Artifice of Eternity

Marshal, like Craig, is welcome here to try to make a point. But he’s gutless.  Here he is: “I  agree that confronting opposing points of view is more fun, fulfilling, enlightening and challenging. I prefer it as well.”  Then he immediately needs to make clear that I’m not challenging. Though I did point out that he voted for a convicted felon. Which makes his standard of judgment about 93% of black people just empty racist prejudice. The look at the ink he spills trying to cover the FACT that Trump is  a convicted felon in an American court of law. He tries so hard to make it not true he thinks his feelings can turn back time. “ And speaking of the troll, a comment submission appeared under yours which was brief and easy to read as I deleted it. [“easy to read as I deleted it”😂 he’s not even a grown up bastard; just a latent juvenile who cannot be straight up honest!😂😂😂] It referenced Trump's conviction and such would've been a good example of the crazy about wh...

Doesn’t have the guts to show up here where he’s welcome to try to make a point. He’s actually scared of the intelligence. “ I can only speak for myself, but I seek out people who disagree with me. Hell, that's part of why I haven't just cut Dan off. But usually I seek out those with more intelligence and expertise than Dan. I do so on social media, in what I read, and who I spend time with. I honestly find it refreshing to have to think through challenges to things I believe or know. I could delete and block about half of the accounts I follow on social media and live in ignorant bliss just like Dan does. Unlike Dan, or your friend (I've got plenty of them as well), I don't automatically dismiss what they say and check their claims out.”

 

  In its merciless pursuit of people without papers — most of them Latino — and its demonization of asylum seekers, refugees, holders of temporary protected status, Muslims and Palestinian rights activists, the Trump administration is accelerating toward a new, modern nadir of   Juan Crow , just downstream of Jim and Jane. When a sitting U.S. senator  refers  to New York immigrants as “inner-city rats,” when a Florida governor waxes rapturously about the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center, when a presidential administration takes  two months to dismantle decades of civil rights law , we must admit that these are acts in a feature presentation of neo-Confederate revanchism targeting brown and Black people. The targeting of the undocumented has a name, after all, based in ugly history and shameful tradition: Juan Crow. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/opinion/trump-juan-crow-birther-race.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Israel  - since the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by  one of their rejected own (rejected because he was a Mizrahi [native Jew not part of the European diaspora] and who was motivated by the then opposition leader, Netanyahu’s, screaming about treason) has increasingly steered steadfast into colonial supremacy . They are performing our own colonizing history: dispossessing the Other of their land, their labor, their very limbs, their loved ones, and their lives. In periodic but serial and consistent brutality, the chosen Likud governments have committed atrocities, crimes against humanity, while wrapping themselves, paranoid, in blood covered garments of victimhood as justification for using ten-thousandfold greater proportion of war weaponry. They have, all along, been the object of small scale murderous violence relative to that they themselves have sown, and seem to seek in order to keep a vile veneer of righteousnes covering a vengeful lust. Jewish supremacy tod...

Glenn, who needs the inerrancy of his book like a duck needs water (because the presence of the Holy Spirit [who is actually living and teaching today- John 14:26] isn’t important to him) is now lying to himself and gaslighting his readers. Unless he can defend his faith against Stan’s argument for biblical inerrancy with one that is ironclad. If he cannot, then he admits to be being wedded to lying and gas lighting. Every protestant Christian should be honest about the Bible and what it is based on. Stan fell well short. His attempt makes a fantasy of the argument of inerrancy. And now Glenn is  hiding the facts, and a false teacher to others. Sounds like what the worst Catholics do with infallibility. That’s who you’ve let yourself become. I sent Glenn my refutation of Stan’s recent attempt to preserve inerrancy. Stan tells us that only the original documents are inerrant. We cannot trust translation. We cannot trust punctuation (and therefore cannot trust interpretatio...

New York already has a version of city-owned grocery stores. Namely, the six markets overseen by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit that manages city-owned property to boost economic development. These grocers include Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, Moore Street Market in East Williamsburg, and others in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Their purpose is not to turn a profit but to provide access to healthy and affordable groceries for underserved communities, according to an Economic Development Corporation spokesperson. These stores are given deep discounts on rent to pass savings on to customers…. People sometimes think of the Essex Street Market as a fancy food hall – and it does have stalls selling $50 balsamic vinegars or exotic alpine cheese. But it also contains a long-running meat market, a fish market, and three grocery stands, including Viva Fruits and Vegetables, which has been run by the same Dominican American family since 2000. Th...

The Book of Revelation gives us a mystical picture of our prayers delivered at the throne of God: “ The Lamb came forward to take the scroll from the right hand of the One sitting on the throne,  and when he took it, the four animals prostrated themselves before him and with them the twenty-four elders; each one of them was holding a harp and had a golden bowl full of incense made of the prayers of the saints.” The heavenly ones hear our prayers and appeal on our behalf because the body of Christ, those ascended and those of us living here are in communion with each other by the power and grace of God.

 

 

Yesterday, Stan played pick-up sticks trying to preserve an inerrant Bible. He only found straw. Wisely, Stan throws out translations in considering inerrancy. He throws out any copy that adds things not found in the original texts: things like punctuation and paragraphing. Presumable anything added to the original texts erases inerrancy. Say, like vowels for instance. Stan claims that only the original documents, or absolutely faithful copies of them, in the Hebrew and Greek languages… are inerrant.  I have questions. 1. Aramaic? The Hebrew Bible uses Aramaic as well. Will Stan amend his inerrant imprimatur to include the Aramaic found in the Hebrew Bible? By his own standards, I think he would. 2. However, the Old Testament that Christians like Stan and, in fact, almost every single Christian reads is a translation of a Hebrew Bible that Stan believes to be original and inerrant, but, by his standards, cannot be. The Hebrew Bible being used as the Ur-source - the original - is th...

arrested. Obama Posts Video of Trump Actually Getting Arrested in Real Life WASHINGTON—Responding to Donald J. Trump’s posting of a fake AI-generated video of Barack Obama being arrested, on Monday the former president posted an actual video of Trump being criminally prosecuted in 2024. The video shows Trump outside the Manhattan courtroom where he was charged with 34 felony counts and ultimately convicted on all of them. “To be honest, I wanted to come up with some kind of crazy AI video to respond to his, but I’m no good with all of that tech stuff,” Obama said. “Fortunately, there was real video of him when he was on trial, so I guess I lucked out.” At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted Obama’s post, stating, “Sharing actual footage of events that really happened is something that President Trump would never do.”

 

Peter Alexander, the Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s Press Secretary ___ Peter Alexander leaned in again. “So, to clarify: you’re saying there is no prioritization for violent criminals. ICE is instructed to arrest everyone the same?” She paused — visibly confused now — and repeated, “The President wants to deport illegal criminals, illegal immigrants, and yes, violent offenders. But again, they’re all criminals.” “So… a six-year-old girl fleeing cartel violence, crossing the border with her grandmother… is a criminal?” For a moment, Karoline’s entire persona — the polished smile, the GOP cheerleading, the made-for-Fox News sarcasm — collapsed. She blinked, looked down at her notes, and offered a broken response: “I’m not here to debate hypotheticals.” “Karoline, your job isn’t to recite slogans. It’s to explain decisions that affect real lives. And I’ll ask again — for the sake of transparency: How is removing a child from a classroom, a parent f...

Luke 10:25-37- 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time Why did the Samaritans dislike the Jews in Jesus’ time? And why did Jews dislike Samaritans? At least as reported in the Gospels, there was no little enmity between these two groups, which lends added poignancy to this Sunday’s Gospel, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (as well as the story of the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel). Some of this enmity had to do with complex historical reasons relating to conquest, settlement, resettlement and intermarriage, but part of the enmity was more contemporary for Jesus’ followers. In other words, there were reasons dating from “Old Testament times,” but the effects continued until “New Testament times.” In Jesus’s time, the Jews worshiped God in the Temple in Jerusalem; the Samaritans at Mount Gerizim, where they had built their own place of worship.  So the two groups were often at odds. This is why one of Jesus most well-known parables emphasizes that the beaten man lying by the side of the roa...

  Following the Great Depression, the US government initially responded with the  Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 , which significantly increased tariffs on imported goods.  This act, intended to protect American farmers and industries, ultimately worsened the depression by triggering retaliatory tariffs from other nations and drastically reducing global trade.  Later, the US shifted towards trade liberalization through  reciprocal trade agreements.

According to recent reports, budget rules imposed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have been cited as a factor in slowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s initial response to the deadly Texas floods. More specifically, a policy implemented by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem required her approval for every purchase, contract, and grant exceeding $100,000. Current and former FEMA employees, who spoke anonymously, stated that this significantly delayed the deployment of critical resources, including tactical and specialized search and rescue teams, during the early stages of the disaster response.   According to reports, these teams were not authorized until 72 hours after the initial flooding occurred. Some critics, including Senator Jared Moskowitz, argue that this $100,000 threshold is impractical in the context of disaster operations and effectively stripped FEMA of its ability to act in real-time.