Saturday, October 18, 2014

Sat Oct 18th Todays News

Greatness cannot be measured, but is clearly seen. The divide caused by politics between opposing parties means friendships rarely cross the divide and the many slights leave a bitter taste. It is unimaginable that Gillard or Rudd would contact a Liberal identity when they had long retired and were facing their final days in a nursing home. "Sorry about calling you a mincing poodle or claiming that you were an ugly misogynist" doesn't sound right. Yet Mr Howard did not have the style of personal abuse. He wasn't a great friend of Mr Cohen, but respected him, and gave the former ALP Minister a call. And they joked about times past. 

 Leftwing without a matching right
Victoria's desalination plant, which has produced no water, will have cost $2 billion to Victorians by the end of next financial year. The plant isn't needed because AGW alarmists lied about the science. Meanwhile, ABC claims world is heating substantially, but that it just can't be measured because our instruments aren't up to it. According to measurement theory, they should be accurate to within half of one degree with mercury thermometers alone. According to those measures in Sydney homes, there is no global warming at the moment and has not been for some sixteen years. Gillard blames ALP for her failure to support Israel when she was PM. She has previously blamed Jews for not having a strong enough lobby. Maybe if she had shared her slush with them? Plibersek is opposing Shorten over ALP policy. But neither want anything worthwhile for the public. Gerard Henderson collects a long list of ABC bias. Professional activists are costing the public billions of dollars in challenges to public policy. The money could have gone to schools, hospitals ..

 Foreign affairs
Fight for Democracy in Hong Kong shows that Taiwan cannot reconcile while the government is communist. India agrees with Abbott that cheap coal is lifesaving for industry. Bishop wins pledge from Putin over MH17. Legal observers at G20 will be looking at police, but not activists.

 International fights
WHO blames itself for failing over Ebola outbreak. Terrorists claim that Burqa issues are causing them to kill. Them cross dressers become fierce when denied their cover. 

from 2013
NSW forest fires are a direct result of ALP policy to not back burn. Fires are natural to rural NSW, some indigenous life is reliant on it. Having parks is nice, but being able to coexist and prosper is essential. ALP Green policy denies coexistence. People are dying from out of control fires. hundreds of houses lost yesterday, and it isn't yet summer. Another reason for the rich outback is the substantial rain from the last two years. The outback is very green, at the moment. And it hasn't been safely maintained. 

Global warming is guilty of: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths — not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece.... Thankfully, although billions of dollars has been spent fighting it, the fight has been ineffective. The planet wont be saved by throwing away money, but it will make Adam Bandt smile. 

Another fight is that against censorship of the press. This fight is being lead by the left wing mainstream press who favour censorship. 

The working ALP motto seems to be paraphrasing that of the Australian Democrats "Calling each other bastards." There is a press award available for calling Mr Abbott a bastard, but nothing for excellence in reporting news. 

In the US mainstream press are applauding Obama for failing to act to end the government stand down. Obama failed to negotiate. GOP made their point effectively. Now the press have to massage the truth in the lead up to the mid term elections.
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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.
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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.
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Quyen Le Qttl, Anna Vasilyeva, Hoang Pham, Kymberley Wang, Hans-leo Rehbaum  and Jade Guttenbeil. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
1127 – Emperor Go-Shirakawa of Japan (d. 1192)
1679 – Ann Putnam, Jr., American witness in the Salem witch trials (d. 1716)
1926 – Chuck Berry, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1926 – Klaus Kinski, German actor (d. 1991)
1927 – George C. Scott, American actor (d. 1999)
1939 – Lee Harvey Oswald, American assassin of John F. Kennedy (d. 1963)
1960 – Erin Moran, American actress
1960 – Jean-Claude Van Damme, Belgian martial artist, actor, and director
1990 – Bristol Palin, American author
1998 – Julia Wróblewska, Polish actress
Church of the Holy Spirit, Heidelberg
Orders are followed. The university has opened. They have conquered. The jump was long. We can party on health grounds. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2014
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ACROSS THE DIVIDE

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 18, 2014 (1:19pm)

Labor veteran Barry Cohen reports from his new home – a Sydney aged care facility: 
When word got out that I had joined the list of dementia sufferers one of the first calls I had was from an old “friend”.
“A Mr Howard calling,” was the message from the nurse.
“I don’t know a Mr Howard, unless it’s the former prime minister.”
“That’s the one,” said the nurse.
I was deeply moved that a lifelong opponent had taken the trouble to ring to find out how I was and whether he could do anything to help. After a lengthy conversation, I told him, “This is what makes Australia a great country.”
His last question was, “What’s it like in there?”
He roared when I shouted back, “Question time.” 
Cohen’s facility even has its own equivalent to the Greens – a group he describes as “screamers”. Best wishes to the former Hawke government minister.
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Two fine Australians

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (2:15pm)

Barry Cohen is a lovely man and as a Hawke Government Minister summed up the best of Labor - compassionate but practical, romantic but no dreamer, improver not revolutionary. Add, of course, he’s a man with great faith in Western civllisation.
He today writes that he has dementia and has had had to move into a nursing home:
When word got out that I had joined the list of dementia sufferers one of the first calls I had was from an old “friend”.
“A Mr Howard calling,” was the message from the nurse.
“I don’t know a Mr Howard, unless it’s the former prime minister.”
“That’s the one,” said the nurse.
I was deeply moved that a lifelong opponent had taken the trouble to ring to find out how I was and whether he could do anything to help. After a lengthy conversation, I told him, “This is what makes Australia a great country.”
Great men and women help make a great country. You’ve just heard about two of them.
UPDATE
Hit the link for Barry’s invaluable tips to make a generation of people in nursing homes feel less miserable and more human. I do urge Ministers Kevin Andrews and Mitch Fifield to read it.
(Thanks to reader S.) 
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The global warming scare: the costs and the new deniers

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (10:45am)

Global warming - dud predictions

Global warming alarmists panicked gullible Labor governments into building desalination plants with scares like Tim Flannery’s:
So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush…
I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis…
Perth is facing the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the city’s water supply…
I’m personally more worried about Sydney than Perth… Where does Sydney go for more water? 
No one in the ABC or Fairfax newspapers questioned Flannery’s alarmism, and no political leader dared to:
In 2008, Flannery said: “The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.” ...
In 2007, Flannery predicted ... “In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.”
One premier, Queensland’s Peter Beattie, took such predictions - made by other warming alarmists, too - so seriously that he spent more than $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on a desalination plant, saying “it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower-than-usual rainfalls could eventuate”.
But today we must pay the price for losing our heads:
New figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show the Victorian desalination plant, southeast of Melbourne, will have cost water users $1.2bn by the November 29 state election, rising to $2bn by the end of the next financial year.
The cost has soared, despite no water having been drawn from the facility since its opening in 2012 and dams being more than 80 per cent full…
The Victorian experience has been replicated across Australia’s east and south. Plants in Victoria, NSW, Adelaide and on the Gold Coast cost more than $10bn to build but their operations have been effectively mothballed.

Sydney’s plant is dismissed as a white elephant, with no water produced since 2012, despite costing consumers almost $200 million a year, or about $100 a year for every water user.
In Queensland, the Gold Coast desalination plant built by the previous Labor government at Tugun cost $1.2bn but has been effectively mothballed for the past few years.
In Adelaide, the 100-gigalitre-capacity desalination plant cost $2.2bn to build and was finished in December 2012 but the plant, publicly owned but operated by private contractors AdelaideAqua, will be mothballed from January 15 next year after a two-year “proving period”.
Serious questions are being asked about why state governments past and present have invested billions of dollars in desalination plants when high dam levels — such as 88 per cent in Sydney — make the infrastructure surplus to requirement.
Those serious questions aren’t really being asked, actually, because the politicians, academics and journalists who fell for the global warming scare are not interested in holding the gullible - including themselves - to account.
UPDATE
The new consensus is that there is an unexpected pause in the warming of the atmosphere:
Michael Asten, from the school of earth atmosphere and environment at Monash University, says there have been 15 articles commenting on and analysing the pause, or hiatus, published by the top journal group Nature in the past two years.
“While opinions on causes differ, existence of the pause is settled; only activists dare claim the pause in global temperature does not exist,” Asten says.
So who are the new “deniers” now?
Responses from Australia’s key science organisations show they remain in lock-step with the IPCC and their advice is accepted by Environment Minister, Greg Hunt.
Helen Cleugh, science director at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, says ...  while the rate of increase is lower, the temperatures are not lower, she says.
Measurements across the oceans and Earth system as a whole show that warming has continued unabated. “A reduction in the rate of warming (not a pause) is a result of short-term natural variability, ocean absorption of heat from the atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, a downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, and other impacts over a short time period,” Cleugh says.
After taking advice from the Bureau of Meteorology, Hunt tells Inquirer the warming of the climate system is “unequivocal"…
Greens leader Christine Milne says she does not accept the pause…
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says the rate of warming in global surface temperature during the past century has not been uniform… “The pattern that results is one of steady warming of the oceans, accompanied by alternating periods of fast and slow rises in air temperature.”
UPDATE
Tolstoy would surely have warmists in mind today:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
(Thanks to reader Rocky.) 
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Protester’s challenges costs money that could go on schools and hospitals

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (10:17am)

We must pay for the politics of this ”professional protester”, but he does not pay us the taxes needed to realise his utopian dreams:
Tony Murphy has cost the Victorian taxpayer $1.7?million in his failed court bids to stop the East West Link. 

The figure has been revealed as his latest High Court bid to stall the $8 billion road tunnel failed yesterday.
Mr Murphy, whose court challenge is partly publicly funded, is unemployed.
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Fight for democracy in Hong Kong gets more violent

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (10:08am)

The battlelines in Hong Kong are hardening:
Pro-democracy demonstrations heated up again in Hong Kong early Saturday as thousands of protesters converged on the city’s busy Mong Kok financial district. The numbers increased overnight, swelling to 9,000 protesters, Hong Kong police said.
Protesters crossed police lines, authorities said, clashing with officers as the situation turned violent.
At least 240 people were injured over the past 24 hours, according to the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which manages all public hospitals in the city.
Fifteen police officers were injured, the Hong Kong Police public relations branch said.
China can say goodbye forever to Taiwan - at least while Communists rule. 
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Fight the anti-coal pagans. UPDATE: India echoes Abbott

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (9:32am)

Paul Kelly on Tony Abbott’s war on green extremists:
WITH his statement that coal is “essential for the prosperity of Australia” and “essential for the prosperity of the world”, Tony ­Abbott has declared political war on the green activist campaign to shut down Australia’s cheap ­energy sectors and undermine our competitiveness…
Abbott’s message is that if you want jobs, cheap energy and economic prosperity then you must oppose the ideological campaign to close down fossil fuels as soon as possible in the cause of renewables…

He thinks Labor will be caught at the next election between supporting jobs on one hand and making concessions to the pro-green compulsion to punish fossil fuels and accentuate their decline on the other…
Yet public opinion is likely to be equivocal. There is still much incomprehension in the community that recent high levels of health, education and welfare have been financed directly by the high terms of trade enjoyed by the resources sector or that a nexus exists between such prices and high living standards…
The anti-fossil fuel movement in Australia can mobilise a loose yet growing coalition typically seen as including the Greens; a collection of non-governmental org­anisations, veterans such as Greenpeace, the Graeme Wood Foundation (with Wood having made the largest campaign don­ation in our political history to the Greens) and the Australia Institute; climate change activists in unions, universities and social media; foundations, wealthy individuals, philanthropists with deep pockets; and the margins of the Christian churches. This network is gaining in sophistication, money and tactics…
The IEA predicts that by 2035 fossil fuels will meet 76 per cent of world energy demand and renewables will meet 18 per cent. It says China’s demand for coal continues to rise despite its commitment to renewables, Last year China added three times more new coal-based electricity than wind and solar combined. China is not getting out of coal; but it is getting into cleaner coal.... More than 1.3 billion people across the world have no access to energy, and fossil fuels will be pivotal in filling that gap…
With Labor pledged to resurrect carbon pricing and the Greens running hard against fossil fuels, Abbott takes his stand on a competitive economy and cheap energy. But the politics won’t be easy.
I do think we should help Abbott win this battle. Workers, rationalists, humanists and Christians who believe God gave man dominion over nature should finally wind back the suffocating power of the green pagans who threaten our reason, jobs, wealth and security.
UPDATE
The world’s third-biggest emitter says forget India making any cuts to emissions. As Abbott says, coal is indeed a blessing to India’s poor:
In a blow to American hopes of reaching an international deal to fight global warming, India’s new environment minister said Wednesday that his country would not offer a plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a climate summit next year in Paris.
The minister, Prakash Javadekar, said in an interview that his government’s first priority was to alleviate poverty and improve the nation’s economy, which he said would necessarily involve an increase in emissions through new coal-powered electricity and transportation…
“What cuts?” Mr. Javadekar said. “That’s for more developed countries… India’s first task is eradication of poverty… Twenty percent of our population doesn’t have access to electricity, and that’s our top priority. We will grow faster, and our emissions will rise.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill, David and mem.) 
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Are our police really the enemy?

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (9:26am)

So many lawyers to monitor the police at next month’s G20 protest. Why not monitor the protesters as well, given they will almost certainly be the initial source of any violence?
About 6,000 officers will patrol the city with many of them drafted in from interstate and from New Zealand.
They will be observed by a team of independent lawyers whose task will be to watch and record how protesters and police interact and they have already started training....
JOHN TAYLOR: Some Queensland lawyers believe they can help make a safe and just Brisbane G20 as independent legal observers.
DAN ROGERS: One way to describe it is walking Go-Pros…
SCOTT MCDOUGALL, CAXTON LEGAL CENTRE: They’re on nobody’s side. They are not there to police the police. They are simply there to observe the interactions between the police and the public.
Sure, sure. Yet McDougall himself goes on to add:

SCOTT MCDOUGALL: It’s going to be very easy for people to find themselves in trouble during the G20. They are not going to have to step out of line very far.
JOHN TAYLOR: There may be dozens of legal observers during the G20. 
(Thanks to reader John.) 
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Biased ABC excuses the warming pause with a theory that’s just been debunked

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (8:19am)

Global warming - propaganda

The ABC’s Catalyst program finally confronts the great embarrassment of the global warming movement - the failure of the planet’s atmosphere to warm for 16 years, against all predictions:
NARRATION
It was 1998 and the climate seemed set on a frightening trajectory.
News Reporter

What the world is experiencing could be part of a climate shift.
NARRATION
But the years that followed didn’t live up to predictions, leading to a crisis of confidence.
“Crisis of confidence”? Only a crisis among alarmists. The rest of us were demanding those fearmongers be held to account:
Professor Judith Curry
The globally average surface temperature hasn’t increased in any significant way since 1998.
Maurice Newman
In fact, can be argued since 2003 it has cooled off somewhat.
The ABC does grimly concede the truth it so long ignored or even denied - that the world’s atmosphere has simply not warmed, or in ABC weasel-speak, that ‘the rate of rise has slowed dramatically”:
NARRATION… 
It became the most important question to answer in climate science today - what happened to global warming? ...
While the period from 1975 to 1998 had seen a rapid rise of global average air surface temperatures, in the years since, the rate of rise has slowed dramatically, leading a vocal minority to question predictions of catastrophe.
Professor Judith Curry

So we’re getting this growing divergence between the observations and the climate model simulations.
Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge

You have at least to consider the possibility that the models are not reliable for one reason or another.
Anja Taylor
On one point the sceptics were right - none of the models used in future climate projections predicted the hiatus. And while the slowdown for the first few years was written off as natural variability, lately it’s become something to explain.
So the ABC’s task is simple. As a fervent missionary, it must restore faith in the global warming scare by pretending the warmists were not utterly wrong all along:
NARRATION
From the data he’s been analysing, Dr Trenberth sees a planet heating up just as fast as ever… His calculations show our budget is continually in surplus - more energy coming in than leaving the atmosphere.
Dr Kevin Trenberth

Given that there’s an energy imbalance, where does that energy go? How much has gone into the oceans? How much has gone into melting Arctic sea ice? ... And when we first did this, there was some quite substantial discrepancies that in some years we can’t account for where the energy has gone.
NARRATION

...Monitoring systems simply aren’t sophisticated enough to track all of the heat exchanges on the planet.
Note the presumptions underling the inquiry. The world MUST be warming. The heat MUST be hiding somewhere.  This is not a dispassionate scientific inquiry but a desperate search for vindication,
The trouble, though, which Catalyst inexplicably fails to mention, is that NASA has just ruled out the ocean excuse, announcing: ”The cold waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005, according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years… The temperature of the top half of the world’s ocean — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures.”
But Catalyst is determined to pin most of its hopes on this dubious excuse:
NARRATION

In total, aerosols and solar activity are thought to account for about 20% of the pause, but the biggest contender for where the rest of the heat is going is the one that’s hardest to measure. The oceans absorb a whopping 93% of the world’s excess heat.
Dr Kevin Trenberth

... we’ve found ... that after about 1999, a lot more heat is going deeper into the ocean. And this is unprecedented…
No, not unprecedented, but disproved.
But on Catalyst ploughs, letting warmists scramble for excuses without demanding they explain their past errors, delivered with such certainty:
NARRATION

Professor Matthew England has been key to nailing down how the Pacific has been dragging down world average temperatures.
Professor Matthew England

We had to look for something about the climate system post-2000 that was dramatically different to the climate system in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and one of the most dramatic things you see in the system is this flip in the Pacific Ocean. If ever you travel to the tropics in the Pacific Ocean, there’s a prevailing wind from the east towards the west, and these easterly winds push a lot of the surface water across the West Pacific Ocean. If they remain for long enough, this water starts to get subducted into the ocean interior…
Hey, isn’t that the same Matthew England who just two years ago still insisted that claims of a pause in the warming of the atmosphere were “actually not true”, and thundered: “And so anybody out there lying that the IPCC projections are overstatements or that the observations haven’t kept pace with the projections is completely offline with this. The analysis is very clear that the IPCC projections are coming true.” Why should we believe the new assurances of a man who just two years ago falsely accused people of “lying” when they pointed out the pause he’s now trying to excuse?
But on the ABC goes with its ocean excuse:
NARRATION
The ocean once more began to build up heat. The change in the way the ocean either releases or draws in heat is part of a regular long-term cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Each phase lasts around 15 to 30 years. When Dr Gerry Meehl from Boulder studied climate models with hiatuses, he discovered they linked closely with the negative phase of this pattern.
Dr Gerald Meehl

And sure enough the extra heat was going into the deeper ocean....
NARRATION

It was Matthew England who found [trade] winds were unprecedented in strength this century… the winds push the warm surface waters west.
Professor Matthew England
... It’s sort of reaches a breaking point perhaps where that heat then sloshes back to the East Pacific…
NARRATION
What that means is we’re currently in the phase before the next global temperature jump.

Global warming theory saved! Well, if you ignore the admitted lack of data. If you ignore that these same scientists were wrong before. If you ignore NASA’s latest data showing no warming of the deep ocean for nine years now.
Sure, in the interests of “balance”, the ABC then tacks on quick grabs from sceptics, but not before giving them a pejorative introduction:
NARRATION

But a small minority of scientists disagree.
Pardon? Another way of introducing those sceptical scientists would be: “But scientists who were right about the warming pause disagree with these latest excuses.”
And to further load the dice, Catalyst has each of sceptics’ arguments below immediately countered by a warmist (see full transcript), while the warmists were allowed to speak unchallenged:
Professor Judith Curry
That’s where I break with my colleagues. I just think there’s a lot more uncertainty. We’re now in the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and I think that is the major thing that’s causing the pause. And my understanding of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is that we could stay in the cool phase for another two decades. So where does that leave us in terms of thinking that this sensitivity that we’ve deduced, largely based on this warming in the last quarter of the 20th century, during that period we were in the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge

And this is a thought which is, for about 30 years people have tried to ignore because it takes away from the thought that most of the rise in temperature is due to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…
Professor Judith Curry

And there is one other possibility - that there is no missing heat.

What a pathetic program, summed up best by its triumphant conclusion - marred by a missing and crucial “no” in the transcript:
NARRATION
All things considered, there’s been global warming pause.
The ABC’s bias is out of control. 
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Plibervola virus hits Labor

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (8:07am)

Rowan Dean nails the posturing of Plibersek:

Authorities within the Australian Labor Party were scrambling this week to try to contain an outbreak of the deadly Pliberbola virus, with frantic calls for the exposed leadership of Bill Shorten to be immediately quarantined…
The Pliberbola crisis came after Mr Shorten recklessly wandered into the national security debate with no protection against the extreme risk of being infected by a deadly dose of bipartisanship, caused by getting too close to Tony Abbott.
“Pliberbola is the most virulent strain of undergraduate socialism the world has ever seen,” said a spokesman for Mr Shorten…
The virus is believed to have mutated in the 1970s in the Democratic Republic of Marrickville in a freakish contact between batty undergraduates and hard-core Marxist union enforcers, or apes, which in turn infected the gibbering idealists of the Greens. How the virus crossed the species barrier to infect normal, sane, rational human beings is not known, although the first identifiable case has long been rumoured to be a large man with a booming voice known only as Gough.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill .) 
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World Health Organisation damns itself

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (8:05am)

Another dysfunctional United Nations agency:
THE World Health Organisation has admitted it botched attempts to stop the now-spiralling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information. 

IN a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press, the UN agency wrote that experts should have realised that traditional infectious disease containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.
“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” WHO said in the document.
The UN health agency acknowledged that, at times, even its own bureaucracy was a problem. It noted that the heads of WHO country offices in Africa are “politically motivated appointments” made by the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Luis Sambo, who does not answer to the agency’s chief in Geneva, Dr. Margaret Chan.
(Thanks to reader Dave.) 
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But before the raids came the (alleged) plots

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (7:58am)

The organisers of “Wear a Hijab Week” don’t blame the Islamists but the authorities trying to stop them killing Australians:
Since the terror raids and proposed anti-terror laws we have seen a wave of unwarranted anti-Muslim violence around the country. Mosques have been defaced in Brisbane, a woman was bashed on a train in Melbourne, and in Sydney a man with a knife threatened students and staff at an Islamic primary school.
This victim mentality is pathological.
(Thanks to reader Max.) 
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Julie Bishop wins pledge from Putin

Andrew Bolt October 18 2014 (7:50am)

The Foreign Minister Julie Bishop shirtfronts Putin:

FOREIGN Minister Julie Bishop has personally taken Russian President Vladimir Putin to task over the shooting down of Flight MH17.
At the Asian-Europe Meeting in Italy yesterday, Ms ­Bishop spoke to Mr Putin for more than 20 minutes, during which she won a guarantee from him to allow crash ­investigators another visit to the Ukraine crash site before winter sets in.
Mr Putin said Russia would co-operate with investigators. 
“I approached Mr Putin and had a detailed and lengthy ­discussion,” Ms Bishop told The Saturday Telegraph late last night from Milan.
“I raised my concerns about MH17 and the fact our teams had not had access. I sought his co-operation in using Russian influence over the Rebels."…
Ms Bishop said she had bluntly spelled out Australia’s frustration at what it sees as Moscow’s hampering of the Dutch-led probe into the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in July, in which 38 Australians died.
“Russia has not been as ­­co-operative as we would have expected,” she said.
But, but, but, says the Sydney Morning Herald:
Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister has buttonholed - not shirt-fronted - Vladimir Putin, and won from him a promise to help international forensic teams regain access to the MH17 crash site.
The Sydney Morning Herald is just determined not to pay credit. Here’s its report yesterday:
AUSTRALIAN Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appears to have missed an opportunity to “shirt-front” Vladimir Putin over Russia’s role in the MH17 tragedy ... However, she did buttonhole Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over problems with ­access to the Ukraine crash site.
Mind you, a Putin promise is worth ...?
(Thanks to reader John.) 
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Post by Dallas Beaufort.

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4 her, so she can see how I see her
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Post by Dallas Beaufort.

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Post by Matt Granz.

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=== Posts from last year ===
(Video) Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley
http://networkedblogs.com/Q9MqJ
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..14 October '13..Israel's national ethos is one of self-reliance. International peacekeepers have been proven unreliable in the Middle East in every instance. The Israeli army has been deployed along the steep slopes of the Jordan Valley since 1967, allowing it to

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Why Christiane Amanpour is dangerous…
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-christine-amanpour-is-dangerous/
You know how sometimes you see a headline and it catches you? Well, I have to admit while most......

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Last of our new 'An Adventure in Space and Time' images – and here's David Bradley as the brilliant William Hartnell AKA the First Doctor and Claudia Grant as Carole Ann Ford, who played the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman.
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The Battle of Iwo Jima was the first American attack on Japanese soil, with Japanese soldiers defending their ground even after the historic raising of the American flag. These early battle plans dated over 6 months before the attack appeared on an episode of Pawn Stars on History.

See an Enigma machine, another military artifact, during all-new episodes of Pawn Stars, tonight at 10/9c. #PawnStars
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From www.facebook.com/positivelyrepublican <--become a="" able="" about="" also="" and="" article="" as="" be="" can="" claim="" debate.="" debt="" don="" down="" everyone="" explains="" fan="" from="" get="" give="" going="" government="" hoover="" if="" in="" institute.="" involved="" is="" it="" its="" light="" limit.="" minutes="" misinformation="" of="" on="" others="" pay="" please="" raise="" read="" responsibilities="" rights="" share="" should="" shut="" simple="" so="" some="" sowell="" span="" straightforward="" such="" t="" take="" that="" the="" this="" thomas="" three="" to="" today.="" us="" we="" well.="" will="" won="" you="">
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Names...
Names...
Names...
Who are you with?...

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The Florida church where an 15-year-old orphan pleaded for a family to adopt him has been "flooded" with phone calls.

"It has been just an awesome outpour," Cynthia Coney, a secretary at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, said. "We've been getting calls from as far as Utah and forwarding them to his adoption agency."

Two weeks ago, Davion Navar Henry Only, 15, dressed in a dark suit and borrowed tie, told the packed church that he was seeking a family to call his own. His requirements were simple.A brother needs a home - ed
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A CONTROVERSIAL judge is in the firing line again after an accused rapist was set free and allegedly raped and stabbed the same woman.
Judge Sarah Bradley refused to adjourn the man's trial for a night after his alleged victim left court in the middle of giving evidence and said she couldn't go on.
It was the third time a trial had collapsed because the woman could not complete her testimony.
The woman, an indigenous special witness, was allegedly stabbed then raped and sodomised at knifepoint.
Prosecutors asked for an overnight adjournment or to call other witnesses while they sought to bring the woman back to court to continue testifying, but Judge Bradley refused.
The charges were withdrawn and the accused rapist was freed from custody.
Two days later police claim he allegedly tortured and raped the woman in an attack in which she was again stabbed multiple times.
Judge Sarah Bradley has ignited further controversy with a rape case.
Even if the rape trial wasn't to proceed, assault with a deadly weapon and GBH didn't require her testimony. He might have been given a custodial sentence on that? - ed

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AN INDIAN policeman who got lost as a child at a crowded railway station has been reunited with his family after 24 years - thanks to a tattoo on his arm.
Ganesh Raghunath Dhangade was separated from his parents in 1989 aged just six when they were boarding a train. He ended up on his own in Mumbai, where he was cared for by a fisherman and then at two orphanages.
A car accident later left him unconscious for four months, struggling to remember details of his family or home, and he spent years rummaging through missing person records at police stations - before joining the force himself in 2011.
"I had not given up on finding my family," Mr Dhangade said.
He pressed on with his search using the only clue he had: a tattoo of his mother's name, Manda, on his right arm.
Another piece of the puzzle - forgotten after his car crash - came from records at his first orphanage, where he had given his home place as "Mama Bhanja", a forested area in a district neighbouring Mumbai.
Earlier this month, Mr Dhangade went back to the area with his police colleagues asking for Manda, and he was directed to the hut of an old lady who had been staying in the hills there for years.

INDIA-PEOPLE-FAMILY-REUNION-TATTOO
Heart warming - ed
===
Early Human

A WELL-PRESERVED skull from 1.8 million years ago offers new evidence that early man was a single species with a vast array of different looks.
With a tiny brain about a third the size of a modern human's, protruding brows and jutting jaws like an ape, the skull was found in the remains of a medieval hilltop city in Dmanisi, Georgia, said the study in the journal Science.
It is one of five early human skulls - four of which have jaws - found so far at the site, about 100 kilometres from the capital Tbilisi, along with stone tools that hint at butchery and the bones of big, saber-toothed cats.
Lead researcher David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, described the group as "the richest and most complete collection of indisputable early Homo remains from any one site.''
The skulls vary so much in appearance that under other circumstances, they might have been considered different species, said co-author Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich.

there is greater diversity within a race, than between races .. old news - ed
===

YESTERDAY capped off a remarkable 16 days for the US government, after a last minute deal was passed to raise the debt ceiling and avoid an unprecedented default.
If you've just tuned in, here's a quick rundown.

Poor analysis .. Obama failed to negotiate. US peoples won't be impressed - ed
===

Pastor Rick Warren
Staying quiet and trusting God to vindicate you when critics attack what God told you to do is a beautiful expression of faith.
=
I bought this pink pumpkin to celebrate Kay's 10 year anniversary of being cancer free!
#BreastCancerAwarenessMonth Follow this amazing woman on Twitter: @KayWarren1
=
Anytime you add a new task or event to your life ask "What'll I give up?" Elimination leads to #purposedriveneffectiveness
=
The brightest lights are those who refuse to give up in the darkest nights. Weak fires blow out easily; strong ones #UseTheWindsOfAdversity to fan their flame brighter! Don't give up, my friend. You too can make it through what you're going through. God is with you and I'm praying for you as I write this.

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Red corn at morning, Farmer take warning...
Red corn at night, Lightning will strike... — withMike Oria.
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Fall Colors at Conway Summit 
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James Calore
Throwback Thursday:
Elvis and John Lennon
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Shiloh Musings: Has Israel Already Been Sold Down The River?
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.co.il/2013/09/has-israel-already-been-sold-down-river.html
My musings, reflections on life here in Shiloh. Original, personal, spiritual and political. While not a "group blog," Shiloh Musings includes the voices of other Jews in The Land of Israel. **Copyright(C)BatyaMedad ** For permission to use these in publications of any sort, please contact me direct...

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Report: Turkey Exposed Israeli Spy Ring in Iran
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172910
Turkish-Israel relationship so hostile that PM Erdogan deliberately exposed Israel’s Iranian agents.

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Why Was Republican Billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Offer to Pay Military Death Benefits Denied by...
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/10/11/why-was-republican-billionaire-sheldon-adelson’s-offer-pay-military-death-benefits-denied
Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson offered to pay for the death benefits to military families in the wake of the government shutdown, but his offer was denied.

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Sample Reel for 'Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force' - Playmount Productions
http://vimeo.com/54400569
Sample Reel for forthcoming documentary feature "Above and Beyond: The Birth of the Israeli Air Force" currently in production by Playmount Productions. Help…

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Jeremy Rosen's Blog: Rabbinic Violence
http://jeremyrosen.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/rabbinic-violence.html

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Are You Located Near A Terrorist Training Camp In America…Find Out Here
http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2013/09/15/are-you-located-near-a-terrorist-training-camp-in-america-find-out-here/
IS THERE A JAMA ‘AT UL-FUQARA TERRORIST TRAINING CAMP NEAR YOU...PLEASE SHARE THIS LINK! Here is a list of 30 Locations Inside the United States… ...

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Iran will likely retain nuke breakout ability, warns ex-defense minister
http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-will-likely-retain-nuke-breakout-ability-warns-ex-defense-minister/
Meanwhile, energy minister argues that Western detente with Tehran aims at getting Iranian oil back on global market

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Syrian Girl Who Watched Parents Murdered Has Heart Cut Out By Obama-Supported Syrian Rebels -...
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=15416
Here is how the Obama administration is using your tax dollars — mockingly in the name of “freedom.” As you can see her heart has been cut out and stuffed with cloth. No need to speculate what was done to that heart.

<...IS MODERATE ISLAM WORKING FOR YOU YET ?

... Despite all their denials and protests the leftists and those affiliated with the socialist alliance support directly and indirectly this type of Wahabi scum. 

Where is this " moderate Islam " we are told exists ?

Let's not fool ourselves any longer. 

If this is what Muslims do to Muslims what then will they do to others who refuse to be part of their sick ideology. 

Islam is a mental disease. 

Those that claim only extremists are responsible need to be reminded that a Muslim will always be a Muslim based on the perverted ideas of a dead false prophet with an imaginary man made god backed up by a book of gibberish. 

When is enough enough ?>===

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Israeli Security Policy in an Uncertain Middle East
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/2013-schiff-memorial-lecture
Israeli Security Policy in an Uncertain Middle East Also available in On October 9, senior Israeli defense official Amos Gilad delivered The Washington Institute's 2013 Zeev Schiff Memorial Lecture, held annually in honor of the esteemed defense correspondent, strategic thinker, and longtime friend…

VIDEO & TRANSCRIPT Israeli Security Policy in an Uncertain Middle East 2013 Zeev Schiff Memorial Lecture Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, IDF Also available in العربية October 11, 2013
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Stoning = Terrorism - must see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP79-4OKZ8s
המצב בשטח מחייב שינוי בחקיקה. זריקת אבן על אוטו נוסע = נסיון לרצח. העובדות בשטח. תראו ותפיצו!!! תודה רבה לאילו שהסכימו להתראיין, ולאילו שהעלו סרטים ליו-טיוב ...

VIDEO ROCK ATTACKs.. mobs of Arab Palestinians assaulting Israeli motorists . Obama's Israel does not need security points , and open road ways .. is killing and injuring Israeli women and children.
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Government Approves New Aliyah for Indian 'Lost Jews'
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172912
The Shavei Israel organization, which assists “lost Jews,” will be allowed to bring 899 Bnei Menashe Jews from India to Israel.

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Campaign Tells Jews: Visit the Temple Mount!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172922
A new campaign aims to encourage Jews to visit the Temple Mount.

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Sharp Rise in Building in Judea and Samaria
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172919#replies
NGO Peace Now says it has recorded a significant increase in building in Judea and Samaria in the first half of 2013.

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Sultan Knish: The Hyena Cure
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/the-hyena-cure.html

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The View from Israel.: Will the meek ever inherit the world?
http://israeltheviewfromhere.blogspot.co.il/2013/09/will-meek-ever-inherit-world.html

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Sarah Palin
See the link below for some inspiration and a reminder of how to push through pain and inconvenience and not complain or make excuses. 

A group of vets with Operation Giveback took part in a charity relay-style race called Ragnar “to help raise awareness and resources for the families and children of fallen heroes. Every year they raise enough money to provide Christmas presents for Orphans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” Many of the vets participating in the run were wounded warriors, and their dedication is especially inspiring. 

It was great to see so many proud vets last Sunday in Washington, D.C. standing up for freedom. These guys know never to give up!

Hat tip to my cousin JD and his great band “Missing Stateside” for sharing this with me and generously supporting our vets and active duty military. 

Here’s the article about the relay:
http://blognar.ragnarrelay.com/2013/10/team-operation-giveback-conquers-ragnar-relay-washington-d-c/

And here’s the Missing Stateside website:
http://missingstateside.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html#.UmCTIZQa_t4

- Sarah Palin
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Dean Hamstead
Our school system has failed, if people believe that you need to borrow more money to pay interest on your debt.
=
People scream for access to 'free' education, then don't consider how little of what was learned is of any use.
===

Walrus' reaction after getting a birthday cake made out of fish..
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Next new image from 'An Adventure in Space and Time', and here's Jemma Powell and Jamie Glover as Jacqueline Hill and William Russell, who played the First Doctor companions Barbara and Ian.
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Larry Pickering
The perfect cup of tea

I fully expect to live and enjoy life well beyond 100 and if I do it will be for three reasons.

Good reds, good roll-tobacco and good cups of tea. Now I can’t share my baccy or reds with you but I can share how I have always made my tea.

First, do not use a teapot, or those hideous teabag things. Use hot water from the tap to boil the jug.

While the jug boils heat your teacup under the hot water tap. You must use milk! Why milk?

Well here’s the secret... milk is alkaline and tea is acid. The object is to have the Ph level balanced to perfection. You will notice when you get it right.

So the amount of cow juice you put in the cup must equate to the required strength of your tea.

Now put the strainer (I use a large one) in the cup and the required amount of tea leaves with the sugar (if you take it) on top of the tea leaves. The sugar must be on top.

By now the jug has boiled.

Slowly pour the boiling water through the strainer filling the cup to the rim and leave it to steep for no more than ten seconds.

Remove the strainer and your tea is ready.

Don’t use just any tea, the finer the leaf the less you need to use. Nerada is good but there are others and leaf tea is as cheap as chips.

You haven’t lost any critical heat by pouring the boiling water into a pot or using a cold spoon to add the sugar... and you haven’t wasted anything.

You can make multiple cups by adding tea or leaving the strainer in the cup longer.

Only takes about 40 seconds... and if you’re a tea tragic try it, it’s worth it!
===

Glenn Beck ‘Horrified’ by ‘America’s Latest Propaganda Machine’
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/17/glenn-beck-horrified-by-americas-latest-propaganda-machine/
Glenn Beck on Thursday broached a topic that he said "horrified" him when it was brought to his attention roughly two weeks ago, describing it as an "effort to re-write our history and catalyze a new culture for America" with the help of "America's latest propaganda machine." Beck...

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Anyone afraid of heights?

You'll be pleased to know this ISN'T a real house!
===

Kirk DuQuette
Wow.. The old Model T still looking Good and built so long ago, I built this thing in 21 days before the Nats some 20 plus years ago. Donnie sent some pics and his Hot Rod collection is HUGE..
===

===

Red corn at morning, Farmer take warning... 
Red corn at night, Lightning will strike...
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Thirty million people are slaves, half in India: survey
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/us-slavery-index-idUSBRE99F1AV20131016
LONDON, Oct 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labor, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude, a global

#Burma is among the top 10 countries with the highest number of people in #ModernDaySlavery with an estimated 384,000 enslaved people, according to the Global Slavery Index 2013. The top 10 countries account for 76% of the world's 30 million enslaved people. Read the report: http://bit.ly/1bAszsq
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http://www.news.com.au/national-news/greens-mp-adam-bandt-tries-to-make-political-mileage-out-of-fires/story-fncynjr2-1226741900565
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Sultan Knish: Bill de Blasio and the Jews of New York
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/bill-de-blasio-and-jews.html
If you believe life has cycles, maybe it's time New York underwent another Lindsay/Dinkins spell in the desert.

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Andy Trieu
I was so tired last night I almost used this as toothpaste.... #close #call #lol #deepheat #ninja#senses #tweegram #instafollow #igdaily#picoftheday #toothpaste #pictureoftheday #igers#instagood #instadaily
===
“The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them. My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.” Psalm 25:14-15 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul."
1 Samuel 27:1
The thought of David's heart at this time was a false thought, because he certainly had no ground for thinking that God's anointing him by Samuel was intended to be left as an empty unmeaning act. On no one occasion had the Lord deserted his servant; he had been placed in perilous positions very often, but not one instance had occurred in which divine interposition had not delivered him. The trials to which he had been exposed had been varied; they had not assumed one form only, but many--yet in every case he who sent the trial had also graciously ordained a way of escape. David could not put his finger upon any entry in his diary, and say of it, "Here is evidence that the Lord will forsake me," for the entire tenor of his past life proved the very reverse. He should have argued from what God had done for him, that God would be his defender still. But is it not just in the same way that we doubt God's help? Is it not mistrust without a cause? Have we ever had the shadow of a reason to doubt our Father's goodness? Have not his lovingkindnesses been marvellous? Has he once failed to justify our trust? Ah, no! our God has not left us at any time. We have had dark nights, but the star of love has shone forth amid the blackness; we have been in stern conflicts, but over our head he has held aloft the shield of our defence. We have gone through many trials, but never to our detriment, always to our advantage; and the conclusion from our past experience is, that he who has been with us in six troubles, will not forsake us in the seventh. What we have known of our faithful God, proves that he will keep us to the end. Let us not, then, reason contrary to evidence. How can we ever be so ungenerous as to doubt our God? Lord, throw down the Jezebel of our unbelief, and let the dogs devour it.

Evening

"He shall gather the lambs with his arm."
Isaiah 40:11
Our good Shepherd has in his flock a variety of experiences, some are strong in the Lord, and others are weak in faith, but he is impartial in his care for all his sheep, and the weakest lamb is as dear to him as the most advanced of the flock. Lambs are wont to lag behind, prone to wander, and apt to grow weary, but from all the danger of these infirmities the Shepherd protects them with his arm of power. He finds new-born souls, like young lambs, ready to perish--he nourishes them till life becomes vigorous; he finds weak minds ready to faint and die--he consoles them and renews their strength. All the little ones he gathers, for it is not the will of our heavenly Father that one of them should perish. What a quick eye he must have to see them all! What a tender heart to care for them all! What a far- reaching and potent arm, to gather them all! In his lifetime on earth he was a great gatherer of the weaker sort, and now that he dwells in heaven, his loving heart yearns towards the meek and contrite, the timid and feeble, the fearful and fainting here below. How gently did he gather me to himself, to his truth, to his blood, to his love, to his church! With what effectual grace did he compel me to come to himself! Since my first conversion, how frequently has he restored me from my wanderings, and once again folded me within the circle of his everlasting arm! The best of all is, that he does it all himself personally, not delegating the task of love, but condescending himself to rescue and preserve his most unworthy servant. How shall I love him enough or serve him worthily? I would fain make his name great unto the ends of the earth, but what can my feebleness do for him? Great Shepherd, add to thy mercies this one other, a heart to love thee more truly as I ought.
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Today's reading: Isaiah 50-52, 1 Thessalonians 5 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Isaiah 50-52

Israel’s Sin and the Servant’s Obedience
1 This is what the LORD says:
“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce
with which I sent her away?
Or to which of my creditors
did I sell you?
Because of your sins you were sold;
because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
2 When I came, why was there no one?
When I called, why was there no one to answer?
Was my arm too short to deliver you?
Do I lack the strength to rescue you?
By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea,
I turn rivers into a desert;
their fish rot for lack of water
and die of thirst.
3 I clothe the heavens with darkness
and make sackcloth its covering.”
4 The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
5 The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
6 I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
7 Because the Sovereign LORD helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame....

Today's New Testament reading: 1 Thessalonians 5

The Day of the Lord
1 Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2 for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5 You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. 9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing....
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WIDOW OF ZAREPHATH

The Woman Who Shared Her Last Morsel
What deeper interest we would have in some of the conspicuous characters of the Bible if only we knew their names and their significance! The renowned widow of Zarephath, or Sarepta, so sympathetic, kind and self-sacrificial, must have had a lovely name. Yet both her own name and that of her boy are not given. The prophet Elijah who lived with them for so long must have come to know them well, but he has left us with no clue as to their identity. Even the Lord, who has our names engraven upon the palms of His hands, does not lift the curtain of anonymity, but simply refers to this commendable female, as "a woman that was a widow." Evidently, attention is focused on what she did, rather than on who she was.
Her Position
She lived in Sarepta which belonged to Zidon - a fact marking the striking providence of God. When the land of Israel was apostate and unsafe, Elijah found a welcome refuge in a heathen country, which was, moreover, the native place of his deadliest enemy, Jezebel, daughter of King Eth-Baal of the Zidonians. Although brought up among worshipers of strange gods, it would seem as if she had come to know about the faith of the Hebrews before Elijah the prophet came her way. She came to accept it more fully as the result of what she saw and heard due to Elijah's sojourn in her poor home.
Of an alien race, she was likewise a widow with a child to keep. Half-way between Tyre and Sidon, she had the humble home her husband had left her, and from a few olive trees and a small barley field she was able to eke out a frugal living for herself and her growing boy. When seasons were favorable what she was able to gather sufficed for her modest needs, but when a terrible drought killed the growing harvest then her poverty was most acute. What struggles some women had after they become widows. Straitened circumstances and oppressive cares made life difficult. With the able breadwinner taken, widows frequently had more cares than they could cope with. Yet godly widows have the promise of divine provision and protection, as this widow of Sarepta came to experience. When famine struck she did not know where the next meal could come from to keep the two of them alive.
Her Provider
Little did the distressed widow realize that deliverance was at hand - that never again would she and her son suffer the pangs of hunger - that the rough-looking stranger who appeared at her door one day was to be her provider for many a day. Elijah was a hunted man on the run, for the godless Queen Jezebel had set a price upon his head, and the sleuths of the wicked queen hunted in vain for the prophet who had pronounced the doom of Jezebel and her equally godless husband, Ahab. They never thought of looking for Elijah in the poor home of a starving widow. Yet she was the one whom God had singled out to shelter the prophet for some two years. She fed him, as a heaven-protected guest, with fearless faith. When Elijah met the widow she was gathering sticks to make a final scanty meal out of the last cakes and oil she had. What pathos was in the woman's reply to Elijah's request for a drink of water and a morsel of bread. She said -
As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.
Famine in the land had emaciated the widow and her boy, now they have come to their last meal. Once this was eaten there would be nothing to do but throw their haggard, fleshless bodies on the bed and await their release from suffering - the terrible death of starvation. But she was to be the widow whom God would command to sustain Elijah. His commands were to be His enablings, as she was to daily prove. Hereafter she and her son were to live from hand to mouth, but it would be from God's ever open hand to their mouths - and the prophet's as well!
Although she came to speak of Elijah as the "man of God," and saw in him the prophet as he performed the miracle of multiplication, there is no evidence that she recognized in him, as he came to her as a stranger in a crucial moment asking for water, that he was indeed God's honored servant. While God had marked her out as the widow to sustain Elijah, she had not received any advance word that the beggar coming to her would be the prophet. She did not know beforehand of God's purpose for she was preparing to die. Further, lacking any intuition that the one asking for water would miraculously preserve her and her son from death by starvation, as soon as Elijah told her to go on with the preparation of what the widow felt would be her last meal, and share her penury with the prophet, she mechanically obeyed, believing what he had said about her meal never wasting and the cruse of oil not failing until the famine was past. "She went and did according to the saying of Elijah."
This woman of true hospitality who, in her willingness to share her only mouthful of food with a stranger whose face indicated a weariness born of fatigue and thirst, and exhaustion due to long travel, knew not that she was to entertain an angel unawares. She yet took the stranger in, and proved herself to be a noble type of Christian hospitality in that it was exercised out of the depth of her poverty. She might have protested when the beggar asked for food by saying, "Have a heart, sir! Do not mock me, a destitute widow who, with a dying son, has only one scanty meal left." Had this nameless woman met the request of Elijah with bitter scorn, asking him what he expected to find in a famine-stricken house, and also what kind of a man was he to take the last morsel of food out of her mouth, we would have understood her refusal. But no, she did none of these things. It may be that her kind heart said, "I'll share these last cakes with him, for death will soon end our hunger." Although she felt sharing the final meal would hurt both herself and her boy, she ventured out to give the hungry man who had come her way a portion of it, not realizing that her venture was to be one of faith, and would become the evidence of things not seen.
The widow of Sarepta, then, went ahead with her baking and used up her last handful of meal. She served the stranger firstfor this was what he had said, "Make me a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son." The astonished woman had little to say for the bold prediction and the manner of its announcement gave the man's message a commanding solemnity and convinced her that this man was no ordinary beggar. Hastening to do what her innate love of hospitality prompted her to do, she came to prove that "little is much if God is in it." Can you not imagine her after that first meal together - which she thought would be the last - was over, how anxiously she would steal away to the empty meal tub and examine her oil cruse to see if the prediction of the stranger had been fulfilled. How hope must have leaped in her heart as she fingered fresh meal and saw the empty cruse refilled. Truly the guest with whom she was willing to share, was a prophet! The widow was to experience a continuing miracle for until the rains came and famine was past -
The barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah.
Daily, the widow of Sarepta proved that sharing what she had with another needy one did not impoverish her life, but greatly enriched it, just as the heavenly Stranger does when we open the door for Him to come in and sup with us. Yes, God multiplied her handful of meal and cruse of oil as Jesus multiplied the five loaves and the two fishes to feed the hungry crowd following Him. How expressive are the stanzas an American poet has given us -
Is thy cruse of comfort failing?
Rise and share it with another:
And through all the years of famine
It shall serve thee and thy brother.
Love divine will fill the storehouse,
And thy handful still renew;
Scanty fare for one will often
Make a royal feast for two.
For the heart grows rich in giving;
All its wealth is golden grain:
Seeds, which mildew in the garner,
Scattered, fill with gold the plain.
Is thy burden hard and heavy?
Do thy steps drag wearily?
Help to bear thy brother's burden -
God will bear both it and thee.
Her Perplexity
What a difference the God-sent prophet had made to the home of the widow! All trial was past and daily their need was met by Him who opens His hand and supplies what His own require. Before this the widow had come to know that her guest was a prophet and what blessed truths she must have received from his lips. As the weeks and months rolled by Elijah became part of the home, and without exposing himself unnecessarily must have helped in gathering sticks and helping in other ways when manual labor was required. Then there was the widow's young son, who, like the rest of his kind, must have been inquisitive and full of questions as to the lodger's name and experiences. The rugged personality of Elijah must have had an impact on the mind of that boy, whose coming had saved him from death by starvation.
As time rolled by the widow must have grown to feel as calmly secure as Elijah himself who knew that whomever the Lord hides is safe. But one day the peace and contentment of the home miraculously sustained were disturbed for the widow's son was suddenly seized with illness and finally died. Once again the widow knew despair. Before Elijah came to the home, she feared the death of her boy because of the famine. Now he is actually dead and her mother-heart is perplexed and torn with unspeakable anguish. Why was her child rescued from death the first time, if only to die now? In her grief her conscience seems to trouble her. She feels that the boy's death was a form of divine judgment because of sin and she said to Elijah -
What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
The presence of the prophet in her home must have impressed her with the reality of God, resulting in a deeper sense of sin within herself, and thus she connected Elijah, whom she had come to regard, with this terrible calamity. She felt that this man of God had looked into her heart and had detected that it was sinful, and that divine vengeance had fallen upon her. But Elijah knew the bereaved mother was beside herself, and had committed no evil meriting the death of her son. This anguish was to be another trial of her faith.
Her Praise
Somewhat bitter, the Sarepta widow was not permitted to reproach Elijah who did not rebuke her nor answer her question, but simply said, "Give me thy son." The dead form she was clasping was placed in the prophet's arms, who took the lifeless body up to his chamber and asked God why He had allowed such a grief to overtake the widow who had been so kind to him. Three times he stretched himself upon the child and prayed most earnestly that the child might live again. For the mother downstairs it must have been an agonizing wait, but she was to be the witness to another miracle. The Lord heard Elijah's prayer, the child's soul came into him again, and, hastening down the stairs, the prophet handed over the precious burden saying, "See, thy son liveth." The faith of the mother returned with a fervent vigor, and her sorrow turned to song as she praised God and exclaimed -
Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.
In such a declaration we have the final victory of faith brought out by the crowning mercy of her child's resurrection. The widow's growing apprehension of God is seen in her concept of Him. As a heathen woman speaking of Jehovah from without, she said, "The Lord thy God" (1 Kings 17:12). Not her God but Elijah's - thy God, and as "the Lord God of Israel." Now she believes as never before that Elijah, God's servant, is indeed "a man of God" and in accepting "the word of the Lord" from his lips as "the truth" seems undoubtedly to express the widow's full surrender to Him whose miraculous power on her behalf had been manifested through His servant whom she had befriended.
Her Prominence
It must have been a sad day when God called Elijah to leave the shelter and love of the widow's home and go to show himself to Ahab and pronounce the end of the three and a half years drought. While, possibly, Elijah never lost contact with the Sarepta widow who had become such a part of his life, the Bible does not tell us anything further about her and her son whom God raised from the dead. Yet because of our Lord's reference to her, she is held in everlasting remembrance. While in the synagogue at Nazareth He selected this incident from the Old Testament and said that although there were "many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah," unto none of them was the prophet sent save unto the widow of Sarepta (Luke 4:26). As the heathen woman was visited of God, so Christ had come to gather Gentiles, as well as Jews, unto Himself. Jesus immortalized that lowly woman who was so hospitable, to emphasize the immortal truth that in this dispensation of divine grace God is no respecter of persons. No favored nation, nor exclusive privilege enters into His scheme of salvation. God's favor becomes the portion of those who repent of their sin and accept His Son as their Saviour and Lord.
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Samson

[Săm'son] - distinguished, strong orsun-man.

The Man of Contrasts

One of the most renowned of the Hebrew judges, Samson was a son of the Danite, Manoah, who judged Israel for twenty years. He was unique in that his birth and manner of life were foretold. Supernaturally endowed, he killed a lion, thirty Philistines and one thousand men. He broke the strongest bands, carried off the gates of Gaza and pulled down the Temple of Dagon (Judg. 13:24-16:30). He is found among the illustrious in Faith's Hall of Fame (Heb. 11:32).
As long as Samson remained a Nazarite he was unconquerable. He only of all the judges of whom we have any history, does everything single-handed and alone. Samson never called the armies of Israel together; he asked no assistance. What he did, he did alone in his own unconquerable strength. We are not told how he managed his court, nor about the wisdom of his judgments, nor about the manner of Israel's life for a whole generation under her gigantic judge.
The complex story of Samson teaches us the evils of mixed or foreign marriages ( Judg. 14:3), the laxity of sexual relations and of playing with temptation. C. W. Emmet says that Samson "teaches us that bodily endowments, no less than spiritual, are a gift from God, however different may be our modern conception of the way in which they are bestowed, and that their retention depends on obedience to His laws."
But if Samson stands as an example "of impotence of mind in body strong," he also stands, in Milton's magnificent conception, as an example of patriotism and heroism in death, to all who "from his memory inflame their breast to matchless valour and adventures high."
The deadly results of Samson's self-indulgence after he broke his Nazarite vow, appear in their dark and ominous order:
Self-confidence: "I will go out" (Judg. 16:20).
Self-ignorance: "He wist not" (Judg. 16:20).
Self-weakness: "The Philistines laid hold on him" (Judg. 16:21).
Self-darkness: "They put out his eyes" (Judg. 16:21).
Self-degradation: "They brought him down to Gaza" ( Judg. 16:1-3, 21).
Self-bondage: "They bound him with fetters" (Judg. 16:21).
Self-drudgery: "He did grind in the prison-house" (Judg. 16:21).
Self-humiliation: "Call for Samson, that he may make us sport" (Judg. 16:25, 27).
Samson stands out as a man of striking contrasts. He had a kind of Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde being.
I. He was separated as a Nazarite ( Judg. 13:5 ), yet tampered with evil associations (Judg. 14:1-3).
II. He was occasionally Spirit-possessed (Judg. 13:25; 15:14), yet yielded to carnal appetites (Judg. 16:1-4).
III. He appeared childish in some of his plans (Judg. 15:4), yet was courageous in battle (Judg. 15:1-4).
IV. He was mighty in physical strength ( Judg. 16:3, 9, 13, 14), yet weak in resisting temptation (Judg. 16:15-17).
V. He had a noble beginning but a sad end (Judg. 16:30).
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