UPDATED: In his farewell column, Thomas Sowell looks back at quarter century of writing syndicated commentary

WND  "Even the best things come to an end. After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop. Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long.

"It was very fulfilling to be able to share my thoughts on the events unfolding around us, and to receive feedback from readers across the country – even if it was impossible to answer them all.

"Being old-fashioned, I liked to know what the facts were before writing. That required not only a lot of research, it also required keeping up with what was being said in the media.

"During a stay in Yosemite National Park last May, taking photos with a couple of my buddies, there were four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program – and it felt wonderful. With the political news being so awful this year, it felt especially wonderful.

"This made me decide to spend less time following politics and more time on my photography, adding more pictures to my my website.

"Looking back over the years, as old-timers are apt to do, I see huge changes, both for the better and for the worse." . . .

On Black Lives Matter and the Question No One Seems to be Asking (But Should Be)

Applying biblical truth to social, political, and theological issues in our world. . . . "Any conversation about the value of human life, whether it be with regard to social injustice, abortion, or child slavery, must start with God and with His objective construct of why human life matters.

""That the issue of the significance of human life is deemed by many to be worthy of protest in its various and sundry forms, is only because God, who is the Author of all life, has attributed significance to it.

“Know that the Lord Himself is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” – Psalm 100:3a (NASB)

 "It is the same today as it was thousands of years ago, when God declared holy the ground on which Moses stood as he encountered the glory of God at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). 

"Only God could declare sacred and hallowed [קֹדֶשׁ] something as useless and expendable as the dirt that Moses’ worn out sandals had come in contact with in that one extraordinary moment. 

"Conclusion

"Human life matters because, in our humanity, we bear the image of the One who gives life to each of us (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).

"That we, as human beings, are of a particular race, ethnicity, or nationality is of no significance given that even those aspects of our earthly existence are sovereignly ordained by God, so neither you nor I have anything to boast of in ourselves (Acts 17:26).

"Not our race. Not our ethnicity. Not our individual socio-cultural experiences.

"Nothing.

“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” – Galatians 6:14 (NASB)

Born and raised in the inner-city housing projects of southwest Atlanta, Georgia, Darrell B. Harrison currently resides in Covington, Georgia (about 45 miles east of Atlanta) and attends Rockdale Community Church, a Reformed Baptist congregation located in Conyers, Georgia (just outside of Covington).
Much more about Mr. Harrison here. and here.

How Trump’s Election Helped Sink Navy’s Push For Political Correctness

Weasel Zippers

"I always thought criticism of the use of the term ‘man’ has to be one of the stupidest things. ‘Man’ as in ‘fellow man’ has always included within it man and woman for centuries. Only in the ridiculous past decade have people attempted to claim it hasn’t. They are the ones really disenfranchising women from a history that they were in fact included in with such thought.

"Via NY Post:

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus last week dropped his drive to eliminate hundreds of “sexist” job titles — thanks to fury in the ranks. It’s a welcome defeat for the forces of political correctness.

Mabus’ target was a host of words that end in “-man.” He cloaked the move as simply an effort to modernize the pay-rate system, but no one ever bought it: Mabus is known for being obsessed with symbolic equality.

Indeed, at an October event at the National Press Club, he justified his policy by saying, “It’s time to quit segregating women.”

But countless former and current sailors weren’t having it. A White House petition opposing the move garnered more than 100,000 signatures — and the less formal outrage was far louder.

Keep reading…

Dear Michelle: There Most Certainly Is Hope

Eileen F. Toplansky  "In her usual crass, coarse, and graceless manner, Michelle Obama epitomized the very worst of the America she so disdains when she opined about "hopelessness" regarding the election.  She conveniently forgets about the debt her husband piled up, or the incredible unemployment numbers, or the decrease in Americans' buying power, or the diminution of America's standing in the world, or the worsening race relations – courtesy of her husband.

"The Obamas had the means to effect so much positive change.  But as dutiful leftists who hate the United States of America, they were intent upon sowing division and destruction.  They were never concerned about the people, despite all the hype about hope.

"It would shock Mrs. Obama to learn that many young people do not share her dismal view of victimization and do not engage in racism.  And despite the anti-Trump hysteria at many colleges, there are those instructors who really do insist upon critical thinking skills.  To that end, this semester, I distributed the following prompt: " . . .

"Michelle Obama, of the pouty smirk, will never understand the greatness of this country and its amazing strides.  My students, though products of a failed educational system, are still reachable.  With the sea change that has occurred in the White House, we will begin to regain the potential of this great land.  Let Michelle wallow in disgust for America.  Good riddance to her and her husband." 

Major ISIS Recruiter Arrested In Libya… Guess How He's Connected to Obama

Conservative Tribune  "A major Tunisian militant and Islamic State group recruiter who was arrested this week in Libya used to be confined at the Parwan Detention Facility in Afghanistan, but President Barack Hussein Obama decided to have him transferred to Italy.

"It was there that recruiter Abu Nassim was acquitted of all terror charges. He was later sentenced to six years in prison after an appeal, but by then, he had already fled and returned to the battlefield, according to The Foreign Desk, an international news website founded by Fox News commentator Lisa Daftari.

. . . 

"A year later, the militant took part in the Bardo National Museum attack in Tunis, Tunisia, where 22 innocent men, women and children were killed by gunmen. His role in that attack remains unclear, though the fact still remains that he would have had no role — and the attack may not have even occurred — had he not been released.

“ 'If the information on Fezzani proves to be true, it is very disturbing,” Dr. Sebastian Gorka told The Investigative Project on Terror has remarked. “Just like the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, this was a man we had in our detention facility and let go.”

"Yet despite reports like this popping up rather frequently, the president continues to release more detained terrorists every single month."

Obama Quietly Signs The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act" Into Law

Zero Hedge . . .  "But while the passage of the NDAA - and the funding of the US military - was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act.
. . . 
 And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate "Russian Propaganda" with "fake news" (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially "fake"), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also "fake news" and thus falls under the "Russian propaganda" umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be "foreign propaganda."

Just like that, the US Ministry of Truth is officially born.

Obama’s unintended consequences: King of Bahrain openly celebrates Hanukkah with Jews

Jerusalem Post: Analysis: Obama sees himself as on the right side of history  "The president may personally dislike the prime minister – their relationship has been fractious for years. But more than simply sticking it to Netanyahu, Obama sought to codify in the clearest way he could a position he has always believed is in Israel’s long-term interests. Should the promise of a two-state solution survive Trump’s presidency, Obama hopes that Resolution 2334 will stand the test of time and remind his successors of a once-strong international consensus in favor of two states for two peoples.

Thomas Lifson   "President Barack Obama promised a fundamental transformation for America and its role in the world. But as the inept community organizer prepares to leave office, it is becoming clear that his clumsy overreach is backfiring on multiple levels. The election of Donald Trump is but one example of the changes that lie ahead, sparked by backlash to Obama’s policies.

"One minor yet significant example of President Unintendedconcequences: drawing together Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Yes, you read that correctly. The president who stabbed Israel in the back at the UN Friday (as Alan Dershowitz put it this morning on Fox & Friends) has actually paved the way for peace between Israel an the Arabs of the Middle East. By scaring Arab leaders in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia plus the emirates) with his deal to allow Iran nuclear arms, he has reminded the potentates that Israel is no threat to their power, while Iran openly lusts for control over their oil and their citizens, many of whom are Shiites.

"Israel, as it happens, is believed to have excellent intelligences sources within Iran, and has the technological sophistication to pull off Stuxnet and other sophisticated attacks on the mullahs, who have sworn to wipe Israel “off the map.” . . .

2016: A year that will live in infamy for Obama and Israel.

CNN, of course: Obama's exit interview: Hope and change can still win elections/ 2016 at the U.N.   "Arguing that Americans still subscribe to his vision of progressive change, President Barack Obama asserted in an interview recently he could have succeeded in this year's election if he was eligible to run. 

" 'I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it," Obama told his former senior adviser David Axelrod in an interview for the "The Axe Files" podcast, produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN." . . .

CNN

Obama’s UN Legacy: Whitewashing Iran’s Nuclear Cheating; Outlawing Jewish History  . . . "Eleven months after exonerating Iran, Obama put Israel in the penalty box by allowing a resolution that stated, “that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law,” meaning of course that the Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem, (which Jews were illegally ethnically cleansed from by Jordan in 1948) is against international law." . . .

. . . "Hypocritically, the Obama administration is refusing to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention to rein in Iranian aggression resulting from the nuclear deal, but using it to vilify Israel.

"In short, what Obama has done is used the U.N. to give every benefit of the doubt to Israel’s enemies and to criminalize Israel for existing. This is Obama’s shameful Middle East legacy done with the connivance of the United Nations."

Perfidious Obama’s Last Betrayal  . . . "Israel was thus delegitimized and ordered to return to the borders it had before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. 
"President Obama’s enmity toward Israel, though often denied, has been obvious since his inauguration. Through many meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his attempt to force a false peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and his nuclear weapons deal with Iran, Obama has made it clear to anyone who wanted to see that his hatred of Israel coincided with his intention to diminish our national security as well as that of the Jewish state." . . .

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Barack Obama of creating and promoting UN resolution that denounced West Bank settlement operations  . . . " 'And, as I told John Kerry on Thursday, friends don't take friends to the Security Council. I'm encouraged by the statements of our friends in the United States, Republicans and Democrats alike. 

" 'They understand how reckless and destructive this UN resolution was, they understand that the Western Wall isn't occupied territory.'

Netanyahu also summoned the US ambassador for a meeting - a rare decision by an Israeli leader. 

The resolution, which condemned the occupation by Israeli settlers of parts of the West Bank that were seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, passed 14-0 on Friday."

"Rumor has it more is coming. Bibi is turning to President-elect Donald Trump for help, although I’m not sure how much he can do before being sworn in. But if anyone can at this point, it’s Trump."

Obama’s Betrayal of Israel Is a Black Day for American Diplomacy

. . . "I italicize “armistice lines” to highlight that the demarcations, even back in 1967, were not national boundaries. They were disputed even before the Arab war of aggression. The armistice lines merely reflect the position of Israeli and Arab forces when the cease-fire went into effect. They were not accepted as final boundaries by the affected countries. As we shall see, they could not be accepted as final boundaries by Israel." . . .

Obama Leaves Another Hot Mess  "For eight years, countless liberal Jews and other supporters of Israel have insisted that Obama is resolutely pro-Israel. By refusing to veto the U.N. resolution today, Obama has just thrown all of them under the bus. Elliott Abrams has a more exhaustive take that is very much worth reading. I’ll just focus on a few points of my own." . . .

Roger L. Simon: Obama's Israel Vendetta Opens the Door for Trump to Defund the UN

Meanwhile, this "peaceful" organization that has had no effect whatsoever on ending war spends most of its working hours bashing the state of Israel.  In 2015 alone the UN General Assembly adopted 20 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism — and only 3 resolutions on the rest of the world combined.And what does the U.S. taxpayer fork over for participating in this global society for slanderous garbage?  $3.04 billion in 2015, to be exact.  Now admittedly that's not as much as Barack Obama has been shoveling to Iran's mullahs, but it's still a lot.

Cruz: No U.S. Money for UN Until Anti-Israel Resolution Reversed
.  .  . "Friday's abstention prompted a wave of criticism from Trump, Republicans and even members of the Democratic Party.

UPDATED: By allowing an anti-Israel Security Council resolution, Obama will hurt the U.N., and not help peace

Update: Israel accuses Obama administration of helping craft, push UN censure  "We have rather ironclad information from sources in both the Arab world and internationally that this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place,” David Keyes, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Fox News’ “America’s News HQ.”  

Obama 2015: Our commitment to Israel is ‘unshakable’ — Obama 2016: Time to shake things up a bit

"With Republican control of Congress and the White House, the avenues for pushback would be many. Trump could make an anti-settlements resolution a dead letter by moving the U.S. Embassy not just to Jerusalem, but to eastern Jerusalem."

Volokh Conspiracy  . . . "Obama’s goal with such a resolution would be to punish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he personally dislikes, and to create diplomatic facts on the ground to box in President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The folly of a such resolution has been underscored by both Hillary Clinton and Trump, as well as near-unanimous majorities in both houses of Congress and an array of Democratic foreign policy experts, including former Senate majority leader and Obama administration peace negotiator George Mitchell.

"Such a resolution would not cement any positive legacy for Obama. To the contrary, it would vastly magnify the actual obstacles to resolving the Palestinian issue. Moreover, by setting the U.N. against Israel, Obama may provoke a sharp conflict between Washington and the U.N. — one that would harm the latter much more than the former.

"The proposed resolution denounces any Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank as illegal and demands that Israel immediately choke off such communities. These areas had been entirely cleansed of their ancient Jewish populations during the Jordanian invasion and occupation in 1949. The standard diplomatic position of the U.N. is that Israel, upon retaking these areas in 1967, was obligated to indefinitely forbid Jews from living in these areas (but the U.N. has amazingly avoided applying these supposed rules anywhere else).

"The legal effects of such a resolution would be murky — the Security Council is neither a court nor a legislature and cannot create rules of international law. Nor do the resolutions invoke the council’s power under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter to call for mandatory measures, such as sanctions. What is clear is that a Security Council resolution will reinforce all the dynamics that have made a solution more remote despite eight years of pressure on Israel by Obama." . . .
. . . 
Trump has consistently opposed Obama’s turning to the U.N. to create facts on the ground for U.S. policymakers or to avoid Congress — fromclimate change to the Iran deal to control of the Internet. If the Security Council becomes a forum for exonerating Iran and slamming Israel, President Trump could even embrace the idea, already popular among congressional Republicans, of cutting U.N. funding." . . .

Obama's legacy pictured

Christian References Removed From Christmas Carol in Sweden to Prepare Children for 'Inclusion'

Anugrah Kumar

"Protecting Swedish traditions is important, but raising their sights so that they have the courage to meet a changing world is another important task for the school and community to relate to," is said on the municipality's website.

A Swedish prosecutor recently ruled that flying the Islamic State's black flag is perfectly legal and does not constitute a hate crime.

Sweden is sometimes referred to as the "least religious nation in the western world." A 2014 study found that nearly eight out of 10 Swedes are either "not religious" or "convinced atheists," making the country one of the least religious nation in the Western world.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-references-removed-from-christmas-carol-to-prepare-children-for-inclusion-in-sweden-172358/#RaY0f6gbTcfJwov1.99

"Protecting Swedish traditions is important, but raising their sights so that they have the courage to meet a changing world is another important task for the school and community to relate to," is said on the municipality's website.

A Swedish prosecutor recently ruled that flying the Islamic State's black flag is perfectly legal and does not constitute a hate crime.

Sweden is sometimes referred to as the "least religious nation in the western world." A 2014 study found that nearly eight out of 10 Swedes are either "not religious" or "convinced atheists," making the country one of the least religious nation in the Western world.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-references-removed-from-christmas-carol-to-prepare-children-for-inclusion-in-sweden-172358/#RaY0f6gbTcfJwov1.99

. . . "The grandfather laments changes made to the carol, which includes the axing of lines such as “born of the Lord Jesus Christ”, and “a ray of God’s love’s light”, so as to remove references to the fact Christmas is a religious feast. He notes that even “star of Bethlehem” has been censored, and changed to “star over all of us”.

"The letter’s author suggests that schools “bring an end to this special treatment for newly arrived students”, and writes: “The idea was that [migrants] would be integrated into Swedish society and not vice versa.

“ 'We shouldn’t be afraid of our Swedish traditions. Soon we’ll have none left,” he notes, sadly.

"In a notice on its municipal website, Åmål’s education administration confirmed that the changes highlighted in the letter had taken place, and adding that an “appropriate selection of verses from different songs and hymns” were chosen for the celebration.

"The statement says the edits allow “all students regardless of nationality and religion” to participate. The replacing of “Bethlehem” with “all of us”, the school’s management insists, is “commendable”, as “the wording then allows the star to shine on all of us”." . . . Hat tip to Breitbart London

Netanyahu Shares Powerful Christmas Message Of The Bond Between Christians And Jews

Tell me again; why do so many in the world root for Islam to destroy these people?

Weasel Zippers