Saturday, April 18, 2015

Sat Apr 18th Todays News

On Bolt Report an ongoing policy is that any Islam post can only be on the pinned leader. Normal rules apply in that if it is merely foul and abusive it will be deleted. Otherwise comments are welcome.  
===
Hilary Clinton lies badly and often. Possibly because it helps her flow to disconnect verisimilitude from her words. Articles follow. 

 Left praising jihadis .. Melbourne raids. There is a connection between terror and jihadis, but often the left wing play down that role and blame others, including victims. Articles follow. 

 ESPN reporter lords it over low paid workers. On video. Now suspended.

 Teaching sex education to children, or promoting child sex? One outraged tweeter mother has gone to the classroom of her child and heard the teacher discuss abstinence. The parent is outraged, claiming that children cannot abstain from sex and needed to be taught about other things, like family planning involving condoms etc. Perhaps the grandmother at age thirty is at a loss as to how to raise the issue of abstinence with her children, but that does not mean children cannot abstain from sex. Kids are aware of much detail these days, but sadly abstinence is not something they see modelled in popular tv or advertising. Many children will not have sex before becoming adult, and it doesn't hurt them to have abstained. Further, everything is a choice. But in making a choice, like having sex, children find their lives proscribed by that choice in deleterious ways. One shudders to think if the child wants to suicide if the mum takes a Kevorkian view. Children have had sex without their lives being ruined. That is not a good argument for promoting it. The outraged mother is wrong to not accept abstinence as being a good choice in the lives of children.























On this day in 1521, the second day of the trial of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.
On 17 April, the Imperial Herald Sturm and Pappenheim came for Luther. Pappenheim reminded Luther that he should speak only in answer to direct questions from the presiding officer, Johann von Eck. Eck asked if a collection of books was Luther’s and if he was ready to revoke their heresies. Dr. Schurff said, "Please have the titles read." There were 25 of them, probably including The 95 Theses, Resolutions Concerning the 95 Theses, On the Papacy at Rome, Address to the Christian Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian, all of which had been written prior to the Diet of Worms. Luther requested more time for a proper answer, so he was given until the next day at 4 p.m.
On 18 April, Luther, stating he'd prayed for long hours, consulted with friends and mediators, and presented himself before the Diet. When the counselor put the same questions to him, Luther first apologized that he lacked the etiquette of the court. Then he answered, "They are all mine, but as for the second question, they are not all of one sort." Luther went on to place the writings into three categories: (1) Works which were well received by even his enemies: those he would not reject. (2) Books which attacked the abuses, lies and desolation of the Christian world and the papacy: those, Luther believed, could not safely be rejected without encouraging abuses to continue. To retract them would be to open the door to further oppression.[1] "If I now recant these, then, I would be doing nothing but strengthening tyranny".[1] (3) Attacks on individuals: he apologized for the harsh tone of these writings but did not reject the substance of what he taught in them; if he could be shown from the Scriptures that he was in error, Luther continued, he would reject them. Luther concluded by saying
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.[2]According to tradition, Luther is said to have declared, "Here I stand, I can do no other," before concluding with "God help me. Amen."[3] However, there is no indication in the transcripts of the Diet or in eyewitness accounts that he ever said this, and most scholars now doubt these words were spoken.
Eck informed Luther that he was acting like a heretic:
"'Martin,' said he, 'there is no one of the heresies which have torn the bosom of the church, which has not derived its origin from the various interpretation of the Scripture. The Bible itself is the arsenal whence each innovator has drawn his deceptive arguments. It was with biblical texts that Pelagius and Arius maintained their doctrines. Arius, for instance, found the negation of the eternity of the Word—an eternity which you admit, in this verse of the New Testament—Joseph knew not his wife till she had brought forth her first-born son; and he said, in the same way that you say, that this passage enchained him. When the fathers of the council of Constance condemned this proposition of John Huss— The church of Jesus Christ is only the community of the elect, they condemned an error; for the church, like a good mother, embraces within her arms all who bear the name of Christian, all who are called to enjoy the celestial beatitude.'"[4]Private conferences were held to determine Luther's fate. Before a decision was reached, Luther fled. During his return to Wittenberg, he disappeared.
From Wikipedia. Note, Eck had said to Luther that the heresies had been derived from the Word, and so dangerously suggests orthodoxy trumps the scriptures.

 In 1689, Bostonians rebelled against Edmund Andros who was a fan of the Anglican Church while the Pilgrims were puritans. In 1775 Paul Revere rode to warn of attack by sea by the British. In 1915, French pilot Roland Garros was shot down and landed behind German lines. He failed to destroy his plane and so Germany got vital technology from it. Three years later Roland escaped and flew against Germans again, but was killed in action three days after returning to action. And a month before the war ended. In 1942, the Doolittle Raid hit targets on Japanese mainland. In 1949, the keel of a US Navy ship had been laid, but the project cancelled. US Admirals revolted against President Truman's plans to weaken the navy in favour of nuclear bombs. Truman won. Ezra Pound was a great poet and friend to many writers. However, his view of WW2 blamed the war on commercialism. So he became a fascist and supported Mussolini in WW2. Afterwards incarcerated, he was freed on this day in 1958, by the Federal Court. In 1981, a Saturday, the longest ever professional game of Baseball was played, going into 4am then next morning in the 32nd innings. It was interrupted and finally played for the final inning on the following Tuesday. The crowd at 4am had numbered 19 and they received season or lifetime passes to McCoy Stadium. Played on Rhode Island between Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings. The losing pitcher had joined Rochester in the interim. One batter had been congratulated by his dad for his four hits had then explained he had had twelve at bats. The score was 3-2. One of the players was Cal Ripken Jr.
2014
It is Good Friday and so appropriate to look at what that means to others. To Anglican bishops around Australia it means they raise their voice demanding that Mr Abbott pursue an ALP policy of drowning people desperate to come to Australia and facilitating the activity of pirates. According to these people who care a lot about such things, Mr Abbott should listen to them because of his religion. But it calls into question their faith. About 1500 known drownings since 2008, the policy of the ALP was by far their most deadly, but not their most expensive. So in some ways, maybe, we see the Anglican Church's call as fiscally prudent as any of Judas'. By way of contrast, Hillsong, Orthodox and Catholics are focusing on the event known as the Crucifixion of Jesus and its' meaning to Christians. When asked about the day's meaning, the Anglican Archbishop replied it was about children behind razor wire. Maybe he felt it was better they were crucified? Note, 2014, Easter falls on the same dates for Western and Orthodox churches. Rumour has it Seventh Day Adventist Churches begin their observance on a Saturday (my apologies for the bad humour, Seventh Day Adventists are correct to have the Sabbath celebrated on Saturday, but Christians worship on Sunday due to Easter). 

Bolesław Chrobry became King of Poland on this day in 1025. He was not uniquely named, also having the title Boleslav IV, Duke of Bohemia. Born on this day, 1480, Lucrezia Borgia, Italian daughter of Pope Alexander VI. The observant might note this answers the chicken and egg question. 1518, Bona Sforza is crowned as queen consort of Poland. She is important for a recently discovered Leonardo portrait. 1521, Trial of Martin Luther begins its second day during the assembly of the Diet of Worms. He refuses to recant his teachingsdespite the risk of excommunication. In 1740 was the birthday of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, English banker. 1775, American Revolution: The British advancement by seabegins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements. 1857, "The Spirits Book" by Allan Kardec is published, marking the birth of Spiritualism in France, note the book, like the recent movie Noah, is based on the Bible. In 1909, Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome, thus correcting what might have been an embarrassing mistake were it noticed. 
Historical perspectives on this day 
In 796, King Æthelred I of Northumbria was murdered in Corbridge by a group led by his ealdormen, Ealdred and Wada. The patrician Osbald was placed on the throne, but was within 27 days abdicated. 1025, Bolesław Chrobry was crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland. 1506, the cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica was laid. 1518, Bona Sforza was crowned as queen consort of Poland. 1521, trial of Martin Luther began its second day during the assembly of the Diet of Worms. He refused to recant his teachings despite the risk of excommunication. 1689, Bostonians rose up in rebellion against Sir Edmund Andros.

 In 1738, Real Academia de la Historia ("Royal Academy of History") was founded in Madrid. 1775, American Revolution: The British advancement by sea began; Paul Revere and other riders warned the countryside of the troop movements. 1797, the Battle of Neuwied: French victory against the Austrians. 1807, the Harwich ferry disaster occurred near the North Sea port of Harwich on the Essex coast (England) in which 60-90 people drowned during the capsizing of a small ferry boat. 1831, the University of Alabama was founded. 1848, American victory at the battle of Cerro Gordo opened the way for invasion of Mexico. 1857, "The Spirits Book" by Allan Kardec was published, marking the birth of Spiritualism in France. 1864, Battle of Dybbøl: A Prussian-Austrian army defeated Denmark and gained control of Schleswig. Denmark surrendered the province in the following peace settlement. 1880, an F4 tornado struck Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100. 1881, Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico. 1897, the Greco-Turkish War was declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. 1899, the St. Andrew's Ambulance Association was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria.

 In 1902, Quetzaltenango, the second largest city of Guatemala, was destroyed by an earthquake. 1906, an earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, California. 1909, Joan of Arc was beatified in Rome. 1912, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brought 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City. 1915, French pilot Roland Garros was shot down and glided to a landing on the German side of the lines during World War I. 1923, Yankee Stadium, "The House that Ruth Built", opened. 1924, Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book. 1930, BBC reported there was no news, then played out with piano music. 1936, the first Champions Day was celebrated in Detroit, Michigan.

 In 1942, World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya were bombed. Also 1942, Pierre Laval became Prime Minister of Vichy France. 1943, World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when his aircraft was shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island. 1945, Over 1,000 bombers attacked the small island of Heligoland, Germany. 1946, the International Court of Justice held its inaugural meeting in The Hague, Netherlands. 1949, the keel for the aircraft carrier USS United States was laid down at Newport News Drydock and Shipbuilding. However, construction was canceled five days later, resulting in the Revolt of the Admirals. 1954, Gamal Abdal Nasser seized power in Egypt. 1955, twenty-nine nations met at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference. 1958, a United States federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound be released from an insane asylum. 1961, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a cornerstone of modern international relations, was adopted. Also 1961, CONCP was founded in Casablanca as a united front of African movements opposing Portuguese colonial rule. 1974, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto inaugurated Lahore's dry port.

 In 1980, the Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) came into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President. The Zimbabwe Dollar replaced the Rhodesian Dollar as the official currency. 1981, the longest professional baseball game was begun in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The game was suspended at 4:00 the next morning and finally completed on June 23. 1983, a suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people. 1988, the United States launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II. 1992, General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolted against President Mohammad Najibullah of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and allied with Ahmed Shah Massoud to capture Kabul. 1996, in Lebanon, at least 106 civilians were killed when the Israel Defense Forces shelled the United Nations compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge. 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5–4 decision. Also 2007, a series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occurred in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251. 2013, a suicide bombing in a Baghdad cafe killed 27 people and injured another 65. 2014, Sixteen people were killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest.
===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August https://www.createspace.com/4124406, September https://www.createspace.com/5106914, October https://www.createspace.com/5106951, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows the purchase of a kindle version for just $3.99 more. 
===
For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Douglas Sutherland-Bruce via David Daniel Ball
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed

Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.
===
Happy birthday and many happy returns Noodle Won Ton, Tri Tran and Vladimir Tochilkin. Born on the same day as David Tennant, across the years. He played Dr Who. And he could have been born on any day he chose. Be blessed.
Deaths
April 18: Easter Saturday (Eastern Christianity, 2015); Independence Day in Zimbabwe (1980)
Saint Peter's Basilica by Giovanni Paolo Pannini
We built the gate. We revere the ride. We won. Superman debuted. We love grapes. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
===
2015
===

HEROIC HITTERS

Tim Blair – Saturday, April 18, 2015 (6:13am)

The New York Times reports: 
Italian police on Thursday charged 15 Muslim men with homicide aggravated by religious hatred after survivors of a migrant boat rescued in the Mediterranean told investigators that the men had menaced Christians on board and thrown a dozen Christians overboard to their deaths …
The victims came from Ghana and Nigeria, the police said, while the accused are from Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal. 
The crucial issue here – particularly if you’re Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau – is whether throwing Christians to their deaths is an example of punching down or punching up. I suspect he’d go with up, on account of Muslims being “non-privileged” and “a powerless, disenfranchised minority”, as Trudeau whined in his recent, pathetic attack on slaughtered Charlie Hebdo staffers: 
Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny – it’s just mean.
By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech … 
Charlie Hebdo attacked with drawings. Their killers attacked with AK-47s. Trudeau is more upset about the former, as is New York artist Melanie West, a co-resident in Trudeau’s obscene moral abyss: 
Christianity is a religion that features a lot of people with a lot of global dominance, while on the other side, Islam is a faith that has been bludgeoned in order to justify the pillaging and imperial slaughter of the East. Within that context, a Western body blatantly disrespecting Islam (like when drawing the Prophet Muhammad) is dropping arrows from the top. They are driving salt into the wound. They’re punching down, and they shouldn’t be surprised when people get desperate and punch back. 
Or, presumably, when Muslims throw Christians into the Mediterranean, possibly due to the massive global dominance of Nigerians and Ghanaians. Mark Steyn has far more to say on the topic of Trudeau and his disgusting kind, expressed far more eloquently than I ever could, but for now let me add this:
The likes of Trudeau and West are too fantastically, rigidly stupid to understand that “comfortable” and “afflicted” are not permanent conditions. For example, if “comfortable” millionaire crap cartoonist Trudeau were to have been visiting friends in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he may have found himself rapidly converted to “afflicted”, what with all the burning jet fuel pouring over him.
Likewise, the “afflicted” Islamic terrorists aboard those 9/11 jets, who were already “comfortable” enough in terms of upbringing, education and careers, became more “comfortable” still as they carried out their martyrdom missions. One supposes, too, that the “afflicted” Muslims floating off the Italian coast were more than “comfortable” tossing Christians to their deaths.
Among many others, Trudeau, West and Australian Guardian illo-pullet Andrew Marlton probably dreamed for their entire lives of the moment when they would bravely stand up to confront a democracy-opposing, women-hating, homophobic, theocratic fascist power. But when that moment came, through extremist Islam, they licked power’s boots. They caved. They ran.
They not only punched down, they fell down, pleading, on their knees.
===

SUPERVAN III

Tim Blair – Saturday, April 18, 2015 (2:43am)

Timely solar news from CNN: 
The Solar Impulse 2, the experimental plane attempting to fly around the world without using a drop of fuel, has been grounded by the weather in China.
What was supposed to be an overnight pit stop in the southwestern city of Chongqing has now stretched into a two-and-a-half week stay …
The aircraft needs near perfect weather conditions, including cross winds of less than 4 knots, or about 7 kilometers an hour, in order to fly. 
This is nonsense. Nearly four decades ago solar technology was so advanced that it could reliably propel a large van across the United States, as Supervan clearly documented:



In tonight’s barnstorming instalment:
image Van enthusiasts cavort to impeccably grotesque post-hippie music ("Baby, why don’t you do what you’re told?")
image Karen reveals her shameful family secret.
image Behold the slowest stunt driving ever recorded.
image T.B. Trenton exposes his connection to Big Oil.
image The other-worldly sound of solar-powered Supervan is heard for the first time.
image At 5.05, Karen transforms into a large white male.
image At 6.05, the lamest bicycle accident in history occurs.
image And finally, a future Seinfeld star appears ("Uncle Leo, is that you?")
Previous episodes here and here. CNN solar link via James B.
===

SPRAYGATE STOPPED

Tim Blair – Saturday, April 18, 2015 (12:01am)

Following Lewis Hamilton’s champagne controversy at the Chinese Grand Prix, the woman involved speaks out: 
Liu Siying, the 22-year-old Grid Girl who Hamilton sprayed with champagne on Sunday, said she was surprised by the backlash surrounding the incident and claims that it was sexist.
“I think some foreign media are more sensitive about the topic than local media. I was just told by my employer to stand on the podium, and that’s what I did,” she told the Shanghai Daily. “It lasted for only one or two seconds, and I didn’t think too much about it.” 
Nothing is more sensitive than certain elements of the western media. By comparison, a scanning probe microscope has all the delicate reactive finesse of a rooting boar. Notably, however, there was little international uproar over this liquid attack.
===

SHE’S ON TELEVISION

Tim Blair – Friday, April 17, 2015 (11:25pm)

One benefit of being even a minor media figure is that it forces you to consider the consequences of impolite behaviour in public. Given the ubiquity of security cameras and mobile phones, any obnoxious antics will inevitably surface online. ESPN’s Britt McHenry forgot that rule: 
A video surfaced Thursday of the ESPN reporter dressing down a parking-lot attendant in brutally ugly fashion. 
“I’m in the news sweetheart, I will f—–g sue this place,” McHenry, a Washington-based reporter, says as the video opens.
The rant somehow gets more personal as the edited video closes.
“Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh?” McHenry says. “ ‘Cause they look so stunning … ‘Cause I’m on television and you’re in a f—–g trailer, honey.” 
McHenry has since been suspended.
===

A LIE FOR EVERY CAMERA

Tim Blair – Friday, April 17, 2015 (10:45pm)

“Everywhere Hillary Clinton goes, a thousand cameras follow,” wrote the Atlantic‘s Molly Ball last September. “Then she opens her mouth, and nothing happens.”
This is not entirely the case. Plenty of lying happens. Clinton seems compelled to lie about every little thing, all the time. Sometimes – as with her latest lie, about her foreign background – Clinton’s lies are both easily revealed and of absolutely no advantage to her at all. All they do is provide smart critics with the chance to write terrific headlines: 
Dead Broke Hillary Dodged Sniper Fire With Her Immigrant Parents In Tuzla 
Clinton’s inaccuracy addiction also gives Mark Steyn the chance to rifle through his archives: 
The defining fiction arose back in the mid-Nineties when she visited New Zealand and met Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Everest, and for some reason decided to tell him he was the guy her parents had named her after.
Hmm. Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in 1953. Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and a somewhat unlikely inspiration for two young parents in the Chicago suburbs. If any of the bigshot U.S. newspaper correspondents on the trip noticed this inconsistency, they kept it to themselves. I mentioned it in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph at the time, but like so many other improbabilities in the Clinton record it sailed on indestructibly for years. By 2004 it was preserved for the ages in Bill Clinton’s autobiography, on page (gulp) 870: “Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest and, most important, was the man Chelsea’s mother had been named for.”
Eventually, when it was noticed that Hillary was born six years before the ascent of Everest, Clinton aides tried assuring skeptics that her parents had seen a press interview with Sir Edmund in his beekeeping days, Mr. and Mrs. Rodham apparently being the only Illinois subscribers to The New Zealand Apiarist. 
Spare a thought for Clinton’s staffers, eternally forced to explain their employer’s dishonesty. Here’s the most recent excuse: 
“Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton campaign spokesperson said on Thursday. 
That makes sense. My grandparents always spoke about horse racing and the royal family. As a result I always thought of them as imperial ponies.
===

Anzac Day plot

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (10:01am)

Julian Burnside’s inflammatory fantasy:
The Islamophobia stirred up by Abbott and Bolt is a bigger threat to us than terrorism
Today’s hard reality:
Police have swooped in counterterrorism raids across Melbourne this morning, arresting five young men so far.
At least two of the arrests relate to allegations the men were preparing to launch a terrorist attack on Australian soil, with police officers believed to be possible targets.
UPDATE
Police claim two of the arrested men were plotting an “ISIS inspired” attack on an Anzac Day “activities”, using edged weapons.  They were from an unidentified “community”.
Police confirm that some are “associates” of Numan Haider, an Afghan-born Islamic State supporter who last year attacked two Victorian police with knives before he was shot dead.
But warning: the arrested men must be presumed innocent.
UPDATE
Note where the arrests occurred - near the “multicultural” hub of Dandenong, where police have reported extensive trouble with ethnic gangs:
image
Remember the claim of Labor frontbencher Mark Dreyfus, member for Isaacs, which includes Dandenong South and borders Hallam:
“One third of Australians were born overseas and Greater Dandenong is home to citizens representing 150 different nationalities,” he said. ”Our community is a wonderful example to others of a modern, diverse and harmonious society.”
Blind. Just blind.
UPDATE
None of the three police chiefs in two press conferences today mentions the words “Muslim” or “Islam”.
UPDATE
Indirectly related, and a frightening harbinger of Turkey’s future:
The Turkish government has been paying Gallipoli tour guides to give tourists a more faith-based interpretation of the conflict which celebrates a victory for Allah over the Western infidels.
The move has divided tour guides and historians, who fear it undermines the legacy of Turkey Gallipoli hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who later helped to found a secular Turkish republic.
The tensions reflect a broader push by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make Turkey a more religious Islamist nation, a move that has seen him take a ­softer line than the West against ­Islamic State… The names of non-Muslim Turkish soldiers at Gallipoli have also reportedly been removed from the List of Martyrs of the Gallipoli campaign issued by Turkey’s Ministry of National Defence.
===

Why are taxpayers paying a dud SBS comic to vilify conservatives?

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (9:43am)

Not for the first time I have to ask: why is SBS paying someone to write utterly unfunny “satire” relentless attacking Liberals, conservatives, Tony Abbott, climate sceptics and any other deviants from Left-wing dogma?
image
How does this possibly conform with the SBS charter to service the multicultural community and represent all sectors of the community?
This has been going of for ages. Here’s The Backburner menu the last time I wrote about it:
image
UPDATE
SBS even pays people to look up funny YouTube clips and repost a few on the SBS site:
Stuff We Found, the best comedy ‘stuff’ on the internet. We find it so you don’t have to, every day, twice a day so you can get your much needed comedy fix.
Why must taxpayers fund this stuff, when SBS viewers could look up YouTube themselves for free?  SBS is wildly overfunded if it can afford this utterly frivilous waste.
(Thanks to readers mem and SM.)   
===

Is Julie Bishop’s submission appropriate?

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (9:19am)

Yes, wear a headscarf in visiting a mosque, but should she grant the mullahs this victory?
Julie Bishop takes on her sternest task as Foreign Minister today as she uses a historic visit to Iran to gain information about the fight against Islamic State and build a relationship with a nation in the process of shaking off its ­pariah status… Ms Bishop, who will wear a headscarf during the visit...
UPDATE
Bishop is right to feel embarrassed, and her excuses don’t convince:
Julie Bishop elected to don a headscarf arriving in Tehran early on Saturday morning - a covering the local morality police force on all Iranian women.
To avoid any awkward moments, protocol also dictates Ms Bishop not extend a hand to shake when meeting Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani or other male dignitaries…

An exile[d] Iranian journalist - who kick-started a popular Facebook page for Iranian women to post photographs of themselves bareheaded - had in recent weeks called for Ms Bishop to refuse to wear the covering.
But Ms Bishop said wearing the scarf, which she also covered with a hat, was not an imposition.
“As a matter of fact I wear scarves and hats and headgear quite often as part of my everyday wear,” she said.
Asked why she had pulled the scarf back to her shoulders for an early hours media conference shortly after arriving, she said it was more comfortable.
===

ABC frames Liberal Premier Colin Barnett. Protects Labor Premier Dan Andrews

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (9:13am)

Had enough of the ABC’s cheap “gotchas” of conservatives?
Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog:
Some confusion surely on 7.30 [on Thursday] night. First up presenter Leigh Sales declared that Western Australian premier Colin Barnett has hinted that unless WA gets a greater share of the GST it “might be a bit slower to help with things like bush-fire and flood relief”. The Premier said no such thing.
Later in the program 7.30’s political correspondent Sabra Lane also said that Colin Barnett had suggested that Western Australia “won’t be so willing to help other states in their hour of need” if WA doesn’t get a better deal on the GST. Once again, the Premier said no such thing.
In fact both Ms Sales and Ms Lane would have been aware of this had they watched the clip of what 7.30 ran concerning what Mr Barnett had really said – which was this:

Colin Barnett : When Victoria had those tragic fires a few years back, Western Australia was the first state and the most generous state to provide financial assistance, so perhaps the new Treasurer’s got a short memory or perhaps he’s not aware of that. Same when Queensland was in trouble, Western Australia was the first state to provide assistance on the Queensland floods. Now we’d do that and we’d do it again.
Perhaps it’s time that ABC managing director Mark Scott directed his Fact-Checking Unit to first check the so-called facts which are cited on the ABC before it fact-checks others.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
Alternatively Mark Scott might consider sending Lane for a hearing test. She appears to have form in the area of hearing things that weren’t actually said.
UPDATE
On the other hand, when Victorian Labor Premier Dan Andrews wastes a scandalous $600 million dollars by cancelling a contract to build a much needed East West road link the ABC goes out of its way to pretend nothing happened, or, if it did, that it was nothing to worry about.
The ABC’s 7.30 failed to ask Andrews a single question about that colossal waste of taxpayers’ money , and Lateline couldn’t be bothered mentioning it, either.  On The Drum online, presenter Barrie Cassidy reserves most of his criticism for the Liberals and ignores Andrews’ campaign lies that the contract was not valid and no compensation would be paid.  AM on the morning after also ignored the scandal.
True, The Drum at least did cover it on April 15, (6:42 to 13:28), but mostly to damn the Liberals and even praise Labor, with Chris Evans blithely declaring (at 6:43)
“They elected the Labor Party who said, as a key platform in their election campaign, that they were going to end the contract. Today they ... honoured their promise and their commitment. So ... there was always going to be a cost to that.”
Given the ABC is the country’s biggest media organisation, it is a miracle that the Liberals still manage to win the occasional election.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, April 19

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (8:55am)

On the The Bolt Report on Channel 10 tomorrow at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: Mad moves to divide us by race. 
Guest:  Employment Minister Eric Abetz.
The panel: IPA boss John Roskam and Sean Kelly, former media adviser to Julia Gillard.
NewsWatch: Australian media editor Sharri Markson. Which idiot chose Dr Karl? 
On taxes, halal certification, dangerous Dan Andrews, “peace” journalists, Abbott’s surprising friends and more.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Get a degree in warming propaganda and denial

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (8:52am)

Astonishing and shocking. The University of Queensland now offers a course to teach students not to doubt. In fact, it teaches students how to attack any sceptics - including leading climate scientists - who point out flaws in the theory than man is heating the world dangerously:

This is not science. This is not in the Western tradition of academia - based on always testing claims and “truths”. This is represents the closing of the Western mind:

What you’ll learn
How to recognise the social and psychological drivers of climate science denial
How to better understand climate change: the evidence that it is happening, that humans are causing it and the potential impacts
How to identify the techniques and fallacies that climate myths employ to distort climate science
How to effectively debunk climate misinformation
I see that the video and the course promotes Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, preaching against doubt of the warming faith.
In fact, there have been very many good reasons to doubt Hoegh-Guldberg’s warming claims and predictions.

(Thanks to reader Anthony.) 
===

Bill Shorten’s nuclear test

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (8:45am)

The ultimate example of Bill Shorten’s surrender to populism and green scares - irrational scares of the kind that cost jobs and wealth:
In November, former Rudd and Gillard government minister Martin Ferguson highlighted the opportunities China’s embrace of nuclear power offered Australia: 
The People’s Republic of China has 22 nuclear power reactors operating and a further 26 under construction. Additional reactors — enough to triple nuclear capacity ... are planned. This will raise the percentage of China’s electricity produced by nuclear power from the current 2 per cent to more than 7 per cent by 2020. Thereafter, another threefold increase in nuclear capacity is planned by 2030; and then more again by 2040. Not only does nuclear power offer an enormous opportunity to Australia’s uranium exporters, it clearly has a central role to play in China’s decarbonisation. 
South Australia, with one of the world’s richest uranium deposits, launched a royal commission in February examining what role the state could play in the nuclear industry. As [Labor] Premier Jay Weatherill said:

The truth is we are already in the nuc­lear fuel cycle. I mean we are selling uranium to the world ... We believe South Australians should be given the opportunity to explore the practical, financial and ethical issues raised by a deeper involvement in the nuclear industries…
South Australian Greens senator Penny Wright was unimpressed:

The Australian Greens are unequivocal. We do not support nuclear power in any circumstances.
Bill Shorten also opposed the inquiry. The Opposition Leader’s spokesman said the ALP had:
… a longstanding position on nuclear power based on the best available expert advice.
Former prime minister Bob Hawke believes Australia should enrich uranium and dispose of nuclear waste. He told a Perth conference last year:
If Australia has — as we do — the ­safest remote locations for storing the world’s nuclear waste, we have a responsibility to make those sites available for this purpose … in doing good for the rest of the world, we can, in the process, do enormously well for the Australian economy.
The International Energy Agency argues nuclear power is critical in limiting greenhouse gas emissions:
A mature, low-carbon technology, nuclear power is available today for wider deployment, subject to safety and security conditions ... The scale of nuclear is such (an average nuclear plant has the production of 4000 windmills) that it is difficult to imagine nuclear being fully replaced by low-carbon renewables in the foreseeable future.
===

Not wanting our protection but our wealth

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (8:24am)

How the Greens characterise the boat people trying to crash our borders:
We need to take action immediately to save the lives of desperate people coming to us for protection. 
Contrast that with how members of one of the biggest groups of boat people characterise themselves:
According to the Immigration ­Department, 22.6 per cent of the 1848 detainees in mainland facilities are Iranians. They make up just more than 30 per cent of the 2512 arrivals now living in the community after being approved for residence ­determinations.
A fresh survey of 199 Iranians preparing to leave Iran, included in research conducted by global development start-up Farsight, has found ...26 Iranians (13 per cent) were focused on coming to Australia… Nearly half of this group said they were motivated by joining family members, underlining that small diasporas can generate momentum in shaping larger migration outcomes over time.
The second most common ­response when people were asked why they were leaving was “I cannot find a job here”, providing further evidence that economic motivation and financial security play roles in driving irregular migrati­on to Australia.
Are the Greens lying to us, or are they simply gullible?
(Thanks to reader Gab.) 
===

Hillary Clinton lies again

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (7:44am)

Hillary Clinton campaigns for the immigrant vote in Iowa:

”All my grandparents, you know, came over here [to America],” Hillary Clinton claimed, reinforcing her immigration reform bona fides.
Except, of course, it’s another Hillary lie - one so astonishingly obvious that you can only conclude that she lies reflexively and habitually.
Only one of her grandparents was born overseas, although another was the child of immigrants, forcing Clinton’s staff to offer this cringing explanation:

“Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News. 
Remember this lie?:
The Clinton campaign says Senator Hillary Clinton may have “misspoke” recently when she said she had to evade sniper fire when she was visiting Bosnia in 1996 as first lady…
She has been using the episode as an example of her foreign policy bona fides.
“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she said last week. “...I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
But her account has been challenged, first by Sinbad, the comedian, who traveled with her, and then by news organizations, most notably the Washington Post, which awarded her four “Pinnochios” which it gives for major “whoppers.”
A number of videos have been posted to YouTube juxtaposing a CBS news report with Mrs. Clinton’s statements last week: 
Roger Stone recounts more Hillary lies:

As Hillary’s now infamous email scandal demonstrates, in which Madam Secretary purposely used private email to conduct government business and escape disclosure requirements, telling the truth is outside her DNA. For instance, during the sole time Hillary publicly addressed this issue at the UN press conference, she claimed that some of the deleted emails were between Bill and her. Yet the Wall Street Journal reported only hours before the press conference that the impeached former president has “sent a grand total of two emails during his entire life.”
She also got busted lying about having one computer device when proof existed that she used two…
Whitewater was a failed real estate venture which lost money for all equity partners but siphoned $800,000 in campaign funds to Bill Clinton’s campaign and paid Hillary’s law firm handsomely. As First Lady, Hillary was caught criminally defying 1994 congressional and federal subpoenas. During the Whitewater investigation, a grand jury subpoena was issued for all of Rose Law Firm billing records. Rose Law Firm claimed that the documents were destroyed and the Clintons claimed that they did not have them. Yet two years later, the Rose billing records were discovered in the personal residence of the White House by a staffer. Hillary, of course, claimed no wrongdoing.
In January 2001, a scandal broke when Hillary was caught taking artwork and furniture from the White House. She claimed that these items were given to Bill and her as gifts during their years in the White House. However, less than a month later on February 8th, Hillary agreed to return $28,000 worth of gifts to the White House and pay in restitution $86,000 for china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other items which was only 50 percent of the value.
This brings up another issue. If Hillary was able to make an $86,000 vanity purchase in February 2008, then why did she describe herself as “dead broke” upon leaving the White House?…
Of course Hillary has often lied about her biography for convenience as well. Since at least 1995, Hillary claimed that her mother named her after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Bill even mentioned this anecdote in his autobiography. The only problem, Hillary was born in 1947 and Sir Edmund did complete his historic feat until 1953. 

Mona Charen on perhaps the most disgusting Hillary lie:
...let’s not forget what it took for Mrs. Clinton to lie to the grieving father of an American hero…
A convoy of well-armed terrorists rolled into the complex housing the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The attackers sealed off streets leading to the consulate with trucks and then commenced the attack on the building using rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, mortars, and artillery mounted on trucks.... The terrorists killed Ambassador Stevens and another American and set the building ablaze.  (Two more Americans would die later attempting to protect the annex.)… [N]o help arrived…
As soon as the next morning, Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the attack as a “commando-style event” with “coordinated fire, direct fire, [and] indirect fire.” A few days later the Libyan president said that it was a planned terrorist attack…
Yet a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign by the Obama administration managed to put the press off the story and mislead the American people… At 10:32 on the night of the attack, Secretary Clinton issued a statement deploring violence in response to “inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” In the days that followed, the president and his spokesman repeatedly invoked the supposedly offensive video as the cause of the attack. The president and secretary of state even filmed commercials to play in Muslim countries denouncing the video ...
But as the State Department finally disclosed a month after the attack..., there was no protest outside the American consulate in Benghazi. Nothing. Not a peep. As the Rhodes memo makes clear, the president sent his U.N. ambassador to the Sunday shows to lie. Susan Rice was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."…
When the Libyan ambassador to the U.S. apologized to [Clinton] on September 13 for the “terror attack,” she ignored this and burbled on about “The Innocence of Muslims.” The president, the vice president, and Mrs. Clinton welcomed the bodies of Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith, and Glen Doherty to Andrews Air Force base on September 14.
According to Woods’s father,… Mrs. Clinton stayed on message. She greeted the man whose son who had bravely attempted to fight off far more numerous and better-armed terrorists on the roof of the CIA annex and who gave his life… Did she express regret that [his son] had been left nearly alone to fight off the Islamist terrorists? No… She told Mr. Woods that they would catch the guy who made the Internet film and make sure he was punished. 
===

On the traitors who think the Charlie Hebdo dead deserved it

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (7:14am)

Tim Blair, a gifted blogger and satirist, is rarely angry. Today, though, he discusses Western cartoonists who say of every Islamist slaughter of “Christians” - especially the slaughter of fellow cartoonists - that in some way we deserved it:
Among many others, Trudeau, West and Australian Guardian illo-pullet Andrew Marlton probably dreamed for their entire lives of the moment when they would bravely stand up to confront a democracy-opposing, women-hating, homophobic, theocratic fascist power. But when that moment came, through extremist Islam, they licked power’s boots. They caved. They ran.
Cartoonist Gary Trudeau blames cartoonists for getting themselves killed for mocking Islam, accusing them of being merely bullies who “punch down”. Mark Steyn has words for the weasel and his excuses for mass murderers:
Charlie Hebdo dead, Vilks in hiding, Hedegaard shot, Rehman firebombed, Nekschot vanished, Molly Norris fled, Kurt Westergaard attacked by an Islamic axeman… But Garry Trudeau is on stage congratulating himself on “afflicting the comfortable”. You can’t “punch down” much lower than sneering at the dead and those no longer able to speak, can you?
===

Glenn Lazarus the Sports Minister? Seriously?

Andrew Bolt April 18 2015 (7:10am)

I’d bet a small fortune that either Clive Palmer or Glenn Lazarus has a severe problem with the facts:
Palmer United Party defector Glenn Lazarus says Clive Palmer proposed folding his remaining two senators into the Liberal Party at a pre-lunch meeting on February 6 in exchange for ministerial positions for the pair, in a bizarre deal Mr Palmer is claimed to have hatched with senior Abbott government figures…

The now independent senator claims Mr Palmer urged him and fellow PUP senator Dio Wang (WA) to join the Liberal Party and vote with the Coalition in the Senate, giving the government another two guaranteed votes…
He told Fairfax Media that the proposed deal – in which it was even suggested he would be elevated to the outer ministry in the sports portfolio – was one of the main reasons he resigned from Mr Palmer’s party on March 12…
“But Clive said it would be a great thing. He said he wouldn’t be around in politics a lot longer, and he wanted to look after Dio and I.”
Mr Palmer has denied Senator Lazarus’s claims… Government figures scoffed at the claimed deal, describing it as fanciful…
However, [Lazarus] admitted he “can’t remember” the names of the government ministers purportedly behind the deal.
Remember when the ABC regularly promoted Palmer and his party? 
===
While some might be disappointed, the Australian Greens are never afraid of fighting on controversial issues.
Posted by Greens taking credit for things on Friday, 17 April 2015

===
Exodus 14:21 "Then Christine stretched out her hand over the sea, and caused the sea to go back, and the waters were divided"
Posted by Greens taking credit for things on Friday, 17 April 2015

===
Photo Friday forecast: Cloudy with a chance of … Half Dome!Thanks to Michael Evans for this captivating cloud time-lapse scene. Share your Yosemite moments with us on Flickr (bit.ly/yosemiteflickr).
Posted by Yosemite Conservancy on Friday, 17 April 2015

Photo Friday forecast: Cloudy with a chance of … Half Dome!Thanks to Michael Evans for this captivating cloud time-lapse scene. Share your Yosemite moments with us on Flickr (bit.ly/yosemiteflickr).
Posted by Yosemite Conservancy on Friday, 17 April 2015

===
We believe all women are unique, but can a child find its mother among a group of women – only using its intuition?
Posted by PANDORA on Wednesday, 15 April 2015

We believe all women are unique, but can a child find its mother among a group of women – only using its intuition?
Posted by PANDORA on Wednesday, 15 April 2015

===
(Y) Follow Sun Gazing
Posted by Sun Gazing on Sunday, 12 April 2015

===
A Stormy Sunset at the Wind Farm
Posted by Matt Granz on Friday, 17 April 2015

===
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Friday, 17 April 2015

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

===

=== Posts from last year ===

Shadow men haunt Parliament

Piers Akerman – Friday, April 18, 2014 (6:23am)

FORGET for a moment the Grange, if you can, and concentrate on the underlying issue ICAC is wrestling with — the insidious power of unelected opportunistic lobbyists in both the NSW Labor and Liberal parties.
That’s the real importance of the parade of Obeid-related door-openers and gladhanders before the inquiry. And it hasn’t scratched the surface yet.
At the outset of this inquiry, counsel assisting, Geoffrey Watson, SC, warned the commission would be investigating corruption on a scale not seen since the days of the Rum Corps.
Not an exact parallel but certainly colourful and indicative of the gravity of the concern.
What we have seen so far is evidence certain individuals stood to make vast sums if political decisions were made in favour of companies they were associated with.
What has yet to be explored is the extent to which those who were lobbying for the decisions actually influenced the actual structure of the parties whose MPs and ministers they were begging for favours.
Michael Williamson, corrupt former Health Services Union boss, was also a national president of the ALP. That’s power.
Eddie Obeid, NSW Labor factional boss, pushed premiers around and usually got his way. That’s power.
Craig Thomson, former Labor MP and another corrupt HSU boss, had the backing of former prime minister Julia Gillard and the entire federal Labor Party because his vote was so critical to Labor’s survival. That’s power.
But the picture is just as unattractive from the perspective of the NSW division of the Liberal Party. Office bearers of the division are fighting long overdue reform because lobbyists still hold sway, despite Abbott’s own warning to them last October, a month after winning office.
With then premier Barry O’Farrell beside him, Tony Abbott declared: “I am determined to ensure that as far as the new Coalition government in Canberra is concerned that not only is it clean and fair, but it’s seen to be clean and fair. I’m determined to ensure you can either be a powerbroker or a lobbyist but you can’t be both.”
Conservative lobbyists Michael Photios and Joe Tannous resigned from roles on the state party executive within hours.
Photios never made any secret of his power within the Liberal Party, boasting to an interviewer in July, 2011: “We go from success in the morning to success in the afternoon when we roll out preselections.”
Insiders say the power of the lobbyists has not diminished and some estimate more than 60 per cent of state Liberal MPs owe their preselections to branches controlled by lobbyists’ agents.
Branch stacking is not solely the province of the ALP. Even now the Wentworthville Young Liberal branch is locked in legal action with the NSW division because head office suspended branch delegates.
Initially, the suspension meant delegates were prohibited from voting in the Parramatta federal electorate conference, the Granville state electorate conference and the Parramatta local government electoral conference.
That has now been modified but the action is still running and members of the branch are concerned head office is intent on preventing their voice from being heard when senate selectors and state council delegates are chosen — and most crucially — when the long overdue vote on party reform is held later this year.
The first test for Abbott will come when he receives the report on reform of the NSW division from the expert panel of eminent persons he moved to appoint under the chairmanship of former prime minister John Howard shortly after the last election.
Other members include Dr David Kemp, former cabinet colleague Philip Ruddock, along with former Liberal Party national president Chris McDiven.
The first test for the new Premier Michael Baird will be whether he reappoints O’Farrell nominee MLC Don Harwin to the state executive or whether he signals a fresh start and nominates a reform-driven candidate without any factional baggage.
Failure to do so would lead to the same disunity and instability which still dogs Labor.
GRANGE PROVES A FOLLY FOR POLLIES FROM BOTH SIDES
PENFOLDS Grange also features in Labor Party mythology.
Another former NSW Labor premier, Barry Unsworth, remembers accompanying Bob Hawke, then president of the ACTU, to South Australia in the late ‘70s during the days of the flamboyant Labor premier Don Dunstan and seeing a Port Adelaide publican get the better of the future Labor PM.
“We were on some sort of a worker participation tour and wound up in the Port pub favoured by Mick Young,” Unsworth relates.
Young, a former shearer and AWU boss, later secretary of the ALP, was credited with devising the successful “It’s Time” slogan for 1972 election.
According to Unsworth, Hawke was playing snooker with other delegates, including SA Labour Council secretary Bob Gregory when the publican opened a trapdoor in the barroom floor and descended to the cellar on a shaky ladder.
Hawke called out: “Any of that Grange down there?” The publican’s head reappeared, nodding. “How many are you after?” he asked, and clambered back up with a box filled with dusty bottles of various years.
Unsworth isn’t sure exactly how much the publican asked per bottle but he does say Gregory did the maths and reckoned that Hawke would have been able to buy the lot cheaper at the local bottle shop.
They flew back to Melbourne with Hawke taking both his snooker cue and the pricey case of red.
“That bloke stitched him up,” says Unsworth. Maybe Mick Young put him up to it.
===

RATE THE GREENS

Tim Blair – Friday, April 18, 2014 (3:29pm)

Thank you for voting!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Total Votes: 1,694
Return To PollCreate Your Own Poll 
===

ANDRE JOHNSONLESS

Tim Blair – Friday, April 18, 2014 (3:19pm)

Think you’ve had a bad day? Think again.
UPDATE. For the unfortunate rapper mentioned above, life imitates art:

===

THERE MAY BE ONE OR TWO MORE

Tim Blair – Friday, April 18, 2014 (12:44pm)

Today’s collection of typos from the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Richard Ackland: 
hand delivered plonk 
Should be: “hand-delivered plonk”. 
the same old cast of stagers keeps turning-up 
Should be: “the same old cast of stagers keeps turning up”. 
the Liberal’s money raising machine 
Should be: “the Liberals’ money-raising machine”. 
grog merchants lobby group 
Should be: “grog merchants’ lobby group,” 
alcohol fuelled mayhem 
Should be: “alcohol-fuelled mayhem”. 
the Liberal’s money raising efforts 
Should be: “the Liberals’ money-raising efforts”. 
The fact, that he was reminded by the media about the Grange three weeks or so before he was questioned about it by Geoffrey Watson SC, opens a fresh line of inquiry. 
Should be: “The fact that he was reminded by the media about the Grange three weeks or so before he was questioned about it by Geoffrey Watson SC opens a fresh line of inquiry.”
===

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 17, 2014 (11:46pm)

An already-rich leftist journalist is paid $25,000 per month … to talk about income inequality.

===

Dyson Heydon on the new racism of the intellectuals

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (10:42am)

We’ve seen the disgraceful attacks - some from Labor - on Tony Abbott’s Catholicism. We’ve seen reporters only too eager to portray the Catholic Church as little more than a sanctuary for pedophiles. We’re seen the vicious baiting and heckling of Cardinal George Pell. 
Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, in a brilliant Acton Lecture on religion and freedom for the Centre for Independent Studies this week, notes this fashionable new intolerance:
Now there may be a new anti-Catholic movement, particularly among the intellectuals.  To adapt Windhorst’s aphorism, anti-Catholicism in Australia now might be called the racism of the intellectuals.  
This new anti-Catholicism may backfire as much as Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.  It is intolerant.  It is hypocritical.  It fails to recognise the extraordinary contribution of Australian Catholicism to education, to charitable relief, to the running of hospitals, to social progress of all kinds, to political life, and indeed to the life of the nation as a whole.  Without that contribution, Australia would not be the Australia we know.  The new anti-Catholicism may cause suffering, but it is suffering which may unify Catholics.  It may bring other elements of society in behind Catholics, for its programme is more than anti-Catholic.  Whether these desirable results flow depends on new Windhorsts and new von Galens.  The hard question is:  Where are they to be found?

In some ways Heydon’s appeal is much like that of Maurice Samuel in The Great Hatred, written in 1940 to warn the US that the fight against the Nazis was their fight, too. Samuel warned that the Nazi’s anti-Semitic program was likewise more than an attack on Jews:
We shall never understand the maniacal, world-wide seizure of anti-Semitism unless we transpose the terms. It is of Christ that the Nazi-Fascists are afraid; it is in his omnipotence that they believe; it is he that they are determined madly to obliterate. But the names of Christ and Christianity are too overwhelming, and the habit of submission to them is too deeply ingrained after centuries and centuries of teaching. Therefore they must, I repeat, make their assault on those who were responsible for the birth and spread of Christianity. They must spit on the Jews as the ‘Christ-killers’ because they long to spit on the Jews as the Christ-givers.  
And what in Christianity so threatened the Nazis?:
And so, as Samuel says, the Nazis’ hatred of Jews was actually a rejection of the most important Judeo-Christian message – that no person is too humble to be precious to God, and that all of us are called to the brotherly love of even strangers. 
It was a rejection of the Judeo-Christian claim that the political machine exists for people, not people for the machine. Christianity was the enemy of totalitarians then, and is so still. Ask the Islamists. Ask the Greens. Ask our university Marxists and the International Socialists; and isn’t it natural that such folk also hate Israel? 
That remains the threat Catholicism poses to the merchants of new faiths that legitimise the totalitarian instinct. Christianity remains a defence against the enemies of freedom.
Heydon quotes an amazingly prescient warning from the past:
In 1843 Heinrich Heine wrote: “A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French Revolution will seem like a harmless idyll.  Christianity restrained the martial ardour of the Germans for a time but it did not destroy it; once the restraining talisman is shattered, savagery will rise again … the mad fury of the berserk.”
Heydon in his lecture below says how right Heine was:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Dyson Heydon on the new racism of the intellectuals'
===

The Bolt Report on Sunday

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (10:20am)

On the show on Sunday – Network 10 at 10am and 4pm....
It’s the cover-up, every time… Two urgent lessons from Barry O’Farrell’s fall.
Assistant Minister for Infrastructure Jamie Briggs on how to stop the usual cranks from blocking Sydney’s second airport.
The panel: Michael Kroger and Kimberley Kitching on scandals, Mike Baird, airports and Labor’s disgraceful hounding of Joe Bullock.
On NewsWatch - and to mark the weekend Marxism 2014 conference - my favourite Marxist, Brendan O’Neill:
Plus more, including Harrison Ford’s scary new God for Easter.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Smear or fear? Jews targeted in eastern Ukraine

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (9:52am)


image
Deeply sinister:
Jews have reportedly been told to ‘register’ with pro-Russian forces in the east Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
They were also told they would need to provide a list of property they own as well as being ordered to pay a fee or face the threat of deportation… Jews leaving a synagogue in the city of Donetsk were reportedly told they had to ‘register’ with Ukranians trying to make the city part of Russia.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry ... described the leaflets as ‘grotesque and beyond unacceptable’ ... The State Department says it is looking into who is responsible but takes the threat seriously no matter who is behind the leaflets…
[The leaflet] goes on to explain that the reason for this is that leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendery Junta in reference to the leader of a nationalist group fighting for independence at the end of the Second World War. The letter features the flag of the so-called Donetsk Republic, a self-proclaimed state declared earlier this month by several hundred activists who occupied the Regional Administration Building and the City Hall buildings in the city.
Denials - or not really:
Armed, masked men were waiting outside one synagogue, reports Ynet News, Israel’s largest news website, to hand worshipers the leaflets telling them to register with the forces who are trying to return the city to Russia.... 
The signature of Denis Pushilin, chairman of Donetsk’s temporary government, was on the leaflets.... Pushilin admitted the flyers came from his organization but disavowed the contents, which said that Jews were being ordered to register because of their support for the Bendery Junta, a reference to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement that fought for Ukrainian independence at the end of World War II.
But the Times of Israel says Pushilin claims it’s just a set-up:
The flyers were official-looking documents that carried what was presented as Pushilin’s signature, but the news site tvrain.ru on Wednesday quoted Pushilin as denying any connection to the flyers, calling them a provocation.
The letter translated:
Independent Donetsk Republic, General Staff 
Dear citizens of Jewish nationality:
Taking into consideration the fact that the leaders of Jewish community of Ukraine has supported banderovtsy’s Junta in Kiev, and have been hostile to Orthodox Donetsk Republic and its citizens, the General Staff of Donetsk People’s Republic has decreed the following:
All citizens of Jewish nationality who are older than 16 years-old that have been living within the territory of Sovereign Donetsk Republic should attend acting Commissioner for nationalities affairs in Donetsk Regional Government Department, office 514 for registration before 03 May 2014. The registration fees are 50 USD.
You should bring the amount of 50 USD for registration fees, passports for marking the confession of faith, documents showing family members, entitling documents for title to real property and transport facilities.
In case of attempts to avoid the registration, the subject persons’ citizenship will be revoked with their subsequent enforced deportation outside Donetsk Republic including the forfeiture of their property.
Yours People’s Governor – Denis Pushilin
..
(Thanks to readers PeterX and the Village Idiot (reformed).) 
===

Selling the ABC’s global warming scare

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (9:42am)


 The ABC gets a little help.
(Thanks to reader James. Via Jo Nova.) 
===

Canada’s new race

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (9:16am)

Culture wars, The politics of race

It’s been ruled here that certain fair-complexioned Aborigines with ancestors of various ethnic or “racial” backgrounds had no choice but to identity with just one of those “races”.
In Canada, similar race-based thinking is leading to the kind of division - and public expense - I’d hoped we could be spared:
The Federal Court of Appeal has largely upheld a landmark ruling that could extend Ottawa’s responsibilities to hundreds of thousands of aboriginal people who are not affiliated with specific reserves and have essentially no access to First Nations programs, services and rights... 
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and several Métis and non-status Indians took the federal government to court in 1999, alleging discrimination because they were not considered “Indians” under a section of the Constitution Act.
A Federal Court upheld a ruling declaring Métis should be considered ‘Indians’ under the Constitution. (CBC)
They argued they have been denied certain benefits, which included: 
— access to the same health-care, education and other benefits made available to status Indians; — being allowed to hunt, trap, fish and gather on public lands; and, 
— the ability to negotiate and enter into treaties with the federal government.
The Métis and non-status Indians scored a major victory last year when the Federal Court recognized them as “Indians” under the Constitution.
The federal government appealed that ruling. On Thursday, the appeals court upheld part of the decision. It ruled that while Métis should remain Indians under the Constitution, extending that recognition to non-status Indians should be done on a case-by-case basis since it is a separate issue. 
The “Metis Nation of Alberta” describes the people it claims to represent:
The Métis are one of three distinct Aboriginal peoples of Canada, recognized under the 1982 Constitution.... 
The National definition of Metis ... states:
1.1 “Métis” means a person who self-identifies as 
Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of Historic Métis Nation ancestry, and is 
accepted by the Métis Nation.
Defined Terms in National Definition of Métis
1.2 “Historic Métis Nation” means the Aboriginal people then known as Métis or Half-breeds who resided in the Historic Métis Nation Homeland .
1.3 “Historic Métis Nation Homeland” means the area of land in west central North America used and occupied as the traditional territory of the Métis or Half-breeds as they were then known.
1.4 “Métis Nation” means the Aboriginal people descended from the Historic Métis Nation which is now comprised of all Métis Nation citizens and is one of the “aboriginal peoples of Canada” within the meaning of s.35 of the Constitution Act 1982.
1.5 “Distinct from other Aboriginal peoples” means distinct for cultural and nationhood purposes
The word Métis comes from the Latin “miscere”, to mix, and was used originally to describe the children of native women and French men. Other terms for these children were Country-born, Black Scots, and Half-breeds. The Métis quickly became intermediaries between European and Indian cultures, working as guides, interpreters, and provisionary to the new forts and new trading companies. Their villages sprang up from the Great Lakes to the Mackenzie Delta. The Métis Homeland encompasses parts of present-day Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. 
For legal reasons it would be too risky for me to discuss the stupidity and danger of such “racial” divisions, which I believe are an insult to our common humanity and the Enlightenment tradition. It is ghastly that such a profound challenge to that tradition cannot be freely discussed.
(Thanks to reader betapug.) 
===

Blocked from Australia, refugees give Indonesia a miss. Not that persecuted, then

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (8:44am)

If they were real refugees they’d be glad to be safe in Indonesia: 
AUSTRALIA’S hard-line strategy against people smuggling has reduced asylum-seeker registrations in Indonesia by more than 80 per cent this year. 
Between late December and the end of last month, the number of asylum-seekers registering had fallen from 100 people daily to about 100 people weekly, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Indonesia representative, Manuel Jordao, said… Another key indicator of asylum-seekers’ diminished capability to board boats to Australia was the “no-show rate” at the Jakarta office falling from 50 per cent a year ago to 2 per cent now. This was the rate of people reporting for registration but failing to return to UNHCR — authorities assuming most no-shows had boarded boats.
So who are those tens of thousands of people our officials accepted as refugees, fleeing danger and persecution?
(Thanks to readers Baden, Peter of Bellevue Hill and others.) 
===

Actually, there is a difference between Obeid’s Labor and O’Farrell’s Liberals

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (8:20am)


image
ABC presenter and university politics lecturer Waleed Aly demonstrates all the even-handedness for which both the ABC and academia are so famous.
The pocketing by a former union official (and then boyfriend of solicitor Julia Gillard#) ofhundreds of thousands of dollars from employers and the alleged use of pre-selection power to steer government contracts to mates? Nothing to see here, folks:
...the complete non-scandal surrounding the Australian Workers Union and Julia Gillard’s time as a labour lawyer...
And Labor - in which Obeid and his crooked mates served as government ministers and made and unmade premiers as they rorted taxpayers sideways - is really not much worse than the Liberals, which just had a Premier quit over a $3000 bottle of wine he failed to declare:
No Liberal has been found corrupt, but this episode reminds us that the Labor and Liberal parties do not represent two different worlds. There are shades of difference but they are both ultimately similar machines directed at similar goals and subject to the same power plays and moral compromises… Eddie Obeid might have been Labor’s heart of darkness, but he was only ever a step or two away from the nearest senior Liberal.
True, this is not a contest between the evil and the pure. I suspect ICAC is about to expose more Liberals yet.  But if we can’t make finer moral distinctions than this between Obeid’s Labor and O’Farrell’s Liberals then jaywalkers are no better than killers. 
(# Julia Gillard insists she did nothing wrong. She advised her then boyfriend on the creation of his slush fund but says she did not know how he then used it.)
UPDATE

No difference?:
New South Wales Opposition Leader John Robertson has effectively admitted he should have reported a $3 million bribe offered to him when he was secretary of Unions NSW. 
Mr Robertson told Lateline if he had his time over again he would have reported the offer - made to him by murdered businessman Michael McGurk - to authorities.
“...Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he told Lateline host Tony Jones.
“If I found myself in those circumstances again I’d report it,” he said. Mr Robertson is set to face a state parliamentary inquiry over his revelation to a newspaper last year that he was offered the bribe by Mr McGurk, who was later shot dead outside his home in Sydney’s Cremorne. Mr Robertson rejected the offer, which related to the sale of valuable union-owned land at Currawong in Sydney’s north.
Cut & Paste, 17 April:
Leo Shanahan, The Australian, July 12, 2011: 

THE former Labor government’s purchase of Currawong … took place less than two weeks before the election, the property was bought from a company with ALP associations, who sold it to the state for $1.2m more than they paid only a month earlier when they bought it from Unions NSW. Established by Unions NSW in 1947, the Currawong site formerly served as a subsidised holiday resort for union members and their families. In 2005 then Unions NSW chief John Robertson put Currawong on the market and in December 2006 an option on the property was granted to Eco-Villages, owned by … Labor affiliate Allen Linz. Eco paid a $1m deposit by November 2007, but the final sale to Eco wasn’t completed until January 28 this year for $11m, $4m less than initially agreed. The unions had previously rejected another offer of double the price offered by Sydney standover man Michael McGurk, who was shot dead outside his home two years later. Linz was a business partner of fellow developer David Tanevski, who had been hired by Robertson to advise on the sale. Both Linz and Tanevski were generous donors to the Labor Party, their company KWC Capital contributing $45,000 between 2003 and 2007.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Geoff.) 
===

Baird has soft heart. Let’s see if he also has a hard head

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (8:05am)

There’s a lot to like about new NSW Premier Mike Baird, the more I like:
Guiding Mr Baird through his career are three role models whose portraits hang on his office wall in NSW parliament. Attached to each is a small silver plaque for each of his guiding principles — integrity, passion, and results. 
For integrity, Mr Baird has William Wilberforce, the deeply religious British politician who campaigned to end slavery in the early 1800s.
For passion, he has a picture of Martin Luther King making one of his fiery speeches.
And for results, he has Roden Cutler, the longest-serving governor of NSW, who won a Victoria Cross for courage fighting in Syria in 1941. However, there’s a living hero whose portrait is not on the wall that Mr Baird has spoken of privately. He has a brother who works with homeless people whom Mr Baird says is his real inspiration.
If he also has a hard head, he should be good.
But that “if” is the one question still needing an answer:
Mr Baird admitted that in hindsight he had made a mistake appointing Mr Di Girolamo – a Liberal part fund-raiser who spoke twice a month to Mr O’Farrell – to the State Water Board in 2012. Mr Baird said he and Mr Di Girolamo were “not friends” but Mr Baird said he had held two meetings with him as Treasurer. 
And:
image
===

Obeid deserves more than just bad headlines

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (7:04am)

Kate McClymont sure isn’t kidding:
The fact that Eddie Obeid is still tooling around town behind the wheel of his top-of-the-range Mercedes and enjoying the comforts of his $10 million palatial abode in Hunters Hill, is galling to many. 
It is perhaps even more galling since the ashes of Barry O’Farrell’s leadership lie smouldering following his extraordinary self-immolation after he staked his premiership on the receipt of a $3000 bottle of wine. Mr Obeid, 70, possibly the most venal politician this state has ever known, has featured in an unprecedented seven corruption inquiries.
===

Steyn on the great shut-up

Andrew Bolt April 18 2014 (12:16am)

Free speech

image
In this week’s Spectator, always a must-read, the great Mark Steyn - fighting for a freedom too many Australians won’t defend:
These days, pretty much every story is really the same story: 
• In Galway, at the National University of Ireland, a speaker who attempts to argue against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) programme against Israel is shouted down with cries of ‘F..king Zionist, f..king pricks… Get the f..k off our campus.’
• In California, Mozilla’s chief executive is forced to resign because he once made a political donation in support of the pre-revisionist definition of marriage.
• At Westminster, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declares that the BBC should seek ‘special clearance’ before it interviews climate sceptics, such as fringe wacko extremists like former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
• In Massachusetts, Brandeis University withdraws its offer of an honorary degree to a black feminist atheist human rights campaigner from Somalia.
• In London, a multitude of liberal journalists and artists responsible for everything from Monty Python to Downton Abbey sign an open letter in favour of the first state restraints on the British press in three and a quarter centuries.
• And in Canberra the government is planning to repeal Section 18C — whoa, don’t worry, not all of it, just three or four adjectives; or maybe only two, or whatever it’s down to by now, after what Gay Alcorn in the Age described as the ongoing debate about ‘where to strike the balance between free speech in a democracy and protection against racial abuse in a multicultural society’. 
I heard a lot of that kind of talk during my battles with the Canadian ‘human rights’ commissions a few years ago: of course, we all believe in free speech, but it’s a question of how you ‘strike the balance’, where you ‘draw the line’… which all sounds terribly reasonable and Canadian, and apparently Australian, too. But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.
But I don’t really think that many people these days are genuinely interested in ‘striking the balance’; they’ve drawn the line and they’re increasingly unashamed about which side of it they stand. What all the above stories have in common, whether nominally about Israel, gay marriage, climate change, Islam, or even freedom of the press, is that one side has cheerfully swapped that apocryphal Voltaire quote about disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it for the pithier Ring Lardner line: ‘"Shut up,” he explained.’
A generation ago, progressive opinion at least felt obliged to pay lip service to the Voltaire shtick. These days, nobody’s asking you to defend yourself to the death: a mildly supportive retweet would do. But even that’s further than most of those in the academy, the arts, the media are prepared to go. ... I’m opposed to the notion of official ideology — not just fascism, Communism and Baathism, but the fluffier ones, too, like ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘climate change’ and ‘marriage equality’. Because the more topics you rule out of discussion — immigration, Islam, ‘gender fluidity’ — the more you delegitimise the political system. As your cynical political consultant sees it, a commitment to abolish Section 18C is more trouble than it’s worth: you’ll just spends weeks getting damned as cobwebbed racists seeking to impose a bigots’ charter when you could be moving the meter with swing voters by announcing a federal programmne of transgendered bathroom construction. But, beyond the shrunken horizons of spinmeisters, the inability to roll back something like 18C says something profound about where we’re headed: a world where real, primal, universal rights — like freedom of expression — come a distant second to the new tribalism of identity-group rights. 
Read it all.
And don’t miss this Speccie event:
Joe Hockey, with Spectator publisher Andrew Neil 
The ‘world’s greatest treasurer’ Wayne Swan bequeathed a whopping national debt and federal deficit. How will his successor tackle these challenges in his first budget on May 13? Join the federal Treasurer Joe Hockey and Andrew Neil, publisher of The Spectator and BBC politics host, on Wednesday 23 April at the Doltone House, Hyde Park , Level 3, 181 Elizabeth Street, Sydney 
Hit the link to book. 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 ===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===

 
===
TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGIN’ Larry Pickering

Thought of a cartoon but it’s too hard to draw so I’ll just tell you about it:

About 20 Kiwi rams all crawling over each others’ backs trying to get to a peep-hole in the hedge to see two ewes getting it off in the next paddock. That’s the way it works doesn’t it?

Anyway, I’ve got a better idea and no hope of drawing it.

I reckon if we drag Tasmania and New Zealand into Bass Strait and moor them both up to South Australia, we could fence the three of them off and forget about them.

They could then secede as ‘The Great Southern Land of the Marxist Tree-Hugging Homosexual’.

They could develop their own tourist economy, saving us the problem of supporting them.

Imagine it, Christine Milne dawn tours to view the almost-extinct Southern Bell Frog, the Spotted Tailed Quoll and the Forestry Industry.

[We could agree to restock them with some extinct species they have killed off themselves, like small businesses and Tassie Aborigines.]

Then off for a spot of latte with Bob Brown and his mate, toasting your own wholemeal bread over a log fire. Followed by a trip to the Julia Gillard Hall of Fame with the ever-popular Andrew Wilkie.

After a luncheon hosted by Penny Wong, an exhilarating rainbow hunt before viewing same-sex group marriages over at the NZ sector, finally returning to the boutique Islington Hotel where a sumptuous vegetarian quiche spread awaits, followed by the ever-popular Clitlickin’ Cowgirl and Cocksuckin’ Cowboy complimentary drinks.

Then it’s time to retire with strict segregation arrangements... blokes on the first floor and sheilas on the second.

Oh well, I’m starting to feel a bit left out being normal.
===
A BOAT packed with 66 asylum-seekers managed to evade detection by border patrols and made it to the West Australian port of Geraldton.

Locals were stunned as the crowded fishing boat approached.

It is thought it came from Sri Lanka and had been at sea for around six weeks.

The boat's passengers were holding up a sign saying, ''We want to get to New Zealand”.

Mmmm. New Zealand eh? - Larry Pickering
===
You have embarrassed us in front of the world.
He, not only clearly hates the American way...he also hates our closest friends....the British.

"Obama’s absence meant he was upstaged by the presence of F. W. de Klerk,former President of South Africa, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Italy’s Prime Minister, Mario Monti, and Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, just to name a few state leaders who decided that Lady Thatcher was worth honoring.

The leading chief-of-state who attended today’s memorial was Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Today was the first time the Queen of Great Britain attended the funeral of a prime minister since Sir Winston Churchill passed away forty-eight years ago.

The Obama Administration did, however, send a formal delegation to the funeral of Socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died last month."

(Jim)>
===
April 18: Good Friday (Christianity, 2014); Independence Day inZimbabwe (1980)
Damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
===
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” - 1 Corinthians 1:18
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel."
Hebrews 12:24
Reader, have you come to the blood of sprinkling? The question is not whether you have come to a knowledge of doctrine, or an observance of ceremonies, or to a certain form of experience, but have you come to the blood of Jesus? The blood of Jesus is the life of all vital godliness. If you have truly come to Jesus, we know how you came--the Holy Spirit sweetly brought you there. You came to the blood of sprinkling with no merits of your own. Guilty, lost, and helpless, you came to take that blood, and that blood alone, as your everlasting hope. You came to the cross of Christ, with a trembling and an aching heart; and oh! what a precious sound it was to you to hear the voice of the blood of Jesus! The dropping of his blood is as the music of heaven to the penitent sons of earth. We are full of sin, but the Saviour bids us lift our eyes to him, and as we gaze upon his streaming wounds, each drop of blood, as it falls, cries, "It is finished; I have made an end of sin; I have brought in everlasting righteousness." Oh! sweet language of the precious blood of Jesus! If you have come to that blood once, you will come to it constantly. Your life will be "Looking unto Jesus." Your whole conduct will be epitomized in this--"To whom coming." Not to whom I have come, but to whom I am always coming. If thou hast ever come to the blood of sprinkling, thou wilt feel thy need of coming to it every day. He who does not desire to wash in it every day, has never washed in it at all. The believer ever feels it to be his joy and privilege that there is still a fountain opened. Past experiences are doubtful food for Christians; a present coming to Christ alone can give us joy and comfort. This morning let us sprinkle our door-post fresh with blood, and then feast upon the Lamb, assured that the destroying angel must pass us by.

Evening

"We would see Jesus."
John 12:21
Evermore the worldling's cry is, "Who will show us any good?" He seeks satisfaction in earthly comforts, enjoyments, and riches. But the quickened sinner knows of only one good. "O that I knew where I might find Him !" When he is truly awakened to feel his guilt, if you could pour the gold of India at his feet, he would say, "Take it away: I want to find Him." It is a blessed thing for a man, when he has brought his desires into a focus, so that they all centre in one object. When he has fifty different desires, his heart resembles a mire of stagnant water, spread out into a marsh, breeding miasma and pestilence; but when all his desires are brought into one channel, his heart becomes like a river of pure water, running swiftly to fertilize the fields. Happy is he who hath one desire, if that one desire be set on Christ, though it may not yet have been realized. If Jesus be a soul's desire, it is a blessed sign of divine work within. Such a man will never be content with mere ordinances. He will say, "I want Christ; I must have him--mere ordinances are of no use to me; I want himself; do not offer me these; you offer me the empty pitcher, while I am dying of thirst; give me water, or I die. Jesus is my soul's desire. I would see Jesus!"
Is this thy condition, my reader, at this moment? Hast thou but one desire, and is that after Christ? Then thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven. Hast thou but one wish in thy heart, and that one wish that thou mayst be washed from all thy sins in Jesus' blood? Canst thou really say, "I would give all I have to be a Christian; I would give up everything I have and hope for, if I might but feel that I have an interest in Christ?" Then, despite all thy fears, be of good cheer, the Lord loveth thee, and thou shalt come out into daylight soon, and rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free.
===

Today's reading: 2 Samuel 1-2, Luke 14:1-24 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 2 Samuel 1-2

David Hears of Saul's Death
1 After the death of Saul, David returned from striking down the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days. 2 On the third day a man arrived from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and dust on his head. When he came to David, he fell to the ground to pay him honor.
3 "Where have you come from?" David asked him.
He answered, "I have escaped from the Israelite camp."
4 "What happened?" David asked. "Tell me."
"The men fled from the battle," he replied. "Many of them fell and died. And Saul and his son Jonathan are dead...."

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 14:1-24

Jesus at a Pharisee's House
1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" 4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
5 Then he asked them, "If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?" 6 And they had nothing to say....
===
Knowing Him - An Easter Devotional

JUSTIFIED!

…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood–to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished–he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. (Romans 3:23-27)
It is hard to overestimate the power of this one word: justified. Over the past twenty centuries Christians have periodically rediscovered this important truth. We keep forgetting it because we are so inclined to think that we can earn God’s favor if we just try hard enough. But, like the love of a good parent, God’s grace is something that we can never earn. God gladly gives it.
Justification is a word from the law courts, and what it means in the New Testament is that God, who is both Father and Judge, has said that we could be acquitted at court because of the sacrifice of Jesus.
Have you seen a defendant in a courtroom receive a verdict of “not guilty,” and then walk straight out of the courtroom, entirely free? It’s decisive because it’s a decision by an authority about a change of status.
This passage teaches that because of Jesus, we can be acquitted in the court of God’s law (even though we are guilty of breaking it), and walk out as free people. We are guilty (3:23). And Jesus voluntarily took the penalty of the world’s sin on his shoulders. There is justice in it all, and God offers justification to people who ought to be penalized (3:26).
Ponder This: What do you have to say to God, having walked out of the courtroom of his justice, a free person?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Resources
About The Author - Mel Lawrenz serves as minister at large for Elmbrook Church and leads The Brook Network. Having been in pastoral ministry for thirty years, the last decade as senior pastor of Elmbrook, Mel seeks to help Christian leaders engage with each other. Mel is the author of eleven books, the most recent for church leaders, Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement.
===
Lent=Devotions-Header
Today is Palm Sunday, when we commemorate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The excitement of the scene is tempered by the fact that very soon, the same crowds that hailed Jesus as King would be calling for his death.

Today's Scripture Reading: The Triumphal Entry, Luke 19:28-44
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 "Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' say, 'The Lord needs it.'"
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
34 They replied, "The Lord needs it."
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"
40 "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you."
In the other Gospels

The Triumphal Entry is described in all four of the Gospels. The above account is from the book of Luke; the links below will take you to the story as it's described in the other three Gospels:
Something to Think About

Read the Triumphal Entry story in all four Gospels. How is each account distinct from the others?
===
There is no new Lent reading today; today is a catch-up day. If you've kept up with the daily readings so far, congratulations! If you've fallen behind, here are the readings from the last week in case you want to go back and catch up:

Monday: John 1-2
Tuesday: John 3-4
Wednesday: John 5-6
Thursday: John 7-8
Friday: John 9-10
Saturday: John 11-12

Have a blessed Sunday!


at

No comments:

Post a Comment