Artifice of Eternity

  A Mother and Father Were Deported. What Happened to Their Toddler? The Trump administration sent the mother of a 2-year-old to Venezuela and the father to a Salvadoran prison. Their daughter remains somewhere in the United States.

More anti-DEI shareholder proposals fail at Goldman Sachs, Levi’s Proposals aimed at overturning or altering companies’ DEI practices have been unpopular with shareholders. Submissions to the financial institution and clothing company received less than 2% support.

 

Ron and Casey DeSantis were plotting a political dynasty in Florida. Then came a scandal…  … a funding scandal involving one of Casey’s signature initiatives — a state assistance program known as Hope Florida — is casting a shadow over the governor’s legacy and complicating her political ambitions. Lawmakers spent the spring investigating why $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement was routed to a charity connected to Hope Florida, which then transferred the same amount to two groups that financially backed a DeSantis-led campaign against legalizing recreational marijuana. Key lawmakers have publicly suggested the flow of money   appears   illegal . The couple have fiercely stood by their work and denied wrongdoing. DeSantis this week called the criticism of Hope Florida “all political.” Standing alongside her husband Thursday, Casey DeSantis characterized the program as “a philosophy” that “shows we can help people in need.” Remarkably, the investigation into Hope F...

 

You all cannot grow in knowledge of the Spirit and the Triune God because you fear to really believe. So you choose not to know. You “ask” the Bible to confirm your fears in order  to justify your judgments. But you don’t ask god for knowledge because you don’t know how to love god. Stan loves to limit love because it is dangerous to his world view as a White man. And love is dangerous! But the love for god that gives us the courage to ask for more knowledge from god… brings us the freedom of truth. From this part of Isaiah 7… “ If you will not believe, you shall not continue.”  And the Lord spoke again to Achaz, saying:  Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God either unto the depth of hell, or unto the height above.  And Achaz said: I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord.  And he said: Hear ye therefore, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to be grievous to men, that you are grievous to my God also?  Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a...

Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples,  and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one. How is it that you say, ‘You will be made free’?”  Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.  The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever.  So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. _____ from the Financial Times article by Simon Schama, “The War on Truth” “… pinning the ills of America on a free press and a college education would have surprised the Founding Fathers, whose Declaration of Independence Trump will be commemorating next year, its 250th anniversary. As the Founders saw it, the great driver of freedom was knowledge. Two decades before independence, the lawyer and essayist William Livings...

 

Water Oil Bread Wine Salt Cross Icon Wood The church A couple Rings Priest Collar Bishop Staff Hands Prayer Repentance  Song Incense Flowers The sea Fish Mountains Plains Cities Towns Dogs Cats Fields Cattle Rats _____ “For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made,  even  his everlasting power and divinity…” The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. This is Augustine. And every sacramental fellowship agrees, eastern and western. All outward and visible material things exist because of the love of God in creating and sustaining the world. Therefore all material things are capable of signifying God’s presence. All things, spiritually speaking, are sacraments because God is present in the living of all things God made. But preeminently is God present in the Incarnation of the Son of God. The Word became flesh to make us “ partakers of the divine nature ”: “...

  AND IN CONTINUING NEWS: A charity meant to help people stay off public assistance was the signature project of Florida’s popular first lady, Casey DeSantis. But over three years, it had managed to raise only about $2 million to help struggling families in Florida. Then last fall, a $10 million windfall suddenly arrived from an unlikely source: a Medicaid contractor embroiled in a case of overbilling. Within weeks, the money was gone — not to churches or other groups helping the needy. Instead, the Hope Florida Foundation quietly funneled it to two nonprofit political committees that helped Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies defeat a November ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana.

Abrego Garcia's Wife  Moved To Safe House After DHS  Exposed Her Address Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, said she fears for her family's safety after verbal attacks from Donald Trump and government officials .

 

A Bold New History Highlights Latin America’s Humanist Ideals A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin offers a fresh account of the region as an incubator of internationalism and commitment to the common good. “Grandin allows that the conquistadors were responsible for enormous bloodshed. But he goes on to say that it is precisely because of the vicious havoc they wreaked that they elicited outrage and dissent. He offers a rich, moving portrait of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican priest who started out as a supporter and beneficiary of the Spanish crown’s imperial ambitions before becoming one of its most scathing critics. Las Casas’ conversion moment took place when he accompanied an expedition to pacify Cuba. He saw his fellow Spaniards disemboweling women and children. He would later remember “the land, covered in bodies.” Las Casas wrote as a witness to atrocity: “so many massacres, so many burnings, so many bereavements and, finally, ...

  And this is just the first step in awakening people to blaspheming the Spirit for making identity of anyone a sin. Africans were said to “bear the sin mark of Cain” in the color of their skin. Same damn thing.

Disaster survivors in Arkansas left homeless by recent tornadoes have been blocked from receiving federal recovery aid after President Donald Trump rejected the state’s request to declare a major disaster in March. The Trump administration denied Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ request for individual and public assistance following  an outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes  that also affected neighboring Mississippi and Missouri and left more than 40 people dead. The denial follows executive orders signed by Trump seeking to shift the burden of disaster response and recovery from the federal government onto states, as extreme weather becomes increasingly destructive and costly in a warming world. It is unclear how states will fill the financial void, which for decades has been viewed as a federal responsibility given the wide-reaching, multi-state nature of disasters.

The $10 million that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted to a state-created charity last year consisted of Medicaid dollars owed to state and federal taxpayers, contrary to what the governor and other officials have publicly asserted.   Three years ago, lawyers working with the state drew up a settlement agreement that   said Florida’s largest Medicaid contractor, Centene, overbilled taxpayers $67,048,611 for medications, according to a copy of a draft agreement obtained by the Herald/Times. That’s the exact amount DeSantis officials  settled on with Centene  last year. But instead of returning all $67 million to state and federal coffers,  they sent $10 million  of it to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity overseen by first lady Casey DeSantis.

  Trump Promised ‘Big, Beautiful’ Deals. Delivering Has Been Tougher. So far, the goals of many of President Trump’s negotiations have been unrealized, even those he said would be accomplished in a matter of days or weeks.

North Carolina communities still struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene feel the loss of laid-off CDC disaster team

They’d have hung Obama by now.

… let those with ears to hear, hear.

… Marshal. He’d follow Hitler to the death. Marshal spiritually needs the belief in superiority. “ Ultimately, this is why ugliness is so central to the MAGA aesthetic. So much of fascism is about shunning those human qualities traditionally thought of as good, but are viewed as getting in the way of power. This is the  aesthetic version of Musk's declaration  that the "fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." Being deliberately ugly, for MAGA, is an act of contempt. It's polluting other people's field of vision just to make their day worse, in a petty display of dominance .” https://www.salon.com/2025/03/24/from-mar-a-lago-face-to-uncanny-ai-art-magas-love-of-ugliness-is-submission-to/