As usual--Brilliant! (Write a book.) Thank you, and that is how I see things. Christ knew us before the Creation.

Again, thank you very much.

Thank you brother.

I expected someone to bring up that point. This is just the way I look at the Bible: it is a challenging "I" chart, having the eyes to see. The Israelites were supposed to object, plea to God to stay his hand. There are 47 times that God relented at the pleas of his Chosen People in the Old Testament. This section is about violating the principles and purpose of Love, not accepting this attack on Canaan. The Word is filled with these tests on the true nature of love. We are not to blindly accept them but rather question and object.

We are never anything but fools: when of God, to the world and when of the world, to God. Can I hear an ole?

"If you do not love, you have nothing...you are nothing" Excerpts from 1Corinthians13: 1-13. How can anyone just read that scripture without seeing that Love is the whole point of the entire Bible, every chapter and verse? But only through Spirit and Grace. Grace has its own algorithms for the physics of the heart, wholly from heaven and not of earth.

Love is not directly of the heart but of the Eternal.

Striving for perfection, any practice or ideal of self-improvement, is a lie. We are each a unique and exact expression of God, before Creation, to be drawn forth as God designed in his image and likeness. Nothing on earth can help. Whatever treasure that we may have in heaven has nothing to with our efforts, our Mansion is not purchased by our actions but by a complete surrender to Spirit and Grace. Why strive for perfection when to "be still" is to know God.

Our Original sin is to create our own reality, to divide the kingdoms of Spirit and worldliness by a walled-off acre of self from Eternity.

1. "We are to live and move and have our being in Christ" (Acts 17:28): we are to be as Christ was in the world, citizens of heaven and not the world. Not possible for any of us on our own, no matter how well we know Scripture.

2. As humans, we cannot "be as perfect as the father in heaven": only a total reliance, surrender, to spirit and grace
And how can we "be as perfect as the father in heaven"? "Love of enemy." Not possible for any of us on our own.

3. "For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews4:12) The soul is who we are as humans, that whole package, and not some ethereal part of us but all of our nature and nurture. To discern "soul from spirit" is Not possible for any of us on our own.

I could have another 97 but the mainstream Christians find a total reliance on Spirit and Grace, as Christ had and instructed us to do, is a form of lawlessness, antinomianism, that they see as just ego. The mainstream Christians find such a lack of control too intimidating and lacking in order. Having a reliance on safe articles of beliefs, following Commandments, resisting evil, the Bible, a comforting congregation led by a conforming pastor, earthly concerns, and so much more distractions from being as Christ was in the world.

Huffpost
Mary Papenfuss
Sun, February 6, 2022, 10:16 PM

HuffPost
Fox News Totally Botches Slam On Unhealthy 'Blue' Cities, Which Were Actually Healthiest
Mary Papenfuss
Sun, February 6, 2022, 10:16 PM

The Fox face-plant Saturday evening was spotted by Twitter sleuth @Acyn, and got a shout-out from CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale.

Dan Bongino, host of “Unfiltered” — who has been permanently banned by Youtube.com for spinning COVID lies — savaged Democrats in the “Tale of Two Cities” episode for running what a dramatic map behind him targeted as the “Top Ten” unhealthiest cities in America.

But, oops — all the cities clearly labeled in the map Bongino displayed, including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Honolulu, Washington, Austin and Denver — are the healthiest in the country, according to a WalletHub analysis, the very source cited by the program.

Bongino’s map also mistakenly names “Irving” in Texas in the Top 10 list. The WalletHub analysis actually refers to “Irvine,” a city in California, as among the healthiest.

The actual unhealthiest cities named in the WalletHub analysis cited in Bongino’s program include cities in Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia and Tennessee — all red states.

Viewers on Twitter reported that Bongino’s program was modified when it was repeated later Saturday night — without the blatantly inaccurate map listing the “most unhealthy” cities.

Still, Bongino scapegoated Democrats for running unhealthy cities. The second time around, Bongino’s Dem-attack narrative was presented over videos of apparently homeless people in unidentified locations.

Fox News critics on Twitter loved the goof-up, even though many thought it was a new low for the network.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-totally-botches-slam-051633302.html

And...? Find me wrong thru scripture and not your snide and senseless accusations or just keep watching Honey Boo Boo re-runs.

Reuters
Fri, February 4, 2022, 5:37 PM

(Reuters) - North Carolina's divided Supreme Court struck down the state's new congressional map on Friday, upholding claims from Democratic voters and advocacy groups that the redrawn district lines illegally favor Republicans.

The 4-3 decision, with justices registered as Democrats making up the majority, could have an outsized impact on the 2022 midterm elections in November, when control of the closely divided U.S. Congress will be at stake.

Democrats and civil rights activists had asserted that the new map ensures Republicans will win a majority of the state's 14 congressional districts, even in elections in which more Democratic voters cast ballots.

Issuing a ruling Friday, the Supreme Court said the maps "are unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause, and the freedom of assembly clause of the North Carolina Constitution."

North Carolina's legislature can submit new congressional and state legislative districting plans "that satisfy all provisions of the North Carolina Constitution," the court said. The deadline to submit such plans for review by a trial court is Feb. 18, the court said.

Federal law requires states to draw new congressional lines every 10 years to account for population shifts, after the U.S. Census completes its once-a-decade count. In most states, legislators control the process, leading to the practice of gerrymandering, in which one party engineers political maps to benefit itself.

The case was among numerous pending lawsuits challenging congressional maps in at least half a dozen states, including Texas, Ohio and Georgia, according to New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking redistricting litigation.

Republicans need to flip only a handful of seats in the Nov. 8 elections to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Democrats hold a 221-212 edge, including vacancies.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-carolina-supreme-court-strikes-003746241.html

Just one example of 19 Red States looking to subvert our democratic process of Elections.

The Guardian
Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon in New York
Fri, February 4, 2022, 6:48 AM

It has been called a textbook example of discrimination against Black voters in the US. And a ruling on it from the supreme court is expected any day.

It isn’t the kind of explicit voting discrimination, like poll taxes and literacy tests, that kept voters from the polls in the south during the Jim Crow era. Instead, it is more subtle.

Let us walk you through the case with our visual explainer.

The case focuses on Alabama, where the Republican-controlled legislature, like states across the US, recently completed the once-a-decade process of redrawing the boundaries of congressional maps. If partisan politicians exert too much control over the redistricting process, they can effectively engineer their own victories, or blunt the advantages of the other side, by allocating voters of particular political persuasions and backgrounds to particular districts.

Under the new districts, Black people make up 25% of the Alabama’s population, but comprise a majority in just one of the state’s seven districts.

In late January, a panel of three federal judges issued a 225-page opinion explaining how the state was discriminating against Black voters.

“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel wrote. The judges gave Alabama 14 days to come up with a new plan and said the state had to draw two districts where Black voters comprise a majority.



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Now Alabama is asking the US supreme court to step in and block it from having to redraw its congressional districts. In a brief to the supreme court, lawyers for Alabama argued that by creating two majority-Black districts, they would be prioritizing race over other the state’s traditional redistricting criteria such as keeping communities whole and keeping districts as compact as possible.

The plaintiffs in the case dispute that. In their own brief to the supreme court, they noted that several of their sample maps comply with Alabama’s redistricting criteria – some even more so than the map the state enacted. It is possible to simultaneously have two Black districts and observe these criteria, they say.

There is also an element of common sense involved, say plaintiffs, who point to the fact that the Black belt – named for its rich topsoil – has been an area with a high concentration of Black people for hundreds of years. “You have the Black belt … In Alabama it is such a well-known and unique feature of the state. Everyone knows that’s where Black folks live and have lived for 200 years and are still concentrated,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who is representing some of the plaintiffs in the case. “This is a community that has been together.”

The supreme court ruling could have big consequences for section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a crucial part of the landmark 1965 law that prohibits any voting practice that discriminates on the basis of race, and which is commonly used to bring challenges like the one in Alabama. If the justices side with Alabama, it would probably make it very difficult to bring similar future challenges under section 2.

Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, said Alabama was taking a “swing for the fences” argument to try to take down a “major part of the edifice of the Voting Rights Act”.

“It’s really a very aggressive stand,” he said. “What Alabama really is saying is the VRA has to be subordinate to the state’s neutral criteria. And if you can’t draw a VRA district while complying with the state’s neutral criteria, there’s no liability, which would be a big change.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/court-caught-republicans-discriminating-against-134826195.html

Pocono Record
Dr. G. Christopher Hunt
Fri, February 4, 2022, 2:28 PM

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was the focus of my doctoral studies and, at it's core, the central idea of the theory is pretty simple: that racism and it's effects are historic and embedded in our society, and often lead to the exclusion of People of Color and other marginalized groups. Why is this a point of controversy, even conflict?

I’m sure I rolled my eyes at whatever point I first observed that this idea had, indeed, become contentious. The primary thing that CRT does is it acknowledges inequities in society.

What does anyone have to lose by conceding that reality? Is it really controversial to recognize that an individual who comes from more financial means will, typically, have advantages over someone whose family had money problems?

This doesn’t mean that the more financially secure person should feel guilty. It should just help them understand their path may have not presented as many challenges as someone who did/does not have the same resources.

Additionally, what risk is there to individuals who do not live with a disability when we talk about the lived experiences of individuals who do live with a disability and how they navigate in society? And, if we understand that not every American practices Christianity, does that really impose on my ability to serve Jesus?

The thing about Critical Race Theory that most people don’t understand is the succinctness of theory itself. All we hear is, “We cannot allow this decisive concept to be taught in our schools.” The takeaway being that CRT is a dangerous, brainwashing curriculum that dishonors our nation’s history with slander and lies. In fact, CRT is merely a tool — a lens or perspective through which we can make sense of how people with different marginalized identities move throughout society.

An individual from a marginalized identity is easily defined as one who historically does not have as much societal power or authority. CRT simply provides an analysis for how race and other identities shape and influence our shared relationships. It asks that we consider and think about the questions posed earlier regarding socioeconomic status, religion, gender, disability, and other characteristics including, yes, race and ethnicity. The theory also encourages us to be mindful about the contributions that historically underrepresented people have made in our society.

American historian, author, and journalist Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1926 and shortly thereafter established Negro History Week. Fifty years later, a Republican president, Gerald Ford, advocated that the nation should "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” February was selected for Black History Month to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Frederick Douglass (Feb. 20).

In his own way, Ford was articulating a principle of CRT, which is that we have tended not to focus on the experiences and realities of individuals in marginalized groups and that underprivileged groups may have perspectives exceedingly different than those with more societal power and influence.

President Ronald Reagan also seemed to understand the importance of honoring the history and legacy of People of Color and designated Hispanic Heritage Month as a month-long observance in 1988.

There is no reason for anyone to feel threatened by Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, or Critical Race Theory. These are not ploys to indoctrinate our citizenry, but rather an opportunity to make us more informed and aware. In fact, let’s move toward honoring and acknowledging the history and contributions of historically underrepresented people beyond cultural heritage months. Embed a more comprehensive history of our society in our curriculum so we have a better understanding about where we’ve been and where we should be going.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/critical-race-theory-theres-no-204657499.html

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic
Thu, February 3, 2022, 2:58 PM

House Speaker Rusty Bowers has once again saved Republicans from themselves.

You remember that ridiculous bill to allow the Arizona Legislature to toss out our vote if our leaders don’t like the election results? The one that would kill the state’s wildly popular early voting program used by nearly 90% of voters? That would require that all ballots – all three or four million of them – be counted by hand within 24 hours of an election?

Well, Bowers on Tuesday assigned House Bill 2596 to committee.

In fact, he assigned it to every one of the House’s standing committees – all 12 of them, reports the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nathan Brown.

No one assigns bills to 12 committees
You assign a bill to one committee if you want it to pass. You assign it two committees or three even if you want to roughen up the road a bit.

You assign it to 12?

There’s a message in there from Bowers to Rep. John Fillmore, the Apache Junction Republican who dreamed up this abomination. And to his 15 far-right fellow legislators who co-sponsored the bill, including none other than Rep. Mark Fiinchem, who is hoping to be Arizona’s next secretary of state.

As a longtime Capitol reporter, Arizona Mirror’s Jeremy Duda, put it:

“I’ve never seen a speaker or Senate president kneecap a bill as aggressively as this,” he tweeted. “Triple-assignments? Sure. Been there. But this is Bowers killing the bill, chopping it up, setting the pieces on fire, then digging up the ashes and throwing them into the ocean.”

Bowers has kept up the fight since 2020
Bowers has been one of the few Republicans at the Capitol who declined to give in to the collective psychosis that has infected some of the baser portions of his political base – including a depressingly large percentage of the Legisalture – since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

He refused early on to entertain schemes by Finchem and others to overturn the election results or call into question the integrity of the vote absent actual facts.

“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” this Mesa Republican said in December 2020. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”

While Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, was bowing to Team Trump and the Senate’s cuckoo squad by hiring an unqualified Trump supporter to conduct what she called an “independent” audit of the election, Bowers took a pass.

Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called Bowers in November 2020 to regale him about the many ways in which the election was stolen and to suggest that the Legislature choose its own electors.

One horrible voting bill down, 69 to go
Bowers told them to get lost.

“You are giving me nothing but conjecture and asking me to break my oath and commit to doing something I cannot do because I swore I wouldn’t,” he said, recounting the phone call to The Arizona Republic. “I will follow the Constitution.”

For standing on principle, Bowers was targeted by the Arizona Patriot Party for recall and Trump supporters cruised his neighborhood, using a loudspeakers to call him a pedophile.

Since then, his fellow Republcian legislators have introduced no fewer than 70 bills to “reform” our elections, the worst of them being Fillmore’s scheme to essentially take away our vote.

Now Bowers has made an unmistakable statement without saying a word.

Twelve committees?

12?

RIP, HB 2596. And good riddance.

One down, and 69 more to go.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-speaker-rusty-bowers-didnt-012755905.html

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
EJ Montini, Arizona Republic
Fri, February 4, 2022, 8:00 AM

House Bill 2112, which Republicans lawmakers forced through the Arizona House this week, doesn’t mention critical race theory, even though its intent is to prevent instruction of critical race theory.

It’s just as well the Republicans who sponsored and voted for this bill didn’t mention CRT by name, since they seem to have no idea what it is.

For one thing, critical race theory is a rather broad concept that has been discussed for years at the university level, but not in K-12 schools.

The lawmakers who want to ban it, however, seem to believe that younger children must be protected.

That is a smokescreen. The purpose of a law like HB 2112 is not to protect children, but to protect the insecurities or prejudices of politicians, who are uncomfortable with telling school children the truth about American history and world history.

Critical race theory contends that racism exists within some of our social institutions. Things like criminal justice and education. And that over time it was embedded into all manner of laws and regulations that continue to impact individuals based on race. Admitting that such racism exists is not the same as calling someone – anyone – a racist.

However, as Victor Ray, a sociologist who works with the Brookings Institution, so succinctly points out, “Making laws outlawing critical race theory confirms the point that racism is embedded in the law.”

Another view: Yes, critical race theory is a problem in Arizona schools

Yes. It is.

And it’s in the process of getting embedded into the law again, and in the worst possible way.

HB 2112’s language is so jumbled and obtuse as to make the case for objecting to nothing – and everything. And it carries with it a $5,000 fine for offenders.

Fines for teaching women's suffrage?
Among the offenses listed in the bill is “using public monies for instruction that promotes or advocates for any form of blame or judgment based on race, ethnicity or sex.”

Think of that.

Would a teacher get into trouble for violating the law’s prohibition by pointing out it was men who kept women from having the right to vote prior to passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919?

Would an educator be subject to some form of fine by discussing how native tribes were rounded up and marched to reservations under President Andrew Jackson, or having the gall to mention the Indian Removal Act of 1830?

And as far as ethnicity goes, would it now be impossible to educate students about the ethnic cleansing that has gone on in some form around the world for centuries? The crusades involving Muslims and Christians. The civil wars in the 1990s involving Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia and Croatia. The Armenian genocide during World War I. The Holocaust.

Not responsible for the past, but we can right wrongs
The law also says that teachers can’t say that “an individual, by virtue of their race, ethnicity or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race, ethnic group or sex.”

That is not something critical race theory suggests.

It says, instead, that none of us is responsible for racist actions or policies from the past, but that we are, if able, responsible for righting any lingering wrongs.

Who would not want to teach our young people that?

Arizona House Republicans, apparently.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/racist-gop-sponsored-bill-advances-150028210.html

That's funny.