Month: April 2015

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News/Politics 4-9-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

Here’s a few I noticed. 

1. While I don’t really buy the “almost cost us Iraq” part of the story, it’s a good read anyway.

From FoxNews  “People who wonder why the war in Iraq went so wrong for so long, will need to read Judith Miller’s new book “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey.”  Miller details how special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rigged the 2007 perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the Valerie Plame case, and in the process wrecked an early opportunity to reverse course in that strife-torn country. It may be one of the most disastrous cases of prosecutorial misconduct in history.

There’s a longstanding media myth that CIA employee Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband Joe Wilson were targets of a conspiracy led by Dick Cheney and Libby to blow Plame’s CIA covert identity as payback for an op-ed Wilson wrote for the New York Times in July 2003 saying the Bush administration lied about Saddam Hussein trying to get yellowcake uranium in Niger in order to build an atomic bomb.”

“We’ve known for some time that Wilson lied about Saddam’s search for yellowcake; that his op-ed was contradicted by his own report for the CIA; that Cheney had sent Scooter Libby out to talk to reporters like Judith Miller in order to refute Wilson’s lies, not to “out” anyone’s CIA employment; and that the man who actually did pass on Plame’s identity to columnist Robert Novak that fateful July was Undersecretary of State Dick Armitage—and that special prosecutor Fitzgerald knew that even before he began his three-year investigation into the so-called leak. Miller now reveals this was because Fitzgerald’s real quarry was Vice President Dick Cheney.

Fitzgerald obsessively pursued Libby for supposed misstatements to FBI and a grand jury in hopes that the vice president’s chief of staff would roll and say his boss sent him out to leak Plame’s CIA identity.  Twice, Miller says, Fitzgerald told Libby’s lawyers he would drop the charges if Libby would lie and rat out Cheney; each time they said no.

So instead Fitzgerald constructed a web of lies out of Miller’s testimony in the Libby trial in order to get a conviction, by withholding exculpatory evidence from her and from Libby’s lawyers.   Fitzgerald convinced her that four words in her notes from a conversation with Libby–“Wife worked at Bureau?”—had to refer to Plame working at the CIA, even though no one ever calls the CIA the Bureau. “

Read the rest. It’s no wonder Bush pardoned Scooter Libby.

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2. Obama’s attempt to restart his amnesty program has hit another bump.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “President Obama’s new deportation amnesty will remain halted, a federal judge in Texas ruled Tuesday night in an order that also delivered a judicial spanking to the president’s lawyers for misleading the court.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen, who first halted the amnesty in February, just two days before it was to take effect, said he’s even more convinced of his decision now, particularly after Mr. Obama earlier this year said he intends for his policies to supersede federal laws.

Judge Hanen pointed to Mr. Obama’s comments at a February town hall when the president warned immigration agents to adhere to his policies or else face “consequences.”

“In summary, the chief executive has ordered that the laws requiring removal of illegal immigrants that conflict with the 2014 DHS directive are not to be enforced, and that anyone who attempts to do so will be punished,” Judge Hanen wrote.

“This is not merely ineffective enforcement. This is total non-enforcement,” the judge continued, saying that Mr. Obama’s own descriptions of how he is carrying out his policies have hurt his case.”

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3. That’s gonna be a problem, because the next wave is already on the way.

Also from TheWashingtonTimes  “The second wave of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children has begun, with more than 3,000 of them surging across the Mexican border into the U.S. last month — the highest rate since the peak of last summer’s crisis and a warning that another rough season could be ahead.

Immigration officials warned that they expected another surge as the weather improved. Although the numbers are down some 40 percent compared with last year’s frenetic pace that sparked a political crisis for the Obama administration, fiscal year 2015 is shaping up to mark the second-biggest surge on record.

Authorities report having captured 15,647 children traveling without parents who tried to jump the border in the first six months of the fiscal year. Through this point in 2014, they had apprehended 28,579.

Just as worrisome is the rate of whole families — usually mothers with young children — who are crossing. So far this fiscal year, authorities have captured 13,911 “family units,” down 30 percent from last year.”

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4. Is Carly Fiorina the new Sarah Palin?

Well of course she is, because the media is already treating her the same way. Any republican woman can expect the same treatment. As this story shows, that will be the liberal line on Carly too.

From NewRepublic  “In 2008, Sarah Palin was an appealing running mate to John McCain because she offered a potential antidote to the GOP’s insufferable white-maleness. On paper she looked promising, and on television she looked great, but problems started when she opened her mouth. In The New Yorker’s October 27 issue that year, Jane Meyer chronicled Palin’s rise to fame within the party—and then nationally, of course—concluding that it had a lot to do with her gender and little to do with her track record. (At that point, she had been governor for less than two years.) In 2010, writing in her New York Times opinion column, Maureen Dowd called Sarah Palin the GOP “Queen Bee,” a reference to her status among other women in the GOP.

Five years later, it seems the GOP has finally found a new Queen: Carly Fiorina. In 1999, Fiorina became a household name—at least in a certain kind of household—when she was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard, making her the first female head of a Fortune 20 company. (She was fired in 2005 after a series of scandalous leaks.) In 2008, Fiorina was one of McCain’s chief economic advisors, and Palin and Fiorina supported one another over the years: Fiorina defended Palin against “sexist attacks” in 2008; later, in 2010, Palin endorsed Fiorina’s campaign for Barbara Boxer’s California Senate seat.

Fiorina has sought to distance herself from Palin and from other Tea Party conservatives of late, though, including during her California Senate run. As 2016 looms, the GOP, too, has begun to shift: In their quest to find more politically viable candidates to put forward, it’s no wonder Fiorina has recently become a household name. (Again, in a certain kind of household.)

At first glance, Fiorina can be seen as an upgraded Palin, and she occupies a similar position in the party: Fiorina is a charismatic woman with enough success and outsider-status to plausibly appeal to conservative voters—and to possibly even attract new ones. In fact, in 2008 there was even speculation that Fiorina might run with McCain.”

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Our Daily Thread 4-8-15

Good Morning!

Today’s header photo is from Janice.

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Quote of the Day

“The bigger the game, the better I liked it. Not that I was about to let anybody know I was excited. I approached every game the same way. One pitch, one hitter at a time.”

Catfish Hunter

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Jars of Clay, for no apparent reason. From Air1

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 4-8-15

It’s Wednesday, so don’t forget to pray for The Gambia.

Anyone else have something to share?

Psalm 106:1-5

¹Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.

2 Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? who can shew forth all his praise?

3 Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times.

4 Remember me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation;

5 That I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance.

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News/Politics 4-8-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well that didn’t take long.

Less than 2 hours after Rand Paul announces his candidacy, MSN and the NY Times were already out with the story of why he can’t win. Just like with Walker and Cruz. And for good measure, they make sure to take some shots at libertarians. They’re so predictable. 🙄

From MSN/NYT  “It has become fashionable in recent years to refer to a growing libertarian wing of the Republican Party, and Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who announced his candidacy for the presidency on Tuesday, hopes to become the first serious candidate to make it part of a winning primary coalition.

Perhaps in a decade or two, a representative of the libertarian wing of the party will have an easy time winning the nomination. It’s just unlikely to happen in 2016.

The libertarians remain too young and too few to present Senator Paul with a realistic path to the nomination. He has to win over a much larger share of more reliable Republican primary voters, who will have considerable reservations about Mr. Paul’s policies. The other problem he faces: Many of the voters most receptive to libertarian views tend not to vote.

In one sense, you could argue that the libertarian wing of the Republican Party barely exists at all. According to a large Pew Research survey in 2014 of 10,000 respondents, 11 percent of Americans and 12 percent of self-identified Republicans considered themselves libertarian. They met a basic threshold for knowing what the term meant. But there wasn’t much “libertarian” about these voters; over all, their views were startlingly similar to those of the public as a whole.”

So basically the Times wants you to abandon all hope and vote for Bush or some other RINO. Again.

No thanks.

I have 3 I’d vote for, Paul is one of them. If it’s not one of them, I stay home with the supposedly (according to the NYT) mythical libertarians, and watch Pant Suits rule the world for 8 years.

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2. Are California’s water problems man-made? Is it caused by environmentalists and their liberal enablers/benefactors in DC? Carly Fiorina makes a good case that it is. Others are as well.

From TheWashingtonTimes  ““With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided,” Ms. Fiorina said in an interview Monday on Glenn Beck’s radio show, The Blaze reported. “Despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled.”

Ms. Fiorina said that as a result, 70 percent of California’s rainfall “washes out to sea” every year, The Blaze reported. “California is a classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people’s lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology. It is a tragedy,” Ms. Fiorina said.

“Government has grown so huge, so powerful, so costly, so complex, it is literally crushing the life out of this country,” she argued. “It is crushing small and family-owned businesses, which are the economic engine of our nation. It is crushing possibilities out of people’s lives by entangling them in a web of dependence from which they cannot escape. The weight, the cost and the power of government are literally crushing the potential of the nation.””

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More here, from HotAir  “In 2014, National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke filed a dispatch from California’s Central Valley, an area that was once an agricultural hub and has now been reduced to a virtual dust bowl as a result of drought combined with severe and unnecessary resource mismanagement. That misallocation of resources is not the result of a frustrating tradeoff between the needs of Central Valley farmers and the desert-dwelling populations of Los Angeles and San Diego, but the eternally threatened smelt.”

“This is a classic tale of activist government run amok — and, too, of the peculiarly suicidal instincts that rich and educated societies exhibit when they reach maturity. Were its consequences not so hideously injurious, the details would be almost comical. As a direct result of the overwrought concern that a few well-connected interest groups and their political allies have displayed for a fish — and of a federal Endangered Species Act that is in need of serious revision — hundreds of billions of gallons of water that would in other areas have been sent to parched farmland have been diverted away from the Central Valley and deliberately pushed out under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean, wasted forever, to the raucous applause of Luddites, misanthropes, and their powerful enablers. The later chapters of “The Decline and Fall of the United States” will make interesting reading.

Make no mistake: The rare, hard-done-by, and rightly protected manatee the Delta smelt is not. According to some estimates, there are no more than 3,000 manatees left in the United States, and, when left unchecked, human beings have had a nasty tendency to maim and kill them in the service of nothing more exalted than speedboating. By contrast, when the Great Smelt Freakout of 2007 began, there were 35,000 to well over 100,000 of the little buggers, depending on whom you ask. And yet the powers that be have seen fit to decree that no more than 305 of them may be killed in a given year. As an exasperated Harry Cline, of the Western Farm Press, put it in February 2012, last year “800,000 acre-feet of water went to waste based on the science of four buckets of minnows. That is enough water to produce crops on 200,000 acres or 10 million tons of tomatoes; 200 million boxes of lettuce; 20 million tons of grapes. You get the picture?”

The present crisis is not entirely California-based; Washington also plays a role. In December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would have pumped water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into Central and Southern California, but it died an unceremonious death in the Democrat-dominated Senate. If the measure had passed both chambers of Congress, President Barack Obama pledged to veto it. Why? Environmental groups feared the threat it posed to the smelt.

“That’s the tragedy of California, because of liberal environmentalists’ insistence — despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” said former CEO and U.S. Senate candidate from the Golden State Carly Fiorina. “There is a man-made lack of water in California — and Washington manages the water for the farmers.”

The entire NationalReview piece is here.

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3. Ever wonder why gay issues are always so front and center everywhere, when they make up such a small amount of the population? The answer is simple, they’re well-funded and connected.

From Bloomberg  “For those fighting for marriage equality, these are heady times, with the Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments on gay marriage later this month and a favorable decision widely anticipated this summer. And they haven’t forgotten Biden. On April 30th, some of the biggest philanthropists involved in this fight will gather in Dallas for “OutGiving,” an annual conference organized by Tim Gill, the founder of Quark and an important behind-the-scenes figure in the gay rights movement, who over the last decade has worked to organize the political strategy for a large group of wealthy gay donors. (Read all about it here.)

On May 2, Biden will be a keynote speaker (per the Vice President’s office, reporters will have an opportunity to cover his remarks).

For Biden, it’s a chance to soak up some love as the Obama administration draws to a close and attention turns to Hillary Clinton. And if Clinton should get beamed up by an alien spacecraft or is otherwise incapacitated, Gill’s network will be a invaluable fundraising source, should Biden make his own run for the White House.

From its outset 10 years ago (described in Atlantic profile), Gill’s political strategy has been built upon secrecy and the element of surprise—swooping in at the last moment with his network to donors to turn races against unsuspecting anti-gay politicians. Also, the details surrounding this year’s OutGiving conference are so shrouded in secrecy that they’d only reveal to me the city in which it’s being held, not even the hotel.”

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Here’s the old but good read on who they are and how they operate. From TheAtlantic

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4. This one…….. CONTENT WARNING!!!!!! for adult material.

I honestly have no clue on the answer here. But here’s the question….

Is it, or isn’t it, OK for a married couple to continue a sexual relationship when one becomes stricken with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s?

I can say I never thought about it. But now that I have, it raises so many questions….

And could you account for such a situation in your medical instructions in a living will?

From MSN/TheAP  “When Henry and Donna Lou Rayhons married seven years ago in their northern Iowa hometown, it was a second chance at love for the devoted couple, both previously widowed. But their domestic routine of church activities and political functions unraveled as Donna’s health began to fail.

Last year, the 78-year-old woman was moved into a nursing home, suffering from dementia and Alzheimers. According to Henry Rayhon’s family, this was decided by her daughters from a previous marriage. Conflict developed over how to care for Donna Lou Rayhons, culminating in a meeting in which staff told Henry Rayhons that his wife was no longer mentally capable of legally consenting to have sex.

State prosecutors say Henry Rayhons — a long-serving state lawmaker — ignored that message. On Wednesday, he will stand trial for sexually assaulting his wife, who died last August. The charges were filed days after she died.

Many couples experience the hardships of illness, mental decline and living apart, but what happened with the Rayhons has little precedent. Experts could not think of another rape case that happened because a previously consenting spouse could no longer legally acquiesce.”

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More here, from TheWashingtonPost  ““This is maybe the last great frontier of questions about capacity and dementia,” she said. “… Any partner in a marriage has the right to say no. What we haven’t completely understood is, as in this case, at what point in dementia do you lose the right to say yes?”

Friends and family say that Donna Lou and Henry Rayhons, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1997 until this year, were besotted with one another throughout their relationship. She often accompanied him to the state Capitol in Des Moines. He bought her dresses and acquired a bee suit so he could join her in her beekeeping.

“He treated her like a queen,” Charity McCauley Andeweg, who clerked for Rayhons, told Bloomberg.”

“On March 29, Donna was moved to Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa, a five-minute drive from her home with Rayhons. Rayhons reportedly resisted the move and clashed with Donna’s daughters — both from her first marriage — over how she should be cared for at the facility.

In May, Dunshee and Donna’s other daughter, Suzan Brunes, met with Concord staff and drew up a care plan for Donna, according to a state affidavit. At the meeting, the women and doctors concluded that Donna was no longer able to consent to sex, a fact Rayhons was informed of.”

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5. Why are they not banned from re-entering the US? They committed treason. If allowed to return it should be for arrest, trial, and prison.

From TheFreeBeacon  “Rep. Tim Bishop (D., N.Y.) warned during a recent speech that up to 40 radicalized U.S. citizens who have fought alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS) have already returned to the United States, where they could pose a terrorist threat.

Bishop claims that of the 100 or so Americans who have traveled to the Middle East to join ISIL’s ranks, some 40 have returned and are currently being surveilled by the FBI, according to his remarks, which were filmed and uploaded to YouTube last week.

“One of the concerns is the number of U.S. citizens who have left our country to go join up with ISIS,” Bishop said during the speech. “It is believed there have been some number up to 100 that have done that.”

“It is also believed that some 40 of those who left this country to join up with ISIS have now returned to our country,” Bishop said, eliciting shocked responses from some in the crowd.

These 40 individuals, Bishop said, “are under FBI attention and surveillance. So they are known and being tracked by the FBI.””

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The Obama admin refuses to be honest about terrorist threats.

From JudicialWatch  “Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain records regarding its response to the January 1, 2014, explosion of an apartment building in the largely Muslim Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FOIA lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v U. S. Department of Justice (No.1:14-cv-02212)).

The FOIA lawsuit, filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a March 12, 2014, FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), seeks:

Any and all records regarding, concerning or related to the investigation of the January 1, 2014 explosion and fire at the Cedar-Riverside apartment complex in Minneapolis, Minnesota, based on searches of the FBI’s Electronic Case File system, Central Records System and Electronic Surveillance records, as well as any cross-referenced files concerning the explosion and fire.

At 8:16 a.m. on New Year’s Day in Minneapolis, a building at 516 Cedar Avenue containing a grocery store and several apartments exploded, killing three people and injuring 13. All of the apartments were occupied by single men. Many were hurt while jumping out of the burning building’s windows in order to escape the carnage.

The building was owned by Garad Nor, the owner of a money-transfer company, who had initially been implicated as a terrorist financier by the U.S Treasury Department.”

“Before the building’s destruction, G. Schmitz, fire investigator for the Minneapolis Fire Department, and the official investigating the scene on the day of the explosion reported, “The origin of the fire is undetermined.” And suggestions by some that the fire may have been caused by “some kind of gas leak,” were quickly refuted by Minnesota’s Centerpoint Energy spokeswoman Becca Virden, who stated, “We have specialized a gas leak that can detect a gas leak even when you can’t detect it – highly sensitive equipment,” she said. “They have checked there were no gas leaks reported before and there are no gas leaks in the area now.” Virden added, “We had no natural gas in the area.”

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Our Daily Thread 4-7-15

Good Morning!

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Quote of the Day

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

William Wordsworth

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 Today is John Cooper’s birthday. From SKILLET VIDEOS 

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 4-7-15

Anyone have a request or a praise to share?

Psalm 105:1-7

¹O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people.

2 Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.

3 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.

4 Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore.

5 Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth;

6 O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his chosen.

7 He is the Lord our God: his judgments are in all the earth.

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News/Politics 4-7-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

I couldn’t help but notice this one 🙂

duke 1

The Blue Devils are the National Champions.

From MSN/AP  “Over a matter of mere minutes, the youngsters at Duke grew into salty old pros. 

Call them freshmen. But please, do not call them kids.

Led by Tyus Jones and Jahlil Okafor, Duke’s talented group of potential one-and-doners played like veterans down the stretch, outscoring Wisconsin by 14 points over the final 13 minutes Monday night to grit out a 68-63 victory for the program’s fifth national title.”

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Our Daily Thread 4-6-15

Good Morning!

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Quote of the Day

“Every man should be considered as having a right to the character which he deserves; that is, to be spoken of according to his actions.”

James Mill

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Let’s continue with the reader’s choice music selections. It’s interesting to see what you all enjoy.

Here’s my contribution. Since today is Merle Haggard’s birthday, some “Poncho and Lefty.”.

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Anyone have a QoD?

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Prayer Requests 4-6-15

Anyone have something to share?

Psalm 104:1-24

¹Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

4 Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:

5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.

6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.

8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.

9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.

10 He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.

11 They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst.

12 By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches.

13 He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.

14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

15 And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.

16 The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted;

17 Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

18 The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.

19 He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.

20 Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

21 The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.

22 The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

23 Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

24 O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.