Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay? Thank you so much.

Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. We got a lot to talk about today. Now, I want to get to the news today, but I want to start by looking at the Bible.

I want to look at the Bible.

One particular passage of the Bible, and actually in a couple of days, we have this video clip that I've been sitting on for a little while that walks us through all of the different changes that have been made to the Bible. I know that's going to blow some people's mind. I haven't incorporated that yet, but we will. But we are going to look at the Bible at one of the parts that is still considered part of the Bible, because a lot of you who are biblical scholars, you know that one of the things that's been happening is whole passages and Bible verses have been removed from various biblical texts because now with additional research, we know that they was never supposed to be a part of the Bible at all. they weren't even a part of the passages that they were lifted from or copied from or plagiarized from. So that's happening. But in one of the portions of the Bible that is still considered part of the Bible, I know I just blew somebody's mind with that part. But there's this passage that talks about judging. And the passage is designed to say that you should not judge because the way that you judge other people, you are going to be judged similarly. And the passage literally says it's coming out of Matthew. I believe this is Matthew chapter 7. But they said, don't judge or you two will be judged. And in the same way that you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure that you use, it will be measured to you. And then they go into this weird story about a speck of dust and a plank of wood. And the idea is that I, let's say I'm the one judging you, right? And I'm judging you. I got this big old, like, branch sticking out my eye. Like I got a whole ass branch popped in my eye. I don't know why the branch is in my eye. It's a tree branch. It's just in my eye. And it's obvious to everybody that I got a whole ass piece of tree sticking up my eyeball that I should probably do something about. But the story goes on to say that the person with this whole ass piece of wood sticking out their eye is trying to tell you, Amy, I see some dust in your eye. You know, you got you got specks of dust in your eye.

Like, do you want me to fix that for you?

Because you got, I see, like, it's like a whole little piece of dust that just flew down and landed on your eyelashes. I could blow it out for you. I got some vizine drops. You want to cleanse your eye with that because you got a whole ass speck of dust in your eye. And the parable is designed to say, why are you in it?

Like, why are you with this big-ass tree dust in your eye. And the parable is designed to say, why are you in it? Like, why are you with this big ass tree branch in your eye? Why are you worried about this other person who has a speck of dust in the eye? Why you don't worry about getting that tree branch out your eye? And amen, why you got a whole ass tree branch in your eye anyway? That's how I imagine the story was being told when Jesus was talking about it. But the idea is that why are you looking at the speck of dust in your brother or sister or family member's eye and pay no attention to the tree branch in your own eye? How can you say to someone, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a tree branch in your own? You hypocrite! First take the tree branch out your own eye and then you will be able to clearly see how to take the speck from your brother's eye. Now, if I were Jesus, I would have added some things like, and frankly, friend, if you got a whole ass tree branch coming out your eye, why are you worried about that other person? Probably the fact that they only have a speck of dust means that they could be telling you some things. This is a conversation about Texas.

Texas and Chicago.

This is a conversation about Texas and Chicago. Because Texas right now, you got a big-ass tree branch in your own eye and you looking at Chicago like y'all got some wisdom. And I don't mean y'all, Texas. I mean y'all's leadership. Y'all's leadership is looking at Chicago. like y'all got some wisdom chic needs, and you acting like they should be learning from you. Chicago got a speck in their eye. You got a whole ass tree branch in your eye. Now, we don't already talk about the fact that in the state of Texas, Greg Abbott and the Republicans, there are a lot of things you should be worried about. You should be worried about the fact that your state, the state of Texas, is now number one if not number number two. Y'all go back and forth between y'all and Florida for the greatest number of people who are financially distressed. Y'all's bankruptcy filings are increasing. Your consumer credit defaults are on the rise. Y'all got whole ass data centers that are gobbling up energy, so much so that it is competing with the actual citizens of your state as it pertains to who's going to be able to drink the most water.

And in fact, the Economic Times has this really powerful article that's called Texas AI Centers,

guzzle 463 million gallons. Now residents are asked to cut back on showers. So meanwhile, while y'all's governor is trying to tell Chicago how to handle their business,

y'all getting played like some suckers by some thirsty-ass billionaires whose computers are literally sucking up all your water. And there are a whole bunch of other Republican states that I have notes for about this, Alaska, you was going to catch some of this as well. Because in Alaska, and we'll have to talk about this again another day, I don't want to spend too much time on it right now. but in Alaska, they basically should be preparing for some similar assessment because y'all just had an approval that Donald Trump, he just issued an approval that basically there's going to be a construction of a 211 mile highway that's going right through your foothills and is going to have a horrific impact on the environment. But hey, AI data centers need capacity. And this, according to Donald, is going to give the United States an advantage in the AI wars. At some point, we're going to have to talk about the fact that artificial intelligence might be the next housing bubble. I know people don't like to have that conversation, but we should have that conversation because it's too many things pressing on that industry for allow it to be viable in the ways that they're thinking about. But we'll talk about that for another day. I want to get back to Texas being hypocrites and the fact that they are seriously trying to tell other people how to run things. When they got all these problems, y'all had storms like rain falling from the sky, which is going to happen periodically. And hundreds of people die in your storms because your Republican leadership is so terrible at maintaining your infrastructure. Your leaders are trying to focus your attention on woke issues. But if you listen to people like James Tolariko, James Talarico, who was asked about he is now, he's a Texas representative and he's running for, I believe, Senate in that state. And he is constantly being asked, now that he has declared his intention to run for U.S. Senate, he's always being asked about the issues that the people in Texas want you to focus on. The leadership in Texas wants you to focus on the woke. They want you to focus on trans issues. They want you to focus on a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with the fact that y-all don't have an infrastructure grid that's going last any amount of time once these AI data centers are completely up to speed. They don't want you to talk about the fact that your support for your storm system is in the trash. They don't want you to talk about any of those things. They want you to talk about trans people. I want you how to take a listen to James Tala Rico. And this is, again, about Texas and Chicago. Trace for five days. And I've had a lot of interviews with national media. No one's ever asking me about the cost of housing. No one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs. No one ever asked me about the cost of housing.

No one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs.

No one's asking me about the cost of childcare.

The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes.

And so what I would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires.

Trans people are 1% of the population. Und Trans people are 1% of the population. Undocumented

people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the

wrong 1%. Trans people aren't taking away our health care. Undocumented people aren't defunding

our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends.

It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but

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