
The second measure would amend the tax code to use the bipartisan, independent Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) definitions to determine whether an organization is engaging in political activity, rather than allowing the IRS to continue making that distinction. The IRS should focus on taxation, not on determining what constitutes political activity.”
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5. Interesting… Thoughts?
From TheGuardian “Hipster churches in Silicon Valley: evangelicalism’s unlikely new home- Netflix fasts, coffee vouchers, plaid-wearing worshippers is what it takes for ‘church transplants’ to make their home in the affluent Bay Area”
“Like many San Franciscans, overpriced coffee is a considerable portion of my weekly budget. One day in Soma, the industrial district home to many start-ups, I came across a flier advertising a free gift card to Philz, a nearby coffee shop. All that was required was to show up for service at a local church called Epic. I hadn’t been to church in months, and decided to give it a try.
The Bay Area has never been perceived as religious: a 2012 Gallup poll found that fewer than a quarter of residents identify as “very religious” (defined as going to church weekly), as opposed to 40% of the nation as a whole. High salaries have drawn droves of well-educated millennials to the booming tech sector, which correlates with lower religious sentiment. So far afield from the Bible belt, the region is in fact seen as hospitable to all forms of old testament abominations: fornication, paganism – even sodomy.
If you look around, however, you’ll notice a bumper crop of newer Christian ministries that, upon superficial glance, could pass for any other Bay Area start-up: glossy web design, well-curated social accounts and yes, free coffee promotions. County-level statistics substantiate this: numbers from the Association of Religion Data Archives show that several large Protestant denominations have grown in San Francisco County in recent years.
How does one even start a church in the land of $3,000 studio apartments, transient tech workers and rationalist tendencies? The answer lies in a mix of organized efforts by large religious bodies, coupled with messaging that speaks to the tastes, needs and neuroses of ambitious young Bay Area residents.”
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Wandering Views 
5. is interesting. The American church is reminding me more and more of the German church from 1933-1945. There are pockets of true Christianity, but there is much that is heretical, but designed to appeal to our culture. In conservative areas you too often find the Health and Wealth Church. In liberal areas you too often find the homosexual and Social Gospel Church. We all need to hear: Repent and believe!
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If Obama doesn’t care what the Constitution says, what makes us believe he will follow a Ted Cruz inspired law?
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We were talking the other day about where in the world you would want to live in the future (hypothetical, we’re not moving) and someone said, “anywhere there is an emerging Christian body. Maybe South Africa, parts of South America, China. India is a cypher, but possibly there.”
The reasoning was, God will bless a nation where there are followers, but nations that turn their back on Jesus in the main, will fail (See: the history of the world. I’m teaching on Jeremiah these days).
Some estimate China will have more Christians than any other country within . . . . certainly my projected lifetime.
Many of those geeky young workers in Silicon Valley . . . have immigrant roots and I suspect there’s a bunch of Christians among them. I know of at least one church plant, maybe even two, aimed at that demographic.
Reasons to Believe (www.reasons.org) has a very strong satellite group in the Silicon Valley.
And as I’ve been praying for my Stargazer–job hunting now as he prepares to defend his dissertation Feb 25–I keep hoping he’ll end up in the Bay Area. So he’ll be closer to home, of course, but mostly because I want the Lord to place him where his relationship with God will be strengthened.
So, I don’t really care where he ends up as long as that one prayer is answered, but I worship a God who seems pretty benevolent to me . . . so this story gives me hope the Bay Area is the right spot.
To which I say, thanks be to God!~ 🙂
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Which brings me back to a spiritual truth we’ve thought a lot about over the years. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. People are not indifferent to the gospel out here on the edges of Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s what gives church planters/believers/prayers and those who can stop rolling their eyes, hope. 🙂
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Michelle, you are right, of course, but sadly, there is a lot of hate directed at Christianity.
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As Ricky pointed out yesterday, Kissinger and Nixon replaced the democratically elected Chilean government with a bloody dictator, Augusto Pinochet, under whose regime thousands were imprisoned, tortured, and killed. [By the way, arguing that Kissinger did the Chileans a favour because Chile is now prosperous is as silly as arguing that Hitler benefited Germany because it is now a leading industrial power.] Obama is simply following established U.S. foreign policy in interfering with the governments of other countries. See also the Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt Corollary, Marshall Plan, and Manifest Destiny.
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I think Romney made to correct decision.
🙂
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4. In Canada our conservative govt is using the same tactic on its critics….send the tax collectors. I doubt a law will change anything. Political posturing by Cruz. Does anyone seriously think other politicians wouldn’t use the IRS?
1,2 the US Congress is being used as a stage for the Israeli election.
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Chas, I agree.
Roscuro, Germany was a major industrial power before Hitler.
Pinochet created the nation with the most freedom and the best rule of law in the history of Latin America. Chile is already ahead of the U.S. Watch out Canadians! Chile is nipping at your heels, and with minimal perversion.
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The US church is like the German church of 1933-1945 in the following ways:
1. A part of the German church supported the Nazis even as a part of the U.S. church endorses perversion and “health and wealth” theology.
2. More importantly, only a small segment of the visible German church spoke out against the Nazis even as a declining segment of the U.S. church speaks out against perversion.
I noted the “church leaders” in Northern California in the article did not mention homosexuality in their sermons. That would be like the early Spanish Conquistadors not mentioning child sacrifice as they conquered Latin America. That reminds me, I would rank Cortez almost as high as Pinochet.
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