PRAYER POWER

Times are hard on many sides.  We deal with obvious economic pressures and then just the daily demand to bat at a thousand balls.

Responsible people don't have time to deal with what government is up to.  But we must.

We find comfort in knowing that uncounted prayers are going up for our nation.  There are many organizations which base their prayers on the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14.  We might think of One Cry, the National Prayer Breakfast, the Presidential Prayer Team, Billy Graham's organization, and so many others.  All are on their faces before God.

Perhaps you have noticed sermons at your church which would remind you that pastors recognize our times.   Sometimes when we pray, we are so burdened and over-whelmed that all we can say is "Lord, help!"

Be encouraged.  His is answering those prayers.

Just as if we all were in a huge megaplex cinema, the Living God is pulling back the curtain to allow us to see what is going on in the dark.

Over in one theatre, Benghazi.  In another, Gosnell.  In a third, the IRS. And now in a fourth theatre, the revelation of the Associated Press phone taps.

All assault our liberty.

*If soldiers do not think their country will come for them, who will volunteer to protect us?

*God has said that children are a gift from Him.  Will infanticide be the legacy of our land?

*If people who want to make much of the Constitution, responsible debt and a historic American perspective are subdued, who will explain our country to the next generation?

*If the long arm of the law reaches over the freedom of the press, how will government stay in check?  The press has not fully exercised it's journalistic charge, but now that it is in danger, they are juiced and want it back.  GOOD!

We serve a God who is full of mercy and grace.  His kind intention is always for His people's good.  Let's not ignore this gracious insight we've been given.  Let's stand up for the light and continue to ask Him for more...while asking Him what our job as a responsible citizen should be.

God promises to be our Guide and our Help. Although He is God and knows the beginning from the end...He also waits to see who will respond.


"The ultimate determinate in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas. It is a trial of spiritual resolve for the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, and the ideas to which we are dedicated."       
                                      -Ronald Reagan

BENGHAZI/GOSNELL/IRS

What do these issues have in common?

They are all weighty issues that Fox News (and conservatives ) have carried almost solely by themselves for months.  While out in front, Fox bore up under scalding mainstream media flack.  There was sneering derision, name calling, condescending patronization, and outright ridicule (see above).

But now the drive-by's are coming around.  They can no longer ignore the evidence against the abortion industry, the intimidation of the bully IRS toward conservatives, and the rotten scandal in Benghazi.

SURELY as the reporting filters down, Americans will not remain apathetic.

#1.  BENGHAZI
All we hear is "partisan politics" and "a witch hunt trying to pull down Hillary".  But this week it was revealed that the whistleblower, Greg Hicks, is a Democrat who twice voted for the President.  So much for the partisan claim.

#2.  GOSNELL
My husband is a sound thinker with judicial temperament.  Last week when he listened to Gosnell's defense attorney claim that the babies only moved out of reflex...he quietly said to the television "then why would Gosnell have to clip their spine?"

Now this afternoon the jury must agree.  They came back with involuntary manslaughter for the lady whose improper anesthesiology led to her death...plus three first-degree murder charges for the babies born alive who were killed on his table.  We thank the Lord that He gave the jury clear-headed regard for justice and perseverance to endure such testimony.  Now may He help them get the horrific details out of their minds.

#3.  IRS
If you already think the IRS is a bully, it's not hard to imagine how it could be used against enemies.  It has been.  LINK  

First we heard if you had the name "Conservative" or "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in your application for tax-free status, you were not only scrutinized but called to fill out additional forms listing family members and other information that was unheard of.  Then we find out that their red flags were more broad than that.  If you said you were promoting the Constitution or concerned about the debt crisis, or touted better government...you, too, were in their sights.  And the AP reports that senior officials at IRS knew agents were targeting groups as early as 2011.  Still, the former director testified in 2012 that it didn't happen.

CAN'T ANYONE TELL THE TRUTH?

On each of these issues, journalists cooperated by not reporting the facts or being intellectually curious.  So for Americans who only listened to those channels, the assumption was Fox must be wild-eyed.  Surely, those folks reasoned, if there was anything to the Fox claims, their news outlets would be reporting on it.

Well, they weren't.  And here's why.

The administration and the media are ideologically on the same page.  They philosophically linked arms and created an incestuous connection between the media and the White House.  How?

Did you know that the president of CBS (David Rhodes) has a brother (Ben Rhodes) who is Deputy National Security Advisor?  Ben Rhodes wrote the Cairo speech that the President delivered in June, 2009.  AND it was also Ben Rhodes who rewrote the talking points.

Did you know that the president of ABC (Ben Sherwood) has a sister (Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall) who is Special Assistant to the President...until this March when she moved to a new position.  LINK and will coordinate Defense Policy and Arms Control and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Did you know that Hillary's deputy @the State Department (Tom Nides) is married to the CNN Deputy Bureau Chief (Virginia Mosley)?  Or that Jay Carney's wife is ABC's Claire Shipman?

Jay has really been dodging and weaving lately and must be exhausted.  But at the end of the day, he only can say what his boss tells him to say.

There is one CBS reporter who got so close to Benghazi that she got into hot water with the network; Sharyl Atkisson must be a brave soul.  And Jonathan Karl @ABC also comes to mind as a real reporter.

As rocks are rolled over and these things come into the light of day...notice the consistency of the administration.  First the President registers SHOCK and outrage.  Then although he has no idea if it could be true, he will sure find out and it will be dealt with.  Somehow he never seems to know about it (take the IRS thing for example) until the media tells him (as he said they informed him last Friday), yet it took him three days to address it.  LINK  Then he will appoint a blue ribbon commission to get to the bottom of it (like he did at State Department, the same commission who did NOT interview the two people in charge...Hillary and Greg Hicks).   Time goes by and then some poor underling is found to hold the bag.  How ridiculous to think someone down the chain at the Cincinnati office of IRS would have the audacity to initiate such risky policy.

Mr. Glib-of-Tongue speaks as if all this malfeasance happened on an alternate planet somewhere... anywhere but his arena.  As this writer watches to see if her tax return gets challenged, the mainstream media is kicking and screaming as they come to these stories.  And the reporters at Fox News wear the real reporter hats.

JUST IN:
Department of Justice has engaged in a bold move on an unheard of scale...tapping twenty lines of over 100 AP reporters.  The AP is squealing loudly about Freedom of the Press.  Welcome, Gentlemen.  Get in line behind Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, and the Right to Bear Arms.

WICKED WEB

What's that "mother always said"?  It's a wicked web we weave when we practice to deceive.

PARTISAN.
Some alphabet coverage yesterday slammed the Benghazi hearings on the basis that they were a witch hunt out to destroy Hillary.

So let's see now...a terror attack on America results in multiple deaths...and getting to the bottom of it is another conspiracy in the list of conspiracies against Hil.  How many of those conspiracy passes do you get in a lifetime?

.

INTEGRITY.
The three whistleblowers (with a total of 70+ years of service to the country) were not sitting there as Republicans.  It took considerable courage to step forward after the repercussions they have already faced.

This administration is squarely against bullying in third grade, but they bullied, berated, intimidated, threatened, and demoted career employees who bravely spoke in defense of their comrades.  LINK

Is Hillary so important we should sacrifice our country's safety and airbrush the wrong-headed foreign policy that is waiting to bite us again?


DITHER.
A dithering president LINK is dangerous.

Remember how the president dithered about pulling the trigger on Osama until Panetta all but pulled it for him?  Remember how he has stewed about a red line in Syria (which is a big thing)...but also stewed over three pirate thugs bobbing off the coast of Somalia with American hostages for ransom?  The sharpshooters held a bead on them for several days while the command finally came down.  That indecisiveness brings up a fair question.

Was the president dithering the long night of Benghazi?  He got a report the embassy was under fire and that's all we heard from him.  Panetta says he never called back...nor did Hillary.  For all we know the president went to bed.  We know he got up the next morning and flew out for a campaign stop in Vegas.

What Commander-in-Chief does that?  It's not unreasonable to want to know where the president was that night.


HANDICAP.
After the Benghazi attack, the Prime Minister of Libya put himself in personal danger to travel to the burning Embassy, and then went on television and called it a terrorist attack.  Later the whole world heard the UN Ambassador Susan Rice cut his legs out from under him by giving an alternate explanation.

Not surprisingly after that gaffe, we had no access to the "crime scene" for weeks.




ARB (Accountability Review Board).
The ARB filed a vanilla report card on the State Department's handling of Benghazi; it reported problems, but no one was responsible.  That's the State Department writing their own report card WITHOUT interviewing either the Big Cheese (Hil)...or Glen Hicks, the second-in-command under Ambassador Chris Stevens.  Glen Hicks was the one on the ground and would presumably have been able to tell them what happened.

Doesn't that strain incredulity?

GAPOSIS.

There is white space between what we've been told and common sense.

We were told they couldn't send help because the fight was over.  Wouldn't "over" only be able to be determined in hindsight?  We were told they couldn't send help because help was too far away.  Glen Hicks was in Tripoli and he got there.  And the operators on the ground in Tripoli were told to stand down TWICE.

Because of sworn testimony at the hearings, we know now that the first intelligence report was correct. Then there were twelve revisions.  So everyone knew right away it was a terror attack and NOT the bogus video.  Yet the President and Hillary both stood by caskets and looked the mother of Sean Smith in the eye and told her it was the video and they were going to get whoever killed her son.

The President said he got his info from the talking points.  But someone adverse to calling terrorism "terrorism" scrubbed those talking points.  LINK

Here are some direct quotes after Benghazi:

Hillary's words:  "It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again."

The President's words:  "We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.  And make no mistake, justice will be done."

The question is not..."are they saying the right words"?  Of course they are the right words.  They just are not connected to truth.  There has not been a whiff of justice.  How COULD they begin an investigation into what they did wrong?

Did the faux video commotion cause the perps to get away with murder?  It sure was much ado about nothing.  Think we can let that guy who made the video out of jail now?  Maybe he's been punished enough.

America was attacked and the world knows it can be done without reprisal.  Americans have been lied to by their leadership.

But if we reach for the salacious over the substantive (by reaching for Juicy JodiArias coverage to the exclusion of Benghazi hearings) we can be wrapped in the wicked web without even knowing it.

SOME NERVE

If you go out on a date, aren't you supposed to dance with the one who "brung" ya?

Our country has been on a torturous date with our leader for 4.5 years now.  But he doesn't seem to be any keener about us; he consistently goes about apologizing for his date.

Today he apologized to Mexico.  That's right, Mexico.  Incredibly, he apologized to folks who break our laws WHILE WE FEED AND HOUSE AND FUND HEALTHCARE AND HIGHER EDUCATION for them.  It's almost too much to believe.  He apologized and blamed Mexico's gun violence on America because we demand their drugs and...then with the nerves of a burglar in daylight, he said their guns came from us.

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," President Obama said during a speech at Mexico's Anthropology Museum. "I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will."

"But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It’s the right thing to do," Obama added."

Could we remember HIS program, "Fast and Furious"?  Do folks realize the differences between a program during the Bush administration called "Wide Receiver" and the Obama program called "Fast and Furious"?

Wide Receiver was an effort to join forces with Mexican law enforcement in order to get a handle on gun smuggling and drug cartels.  It began in 2005 and involved 400 guns which had a GPS within them to track/keep law enforcement aware of their whereabouts.  The plan was to see where the guns ended so they could make their case against the cartels.  The Bush administration notified the Mexican governments when the arms and smugglers crossed the border.  They made 1,400 arrests.  When ATF realized the bad guys were disabling the tracking devices, RFID tracking devices were installed to destroy guns when they attempted to disarm them.  The program was shut down in 2007 when the smugglers got wise and could outsmart the guns.

THE PURPOSE OF 'WIDE RECEIVER' WAS TO WORK WITH MEXICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT IN ORDER TO TRACK AND BUILD A CASE AGAINST VIOLENT DRUG SMUGGLERS.

What about Fast and Furious?  It began in October of 2009 (AFTER Wide Receiver had been shut down in 2007) and involved 2,000 guns with NO tracking devices and no effort to track them.  The guns were sold and walked across the border.  The Mexican government was not notified the program existed.  Federal agents werre not allowed to interdict the guns and they even ran interference for the smugglers with local law enforcement on multiple occasions to make sure those guns made it across the border.  No effort was ever made to arrest the "purchasers" or the smugglers or anyone.  NONE were arrested.  It was closed down only after the deaths of at least 200 Mexican citizens and two federal agents, Border Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent, Jaime Zapata.

THE PURPOSE OF FAST AND FURIOUS IS UNKNOWN.

This picture is of the brave ATF whistleblowers who testified to Congress about Fast and Furious. 

It is hard to get to the bottom of this case because the president has invoked executive privilege and our Attorney General denies knowing about it.  We have "outrage deficit" because there are so many issues flying in our face daily.  But we know that Fast and Furious bore no resemblance to Wide Receiver. 

The bottom line is...if Fast and Furious was our law enforcement program, it did not play out in OUR country, but in Mexico where over 200 innocent citizens died.  TWO HUNDRED!

AND THE PRESIDENT STOOD BEFORE MEXICANS TODAY AND UNASHAMEDLY ACTED LIKE HE WAS TAKING CHARGE OF PROTECTING THEM...RATHER THAN HAVING COOKED UP THE VERY PROGRAM WHICH SENT GUNS INTO THEIR COUNTRY. 

And then he said his reform would "save lives in Mexico because it is the right thing to do".

BOMBER FATIGUE

It will NOT be too soon when we never see their faces again.  Or see that bomb go off again.  Or think of what it would be like to lose your limbs.

The bomber's whole dysfunctional family is tiring.  Fatigue comes from hearing their whiney mother covered incessantly in the media around the world, complaining about how awful America is.  That would be the same "innocent" lady who we now know (from a Russian wiretap) had jihad conversations with her older son.

Hey Mom!  What about using welfare dollars to pay your arrest warrant for $1,600 worth of clothes lifted from Lord and Taylor?  Or at the very least, pay for some acting lessons.

This family has a trail of sadness, but our country brought them in and gave them money to get them on their feet.  We were repaid most ingloriously; they are ingrates from hell.

And listen, media.  Don't put anymore hunky pictures of #1 in his boxing suit.  Don't put anymore pictures of #2, looking like he is thirteen.  What's the point?  Sixty Minutes, don't run anymore interviews of a girl from high school that talks incessantly about the younger brother...how she liked him because he was cute and sweet.  Alan Colmes, spare us the SYMPATHY for the grieving mother.

Our country is engaged in a life-and-death struggle; extraneous stuff (such as how sweet or cute they are) is ridiculous.  Their book gives them permission to lie as necessary to fool the infidel.  So what if they were good at lying?  We just need to know how they did what they did...and how we can work best to prevent a reoccurrence.

When America heard that the FBI had interviewed #1 but had found nothing, we were willing to cut the agency slack.  Perhaps #1's descent had not begun at the time the FBI came calling.

But then we heard Napolitano say the system "pinged" when #1 traveled, so we know they were aware of him and that he was on two different lists.  Russia gave us the first tip to check him out, and when the FBI didn't turn up anything, six months later the Russians called the CIA.  Knowing all this now...we wonder how AFTER the bombing...that family wasn't up at the top of suspects?  Why did the FBI have to publish their picture and ask for help finding the perps?

We are told that after twelve years since 9/11, the same problem (lack of communication) has happened again between "the suits and the spooks".  Could someone please fix that?

CAN I GET A BLESSING?

When the President spoke to Planned Parenthood's "gala" yesterday, he spoke for twelve minutes and three seconds.

According to Planned Parenthood's 2011 NUMBERS...they performed 333,964 abortions, or one every 94 seconds.  That means at least 7.6 abortions (if not more) were performed during the time he spoke.

The President is the first sitting president to ADDRESS the group.  His appearance seems to be a hail Mary because of two encouraging things:

#1.  States are passing new abortion RESTRICTIONS. Eight states now require an ultrasound prior to receiving an abortion.

#2.  The Gosnell trial.  The informed populace has been to the outer banks of disgust as the DETAILS of this trial unfold.

Truly, Gosnell and Planned Parenthood have a common link.  This TESTIMONY of the Planned Parenthood paid lobbyist boggles the mind.  The legislators asked her a good question; it was not a gotcha question, but a bottom-line question.  "What do you do with the baby born alive?"  And the PP spokesperson went into robotic mode, saying "That is up to the girl, her family, and the doctors."  That painfully illustrates how do no harm swerves into infanticide without a blink.  It did for Dr. Gosnell...

Planned Parenthood would defend themselves by saying that Dr. Gosnell exhibits aberrant behavior and bears no likeness to what happens in their clinics.  They cast themselves as being a helper for women.  They don't put infant feet in jars on display as the doc did.  They have cleaner standards and licensed personnel.

But the Gosnell trial has given America a look inside a death chamber for innocents. We've long heard words to describe procedures done to pre-borns...but now we've seen the gruesome pictures.

Gosnell has proven himself neither the friend of women, nor mankind.  And while PP might tout their righteousness while hiding behind the preventative screenings (as though there would be no other way for women to get those)...the Judge will hold them responsible.

Meanwhile, the country will feel judgment because of their actions.  Evil begets greater evil.  And the ones who do not go along with the President's "enlightenment" find themselves characterized as dinosaurs who refuse to evolve and want to go back to the 50's.

Mankind is called to live a live that put us in the position to receive God's blessing.  When Barack Obama closed his speech at Planned Parenthood, he said to the crowd "God bless you."  That was hair-raising.  The President trivializes the holy and minimizes costly mercy...while putting us beyond the place to be blessed.

It's possible to ignore what God says.  It's possible to reject His laws and smirk at their shelf life and boldly go where no man has gone.  But it guarantees a position where blessing becomes impossible.

CHOOSE LIFE!

THE BROTHERS TSARNAEV

It's pretty creepy seeing them in the crowd.

Mike and I were traveling yesterday and listening to Mark Steyn, hopeful of news of the capture of the second Boston bomber.  Steyn's great acerbic wit (delivered with a British accent) makes him a favorite.  He said that one side waits, sure the fugitive was a white, rightwing nutcase...while the other side waits, expecting a Muslim extremist.

In the end, he said they both were happy because the brothers were Caucasians (and you couldn't get more Caucasian than being from the Caucasus') AND they were Muslims.

Steyn went on to explain about a YouTube channel belonging to Tamerian Tsarnaev, which gives us a looksee into his head.  (That would be somewhat like looking at your Netflix history to see what is inside your head...except having a YouTube channel means you are promoting and not just viewing.)  Tamerian was promoting hateful radical Islamic videos.  He began posting them when he came home from six months in Russia.

This brings us to the reoccurring terrorism in our country.   Just a cursory look back tells us who our enemy repeatedly has been.  This administration has continued to play down the enemy, redefine the enemy, cleanse the nomenclature about the enemy, and choose not to pay benefits to soldiers at Ft. Hood who faced the enemy.  It's hard to know why.

Steyn sarcastically says:  "None of these guys, none of these lone wolves, none of these lone wolves stretching as far back as the eye can see, are ever typical of anything,” Steyn said. “We don’t know that any of these lone wolves belong to the United Amalgamated of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists. They’re all just one-offs — all jihad is local.”

Of course Steyn's sarcasm points out that they are NOT lone wolves and the common thread is their belief in the same worldview.  Contrary to tolerant pantheists, it matters what people believe.  The bumper sticker on the back of Tsarnaev's car said "COEXIST".  That's a good one.

We can connect the dots between the Ft. Hood shooter, the underwear bomber, the Christmas Eve bomber, the Little Rock Army recruiting station shooter, etc. etc. etc.  All are the product of global jihad; all have roots in hateful/harmful radical Islamic fundamentalism.

If Christianity can be reduced to the phrase "turn or burn", then that phrase is a plea to reason and a warning about destruction ahead.  But the believer is not the judgment agent.  

On the other hand, an Islamist says "turn or face the sword and Allah will reward me".  He's judge and jury and executioner...and thinks he will be a bountiful beneficiary.

Strangely, today people are hurrying to the microphone to illustrate their broad-mindedness and enlarge themselves as being viewpoint-tolerant concerning the Tsarnaevs.  Al Sharpton stepped all over himself in this LINK.

A more mainstream media example might be an essay from the NEW YORKER HERE.  Or the NEW YORK TIMES sympathetic piece about the brothers which later had words retracted ("far from war-torn homeland, trying to fit in").  HERE

These men were trying to fit in?  They pay back a government who welcomed them in and supported them...by putting a bomb beside a little boy and setting it off?  Does anyone believe the tripe that they had their feelings hurt and decided to become mass murderers?

No one is advocating a rush to judgment.  But so many things are already known about the Tsarnaev brothers that would put them in the suspicious file (their "religion" not being one of the reasons).  For starters, two years ago the Russians tipped the FBI about Tamerian and he was interviewed about a terror connection.  There was no evidence then to support the claim, but the claim red-flagged Tamerian's citizenship application.

It's very encouraging to see the way technology has come alongside law enforcement.  These pictures of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev getting into the boat are amazing...as well as the infrared picture of him hiding in the boat.

Government stands guard between us and global jihad.  I would feel more comfortable if they started acknowledging the enemy by using the correct words.  Take away the words "workplace violence" and lose the words "overseas contingency operation".  Say the words "radical Islamic terrorist".  It is NOT Islamaphobic to say America is in the crosshairs of radical Muslim fundamentalists.  We are.  And if profiling helps, profile!  Can't we be on our own side?  It's reverse profiling that Major Hassan put "soldier of Allah" on his calling card and no one called him on it.

The diluting of Al-Qaeda worldwide has resulted in smaller efforts centered on disaffected nationals to act as the new footsoldiers.  There may be no more big 9/11 operations, but it looks like with little money and a pressure cooker, the Tsarnaevs have put themselves on the front page.  Others will be attracted to do the same. 

Lord, make us alert and at the ready.