Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Wed Jan 18th Todays News

Pictures of a golden age in Afghanistan are telling. Soviets invaded in 1979 and that was a direct result of US foreign policy under President Carter of disengagement in the Middle East. The US lost a lot of expertise in espionage and needed to resort to more cheap and nasty techniques. It wasn't until Iraq when the CIA bought out Saddam's remnants that US acquired a more sophisticated potent reach. The Arab Spring began. But then Obama trashed that through misdirection in building a Cold War to solve his broad foreign policy vacuum. Some tut tut all of the US all the time. But between bouts of insane Democrat expediency which underlies their murderously bad policy, building has happened. But the Middle East is in a terrible state as Obama leaves office. As bad as when Clinton left office or Carter.

Filling the vacuum being left by Obama is Europe with France's Hollande playing the role of terrorist sympathiser. Neville Chamberlain never learned the full cost of his 'peace.' Hollande did not build a bridge for peace. Hollande prevented peace by declaring that terrorists need not stop killing to achieve some of their aims in securing territory that is not theirs.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
― Martin Luther King Jr.

 Greg Hunt has been made Health Minister by Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull. He had been the Environment Minister. Hunt had supported AGW alarmism. Expect health fads to be heavily promoted as Hunt faces the problem of Australians living longer head on. Hunt will have Turnbull's full support, until he doesn't. Turnbull, Hunt, Bishop and Shorten have promoted the AGW alarmism which has taken over $1.5 trillion each year from the world's poorest, to feed entitled rich AGW activists. There is no solution for the environment which they try to deny plant food. They simply take food away from starving people and claim they are instead denying oil rich.

Meanwhile I am entitled to subsidies on my medication. I can't afford it otherwise. I could if I had a job, but the corrupt powers have prevented that. I'm very lucky for my friends. But the way Chemist Warehouse arranges things is difficult. Their cashiers follow orders given by their pharmacists. Only their pharmacists are not always on top of orders. I saw a wheelchair customer harangue a cashier saying "I've never had to pay before. I simply get it packaged by you and go." The cashier shrugged and complied. I'm not that aggressive. I queried a Jardiance expense last month. The cashier called a pharmacist and said "That is what it cost." But this month's order was unaffordable for me. The pharmacist came by and told me that Jardiance was subsidised too. Suddenly a $200 order became $30. And I was going to get a $32 refund for last month. 

 But, to get the $32 refund, I needed to got to Centrelink/Medicare. At the office I needed to produce ID and documentation. Then I needed to sign a declaration claiming I was at fault for not providing my credentials with the overpayment. I will need to wait weeks for bureaucrats to stamp the documents. It is almost as if Hunt has been Health Minister for years. 
=== from 2016 ===
One of my sisters was born on this day, and died on Valentines Day 13 years later. Pamela is a study in modern healthcare, illustrating why we need government cuts to services to prosper. She was born in 1965. Her umbilical cord entangled her neck and she was slow to breathe. For the first three years, she was thought to be developmentally slow. But that wasn't it. She had kidney disease and bowel issues. Kidney disease meant dialysis, which was performed at Albert Einstein teaching hospital in NYC. She became sicker and sicker, and missed terms of elementary school. At about the age of nine she had to have a colostomy bag. And then at twelve she got the opportunity of a used but functioning kidney. But her body rejected it. And soon after she gave up, and died. Pam could have lived on, but the effort was too much. Her home life was terribly dysfunctional. It isn't the job of government to decide how their population lives. They can't save everyone. And if expensive medical service means that many people live in poverty without decent infrastructure, then priorities are skew. I'm grateful for my sister's life. But not for her intense pain. 
=== from 2015 ===
Christianity is not impotent, but one would not know that to witness believers cut down in the Middle East and their impotent leaders struggling to find a coherent message. According to hand wringers from Gosford Anglican it is punishment for ending the carbon dioxide tax or voting in a conservative government. Why is there pain in the world? Christian leaders seem to say there is pain because people are not having their needs met by hashtags, we need more hashtags. Christian leaders, with few exceptions like Pope Francis, Brian Houston, Rick Warren are not pointing to God. But the role of the church is not secular political. There is a spiritual dimension to evil that needs to be addressed, but there is a secular and political angle the church is not equipped to prosecute. That demarcation is important, and so soldiers have died fighting for their nation, and they have served while being from any of many diverse faiths. And Christians serve and Christians die for their faith. It is ok for a Christian to die. They leave with hope. And blood cries out. A Christian is free to prosecute their service to God to the best of their ability. Or, they can be difficult and impotent hand wringers obstructing others and delving in politics they don't understand 's Tim Costello and Fred Nile have been.

Islam's hierarchy is more fractured than Christianity's. It isn't hard, apparently, for someone to get an Islamic credential. Piers Akerman has made fun of one Saudi Mohammad Saleh Al Minjed who has placed a fatwah on children building snowmen. But to be fair it is no less coherent than many of the utterings of Westboro Baptist. And not as murderous as former cleric, the corrupt Ayatollah Khomeini who profited with political power for his 'fatwah for hire' speeches. But the link between Islam and terror is undeniable. The terrorists claim it and the leaders fail to deny it, or often support it. It should not be the case that those with a small knowledge of Islam know where clerical Islamic leaders are wrong on articles of faith. But many do know more.

Today is the birthday of PFB and Mary McMahon. PFB was born in '65 and died in '78. MM was born in 1919, and died in 2014. At age 95, Mary was a committed Christian who clung to Jesus and lived gracefully as a result. But while one is mortal and will die, their love goes on. 
Jason Fong Gosh Islam, so many ridiculous views from Left to Right. I'm more to the Right on this but not completely anti-Islam. Every religion has its extremists, but why are so many violent acts committed in the name of Islam compared to any other religion in recent times? It is true that Muslims should not have to apologise for nutters committing terrorism in the name of their religion, but if 4000 protestors can rock up to protest against Israel, and hundreds against the Mohammad cartoons in central Sydney, surely it can be expected that even just a third of that number could turn up to protest against the Lindt and Charlie Hebdo slaughters in the West? A real pity because there are many good and law-abiding Muslims who aren't stepping up or at least, seem to be drowned out by the more articulate denialist voices who know the power of the microphone.
From 2014
Many are reliant on the Royal Commission into institutionalised sexual abuse to show their wounds, and let the healing begin. As crimes go, it is pernicious, with victims losing their voice in the community, as well as quality of life. Which is why it is disappointing that a focus has been placed on the Catholic Church and the claims of a detective who has an agenda. The Catholic Church has terrible stories of abuse, but not more so than other institutions which care for children. It could be argued that the Catholic church is in fact cleaner than other organisations that are similar. One glaring international example is the PLO, which seems to have UN approval in abusing children. Or North Korea. The profile of the detective's activity also calls into question the entire police force's management. It is unprofessional at best. And so those waiting for the Royal Commission to hear them, must wait for the incompetent to stop their obstructions. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Working very hard to deny justice is the Overland, which refuses to publish conservatives. I wouldn't subscribe to Overland, but my taxes pay for it, so I have no choice. I am reminded of when I was asked to start a business, and told I could get off unemployment, get assistance to further my education and not have to have an income test. I applied, but when I told them I would be starting a conservative email subscription I was refused, because, as I was told, it needed to be for the entire community. 

It is summer and very warm. But the projected highs have failed to materialise. The reason for the heatwave has nothing to do with global warming, but is to do with a correctable problem of a bone dry desert in central Australia. The sun heats the land, and the hot air disperses the heat out at sea. If we flooded central Australia with something like a Bradfield scheme we could see an end to the heat waves. 

Persons of Interest on SBS, highlighting how ASIO tracked communists in the past shows an ASIO that worked. It is admitted by the communists observed that they wanted violent overthrow of the government of the day. But you wouldn't know it watching the program. I am reminded of a movie highlighting the paranoid nature of the CIA operative who founded their counter insurgency work. He had believed that the communists in the cold war infiltrated the highest levels of Western Society. Records show they had.
Historical perspective on this day
In 350, General Magnentius deposed Roman Emperor Constans and proclaimed himself Emperor. 474, Seven-year-old Leo II succeeded his maternal grandfather Leo I as Byzantine emperor. He died ten months later. 532, Nika riots in Constantinople failed. 1126, Emperor Huizong abdicated the Chinese throne in favour of his son Emperor Qinzong. 1486, King Henry VII of England married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. 1535, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru. 1562, Pope Pius IVreopened the Council of Trent for its third and final session. 1591, King Naresuan of Siamkilled Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, for which this date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day. 1670, Henry Morgan captured Panama.

In 1701, Frederick I crowned himself King of Prussia in Königsberg. 1778, James Cook was the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the "Sandwich Islands". 1788, the first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrived at Botany Bay. 1866, Wesley College, Melbourne was established. 1871, Wilhelm I of Germany was proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles (France) towards the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The empire was known as the Second Reich to Germans. 1884, Dr. William Price attempted to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom. 1886, modern hockey was born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. 1896, an X-ray generating machine was exhibited for the first time by H.L. Smith.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States. 1911, Eugene B. Ely landed on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco Bay, the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. 1913, First Balkan War: A Greek flotilla defeated the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece. 1915, Japan issued the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia. 1916, a 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri. 1919, World War I: The Paris Peace Conferenceopened in Versailles, France. Also 1919, Ignacy Jan Paderewski became Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland. Also 1919, Bentley Motors Limited was founded.

In 1941, World War II: British troops launched a general counter-offensive against Italian East Africa. 1943, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. 1944, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosted a jazz concert for the first time. The performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridgeand Jack Teagarden. Also 1944, World War II: Soviet forces liberated Leningrad, effectively ending a three-year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad. 1945, World War II: Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army. Also 1945, World War II: Liberation of Krakow, Poland by the Red Army. 1955, Chinese Civil War: Battle of Yijiangshan was fought. 1958, Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian National Hockey League player, made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. 1960, Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashed into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 aboard, the third fatal Capital Airlines crash in as many years. 1967, Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler", were convicted of numerous crimes and were sentenced to life imprisonment. 1969, United Airlines Flight 266 crashed into Santa Monica Bay killing all 32 passengers and six crew members.

1974, a Disengagement of Forces agreement was signed between the Israeli and Egyptiangovernments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War. 1976, Lebanese Christian militias overran Karantina, Beirut, killing at least 1,000. 1977, scientists identified a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. Also 1977, Australia's worst rail disaster occurred at Granville, Sydney killing 83. Also 1977, SFR Yugoslavia's Prime minister, Džemal Bijedić, his wife and six others were killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1978, the European Court of Human Rights found the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. Also 1978, the roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center collapsed after a significant snowfall. 1981, Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachuted off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs). 1983, the International Olympic Committeerestored Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family.

In 1990, Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession in an FBIsting. 1993, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was officially observed for the first time in all 50 states. 1994, the Cando event, a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claimed to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute. 1997, in northwest Rwanda, Hutumilitia members killed three Spanish aid workers, three soldiers and seriously wounded one other. Also 1997, Børge Ousland of Norway became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. 2000, the Tagish Lake meteorite impacted the Earth. 2002, Sierra Leone Civil War was declared over. 2003, a bushfire killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia. 2005, the Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, was unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France 2007, the strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years killed 14 people and Germany saw the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Hurricane Kyrill caused at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe. 2009, Gaza War: Hamas announced they would accept Israeli Defense Forces's offer of a ceasefire, ending the assault. 2012, a series of coordinated actions took place in protest against Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act.
=== Publishing News ===
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.
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, 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 a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space
Happy birthday and many happy returns Lyn Vo, PFB and Mary MacMahon. Born on the same day, across the years, along with 
Emperor Huizong
You gave your chair up for a Song? You have set your capital. You told China what you wanted. You broke the colour barrier. You don't talk, you sting. Let's party. 
    Deaths
    ===
    Tim Blair





    THE USUAL SUSPECT

    Someone – or something – is slashing shark nets off the NSW coast. Who or what could possibly be responsible? The Greens have a theory.
    18 Jan  

    DREAM JOBS VANISH

    “Hillary Clinton one step away from snaring her dream job,” the ABC raved on election day. “Take a look at Hillary Clinton’s journey to the White House.”
    18 Jan  

    ELEVATION ABOMINATION TERMINATION DESTINATION

    Attention all readers with access to effective long-range weaponry (which I’m guessing is a majority of this site’s readers). Skywhale is drifting back to Australia. Be armed and ready.
    18 Jan  

    OUT OF HIS LEAGUE

    Barack Obama dares challenge the greats: President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sydney Morning Heraldcolumnist Peter FitzSimons.
    18 Jan
    ===


    DANCERS WITHOUT ANSWERS

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (2:48pm)

    The dance is settled in Western Australia: 
    Marrugeku – Broome’s internationally acclaimed dance-theatre company – is presenting a new work on a major global issue. The performance interprets climate change from an Indigenous perspective…
    It’s about the Kimberley region in northwest WA, which Dalisa Pigram believes is under threat. 
    Oh, absolutely. Just look at how fragile the place is. Why, it’s a wonder the whole joint hasn’t turned to dust and blown away. 
    The Broome-born-and-bred woman said that neither she nor her troupe pretended to have the answer to environmental imbalance. 
    “So what’s the point then?” asks reader Noddy, reasonably enough. Watch the clip, particularly the scene that “portrays the impact of climate change on rural communities”. Apparently it makes rural communities twirl about for a time and then fall to the floor.
    UPDATE, via the Indomitable Snowman, PhD: 
    Armenia has come up with a formidable new defensive tactic. Plans are underway to teach Armenian military cadets traditional folk dancing as a way to raise morale and also preserve the country’s rich cultural heritage. 
    And to ward off climate change. It’s a triple threat.
    ===

    HOVERBLAST

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (2:36pm)

    It’s a fake – here’s the original video – but it’s an impressive fake. Note the dust flurry expertly added adjacent to the blast site.
    ===

    HAIL GAYLE

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (2:34pm)

    Further to Chris Gayle’s defamation action against Fairfax: 
    Fairfax Media could be facing a legal claim worth millions of dollars amid the fallout from cricketer Chris Gayle’s now infamous interview with Ten’s Mel McLaughlin.
    The day after the interview The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times newspapers printed a front-page account from an unnamed woman claiming she accidentally walked into West Indies changing room during last year’s World Cup looking for a sandwich, but was confronted by Gayle in a towel. The story quoted her claiming he pulled down the towel to partially expose his genitalia while allegedly asking her: “Are you looking for this?”
    Gayle is suing the papers and last week lodged proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court. The Australian understands the damages claim could be particularly costly for Fairfax as Gayle will also be claiming money lost from any sponsorship and endorsements losses. Gayle’s legal team is understood to be arguing the Fairfax allegations have the potential to do much greater damage to Gayle’s reputation and earnings than his behaviour during the boundary interview …
    It’s also understood that Fairfax never put the allegations to Gayle directly before publication. 
    That last point could be crucial. Just ask our friends at Crikey.
    ===

    UNDERSTANDING THAT WHICH CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (12:27pm)

    Western governments spend billions on counter-terrorism measures which aim to anticipate and prevent future attacks. For the most part, except when counter-terrorism measures are needlessly extended to cover the likes of elderly white women so as not to appear discriminatory, this spending is obviously worthwhile.
    Western governments also spend huge amounts attempting to analyse the attitudes and mindsets of current and potential terrorists. They seek ways to understand the pre-detonation mentality of suicide bombers and other murderous extremists. They try to work out what, besides a semtex ignition timer, makes them tick.
    Every cent of this money is completely wasted, because Islamic terrorists are idiots.
    (Continue reading Understanding.)
    ===

    DADDY ISSUES

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (12:23pm)

    USA Today reports: 
    Young women could make history by helping elect the first woman president, but many of them are turning to the oldest white guy in the field.
    Sen. Bernie Sanders, 74, a Vermont independent, will head into the Democratic presidential debate Sunday with a 19-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton, 50% to 31%, among Democratic and independent women ages 18 to 34, according to a recent USA TODAY/Rock the Vote poll. 
    The old guy and the nearly-as-old Clinton face each other in a few minutes. Watch if you dare.
    UPDATE. The Drudge Report:

    ===

    NOTES TAKEN

    Tim Blair – Monday, January 18, 2016 (12:12pm)

    I’m a former sports reporter, a role that lasted until people became aware of my own pathetic sporting history. Elite athletes prefer being interviewed by someone who didn’t need books and night classes so he could learn how to run.
    Still, certain habits remain. I can’t watch sport, any sport, without taking notes. This occurs even though I’m not planning to write anything about whatever event I’m watching. My whole house is full of notebooks and pads crammed with cryptic messages to myself about long-forgotten games and contests. “Three goals left foot one right – St Kilda,” reads one from 2011.
    Observe that I’ve omitted the player’s name, which might point to another reason I was shifted from the sports desk.
    Other notes are possibly more illuminating. Forget the 300-plus sixes that have been hit in this year’s edition of the Big Bash League. Divide each game up into five-over brackets and more than 40 of those brackets feature consecutive six-run overs. The lowest amount scored in a completed five-over bracket? Just 17. Highest? 76.
    It’s all very Aspergery, I know, but I’m not alone in this. Some of us note nerds can even be helpful.
    (Continue reading Notes Taken.)
    ===

    How does Clive Palmer excuse this?

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2016 (11:19am)

    The ABC earlier reported Mr Palmer as claiming his donations had ended the carbon tax, saving his refinery $24 million a year. 
    ===

    The Bolt Report and my future

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2016 (8:18am)

    A report in The Australian today says Channel Ten does not want The Bolt Report any more.
    This is not true.
    The issue is that my show is produced by News Corp, and several options are being considered which I can’t discuss and which I am thinking about. If anything, they involve doing more TV, not less.
    My preference meanwhile is to stop working seven days a week, as I have done for the past five years. Enough with that. Just what I will end up doing and in what form is something I am thinking about at long leisure as I saunter around the country filming a documentary for the ABC, something which has turned out to be such fun that I wouldn’t mind more of the same.
    One liberating factor is that I now don’t feel so much that I have a dog in the next election fight. I can do other things without feeling I am deserting. Or am I wrong? One more thing to ponder up here in Arnhem Land. Meanwhile, back to my copy of Enemies of Promise.  
    ===

    A study of warmist muddle

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2016 (6:07am)

    The claim by Stanford University:

    A new study reveals that the evidence for a recent pause in the rate of global warming lacks a sound statistical basis. The finding highlights the importance of using appropriate statistical techniques and should improve confidence in climate model projections…The Stanford scientists say their findings should go a long way toward restorIng confidence in the basic science and climate computer models that form the foundation for climate change predictions. 
    The ugly truth about this spectacularly dodgy study, as described by Tony Thomas.  
    ===

    God needs to start smiting these idiots

    Piers Akerman – Saturday, January 17, 2015 (10:23pm)

    ABOUT now, God must surely be considering sacking his senior management and public ­relations people and wondering how to get his business back to basics.

    Icon Arrow Continue reading 'God needs to start smiting these idiots'
    ===

    FINNBAT FIRED

    Tim Blair – Sunday, January 18, 2015 (5:01pm)

    Behold a compassionate head-tilt so extreme that it must be almost painful. Delightfully, our tilter turns out to be a Finnish woman who was fired from her youth worker job in Boston because she chained herself to a concrete-filled barrel in protest over alleged police racism.
    The protest, against events that didn’t actually occur in Boston, pointlessly delayed traffic for hours. “As mayor, you have to make tough, difficult decisions,” said Boston mayor Martin J. Walsh of the women’s sacking. “This is not a difficult decision.” 
    ===

    #OUTOFWORK

    Tim Blair – Sunday, January 18, 2015 (11:46am)

    Twitter claims yet another job. CNN veteran Jim Clancy joins dozens of others removed from the workforce by the efficient social media/employment reduction service.
    (Via Iowahawk) 
    ===


    ===


    Twelve years ago bad government by the ACT in which back burning had not been done, cost numerous lives and houses.
    ===


    Conservatives are not united like left wingers, they have a diversity of opinion on things and generally need a leader to line them up. Conservatism is best seen as a reaction against change. They tend to be that way because their experience tells them that things that work are useful .. so under Keating Hawke governments real wages fell 1.9% pa on average, under Howard they rose 2.4 % pa on average .. which isn't much in year but over twenty years makes a big difference.

    Jason Fong I wouldn't say conservatives are a reaction against change but more a view that we should preserve the fundamentals of the system that have kept society functioning well and any change should come gradually after carefully thinking things through.

    John Tran No, off with their heads! Revolution! For a better world! (..Sips more latte and chucks hissy fit at waitress for coffee not made from gm free soy.)

    Jason Fong Actually inner-city lefties are the most vehemently conservative - they don't tolerate anything that challenges their orthodoxy. Try building a McDonalds in Newtown or Fitzroy and they go bezerk. Conservatism is more an attitude or philosophy than a system of government. I'm conservative on some issues and radical on others.


    Conservatism as a political and social philosophy...
    EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

    John Tran You are right.. the political definition of conservatism is different.. it is a mixture of economic and social conservative ideals which seek practical policy use. Lefties are conservative for everything they are getting for free and from other people's money 

    Jason Fong Yes I suppose there's a difference between conservatism in a general sense and political conservatism. Lefties do think that their long established status quo of unlimited govt spending and welfare has worked well and therefore resist change. Just look at the Medicare kerfuffle. It's all subjective===


    ===


    You are allowed to give up on life, but when you finish feeling sorry for yourself, we can do this thing together. Polgara.
    ===


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    ===

    Has global warming hype made us weather pussies?

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (10:00am)

    The Sydney Morning Herald’s environment editor, warmist Peter Hannam, beat up Sydney’s ”heatwave” two days ago
    The huge heatwave searing most of south-eastern Australia will again lap against Sydney’s western and southern flanks on Friday, with no real relief expected for most of the city until Monday.
    Has global warming turned us into warming pussies? Yes, out at Penrith the temperature touched 39. But for the rest, Sydney seemed to have a perfectly normal week of summer weather:
    Reader Andrew says Channel 9 was even worse:
    Ch 9 Sydney talking it up (and not understanding the concept of Urban Heat Island). “Parts of Sydney swelter in its 4th consecutive day of extreme heat.” Apparently it was hot in Penrith in the far west. 
    These “consecutive days of extreme heat” have been 28, 29, 28 and 28. In Sydney. It’s January. 
    It’s like some news outlets want the heat to seem ever hotter than it is.
    UPDATE
    Reader Steve noted something similar in Adelaide on Thursday:
    Hi Andrew, all morning we were told by the collective news broadcasts that Adelaide would have the hottest temperature on record. The ABC news pair discussed the design of our houses not suitable for climate change, and the impending doom for us all.   
    Surprisingly, no record was broken. The ninemsn headline below should read, Climate Change Cult Wrong.
    Adelaide misses out on record high ninemsn staff with AAP 6:24pm January 16, 2014 
    Adelaide has fallen short of a record top temperature but South Australia has still sweltered through the fourth day of a forecast five-day heatwave 
    The city was tipped to have a maximum of 46C on Thursday, very close to the record of 46.1C set on January 12, 1939. But the top was 44.2C with the mercury dipping to 42.5C by 5pm.... 
    The five days at 40C or above will make it the city’s third worst heatwave on record.
    ===

    Warmist Schmidt bets very small

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (9:40am)

    Professor Brian Schmidt takes up a bet:
    IN his article ”Mother nature suggests the party’s over for IPCC” ..., Maurice Newman ...  challenges readers with a quote from eminent climate scientist Richard Lindzen about him being “willing to take bets that the global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now”, and then asks: “Any takers?"… Mr Newman, I am prepared to put $10,000 on the line that the Earth’s average surface air temperature in a three-year average (2013-15 compared with 2033-35) will be warmer 20 years from now.
    Jo Nova notes how modest that wager really is:
    In 2007 the IPCC seemed to be 90% confident that the world would warm by about 0.4 degrees over the next two decades. Now Brian Schmidt braves up to offer a bet of “anything above zero”. Is he really a sceptic? It appears so.
    (Thanks to reader James.) 
    ===

    Let’s laugh at Max laughing at ASIO

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (9:04am)

    Max Ogden gloats in the (uncritical) Age:
    The four-part series Persons of Interest on SBS has taken me back to the days when I was put under surveillance by ASIO agents. As has been noted by various academics, including David McKnight, ASIO’s incompetence was legendary. This point was only emphasised after my partner and I spent a few days in the National Archives reading room going through the 25 folders that ASIO had kept on me. At times we had to contain ourselves from laughing. Up to 90 per cent was either wrong or so mundane as to be meaningless. 
    Silly spies, bothering themselves about harmless Max, who continues:
    A lifelong labour movement activist and union official, including at the ACTU, I spent 25 years in the (quite legal) Communist Party, much of that time in the state and national leadership. Virtually everything I was involved with was on the public record…
    A note in my file suggests that operatives should be honest about their mistakes and learn from them, but that such surveillance was important.  However, such activities, without proper checks and balances, did immeasurable harm to law-abiding citizens. 
    What “immeasurable harm to law-abiding citizens”?
    And if mistakes should be confessed, where is good old Max’s apologia? This is, after all, a man who devoted himself to a totalitarian creed that had already enslaved tens of millions of people. This is a man who helped lead a party which long pledged loyalty to the Stalinist Soviet Union.
    (Ogden also joined Julia Gillard’s Socialist Alliance before finding a home at Melbourne University’s Foundation for Sustainable Economic Development is his own march through the institutions. The McKnight he quotes is another former communist functionary given grants and a university job, teaching future journalists.)
    If we must laugh at mistakes, let’s laugh at Max Ogden’s. They are far more serious.
    UPDATE
    A reality check from Gerard Henderson:
    As Mark Aarons documents in his 2010 book The Family File, the CPA received funding and direction from Moscow and CPA members operated openly in the trade union movement and secretly in the Labor Party. He is the son of one-time leading CPA functionary Laurie Aarons. 
    In his 1993 memoir What’s Left, Eric Aarons conceded that if the CPA had come to power in Australia it would have killed its opponents.
    ===

    A church accuser accused

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (8:29am)

     I had my doubts from the start about the ABC’s star witness for the prosecution of the Catholic Church - a witness of the kind that tends to thrive in a witch-hunt. As I noted last year:
    Chief Inspector Peter Fox was the ABC’s star witness in the case against the Catholic Church, and had his every claim taken at face value. 
    But I thought there was something just too glib, too eager, about him. He seemed to nurse a contempt for Catholics.  I have from the start regarded his evidence with suspicion, not least after he kept referring to Cardinal Pell as “Mr Pell”.
    And now: 
    A FAIRFAX reporter who spent years working with the detective at the centre of a NSW government inquiry into Catholic church child abuse said yesterday the policeman might have been motivated by a personal agenda against his colleagues. The reporter, Joanne McCarthy of The Newcastle Herald, moved to distance herself from the detective, Peter Fox, telling the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry that “my job, as he sees it, is to criticise the NSW Police”. 
    The inquiry was established after Detective Chief Inspector Fox publicly claimed he was “ordered to stand down” from the investigation into an alleged cover-up relating to a pedophile priest, Denis McAlinden… 
    The officer in charge of Strike Force Lantle, Jeffrey Little, told the hearing that many of Chief Inspector Fox’s other public claims, including that the investigation was “set up to fail”, were untrue. 
    “ . . . the mere fact that he’s ridden to glory on a saddle of lies at this point is a concern for me,” Sergeant Little said…
    The lie:
    DCI Fox told the inquiry he intentionally disobeyed an order from the Newcastle commander Max Mitchell to bring all his investigation documents… 
    “So you lied to the police at the meeting?” she said. PETER FOX...: Oh absolutely yes, I deliberately kept them myself
    More:
    JAMELLE WELLS: Peter Fox was cross-examined by Wayne Roser, the barrister for a number of police officers appearing at the inquiry. He accused Peter Fox of breaching a suppression order by tweeting information about witnesses....
    Fox was remarkably chummy with journalists, not least on the ABC: 
    The NSW Police Force has painted whistleblower Peter Fox as a troublemaker who passed on confidential documents to journalists to undermine the sex abuse investigation he was excluded from in 2010 in the hope he could write a book about it… He read out emails from Inspector Fox to ABC journalist Suzanne Smith asking to drip feed information saying “it will only give us longer coverage"… 
    The inspector denied his answers were produced or that he had written a book.  
    Yesterday:
    WHISTLEBLOWER policeman Peter Fox used emails sent in his wife’s name to discuss a confidential criminal investigation with a newspaper reporter after being banned from talking to the journalist himself. 
    And it gets worse:
    THE detective doesn’t pause before he says it. Interviewed on the ABC’s Lateline program that will trigger the royal commission, he describes a female victim of child abuse who once contacted him, saying, “The only police officer I will speak to is Peter Fox”. 
    This week, freshly released evidence from a state inquiry shows the woman denies ever saying these words.
    Worse, the victim tells the inquiry, Detective Chief Inspector Fox in fact called her, using a telephone number provided by a newspaper reporter. He later emailed her witness statement to the journalist, without consent, who published parts of it, again without permission.
    In an email tendered to the state inquiry the victim, who cannot be named, writes, “I should not have been used this way ... I have been ‘abused’ once again.”
    Since that Lateline broadcast in November 2012, others have also challenged claims made by the man once dubbed the “hero cop"…
    Broadly speaking, Fox makes two landmark claims on Lateline; that the Catholic Church covered up child sex abuse by priests, and that he was “ordered to stand down” from the police investigation of one such pedophile.
    So potentially significant are these, a NSW Special Commission of Inquiry is established to investigate. The first major challenge to the detective’s evidence comes on the very first day.
    Giving evidence, Fox says the Nationals MP and former NSW policeman Troy Grant told him a “Catholic mafia” existed within the police “who were attempting to discourage investigations into clergy”.
    Grant, the inquiry hears, has given sworn evidence contradicting this, saying he never said, nor believed, such a thing…
    His “irrefutable” statement on Lateline that Catholic priests destroyed evidence of sexual crimes against children turns out, the inquiry hears, to refer to a single case of adult pornography once owned by a priest.
    Embarrassing, certainly, but not illegal, nor evidence of any crime.
    Nor, according to police evidence to the inquiry, was Fox “ordered to stand down” from the strike force set up to investigate the alleged cover-up of abuse committed by a Hunter Valley priest, Denis McAlinden.     He was never on this strike force, the inquiry hears. Instead, he pursued his own private investigation of McAlinden, with his bosses unaware what he was doing.
    How did Peter Fox come to be such a media hero?
    Beware the stars in a witch hunt. 
    ===

    Indonesia’s frigate should stop the boats, not our navy

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (7:52am)

    Professor Tim Lindsay says Indonesia’s navy is too small to stop the boats :
    On its own assessment, the Indonesian navy probably only has about 25 working, seaworthy ships available for operations at any one time and it has no coastguard. Indonesia’s obvious strategic sea defence weakness is one reason it has been so reluctant a partner with Australia in our efforts to stop people smuggling. It simply lacks the practical capacity to do much about it.
    But Indonesia’s navy seems big enough to stop Australia from stopping the boats:
    Jakarta has demanded an immediate halt to the Abbott government’s asylum-seeker turnbacks policy and announced it will send a frigate to bolster its southern defences after Australian ships repeatedly breached Indonesian territorial waters.
    ===

    Someone must be top dog, so worry if it’s not the US

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (7:42am)

    The Left is getting the relatively weaker and more timid US military power many wanted, but I doubt this will bring the blessings they vaguely assumed:
    Three years after the Pentagon said it was de-emphasizing Europe in favor of the Asia-Pacific region, Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III said this week that U.S. dominance has weakened in the shadow of a more aggressive China. 
    “Our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing, no question,” Adm. Locklear, chief of U.S. Pacific Command, said Wednesday at a naval conference in Virginia.
    Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation defines the problem:
    The… assumption is that we can somehow mold China into being ourselves — that China will see its interests as somehow congruent and coincident with those of the United States, and therefore China will assume the mantle of regional provider of public goods. But this is a remarkable assumption, especially in light of recent Chinese behavior. China is not interested in providing security for everyone and, frankly, not even for anyone other than itself.
    ===

    A second generation more dangerous than their parents

    Andrew Bolt January 18 2014 (7:24am)

    We must change our old assumptions about immigration - that the second generation will be more assimilated than the first:
    AMIRA Karroum ... grew up a “sweet and caring” daughter on the Gold Coast beaches, where her dad ran a kebab shop along the Glitter Strip. 
    To the people who knew her from those days, she would have seemed the unlikeliest terrorist - they would never have thought of her as a religious martyr.
    But in the months and weeks leading up to her death last week in a bullet-ridden house in war-torn Syria alongside her husband Yusuf Ali, her Facebook posts reveal a young woman heading for a dangerous future… It is believed as many as 205 Australians have travelled to the battlefield that is Syria since the conflict began in 2011 - part of a contingent of about 11,000 foreign fighters answering what they see as Allah’s call to battle…
    Despite her education at one of the country’s top Anglican schools, St Hilda’s in Brisbane, Karroum was always a Muslim - but it was not until a couple of years ago that she started to wear a burqa. On her Facebook page, she described her work as a “Slave of Allah” and her posts became increasingly extreme, condemning America, the war on terror and even democracy.
    “Today I witnessed hijabi girls promoting democracy with their T-shirts and their stupid voting papers. Kuffars! May Allah guide these strangers!’’ she posted on federal election day last September.
    After wild Muslim riots in Sydney’s Hyde Park in 2012 she called for more violence, urging Facebook followers to: “F… the police! Smash the cop cars.”     On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, she posted: “Worst effing night. I’m proud of being a Muslim!!!!! 10 years of war in Afghanistan for two towers.”
    Islam, particularly as it is often preached today, makes mass immigration a riskier proposition for countries such as ours. How can our border watchers screen out radicals not yet born to those trying to get in? 
    ===
    THE MISSING PIECE IN THE GILLARD PUZZLE

    Some interesting information came to light this week, (from, um, let’s just say an impeccable source deep within the Labor Party, and I would give my right testicle to be able to tell you who). 

    I always wondered why the disastrous Julia Gillard was feted as ‘PM extraordinaire’ at the ALP National Conference by Big Bill Ludwig whose union she helped steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from.

    To quickly recap: In August of 1996 Gillard was discovered assisting to steal funds from her employer, Slater & Gordon’s, blue chip client, the AWU.

    Peter Gordon pulled Gillard in and asked her to explain on tape but apparently the explanation was lacking and Peter Gordon claims to have sacked her on the spot.

    S & G Partner, Bernard Murphy, who was also involved in the scam, was asked to leave at the same time. (Later as PM, Gillard promoted him to the Bench of the Federal Court.)

    Bill Ludwig was livid and called in the cops to find the funds and lay charges. He also commenced Federal Court proceedings to recover $114,000 that Gillard’s lover, Bruce Wilson, had paid himself and others in redundancy payments once he had realised the game was up.

    The Court duly ruled in favour of Ludwig’s application.

    This is where it gets interesting. Strangely, and despite the Court ruling, Ludwig made no attempt to recover the $114,000 from Wilson and others.

    Stranger still, although the AWU had sacked S & G and moved their account to the other bent Labor law firm Maurice Blackburn, who at the time employed lovers Roxon and Shorten, no attempt was made to recover the defrauded funds or to indict S & G, Gillard, Murphy or Wilson.

    In fact Police were so frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the supposed “victims”, they closed the file.

    Why? Why did the many “victims” of Gillard and Wilson (all except the AWU’s Bob Kernohan) suddenly want the matter shut down?

    Bill Shorten certainly wanted it shut down and even called in the heavies to bash Bob after he refused to accept the safe Melbourne seat of Melton as a pay-off.

    “You know, a lot of money changed hands around that time”, said my informant. “No, no I didn’t know that”, I said, sitting bolt upright. “Can you tell me about that?”

    “Well, Ludwig was given $60,000 in cash and others were given lesser amounts.”

    “By whom?”, I asked.

    “Who do you think? Wilson of course!”

    “Who were the others?” I asked. “I can’t say who, but let's just say a lot of money changed hands”, he said.

    I lit a rollie,“Let me get this straight, so AWU heavies, whose members were defrauded of hundreds of thousands, were silenced using those same defrauded funds? Do Vicpol know about this?”

    “You bet they do.”

    So now it makes sense... the missing piece of the puzzle! Shorten, Ludwig and others had, apparently inexplicably, shut down the police investigation because they had willingly become beneficiaries of the defrauded funds. (Although I have no direct evidence that Shorten himself was a recipient.)

    Of course Shorten has always been the “go to” man for corruption cover-ups.

    He went close to “burying” the $20 million Michael Williamson defrauded from HSU East branch members.

    Shorten savagely targeted and victimised whistleblower Kathy Jackson and sequestrated the Union to get his grubby hands on the books.

    Fortunately that didn’t work and Williamson, via a plea bargain (he accepted a charge of stealing a mere $1 million) is now facing a long jail sentence.

    The Bligh Government, before it was thrown out, handed unaccounted-for millions to Ludwig’s Queensland Racing.

    In 1999, Beattie’s Government privatised the TAB and sold it for the bargain basement price of $262 Million.

    Who they sold it to (the shareholders) reads like a who’s who of Labor crooks, including Queensland Racing’s Bob Bentley, who he himself admits is “likely” to spend some time with Her Majesty.

    Unitab now clears in excess of $100 million per year.

    Ludwig’s grifted dollars are converted to numbers and those numbers are converted to power.

    Power enabled the unholy alliance of Richo’s and Bob Carr’s NSW Right, Victoria’s Socialist Left and Ludwig’s QLD AWU to present us with a delightful three years of Julia Gillard.

    The list of who Julia duly repaid is a long one.

    Mafioso bosses ruled from their cells as indeed Labor luminaries intend to.

    ... and the disgustingly credentialled Bill Shorten has their next tick of approval.
    ===

    American Apparel uses mannequins with pubic hair to spark conversation about beauty
    www.news.com.au
    AMERICAN Apparel has sparked controversy with a window display of mannequins wearing lingerie with pubic hair, which has divided social media.

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    Smog in Beijing Is So Awful They Have to Show Sunlight on a Big Screen | TIME.com
    world.time.com
    In the airpocalypse, fake sunrises are a thing
    ===


    ===
    Peer review? Pal Review? Nepotism? When is it OK?
    The Australian Climate Sceptics Blog: Peer reviewed Magazine axed after Skeptic Paper Accepted.
    theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com
    All serious comments published after moderation.Comments should be polite, and respect all views.No bad language. Spam never makes it!
    ===
    Disney’s Blockbuster ‘Frozen’ Scores Points for Feminism—With Jewish Spirit
    Male reviewers who’ve been lukewarm about the Golden Globe-winning children’s movie have failed to understand its true spirit

    http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/159386/frozen-feminism-jewish-values
    www.tabletmag.com

    ===

    Why Ariel Sharon was important - Telegraph
    www.telegraph.co.uk
    Although tarnished by his military record, Ariel Sharon was the first Right-wing leader to grapple with Israel's great dilemma.

    I resent left wing commentators writing of schisms between conservatives and the "radical right" .. agree or disagree with what Sharon chose, he did not embrace the left. I am confident he did not set out to give away Jerusalem. - ed
    ===

    Israel summons UK and other EU envoys in diplomatic tit-for-tat - Telegraph
    www.telegraph.co.uk
    The row between Israel and the EU over settlements has provoked a fresh diplomatic spat

    ===

    BDS Movement and Freedom of Speech (Coldplay)
    www.youtube.com
    Despite Israel being the highest ranked country regarding freedom of press, speech and assembly in the volatile Middle East- North Africa region, academic gr...

    ===
    Washington versus Jerusalem
    www.jpost.com
    The Obama policy toward Israel has consistently proceeded from the assumption that the responsibility for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians lay entirely with Israel.
    ===

    My Right Word: Soars? Or Falls Flat?
    myrightword.blogspot.com

    ===
    Do those who depend on 'mainstream media,' know these ugly facts? Doubtful. Very doubtful, and that is pathetic. Imagine US schools in Texas or Arizona, and closings due to rocket attacks from Mexican terrorists. How would America respond? Would America do so by conceding to the Mexican government, for example, by releasing captured terrorists from their prisons? 

    Ashdod to close unfortified schools following rockets - Jpost 

    "Southern coastal city decides to call off studies for some 3,500 students following recent rocket fire from Gaza on nearby areas."

    Continue to the link for this story and others…...….http://paper.li/allysonchristy/1338794440

    Allyson’s Geo-Political Inspections
    paper.li
    Allyson’s Geo-Political Inspections, by Allyson Christy: Israel, The West and Political Islam

    ===
    After spending the last couple of weeks in Israel visiting my father, I got the urge to write this article. I'd really appreciate if you read it, it's not too long and I feel you will really enjoy reading it. Feel free to share it!

    you don't tweet much .. but the article you have written is accurate and wise. I don''t feel the US will ever elect a woman PM. But I hope they will elect Sarah Palin President .. ed
    ===
    Did you ever hear Washington rebuke Arab Palestinian Leadership when they bad mouth Washington ? … Neither Have I
    From doghouse to White House?
    www.jpost.com
    Moshe Ya’alon’s tirade against John Kerry this week resembled that of another general turned politician who risked America’s wrath – but lived to get back in its good books.
    ===

    The Not Quite Dead Sea
    www.israelnationalnews.com
    How a controversial international project could save the eighth wonder of the world.

    ===

    ZOA: US Anger At Ya'alon A Double Standard
    www.israelnationalnews.com
    Zionist Organization of America criticizes US administration for slamming Ya'alon's comments while silent on PA outrages.

    ===

    Netanyahu Slams EU 'Hypocrisy' on Settlements
    www.israelnationalnews.com
    'When did the EU call in the Palestinian ambassadors about incitement that calls for Israel's destruction?' Prime Minister asks.

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    Protests: 'We are in Oslo 3'
    www.israelnationalnews.com
    Protests erupt at main intersections across Israel against land swaps, negotiations with Palestinian Authority.
    ===
    ===
    “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.” - Philippians 2:14-16
    ===
    Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

    January 17: Morning

    "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion." -Revelation 14:1

    The apostle John was privileged to look within the gates of heaven, and in describing what he saw, he begins by saying, "I looked, and, lo, a Lamb!" This teaches us that the chief object of contemplation in the heavenly state is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." Nothing else attracted the apostle's attention so much as the person of that Divine Being, who hath redeemed us by his blood. He is the theme of the songs of all glorified spirits and holy angels. Christian, here is joy for thee; thou hast looked, and thou hast seen the Lamb. Through thy tears thine eyes have seen the Lamb of God taking away thy sins. Rejoice, then. In a little while, when thine eyes shall have been wiped from tears, thou wilt see the same Lamb exalted on his throne. It is the joy of thy heart to hold daily fellowship with Jesus; thou shalt have the same joy to a higher degree in heaven; thou shalt enjoy the constant vision of his presence; thou shalt dwell with him forever. "I looked, and, lo, a Lamb!" Why, that Lamb is heaven itself; for as good Rutherford says, "Heaven and Christ are the same thing;" to be with Christ is to be in heaven, and to be in heaven is to be with Christ. That prisoner of the Lord very sweetly writes in one of his glowing letters--"O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without thee, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have thee still, it would be a heaven to me, for thou art all the heaven I want." It is true, is it not, Christian? Does not thy soul say so?

    "Not all the harps above
    Can make a heavenly place,
    If God his residence remove,
    Or but conceal his face."

    All thou needest to make thee blessed, supremely blessed, is "to be with Christ."

    Evening

    "And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house." - 2 Samuel 11:2

    At that hour David saw Bathsheba. We are never out of the reach of temptation. Both at home and abroad we are liable to meet with allurements to evil; the morning opens with peril, and the shades of evening find us still in jeopardy. They are well kept whom God keeps, but woe unto those who go forth into the world, or even dare to walk their own house unarmed. Those who think themselves secure are more exposed to danger than any others. The armour-bearer of Sin is Self-confidence.

     David should have been engaged in fighting the Lord's battles, instead of which he tarried at Jerusalem, and gave himself up to luxurious repose, for he arose from his bed at eventide. Idleness and luxury are the devil's jackals, and find him abundant prey. In stagnant waters noxious creatures swarm, and neglected soil soon yields a dense tangle of weeds and briars. Oh for the constraining love of Jesus to keep us active and useful! When I see the King of Israel sluggishly leaving his couch at the close of the day, and falling at once into temptation, let me take warning, and set holy watchfulness to guard the door.

     Is it possible that the king had mounted his housetop for retirement and devotion? If so, what a caution is given us to count no place, however secret, a sanctuary from sin! While our hearts are so like a tinder-box, and sparks so plentiful, we had need use all diligence in all places to prevent a blaze. Satan can climb housetops, and enter closets, and even if we could shut out that foul fiend, our own corruptions are enough to work our ruin unless grace prevent. Reader, beware of evening temptations. Be not secure. The sun is down but sin is up. We need a watchman for the night as well as a guardian for the day. O blessed Spirit, keep us from all evil this night. Amen.

    ===


    Isaac 

    [Ī'zaac] he laugheth or laughing one.

    The son of Abraham and Sarah, who was born at Gerar when Abraham was one hundred years of age and Sarah was about ninety years old (Gen. 17:19, 21; 21:3-12; 22:2-9).
    The Man Whose Birth Caused a Laugh
    Isaac is one of the few cases in the Bible in which God selected a name for a child and announced it before he was born. In the Old Testament we have Isaac, Ishmael, Solomon, Josiah, Cyrus and Isaiah's son; in the New Testament, John the Baptist and Jesus.
    Isaac's beautiful and suggestive name, "he laughed," commemorates the two laughings at the promise of God - the laughing of the father's joy and the laughing of Sarah's incredulity which soon passed into penitence and faith (Gen. 21:6). Isaac was the child of the covenant, "I will establish My covenant with him." To three patriarchs in succession was this covenant specifically given: to Abraham, as he left Chaldea (Gen. 12:3); to Isaac, when in Canaan during the famine (Gen. 26:4 ); to Jacob, at Bethel (Gen. 28:14). Isaac, however, was the first to inherit the covenant, and to him God gave the whole inheritance of Abraham (Gen. 24:35).
    We have no record of Isaac's early life apart from the fact that he was circumcised when eight days of age (Gen. 21:4). Doubtless as a lad he became God's child in heart and life, ever mindful of the covenant he was heir to. When, according to Josephus, Isaac was twenty-five years of age, he was taken from Beer-sheba to the land of Moriah, where, as the burnt offering, Abraham presented him to God. While we have Abraham's unquestioning faith in his submission to the divine command to offer up his only son, we must not forget Isaac's supreme confidence in his father and also his willing consent to become the victim ( Gen. 22:12; 26:5; Heb. 11:17). Thus in Isaac we have a type of Him who gave Himself for our sins. From the day of his surrender to death, Isaac became a dedicated man. "The altar sanctified the gift."
    When his mother Sarah died, Isaac was a man of thirty-six, and was deeply grieved over the death of his mother. Comfort was his when he took Rebekah as his wife to help fill the vacant place in his heart. To the credit of Isaac it must be said that he was the only one of the patriarchs who had but one wife. It is also perfectly clear from the ancient idyll, one of the most beautiful in all literature, that Isaac left the choice of his wife to God. When the caravan bearing Rebekah neared home, Isaac was in the fields meditating or "praying," as the margin expresses it (Gen. 24:63).
    For many years Isaac and Rebekah were childless, but God heard Isaac's prayers and Rebekah gave birth to twins, Jacob and Esau. Isaac seems to have outlived his wife, and died at the age of 180 (Gen. 35:28). For some fifty years Isaac was almost blind, a sad and pitiful lot for God's chosen one.
    The character of Isaac, beautiful though it was in many ways, yet carried a few blots. He followed his father, Abraham, in deceitfulness when he called his wife his sister, bringing upon himself the rebuke of Abimelech. He also loved "savoury food," which should have been alien to a man so calm and still, lord of his passion and himself. Then in the matter of Esau and the blessing, Isaac surely rebelled against the Lord's purpose.
    Among the commendable features of his character, mention can be made of Isaac's submission (Gen. 22:6, 9); meditation (Gen. 24:63); instinctive trust in God (Gen. 22:7, 8); deep devotion (Gen. 24:67; 25:21); peaceableness (Gen. 26:20-22); prayerfulness (Gen. 26:25); faith ( Heb. 11:16, 17). "The fear of Isaac" (Gen. 31:42, 53), means the God tremblingly adored by the patriarch.
    ===
    LOT'S WIFE
    Scripture Reference: Genesis 19:15-26; Luke 17:29-33
    When Abraham heard that his nephew, Lot, had been taken captive by the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, he pursued the enemies and freed Lot, and "the women, and the people." Who the women were, Scripture does not say. They may have been Lot's wife and daughters, or Sodomite female servants. The first direct reference we have of Lot's unnamed wife is when the angels came to hasten the family out of doomed Sodom (Genesis 19:15 ). Who she was, of what race and family, of what life and character, by what name she was known, the Bible is silent. All the information we have about her is packed into one short verse, "His wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." Yet we must give attention to her for it is written in burning words by the finger of God -
    "Remember Lot's wife."
    Some dozen words in the Old Testament, and three words in the New Testament, then, are all we have of this female character.
    When, because of strife, Abraham and his nephew, Lot, came to part, Abraham gave Lot the pick of the land before them. Lot selfishly chose the best stretch of the country, "well watered everywhere ... even as the garden of the Lord" (Genesis 13:10). But such a greedy choice had dire consequences. Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom, and before long was in Sodom where its inhabitants "were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly" (Genesis 13:13 ). Lot became a citizen of Sodom, sat at its gate as the city's mayor, and was treated with honor and reverence as a relative of the mighty Abraham who had delivered Sodom from the Elamite invasion. While Peter speaks of Lot as being just and of having a righteous soul vexed with the filthy lives of the Sodomites (2 Peter 2:7-9), he yet somehow closed his eyes to the wickedness of the people, married a woman of Sodom and consented for his two daughters born in Sodom to marry Sodomites.
    Sodom was such a cesspool of iniquity that God said He would destroy it. But because of Lot's presence in the city Abraham interceded for its preservation. If only there had been ten righteous people in it God said the city would be spared. The only apparent righteous person in it - whose righteousness had been made ineffective through compromise - was Lot. So the two angels came to deliver Lot and his family from the terrible judgment about to fall on Sodom. They were entertained overnight, and Lot's wife doubtless shared in the hospitality shown. Early the next morning the angels sought to hasten Lot and his family out of the city, but they lingered. They were loathe to leave the luxury, pleasure, and sin of Sodom, so the angelic deliverers had to remove them forcibly from the city and compel them to escape for their life.
    The account of the tragedy is briefly related. As fire and brimstone out of heaven fell upon Sodom, Lot's wife looked back from behind her husband. In oriental countries it was the rule for the wife to walk some distance behind her husband, but as Lot's wife lingered and looked back she was overtaken by sulphurous vapors, and, encrusted with salt, perished where she stood. Entombed as a pillar, she became "as a monument of an unbelieving soul" in a desolate region, "of whose wickedness even to this day the waste land that smoketh is a testimony" (Wisdom 10:7 ). The wife of Lot looked back upon her own city with regrets at having to part with its sinful pleasures. She had been compelled to leave Sodom as a city, but all that Sodom represented was very much in her heart.
    All the while Lot's wife was in Sodom, its "filthy communications" soaked into her soul, so much so that when the angel of mercy sought to save her from the angel of judgment, she could not be saved. In the look back to Sodom was regret for all she was leaving for an unknown life before her, and as she sighed the salt air whitened her body into marble, and "nature made for her at once a grave and a monument." "She became a pillar of salt," and in that word we have a symbol of character as well as a monument of destiny. A pillar of salt is the picture of many a society woman today. All the sweet blood of a true woman's heart has become brackish by the life she leads. Instead of a woman, you have only a pillar of salt. In Sodom, Lot's wife lived in pleasure but was dead as she lived. As the wife of a righteous man, she had a name to live, but the gay life of Sodom asphyxiated her soul. Thus when the warning voice of God sounded in her ear, she may have heard it but did not heed it. Sodom with its society and sin had been her whole life.
    When dealing with the truth of His Second Advent, our Lord used the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's deliverance from their destruction as an illustration of His emancipation of His own from the catastrophe to overtake a godless world, and warns believers to remember Lot's wife and not linger, look, and be lost. As those who wait His coming we are not to look back nor draw back, but look up for our redemption draweth nigh. How arrestive is Christ's exhortation! "Remember Lot's wife." Mary's one act of piety in breaking her alabaster box of precious spikenard brought her a perpetual memorial, and in like manner the one tragic act of Lot's wife brought her a different kind of remembrance. For all who preach the Gospel what an appeal for immediate decision there is in the urgent summons of the angels to Lot and his family, "Escape for thy life, look not behind thee ... lest thou be consumed." That stirring evangelistic hymn has led many a sinner to escape to the arms of the Saviour -
    The Gospel bells give warning,
    As they sound from day to day,
    Of the fate which doth await them
    Who forever will delay -
    Escape thou for thy life;
    Tarry not in all the plain.
    Nor behind thee look, oh, never,
    Lest thou be consumed in pain.
    ===

    Today's reading: Genesis 41-42, Matthew 12:1-23 (NIV)

    View today's reading on Bible Gateway

    Today's Old Testament reading: Genesis 41-42

    Pharaoh's Dreams
    1 When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile, 2 when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. 3After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. 4 And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.
    5 He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk. 6After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted--thin and scorched by the east wind. 7 The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream....

    Today's New Testament reading: Matthew 12:1-23

    Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
    1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath."
    3 He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread--which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5Or haven't you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath...."

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