The more aware we are of who God is and who we are to Him, the more pronounced the chaos of the world feels some days. By praying the words of this Psalm, we choose to embrace the privilege of peace that comes as we walk with Christ instead.

A kitten rescued from under a deck is determined to convince a house cat that they should be together for life. Moonpie and FireballLisaEarlier this summer, a tiny kitten was found alone, hiding under a deck. She was hungry, just skin and bones, and had an infected eye.Fortunately, she had come to the right place. The homeowner, a former volunteer for Sparkle Cat Rescue, reached out to the founder, Stephanie Grantham, for help.Stephanie immediately agreed to take the kitten and began treating her eye and putting some weight on her tiny body. Fireball was found under a deckSparkle Cat RescueThe kitten quickly discovered her purr engine when held, but more than anything, she was thrilled to have an abundance of food to devour.Stephanie planned to care for the kitten until she was well enough to move into a foster home. After two days, her eye began to clear up and heal, and her energy level surged. With the much-needed weight gain, her zoomies kicked in. Sparkle Cat Rescue"She was playful, curious, and on the road to a quick recovery," Stephanie shared. "She's a happy baby ready to conquer the world."Lisa, a foster volunteer, met the kitten and fell head over heels for her. She had always hoped for a ginger cat as a new addition to her family but wanted to know if her cat, Moonpie, would accept a little newcomer. Lisa"Her personality is a perfect match for him. She is fearless," Lisa shared on Facebook.The kitten named Fireball quickly settled into her foster home with Lisa, playing with toys and claiming every room she graced. "She's in constant motion until she crashes for a bit, and then she's on the move again." LisaAt first, Moonpie, an 11-pounder, was unsure and intimidated by the less-than-two-pound ball of energy. "But he is much calmer than I had expected."Fireball was ecstatic to have a feline friend to play with. Despite being much smaller, she encouraged Moonpie to roughhouse with her. The intrepid kitten held her own, wrestling with her buddy, who was five times her size. Fireball and MoonpieLisaShe followed Moonpie around the house, determined to convince him that they were meant to be best friends for life.After playing to their heart's content, Fireball curled up beside Moonpie, gazing up at him admiringly. In less than a week, the kitten had left paw prints on everyone's hearts, including Moonpie's. She loves her new feline brotherLisaMoonpie grew fond of the little spitfire and decided to take her under his wing.He showed her his favorite feline entertainment system by the window. Enthralled by the little critters outside, Fireball sat next to Moonpie, enjoying some quiet moments with him. They watch little critters togetherLisaMoonpie has learned to tolerate the kitten's unbridled energy and constant tussling with his bushy tail. He has grown to adore their new morning ritual, dueling over tube treats.Fireball has doubled in size since she moved into her foster home, now forever home. She's a bundle of pure energy, carrying toys around and sharing her mischief with her best friend. Lisa"She has stolen their hearts, and Moonpie enjoys playing and chasing her and having a BFF," Stephanie added.Before Fireball came into their lives, Moonpie often joined Lisa at her stained glass studio, The Glass Angel, greeting customers and doling out cuddles. LisaNow, with a new feline sister, he spends ample time running around or lounging on a cat tree with her."Sometimes, he'd rather stay home than accompany Lisa to her shop. This is indeed a happy tail." LisaShare this story with your friends. More on Sparkle Cat Rescue on Instagram and Facebook.Related story: Cat Spotted High Up on a Building, Suddenly Comes Out of Her Shell When She Realizes Life is About to Change

Children giggle as young people flash their smartphones to film robots carrying plates of freshly prepared meals on their inbuilt trays to deliver to diners in a busy eatery in Kenya's capital. Nairobi…

It is hard to overstate the massive impact of social media in today’s world, and in an election year… the only word that comes to mind is “PIVOTAL”. If you don’t know him (23 MILLION+ people…

A formative influence. The post Tony Iommi’s profound inspiration: “The Shadows were the only band that really appealed to me” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Critics of Vice President Kamala Harris and her counterfeit presidential campaign have failed to grasp what should have become obvious by now. The people who actually run the Democratic Party have changed their default strategy for winning major elections. After what they regarded as a disastrous 2016 defeat, they began shifting their focus from convincing voters to cast ballots for their candidates and instead concentrated on manipulating the electoral machinery of competitive states. This strategy relieves them of the need to run honest or coherent candidates. Axelrod is clearly untroubled by this because he knows the Democrats don’t expect Harris to win by convincing voters. In 2020, it allowed them to hide their presidential candidate for most of the cycle yet defeat an incumbent president who won more popular votes (74,223,975) than any sitting president in history, including Barack Obama. How did basement-bound Joe Biden manage to “win” 81,283,501 popular votes and a 306-232 Electoral College victory? Via the magic of mail-in ballots — over 58 percent of his total — and protracted post-Election Day vote counting in crucial battleground states. He also had a little help from his friends in the “shadow campaign” as Molly Ball famously described it in Time after Biden was inaugurated: This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election … a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures. In reality, of course, these creatures have nothing but contempt for democracy. They colluded with the Democratic Party to install a cipher in the White House who could be easily controlled. And it worked so well that, in 2022, they used the same strategy to elect a Senate candidate in Pennsylvania and a gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, both of whom “won” their respective races despite remaining all but invisible. Thus, it should surprise no one that Harris has been restricted to reading one canned speech from her teleprompter and a single taped interview on CNN. This is how the Democrats intend to conduct every election. (READ MORE from David Catron: Harris Will Lose Unless Her Polls Rise Sharply) The Media and the Democrats None of this would be possible, of course, without the disgraceful complicity of the corporate media. MSNBC’s Luke Russert, for example, provides a typically obsequious description of Harris’ performance during the first interview she has granted since replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket: “Kamala Harris gave lucid and coherent answers on a variety of topics over 50 minutes. That alone sets the bar for the 2024 election.” To call this dishonest would be far too generous. Here is what Harris said when Dana Bash asked if she regretted misleading the public about President Biden’s mental fitness: No, not at all. Not at all. I have served with President Biden for almost four years now. And I’ll tell ya it’s one of the greatest honors of my career, truly. He cares so deeply about the American people. He is so smart and — and loyal to the American people. And I have spent hours upon hours with him, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. He has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president. The obvious follow-up question a real journalist would have asked would go something like this: “Well, if he has the intelligence, the commitment, the judgment, and disposition the American people deserve in their president, why was it necessary for you to replace him as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee?” Dana Bash simply allowed Harris to prattle on about how proud she was to serve as Biden’s vice president. Former Obama advisor David Axelrod offered the understatement of the cycle with this observation about her performance during the interview: “I don’t think she moved the ball that much forward.” Axelrod is clearly untroubled by this because he knows the Democrats don’t expect Harris to win by convincing voters. Their election strategy in 2024 is no different than their 2020 strategy. The “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who devoted themselves to “fortifying” democracy in 2020 are likely behind the removal of Joe Biden from the top of the Democratic ticket. They’re also working to “control the flow of information” to voters. Last Friday, former labor secretary Robert Reich wrote in the Guardian that global regulators should threaten Elon Musk with arrest “if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.” Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth — he’s the richest person in the world — into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world … Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter. He publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, Musk helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Meanwhile, the former U.S. president has revived his presence on the X platform. It could hardly be more obvious that the real problem here has nothing to do with unaccountable political power or authoritarianism. The issue here is that Musk, unlike old Twitter, refuses to deplatform Trump or his supporters. Even worse, he has compounded that crime by openly supporting the Bad Orange Man politically. Reich even exhumed this old chestnut: “Evidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents are using X to disrupt this year’s presidential race, presumably in favor of Trump. Musk has done little to stop them.” Utterly moronic conspiracy theories, like old soldiers, evidently never die. (READ MORE: The Harris Teleprompter Is Economically Illiterate) All of which brings us back to our feckless Vice President and the people who deposed Joe Biden and promoted her to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Harris has almost nothing in common with her masters, but she does share one of their characteristics. There is little she won’t do to acquire power, and less that she won’t do once in possession of it. Fortunately for the nation, she doesn’t seem able to fake competence. In the end, she probably can’t hide this from the voters for 60 days. This is good news for Donald Trump. The post Hiding Candidates Is Now SOP for Democrats appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Ronald Reagan made me a conservative. This is of little historical note compared to destroying the Soviet Union, uplifting the economy, and restoring American optimism from malaise, but Reagan changed my life for the better. My political transformation occurred on the most electric night I ever experienced — November 4th, 1980. What happened that night was so world-changingly memorable, I wish it had been included in the fine new movie, Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid as the greatest President of my lifetime. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe … tear down this wall!” I hadn’t thought much about politics in college — the University of Maryland — but instinctively leaned right. I remember a hot date I hoped to make out with babbling about The Women’s Room, and blew it when I said the heroine sounded like a witch (I used a stronger similar word). I didn’t know or care some new feminist wave was sweeping over the land, just that television had become unwatchably shrill and sexless with shows like Maude, Alice, One Day at a Time, and others. At least I had Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman as an option. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Election 2024: Real Men vs. Feminist Women and ‘Men’) I didn’t much care who was President — until I returned to school after Christmas break for the 1979 spring semester. Then I did find something on TV to watch, every single night, ABC News’ Nightline: America Held Hostage. The longer the Iran Hostage Crisis dragged on with no end in sight, the madder I got. How could a bunch of Third World fanatics humiliate the greatest country in the world? Jimmy Carter’s Mr. Rogers face and Andy Griffith drawl became increasingly intolerable to me. But nothing made me angrier than the Administration’s unofficial response to the diplomatic violation blaring out of every radio in the country — Tony Orlando and Dawn’s 1973 hit, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree. The snappy, sappy song’s resurgence originated from a statement by the wife, Penne Laingen, of U.S. Embassy hostage Bruce Laingen. When asked what Americans should do about the Iranian offense, Mrs. Laingen said, “Tell them to do something constructive, because we need a great deal of patience. Just tell them to tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.” Thus, for many more months, stupid yellow ribbons became the ubiquitous symbols of national impotence. Which red-blooded young American men like me, weaned on John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Captain Kirk, felt personally. We would rather tie a prisoner collar around the ole Ayatollah Khomeini’s neck. When Jimmy Carter finally took military action, it resulted in a helicopter burning in the desert, eight servicemen dead, increased crowing by the Iranian militants, and more disgust in me. That’s when I realized the U.S. presidential race was already in full swing, with two men vying for the Republican nomination. I took note of both candidates and quickly dismissed one — the goofy snob with a high-pitched voice and glasses. But the other intrigued me. He looked like a movie star, in fact had been one, and spoke in a warm friendly tone about the threat of communism and American weakness and about regular hard-working folk as if he knew them. The Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, and Carter’s “powerful” response was to boycott the Summer Olympics. As Paul Kengor cites in his superb book, The Crusader Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, the basis for the new Dennis Quaid film, candidate Reagan told The Washington Post’s Lou Cannon, “So far as an arms race is concerned, there’s one going on right now but there’s only one side racing.” It was the sort of witty yet brutally truthful quip I had not heard before. As a fan of John Le Carre’s Cold War fiction but annoyed by his Moral Relativism, that both sides were equally immoral, I found the clarity refreshing. My preferred candidate won the Republican nomination, but he made one mistake in my new book. He picked the goofy snob for a running mate. I found out years later what a detriment it turned out to be. Upon graduating in 1980, I took my first journalism job as an intern-newswriter for Washington D.C. station WTTG’s Ten O’Clock News. On September 4th, I was assigned to assist political reporter James Adams covering election night at Republican National Headquarters. Everyone there was hopeful yet tense. Many people were young, some no older than me, several of them candidates for office. I could feel their adrenaline pumping, then mine as well. They were ready for a long suspenseful night. (READ MORE: Snow White and the Witches of Hollywoke) We began our coverage at 7 pm. There was a large electoral map on the wall, a precursor to today’s computerized variety. It lit up red right to left faster than a Christmas tree. The whole east coast turned crimson, except for Carter’s home state of Georgia and Senator Robert Byrd’s West Virginia. People gasped with shock and delight as every other state but Minnesota went red. I may have gasped with them. By 8:15, the election was over. And so was my political ignorance. I was a Ronald Reagan conservative forever. I watched the Reagan film last weekend, with frequent tears in my eyes. It’s not a David Leanian masterpiece or even a studio-rich production. But it tells a great American story about a great American hero and a wonderful real-life love story admirably well. And it beautifully captures some of the decisive moments of the 20th Century, culminating in the most magnificent speech — Reagan before the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall, wonderfully delivered by Dennis Quaid. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev (applause), Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I left the movie theater inspired. Then I got home and watched excerpts from Kamala Harris’s and Tim Walz’s word salad interview on CNN. And I got tears in my eyes once again — at how far we’ve fallen since Reagan. ——– “Billed as ‘A Slade and Cork Mystery,’ The Washington Trail tells a gripping, twisting stand-alone story, while introducing us to characters we’d be happy to follow on many adventures to come.… “They don’t make ’em any more,” says Slade of a poster for the John Wayne classic ‘El Dorado’ that hangs in his apartment. “Too triggering.” Fortunately, the same can no longer be said about the hard-boiled detective novel, thanks to this fine debut from Aguilar.”                                                             Matt Himes, The Blaze The post Reagan Made Me a Conservative appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.