Twice Jesus was offered wine while on the cross. He refused the first, but took the second. Why so?Read it here.
The Stokely family sat in a football stadium on a warm Friday night just before Memorial Day 2001 to watch Mike Stokely graduate high school. He already had boot camp / basic training and a year in the National Guard under his belt and would be heading off for Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Gordon in a few weeks. His little sister, Abbey, almost nine, couldn't let go of him, even to have a photo taken with Mike and their brother, Wes. yus1.jpg She swung on his arm adoringly - her look of love says it all.Read it here, and as Anchoress advises, ponder grace.
On the morning of August 16, 2005, as my wife Retta and I sat with Wes and Abbey just after breaking the news to them of Mikes death earler that morning, then 13 year old Abbey buried her head into my shoulder, sobbing these words: "he was supposed to chase away my first boyfriend, he was supposed to cheer at my graduation from high school, he was supposed to be an uncle to my children..." These words seared my heart, broken as it was. I shall never forget them. She lost her oldest brother that day, her "Bubs" which she called him short for his nickname, Bubba. ...
With the long Memorial Day weekend on the horizon, President Obama is finally addressing one of the great broken promises of his administration: his early pledge to return home to Chicago every six weeks or so. [emphasis added]It's not like we have men and women fighting and dying in a war in far off lands, or anything, right? I can't tell whether the reporter is being sarcastic or serious when she says that returning to Chicago every six weeks is "one of the great broken promises" of President ObamBam's administration.
In 16 months at the White House, the Obamas have been back home just once - in February of 2009. But they plan to make the trip over Memorial Day weekend, an official said. After arriving on Thursday night, they will visit with friends and participate in private events.
On Monday, Obama will make remarks at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, south of Chicago - missing the usual tradition of presidents speaking at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.
Vice President Biden and his wife will appear in Obama's place, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as well as holding a breakfast for Gold Star families -- families whose loved ones died in military service -- at the White House earlier that day.
On May 17, 2010 08:32 UTC, The Iceland Met office indicates that a small earthquake has occurred at the Katla location. In what could be an early indication of the event that is expected to occur (an eruption of Katla), a small earthquake is reported at the site. Although a single earthquake is not a precursor of an eminent eruption, it could be the first ’sigh’ of the awakening powerful giant.If such a large eruption does occur, expect food prices to large, as harvest yields plummet. Some more info on Katla's previous eruptions is available here. How's that food storage plan coming along?
Historically, Katla has erupted after the eruption of it’s close neighbor, Eyjafjallajokull, which first erupted on April 14, 2010 and is ongoing at this moment. Magma channels beneath the two volcanoes are thought to be interconnected. A Katla eruption would likely be about ten times as powerful at the Eyjafjallajokull eruption and could cause worldwide disruption while expelling huge volumes of volcanic ash into the stratosphere which would circle the globe potentially for years, depending upon the magnitude of the eruption. [emphasis added] ...
With Kagan, Supreme Court will get yet more diverse: It will have Catholics from Harvard or Yale, an African-American from Harvard or Yale, women from Harvard or Yale, a Hispanic from Harvard or Yale, and a Jew from Harvard or Yale.
WASHINGTON — Xernna Nieves, her four children and her sister, Sara, have for the past eight months lived in a single, cramped hotel room just outside of Atlanta.
(Credit: McClatchy Newspapers)
Nieves, her sister and the two youngest children, both girls, sleep four to a bed. The boys, 15 and 12, sleep on the floor. In such close quarters, "We're getting on each others' nerves," Nieves said.
After nearly two years without a job, about the only thing that Nieves, 41, a former accounting worker, can count on is her unemployment insurance check; a $330-a-week lifeline that pays the rent, fills her gas tank and feeds her family when their $300-a-month food-stamp benefit runs out in mid month.
Barring any further action from Congress, however, Nieves' "lifeline" will be cut at the end of June.
That's when she's slated to join hundreds of thousands of jobless workers nationwide who've exhausted their maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and face life with no meaningful income. ...
What we have here is the failure of the unfree market. That means the failure of Greece. And the other PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain). And Europe. And it means the U.S., too. It even includes the Great Recession. The modern welfare state is collapsing around us.For those that haven't read The Fourth Turning
If you had believed in the 72-Year Rule, you would have seen this coming. The 72-Year Rule says the lifetime of any social order or governing paradigm is about 72 years. For example, how long was it from the adoption of our original Constitution (1789), which sanctioned slavery, to the Civil War (1861)? Call it 72 years. And from then until the New Deal in 1933? Another 72 years. How about from the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)? That would be 72 years again.
Do you know when the first Social Security check was issued? January 31, 1940. If my guess is right, Social Security has maybe two more years left.
Generally, the modern welfare states were born in the 1930s. So the 72-Year Rule says the modern welfare states will collapse and/or turn into something else in the 2002-2012 time frame.
Kinda makes you believe in the 72-Year Rule, doesn't it? ...
, by economic historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, those authors make a similar case, though on an 80 year generational cycle.
I just watched a documentary on Stalin which showed a old Ukrainian woman telling the story of the horrors her family faced when Stalin pushed them onto the collectives, stole their grain and sold it abroad to fund his industrial dreams.Read the rest here. Then consider that the policies of our own collectivist elite -- the same collectivist scum who worship the policies of Stalin, and Mao, and Castro -- would, if allowed to reach their natural, manifestly evil, conclusion, force that same choice upon American mothers.
She said that their house had the only nearby well and neighbors came there to fetch water. No one had any food. Everyone was starving.
Her mother had three children. The youngest was a boy around five. He had taken ill so they had put him in the warmest place, a bunk bed over the stove. The mother had nothing to feed her children save a single turnip. She boiled it up and divided it between the two oldest children. The youngest child, smelling the turnip from his bed over the stove ask for some. The woman refused. The child climbed down from his sick bed, crying, grabbing at her skirts and begging for just a bite of turnip. Seeing this, the neighbors told the woman to give the starving child just a bite of turnip.
“No,” she said, “I have to save the food for my healthy children.”
Hearing this, the boy sagged. He gave up begging and weeping bitterly, struggled back into his bed. He cried until he died the next day.
When a child dies slowly, such as from starvation, they often begin to make a particular rhythmic, low, mewing cry in their final hours.
Those unfortunate enough to have heard it describe it as being like no other sound a human makes. It’s sad and pathetic and tugs at the adult heart like nothing else. Deep in our genetic core it calls us to do something, anything, to save the child.
Did the woman have to listen to her son make that sound? Did his weeping slowly turn to that mindless mewing? Did she have to sit in her one room peasant house, listening to him for hours until he finally stilled?
The horror of this story defies quantification. What could be worse than having to decide to withhold food from your own starving child? From your own youngest child? What could be worse than seeing his face when you told him not that you couldn’t feed him but that you wouldn’t? ...
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.You, driving your SUV, are a threat to world climate. Al and his multiple mansions, huge boat(s), private jet travel, and limousine caravans ... not so much.
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Its coloured charts, graphs and bullet-points are supposed to make the most incomprehensible data crystal clear.Read it here.
But even the sharpest military minds in American were left baffled by this PowerPoint slide, a mind-boggling attempt to explain the situation in Afghanistan.
'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war,' General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing. ...
:Today is May 1, May Day. Back in 2007 and 2008, I advocated the idea of transforming this long-time communist holiday into Victims of Communism Day — a day of remembrance for the victims of history’s bloodiest ideology. This year, several bloggers are joining in an effort to commemorate the occasion. Jonathan Wilde of Distributed Republic deserves credit for organizing this effort.Read the rest here. A fitting day of mourning, as the United States plunges headlong into our own nightmare of Marxist hell.
I think that the rationale I offered for turning May Day into Victims of Communism Day in my first post on the subject still holds true:
May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their regimes. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communismestimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. [emphasis added] We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so. I suggest that May Day be turned into Victims of Communism Day....
The main alternative to May 1 is November 7, the anniversary of the communist coup in Russia. However, choosing that date might be interpreted as focusing exclusively on the Soviet Union, while ignoring the equally horrendous communist mass murders in China, Camobodia, and elsewhere. So May 1 is the best choice.
The status quo political powers are mystified by the Tea Party; we're giving them unemployment, tax credits and healthcare/sickcare coverage; we're buying them off with the same entitlements we offer our other constituencies; why aren't they silent and complicit like everyone else? Why don't they just take the swag and shut up like everyone else?
Lost in their moral rot, the status quo "leadership" cannot understand the Tea Party's anger. The Elites do not understand why the Tea Party rebels don't have the self-serving sense to just take the swag and go back to watching TV. What fires their enthusiasm for rebellion?
The British Parliament was equally confounded in 1773. The Colonists are well-off, and protected by the Empire; what is their problem? ...
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