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Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne,Parents of the Blessed Virgin MaryMatthew 13:1–9 Friends, our Gospel for today is the parable of the sower and the seed. It has to do with the growth and development of the kingdom of God. We hear that Jesus "went out of the house and sat down by the sea" and that large crowds gathered around him. This is Jesus speaking to the whole world.Sitting down, he is, again, in the attitude of the ancient teacher and judge, and he speaks the parable of the sower. The sower sows far and wide, some of the...

C’est la vie, mon fils. First lady Jill Biden escaped to France to mark US re-entry into a United Nations cultural agency this week, while her stepson Hunter’s federal plea deal for tax and gun crimes imploded spectacularly in a Delaware court. The 72-year-old — whom Hunter once called an “entitled c–t” in text messages found on his abandoned laptop — grinned and shook hands with officials in Paris during a Tuesday flag-raising to re-establish American ties with the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) and counter the growing influence of China in international bodies. “I was honored...

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a point, resuming its campaign to increase borrowing costs and crush inflation after a brief pause in June. The unanimous decision puts the key benchmark federal funds rate at a range of 5.25% to 5.5%, the highest since 2001, further restricting economic activity as the borrowing costs for homes, cars and other items march higher. It marks the 11th rate increase aimed at combating high inflation since policymakers began tightening in March 2022. Policymakers also left the door open to additional interest rate increases this year,...

Honoring Our Fallen, a non-profit that helps families of fallen American service members, covered the cost of having Gee’s body transported. The family of a female Marine who was killed during the disasterous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was forced to pay $60,000 to have her body flown from California to Arlington to be buried. Nicole Gee, 23, was one of 13 service members who were killed during a suicide blast at the Kabul Airport in 2021, per Daily Mail. There were also 170 Afghans reportedly killed in the attack that ISIS took responsibility for. The attack took place on...

The plea deal in Hunter Biden’s criminal case unraveled during a court hearing Wednesday after a federal judge raised concerns about the terms of the agreement that has infuriated Republicans who believe the president’s son is getting preferential treatment. U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the deal and her role in the proceedings. The plan also included an agreement on a separate gun charge — Biden has been accused of possessing a firearm in 2018 as a drug user. As long as he adhered to the...

A naked woman in California got out of her car on one of the nation’s busiest bridges and began firing a gun Tuesday. The bizarre scene unfolded during rush hour on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, according to the California Highway Patrol. A driver called 911 to report that another driver had brandished a gun at them on the I-80 span, which crosses the San Francisco Bay, around 4:40 p.m., police said. The woman then stopped in the middle of her lane, got out of her car with a knife and began yelling at other drivers, according to cops. She...

Explanation: South of Antares, in the tail of the nebula-rich constellation Scorpius, lies emission nebula IC 4628. Nearby hot, massive stars, millions of years young, irradiate the nebula with invisible ultraviolet light, stripping electrons from atoms. The electrons eventually recombine with the atoms to produce the visible nebular glow, dominated by the red emission of hydrogen. At an estimated distance of 6,000 light-years, the region shown is about 250 light-years across, spanning over three full moons on the sky. The nebula is also cataloged as Gum 56 for Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum, but seafood-loving deep sky-enthusiasts might know this...

Wow! Brave MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos is at it again, speaking uncomfortable truths on the liberal network. Back in 2019, we noted Cevallos saying that Roe was ripe to be overturned because "the right to privacy does not exist." His truthful take undoubtedly caused much gnashing of teeth at MSNBC and across the liberal media. On today's Morning Joe, Cevallos described the sweetheart plea deal federal prosecutors have offered Hunter Biden on gun charges as "a gift from heaven" for him. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to federal tax charges Wednesday after a plea deal he struck with the government unraveled when the judge raised questions about the terms of the agreement. The surprise development came at a hearing in federal court here at which Biden had been expected to plead guilty to two charges of failure to pay taxes under a deal he struck with the government last month. Far from a done deal, he pleaded "not guilty" to those charges instead until the two sides can meet and address the questions posed by U.S. District Judge...

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) criticized House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) recent comments on impeaching President Biden, saying the remarks were a political move meant to distract from budget negotiations. “What he’s doing is saying there’s a shiny object over there and we’re going to focus on that, we just need to get all these things done so we can focus on the shiny object,” Buck, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a CNN interview Wednesday. McCarthy said this week that House investigations into potential misconduct by Biden have “risen to the level of impeachment inquiry,” echoing...

As school funding became a matter of standardized test scores in reading and math, the budget tightened for classes that taught woodworking and printmaking. From the 1990s to the early 2010s, students took fewer credits in shop class — or as it is now called, Career Tech Education — according to data from the National Center of Education Statistics. Instead, the priority turned toward securing students spots in four-year degree programs. But with more job openings in the trades and more questions around the value of a four-year college degree, high schools are turning their attention back to equipping the...

A Tennessee teenager could be seen on a doorbell camera footage as he was shoved out of a moving vehicle after being shot several times. Surveillance footage shows the moment an unidentified 15-year-old was shot and dumped in the street on Eagles Bluff Drive in Clarksville, Tennessee, on Sunday. The Nest doorbell footage picked up the sound of at least five gunshots in the quiet neighborhood, just moments before a Toyota Camry Hybrid came speeding down the road. Halfway down the street, the back driver’s side door opens up and the teenager, wearing a red shirt, was shoved onto the...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A former church volunteer was arrested and charged with having sex with an underage boy in Jacksonville. The arrest report said the victim reported meeting Rashad Williams, 34, on Grindr in February. The victim said Williams messaged him and the two agreed to have sex at Williams’ home that night. The victim said Williams picked him up and they had sexual encounters that evening and the next morning. After the third encounter, the victim said he told Williams his age, which is redacted in the police report. The victim told police he was brought back to Williams’...

The Great Cloud of Disrepute A dark cloud of disrepute hangs over all official institutions in the developed world. It affects governments most but also all the institutions that cooperated with them over three and a half years, including media, the biggest corporations, and tech companies. The cloud covers most all academia, medicine, and experts in general. The reason traces to the utterly preposterous pretense that by the mass violation of rights and freedoms, governments would somehow contain or control (or something) a common respiratory virus. Not one tactic they tried worked – one might suppose that at least one...

The Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday after skipping the previous hike, bringing the rate to the highest level since 2001. The rate hike brings the Fed’s target rate within a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, making this the eleventh hike since March 2022, after temporarily pausing the rate increases in June. Most economists anticipated a quarter-point interest rate hike as a part of the ongoing effort to bring inflation down, bringing the high end of the range to the highest rate since January 2001, according to the Federal...

Former President Donald Trump is maintaining a double-digit lead in the Republican primary race in Iowa, the latest American Greatness/National Research Inc. survey, released this week, found.The latest survey, taken July 23-24, 2023, shows Trump firmly in the lead in the Hawkeye State with 42 percent support. That reflects a two-point dip from the last survey, taken July 5-9, 2023, although it is still more than the 39 percent support the former president saw in June.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while remaining in second place, continues to slip, descending from 21 percent to 15 percent over the last two weeks. In...

Sinead O'Connor has died at the age of 56 after years of mental health battles, her 'devastated' family confirmed. The Irish singer shot to stardom across the world in 1990 by her heartrending cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U. It comes a year after the mother-of-four's son Shane, 17, took his life in January 2022 after escaping hospital while on suicide watch. At the time of her death, the musician, who changed her name to Shuhada' Sadaqat in 2018 when she converted to Islam, was thought to be spending her time between Co Roscommon, Ireland, and London. In her...

DC_Draino @DC_Draino BREAKING: Mitch McConnell has cognitive malfunction at podium Has to be escorted away by fellow Senators This man has clear cognitive impairments after sustaining serious head trauma from his fall a few months ago It is clear that he should resign

I feel like we're seeing more and more alien-related stuff in the news lately and honestly it's starting to get just a little bit unsettling. VIDEO AT LINK........ Why is there such a push about UFOs recently? So all the Dale Gribbles of the world were right and we've got multiple advanced alien lifeforms that just keep crashing onto backwards little old Earth? And the U.S. government is conveniently the only one who has recovered evidence of this? And no one has any pictures or video? Cool, cool. But the dude testified under oath about it, so there's that. Others...

Former Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern has been rewarded with a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.As the Berkman Klein Center (the Center) at Harvard reports, “The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is thrilled to announce Jacinda Ardern as its first Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow.”Ardern herself claims she will “address online harms… and violent extremism online,” explaining that “Emerging technologies such as AI present huge opportunities to address online harms, but also challenges.” (snip)Ardern’s new appointment is not an academic sinecure. A loyal servant of divisive repression, she has been drafted into an...