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“You Meant It for Evil, But God Meant It for Good” (Luke 22:1-13) In the beautiful rhythm of the church year, here we are again. It’s Lent, a time to reflect and repent, to pray and praise, to remember and rejoice in our Lord Jesus Christ, as he moves humbly toward the cross and then powerfully in victory from the grave. Lent leads us to Easter. This year, we’ll be following Jesus’ story in the Gospel according to Luke. Today, on Ash Wednesday, we begin our Lenten journey toward Easter under the theme, “You Meant It for Evil, But God...

China on Wednesday said it would not consider sanctioning Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine and said it will continue with "normal trade cooperation." And China abstained during a United Nations General Assembly vote Wednesday on a nonbinding resolution calling on Russia to halt its war on Ukraine and withdraw its military forces. Just five nations opposed the resolution – Russia, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria – which passed with 141 aye votes.

The County of Santa Clara Public Health Department announced that all masking metrics have been met and therefore indoor masking will no longer be required beginning March 2. The Public Health Department and the California Department of Public Health strongly recommends that the public continue to wear masks in all indoor public spaces. The California Department of Public Health continues to require masking in higher-risk settings such as public transit, healthcare facilities, shelters, jails, and long-term care facilities. For information on the State’s requirements, visit: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/guidance-for-face-coverings.aspx “We are very encouraged by the progress we have made. We have much less...

A big hoopla was made last June over "Nani's Kitchen" in Rochester NY. The first restaurant to have unionized workers which the owner stupidly praised. Less than a year later, the business has gone bust permanently. Not to say that the Scamdemic didn't have a role to play as other long standing businesses went bust as well, but this restaurant, serving novelle indian cuisine with an almost exclusively woke clientele went down in flames particularly fast. Most of the articles have been scrubbed or are behind a paywall (democrat and chronicle)

n Tuesday night, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was forced into a May Republican primary runoff with George P. Bush, a victory for the Bush family in their long-running feud with former President Donald Trump. Paxton had been endorsed in the race by Trump, who called the embattled attorney general "strong on Crime, Border Security, the Second Amendment, Election Integrity and, above all, our Constitution." Bush, on the other hand, is the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and a scion of the most famous family in establishment Republican politics. His father and Trump feuded regularly during the course...

UC Berkeley scholar’s old lecture resurfaces and prompts criticism, debate “That’s why I am coming up with this recent understanding that to abolish whiteness is to abolish white people. That’s very uncomfortable perhaps, but it asks about our definitions of what race is and what racial justice might mean.”

Some oral bacteria linked with hypertension in older women according to a new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association. In a study of more than 1,200 women in the U.S., average age 63 years, 10 kinds of oral bacteria were associated with a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, while five strains of bacteria were linked with lower hypertension risk. The observational study cannot prove cause and effect; however, the findings highlight possible opportunities to enhance hypertension prevention through targeted oral care, researchers said. Some oral bacteria were associated with the development of hypertension, also known...

Anti-capitalism is flooding TikTok as young people question a life that prioritizes productivity over well-being In a TikTok video with 1.8 million views, a user who goes by the name Rama beams at the camera. "Like many young adults, I used to want an enjoyable and meaningful life," Rama says with a smile, "that is, until I discovered capitalism. "Now, I live in a society where my productivity matters more than my well-being, and so I'm just depressed and anxious all the time. I'm smiling, but I'm deeply wounded. I work three jobs, and I still feel like I'm not...

Coke Freestyle machines seem to have all of the soda flavors you could ever want. But not even the Coke Freestyle dispensers can bring back the discontinued sodas of yore. From the inventive (Coca-Cola combined with coffee, anyone?) to the truly strange (we're looking at you, bacon soda), the beverage industry has come up with some wild creations over the years. Here are a few soda flavors that have gone the way of the dinosaur. We can't say we miss them, but it's fun to reminisce about these vintage options.

Melinda Gates reached a breaking point before filing for divorce from Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates. During conversation with Gayle King on CBS Mornings—which is set to air March 3—Melinda shared that she was an emotional wreck after announcing their divorce after 27 years of marriage, telling Gayle that she shed "a lot of tears for many days" and would lie on the carpet thinking, "How can this be? How can I get up? How am I going to move forward?" In a March 2 preview, Gayle asked the billionaire philanthropist about the New York Times report that her former husband...

KYIV, UKRAINE — Most of the world lined up against Moscow in the United Nations on Wednesday to demand it withdraw from Ukraine, as Russian forces renewed their bombardment of the country’s second-biggest city and besieged its strategic ports. Russia reported its military casualties for the first time since the invasion began last week, saying nearly 500 of its troops had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine insisted Russia’s losses were far higher but did not immediately disclose its own casualties. The U.N. General Assembly voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive and immediately withdraw all troops, with...

Retired Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News Tuesday to discuss the latest developments of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, noting that the first phase of Russia’s incursion is over, marking the “beginning of the end of the Ukrainian resistance.”“The first five days, we witnessed a very slow, methodical movement of Russian forces into eastern Ukraine,” MacGregor said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday.“That is Ukraine — the third of Ukraine, which is on the eastern side of this river, called the Dnieper. They move slowly, cautiously. They try to reduce casualties among the civilian population, tried to give as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Russian troops move deeper into Ukraine, President Joe Biden is taking steps to rein in rising energy costs even if those moves run counter to his agenda for addressing climate change. The focus on high gas prices and increased oil flow is a far cry from Biden’s pledge to wean Americans off oil and other fossil fuels and cut planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. Still, it reflects political realities. Biden’s hourlong speech Tuesday night touched only lightly on climate and he offered no new policy initiatives to address global warming. Republicans, seizing the political advantage,...

Taylor Schabusiness, 24, was charged Tuesday with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and third-degree sexual assault. She's accused of choking the man to death during sex and then allegedly used a bread knife to dismember his body. Schabusiness then placed his head and penis in a bucket, while she dumped other body parts in a large crockpot box, according to a criminal complaint. The grisly scene was discovered by the victim's own mother when she returned home. Schabusiness told investigators she did not mean to kill the victim but as she was choking him, she liked it and kept...

Video at link................. Hundreds of Ukrainians have likely been killed in a nonstop Russian attack in Mariupol that has already lasted more than 15 hours, officials said Wednesday. The southeastern port city is already suffering mass casualties as Russia continued its shelling onslaught on residential areas, Mayor Vadym Boichenko revealed in a live Ukrainian TV broadcast. Authorities haven’t been able to go in and retrieve any bodies, but deputy mayor Sergiy Orlov told BBC News that hundreds were feared dead after an entire district of the city was “nearly totally destroyed.” Orlov’s father is among those who live in the...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stated that President Joe Biden’s solutions to inflation in the State of the Union were the agenda of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that “they’ve been trying to do all year” and will make inflation worse.

Ruling Class laptop war-hawks commence a dangerous new weaponization of money. Among the cognoscenti of the Western capitals of politics and finance, the chorus screams unanimously for ever-escalating economic sanctions against Russia. Lost amidst the cacophony of those calling for a historic financial bloodletting is a dispassionate and careful analysis of the potential peril of such unprecedented collective actions. Specifically, for the first time ever, the powers of the Western World align to purposefully and willfully destroy the currency of a major power – and not just any power, but the most armed nuclear force on earth. The decision to...

After the end of the Cold War, foreign policy experts across the spectrum assured us that things had changed. Wars of pure border conquest were over. Wars over oil would soon be a thing of the past. Instead, the increasingly intertwined world would move toward peace. Thomas Friedman suggested in his massive 1999 bestseller "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" that no two countries with McDonald's would go to war with each other; Francis Fukuyama stated in "The End of History and the Last Man" that we had reached the "end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western...

The Russian Defense Ministry gave its first official accounting of casualties in the war in Ukraine, saying late Wednesday that 498 soldiers had been killed and more than 1,500 wounded. It also said that more than 2,800 Ukrainian troops had died in the fighting. Ukraine’s military said more than 5,800 Russian troops have been killed in action. Kyiv hasn’t said how many of its own service members have died. Neither the Russian nor Ukrainian figures could be verified independently.

When I was a kid, growing up in the foothills of the Appalachians, one of our pastimes was crawdad hunting. It usually happened when the weather was scorching hot and contrary to popular belief it gets hot and humid in the mountains. Once there weren't enough kids around to play stickball, or our bikes were down for repairs, the creek beckoned. Mom and Dad warned us time and again to stay out of the creek, but keeping an eye on me and my brother was a full-time job in and of itself. Growing up out in the country certainly had...