Mike Huckabee apologized to Mitt Romney on Wednesday for raising questions about the Mormon faith, again pushing religion to the fore of an increasingly bitter fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

The controversy, which overshadowed a GOP debate here, came less than a week after Romney, who had been leading in Iowa polls, delivered a speech aimed at overcoming any political impediment posed by his membership in the Mormon church.

And it was the latest instance of the newly ascendant Huckabee having to explain his statements now that he is facing closer scrutiny.

The fracas stemmed from comments Huckabee made in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, set to appear this weekend. The former Arkansas governor — an ordained Southern Baptist minister — was asked if he considered Mormonism to be a “cult or religion.”

“I think it’s a religion. I really don’t know much about it,” Huckabee replied. Then he posed a question of his own: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

A church spokesman refuted the notion, as did Romney.

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Reed Dearing of Macclenny put senior St. Peter’s warden Sue Krall, also of Macclenny, on notice that it must vacate the property after services on Sunday. Mr. Dearing, a former local credit union executive and longtime Jacksonville area banker, said he would collect the keys and conduct an inventory ”” and that he was acting on authority of Bishop Johnson Howard.

“We obviously declined the ”˜request’ to take leave of the property at this time and in fact asked the Sheriff’s Office to watch the church building and prevent anyone from unlawfully entering without our permission,” said Ms. Krall in a memo this week to church members.

She characterized the “18-hour notice to depart” by Mr. Dearing as “less than gracious and certainly not in the spirit of working with fellow Christians…”

Ms. Krall termed Mr. Dearing’s ultimatum a surprise in light of a recent meeting with the diocese chancellor during which St. Peter’s sought 3-6 months for “a more planned, organized and reasonable departure.”

Mr. Dearing, for his part, backed off after St. Peter’s deacon Mike Webb requested time to re-set another meeting with the bishop’s representative and perhaps Rev. Howard. He was also confronted by Ms. Krall and Lin Taber of Glen St. Mary, whose family has been longtime members and benefactors of the church under both names.

“I was appalled it was carried out the way it was,” said Mr. Taber. “We want a reasonable amount of time and we still hadn’t heard anything official [from the Episcopal diocese] about vacating.”

The Episcopal church is one of the oldest denominations in Baker County, and before the Yellow Fever epidemic in the 1880s had a very prominent presence here. The former St. James was constructed about 50 years ago, though the property was deeded to the church in 1941.

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Australia’s Anglican Primate, Phillip Aspinall, spoke to AM in Jerusalem’s Old City.

PHILLIP ASPINALL: We’ve met with Israeli leaders and we understand their concerns. I mean, where there are acts of violence and terrorism, it does make them want to secure their own lives.

Our concern is that in doing so, they don’t then oppress another group of people and behave in an inhumane way to another group. And I think the wall and some of the restrictions that are imposed on Palestinians do have those inhumane effects.

DAVID HARDAKER: So do you believe the Israeli justification for security is actually fair here?

PHILLIP ASPINALL: I think that’s a very difficult judgement to make. But I think if steps are taken which then lead to great frustration and feelings of being pressured and hemmed in and oppressed on the part of another group of people, that may well have the effect of leading to more anger and more frustration and more violence.

TONY EASTLEY: The leader of the Anglican Church in Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, ending David Hardaker’s report.

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Economists and market specialists say policy makers are trying to reassure bankers that they will stand firm as the lenders of last resort. The coordinated action is being led by the Fed, which will lend $40 billion this month. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Canada will lend $50.2 billion this month and next.

“This is basically a reinsurance policy,” said William H. Gross, chief investment officer of the bond management firm Pimco. Central bankers “are saying, ”˜We will stand behind you.’ “

He added, “Now it’s up to the private market to gain a little confidence and turn a little macho and start performing on its own.”

Fed officials said that the move was an effort to improve financial markets, not a response to problems at specific banks, and that it was in the works well before investors reacted negatively to the Fed’s modest interest rate cut on Tuesday.

“This is not about particular financial institutions with particular problems,” a senior Fed official told reporters. “It is about market functioning.”

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Harvard University announced on Monday that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offered to middle-class and upper-middle-class students, seeking to allay concerns that elite colleges are becoming too expensive for even relatively well-off families.

The move, to go into effect in the next school year, appears to make Harvard’s aid to students with household incomes from $120,000 to $180,000 the most generous of any of the country’s prestigious private universities. Harvard will generally charge such students 10 percent of their family household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $45,600.

Officials said the policy would cut costs by a third to 50 percent for many students and make the real costs of attending Harvard comparable to those at major state universities.

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The Rev. Peter Strimer, rector of St. Andrew’s Church, said that everyone from all religious backgrounds are welcome at St. Andrew’s, including traditional Anglicans. He said he has previously referred people to Dan Keusal, the licensed counselor and astrologer in private practice who is leading the workshop, with good results. Mr. Keusal holds a degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame and worked for years as a parish and campus minister.

“Of the 35 people signed up for the class, nearly half have not been in our church or any church before,” Fr. Strimer said. “We are using Raymond Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah.” Fr. Strimer described the course as “a fun, captivating approach to the Christmas story” which draws upon Mr. Keusal’s training in Roman Catholicism and astrology.

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This group believes the split may actually be a good thing, for group member Michael Gardner breaking away means saying goodbye to archaic thinking. Gardner says, “lets continue what the real tradition of the church not something that is 40 years old and hasn’t grown.” Other members of “Remain Episcopal” say they are offended by the misconceptions put forth by the San Joaquin Diocese. For example, Jan Dunlap, says the diocese often accuses the Episcopal Church of ignoring the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which she says just isn’t true. Dunlap reminds the other side that “every episcopalian says the Nicene creed and were not crossing our fingers.”

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Local leaders, along with those from the wider church, are already making plans for the continuation of the Diocese of San Joaquin following a vote to disassociate from the Episcopal Church.
Michael Glass, a San Rafael, California-based attorney who represents congregations and individual Episcopalians who wish to remain in the Episcopal Church, told Episcopal News Service (ENS) December 11 that he, local leaders, Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop David Booth Beers, and leaders from Episcopal dioceses surrounding San Joaquin “are coming together very soon to finalize our coordinated efforts to provide for the leadership needs, the legal and pastoral issues, and the financial concerns of our brothers and sisters in San Joaquin, and to provide for the continuation of the diocese.”

The Rev. Robert Moore will meet with the group as well. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori appointed Moore “to provide an ongoing pastoral presence to the continuing Episcopalians in the Diocese of San Joaquin,” said the Rev. Charles Robertson, canon to the Presiding Bishop.

Moore is the husband of Bishop Suffragan Bavi Edna “Nedi” Rivera of Olympia, the daughter of San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield’s predecessor, Bishop Victor Rivera.

“The Presiding Bishop wants the people of San Joaquin to be assured of her prayers and also of her support in the coming days,” Robertson said.

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When you have an opportunity to stand back from what is going on, you are better able to see all the players in action, and it is a little easier to measure their play against a common set of reference points. Quite honestly, it seems to me that denial of the realities is standard at both ends of the spectrum. The voices of those who ally themselves with the “establishment” and the National Church seem as determined to read the situation through their own set of colored lenses as those at the other end of spectrum to put their own spin on the realities. While those who want everyone to kiss and make up are more sentimental than realistic.

If Kevin Martin is correct, and I think he has been fairer in his analysis of what is going on than most, then for those who continue as part of the Episcopal Church a crunch point is fast approaching when declining numbers and funds will no longer be capable of upholding the infrastructure that presently exists. You might have been able to say until now that its only a relatively small number of parishes that are causing all this upset and, by and large, other than them everything is fine and dandy, but it is no longer just parishes heading for the exit. When dioceses start doing the same then you have to change your tune.

But then, those who are conservative, orthodox, or whatever other label you want to give them, have their own blinkers on when it comes to looking at the realities. It might be a wonderful sense of relief for those leaving to get out from under the antagonistic leadership of the Episcopal Church, but it is incredibly hard and grueling work to create a whole new infrastructure in which to be church. Having been at the front end of a number of new ventures in my time, I know from personal experience the grinding agony of having limited financial resources, relatively little land or property, and how incapacitating it can be to do pioneer work after you have got over the euphoria of getting the new ministry (or whatever) up and started. It requires guts and a special mix of gifts to be a pioneer.

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Melbourne’s Anglican dean has been appointed the worldwide church’s top diplomat, representing the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Vatican.

David Richardson, dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, said yesterday his job would be to interpret Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church and relay what was going on in the Vatican to fellow Anglicans.

He will take up the post next April, at a time when Rome’s enthusiasm for improving ties seems to have cooled. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI put most of their ecumenical energy into Eastern Orthodox churches. Benedict said in July that Protestant denominations could not properly call themselves “churches”.

Dean Richardson, 61, said there had been “hesitations in the conversation” between the churches because the American church consecrated a bishop in a gay relationship and because of women priests.

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Of course, the religious heritage of which Romney spoke is profound. The Puritans’ vision of “a city upon a hill” in America serving as a beacon to humanity was based on a “covenant” with God. As the Bill of Rights was formulated, George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation alluding to “that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

But if religion informed America’s formation, its distancing from the political sphere was decisive to the republic’s resilience. Indeed, the devastating European experience of religious war and intolerance played an important role in the founders’ thinking. Seen against this backdrop, Romney’s speech and the society it reflects is far more troubling than Europe’s empty cathedrals.

Romney allows no place in the United States for atheists, who do not merit a mention. He opines that “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom,” yet secular Sweden is free while religious Iran is not.

He shows a Wikipedia-level appreciation of other religions – admiring “the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims” and “the ancient traditions of the Jews” – that suggests his innermost conviction of what America’s true religion is. In all, masked beneath professions of tolerance, a faith-first Christian vision emerges.

Romney rejected the “religion of secularism,” of which Europe is on the whole proud. But he should consider that Washington is well worth a Mass. The fires of the Reformation that destroyed St. Andrews Cathedral are fires of faith that endure in different forms. Jefferson’s “wall of separation” must be restored if those who would destroy the West’s Enlightenment values are to be defeated.

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“w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

It’s like saying “yay,” the dictionary said.

“It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,” Merriam-Webster said.

Visitors to Merriam-Webster’s Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers.

Runner-up was “facebook” as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.

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Asked about his support for gay clergy, he replied: “I have no problem with gay clergy who aren’t in relationships, although there are savage arguments about the issue you might have heard about. Our jobs mean we have to adhere to the Bible. Gay clergy who don’t act upon their sexual preferences do, clergy in practising homo-sexual relationships don’t. This major question doesn’t have a quick-fix solution and I imagine will be debated for many years to come.”

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But how that passion will relate to women’s rights within the church remains to be seen.

Although Minns told those assembled that “there is no person outside the reach of God’s love,” he also informed them that, “At this time the Church of Nigeria, to which we owe canonical obedience, has no provision for the ordination of women, although there has been acceptance of women in the order of deacons.”

The Episcopal Church has allowed for the ordination of women since its 1976 General Convention but Minns said that CANA, which currently numbers about 60 congregations with over 100 clergy in 20 states with a total average Sunday attendance of approximately 8,600 ”“ larger than 70 percent of the dioceses in the Episcopal Church ”“ is currently split on the issue.

The four new bishops consecrated on Sunday were all male.

“I am fully aware that this is a topic of concern for many clergy and congregations throughout CANA and one that produces intense reactions,” Minns said Thursday.

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Republican Mitt Romney retorted to questions about his faith by surging rival Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, declaring that “attacking someone’s religion is really going too far.”

In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Romney, vying to become the first Mormon elected president, declined to answer that question during an interview Wednesday, saying church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic.

“But I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,” Romney told NBC’s “Today” show.

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Days after its publication, a largely positive review of The Golden Compass that appeared in Catholic newspapers across the country was retracted this week by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The bishops, who could not be reached for comment, offered no explanation for the decision. But Catholic groups, including the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, have urged moviegoers to boycott the film, saying the film and the book on which it is based are anti-Catholic.

“Certainly, there was all kinds of speculation from the day it went up [on the Web site] as to whether or not something like this would happen,” said Jim Lackey, general news editor for the Catholic News Service, a wire service run by the bishops’ conference. He was told Monday to remove the review from the service’s Web site.

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Five retired bishops chided two members of Executive Council whom the bishops said “carefully failed to give us the information we requested.” In a brief letter the bishops again repeated their request for the amount of money spent last year on property disputes and the source of the funds.

“We are concerned that there could be a violation of federal pension fund laws,” the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, retired Bishop of Eau Claire, said in an interview with a reporter for The Living Church. “If they are using endowment funds, some of those are restricted.

“Are we seeing Executive Council in the act of pulling a Charles Bennison on the church?” Bishop Wantland asked. “Bishop Bennison was brought up on charges by his standing committee for refusing to disclose full financial information. No one is saying Executive Council is using money illegally, but how do we know? We need assurances that the gifts of faithful Episcopalians in previous generations are being used for the purposes for which they were originally intended.”

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The San Joaquin Diocese’s vote Saturday to split from the National Episcopalian Church drew mixed reaction from local church leaders and parishioners.

Representatives of the diocese, which includes Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, voted 173-22 to leave the national church, realigning the diocese with the conservative Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America.

“I’m very happy the way the vote went,” said the Rev. Jim Stout of the Church of the Ascension in Copperopolis. “I’m deeply grieved for those that chose not to go in this direction. I pray they are not hurt by this process.”

The outcome of the vote on Saturday was overwhelmingly in favor of the split, with 173 voting in favor, compared to 22 who were opposed.

Local church leaders seem to be split on the issue.

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Disagreements over religious beliefs are leading Trinity Episcopal Church to consider breaking from the national Episcopal Church, following in the footsteps of other parishes in Florida and nationwide.

The Rev. Lorne Coyle says the national church is being unorthodox, in his estimation, on everything from interpretations of the Bible to allowing a gay bishop to be ordained in 2003. He is not alone in his beliefs ”” members of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, Calif., voted this week to split from the national church, the first entire diocese to make such a move.

The Episcopal Church nationally has a “culture the Holy Spirit cannot honor,” Coyle said. “It is losing members.”

Members of the 81-year-old Trinity Episcopal parish are talking among themselves about making a decision, possibly within six months, Coyle said. If part of the congregation decides to stay, it would continue to remain in the church and worship there, diocese officials said.

So far, Coyle’s conservative congregation is the only Episcopal parish on the Treasure Coast openly considering a split, diocese officials say. However, Trinity Episcopal is among six parishes in the 90-parish Diocese of Central Florida that are considering going their own way.

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That didn’t take long. It still makes no sense to me as to why this didn’t occur yesterday.

One November night, Bishop John W. Howe stood at the pulpit of Grace Episcopal Church as members with worried and frustrated faces stared back at him.

Howe, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, was there to tell the members what they all wanted to hear.

“During this time of transition, however it comes out, neither I or the Diocese of Central Florida intend in any way to abandon you. . . . Neither your rector [pastor] or your vestry [pastor and lay members] will decide for you whether you want to be a part of The Episcopal Church or the Diocese of Central Florida or not,” Howe said. “That’s something that you’re going to decide for you.”

Howe visited the church to address Grace Episcopal Church’s recent decision to “disaffiliate” from the Central Florida diocese and The Episcopal Church (USA) – a movement that’s happening in Episcopal parishes all across the country. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion and has 2.4 million members. Approximately 80 million members belong to the global denomination.

Conservative Episcopalians believe the church is losing its biblical and traditional roots because of what they describe as a growing liberal leadership. The division between liberal and conservative Episcopalians centers on issues from Bible interpretation to accepting homosexuals. Most notably was the consecration of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man in a committed relationship, as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Blessings of same-sex unions in some Episcopal churches also have drawn much criticism in the Communion.

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A massive storm that dropped sleet and freezing rain across the nation’s midsection, leaving nearly a million utility customers without electricity, finally tapered off, but another wintry blast was forecast to develop Wednesday over the southern Plains.

The new system was expected to bring more sleet and freezing rain to Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas, but not nearly as much as the previous storm, according to the National Weather Service.

Ice ranging from a quarter-inch to an inch thick glazed roads in much of the central Plains and Midwest. At least 24 deaths have been blamed on the storm since it developed last weekend. Most resulted from traffic accidents.

Forecasters said more snow, sleet and freezing rain could develop across the northern Ohio Valley and from Pennsylvania into New England on Wednesday

The power outage was the worst ever in Oklahoma, with more than 618,000 homes and businesses without electricity late Tuesday. Officials said it could be a week to 10 days before power is fully restored.

Read it all. I have to confess that seeing the Oklahoma footage on the news this morning felt a bit odd, as it has been in the 80’s here this week–KSH.

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed ”” 35 percent ”” identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ”˜It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001.

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U.S. Catholic bishops, acting at the direction of the Vatican, have rebuked a theologian at Georgetown University for writings that they say conflict with church doctrine on the uniqueness of Christianity and Catholicism.

In a 15-page statement released Monday, the bishops’ Committee on Doctrine criticized the 2004 book Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue by the Rev. Peter C. Phan.

Phan is a Vietnamese native and a priest of the Dallas diocese. He teaches in Washington and is a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

The bishops specifically criticized Phan for arguing that Christ should not be described as the “unique,” “absolute” or “universal” savior of humankind; that non-Christian religions offer an “autonomous” path to salvation; and that past injustices committed by the Catholic Church disqualify it from claiming to be the “unique and universal instrument of salvation.”

In what they presented as a “positive restatement” of relevant Catholic teaching, the bishops asserted that Christ “brings together humanity and divinity in a way that can have no parallel in any other figure in history.”

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Watch this report and that one also. It is enough to want to make you scream.

“The Fed’s policy makers seem reluctant to say what everyone seems to know: that the risk to economic growth is the predominant concern today,” said Brian Sack, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based forecasting firm….

“Consumers can get credit, but it is harder now and more costly than it should be,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

Mr. Zandi and others were particularly critical of the Fed for not cutting the discount rate by at least half a percentage point and extending the loans to 90 days instead of the present 30 days. Banks often fund their operations by borrowing for 90 days at the London interbank rate, which is now just over 5 percent. Allowing banks to borrow at a significantly lower rate from the Fed’s discount window, and for longer terms, economists said, would send a clear signal to financial institutions to encourage more activity.

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Update: Greg Ip in today’s Wall Street Journal has this:

Fed officials, however, continue to consider ways of using various tools — including the discount rate — to combat banks’ unwillingness to lend even to each other, which they view as a threat to economic growth. The central bank could take action within days.

A variety of steps, widely discussed in the markets, are likely to be on the table, including another cut in the discount rate, longer-term loans to money-market dealers, easier collateral rules for loans from the Fed, and other steps last taken in 1999 to alleviate funding pressures ahead of the year 2000, when many feared a “Y2K” computer bug would disrupt markets and create economic havoc.

But if this is the case, why not do that yesterday???

A ranting screed was left on a website between shootings Sunday by the man who police say killed four people at two religious organizations.

Authorities are now investigating the posting, which copies from a manifesto written by Columbine killer Eric Harris before the 1999 high school massacre.

Matthew J. Murray, 24, who police say carried out attacks at the Youth With a Mission dormitory in Arvada and New Life Church in Colorado Springs, left behind final words that are rearranged but otherwise largely word-for-word the same as Harris’ writings.

The writing, first reported by 9News, was confirmed as Murray’s work by investigating authorities. He posted the message at 11:03 a.m. on a website for people who have left organized religion, almost 11 hours after the Arvada shooting and two hours before the Colorado Springs attack.
“You christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray writes in his 452-word harangue. “I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill.

“Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

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The Rev. John Riebe, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in southwest Bakersfield, outlined what he sees are two significant differences of opinion between the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Worldwide Anglican Communion regarding “fundamental and foundational principles” of Christianity.

He said these differences concern “the person of Jesus Christ” and “the role of the authority of Holy Scripture.”

“Katharine Jefferts Schori’s public statements that are on record say that she does not agree that Jesus is the unique savior for all people,” Riebe said. “She believes that other faiths are equally valid, and clearly, in the New Testament, Jesus is very clear that he is the way, the truth and the life and the only way to God the Father and to salvation.

“Most of the Anglican community would disagree with her statements,” he said.

“On the role of Holy Scripture,” Riebe said, “she indicates that it may be informative and very important, and they (many clergy and bishops in the Episcopal Church) might even refer to it as the Word of God in public references, but they don’t believe it has authority.”

Some examples, he said, include questioning whether Jesus performed miracles or whether he resurrected from the dead.

“Traditional Christianity has continued to believe that the resurrection was real, that Jesus is the Son of God and that he atoned for our sins,” he said.

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Australians believe the American hamburger and U.S. slang are infringing on their culture and they are “not at all pleased” about it, according to a survey released Monday.
The telephone poll of 1,213 people by the government-funded U.S. Studies Center at the University of Sydney measured Australians’ attitudes about their closest ally, the United States.

Asked to judge the influence of American culture on Australia, 67% of respondents said they were “not at all pleased” about the prevalence of U.S.-style fast food in Australia. Australians ranked fast food second only behind U.S. foreign policy as an issue they were “very worried” about.

The survey did not ask respondents for specific examples, though fast food chains selling burgers and french fries are more common now in Australia than the once-ubiquitous corner store selling fish and chips.

A further 52% said they were very unhappy with the influence of “the American language” on the way people speak, which could easily now include phrases such as “Hey, buddy” instead of “G’day mate.”

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