Valletta said:

House passes Republican health care bill that does not include extension of Obamacare subsidies

The bill, dubbed the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, was passed in a 216-211 vote, with just Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie voting with Democrats against the legislation.

justthenews.com

Finally a bill that will actually cut costs for patients instead of making insurance companies wealthier.

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Any money it reduces coverage.

truthuprootsevil said:

I do have a question you stated under Final Biblical conclusion: "Christians are not obligated to observe the Saturday Sabbath." Is it because in Romans 14:5 it says basically to make up your own mind?

So reading your other statements are you basically saying there are TWO different sets of rules? One for Israel the other for the gentiles?

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Well Colossians 2:16 is actually a much clearer example and no I’m not saying there are two different sets of rules I’m saying that many of the OT rules were abolished. The Jews were commanded to keep 10 sabbaths and all of them were abolished along with the dietary laws and circumcision.

Dan1988 said:

I don't believe it because it's not true. If the Lord Jesus was the Saviour of every single person in the world, then why does He cast the majority into hell.

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You do understand that there is not one single named person said to be in hell now or in the future? Nor is there a single named person even threatened with that fate.

ALL of orthodoxy has never been able to confirm that any named person is in hell. No, not one.

Dan1988 said:

Are you suggesting that the Lord Jesus, first saves a man and then turns around and betrays him by casing him into the lake of fire.

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Man in scripture is not a sole individual. It is man and the tempter (or his own)

Just as Jesus spoke to Satan in Peter or Satan entering Judas or Paul having a messenger of Satan in his own flesh, 2 Cor. 12:7

Dan1988 said:

Can you see how this theory of yours makes the Lord look like a hypocrite?

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I have no issues with the devil and his messengers being sent to the lake of fire forever and ever.

So maybe look at the obvious. WHERE did Jesus show us the devil and his messengers operate? Its completely open disclosure: IN MANKIND

Fervent said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Miraculous occurrences are by definition outside of the domain of science. The issue comes when rather than accepting that YEC is entirely based on faith, advocates push muddled "science" that isn't science at all.

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Right, so since the earth was miraculously created we shouldn’t expect it to coincide with science. I agree that YEC is based on faith.

Dan1988 said:

No, none of that is true according to God. His speech is foolishness to the vast majority of mankind.

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Apparently if you can't understand it....you can only do so via some other guy telling you what it all means

Short version: God's Word is insufficient

Don't know why it's sufficient for your boss but not for you.

Dan1988 said:

Most of the 8 billion inhabitants of the earth are unbelievers,

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Entirely dependent on how tight and stingy people are with their filters. Or not

There is more than adequate room to love all our neighbors as ourselves don't you think?

Dan1988 said:

and Gods Word confirms that His Word is foolishness to those whoa re perishing and that's the majority view.

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We all perish. Col. 3:3

Dan1988 said:

It would be refreshing to see, if at least one of your opinions was biblically correct.

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I'm good with the primary command, Romans 13:8-10. How bout you?

Trump Administration Aims to Strip More Foreign-Born Americans of Citizenship


An official with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it would prioritize “those who’ve unlawfully obtained U.S. citizenship.”



The guidance, issued on Tuesday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, asks that they “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year. If the cases are successful, it would represent a massive escalation of denaturalization in the modern era, experts said. By comparison, between 2017 and this year to date, there had been just over 120 cases filed, according to the Justice Department.

Desk trauma said:

Own research, AI generated, pick one.

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Both. Took me about an hour to get all the information, then formulate it with the help of AI to clearly relate the findings.

CoreyD said:

When you say they are "parallel passages", can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by that, thanks.

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They’re both saying the exact same thing.

After much research, the "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act," will be disastrous as under its hood are missing parts! Here is the conclusion of my research:

AI Generated

The core superiority of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) structure over the expanded Association Health Plans (AHPs), as proposed in the House bill, lies in its guaranteed consumer protections and market stability. While the "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act" aims to lower monthly premiums by formally expanding AHPs (which pool members to gain large-group status) and introducing Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) transparency, it achieves lower premiums partly by allowing AHPs to avoid key ACA mandates. This means that unlike ACA-compliant plans, expanded AHPs are generally not required to cover all ten Essential Health Benefits (such as maternity care and mental health services), potentially exposing enrollees to catastrophic out-of-pocket costs for excluded necessary care. Furthermore, critics contend that by drawing healthier workers into these less-regulated, cheaper plans, the AHP expansion could destabilize the comprehensive ACA individual and small-group markets, causing premiums to rise further for sicker individuals who rely on the ACA's robust coverage.

Apple Sky said:

Well I have looked again & I can't see it, maybe you could take a screen shot of it & post it.

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Here we are (It is right at the beginning of the video - I think your link opens the video part way through, so maybe that is why you didn't see it):

I am one of those people who push Adam back in time, though not as far back as you do. Without addressing the great ages of the antediluvians and instead taking them at face value, I situate him around ~5100 BCE.


You neglected to say why.

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The years ~5000 BCE to 4000 BCE are quite full of people that have already adapted to the ways of life of Adam, Cain and Abel. Placing Adam in 5000 BCE would make his punishment to toil the soil(genesis 3:17-19) for food an ordinary task for an ordinary person as everyone toiled the land and herded animals. There is a clear lack of cities but villages and outposts are common enough that mesopotamia has no place to forage naturally.

In a discussion between us, let’s leave Noah out of this. I want to focus on just Adam. (Or does your argument hinge on Noah?) I want to know why Adam’s story makes sense in pre-Chalcolithic times, keeping in mind that Adam is not presented as the founder of civilization in Genesis. It was Cain who is said to have built a city, and Jubal, Jabal, and Tubal-cain who develop culture, music, and metallurgy—outside Eden, east of it, and under the sign of exile.

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The founder of civilization title doesn't come from building cities. It comes from working the land. Which no human does in any meaningful sense until ~10,000 BCE. All the fruits of this labor are derivative. Other Antedeluvian figures don't loose their accreditation. The timeline stretches to fill in the gaps. Tubal-cain would be a historical figure from 3500 BCE. I don't understand removing Noah from the discussion if we are talking about other antediluvian figures that have no lifespans listed in their genealogy.

I disagree. That is a possible setting, but implausible and unlikely due primarily to the genealogies. They are not a sliding scale to be freely relocated wherever one finds a convenient paleoclimatic event. Once you detach the genealogical route starting with Adam from its historical anchor in Abraham, David, and Jesus, you are no longer doing biblical chronology at all; you are doing archaeological harmonization and retrofitting Scripture to it. If Adam is pushed to 14,000 years ago, the genealogies cease to be genealogies in any meaningful sense. They become symbolic placeholders with no temporal density. At that point, appealing to them at all is disingenuous.



There is no hint in Scripture of Adam being situated in the Epipaleolithic. The textual clues in early Genesis—domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, human societies, etc.—seem to put an outside limit of 10,000 years on where Adam and Eve are situated historically.

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I understand that disagreement. But at the same time it's just an interpretation of a work of literature that is without it's library. I'm not the only one moving genealogies around. Ask a group of clergy and Jews when Moses lived and you will get answers from 2300 BCE to 1100 BCE. Everyone is harmonizing/retrofitting in their own personal ways.

The passage of time in early Genesis chapters is hard to represent. There's just not a lot of text to work with. In terms of supporting text, Genesis 2:5 clearly dates Adam to a time before man worked the earth. Genesis 2:15 states he works the Garden but not the soil. 3:17 states he's cursed to work the earth and that is will produce thorns and thistles. Which is a known side effect of agriculture. These details would date to the start of the neolithic revolution(end of epipaleolithic).

When you say that “people living in plenty never develop anything complex,” you are simply begging the question against the historical record conveyed in my post—for things like Jericho and Çatalhöyük are fairly complex, and they developed after the Younger Dryas (which represented a shift in vegetation patterns, not an ecological collapse).

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These events all happen comfortably after my time for Adam. 9650 BCE is the upper limit for complex structures like gobekli tepe, 9000 BCE for Jericho. My timeline for Adam is the generations that lived at the very end of the Younger Dryas. But also potentially during the early years of the Younger Dryas(10,900 BCE to 9650 BCE).

The people living in a time of plenty, roughly 13,000 BCE to 11,000 BCE construct no megalithic structures, do not occupy the same structures year round generation after generation(which would result in tells). They do not cultivate fields or raise animals. It's hard to track where they are specifically living in the younger dryas because most settlements are abandoned around the start and if/when they are reoccupied there's distinct agriculture and animals(roughly 9500 BCE). Which is just more evidence that a very small group of people are responsible for agriculture. Had it developed at a large settlement we would have found the first fields by now.

Sorry for not updating you guys it was late by the time we got home. The nurse finally saw us around 2:30 and she messaged my psychiatrist and he replied back and asked her to do a bunch of tests like take my oxygen and ask me a variety of questions. When everything was done he concluded it was HIGHLY unlikely its the caplyta causing the shortness of breath because if it was id be having an allergic reaction most commonly or in the rarest of cases it can make asthma worse but thats apparently a 1 in a million side effect. He said that im definitely not allergic to it and said that its likely either my asthma acting up or anxiety or both. He told me if the sob gets any worse over the next few days to call the nurse and they will contact him or go down again and he will see me and figure out whats going on but for right now continue taking the caplyta as prescribed and he will refill my ativan for one FINAL time (so I have to get off of it within 60 days but thats something for me to worry about another time).

Anyway, thats how it went. I can breathe a tad easier this morning but its still very difficult to breathe on exertion. Its really weird.

David Lamb said:

Of course there is. I didn't make the words up. The video you linked to in post 52 opens with a picture of a flat earth, surrounded by these words: "Teaching School Children that the Earth is Flat. The Guiding Head of the Zion Colony explains why scientists are all wrong in their ideas of geography and astronomy. The sun is smaller than the earth which stands still and the earth revolves around it while the moon makes its own light." (my emphasis)

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Well I have looked again & I can't see it, maybe you could take a screen shot of it & post it.

rjs330 said:

Yes because a bunch of backward savages who made war on each other, tortured, enslaved, raped and murdered each other were way better. Child sacrifice was much better.

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Baring the human sacrifices that describes any religion.

Homily Friday, December 19 2025



Judges 13:2-7, 24-25a

An angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her: “Though you are barren and have had no children, you will conceive and bear a son.”



The woman who told this story believed the message of the angel, the messenger of God. And she gave birth to a son and named him Samson.



Luke 1:5-25

“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John.”



For the past few days, we have had testimonies of people who believe. There is Joseph, the mother of Samson, and now Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. And of course, Mary also believed.



Biblical texts: NAB-RE

Normand Thomas.

Servus said:

There seems to be great resistance to an aggressive proactive stance against fentanyl and other illegal drugs coming into the US.

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I disagree. The proactive stance is NOT against fentanyl --it's against Trump!
You can trust, if it was Obama/Biden/Kamala taking this exact same approach as Trump, 99% of these critics would instead be silent and complaining about nothing. Just like they stayed silent toward Biden's inaction RE: fentanyl! lol

Want proof??

Check this website's archives for how anti-Trumpists treated Biden when his Administration took miniscule action against Fentanyl

Valletta said:

A Clinton-appointed federal judge has ordered the FBI to destroy emails central to the obstruction and false statements case against former FBI Director James Comey, a decision that legal experts warn could cripple prosecutors’ ability to pursue a new indictment and set off a constitutional showdown over separation of powers.

https://conservativebrief.com/clinton-appointed-judge-97506/?utm_source=CB&utm_medium=DJD

An absolutely outrageous order.

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Misleading. The judge didn't order anything destroyed. She ordered the return of materials that were seized and used without a warrant. In face she went so far as to have a copy of the materials submitted to the court in case they manage to get legal authorization to do so.


U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the material from Richman — an image of his hard drive and files from his iCloud and Columbia University email accounts — was handled with “callous disregard” for Richman’s rights. Prosecutors rummaged through the materials without a warrant as they pursued a slapdash case against Comey, the judge found, calling it a “remarkable breach of protocol.”

However, in a significant concession to prosecutors, Kollar-Kotelly ordered that a copy of all the data the government obtained be deposited with a federal court in Virginia. That provision, the judge said, would ensure that prosecutors could seek to regain access to the materials if they can persuade the court there to do so.

AstralHammer said:

Some games and actions in games I certainly would not like to repeat because my relationship with God has matured. There is a lot of critical thinking and views on this particular topic that I would not have thought to be bad, but now I am left questioning. Personally, I was on a search for games that did not involve player choice of worshipping something that was not God and not drawing powers from gods, deities, or demons. Things I felt a Christian should not be exalting/worshipping for powers as they lead to a path that just doesn't feel right at all. There's a lot in this topic I am still taking in. I used to think that combat in video games was ok as it wasn't real. But I don't know anymore. I'm feeling discouraged more than anything as I am on a search for a game to play that isn't chess or checkers. Maybe I am more lost than I thought as I do like space exploration and space battles and fantasy rpgs with quests that involve deadly goblins and wizards who are bent on destruction that my character must overcome with his weapon of choice and combat mechanics built into the game. I have a lot to think about.

That same kind of discernment applies outside of games too, especially when it comes to things like online casinos. If someone chooses to engage with them, it becomes important to do so responsibly, including using a trustworthy bank for deposits and withdrawals, since financial stress can affect spiritual and mental well-being. For example, understanding how banks interact with gaming platforms, such as through resources like https://icasino-reviews.co.nz/co-operative-bank/ can help people make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary risks. Ultimately, whether it’s games or gambling, knowing your limits and acting with intention matters most.

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I think this is something a lot of Christians wrestle with at different points, so you’re definitely not alone. For me, the line has always been about intent and discernment, not total avoidance. A game can depict conflict, magic, or false gods without endorsing them, much like books or films do. Engaging with a fictional world isn’t the same as worshipping or exalting what’s in it.

Official tally on CBP site is 200 billion collected. I think we might be a lil short as of now.



WASHINGTON—Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 15, 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection collected more than $200 billion in tariffs thanks to more than 40 executive orders put in place by President Donald Trump’s Administration. This figure underscores CBP’s effectiveness in promoting secure, fair, and compliant trade, strengthening America’s national and economic security.

Day 3 — December 18

Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem in piercing cold.

In that hour, vouchsafe I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayers and grant my petitions through the merits of Jesus Christ and of His most blessed Mother. Amen

(Mention your intentions here)

PRAYER

O Adonai, and Ruler of the house of Israel, Who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with an outstretched arm!

Our Father....
Hail Mary....
Glory be....

The offical tally is 200 billion in tariff revenue collected.

Thanks To President Trump, CBP announces record-breaking $200 billion in tariff revenue

WASHINGTON—Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 15, 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection collected more than $200 billion in tariffs thanks to more than 40 executive orders put in place by President Donald Trump’s Administration. This figure underscores CBP’s effectiveness in promoting secure, fair, and compliant trade, strengthening America’s national and economic security.

_________

So.... not several trillions?

The little old lady wen to the vet saying her budgie died last night.

After examining the bird, the vet said she forgot to turn him over after she tucked him into bed.

December 18, 2025

Our Morning Offering – 18 December – Awaiting Baby Jesus


One Minute Reflection – 18 December – “The Lord is near. Have no anxiety [at all]” Phil 4:5-6

Greater Feria of Advent (Third Sunday of Advent) propers and Antiphons (EF)

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent (Gueranger) (EF)

Advent Weekday readings & commentary (OF)

Advent: December 18th readings & commentary (OF)
December 18, O Lord and Ruler (O Adonai)

Daily Gospel

ADVENTCAzT 2025: 19 – Thursday 3rd Week of Advent – True love

Saint Gatian First Bishop of Tours

St. Gatian

Saints of the Day

O Adonai (December 18)
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Audio version of Gueranger
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Kathleen30 said:

Prodromos you certainly did.

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Nope. Geocentrism was the prevalent view in the Orthodox Church but it was not the only view. Once again I have not claimed that the Orthodox Church never embraced Ptolemy's system. You wrote a lot of words without showing anywhere I made such a claim.

Confessions would be safe. He'd just give you a wink and go on eating euchalyptus leaves.