7. It might be concluded from the above that GAFCON may be attempting to force the hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates as a whole. Here though we need to look at the deepest motives. Granted human failures that we all hold in common, we may safely assume that no one in this dispute is working purely cynically, and that by our lights we are all looking for a future God can approve. Revisionists believe that they are acting out of justice love. Conservatives seek to be loyal to the way of Christ according to the traditional interpretation and plain meaning of Scripture. Surely it is better that both follow conscience rather than demanding a compromise of conscience that neither is willing to make. Those with greatest responsibility in the Communion have corporate responsibility for preserving conscientious membership. Does it matter who it is who is taking the preparatory steps? The important thing is that they should lead to decisive measures that can be endorsed by the whole leadership?

8. It is clear that the decision whether or not to support a new Anglican province in North America is linked with the outcome of the Covenant Process. The presumption would be that the newly formed province would participate in the Covenant once established. TEC, still committed to its revisions, would not qualify as a participating member church. With these questions as yet unresolved there is actually a costly and very damaging process of litigation taking place, affecting many Episcopal parishes and some dioceses in the United States. Would the authorisation of a new Province and the establishment of a strong Covenant increase or decrease this level of litigation in the U.S. and increase or decrease the risk of similar conflict in other parts of the world? It could be argued that total clarity in the way the instruments of Communion seek to resolve this controversy will actually hasten the end of the litigation. North American leaders who believe in the alternative ethic will finally realise that they cannot co-opt or coerce fellow Anglicans to this new agenda and may be content to pursue it on their own and using the resources and plant that more naturally correspond to them.

9. Finally there may be a case for the Archbishops and Primates to support the initial steps in the formation of the new Province of North America, and require for their completion an ongoing process of collaboration and consultation with participants appointed at the Primates’ Meeting itself. How the new province is set up is crucial. The birthing of the new entity may need the work of a supervisory group chaired by a Primates’ appointee.

Read it all.

During past downturns, layoffs were mostly a private affair. Big companies tended to issue vague press releases filled with jargon about “downsizing,” and start-ups often gave people the pink slip without telling the world anything at all.

Not anymore. In the age of transparency, the layoff will be blogged.

Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company ”” even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs.

Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, had already published the news, and it was being picked up by traditional media reporters, Mr. Musk said. “We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.”

Read it all.

More generally, the picture is of a solid Democratic win, but not the tsunami some had expected. Obama won the popular vote by a solid, but not crushing, margin of slightly less than six percent (52.4-46.5). Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by a significantly greater margin and even greater relative percentage (49.25-40.71), and George Bush by a slightly lower margin, but higher relative percentage (43.01-37.45). Bush, meanwhile, beat Dukakis by a larger margin, 53.4 to 45.6. The Democrats picked up about twenty House seats, on the low end of the expected range. And, as noted above, they seem likely to pick up five or six Senate seats,which would make the Senate races either 18-16 in favor of the Democrats, or tied at 17-17, again on the low end of the expected range.

Read it all.

The text of proposition 8 is as follows:

This initiative measure is submitted to the people in accordance with the provisions of Article II, Section 8, of the California Constitution. This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by adding a section thereto; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.

SECTION 1. Title This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.5 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

According to the LA Times:

A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California led Tuesday, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.

As the measure, the most divisive and emotionally fraught on the state ballot this year, took a lead in early returns, supporters gathered at a hotel ballroom in Sacramento and cheered.

“We caused Californians to rethink this issue,” Proposition 8 strategist Jeff Flint said.

Early in the campaign, he noted, polls showed the measure trailing by 17 points.

As of this time of posting the numbers are Yes 51.9% No 48.1%, with about 91% of precincts reporting. Read the whole article.

Reporting from Washington ”” Barack Obama won the presidency Tuesday by persuading voters to embrace a seeming paradox: leadership based on contradictory principles of change and reassurance.

The Illinois senator combined ambitious goals and a cautious temperament. He promised tax cuts, better healthcare, new energy programs and fiscal discipline all at the same time, and all without the bitterness and stalemate that arose when those issues were tackled in the past.

Now, as Obama moves through his transition to the White House, this effort to square the political circle becomes the defining challenge in the months ahead. Which Barack Obama will dominate as he begins to govern?

Too much of the ambitious liberal, and he rekindles partisan squabbles he was supposed to transcend.

Too much the cautious mediator who reaches across the aisle to compromise with Republicans, and he risks losing the energy and idealism that attracted millions to his candidacy.

Read it all.

Here is one entry from Michael Knoll in Pennsylvania:

With many of the Bush tax cuts sets to expire in the coming years, the tax system has been described as a jump ball. And President-Elect Obama, who was elected on a platform promising tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans and ambitious plans to increase spending, is poised to grab it. With solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, there will be intense pressure on him to move quickly to reverse the Bush tax cuts and to implement his promised tax and spending plans. Yet, prudence dictates not moving too quickly with his tax plan for several reasons. First, a weak economy is not the time to raise taxes on the top 5 percent. The time for tax increases will come when the economy improves. Second, the U.S. government has been running large deficits, which add to the national debt. Once the economy improves, total tax revenues will in all likelihood need to be increased ”“ not only revenues from the top 5 percent ”“ to reduce those deficits. Third, there is substantial dissatisfaction with the existing tax system from many corners. President Bush cut taxes first and then tried to get tax reform. He got his tax cuts, but he made little headway on tax reform having given away all the benefits. By connecting any revenue changes (most likely increases) with tax reform, President Obama will be better able to achieve both. Fourth, the U.S. tax system was designed for a nation where foreign trade and investment constituted a small part of the economy. That is no longer the case, and any major overhaul needs to address squarely the United States’ economic connections with the rest of the world.

Read them all.

I am interested in who you are and where you live, your thoughts on the outcome and the reason, and particularly your information about your own specific region and the elections and referendum questions there. Once again, please, real names STRONGLY preferred if at all possible.

1. Will President Barack Obama govern as a moderate centrist or a liberal extremist? As the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, with a background seeped in far-left activism, he does not seem naturally inclined to head to the center without a looming election to force him to accommodate moderate voters. Certainly he now has every opportunity to push through the redistributive agenda he spoke about so fondly in his now-infamous 2001 radio address. He has healthy majorities in both houses of Congress and a wish list built up over eight years ”” with everything from universal health care to abolishing secret ballot union elections to the Freedom of Choice Act.

It would seem to require Herculean strength for a president, especially one relatively new to Washington and with a record of subservience to party orthodoxy, to resist the strong leftward pull. Certainly, Obama presumably wants not just one, but two terms and wants to retain that Congressional majority. And the lesson of 1994 when President Bill Clinton lost his Democratic Congressional majority remains fixed in Democrats’ memories. But it is hard to imagine, even with the financial crisis ”” and the resulting mound of debt and revenue shortfall ”” that Obama will now transform into a protector of free markets and balanced budgets and a bulwark against the phalanx of Democratic special interest groups….

Read it carefully and read it all.

There are a lot of reasons, but in my view the main ones are these:

The question is: was it more of the former or the latter? My answer is more of the latter. Mr. Obama is for hope and change. But hope for what exactly? Change of what kind exactly? He almost became a Rorschach test on which people projected their various dreams and aspirations. But he mainly won because he is not George Bush. There is really a huge range of possibilities of what kind of a President he will be–he could be very good, or very poor, or many places in between. We shall see. But he–and we–will discover very quickly that governing is MUCH harder than campaigning–KSH.

Sen. Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

Read it all.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share.

Read it all.

Some valuable stuff here, such as this:

Brendan Payne in Edmonds, US, says: I voted for McCain and disagree with much of Obama’s policies, but this is an historic day for the United States. Ideology aside, we must come together as Americans to celebrate this great hammer blow against the walls of racism in America.

Read it all.

…[His] plans are for his campaign to quickly start filling top jobs in the White House and cabinet. Leading the list for White House chief of staff is Chicago Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s biggest House cheerleader and a former top aide in the Clinton White House. His appointment, say Democratic insiders, could come as early as Wednesday. Also, Obama is considering Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 presidential runner-up, as secretary of state, according to sources.

Read it all.

CNN projects that Barack Obama will be the nation’s 44th president.

Read it all.

Whatever thoughts you chose to share. Please if at all possible real names and locations highly preferred.

Some of the nation’s most divisive social issues – gay marriage, abortion and affirmative action – went before voters Tuesday as 36 states passed judgment on ballot measures as well as candidates.

Of the 153 measures at stake, the most momentous was a proposed constitutional amendment in California that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples.

Similar measures have prevailed previously in 27 states, but none were in California’s situation – with thousands of gay couples already married in the aftermath of a state Supreme Court ruling in May.

The opposing sides together raised about $70 million, much of it from out of state, to wage their campaigns. The outcome, either way, will have a huge impact on prospects for spreading same-sex marriage to the 47 states that do not allow it.

Read it all.

Check it out. I see over on Intrade that Obama is over 94 and John McCain is down to 6.

For your amusement, I report that the State of New York has ELEVEN Parties on the ballot: Republican, Democrat, Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Socialist Labor, another party with socialist in the title, Green (Cynthia McKinney), Libertarian (Bob Barr), and Populist (Ralph Nader.) McCain/Palin appear on 3 of the first four; and the Democrats and Working Families have Obama/Biden. I’d never heard of the two candidates who’ve been nominated by the two socialist parties.

–From one in the stream of emails today

What we are unlikely to see over the next four years is progress on serious defects in the press and the electoral process that this election revealed.

It is ironic that in 2008 we probably have two of the most honest and decent men running for president that we have had in a long time, and yet this has easily been the most corrupt election in my lifetime.

Read it all.

Bishop Ronald Gainer said Monday that he wrote a letter stressing the church’s stance on abortion to the Lexington Diocese because he felt that too many Catholic politicians had misstated key Catholic teachings.

On Sunday, 64 parishes in the Lexington Diocese were read a letter written by Gainer that stressed that issues about the sanctity of life ”” including abortion ”” are morally more important than other political issues.

The letter, Gainer said Monday, was in response to several letters to the editor and statements made by Catholic politicians on a key Catholic document related to voting and citizenship.

“I mention no party and mention no candidates,” Gainer said of his letter. “Our policy is that we are non-partisan but principled.”

Read it all and the letter itself is there.

Florida has only voted for one Democratic presidential candidate since backing Jimmy Carter in 1976 – Bill Clinton in 1996. Even then, Clinton only received 48 percent of the vote. President Bush carried Florida by only 537 votes in the 2000 election that took five weeks to sort out.

While Bush won by a more comfortable 381,000 votes in 2004, this year’s race is expected to be much closer. Since 2004, Democrats have added 461,000 voters to their rolls, compared to 172,000 more Republicans. And the number of black voters, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, has increased by about 250,000 since 2004.

The campaigns are also competing for Florida’s nearly 1.4 million Hispanic voters, as well as large blocks of Jewish and elderly voters.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once.

Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, baby boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. By Tuesday night, if the polls are to be believed, a member of a new generation will become president-elect.

So today is not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots.

When historians look back at the era that is now closing, they will see a time of private achievement and public disappointment. In the past two decades, the United States has become a much more interesting place. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life. Private citizens, especially young people, repaired the social fabric, dedicated themselves to community service and lowered drug addiction and teenage pregnancy.

Yet, at the same time, the public sphere has not flourished.

Overly dire, in my view, forgetting too much the capacity (or at least the possibility for the capacity) present for renewal culturally and innovation educationally and politicially. In any event, read it all.