At least it wasn't as bad as I feared. Thank God.

durangodawood said:

I think Israel abuses this position to count on USA support no matter what they do.

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Israel needs a better spokesperson. Although Bibi N is an effective politician, his arrogant communication style appeals only to right-wing supporters and fails to reach a broader global audience.

Israel has many moderate and liberal parties, which has allowed Likud to maintain control since 2000. The country could benefit from leadership similar to Ehud Barak or Yitzhak Rabin.

BPPLEE said:

They confessed to killing a police officer before the other charges were brought.

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And found not guilty!

Apple Sky said:

No - I understood Scripture first, it was the reading of Genesis 1 and other verses that pulled me into the flat earth & to seek out the truth plus I did have a friend who drew out a picture of the flat earth & told me that earth was shaped like a Mexicon hat so I looked it up and wo behold I found this image.

View attachment 372299

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Almost the whole of Christian exegesis of the verses that you claim defend a flat earth do not teach a flat earth. You are directly going against what it taught and believed.
Very few, if any, official churches or major Christian denominations believe in a flat Earth. This belief is a fringe viewpoint held by a small number of individuals, including some Christian fundamentalists, rather than by any organized church. So your belief is not what it taught in Christianity so it falls into the false teaching realm.

Hazelelponi said:

I don't consider it extrajudicially in the first place. It's not. Its a state of war (not using this as a legal term)...

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Then don't use it as such.

Hazelelponi said:

I don't reject these actions. There's nothing to reject. They are lawful acts by a government entity against people who are killing ours.

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That's not true. Otherwise killing anyone who supplies drugs can be killed. Extra judicially.

Do you understand the meaning of that term?

White House fires commission charged with advising the president on design as Trump pushes construction projects​

The White House has fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency charged with advising the president, Congress and the city of Washington, DC, on “matters of design and aesthetics,” according to a source familiar with the matter.

The email received by commission members contains similar wording to those that dismissed Biden appointees on other boards and organizations this year, including the National Capital Planning Commission and the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

Embarrassing Flaws Emerge in Trump’s New White House Design​

Plans shared by the MAGA administration suggest “a hurried process,” the New York Times reports, noting that a miniature mock-up of the 90,000 square foot annex, proudly unveiled to the press Wednesday, featured some truly bizarre architectural features.

These include a staircase leading up from the South Lawn directly into a brick wall, and at least two woefully misaligned windows that appear to open out onto one another.

--
These are not exactly causally linked. As I understand it, Trump has submitted no plans to any of the appropriate bodies for comment. Because Trump just does whatever he wants -- I forget what kind of political system that's called where a one-ruler has absolute say. Anyway, it's not that this panel had criticism for the plans and that's why they were fired -- they will now never see the plans.

Apple Sky said:

No - I understood Scripture first, it was the reading of Genesis 1 and other verses that pulled me into the flat earth & to seek out the truth plus I did have a friend who drew out a picture of the flat earth & told me that earth was shaped like a Mexicon hat so I looked it up and wo behold I found this image.

View attachment 372299

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So now after many posts where you have stated your belief in the earth being a flat disc, are you now saying you believe it to be a flat square? Perhaps in a few month's time you will change your mind again and you will say it is an oval, or some other shape.

Tropical Wilds said:

I'm not sure what you're attempting to prove here,

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Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.

Tropical Wilds said:

since I at no point said that no president has ever been objectively unpopular at one point or another during their presidency. I said that he is an objectively unpopular president who has the lowest peak approval rating and the highest peak disapproval rating and he is an objectively unpopular president, which he is, based off of his peaks, valleys, the fact that he's only won the popular vote once despite running for president four times, and his current approval rating.

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What "peaks" and "valleys" are you referring to? This is pretty much a flatline across the board.

Tropical Wilds said:

I also never said that people are souring on him.

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Sure you did. Specifically, you said:

You're not the only one to posit the theory that voters have "buyer's remorse" with Trump.






If there is any "buyer's remorse" over Trump, it is certainly not reflected in his approval polling, which has remained "objectively" constant. If there were this epidemic of buyer's remorse, one would expect to see it reflected in his approval rating as people defected from him. But that's not happening, despite all the chaos he's instigated.

Tropical Wilds said:

I said that he has remained consistently low, having no real popularity peaks that have brought him to a place where more people thought he was doing well than aren't. Look at your charts. He is the only president to have a sustained period where his approval is above his disapproval.

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That's demonstrably false. Biden only had a positive approval rating for the first 6 months of his presidency. The remainder of his 3-1/2 years he was, to use your vernacular, "objectively unpopular".

Tropical Wilds said:

In fact, looking at those charts, he's never done it in his second term, he's not close to doing it, and if we look at the 48-months he was president in his first term, there were only 4-ish months where anybody thought he was doing a good job...

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Yes, Trump has a higher disapproval rating than approval. To your point, he has for his whole political career. And yet, he's won not one but TWO national US elections. Does that tell you something about the "objectivity" of the polls you're citing? It really should.

Tropical Wilds said:

Coincidentally, it was during Covid, when he was listening to Fauci.

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Tropical Wilds said:

When he started railing against Fauci and the CDC and talking about injecting bleach and taking horse medicines, his popularity tanked again...

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Even the self-appointed fact-checkers admit that Trump never told anyone to "inject bleach".


And Ivermectin is not "horse medicine". Before it became a political flashpoint (note that the following article was authored in 2011), Ivermectin was approved for human use in 1987 and was labeled a "wonder drug".


Your regurgitation of demonstrably false, yet sanctioned, COVID propaganda calls into question your objectivity.

Tropical Wilds said:

But it illustrates that people were willing to believe he could be a leader capable of not terribly running the country and he had the potential to appeal to moderates and light bipartisan favor, flying in the face of the "everybody hates Trump all the time for no reason and there's nothing he can do to get some people to support him" narrative by those who like to victim shop.

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I don't really care if people think Trump is popular or not. I'm certainly not a fan. Trump was a catalyst for me to change my voter registration from Republican to Independent in 2016. But what you're arguing here defies reality. How can a person who is "objectively unpopular" win a national election TWICE? For any "objective" person, this should call into question the objectivity of the polling.

Dan1988 said:

No, just because you deny something doesn't mean that it's not true. You deny "predestination to salvation", you claim it's a heretical teaching by John Calvin. But when I showed you that God teaches the same thing, you just ignore the in your face evidence and pretend you can't see the elephant in the room.

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I’ve never refuted predestination at all. We are chosen according to God’s foreknowledge, according to His prognosis. The word predestined means to choose or appoint beforehand, to preordain. I’ve never refuted that at all. We were chosen according to His foreknowledge before the foundation of the world and written in the book of life. How is that not predestination?

Apple Sky said:

1 John 4:5-6
They are of the world. That is why they speak from the world’s perspective, and the world listens to them. / We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

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But the Christians mentioned by Strong in Him are not of the world or speaking from the world's perspective.

David Lamb said:

What do you mean, saying that Antarctica is supposed to be 13.66 million km?

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Sorry my mistake.

Apple Sky said:

By you no doubt.

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Strong in Him is not a moderator. She is no more able to close threads than you or I are. I seem to remember that this has been covered several days ago.

probinson said:

I would prefer the term "empirically", because polls are subject to bias, which by their very nature, makes them not so "objective". You can "empirically" refer to the data available, but it's important to understand if there is bias inherent in that data. Just look at how far off the polls were in this last election.

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You can prefer "empirically," but that's preferring a different word that says the same thing.

And if you will look, the stuff I cited was a variety of polls where the declared margin of error made clear that there was no way to read the data so that he was objectively popular. A disapproval rating of 60% with a 3 +/- margin of error means that between 57% and 63% dislike him. Clearly, stilly more disliked than liked.

probinson said:

Nate Silver said this on his site yesterday.

Inevitably, there’s a lot of disagreement from survey to survey, not just because of statistical variation but because pollsters have long had trouble pegging down Trump’s popularity — and often underestimated it.​

​

How popular is Donald Trump?

Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump — and all presidents since Truman.

www.natesilver.net

​

​

If you follow the link above where it states pollsters "often underestimated" Trump's approval rating, it says this:

The short answer is that the polls were biased again — but not to the same extent that they overestimated Joe Biden in 2020. Nor, with no clear favorite heading into Election Day, was the outcome anywhere near as much of a surprise as in 2016 (unless perhaps you were consuming too much “hopium”). By some measures, in fact, 2024 was a considerably above-average year. The polls weren’t that far off the mark. The problem was that nearly all of them erred in the same direction, again underestimating Trump and other Republicans.​

What happened? The polls were BIASED again, consistently underestimating Trump. Something that is biased is, by definition, NOT "objective".

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Not all polls are created equal. Presidential polls that determine who people will and won't vote for are liquid polls, meaning, their results influence their results. By saying Biden is clearly favored to win, it will cause people who are voting for Biden to not vote, and driving people who want Trump to vote. Liquid polls take a snapshot of a variable that will inform that performance of said variable. More people may well have voted for Biden making him the clear favorite, but chose not to because his polls had him a lock. That liquidity actually is attributed to Trump's win in 2016... Hillary was a polling lock, so people stayed home, resulting in her being the most popular pick for president that ultimately lost the vote. Add to that the answer to the question is volatile... People change their votes easily and quickly, right until election day. So it's a snapshot of a variable that is a variable in a liquid poll that informs the next poll.

Performance and popularity polls are static polls, meaning their results do not influence their results. Nobody will change a behavior or an action based off of what the popularity polls dictate. Somebody will not declare they agree with what he's doing because of how the last poll reviewed him. While the polling subjects are also variable, meaning they can change their opinions, the static nature of the poll means the outcome of this poll will have no influence on the next poll.

The problem is in dumbing down the concept of statistics to fit in news stories or appeal to the masses, we act like all polls are equal, their impact equal, and their results/findings equal. They are not. The public's fundamental lack of understanding of statistical analysis doesn't automatically make the poll wrong, it just makes the average American uninformed as to what a poll actually means and how one should properly manage and extrapolate the data. We use liquid polls ("if the election were held today" polls) to try and guestimate the results of a static poll (who will be the president based off of votes cast). Basically, the most variable type of poll to make an informed guess as to the outcome as the least variable type of poll. Hence the huge margins of error and the extreme unpredictability as to how they will skew. Read the books of Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Sr... They all specifically mention this in various points of their stories. It's a concept they understand, that their teams understand... In fact, it's why Hillary's (or was it Gore's...? I forget) campaign was pushing for news agencies to stop reporting on polls. It was leading to burnout and false data which was influencing the voter's behavior.

probinson said:

Regardless, it's clear to see from the data available that all Presidents have been "objectively unpopular" for large swaths of their presidency. I just don't know what anyone thinks this proves or doesn't prove.

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For part, or even large swaths? Yes. For an overwhelming majority? No. That's unique to Trump.

He was about even or slightly above 50% popularity for 11.8% of his first presidency, 0% of his second (so far). Biden for 23ish%. Everybody else, 40-50% or more.

Bradskii said:

Did anyone really think it was a planned armed overthrow of the government?

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Yes.

Bradskii said:

If someone told you that, tell him from me that he's an idiot.

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You can tell him yourself. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia was Matthew M. Graves, 555 4th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20530. Phone number: (202) 252-7566. Email USADC.Media@usdoj.gov

Bradskii said:

You do realise that Trump and the Republicans were in power at the time? Who were they going to overthrow? His plan was to overturn the election. And there is a galactic amount of evidence that he tried to do that and it was also the plan of some of the morons who stormed the Capital.

If Pence had been a rusted on MAGA supporter instead of an honourable man holding to his promise to uphold the constitution then you'd have seen blood on the streets.

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From bloody noses that got punched? I'll try and verify that in the Physical and Life Sciences forum.

Hentenza said:

I think you use conspiracy theorists to define your understanding of scriptures. Am I wrong?

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No - I understood Scripture first, it was the reading of Genesis 1 and other verses that pulled me into the flat earth & to seek out the truth plus I did have a friend who drew out a picture of the flat earth & told me that earth was shaped like a Mexicon hat so I looked it up and wo behold I found this image.

Studyman said:

I didn't ignore any verses, just pointing out that taking a few Words of God from the Bible and separating it from the rest of the Bible, then creating doctrine from it, is how the the prince of this world deceived Eve. The preaching that God's Law demanded that Israel couldn't warm themselves or their children, or have a lantern fort light on the Sabbath is absurd. Because I understand that God talks in parables, and HE wants men to "Seek His Righteousness", I have given this some thought and considered more than just one sentence from the Bible.

Prov. 26: 21 As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife.

Is. 43: 2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

Jer. 17:27 But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.

I won't do the study for you. And if you want to believe popular religious philosophy that by God's LAW, an Israelite was forced to live in the cold, with no light in their home on God's Holy Sabbath, that is your choice and you are free to do so.. "Kindle a fire" has a Spiritual meaning in my view, just like "drinking the Blood of Christ" and "eating the Flesh of Christ", also has a Spiritual meaning. And how can a man know the meaning, if he separates the sentence for the rest of the entire Bible, and then create doctrine from it?

That is my point.

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What you are arguing is that the simple reading of the verse in Exodus explaining a statute of how to keep the sabbath is trumped by your interpretation of verses that are unrelated to the verse in Exodus? Is that the study that you want me to do?

I would suggest a study on hermeneutics to help you understand how to interpret scripture.

In fact, in the NT Jesus spends a lot of time refuting the Jewish leaders of the time interpretation on how to keep the sabbath and this issue never came up.

Secondly, your argument of the fire to warm families falls flat when you realize that the prevailing temperature in Israel is rather warm with the lower temps in winter in the middle fifties.

Third, the verse is there and you can’t just ignore it simply because you don’t like it. My argument was never an exegesis of the verse but simply pointing out to you that it does exist when you claimed that it did not. You have already been proven wrong because the verse does in fact exist. All I expected from you was a “thanks I missed it” not an argument about its significance. I think you are just arguing for the sake of argument. Count me out.

Apple Sky said:

Yes - But how many of them actually fly right over Antarctica & don't forget that Antarctica is supposed to be 13.66 million km.

Commercial flights do not fly over Antarctica because of a combination of safety regulations and the continent's harsh, remote environment. ETOPS regulations require aircraft to stay within a certain range of an emergency landing airport, which Antarctica lacks,

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What do you mean, saying that Antarctica is supposed to be 13.66 million km? Even its coastline is only 17.968 kilometres long, so just under 18 thousand kilometres, not even one million, let alone 13.66 million km.

Then you say, "Commercial flights do not fly over Antarctica because of a combination of safety regulations and the continent's harsh, remote environment." Yet I and others have posted information about flights over the Antarctic by well-known airline QANTAS. If the airline had a name that most people have never heard of, then there might be room for saying, "Perhaps they don't really do what they say." Or, "How can they possibly do that in view of the dangers?" But QANTAS is sufficiently well-known that it would be disaster for them if they were found to be deliberately selling tickets for dangerous flights.

FAITH-IN-HIM said:

Are you aware of the potential consequences for Israel should the United States withdraw its support? Every Arab nation will unite to oppose Israel and work toward its elimination......

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I think Israel abuses this position to count on USA support no matter what they do.

tdidymas said:

Regardless of the lexical argument in this verse, the experience still ends up being chronological, even though it may seem simultaneous, for these reasons:
1. According to 1 Cor. 2:14-16, a person must first be spiritual (i.e. made spiritual by God) in order to understand the gospel enough to believe and obey it.
2. Eph. 2:5 implies that "dead in sin" means unbelieving state of mind (and heart), that God regenerates the person in that spiritually dead state, resulting in spiritual life, and ability to believe the gospel preached.
3. No one can decide to believe something they don't believe. They must first be convinced of the truth of the narrative before they will ever choose to believe it. Therefore, being convinced of the gospel, they are simply choosing to believe what they already believe, since they have been persuaded. The persuasion comes first (God regenerating), then the faith comes after (choosing to believe and obey).

Again, since the gospel is spiritually discerned, the only way a person can believe it is if God regenerates them by the indwelling Holy Spirit and enables them to believe in their heart, which they do because God has revealed it to them. God is the one who creates the spiritual ears to hear the gospel and believe.

With this understanding, not only is "has been born of God" logically the cause of "believes," but it is also chronologically prior. It may be true that chronology can't be extracted from the lexical argument of 1 Jn. 5:1, but contextually and hermeneutically, it can't be otherwise.

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Please comment on my post 25?

rjs330 said:

Huh? Why did you mention me? What have I got to do with your reply?

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Because you gave the other poster at least two Winner ratings for her replies, which means you must agree with her, and I wanted you to read my post and get the other side of the story.

Dikaioumenoi said:

I'm not sure how any of this advances the discussion. Yes, unbelievers can exercise a kind of "belief" (in idols, false gods, bare facts), but that is not the πίστις John or Paul ever describe as salvific.

Are you suggesting that a spiritually dead sinner can, by an act of natural trust, surrender to God and thereby obtain regeneration? That is precisely what 1 John 5:1 contradicts. What purpose would there be in being "born of God" if one were already capable of turning to Him beforehand?

The issue is not whether man possesses a natural capacity to assent to propositions; of course he does. The issue is whether fallen man possesses the moral and spiritual capacity to exercise that ability in a Godward, saving way (cf. John 6:44; Rom. 8:7-8; Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29). The "faiths" you list are categorically distinct from believing in Christ.

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I agree πίστις comes from God after regeneration, but regeneration must be accepted by man, with accepting God’s Love (Charity) in the form of forgiveness.

This “Kind of believe” you talk about can be directed toward your creator in the acceptance of charity from your hated enemy (God) and prior to obtaining πίστις.

Everything hinges on the definition of “Spiritually dead” and if the person that is spiritually dead can do something for himself (selfishly). We know the “spiritual dead” person can still physically feed himself, so what else can he do for himself?

How do you get around Jesus explaining to us that a person spiritually dead like the prodigal son can turn to the Father?

(Luke 15: 32) Christ has the Father explain what it meant to be dead and calls the son dead (not meaning dead physically) when the Father now knows he is alive: “…because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

The prodigal son in a dead state (by Jesis’ own words) could turn to his father for selfish reasons, but undeserved salvation was from the father. The young son did not excising some “Godly ability”, but selfishly (sinfully) wanting to humbly accept pure underserved charity.

You are right for I am not talking about “believe in Christ”, but “trusting” in God unbelievable illogical Love.

SabbathBlessings said:

We need to let the Bible define things and not take a phrase and apply it to our own definitions. Like what God defined as His commandments, I would think that should count for something, or what is God’s righteousness (right and wrong doing). What under the law means, because you are using it a way thats contrary to what the Bible says. Too many things do not make sense, like we have the law giver, implying so we can ignore what the law giver asks of us, if we love Him. Or we can apply God’s written and spoken commandments HisTestimony to something different than what He said in that commandment. What’s the point of having what God deems as right or wrong (His righteousness Psa119:172 which is everlasting Psa119:142 if we are going to ignore it and replace it with our own righteousness (what we feel is right or wrong). These are all just nonsensical arguements.

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That is not at all what I was implying. It’s actually the opposite. When we are under the Law, we stand condemned to die. If you read the Law as it is laid out in Scripture, there is no built-in provision for forgiveness or redemption. Once the Law is broken, the only verdict it can pronounce is guilt and the only sentence it can give is death. As Paul wrote in Galatians 3:10–14:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

God’s Law is righteous and eternal, but forgiveness cannot come from the Law itself. If God were to simply overlook sin, He would deny the very justice His Law upholds. The curse and penalty for sin must be carried out — and since all have sinned (Romans 3:23), every one of us is doomed under the Law’s demands.

But Christ stepped in. He took the full condemnation the Law required (Isaiah 53:5–6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). He satisfied God’s justice on our behalf and paid the price of our sin in full. Now we belong to Christ rather than to the Law (Romans 7:4). The Law still exists, but we are no longer indebted to it — Jesus paid it all. Because of that, our allegiance and accountability are now to Him. The Law condemns, but only Christ redeems.

Since through faith we have received the promised Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13–14), we now walk according to the Spirit instead of according to the Law (Romans 8:1–4). And here is the real question: do you think the Spirit will produce less righteousness in us than our own attempts to keep the Law? Or will following Christ lead us into a greater, deeper righteousness — one that flows from the heart rather than from tablets of stone?

SabbathBlessings said:

I wish I could go down this journey with you and show you these things through the Bible, but my guess is I would be doing so in vain and I already spend too much time on this forum. So I am going to move on . All will get sorted out when Jesus comes. Be well.

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I would hope that you would read this post prayfully and study all of the references in it.

rjs330 said:

I actually love this. Trump LOVES to troll the media and the rest of the left. This thread is a great example. Its quite hilarious.

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This is the president of the USA engaging in disingenuous games and lying. I do understand tho that it makes good entertainment, which is what people value these days.