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All Efforts of Worth and Excellence Are Difficult "Enter by the narrow gate . . . . Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life . . ." —Matthew 7:13-14 If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all efforts of worth and excellence are difficult.  The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but it difficulty does not make us faint and cave in—it stirs us up to overcome.  Do we appreciate the miraculous salvation of Jesus Christ enough to be our utmost for His highest—our best...

DEAR LORD, WE THANK YOU FOR THIS DAY, THIS HOUR AND THIS SECOND. LORD, WE THANK YOU FOR THIS TIME YOUR SAINTS CAN GATHER BEFORE YOUR THRONE OF GRACE WITH PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION. LORD, WE PRAY FOR ALL OF YOUR SAINTS NO MATTER WHERE THEY MAY BE OR WHATEVER THEIR NEED. LORD, WE PRAY ESPECIALLY FOR OUR TROOPS AND PATRIOTS WHO FAITHFULLY PLACE THERE PRAYERS FOR OUR HEROES AT THE FOOT OF THE THRONE,AND TO ALL MEMBERS OF GOVERNMENT WHO HOLD YOUR TRUTHS CLOSE TO THEIR HEARTS. LORD, WE PRAY FOR YOUR CONTINUED HAND OF GUIDANCE AND PROTECTION IN EACH...

Today, the Senate is holding hearings about the college football Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- UT, is replicating a hearing about the BCS that was held earlier this year, in the House, by his fellow Republican, Texas Congressman Rep. Joe Barton. Hatch and Barton are not concerned with terrorism, war, famine, plague, unemployment, crime, the government usurpation of the automobile industry and the planned usurpation of the health field, as well as North Korea, etc. No, they want to enact laws forcing a playoff in college football. http://tremoglieteatime.blogspot.com/

Preparing for the Michael Jackson funeral online, Internet connection problems and finding live feeds, photos and video amidst bogus websites. Michael Jackson’s funeral will air on television and online on Tuesday July 7, 2009. This day may pose problems for online access whether or not Michael Jackson funeral live feeds, photos and video is sought. Fans should also prepare for Internet congestion and bogus website claims. For starters, many sites claim to have the Michael Jackson funeral live and online already, even though the event has yet to take place. Some of these are harmless sites, others are not. Otherwise,...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Seattle clinic for people fed up with insurance, started by doctors fed up with insurance, has gotten $4 million in private venture capital money to expand, it announced on Monday. Qliance says it has a profit-making solution to the problems of long waits, rushed doctors and cursory care that bother patients, at the same time that it eliminates the paperwork and pressure that plague primary care doctors. "If you spent five minutes in my office you would notice there is nobody waiting. We don't have to stack them up like jets over Newark," said Garrison...

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - July 7 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "Brethren, pray for us." - 1 Thessalonians 5:25 This one morning in the year we reserved to refresh the reader's memory upon the subject of prayer for ministers, and we do most earnestly implore every Christian household to grant the fervent request of the text first uttered by an apostle and now repeated by us. Brethren, our work is solemnly momentous, involving weal or woe to thousands; we treat with souls for God on eternal business, and our word is either a savour of life unto life, or of death...

At least 12 militants have died in a missile strike by a suspected US drone in north-west Pakistan, intelligence officials and residents say. The attack targeted a stronghold of Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. The missiles flattened a compound in the Zangarha area, officials said. There have been dozens of such strikes since last August, killing hundreds of militants and civilians. Most strikes have taken place in the tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. Local officials told the BBC Urdu service's Dilawar Khan that a suspected US drone had fired two...

Ever since Sarah Palin entered the national political arena last summer as the Republican VP nominee, she has caused sheer panic in the hearts and minds of the Leftist Liberals in America. Accordingly, the Leftist media is hell-bent on doing all they can to discredit Palin’s accomplishments and destroy her character at any cost. Even now, much effort and energy is being expended to deceive the American people regarding her considerable achievements. Her popularity among conservatives is astounding, and many believe that she will get the 2012 endorsement for the presidency.

I have a .VOB file, from a DVD, from which I would like to extract 10 minutes. I am using Avidemux, but find the documentation to be virtually nonexistent. I have a really simple objective: extract a continuous 10 minutes from this original .VOB file. IF this were an audio file, and IF I were using Audacity, the process is simple: I would highlight the section of audio. Then I would - "trim" the audio outside the shaded area - save the result as a new file Or, I could - copy the highlighted section - open a new file...

The Wall Street Journal is helping Leonard Mlodinow tout his book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Among other things, Mlodinow, like academics Tversky, Kahneman, and Gilovich before him, wants to show that streaks in games like basketball don’t exist. Or, rather, they do exist, but they can be “explained by randomness.” Listen: randomness can’t explain anything. Statisticians imagine—I choose this word carefully—a basketball player has an ineffable probability of making a free throw, and they try to guess the probability’s value through modeling. Suppose a guess is 80% for a particular player and then suppose our player...

There has been an unprecedented unleashing of violence against women in Iraq in recent years. What is the link between the US-led invasion of the country and the rise in women's rights violations? Before the invasion of their country in 2003, women formed forty per cent of Iraq's public work force. Today, ninety per cent of them are unemployed. Polygamy, previously virtually unheard of in Baghdad is making a comeback as women become second and third wives in order to survive economically.

KABUL (AP) - Bombs and bullets killed seven American troops on Monday, the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in nearly a year—and a sign that the war being fought in the Taliban heartland of the south and east could now be expanding north. Separately, Taliban militants claimed on a militant Web site that they were holding an American soldier whom the U.S. military says insurgents might have captured last week. The Taliban statement, however, did not include any proof, such as a picture or the soldier's name. Four of the deaths Monday came in an attack on a...

It is hard to fathom what the United States will gain from Barack Obama’s much-hyped agreement with Dmitry Medvedev to further cut America’s nuclear arsenal. Washington and Moscow have agreed in principle a framework to reduce their nukes by about a third, to 1,500 to 1,675 warheads over the next seven years. Even more significantly, the two leaders have pledged to cut their nuclear delivery systems (intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers for example) to just 500-1,100 units, a move that works greatly to Russia’s advantage as its force projection is far weaker than the U.S. in this area. The...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is personally behind the alleged fraud in the June 12 presidential election, former Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr claimed in Vienna late on Monday. "Khamenei ordered the fraud in the presidential elections and the ensuing crackdown on protestors," Banisadr said at a symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the murder of three Kurdish opposition leaders in Vienna. "The regime is edging closer to the abyss and is holding on to power solely by means of violence and terror," said Banisadr, who was Iran's first elected president following the 1979 Islamic revolution. The regime wanted to...

Gov. Sarah Palin was coy about her presidential aspirations but criticized both President Obama and the Republican Party in her first interview since announcing she was stepping down as governor of Alaska. Standing astride a fishing boat she would later climb aboard to haul in fishing nets and salmon, Palin expressed bitterness at bloggers who peppered her with ethics accusations, whom she said brought government in Alaska to a grinding halt. "The critics want to put you on a course of personal bankruptcy, so you can't afford to serve," she said, calling the attacks "bull crap." ...................... Pa. lin also...

President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, in separate interviews this weekend, said the post-election unrest in Iran would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations. In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Obama said despite the arrests of opposition leaders in Iran, the door on negotiations with the Iranian government would not be closed. Iran, as a country that has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), insists that its nuclear activities are solely aimed at producing electricity to meet the nation’s...

“Only dead fish go with the flow.” That quote from Sarah Palin’s stunning July 3 statement said it all about the soon-to-be-former Governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee. In leaving the Juneau statehouse and pursuing her next steps in politics or the private sector, Palin is doing so on her terms regardless of what the pesky national press and the political “experts” think. Continues... Shattering the chattering class ceiling Nothing better demonstrates the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin's on a roll than harrumphing experts declaring that she's finished. (They also once explained why movie actor Ronald Reagan...

I saw a bumper sticker today that said "STOP H8N." The first thought that came to mind was of the vile hatred I had seen directed at Sarah Palin over the weekend. Make that over the past year. I have tried to imagine how those on the left see Palin, but I don't get it. I despise what Barack Obama is doing to the country I love, but I don't make horrible, crude jokes about his precious daughters. I don't ridicule people he loves who have disabilities. I don't understand how anyone could do that and still have any self...

Anyone who previously doubted Sarah Palin's celebrity status need no longer doubt. The surprise announcement of her decision to resign the Alaska governorship effective July 26 -- fully 18 months before the end of her first term -- generated a reaction nearly powerful enough to bump Michael Jackson's funeral from the headlines. In addition to the usual sources of political news, People magazine weighed in with a report quoting gubernatorial father-in-law Jim Palin's reaction: "Wow.…We had no idea it was coming." The elder Palin reported that "Sarah and Todd had thought it through," but their planning had been unreported --...

Forget the pundits and prognosticators. If you really want to find out what’s around the corner, just turn to the bookies. After all, there's real money on the line. And, because luck is the Irish way, who better to turn to for political predictions than Irish bookmaking outfit Paddy Power?