Secret talks with North Korea?… Russia plans to fly surveillance planes over the United States?… An Uber driver goes on a murdering spree… Pope Francis hints that condoms may have their place… Barack and Michelle Obama entertain a welcome visitor. Ray has it all and more on this edition of Worldwide News With Ray. Join him now.
Mid-afternoon News with Ray – Monday July 20, 2015
Cuban officials formally opened their embassy in Washington, D.C., fully restoring diplomatic relations between the nations after five decades of hostility.
At midnight Monday, Cuba’s flag was hung in the lobby of the U.S. State Department.
“A new stage will begin, long and complex, on the road toward normalization which will require the will to find solutions to the problems that have accumulated over more than five decades and hurt ties between our nations and peoples,” Cuban President Raul Castro said in a televised address.
Likewise, the United States reopened its six-story embassy in Cuba’s captial city of Havana.
“It’s a historic moment,” Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray said. “The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts,” he acknowledged. “But the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed.”
Greek banks finally reopened Monday after being closed for three weeks.
Long lines formed outside banks in Athens as strict limits on cash withdrawals remain in place — 60 euros ($65) a day or a maximum 420 euro ($455) withdrawal weekly.
“I had 20 euros in my pocket when this happened. They said that today we would be able to withdraw 400 euros, but I could only withdraw 60,” pensioner Andreas Chrisavas said.
Greek banks closed their doors on June 29 to prevent a run on the banks after the country flirted with bankruptcy, defaulting on debts to the International Monetary Fund as its second bailout deal expired.
Now average Greek citizens will have to pay for austerity at the cash register in the form of a 23 percent sales tax, up from 13 percent, on many basic goods, making almost everything more expensive in this poor nation. Pensions have also been cut.
Bank customers will still not be able to cash checks, only deposit them into their accounts. Neither will they be able to use their credit or debit cards to withdraw cash abroad, only make purchases.
For Greeks, this is not a solution. And far left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is struggling to contain a growing revolt within his own party over the deal.
JERUSALEM, Israel — The Obama administration and the Netanyahu government continued their campaigns to either endorse or criticize the nuclear deal with Iran. The debate took place as Congress begins its 60-day period to review the agreement.
Both Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took turns on the Sunday talk shows defending their positions.
“Ronald Reagan negotiated with the former Soviet Union. Richard Nixon negotiated with what was then known as Red China. You have to negotiate sometimes with people to make the world and your country safer,” Kerry told told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“And we negotiated because President Obama thought the primary challenge here was getting a nuclear weapon away from Iran and we believe that this deal does that,” he added.
But Netanyahu suggested Iran had just received its “dream deal,” warning the agreement was destined for the same end as the 1994 accord with North Korea.
“There was a celebrated deal just a few years ago, a nuclear deal everybody — the international community, the scientific community — everybody applauded it,” Netanyahu said on “Face the Nation.”
“It was a deal with North Korea,” he continued. “That proved to be a historic deal as well. And North Korea today has a dozen nuclear bombs and is on track to get a hundred nuclear bombs. So I think that this is a repeat of the mistake of North Korea.”
Meanwhile, the clock began ticking on the 60-day period for Congress to review the agreement. The Obama administration, however, plans to take the accord to the U.N. Security Council before Congress can vote.
While Kerry and Netanyahu staked out their positions and Congress began its review of the accord, crowds in Tehran shouted “Death to America.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed Iran’s policy toward what he called the “arrogant” United States would not change and pledged to support its allies in the region.
“America’s regional policies run counter to the Islamic Republic’s policies,” Khamenei said. “We will not stop supporting our friends in the region: the oppressed people of Palestine, the oppressed people of Yemen, the people and government of Syria, the people and government of Iraq, the oppressed people of Bahrain, and the true jihadists in Lebanon and Palestine.”
With billions of dollars in sanctions relief, many Middle East observers fear Iran will soon be able to resupply the terror groups: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
In the meantime, as one more sign of the growing tensions in the region, 47 percent of Israelis would support a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, all 15 members of the United Nations Security Council gave the Iran nuclear deal a nod of approval on Monday. While the council unanimously endorsed the accord limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting sanctions, it also voted in favor of a measure that would re-impose U.N. penalties should the country breach the agreement.
Several states that have ordered the National Guard to arm military personnel at facilities and recruiting offices in the wake of last week’s shooting rampage in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Those states include Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida.
“I will not permit our citizen-soldiers to remain unable to defend themselves and our facilities around the state,” Indiana Gov. Mike Pence told reporters.
The Pentagon also ordered recruiters into civilian clothes at the office.
Skip Wells was one of the four Marines killed in the shootings in Chattanooga last week.
“We send our service people into harm’s way overseas and that tends to be when we worry about them the most,” his father, Kip Wells, told reporters. “We don’t tend to worry so much when they’re here at home.”
Nancy Proxmire, the mother of the fifth victim, Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith, made a trip to the memorial outside the military recruiting office in Chattanooga on Sunday. Smith died of his wounds in the hospital Saturday.
In tears, Proxmire told reporters, “My son is a hero! He died doing what he loved. He’d have it no other way.”
Meanwhile, the family of the alleged gunman, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, broke their silence this weekend. They expressed sympathy to the victims’ families and noted that the 24-year-old suffered serious mental illness and depression.
“There are no words to describe our shock, horror, and grief,” the family said in a statement.
“We understand there are many legitimate questions that need to be answered,” the family said. “Having said this, now is the time to reflect on the victims and their families, and we feel it would be inappropriate to say anything more other than that we are truly sorry for their loss.”
Abdulazeez was a devout Muslim. So far, the FBI has no evidence he talked with terrorists.
While the biggest weather story of the week is undoubtedly the blockbuster snow affecting western New York, there’s an equally rare phenomenon occurring on the other side of the country: it’s raining in California, and more could come as we head into the winter.
After a winter and early spring yielding record low Sierra snowpack compounding a crippling multi-year drought, parts of California saw a strangely out-of-season soaking late this past week.
Record rainfall fell in southern California. On Thursday, showers and thunderstorms brought locally heavy rainfall to the San Diego area. San Diego International Airport measured 1.51 inches of rain in just about 90 minutes. A total of 1.63 inches fell on Thursday at Lindbergh Field, making it the wettest day in May on record.
This heavy rain brought flash flooding to the area with multiple water rescues reported. There was also a rain delay for the baseball game between the Washington Nationals at San Diego Padres on Thursday night. This is only the fifth rain delay at San Diego’s Petco Park since opening in 2004.
San Diego is also experiencing its second wettest May as of Friday evening, with a monthly total of 2.35 inches. The current record for wettest May is 2.54 inches set in 1921.
Record rainfall also occurred in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday where a daily rainfall record of 0.69 inches of rain was set. LA broke the daily record rainfall again on Friday with an additional 0.16 inches. The previous record was only 0.03 inches set in 1902.
Satellite image and jet stream midday Thursday along the West Coast. Teal-shaded streamlines depict the strongest jet-stream level winds, illustrating the sharp southward plunge of the jet stream off the West Coast.
For much of this past winter and early spring, the polar jet stream had taken a large northward migration into Canada, keeping Pacific storms away from the West Coast.
Instead, late this past week, the jet took a sharp southward plunge over the eastern Pacific Ocean, steering vigorous upper-level disturbances into the West Coast.
While this precipitation may be considered “manna from heaven” in this sun-worshipping state, it is only a tiny drop in a massive bucket that is this multi-year drought.
Let’s stick to the positive news, here. How unusual is this May rain?
How Rare is a May California Soaking?
January-April was the third driest such period on record in California, exceeded only by 2013 — the state’s record driest year — and 1977.
From May through October, only 9 percent of the year’s average rain fell in Los Angeles.
In May, that monthly average was a mere 0.26 inches of rain as the dry season started to set in.
However, L.A. picked up almost four times their average May rainfall in just a two-day time span this week (Thursday and Friday).
In fact, L.A. has only recorded 13 Mays since 1878 with at least an inch of rain, for an average return interval of once every 10-11 years. This last occurred in 2003.
In San Diego, this is even more unusual.
Only once since 1930 has this city synonymous with picture-perfect weather seen a one-inch rainfall in May — May 8, 1977 — when 1.49 inches was measured at Lindbergh Field.
Sierra snow isn’t all that typical in May, either.
Tahoe City, California, only averages 2.3 inches of May snow. By this time of year, spring snowmelt of the heavy Sierra snowpack is well underway, replenishing the state’s reservoirs, a prime source of drinking water.
Senior weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen noted the winter storm warning issued for the Sierra earlier this week was the latest-in-season such warning by the National Weather Service in Sacramento since 2011.
To reiterate, this welcome May event is a tiny drop of drought relief.
While often overstated and oversimplified to imply relief is certain, the developing El Nino may offer hope since the Pacific storm track may not be blocked from California as often next fall and winter, when the real wet season returns to a thirsty state.
Tornadoes ripped through western Illinois Thursday, with the town of Cameron, population 600, taking a direct hit.
Video captured several funnels forming as a multi-vortex storm ripped through Warren County, located southwest of Chicago.
The twisters caused significant damage and left many residents without power. Illinois State Police officials say there no major injuries.
“I lived in this town in 1989 when the last tornado touched down,” Cameron resident Mike Trout, told the Galesburg Register-Mail. “The damage this time is far, far worse; 1989 doesn’t even compare to this.”
Honeybee ‘Crisis’ Now Seen as False Alarm
In 2006 commercial beekeepers began reporting unusually high rates of honeybee die-offs over the winter, blaming a variety of factors for the decline.
Since then the media have warned of a “beepocalypse” threatening America’s food supply. In 2013, NPR said bee declines could bring “a crisis point for crops,” and a Time magazine cover looked ahead at a “world without bees” that are responsible for pollinating one-third of the crops Americans eat.
But here’s the buzz now: There are more honeybee colonies in the U.S. today than in 2006. Data released in March by the Department of Agriculture showed that the number of honeybee colonies is at a 20-year high, and U.S. honey production is at a 10-year high.
“Since colony collapse disorder began in 2006, there has been virtually no detectable effect on the total number of honeybee colonies in the United States, nor has there been any significant impact on food prices or production,” according to the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a Montana-based non-profit environmental think tank, which attributes the industry’s health to the “savvy” of commercial beekeepers.
The beekeepers have been actively rebuilding their colonies, often by splitting healthy colonies into multiple hives and buying new queen bees from commercial breeders.
The fees beekeepers charge farmers to provide pollination services have risen for a few crops, but the higher fees have helped beekeepers offset the cost of rebuilding their hives.
According to the USDA, the honeybee industry thrived last year, with the number of colonies rising to 2.74 million from 2.64 million in 2013. The honey yield per colony also rose, from 56.6 pounds to 65.1 pounds, and production increased from 149 million pounds to 178 million.
Yet the Obama administration last year announced the formation of a task force to develop a “federal strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators. Last month the task force disclosed a plan aimed at reducing honeybee-colony losses to “sustainable” levels. It calls for more than $82 million in federal funding to promote pollinator health.
PERC observed: “Somehow, without a national strategy to help them, beekeepers have maintained their colonies and continued to provide the pollination services our modern agricultural system demands.
“With U.S. honeybee colonies now at a 20-year high, you have to wonder: Is our national pollination strategy a solution in search of a crisis?”
Last week, pro-life activists published a three-hour video of Planned Parenthood’s top doctor talking about the exchange of fetal organs that are extracted from women during abortion. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part,” Dr. Deborah Nucatola tells her lunch guests, undercover activists who posed as members of a biologics startup. “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Ever since the video’s release, the apologists for legal abortion at Planned Parenthood and in the media have been trying to crush this story with euphemisms. The mainstream media dutifully repeated and expanded on Planned Parenthood’s talking points. The story went like this: A group of fanatics, one of whom is known to pray (ew!), perpetrated a hoax. They falsely portrayed Planned Parenthood’s program of life-saving tissue donations as a sale (which would be illegal).
What has gone largely unmentioned is that the activists also released a complete unedited video. The media went to extreme lengths to avoid quoting this doctor on which parts of an unborn child she “crushes” to preserve valuable organs. The media also failed to mention that she discussed Planned Parenthood affiliates that want to “do a little better than break even” on these transactions. And the reports don’t mention that a firm associated with the sale of these fetal livers, hearts, and headsadvertised the fiscal benefits of preserving them, and had that very daytaken its website offline.
Planned Parenthood’s top talking point was that the video was “dishonestly edited.” The truth is more the opposite. The video revealed the reality that Planned Parenthood and its defenders are working hard to spin. When Planned Parenthood gives one of its patients this consent formfor organ donation, the language is dishonestly edited, referring to hearts and livers as “blood and/or tissue.” When speaking candidly to presumed professionals in the biz, however, PP’s top doctor is far more precise. After all, how do you think Planned Parenthood would react to legislation requiring it to explicitly ask patients if they want to donate the “heart, liver, or brain” of their aborted child to research?
I doubt addressing the conscience of most hard-core abortion supporters is likely to effect change. A moment’s reflection on biology tells you that at the time of conception (not implantation), a unique human DNA code comes into being, bearing a likeness to its mother and father. A moment’s reflection on evolution tells you that from that same moment, the mother’s own body goes through physiological changes designed specifically to protect a healthy unborn child from harm. A glancing familiarity with human reproduction tells you that elective abortions are performed on unborn children with recognizably human features. Arms that can flail, fingers that can grasp, brains that can perceive pain. There is no one part of abortion that is more horrifying than abortion itself.
Someone who knowingly accepts the “crushing” and “snipping” of developing children as part of life in enlightened times, who resolves themselves to this practice as society’s comprehensive and just response to a pregnant woman in crisis, is a person whose conscience is at the ready to accept or wave away any enormity around the practice. If you forced yourself to contemplate them at length, you might question the moral character of the whole enterprise. So you dismiss as local crime Kermit Gosnell’s horror-clinic, where plunging the sink revealed a baby’s arm, and you turn away from stories about hospitals that burn the remains of unborn children as part of a renewable heating energy source. Planned Parenthood’s financial transactions in recently severed baby heads is just the humanitarianadvance of “Science! FTW!” Could you object if they labeled a bag of heads with a meme of Neil deGrasse Tyson? What, are you such a troglodyte that you are “grossed out by science?” We’re just plunging science deep into some necks — I mean “tissue” — here.
Some argue that the pro-life activists are just taking advantage of a natural squeamishness to medical procedures, that they “zero in on those gross medical details for maximum impact.” As if the phrase “I’m gonna crush this” is something only a properly desensitized medical professional can understand. I don’t believe the reaction of disgust here is purely physical.
Just this week I’ve watched television shows that included innocent people being shot in the head, with their blood spilling out in a little gusher. There was once a popular show on SpikeTV called 1,000 Ways to Die, in which extremely gruesome deaths were re-enacted for a thrill. Medical dramas and documentaries show people going into active and traumatic surgery.
We can see bloody cop dramas because we are allowed to deplore the actions depicted, and console ourselves that they are extraordinary and unlawful. The gore of 1,000 Ways to Die we can live with because the events are so abnormal, so unchosen. And the details of medical dramas on television (and in our own lives) are bearable because we know that doctors are trying to save a human life.
The reason the pro-life activist video has to be dismissed as a “hoax” is the same reason the hailed pro-choice activist kept the film of her own abortion framed from the neck up. And it’s the same reason Planned Parenthood wants media outlets to use their bloodless language about “tissues.” Because the clinic, the media, and the culture want your approval of abortion as ordinary, lawful, and competently chosen. They can’t let you see what it actually is: the violent destruction of a human life.
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So until the next newscast this is Ray Mossholder, praying for you my friend. Hav
Mid-afternoon News with Ray – Monday July 20, 2015
From the headquarters of reachmorenow.com in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is the news………
Before I actually begin sharing the news today, I want to begin by thanking you for your comments at the end of my newscasts. Several of you have said that I sound like a man who I will forever admire. I couldn’t have a more profound compliment them to be compared with the one and only Paul Harvey.
The truth is, when I began doing the news as the news director of KEAR–FM in San Francisco in late 1966, I had never heard Paul Harvey and his news style of delivery. But immediately people were writing in to say that I sounded very much like him. In fact, when I later did happen across his remarkable program, I not only became an instant fan, but I recognized that this giant of delivery did sound somewhat like me, only he was far far better at it than I have ever been.
You might say that as I kept listening to his broadcasts, he was my mentor, though we never met. I think it must be because he has been gone from this planet for many years, you’ve forgotten exactly how they sounded hello America hello world and I’ve come along to remind you of him. Thanks again.
Well, the truth is finally out about the Ebola virus and it isn’t pretty. If you’re an American who has thought Ebola was limited to West Africa, it isn’t. I will try to break this to you gently but I want to be thorough so that you know what is really happening.
Ebola is a virus that kills over half of the people infected, and a disease with no known cure. The virus is rapidly spreading in West Africa. Nigeria is the latest to feel it’s wrath, and Saudi Arabia too. Doctors Without Borders says the virus is completely out of control. More than one hundred health workers have now died while treating the disease in others. That’s in spite of the fact that health workers are now using every precaution, including what they wear when treating patients, and still they die.
Right now the Ebola virus is killing half of those who receive it, but knowledgeable doctors regarding this disease say that it could, in days to come, kill 90%. The Worldwide Health Organization has declared a worldwide crisis alert for Ebola virus.
Symptoms come on gradually. Anyone who carries the virus is almost always unaware of it for the first week to three weeks.
For the very first time, the Ebola virus has been brought – on purpose – to the United States and is no longer just a threat to West Africa. As journalist Paul Craig Roberts put it recently, “One cough, one sneeze, or one drop of saliva, and the virus is loose.”
There are other strains of Ebola. But the Ebola virus spreading now is one doctors have never seen before and have known nothing about.
The two Christian health workers who are now in Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after being flown from Liberia, have received an experimental drug called ZMAPP. So far Doctor Kent Brantly and Nancy Whitebol are continuing to show amazing signs of improvement after each of them have had four injections of this drug. But hardly any ZMAPP exists, and it will take several months before more is ready to be used. That is, if the drug companies are now willing to invest their money in creating it.
ZMAPP is made from genetically modified plants
President Obama signed an executive order Thursday that gives the federal government the power to take into custody any Americans that show any symptoms of “diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illnesses that are capable of being transmitted from one person to another, and that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.” So, for goodness sakes, don’t get a cold or you might be arrested!
Federal law already permits “the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease.” Achoo!
In spite of media attempts to play down the Ebola virus to keep Americans from fear until now, this virus carries such dangers that 20 quarantine centers across America are set up and prepared to potentially receive Ebola patients. One of these centers is located at the Los Angeles International Airport.
On Friday, New York City conducted the largest emergency drill in its history. The good news there is that the man in the hospital who had the Ebola virus has recovered and old symptoms are gone.
The federal government will begin testing an “experimental Ebola vaccine” on Americans in September.
If you are wondering why we don’t have an Ebola vaccine for a disease that could easily cause a worldwide plague, it’s because the pharmaceutical industry did not want to invest huge sums of money on a disease that “only affected people in Africa.”
Now at this point, I’m going to share with you some facts that already have gotten some conspiracy theorists going wild. You can check these facts out on the website Red Flag.
According to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone since the 1970s, researchers from Tulane University have been active for several years studying Ebola in nearly the exact spot where the very first Ebola virus broke out out this year. One of their stated purposes of this research was to study “The future use of fever–viruses as bio–weapons.”
Also since the 1970s, the Navy Times says the United States military has been interested in studying Ebola “as a potential biological weapon”
Now if you’re beginning to see why conspiracy theorists are sure they’re on to something, our government has asked the researchers from Tulane “to stop Ebola testing during the current Ebola outbreak.” Is it possible that researchers from Tulane somehow let the virus out that has begun killing people in many nations?
Navy officials tell us “Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates and it’s stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.”
Before this, I had thought only evil nations would try to use biological weapons. Syria has supposedly had to allow the United Nations to destroy all of its biological weapons because they were so dangerous. It’s a gruesome question – whether you would rather die in a split second from a nuclear bomb or linger in agony and slowly die of a biological disease while your family was dying of the same disease too? Man’s capacity for evil is not limited to other nations.
The U.S. Center For Disease Control actually owns a patent on a particular strain of Ebola known as “EBOBUN”. That isn’t the same strain of Ebola that has broken out now.
The CDC has raised America’s danger level in the highest degree possible. The CDC has just put up its own webpage called “Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations For Hospitalized Patients With Known or Suspected Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever In United States Hospitals.” And if you heard me say that once and can remember it, you should go on Jeopardy. You can replay this portion on your computer to get that title or just scroll down to it.
Here’s the most interesting point of all: The World Health Organization has launched a one hundred million dollar response plan to fight this Ebola outbreak. And you and I both know they would never do that unless they are extremely worried about the possibility of a worldwide Ebola epidemic like Smallpox that killed over three hundred million people in the 20th century and is returning now to our nation through our borders.
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The big bad Wolf told the three little piggies that he was going to “Huff and puff and blow their houses down.”
Hurricane Iselle was predicted to do the same thing on the big Island of Hawaii. It huffed and puffed while it was out at sea, but by the time it reached the Hawaiian shores it had turned into heavy wind and torrential rain they could handle.
Tropical storm Iselle’s eye was half blind by the time it struck about 5 miles from Pahala. At 2:30 a.m. EDT wins came on at 60 miles an hour and a tropical rainstorm with heavy downpour was all that was left. It knocked down some trees and did some damage to some roofs. The worst thing it is still doing is inundating the big Island with 5 to 8 inches of rain, with up to a foot of rain in some places. There is a flash flood warning continuing now. Two polling precincts had to stay closed on this day of primary elections. Roads were clogged in some places that totally stopped traffic from moving. But the aloha-welcoming Island has avoided what could easily have been great destruction. I’ll betcha a lot of Christians were praying.
Hurricane Julio – was headed as if by magnetic pull, dead center on Hilo, Hawaii, for many hours praying. The praying must have continued because Hurricane Julio has now my past not only Hilo, but the rest of all the Hawaiian Islands. Those are miracles my friends.
Hilo did get a 4.5 during the early morning hours yesterday. It rattled the people’s nerves more than items on shelves. No damage was reported. The people were out of bed early, stocking up on groceries and needed items that would last them longer than the hurricane that is now going to bypass them.
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An American, Alan Gross, has been rotting in a Cuban prison cell for five years. His lawyer, Scott Gilbert, says that the 65-year-old prisoner has totally given up. Gilbert told his wife and youngest daughter on their last visit to his cell, “life in a Cuban prison is not a life worth living.” He asked them not to visit him again, and told them “My 65th birthday” (which took place in May) “will be my last one in Havana one way or the other.”
Alan Gross before and after five years of prison in Cuba
Alan Gross, who lived in Maryland before his Cuban nightmare began, is Jewish. He was arrested in Cuba in 2009 for trying to set up Internet access for a small Jewish community in that communist country and sentenced to 15 years. He had come to Cuba to work as a subcontractor for the United States government’s US Agency for International Development, which promotes democracy in Cuba.
Since that time, Gross has undergone what his lawyer describes as “severe emotional deterioration.” His body is falling apart too. His hips are worn out and he has lost most of the vision in his right eye.
Gross was especially affected by the death of his mother in June. She was ninety-two. Until her death, she and her son Alan talked by phone regularly. That encouraged him. Her death brought Gross into deep despair. He asked the Cuban government to be allowed to return to the United States just for her funeral. His request was denied.
Judy Gross, Alan’s wife, told reporters she had never seen her husband so sick and broken. She wrote, “his decision to say goodbye was wrenching.”
Gross is also now refusing to see officials from the US Interest Sections in Havana, which Washington maintains instead of an embassy because the two countries have no formal diplomatic relationships.
Also on Monday, Gross’s lawyer released a letter that 300 rabbis had sent to President Obama, urging him to take action to secure Gross’s freedom to come home. But, as our president has already proven in regards to America’s Marine Sergeant hero Andrew Tahmooressie, who is locked tight in isolation in a Tijuana jail cell, President Obama does not like to make those kinds of phone calls.
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President Obama’s poll numbers have fallen to an all-time low. According to the reliable Gallup Poll, many of the people who voted for Obama because of his promise of “Change,” now wish they could change presidents instead of congressional members in 2014. 60% of Americans are unhappy with our Commander-In-Chief and feel that he has America going on the absolutely wrong track. 57% wish that Mitt Romney was president instead of Obama. They complain about his total lack of leadership both domestically – with his forever stall of creating many jobs by installing the Keystone Pipeline and many other drag-your–feet decisions that could strengthen our economy while he spends money as if it were confetti – and his utter lack of foreign policy and failure to have strategies that could save so many lives in places like Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, and so forth.
But President Obama might argue back “America said it wanted change. And I’m changing lots of things. If I did things like the other presidents did then it really wouldn’t be change, would it? It was George W. Bush, not me, who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. I got us out of Iraq. Bush was like Lyndon Johnson who ended up grieving over a war he couldn’t get out of. It was me who got us out of Iraq. ”
Of course, that argument would hold no water now with his order to have at least our Air Force fighting once again in Iraq. In all the years of his presidency since 2011 and all the months of 2014, President Obama continued to say America would never go back to Iraq. Of course, President Obama is also the one who told us: “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.”
No recent president has been involved in so many scandals with his administration that because of excuses rather than dealing with the problems, taints him too.
The hardest thing for America or an American president is when that president is no longer trusted. Fewer and fewer people any longer trust anything that Barack Obama says.
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Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned from being president of the United States. He was locked in one scandal he couldn’t overcome.
On June 17, 1972, five men under President Nixon’s directions, broke into the Watergate office complex in Washington DC, entered a large sum of money along with several other things. When the break-in began to be investigated by congressional order, Nixon denied knowing anything whatsoever about it. He continued that lie for many months. On top of that backspace, President Nixon began bugging the offices of political opponents and involved the FBI, the CIA, and the Internal Revenue Service to help cover up for him.
But all of this kept unraveling from the time the five burglars were quickly arrested. They still had money on them that they had taken from the Watergate office and easily traced. However, the smoking gun was 3700 hours of recorded tapes of every phone call in or out been involved the president. Had he destroyed those, he probably would’ve never been nailed. But it was a case of “Be sure your sins will find you out.” It was Nixon’s vanity that kept them from destroying the tapes which revealed him to all along have known and directed the Watergate break-in.
Only two presidents in history have ever been a candidate for president 5 times – President Nixon and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a five-time winner. Nixon won twice and came oh so close to defeating John Kennedy for a third win.
In November 1972, Nixon won the presidency in a landslide – winning 49 states, 60.7 percent of the popular vote, and 97% of the electoral college vote. How could a man so loved by America so quickly fall to such a place that he felt he had no choice but to resign?
I can point to achievement after achievement that Richard Nixon made while in office. But the truth is, with all his success and favor from the people of our country, Richard Nixon had a giant– sized ego. He also had the hawkish tendencies of the Bush father and son, the foul language of Lyndon Johnson, the dishonesty of Bill Clinton, and the arrogance of Barack Obama. But what sunk this man were recorded tapes that he had made that carried both heavy cursing and proved he had known about the Watergate Hotel robbery of Democratic campaign plans. Nixon’s character was absolutely destroyed in the hearts of Americans after those tapes were played. The keeping of those tapes had been totally foolhardy and they cost him his presidency.
Many still ask if Nixon should have resigned in light of the far more serious scandal of having President Bill Clinton boldface lying to America to cover up his adultery or the boldface lying to America by President Obama about Obamacare.
Forty years ago today, after his wife and daughters wept and pleaded with him to face impeachment because they knew in their hearts he could beat the rap, Nixon wrote and delivered to our nation one of the finest and classiest speeches any of our presidents have given.
Nixon began by talking about the disintegration of those who had been his greatest supporters, and with them gone he saw no reason to keep fighting his impeachment. Then he said “The interests of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.” His final words stunned whoever was listening, many weren’t, as he said to the nation that had voted him into office with a landslide:
“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed his abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.”
Many thought he wouldn’t resign. But the facts are, if he had stayed on, he would his investigation by Kennedy supporters who were even at that minute microscopically examining even his back taxes. Nixon knew that even if he had thrown away a new toothbrush at the age of ten, it would be used against him. Like a mouse in a rat trap, he had been caught guilty of Watergate and now every bit of his dirty laundry would be hung out for the world could see.
Doctor Billy Graham considered Richard Nixon a close friend and believes Nixon was terribly mistreated for what he did.
But out of all that came Richard Nixon’s top Special Counsel and Liaison Spokesman, a man named Chuck Colson, who received Christ in prison and came out to be one of the greatest Christian evangelists and role models of the twentieth century.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Humans remember a Christian’s sins. Christ doesn’t.
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