How the Church can respond better in the next pandemic; DEI and the End of the Constitutional Order...more

Pastoral care for the common good: How the Church can respond better in the next pandemic  Noting that the UK Church’s response to the Covid pandemic was disappointing when compared with her response to disease-related outbreaks of earlier centuries, this paper reflects on the issue of pastoral care by the Church both for congregations and the general public. Requisite pastoral care should have a common grace focus, where carers accept the risks to their own lives, engage collaboratively with the scientific community, yet are also prepared to think and act prophetically. Finally, the paper calls for a way forward that takes seriously the lessons to be learned from the coronavirus pandemic in order to prepare for a more effective response when the next pandemic arrives. The paper closes with an important call for the Christian Church to be at the national policy-making table.

Top EU official challenges Covid bans on communal worship

He argued that for people of faith, communal worship and spiritual nourishment "can be as important as bodily nourishment" and should be protected in democratic societies.

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DEI and the End of the Constitutional Order...Critical race theory was never designed to reveal truth—it was designed to achieve power

The triumph of the new ideological regime would mean the end of a society oriented, however imperfectly, toward the eternal principles, and the installation of society of racial score-settling and bureaucratic leveling, abandoning the individual to his fate.

**********Democrat run cities**********

New York City: A Sanctuary No More...Frantic Dems now drowning in the cesspool of their own creation.   Abbott proved to Adams and other Democrats in sanctuary cities around the country that their rhetoric means nothing when confronted by the true scale of the illegal entry problem. Perhaps it made them feel good to talk about sanctuary and welcoming and unity in opposition to the hated Trump. But it won’t solve the immense problem that President Biden’s policies have created.

End of the Encampments? Americans have lost patience with homeless advocates’ arguments that letting vulnerable people sleep on sidewalks and in parks is an acceptable part of urban life 

Americans understand that the homeless deserve compassion and dignity, but they also know that nothing is less compassionate or dignified than letting people die slowly in illegal encampments. They refuse to accept that these camps, almost unknown to American cities as recently as two decades ago, are an inevitable part of urban life—and they are pushing back.

Portland’s Multnomah County lost $1 BILLION from 2020-2021, as high earners left city amid riots, pandemic   The county’s largest city, Portland, saw an exodus during the time frame which has continued causing The Rose City to be one of the fastest declining large cities in 2022, according to The Oregonian. The city has also grappled with record-breaking homicides. The problem is exacerbated by the fact Portland police lack resources to follow up on investigations and property crimes.

Making matters worse was a revelation in 2022 that District Attorney Mike Schmidt is prosecuting less than half of all misdemeanor theft cases referred to his office by police.

San Francisco hardware had $700K of merchandise stolen in 2022... The thefts come as the Bay Area and rest of US deal with a spike in thefts - totaling nearly $100 billion in losses

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Scientists increasingly put politics over uncertainty in their research papers  The death of uncertainty in science: According to a paper published this week in the peer-review journal Science, scientists in recent years are increasingly abandoning uncertainty in their research papers and are instead more willing to make claims of absolute certainty without hesitation or even proof.

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30,000 Pilot Shortage + Union Demands Will Make Flying Unaffordable   Flying in the United States is set to become unaffordable for normal Americans with a combination of severe pilot shortages and increasingly-demanding pilot unions causing ticket prices to soar. It is estimated that airlines across North America will suffer shortages of around 30,000 pilots over the next decades, as the U.S. is failing to train enough, with others opting to retire early.

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The Military Is Quietly Using A Little-Known Program To Enable Child Sex Changes  The U.S. military is quietly making accommodations for military families with children or dependents seeking gender transition help through a little-known program initially meant to assist families with special needs members

Canada: Euthanasia Clinics Are Being Inundated With Transgenders Who Regret Their Surgeries

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Nothing To See Here: 'Foibles,' Global 'Boiling' Dominate 'News;' Militarized IRS, DePopulation, Global Minimum Tax Not So Much  And other things the media under-reported last week

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The Danger of the ‘Smart’ Car...Do you own your car – or does it own you?  The alternative is bleak: someday our cars may become so insidiously “smart” that they start driving us over cliffs – or, worse, to wherever Bud Light is sold. No, thank you!

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John Kerry Targets Farmers in Quest to Achieve 'Net Zero' in Carbon Emissions  U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was blasted on social media over the weekend by critics who accused him of trying to destroy the agriculture industry in order to achieve “net zero” emissions.

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Now a Disease from Biblical Times May Be Coming Over Our Unsecured Border  So, not only are migrants bringing communicable diseases like COVID-19 and tuberculosis across the Southern border, but they’re also likely bringing leprosy. It’s been added to the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) list of diseases with “public health significance,” according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol

Flesh-rotting tranq infects cocaine supply, takes aim at new, unsuspecting victims  That means the cocaine, heroin, meth or fake painkillers that people buy on the street could easily be laced with a malevolent mixture that can kill with just a few grains.

The situation could increasingly blindside users who aren’t expecting the flesh-rotting, psychosis-inducing tranq in their party drugs.

“Young people can innocently take a pill, not knowing it has fentanyl in it or that it has fentanyl and xylazine,” Tarentino said.