• Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced the restoration of full relations between the United States and Cuba, along with a raft of reconciliatory actions. Obama said the US and Cuba have chosen “to cut loose the shackles of the past”, and Castro called for the embargo to end.
• Cuba released American Alan Gross from prison after nearly five years of captivity. Cuba also freed a spy held for more than 20 years, an act the US intelligence chief called “a fitting closure to a Cold World chapter”.

• The US announced overhauls to commerce, travel and internet restrictions, and the restoration of an American embassy in Havana. Cuba said it will release 53 political prisoners, allow greater internet services, and work with international groups like the UN. The White House refused to rule out a visit by President Obama to Havana.

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This has to be one of the most obvious examples of race-baiting propaganda from the Obama team. According to their logic an unknown woman asked Michelle to help her get an item off a shelf, ergo the shopping woman is racist. The exact opposite claim could be made from the same situation. The shopper didn’t see Michelle Obama through the skin color prism, but as an ordinary human who naturally would assist another.
And as to the claims of President Obama being mistaken for a waiter; it was not too long ago when Valerie Jarrett asked a white four star general to fetch her a drink while making an identical mistake. Does that make Valerie Jarret a racist?

2011 […] Jarrett, apparently only seeing [General] Chiarelli’s striped uniform pants, thought that he was a waiter. She asked him to get her a glass of wine. She was said to be mortified as soon as she realized her mistake, and who wouldn’t be? But the instructive part of this tale is what Chiarelli did next.
Rather than take offense, or try to make Jarrett feel small for her blunder, the general, in good humor, went and poured her a glass of wine. It was evident that he wanted to defuse the awkward moment, and to let Jarrett know that she should not feel embarrassed.  (link)

These people are over the top with their own racism. (more…)

Martha McSally is a combat tested A-10 Warthog fighter pilot.  After a closely contested Arizona race it is now official – McSally has won the former Gabby Giffords’ seat.

(Reuters) – U.S. Representative Ron Barber, an Arizona Democrat and former aide to Gabrielle Giffords, has officially lost his re-election bid to the Republican challenger in November’s congressional elections, a judge certified on Wednesday.
A superior court judge declared Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel and a pioneer of women’s combat aviation in the 1990s, the winner after a state-mandated recount showed she won by 167 votes in the Nov. 4 election.
“There’s no getting around that this was an incredibly close and hard-fought race. After what’s been a long campaign season, it’s time to come together and heal our community,” McSally said in a statement. (read more)

(Via Red Alert) Following the model set at several law schools, students at Oberlin College are pleading for leniency during final exams and the final grading period this fall semester in light of the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases and the shooting of Tamir Rice.
A petition has been circling around the school community President Marvin Krislov to suspend the standard grading system because students of color, especially black students, are at risk of failing.
“I would really like to see the normal grading system suspended for this semester and replaced with a no-fail mercy period. Administrators should require professors to exercise complete flexibility in what students are saying they can produce academically. Require that every professor listen to what their students are saying and if that means rather than writing a paper students instead meet with their professor to simply discuss in groups their paper topics or if tests are taken collectively with professors there are ways to make sure we are learning what we are supposed to be learning in ways that are not so taxing in times like this,” the petition reads. (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.
When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the “Do Nothing Congress” almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He’s used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration. (more…)

2352 Herron Road, Courtland, Mississippi –  Click all pictures to enlarge and explore
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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

A little something about American culture, nostalgia, and a bit of humor . . . .

Prayers for every family….

(Overnight CNN) — At least 84 people, most of them children, have been killed after a group of gunmen stormed an army-run school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
The Pakistan Taliban — Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday.
Pervez Khattak, chief minister of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said over 80 of the injured are children ranging from 12 to 16 years of age. He added that two of the attackers are now dead — one blew himself up, while the other was killed by security forces.
Earlier, Shahram Khan, the province’s health minister, told CNN that two teachers and an army official had also been killed, while 104 more were wounded.
The Pakistan military said a rescue operation involving its troops is currently underway at the school, with gunfire still being exchanged. (more…)