CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
EVENING EDITION, Saturday, February 15, 2014
UPDATE ON THE MOSSHOLDERS
My son, Reverend Tim Mossholder, is still recovering from Thyroid cancer surgery. Many of you have been asking about him and I thank you for that. Doctors have said that it will take several months of healing before Tim will know how he’s going to feel and how his body is going to respond in the future. Specific points of prayer needs for Tim are for his energy and his voice.
Tim says he doesn’t have all of his strength back and be sure would like to have it again. His voice is another major point of concern. Right now he has lost his high range, and the most challenging part of that is that he can neither sing at all, nor can he preach or teach. Doctors have told him not to return to the pulpit for several months. And Tim is like his dad, he loves to sing. Please pray for the kind of physical restoration that will astound his doctors because it happens so quickly. This is definitely a testing time for Tim in accordance with James 1:2 – 4. We are praying that he will get to verse 4 immediately.
Several of my friends have been asking how I’m doing with the sciatica. I’d love to say I’m healed and have no pain. In fact, one of my favorite sayings is “No pain. No pain.” And as you’ve prayed for me, my pain a lot of the time is far less than what I remember from my other two bouts with this. But sciatica has a way of going from a 1 to 10 instantly. I’m a woose, completely unprepared for pain. So I ask you to pray for me and especially for Tim.
Then there’s Georgia. My wife isn’t a woose. Whether standing, sitting, or walking, her back is in constant pain ranging from a 4 to a 10. Yet I have to ask her how’s she’s doing before she’ll tell me or complain. Fibromyalgia feels like sciatica of the back and works in a very similar way.
For a “healing evangelist” who Christ has used since 1970 to bring healing to thousands, this seems impossible. I’m humbled daily by it, or maybe I should say humiliated. Georgia even has a bad cold now. But Tim, Georgia and I, are believing Christ for our healings while standing in the need of you joining us in prayer my awesome friend.
THANKS, Ray
THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW ALL OVER THE WORLD MAKES SENSE
(ACCORDING TO METEOROLOGISTS)
(CNN)– It’s official: This worlds weather has gone absolutely wacky. The nation’s climate agency says so — and, in part, explains why. There is method to the meteorological madness. And it has served to spread the weirdness around the world, from the American West all the way to Russia, a climate expert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The drought parching California; those two snowpocalypses in the South; the unrelenting New England snow; the sopping soaking of the UK; short sleeves on Sochi’s snow-hungry slopes. One single weather event has a hand in all of them, said NOAA environmentalist Bill Lapenta. “They are associated with that long-wave pattern, so they are connected in that sense,” he said. That “long-wave pattern” is like a whip that got swung in California and has cracked in all the other places.
A big, sturdy ridge of high pressure air has blustered rain clouds away from California, and at the same time, it has pushed the jet-stream way up into Canada. In reaction to that, the jet-stream has swung back deeper into the South than usual, carrying Canadian cold with it. Voila. Snow and ice from Louisiana to the Carolinas.
Then it has whipped back up, helping big storms dump snow over the Northeast.
From there, the same jet-stream has crossed the Atlantic and brought weather that flooded Great Britain in the wettest January there in two and a half centuries.
Down the road a bit, at the Winter Olympics, it’s practically springtime in Sochi, and it’s that same jet-stream dragging in warmth that’s boosting temperatures well above freezing. But it gets even worse.
The jet-stream is moving slower than in past years, which means that all that ugly weather is hovering over places for longer periods, plaguing them with more of its nastiness than usual. It has weather-beaten people in many parts of the world groaning the same moan: “I’ve never seen weather like this before.”
Are they exaggerating? Maybe not. Let’s have a look at the season’s weather, starting with the whip’s handle — in California — and follow the jet-stream’s lash from there.
For the first time in its history, the California Water Project – a system of canals and reservoirs that provide water to two thirds of the people in the state’s Central Valley — set its allocation for all of them to zero. This pertains to people in the country and in cities alike. Many blame it on bureaucratic tangles between state and local authorities who decide over the water’s release. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there is a water shortage. As one example, Mark Borba’s farm gets its water from reservoirs 500 miles to his north. This year, they are running on bare minimum.
Further down the jet-stream, there’s been precipitation to boot. Winter blunderland. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard about or felt the winter ills that have walloped the nation’s Southeast. About two weeks ago, less than three inches of snow turned the region’s largest city into a gridlocked parking lot, where thousands of motorists sat for as much as 20 hours in their cars, while lows dipped into the teens.
Not being able to deal with snow is no surprise for a region that usually gets iced over every ten years or so — although the last such shellacking came three years ago.
Then this week, a second winter storm polished a path of white from Alabama all the way up to Maine. Not that the Northeast is not used to snow, after all it’s winter, and it’s normal there. But the frequency of heavy snows has had leaders in the region huffing for a break. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio greeted reporters covering the storm with the line: “Welcome to winter storm six of the last six weeks.”
And as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said before the worst of the storm hit: “This has just been a brutal winter where it never really has gotten warmer. And so the natural melting away of snow and ice is not happening.” It may have been a long-planned vacation or something to do with a bridge, but after the last storm passed, Christie took off with his family for the warmer latitudes of Puerto Rico.
A previous recent snow-thumping wrecked much of his inauguration celebration — along with that bridge scandal.
Add to that increased frequency of snowfall a quick CNN weather factoid: Over the last week, the continental United States has had snow on the ground in 49 of 50 states.
Following the jet-stream across the North Atlantic, things get warmer, but also, much, much wetter. London is used to rain, but this? The River Thames has burst its banks.
The Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, said the recent series of winter storms “has been exceptional in its duration, and has led to the wettest December to January period in the UK since records began.”
Some communities in low-lying areas in southwest England are looking more like the water-bound city of Venice, Italy. They have been under water since December. And there’s no letup in sight just yet. Authorities have warned communities along the Thames that more flooding is on its way, as the river reaches its highest level in 60 years.
A powerful Atlantic storm that blew in on Friday will add to people’s woes.
Where’s that coming from? It’s what’s left of a storm that plastered the United States with snow and ice.
Photos of Olympic cross-country skiers striding for miles in the snow in short sleeves were all the rage this week. They illustrate how warm it has been in Sochi, Russia, at the Winter Games. Low temperatures have been well above freezing, and daytime highs have hit the 50′s, NOAA says.
Spectators may find it pleasant to walk around in light jackets — or amusing to sit in the sun in shorts and t-shirts. But for the organizers, the warm weather, which Lapenta says is strongly influenced by that same jet-stream, has been no laughing matter. They’ve had to crank up snow machines to keep some ski runs white. Sochi has been one of the warmest cities to host the winter Games.
But that’s not really shocking, the climate agency says. “Sochi sits in a marginally wintry zone along the Black Sea coast near the Caucasus Mountains.” But with the current jet-stream pattern, marginally wintry does not seem to be enough to hold back balmier air. Luckily, many events are being held indoors or at higher, colder elevations.
Blasts of warm weather at Winter Olympic Games is nothing new, and it has been worse before. In 2010, Vancouver, Canada experienced its warmest January ever recorded. Snow machines were powerless against it, so organizers had to ship in snow by truck and helicopter. The Obama administration advises that the Olympic Committee should consider awarding the Games to cities in solidly cold regions — as global warming increases.
That leads to a pertinent question that is often on people’s minds when the weather goes haywire these days. Can we chalk this wacko winter up to climate change?
Lapenta would like to know, too. Cracking that code will be very complicated.
But there is something else that baffles his team. Why has the jet-stream gotten to be so slow this year? “That’s an area of research that we’re currently investigating. We don’t have a clear-cut answer to that question,” he said.
If climate scientists can make that connection, it will allow them to better predict weather craziness as much as a month or two ahead of time, Lapenta said.
So we’ll all be able to plan ahead.
CNN’s Miguel Marquez contributed to this report.
OBAMA AND THE UNITED NATIONS PLAN TO CHANGE THE WORLD’S ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, AND SOCIAL LIVES BEGINNING IN 2015
John Podesta, the former Clinton Administration chief of staff who is spearheading President Barack Obama’s aggressive strategy of government-by-regulation, has also been helping United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an even more ambitious job: setting the stage to radically transform the world’s economic, environmental and social agenda. That effort—a colossal and sweeping form of global behavior modification–is supposed to get a new kick-start at a special U.N. summit of world leaders to be convened by Ban in New York City on September 25. Its supporters hope that effort will end next year in a new international treaty that will bind all 193 U.N. members– including the U.S– to a still formless “universal sustainable development agenda” for the planet that will take effect in 2020.
“Developing a single, sustainable development agenda is critical,” says a report produced in May, 2013 by a 27-member “High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons” hand-picked by Ban to help focus the discussion and frame the effort required to make the huge and lengthy project a success. The high-level panel report was chaired by British Prime Minister David Cameron and the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia. The sole American among the international luminaries, who spent nearly a year at their efforts and endorsed them through a process of consensus, was Podesta.
The question is, critical to what? And the answer, according to that panel, is pretty much everything, in what it called a series of “big, transformative shifts.”
Their report opens with the challenge to end “extreme poverty, in all its forms;” and declares, “We can be the first generation in human history to end hunger and ensure that every person achieves a basic standard of well being. But it then adds: “ending extreme poverty is just the beginning, not the end.”
The new agenda is also intended to bring “a new sense of global partnership into national and international politics”; must cause the world to “act now to halt the alarming pace of climate change and environmental degradation;” and bring about a “rapid shift to sustainable patterns of consumption and production,” to name just a few things itemized in the document.
Moreover, it apparently also must spark a planetary psychological sea-change: “The new global partnership should encourage everyone to alter their worldview, profoundly and dramatically,” the report declares.
At the time he joined the high-level panel and helped to shape its radical and ambitious exhortations, Podesta was head of the Center for American Progress , a think tank that he founded in 2003. The Center is closely supportive of the objectives of the Obama Administration and says its aim is to “provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement” and “shape the national debate” in the U.S. on a wide variety of issues, from energy to economic growth, national security and climate change.
In 2010, Podesta became one of the most high-profile exponents of the idea that the Administration could advance its agenda in the face of Congressional opposition from Republicans through executive action, when his staff authored a 54-page Center for American Progress paper on the topic. “The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through [executive] powers should not be underestimated,” he wrote in a forward to the document. Podesta left the Center last month to take up his latest White House assignment. The high-level panel, meantime, dissolved last fall, after delivering its report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban.
A so-called Open Working Group of the U.N. General Assembly is now currently hammering out specifics of the proposals that will be presented at the summit this upcoming September as a series of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, successors to the U.N.’s much-touted but unevenly successful Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, which expire in 2015.
Despite the fact that their headline feature is likely to be the pledge to end all forms of “extreme poverty” around the globe by 2030, the agenda that Podesta and the rest of the high-level panel have urged the U.N. and its member states to produce is far more than a conventional anti-poverty plan.
While even the broad outlines they sketched are still in the formative stages of being turned into more concrete negotiating proposals, the process surrounding the eventual fulfillment of the SDGs, would undoubtedly require trillions of dollars of public and private spending on poverty and the environment, a radical reorganization of economic production and consumption, especially in rich countries, and more drastic efforts in the expensive war on climate change.
And now, having helped to frame the SDGs, Podesta may have a key role in setting the stage to accomplish them. The main reason being that how nations meet the collective goals laid out in the SDGs, as the high-level panel underlines in its report, will be left up to each individual nation. Meaning, among other things, that many of the objectives that make up the SDGs –or, at least, the conditions for their fulfillment–will be part of the regulatory agenda he is now helping to carry out.
Among other things, climate change—and especially the push to meet and even exceed ambitious targets on the suppression of carbon emissions – is said to be a cardinal focus of his job as a kind of super-coordinator of regulatory efforts to achieve Obama Administration goals—even though climate change got hardly a mention in the President’s State of the Union speech last month.
(A report last month by the Administration to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, indicated that the U.S. is a long way from meeting even its current target of a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels in U.S. carbon emissions, but fully intends to keep pushing to meet them.)
Nonetheless , as the U.N. high-level panel’s report points out, suppressing carbon emissions involves a cascading series of other activities, many of them already high on the agenda of Obama Administration agencies. “The Panel is convinced that national and local governments, businesses and individuals must transform the way they generate and consume energy, travel and transport goods, use water and grow food,” it says among other things—pointing toward just one portion of an inter-related agenda covering a sprawling array of topics.
Another such area is attacking inequality, a theme that President Obama has increasingly struck as an objective for 2014. Among other things, the panel notes, “many countries are using public social protection programs and social and environmental regulations to bring down high levels of domestic inequality by improving the lives of the worst-off, while also transforming their economies.”
The report also strongly recommends that private businesses be harnessed to the new development effort, willingly if possible, but even if not so eager to do so.
“We embrace the positive contribution to sustainable development that business must make,” the report says. “But this contribution must include a willingness, on the part of all large corporations as well as governments, to report on their social and environmental impact, in addition to releasing financial accounts.”
It then suggests a mandatory policy of “comply or explain” for all companies worth more than $100 million, along with “sustainability certification” that will make it “easier for civil society and shareholders to become watchdogs, holding firms accountable for adhering industry standards and worker safety issues, and being ready to disinvest if they do not.”
Moreover, the report says, the “post 2015 development agenda must signal a new era for multilateralism and international cooperation”— lead, of course, by the U.N.
Among other things, the report suggests that a variety of U.N. agencies monitor the entire transformational process, and “would also recommend ways of implementing programs more effectively.” In the end, however, the high-level panel concluded that “only U.N. member states can define the post-2015 agenda.” And in the U.S. perhaps no-one is better positioned to oversee that definition than John Podesta.
George Russell is editor-at-large of Fox News and can be found on Twitter @GeorgeRussell
PRESIDENT OBAMA SAYS “I’VE GOT THE POWER”
President Obama, speaking to a crowd of House Democrats at a party retreat in Maryland, touted his executive order powers on Friday – repeating a theme he’s hit regularly since his State of the Union address.While saying he’s willing to work with Congress, he added, “I’m not going to wait, because there’s too much to do. And America does not believe in standing still.” The rhetoric, though, is quite a turnaround from his days on the 2008 campaign trail, when he bashed his predecessor for going it alone. When George W. Bush was in office, then-Sen. Barack Obama presented a different belief on executive power.
“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America,” Obama said on March 31, 2008, in Lancaster, Pa. But after five years in office, and facing Republican resistance in both chambers of Congress, Obama has come around to what he calls a “pen and phone” strategy to get things done.
At the Democratic retreat on Friday, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden tried to rally lawmakers, many of whom are facing tough reelections in the fall. Although the president was sending a message of teamwork to Democrats, he was, ironically, also backing a go-it-alone approach.
One of his latest executive actions was to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers. On top of that, the administration has unilaterally delayed parts of the president’s signature health care law 29 times. The health care actions have dealt with everything from delaying Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care physicians to delaying enforcement of the so-called employer mandate for certain businesses.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT BENGHAZI?
New information about the intelligence available in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack raises questions about whether the former No. 2 at the CIA downplayed or dismissed reporting from his own people in Libya that it was a coordinated attack and not an out-of-control protest over an anti-Islam video.
Then-Deputy Director Mike Morell, whose own agency lost two employees at Benghazi, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, was heavily involved in editing the administration’s internal narrative on what happened – known as the “talking points” – which served as the basis for then-U. N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s controversial claims about a protest on the Sunday talk shows after the attack.
According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, on Sept. 15, four days after the attack and one day before Rice’s appearance, the CIA’s most senior operative on the ground in Libya emailed Morell and others at the agency that the attack was “not an escalation of protests.”
Fox News has confirmed that three days earlier, the CIA Chief of Station and the agency’s team in Libya also sent situation reports, known as sitreps, to Washington.The raw intelligence reporting described a coordinated attack by extremists, not an out-of-control protest.
“In a crisis like Benghazi, you would expect it’s going directly to the seventh floor,” Sam Faddis, who recently retired from the CIA and writes extensively about the intelligence community, said. The “seventh floor” refers to CIA leadership – at the time, Director David Petraeus and his second-in-command Morell, among others. “In a situation like this, you’re going to be looking at it immediately … your aides are going to be asked to flag it to your attention the second that it comes in and bring it to your desk — right in front of you,” he said.
Further, Fox News has learned new details about a secure video teleconference some 72 hours after the attack.Two sources familiar with the call say it included Morell, the CIA chief of station and Benghazi survivors who were evacuated to Germany — as well as Greg Hicks, the late Ambassador Chris Stevens’ deputy.
Fox News is told that after an update from personnel on the ground, Washington’s singular focus on the video left participants in Libya baffled, angry and dismayed that Morell seemed to dismiss their on-the-ground reporting.
On September 12, based on the intelligence disseminated to senior lawmakers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., also told Fox News that Benghazi was a “coordinated, military style commando-type” attack.
In a brief statement to Fox News, Morell did not address the situation reports. Separately, Bill Harlow, who is working with Morell on a book, said there was early intelligence reporting from the CIA operation in Libya of a protest before the assault. This claim conflicts with the assessment of Republican Senator Richard Burr, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which recently released a bipartisan report concluding the Benghazi attack was preventable. Burr said investigators never found credible reporting linking the attack to a demonstration spawned by an anti-Islam video.
“We’ve done a forensic on that event. We’ve never found a reference to demonstrations from individuals who were on the ground — whether it’s the chief of station in Tripoli, whether it’s the diplomatic security, or the GRS (Global Response Staff) that went … from day one, all referrals were an attack that was underway that continued well into the night and to the (CIA) annex.”
Yet on September 14 — when the bodies of Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, as well as Woods and Doherty, were flown to Andrews Air Force base Yet on Sept. 14 — when the bodies of Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, as well as Woods and Doherty, were flown to Andrews Air Force base – then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to talk about the video.
“We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men,”Clinton told the somber gathering.”We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with.”
The video was linked to protests elsewhere in the region. But on Sept. 15, in what appears to be a direct response to the administration’s public statements about the cause of the attack, the CIA’s chief of station sent the email to Morell saying protests were not involved in Benghazi.
Faddis said it was unusual for the chief of station to directly e-mail the deputy director, but it appeared to be an effort to cut through the bureaucracy, to be sure nothing was getting lost in translation. And by taking the message outside standard intelligence channels, it may have been an effort by the chief of station to allow Morell and others to save face.
“The way the agency works, he’s (chief of station), been running 24 hour a day to nail every fact,” he said, “… and now he is reaching out four days into this directly to the most senior levels of his organization, saying again with the big red crayon as clearly as he can, ‘there were no protests, I am trying to do my job and tell you at the most senior level don’t go forward with anything that says something we can’t factually support’.”
Documents released by the administration last May show that by Sept. 15, Morell was engaged on the talking points with the State Department and White House.The bipartisan Senate report shows that on the same day, Morell cut half the text including prior intelligence warnings to the State Department. The word “Islamic” was dropped, but “demonstrations” stayed in.
Harlow said Morell was not aware Rice – or any administration official – was going to use the talking points, adding Morell believed they were being prepared for lawmakers. After the Sept. 15 e-mail, Harlow said Morell asked the chief of station to provide more information, adding that on Sept. 16, the chief of station’s response was forwarded to the agency analysts.
“Morell immediately passed that to the analysts who produced the original analysis and asked for their reaction,”Harlow explained. “They responded that they had contradictory information and stuck with their judgment. It wasn’t until several days later that the CIA was able to get their hands on the CCTV video (Sept. 18) — when they did, it was clear there were no demonstrations and the analysts changed their reporting.”
This emphasis on the analysts who are thousands of miles from the scene of the attack versus the agency personnel on the ground in Libya does not feel right, according to Faddis and other former intelligence officials contacted by Fox News.
“When I hear that explanation, the words that come to mind are disingenuous and frankly incomprehensible,” Faddis said. “This strikes me as — what you’re doing is you’re looking for an excuse for not paying attention to what (the chief of station) said.”
Since retiring from the CIA last year, Morell has taken on high-profile assignments for the administration, including the NSA review panel, which formulated recommendations for President Obama. In addition to the book deal, he is now a TV commentator on national security issues for CBS News and has taken a position for Beacon Global Strategies, which was founded by Philippe Reines. The New York Times magazine recently described Reines as Clinton’s “principal gatekeeper.”
In a series of questions via e-mail, Fox News asked Morell for his recollection of the early intelligence, the video teleconference and whether he notified the administration at any point that its public statements were in direct conflict with the reporting of U.S. personnel on the ground in Libya.
While not disputing he was aware of the situation reports and participated in the video teleconference, Morell said: “I stand behind what I have said to you and testified to Congress about the talking point issue. Neither the Agency, the analysts, nor I cooked the books in any way.”
While Morell has a standing invitation to speak with Fox News on camera, in his statement he said he does “not intend to get into an extended dialogue with you on the subject nor do I intend to grant you an interview on this matter.”
While the bipartisan Senate report speculated that protests elsewhere over the anti-Islam video may have played a role in inspiring the attack, the report concludes the intelligence analysts stayed with the protest explanation for too long.“Analysts inaccurately referred to the presence of a protest at the Mission facility before the attack based on open source information and limited intelligence, but without sufficient intelligence or eyewitness statements to corroborate that assertion. The IC (Intelligence Community) took too long to correct these erroneous reports, which caused confusion and influenced the public statements of policymakers.”
In an addendum to the bipartisan Senate report, six Republicans on the committee concluded of the talking points: “Rather than simply provide Congress with the best intelligence and on the ground assessments, the administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism.”
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
All while
FIVE STORMS BETWEEN PUTIN AND OBAMA
WASHINGTON – The weather is warm at this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, yet U.S.-Russian relations are still in the deep freeze. Back in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave Russia’s top diplomat a red button labeled “reset” to symbolize how U.S. relations had thawed — even though it was mistranslated into Russian. But the event was more of a downhill slalom, than a soaring ski jump. Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes hosting the Olympics will further seal his nation’s status as a world power. But President Barack Obama is among several western leaders who decided not to show up.
Here are five of the issues where U.S.-Russian relations have run off course.
UKRAINE
Washington and Moscow are in a standoff over Ukraine, which is rocked by anti-government demonstrations over Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s rejection of an agreement with the European Union and his acceptance of a $15 billion loan package from Russia instead. Both the U.S. and Russia accuse the other of meddling in the affairs of the former Soviet satellite nation. And last week the two tangled after a Russian government aide posted a video online of a bugged phone call between two top U.S. diplomats.
At one point, a voice believed to be Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland, is heard saying, “F— the EU,” in an expression of frustration over the EU’s pace in taking steps to help Ukraine. Nuland later apologized.
The State Department, without directly accusing Russia of recording and posting the audio of the call on YouTube with Russian subtitles, said the incident marked a “new low in Russian tradecraft.” The Russian government official who posted the link denied any Russian government role, saying he came across the recording while surfing the Web and simply reposted it.
SYRIA
In the bloody war in Syria, Russia is in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s corner and the U.S. supports the opposition.
The Russians made a proposal to place Syrian chemical weapons out of Assad’s control, a proposal embraced by the U.S., U.N. and other nations. Very few weapons materials have been destroyed. And peace talks to end the civil war in Syria are not going well.
The talks have been accompanied by a sharp rise in violence. Opposition leaders have called on Russia to pressure the government to prevent the faltering peace negotiations from collapsing. Moreover, Russia says it would veto a Western-proposed U.N. resolution threatening sanctions if Assad’s government does not allow full deliveries of aid to civilians caught in the fighting.
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama said Moscow was a “holdout” to the passage of the U.N. resolution. Obama said Secretary of State John Kerry and others have delivered a very direct message to the Russians: “That they cannot say that they are concerned about the well-being of the Syrian people when there are starving civilians. … It is not just the Syrians that are responsible; the Russians are, as well, if they are blocking this kind of resolution.”
Responding to the latest tit-for-tat, Russia’s foreign ministry accused Washington of a “biased distortion” of the Russian stance on Syria. It said that Russian diplomats were working with Syrian authorities to help humanitarian efforts and challenged the U.S. to use its influence with the rebels to do the same.
U.S. SURVEILLANCE
Tensions with the U.S. and Russia spiked last year after Putin granted temporary asylum to former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, defying Obama’s demands that the 30-year-old American be returned to the U.S. to face espionage charges.
Snowden, a former NSA contractor who fled the United States with classified information, has leaked thousands of pages of documents that revealed that the NSA has been sweeping up millions of Americans’ phone and Internet records and snooping on U.S. allies abroad, including heads of state.
The controversy surrounding the NSA surveillance programs followed Obama to the Group of 20 economic summit in Russia last fall, but Obama chose to call off his one-on-one meeting with Putin while he was in Russia. The Snowden affair has given Moscow a way to turn the tables on Washington, which often criticizes Russia’s human rights record.
GAY RIGHTS
The Olympics also has been a venue for debate over a Russian law, signed by Putin in June, banning gay “propaganda” from reaching minors. The law has drawn strong international criticism and earlier calls for a boycott of the Sochi Games from gay activists and others.
A coalition of 40 human-rights and gay rights groups from the U.S., Western Europe and Russia wrote a letter to the 10 biggest Olympic sponsors, urging them to denounce the law and run ads promoting equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.
The law bans pro-gay “propaganda” that could be accessible to minors — a measure viewed by activists as forbidding almost any public expression of support for gay rights. The law cleared parliament virtually unopposed and has extensive public support in Russia.
Obama, who has criticized the Russian law, named a U.S. delegation to the Olympics that includes several openly gay athletes, including tennis great Billie Jean King and figure skater Brian Boitano.
PUSSY RIOT
Two members of the punk band Pussy Riot have urged politicians attending the Winter Olympics to criticize human rights abuses in Russia. The two performers, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were sentenced in August 2012 to two years in prison for hooliganism after an irreverent performance blasting Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral. That was broadcast around the world.
Now out of prison, the two criticized Russia’s law banning pro-homosexual propaganda from reaching minors and the risks — including beatings — that gay people and other minority groups can face in Russia if they speak out.
After meeting the two punk rockers in New York, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power traded jibes on Twitter with Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. “I asked Pussy Riot if they were afraid of prison. Response: No. In prison we could see the terrible conditions. It’s human rights fieldwork,” Power added.
Asked about it later, Churkin defended the performers’ arrest, re-tweeting sarcastically that perhaps Power would like to invite the band to perform in a world tour at the National Cathedral in Washington, St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome, Mecca in Saudi Arabia “and end up with a gala concert at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA SAYS “I’VE GOT THE POWER”
President Obama, speaking to a crowd of House Democrats at a party retreat in Maryland, touted his executive order powers on Friday – repeating a theme he’s hit regularly since his State of the Union address. While saying he’s willing to work with Congress, he added, “I’m not going to wait, because there’s too much to do. And America does not believe in standing still.”
The rhetoric, though, is quite a turnaround from his days on the 2008 campaign trail, when he bashed his predecessor for going it alone. When George W. Bush was in office, then-Sen. Barack Obama presented a different belief on executive power.
“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America,” Obama said on March 31, 2008, in Lancaster, Pa. But after five years in office, and facing Republican resistance in both chambers of Congress, Obama has come around to what he calls a “pen and phone” strategy to get things done.
At the Democratic retreat on Friday, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden tried to rally lawmakers, many of whom are facing tough reelections in the fall. Although the president was sending a message of teamwork to Democrats, he was, ironically, also backing a go-it-alone approach.
One of his latest executive actions was to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers. On top of that, the administration has unilaterally delayed parts of the president’s signature health care law 29 times. That has led Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming to charge, “It’s almost whatever he thinks of on any given day when he wakes up, he thinks that’s what America is going to do.”
The health care actions have dealt with everything from delaying Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care physicians to delaying enforcement of the so-called employer mandate for certain businesses.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about the previous comments Obama made about Bush’s use of executive actions. He said they were specific to the War on Terror. “There is no question that this president has been judicious in his use of executive action, executive orders, and I think those numbers thus far have come in below what President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton did,” he said.
Carney added, “The matter the president was discussing in his campaign in 2008 wasn’t the number. It was the quality and the type of executive actions that he believed were not appropriate.” That leaves some Republicans saying he’s just doing what he wants to promote his own agenda. “It’s one of the reasons why there’s so little trust of the White House, as they’re going way beyond the original intent of lots of legislation, and they change it and interpret it to their own whims,” Barrasso said.
Carney dismissed the criticism, saying: “It is funny to hear Republicans get upset about the suggestion the president might use legally available authorities to advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility, when, obviously, they supported a president who used executive authorities quite widely.”
“PRESIDENT OBAMA JUST DOESN’T UNDERSTAND”
FRESNO, Calif. – Farmers in California’s drought-stricken Central Valley said the financial assistance President Obama delivered on his visit Friday does not get to the heart of California’s long-term water problems. Amid one of the driest years in the state’s recorded history, Obama came to the Fresno area to announce $100 million in livestock-disaster aid, $60 million to support food banks and another $13 million toward things such as conservation and helping rural communities that could soon run out of drinking water.
Obama told reporters in the rural town of Firebaugh, where he met with community leaders, that he wasn’t about to wade into California water politics. Yet the president gently warned California’s leaders to find common ground rather than thinking of water as a “zero-sum game.” He went on to say, “We’re going to have to figure out how to play a different game. If the politics are structured in such a way where everybody is fighting each other and trying to get as much as they can, my suspicion is that we’re not going to make much progress.”
In his three-hour visit to the Central Valley, Obama also toured a farm in Los Banos to see the drought’s impact firsthand. A farmer, Sarah Woolf, a partner with Clark Brothers Farming, said anything will help, but the federal government needs to better manage the state’s water supplies so farmers have enough during future droughts like the current one. “Throwing money at it is not going to solve the problem long-term,” she said.
The Central Valley produces nearly one-third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, and Fresno County leads the nation in agriculture. Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, estimated that 25 percent of the county’s irrigated land will go unplanted this year.
The drought has caused Democrats and Republicans in Congress to propose dueling emergency bills. Led by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the House passed one that would free up water for farmers by rolling back environmental protections and stop the restoration of a dried-up stretch of the San Joaquin River that once had salmon runs.
Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer proposed their own version that pours $300 million into drought-relief projects without changing environmental laws. The bill would allow more flexibility to move water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms in the south and speed up environmental reviews of water projects.
Mark Borba said he wasn’t invited to share his story with the president. His family’s Borba Farms won’t plant one-third of the 11,000 acres of almonds, tomatoes, garlic, lettuce, onions and much more they typically grow. Borba said the president could ease this year’s drought hardship on farmers by relaxing federal environmental regulations within the boundaries of the law intended to protect endangered smelt. “We don’t want money,” Borba said. “We don’t want a handout. The state grows more than the lion’s share of the tomatoes used in U.S. processed foods,” farmer Mark Borba brags. “This year? Zero,” he said.
SYRIAN PEACE TALKS END WITHOUT PEACE
Syrian peace talks in Geneva have ended in anger and frustration. Secretary of State John Kerry says there can be only one to the Syrian crisis and that is for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to resign and for an interim government to be formed. Russia has argued all along with Syria that al-Assad must remain in power. The deadlock is entirely centered on this one issue.
U.N. mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi normally briefs on the status of the talks, but on this occasion, decided to stay away from the two parties’ public airing of grievances. Thursday he told reporters that he sees failure staring him in the face, but insisted that the United Nations will not leave any stone unturned to find a solution to a conflict that has meanwhile killed more than 140,000 people,
Among the dead are 7,626 children and 5,064 women.
A spokesman for the Observatory, which is based in Britain but has a network of activists across the country. “It is shameful that the international community has done nothing to show that it will defend human rights,” Abdelrahman told Reuters by telephone. “They are just looking on at this tragedy. The Syrian people dying are just statistics to them.”
The revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began as peaceful street protests but transformed into an armed insurgency after a fierce security force crackdown. It has since descended into a civil war with sectarian dimensions.
Jeff Seldin in Washington contributed to this report, some information provided by Reuters
WYOMING TAKES THE EPA TO COURT
Wyoming officials are taking the Environmental Protection Agency to court in a bid to reverse a sweeping agency ruling that transferred more than 1 million acres of land — including an entire city — to Native American tribes.
Wyoming Attorney General Peter K. Michael filed his state’s appeal Friday morning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. The state wants either the EPA to reverse, or the courts to overturn, a December ruling on a request from the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.
The tribes had sought “state status” in order to administer air quality monitoring. The EPA, in the course of reviewing the request, determined the land in question actually belongs to the Wind River Indian Reservation and has for more than a century, despite a 1905 law opening it to non-tribal members.
The decision, which encompassed the city of Riverton, caused intense controversy as officials warned about a range of disruptive consequences, including the possibility that jailed tribal members could now challenge their convictions.
Offering some relief, the EPA earlier this week agreed to put its own decision on hold at the request of the state and the tribes themselves. The state was the first to ask for a stay, calling the decision “arbitrary” and “wrong.” But the tribes followed suit, in the interest of soothing tensions. In a Thursday letter to Governor Matt Mead and tribal representatives, an EPA official confirmed the agency would put the decision on hold pending review, “due to the unique circumstances of this case.”
The official said the agency “remains committed” to working with all sides in the dispute but noted that “in granting this stay, the EPA is not agreeing with or adopting the State’s legal or factual arguments” over the boundaries. The state made several arguments against the ruling, in a petition filed last month with the EPA.
“EPA’s decision casts a shadow of uncertainty over the transactions and day-to-day operations of state agencies, courts, businesses and individuals within the disputed territory,” Michael wrote. He argued that the ruling could impact the area in several ways, including:
– Dozens of tribal members jailed for crimes committed “in the disputed area” potentially could challenge their convictions.
– Previously issued environmental permits could be invalid.
– Food processing facilities could be able to operate without regulation.
– The Wyoming Highway Patrol would be unable to enforce criminal laws in the area.
The EPA is still weighing the state’s request to reconsider its decision. In the meantime, officials will press their case before the courts.
Northern Arapaho Tribe spokesman Mark Howell told FoxNews.com earlier this week that while the tribe agrees with the EPA decision, it joined Wyoming officials in seeking a stay “in an effort to kind of quell some of the racial tensions that have been frankly generated by the state of Wyoming.”
Howell noted that the EPA was relying on Department of Interior guidance in reaching its decision and blasted the state for putting out “misinformation” on the case. “They’ve never been left out of the process,” he said. “This idea that somehow this came as a surprise is just completely a false statement.” The EPA said in a separate statement on Friday that the stay will help ensure the case is “decided in an orderly fashion by the courts.”
“We are encouraged that this approach will help alleviate tensions and areas of disagreement while providing all parties an opportunity to work together to implement EPA’s decision and ensure environmental protection,” Shaun McGrath, EPA’s regional administrator, said.
The EPA’s original announcement in December said the agency was required to rule on the reservation’s boundaries under Clean Air Act and EPA regulations. The statement said the agency did so “after carefully evaluating relevant statutes and case law, historical documents, the Tribes’ application materials, all public comments, and input from other federal agencies.” The agency said the ruling was “consistent” with a recent opinion from the Department of the Interior, and it would “work closely” with the tribes and state to resolve any issues.
ONE OF THE ALL–TIME GREATEST BASEBALL PLAYERS AND MANAGERS DIES AT 71
ATLANTA – Jim Fregosi, a former All-Star who won more than 1,000 games as a manager for four teams, died yesterday in Miami after suffering a stroke. He was 71. He had been on a cruise with baseball alumni.
Fregosi ended more than 50 years in baseball as a special assistant to Braves general manager Frank Wren. He managed the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1993 National League pennant and the 1979 California Angels to their first American League Western Division title. He also managed the Chicago White Sox and Toronto Blue Jays. He was a six-time All-Star shortstop with the Angels, who retired his No. 11 in 1988.
PAPA WALTON DIES AT 85
LOS ANGELES – Ralph Waite, who played the kind patriarch of a tight-knit rural Southern family on the TV series “The Waltons,” died at his home in Palm Springs, his manager, Alan Mills, said Thursday. Waite was 85.
Mills did not know the cause of death. He said he was stunned because Waite had been in good health and still working. He appeared last year in episodes of the series “NCIS,” “Bones” and “Days of Our Lives.” “He was a wonderful guy,” Mills said. “He was always kind, always generous, and a joy to work with.”
“The Waltons,” which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1981, starred Waite as Ralph Walton, and Richard Thomas played his oldest son, John-Boy, an aspiring novelist. The gentle family drama was set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. The show was narrated by its creator, Earl Hamner Jr., who based it on his family memories.
ACTOR FROM “THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY” DIES AT 82
The actor who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom “The Partridge Family” has died in Florida. Dave Madden was 82. His niece Mary Frances Miller says he died Thursday at a hospice center near his home in the Jacksonville area.
Madden was best known for his role as Reuben Kinkaid, who managed the family band and clashed with the precocious pre-teen bassist played by Danny Bonaduce. Before “The Partridge Family,” Madden was part of the comedy ensemble on the “Laugh-In” variety series. He later had a recurring role as a customer at Mel’s Diner on the long-running sitcom “Alice.”
UGANDA – “LIFE SENTENCES FOR ALL HOMOSEXUALS”
KAMPALA, UGANDA – An official says Uganda’s president plans to sign into law an anti-gay bill passed by lawmakers that would allow life imprisonment for gays.
Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesman, said in Twitter posts Friday that President Yoweri Museveni told lawmakers that he would do that after receiving a report from “medical experts” saying “homosexuality is not genetic but a social behavior.” Opondo did not say when the signing would happen.
Museveni previously had opposed the bill, saying it’s too harsh. Homosexuality, which Museveni has called abnormal, is a crime in Uganda.
Rights groups have called the bill draconian. Supporters, including Christian clerics, have said the law is needed to protect Ugandan children from Western homosexuals.
Gays from Kenya wearing masks to preserve their anonymity, staged a protest outside the Uganda High Commission in Nairobi. Gays from Uganda are fleeing into Kenya and staying in camps there rather than being caught and imprisoned for life.
“BOY GIRL” TO PLAY ON HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS SOFTBALL TEAM
A California high school student who believes he is a girl “trapped in a boy’s body” just made the girls’ softball team. Pat Cordova-Goff, 17, a strapping senior at Azusa High School, in Azusa, an hour east of Los Angeles, can play with and against girls because of a September change in state law went into effect last month. The law requires that, “a pupil be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”
Goff, who is a cheerleader at the school, played freshman baseball when he considered himself a boy. He found out Friday that he made the cut for the girl’s team. “We feel really confident about her ability,” Azusa Unified Superintendent Linda Kaminski told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, “No. 1 as a district, we want to ensure access to everyone, but we’re also committed to placing students on the team on their merits …Based on her skills, Pat did make the team.”
The law was signed by Governor Jerry Brown amid a gender debate that also included disagreement over which bathrooms students could use. Supporters have said that the law will help cut down on bullying against transgender students.
Officials for Azusa High School said parents of students and others have been supportive of Cordova-Goff trying out for the team. “Parents had questions and we answered them as best we could,” Azusa High School principal Ramiro Rubalcaba told FoxNews.com. “My experience is that the parents have been pleased. Some students and players may feel uncomfortable but that only because this is something new to them but I believe they are all going to be accepting,” he added. “And I think the team is going to bring home a championship. That’s my prediction.”
Some feel that having Cordova-Goff play with young female athletes puts out an unfair advantage and sets a bad precedent. “It’s intolerable of this young man to not accept an equal standing of girls playing girls,” Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, told FoxNews.com. “It is categorically unfair to biological girls to have to compete with a sexually-confused young man with stronger upper body strength, who makes the game board decidedly ‘unequal.’ “This mixed-up, in-your-face cross-dressing agenda is pushing more parents out of California public schools, which now have ten sexual indoctrination laws leading children astray,” he added.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
As more gay students come out of their closets at evangelical colleges, a new advocacy group is working to change that. This week, while international LGBT rights advocates continue to spotlight repressive anti-gay policies and violence in Russia, some are focusing their protests closer to home.
Friday morning in Los Angeles, a new LGBT support coalition for Christian college students and alumni called Safety Net, launched publicly with a prayer vigil protest of a meeting of hundreds of Christian college administrators. The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), representing 119 U.S. evangelical and fundamentalist higher education institutions and 55 international affiliates, held its quadrennial conference in LA, this year focused on the theme of “Engaged Community.” But in the past four years, the community around Christian colleges is starting to change in significant ways, growing to include a number of public and private groups for gay and transgender students and alumni. Carrying a banner for Safety Net and wearing college sweatshirts from schools like Wheaton College, Biola University and Fuller Theological Seminary, 25 alumni and former faculty gathered to declare “We’re part of this community, too.”
Safety Net has launched an umbrella coalition for LGBT groups and alumni at 50 Christian colleges, including organizations like Bob Jones University, Wheaton, George Fox Universityand Biola. Most of the alumni groups are public, but around a third of the groups, mostly representing current students, are “underground,” not disclosing members’ identity for fear of expulsion, losing financial aid or students’ families cutting them off.
“We realized that all of us had come to terms with our sexual orientation in isolation and fear, in many cases, of being disowned or persecuted or punished by our families,” he said. “And then we started hearing rumors about young people who had killed themselves a year or two prior, and we started talking.” They started by forming in secret.
At nine CCCU institutions, Paul Southwick explained, LGBT groups have attempted to gain official school “club status,” and been denied. While club status is determined by individual schools, CCCU schools generally prohibit same-sex relationships and behavior. Southwick said he has heard privately from several CCCU college administrators that the standard approach is that if LGBT groups are allowed, they must be limited to discussion or support groups only—no advocacy—and they must agree to an high degree of oversight from school officials, which they claim significantly chills student participation.
There seem to be fewer student expulsions these days, perhaps due to schools’ fears of losing accreditation and state support. But student fear remains high, and schools seem to be responding to LGBT students’ activism with a crackdown on faculty members who support them.
Among the casualties is Beth Stuart, a former faculty member at Southern Wesleyan University in South Carolina, who was fired after she refused to withdraw support for SWUnity, for which she was the faculty sponsor. And at Azusa Pacific University in California, professor Adam Ackley, a transman who previously chaired the school’s theology and philosophy department, wasterminated when he admitted he was gay, although he says he was living in compliance with the school’s position statement on human sexuality and living chastely outside of marriage.
The Arizona Republic reports that the 40-year-old Dekenipp was arrested without incident after he arrived at a saloon and grill where he was to meet his girlfriend.
Dekenipp has been in jail since his arrest you January 10 on suspicion of vehicle theft, trafficking in stolen property, unlawful flight, and driving on a suspended license. Officials say he is now facing an escape charge. But his girlfriend said, “He’s my Valentine for sure.”
Conversation with God
Man: God, can I ask You a question?
God: Sure
Man: Promise You won’t get mad .
God: I promise
Man: Why did You let so much stuff happen to me today?
God: What do you mean?
Man: Well, I woke up late
God: Yes
Man: My car took forever to start
God: Okay
Man: At lunch they made my sandwich wrong & I had to wait
God: Hmmm
Man: On the way home, my phone went DEAD, just as I picked up a call
God: All right
Man: And on top of it all, when I got home I just want to soak my feet in my new foot massager & relax. BUT it wouldn’t work!!! Nothing went right today! Why did You do that?
God: Let me see, the death angel was at your bed this morning & I had to send one of My Angels to battle him for your life. I let you sleep through that.
Man (humbled): OH
GOD: I didn’t let your car start because there was a drunk driver on your route that would have hit you if you were on the road.
Man: (ashamed)
God: The first person who made your sandwich today was sick & I didn’t want you to catch what they have, I knew you couldn’t afford to miss work.
Man (embarrassed): Okay
God: Your phone went dead because the person that was calling was going to give false witness about what you said on that call, I didn’t even let you talk to them so you would be covered.
Man (softly): I see, God
God: Oh and that foot massager, it had a short that was going to throw out all of the power in your house tonight. I didn’t think you wanted to be in the dark.
Man: I’m Sorry God
God: Don’t be sorry, just learn to Trust Me. in All things the Good & the bad.
Man: I will trust You.
God: And don’t doubt that My plan for your day is Always Better than your plan.
Man: I won’t God. And let me just tell you God, Thank You for Everything today.
God: You’re welcome child. It was just another day being your God and I Love looking after My Children.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Blessed are the irritations of life because they remind us
to pray.
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