The Present:
I’m stuck with a new version of WordPress; because “it is better”
In my opinion, which I pay WordPress for, it sucks.
The President has been infected with COVID-19. The Virus he’s been lying about since February, when he learned the COVID-19 is deadly [Bob Woodward has the tape]. The Virus the President did nothing to quell until mid-March.
If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.
And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated. Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing-deaths.html
The Virus Trump has been ridiculing for months; to the point where Trump supporters today still refuse to wear masks; even though their Leader is infected. No one knows exactly how bad the President’s infection is, because ‘the White House’ by choice, cannot be trusted to tell the Truth. The SUV in which the President, against doctor’s orders, decided to take for a drive to New Jersey is hermetically sealed to protect against gas attacks. It is air-tight. The Secret Service agent in front of the President, as well as any other individuals in the SUV are breathing the air in the President’s lungs and are probably infected with COVID-19. It is unlikely that they will be treated with the experimental drugs and steroids being used on the President.
The President has shown over the last 4 years that he has no more appreciation for the Secret Service agents sworn to protect his life than the children still rotting in ICE cages. And religious people throughout the country believe that the President has been blessed by god. As of today, the man who has said he has no need to repent, because he has never done anything wrong, says that his COVID diagnosis was a ‘blessing from god’. His niece and his sister have stated on tape, that Trump has no use for religion…
From J. H. McKenna, Ph.D:
Jesus did not arrive to lecture and berate the righteous or the virtuous or the upright or the honorable. He said so himself. It’s sinners Jesus wants. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
At the right moment, in the fullness of time (as is said) Jesus would come to earth with an antique message, not for good people, but for bad people, for people who need to repent in order to become good people…
In other words, from all eternities past, God conceived a religion precisely with Donald Trump in mind. So why hasn’t Donald Trump repented and converted to Christianity? (Don’t pretend he has.) Why does Trump resist a religion invented precisely for him?
Can his Evangelical enthusiasts help him to an authentic, remorseful penitence? What could a repentant, truly reformed Trump look like? Can we imagine Donald Trump becoming an honest, humble, humorous, charming, generous, open, self-deprecating moral titan?
Can the religion of Jesus, engineered with Trump in mind at least several billion years ago, actually snag Mr. Trump and save him and reform him and better him and allow him plenty of years ahead to perform restitution for his long, long, indeed life-long, slog through all the categories of sin?
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/humanistplus/2020/08/will-trump-repent-in-time
Tonight, at the Vice-Presidential debate, Mr. Pence proved that he can sling BS as well as his boss. As of one hour ago, according to the Johns Hopkins website, 7,549,429 living Americans have been infected with COVID-19 and 211,793 Americans have died. Those infected but not yet hospitalized suffer each day, to restore the life they had last year.
“The first claim that Vice President Pence made in the vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night was not true. He claimed that President Trump had “suspended all travel from China” in order to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States. The travel restrictions were sufficiently porous that nearly 40,000 people traveled from China to this country after the restrictions went into place…
Pence attempted to defend Trump’s record on the pandemic — and his own, given that he’s ostensibly in charge of the response — by pretending that a challenge to the administration’s record was somehow a disparagement of the public.
“When you say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn’t worked,” Pence charged, “that’s a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made.”
I mean, you work with what you’ve got. But this seems unlikely to work as a strategy.
I’m not sure how much further into absurdity this country can fall.
The Future:
The best part of the movie, Jupiter Ascending:
Caine Wise: It can be difficult for Terrans, or people from underdeveloped worlds, to hear that their planet is not the only inhabited planet in the Verse.
Jupiter Jones: Has to be the anesthesia. I mean, it’s gotta be a dream.
Caine Wise: The Protocol actually says that most Terrans will say that this has to be a dream.
Jupiter Jones: Yeah, because a dream is the only way any of this makes sense.
Caine Wise: Compared to what? The idea that you’re the only intelligent species, on the only habitable planet, in a universe so full of planets that you don’t even have a number to describe how many there are?
NOT SCIENCE FICTION
A newly mapped [2018] starburst galaxy labeled COSMOS-AzTEC-1 – located 12.4 billion light-years away, in the early universe – is now known to be forming stars 1,000 times faster than our Milky Way. It’s also been found to have star-forming regions not in its galactic center, but in vast clouds located off-center by several thousand light-years. [Emphasis added]How these galaxies have been able to amass such a large quantity of gas in the first place and then essentially turn the entire gas reserve into stars in the blink of an eye, cosmologically speaking, was a completely unknown question about which we could only speculate. We have the first answers now.
https://earthsky.org/space/starburst-galaxy-cosmos-aztec-1-unstoppable-monster
Why is this important?
This is an image of a galaxy as it was, 12.4 Billion years ago. Two years ago, it became known that the galaxy is forming stars 1,000 times faster than our Milky Way.
The idea that you’re the only intelligent species, on the only habitable planet, in a universe so full of planets that you don’t even have a number to describe how many there are?
Look at the night sky on a clear night where city lights cannot be seen. Each of those points of light is a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy. Creator may still be forming stars from cosmic gas. The number defies counting.
In another 20 years, the current President will be dead [at 94 and morbidly obese].
My granddaughter, preparing to vote in her first Election, will be nearly as old as her mother is now.
The United States of America will hopefully still exist.
The Earth may not be habitable in 20 years [2040]. The oceans will have new ‘sea levels’ due to the melting of our Ice Caps. There may only be portions of the continents in their most extreme distances that are habitable. Global Warming/Climate Change is Real. Bangladesh is largely under water due to typhoons.
In every election for every office from now onward, we Earthlings need to elect people who respect science, and rely on the wisdom of experts, if we are to survive.
I know people who believe that Climate Change isn’t important because Jesus is Returning Soon. Jesus, all of the Creator that could be stuffed into a human, did not know when He would return. The Return/Second Coming is an interpretation based on a handful of verses from the New Testament, the Revelation of John, in particular.
1 John 2:18 in Aramaic [the language used in Jesus’ time]
My sons, it is the end time, and as you have heard that something will come; the false anointed one, and also now, for, there are many false anointed ones, and from this we know it is the end of time.
As near as I can tell, Time for Earth did not end two Millenia ago. The author of 1st John was making a prediction based on what he knew at the time.
What scientists know is that we have a limited amount of time for keeping Earth habitable. This was the purpose of the Paris Agreement that our President dumped shortly after he took office.
How late is too late for policies to have a reasonable likelihood of achieving the Paris Agreement’s 2-degree goal in 2100? Assuming a moderate mitigation strategy, a 2-degree warming threshold, and accepting a 67% likelihood of remaining below the threshold, the Point of No Return will arrive in the year 2035.
https://environment-review.yale.edu/too-little-too-late-carbon-emissions-and-point-no-return
There are other dates, dependent upon mitigation strategies and the rising of the Ocean due to melting glaciers.
Only the Creator knows our planet’s future.
If we are wise, we can help heal the planet. This is the job Jesus set out for us.
Stewardship
Share this:
Tags: depression, faith, freelance illustration, hope, intolerance, material poverty, mental health, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 