MR. BROKAW: On this program about a year ago, you said that being a president is 90 percent circumstances and about 10 percent agenda. The circumstances now are, as you say, very unpopular in terms of the decisions that have to be made. Which are the most unpopular ones that the country’s going to have to deal with?

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, fortunately, as tough as times are right now–and things are going to get worse before they get better–there is a convergence between circumstances and agenda. The key for us is making sure that we jump-start that economy in a way that doesn’t just deal with the short term, doesn’t just create jobs immediately, but also puts us on a glide path for long-term, sustainable economic growth. And that’s why I spoke in my radio address on Saturday about the importance of investing in the largest infrastructure program–in roads and bridges and, and other traditional infrastructure–since the building of the federal highway system in the 1950s; rebuilding our schools and making sure that they’re energy efficient; making sure that we’re investing in electronic medical records and other technologies that can drive down health care costs. All those things are not only immediate–part of an immediate stimulus package to the economy, but they’re also down payments on the kind of long-term, sustainable growth that we need.

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Mugabe and his corrupt regime must go. Lord Acton said: ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ How can anyone share power in a thoroughly corrupt regime?

The sterility of the power-sharing agreement can be seen through this broken land where its people die from eating anthrax-infected cattle or from starvation. Where sewers are open and there is no running water in towns hospitals any longer. A place where there is no electricity to operate the most basic services. A land where cholera is claiming more lives by the day.

The time has come for the international community to recognise that the power-sharing deal signed in September is dead. The impasse within the South African-sponsored negotiations between the MDC and Zanu PF has been sustained by a Mugabe regime which is unwilling to give up power and refuses to recognise the rule of law.

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The most important issue is cutting Detroit’s output to an appropriate level. “What we would tell a client who went from 30% to 20% [share] and they say, ‘We’re modeling now at 20%,’ I’d say, ‘Let’s model it at 16%,'” says Conway. Scaling below capacity doesn’t mean you give up on 20% or even 22% share ”” you can add shifts, for instance, to boost output.

Reducing capacity could also go a long way toward solving Detroit’s revenue problem. Between Detroit and the transplants, there are around 17 million units of manufacturing capacity in the U.S. In 2007 vehicle sales hit 16 million, but about 2 million of those were driven by the combination of easy credit and discount pricing. In a normal economy, the true size of the business may be closer to 15 million units. The Detroit Three simply have to generate more revenue per car and, not incidentally, a profit. Right now, the revenue gap per car is $4,000 vs. Toyota.

The competition hasn’t stood still, of course. Japanese and German makers continue to improve their products, and the U.S. customers they have won over will be hard for the home team to get back. Even as the Big Three have closed the distance over manufacturing, drivetrain and other engineering issues, another has opened up. The transplants have moved on to the sensual: the quality of materials, the look and touch of dashboard knobs, the sound a door makes, the feel of seats. Craftsmanship is the new point of difference. “The Japanese have figured out, How do we reduce friction?” notes Gidwani. “Now they are going to have to catch them in a new area.”

The real catch, though, is whether American taxpayers are willing to give the Big Three the chance.

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The panic in global financial markets has sparked an unprecedented rush into safe US Treasury securities, driving yields on short-term government notes down to almost zero.

Due to stampeding demand for safe short-term investments, the US Treasury’s four-week and three-month bills on Friday yielded an effective rate of 0.01 percent — down sharply from 1.515 percent and 1.785 percent, respectively, in early September.

Other Treasuries are also showing record low yields. The 10-year bond yield fell as low as 2.505 percent and the 30-year bond yield slid to 3.005 percent at one point on Friday. The six-month bond yielded a mere 0.20 percent.

The low yields reflect a surge in demand for these instruments, seen as the safest in the world during times of turmoil.

“Investors seem to be content to sell stocks and park into the bonds for now,” said Greg Michalowski of the financial website FXDD.

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There is very positive news coming out of Chicago this week: the launch of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partnership, which will keep everyone watching for further developments. Numerous planned meetings of Primates in smaller and larger groups, sometimes with the Archbishop of Canterbury and sometimes not, and together with laity in Jamaica as the Anglican Consultative Council, will be occurring over the next six months, guaranteeing that the issues brought forward by GAFCON, the formation of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, and now ACNA, will stay in the center of attention for some time to come.

The launch of the new Anglican Church in North America, an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partners Federation, has been positioned such that there is reasonable hope that Primates of the Anglican Communion, perhaps beginning with the GAFCON Primates’ Council, might begin to recognize the entity as a province in the Anglican Communion. The Jerusalem gathering of GAFCON gave a call for such a new province to be formed, and the approval of a provisional Constitution and Canons of the ACNA is seen as the beginning of this process.

The formation of ACNA, which is a coming together of Anglican judicatories under an Archbishop, leaves two of its sponsoring organizations in a here-and-there position. Both Forward In Faith-North America (FIFNA) and the American Anglican Council (AAC) are advocacy and affinity organizations that overlay actual ecclesial judicatories, and although both are presently headed by bishops, the bishops and the members are all embedded in separate actual church structures.

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My list of blogs you should check out keeps getting longer and longer, and I rarely get to it these days. But tonight I do want to draw your attention to the blog of Rob Sturdy. Rob is the rector of Trinty, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and he is energetic, passionate and inspiring. Give it a look when you get a chance–KSH.

Joining me with more about the implications of all of this is Timothy Shah, adjunct senior fellow for religion and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tim, welcome. Tell us how religion was tied up in this.

TIM SHAH (Adjunct Senior Fellow, Religion and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations): In a number of ways, and in really two big ways in particular. First is that the group that was most likely involved in these terrible attacks in Mumbai was not just a militant group, as we often see in the press, but it was a group motivated by religious ideology. The group is known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means “Army of the Pure,” and it continues to operate openly in Pakistan today. It has reconstituted itself as a faith-based NGO, but it is still a radical Islamic organization motivated by religious ideology. The second way in which religion is involved is that these attacks help to intensify a very volatile mix of religion and politics in India, which especially involves the Hindu nationalist movement and its political wing, the BJP.

[KIM] LAWTON: Now where does this leave India’s Muslim population?

Mr. SHAH: It raises some questions and suspicions in the minds of many Indians and also people outside of India as to whether India’s very large Muslim community was in some way involved in this, if not as the prime instigators perhaps as accomplices. India has a very large Muslim community. It’s the third largest Muslim population in the world, making India the third largest Muslim country in the world of about 130 million people, and so there are questions ””so far no concrete evidence I should emphasize ”” but there are questions and suspicions about the role of India’s Muslims.

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In Port Charlotte, Fla., Sharon Byberg has been looking for a job for 15 months, after being laid off by a surveying company where she made $17 an hour making blueprints for architects and builders.

Ms. Byberg has had few responses to her job applications at national retailers, fast-food chains and grocery stores. A local gas station got more than 1,000 applications for two jobs paying about $8 an hour, Ms. Byberg said.

“Jobs are like diamonds,” she said. “You got to know somebody to get one and they’re extremely rare. … Employers can pick and choose who they want.”

Ms. Byberg, 48, said she has $50 in a bank account and faces about $300 in bills for car insurance and a mobile phone. She hasn’t had any income since her unemployment insurance benefits ran out this September, so she and her 15-year-old daughter now live with her retired mother, whose Social Security checks cover essential costs.

She doesn’t plan to buy anything for the holiday. “I don’t see a Christmas,” she said.

—From a front page story in Friday’s Wall Street Journal

Britain and the United States are likely to be among the countries that will be implicitly criticised in a soon-to-be-released Vatican document on bioethics. The document will address such controversial bioethical issues as embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said it would unveil its new instruction – “Dignitatis Personae: on some bioethical questions” – at a press conference on Friday. It is anticipated that the new text will unequivocally oppose principles such as those contained in Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFE) and those that lie behind undertakings by US President-elect Barack Obama to fund federally embryonic stem-cell research.

The new CDF text, which has been under elaboration for a number of years, will be the first Vatican document to address bioethical issues since Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. Archbishop Angelo Amato, who served as CDF secretary until July, had already indicated nearly two years ago that the new document was being prepared and was intended to update a similar CDF instruction on bioethical themes, “Donum Vitae”, published in 1987.

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He sits by himself in a corner of the dressing room, hunched forward on a metal chair, the same kind you’d see at a Methodist picnic. He tugs at his ears and fiddles with his glasses. He’s already taken his hat off, so he puts it on again, then sets it down, smooths his white hair and rubs his forehead with both hands.

He stands up. He has to. He shifts his weight, touches his chin and fingers the gold whistle around his neck.

Then John McKissick, the coach with 565 wins, more than anyone else in football at any level, calls out to his Summerville team, the 75 or so players dressed in kelly green and gold.

He walks between the bunch, seated on a wooden bench and rows of metal chairs, and lectures them about Gaffney, their opening-round playoff opponent.

He tells ’em the truth: This is the only game that matters.

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Although the recession has not yet been much deeper than its predecessors, it almost certainly will be by the time it is over. With banks still deleveraging and home prices still declining, consumer spending will remain under pressure for many months yet. Business investment is pulling back sharply: orders for capital goods sank 4% in October and commercial construction is about to feel the effects of the collapse in the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities. Exports will be pummelled by the global recession and the stronger dollar. Many economists expect the recession to continue until mid-2009, which would be longer than those of 1973-75 and 1981-82. Moreover, employment is likely to keep falling after the official end of the recession.

So if the Fed did not cause this and the past two recessions, what did? In his paper of a year ago, Mr Hall called them “mystery shocks”. Now, though, there’s less of a mystery; in both 2001 and now one sector experienced dramatic over-investment (technology then, housing now). The paradoxical truth may be that the less volatile business cycle (until recently) encouraged investors to take bigger risks with borrowed money, driving asset prices too high and ending in damaging busts. Some would still blame the Fed, for not deflating asset bubbles with higher interest rates. In a recent speech, Donald Kohn, the vice-chairman of the Fed, rejected that charge but pleaded guilty to a lesser one: by better controlling inflation, central banks helped moderate the business cycle, which bred investor complacency. They thus “may have accidentally contributed to the current crisis.” The Fed may no longer be the prime suspect for causing recessions; but it is still an accessory to the crime.

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This post is not directed at any particular group of Episcopalians (or Anglicans or Christians, for that matter). Instead, if the shoe fits, wear it.

At this time of year, churches across the land are seeking to establish their annual budgets, and are asking parishioners to submit their pledges. The unavoidable fact is that the recession we are currently experiencing will adversely impact those budgets. It therefore becomes all the more important for both churches and their parishioners to allocate their priorities, in order to maximize the benefit of each dollar donated. Thus one has to wonder why churches in tight financial straits would allocate any significant portion of their budgets to lawsuits. And one has to wonder even more at why parishioners, who are perhaps struggling to keep their donations to their church at least on a par with the previous year, would let their money be used in such a wasteful way.

This will not be news to many who reflect for even a moment on the matter, but it needs saying, and saying repeatedly: lawsuits are one of the most inefficient ways that exist to spend money to achieve a given object. Any of the alternatives to a lawsuit—mediation, arbitration, or even face-to-face, unmediated talks—are preferable to taking a case to trial, if the object is to put the dispute behind you as quickly as possible.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said December 5 that she had accepted Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker’s renunciation of his orders in the Episcopal Church.

The Presiding Bishop’s office released a one-page notification on December 5 saying Jefferts Schori had accepted Iker’s renunciation with the “advice and consent” of her advisory council. The document says that Iker made his renunciation in writing on November 24; however a spokesperson for Iker denies that such a renunciation has been made.

“I have chosen to follow this course rather than seeking consent of the House of Bishops to Bishop Iker’s deposition for abandonment of the Communion of this Church because I believe it to be a more pastoral response to Bishop Iker’s clear expression of his desire not to be a part of the Episcopal Church at this time,” the Presiding Bishop wrote in a letter to the House of Bishops. “I believe this course best expresses my hope and prayer that reconciliation in the future can be achieved by God’s love and grace.”

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Bishop Clay Matthews, who heads the Office of Pastoral Development in New York, told ENS December 5 that he or his designee meets with a diocesan standing committee prior to the public announcement of a call for an episcopal election to guide them through the manual and help the diocese create the process and its timetable. His office also offers a search consultant to work with the diocese as the process unfolds.

The anticipated revisions are meant to consider best hiring and transition practices of the field of human resources “while recognizing and insisting that [electing a bishop] is a discernment process,” the Rev. Gay Jennings, a task force member and CREDO associate director, told ENS.

A task force made up of bishops, consultants, theologians, former nominees, spouses and partners of nominees, and chairs of diocesan committees began working on possible revisions in June 2007. Matthews said the group has already outlined some areas for attention, beginning with the fact that the model process his office offers is based on methods used to elect the rector of a parish.

“That’s not the same thing as a bishop being elected to serve a diocese,” Matthews noted.

The group believes that the process needs to be undergirded by a “clearer understanding of the theology of the order of bishop,” he said.

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A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in the state, a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life.

Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling late Friday in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer, who had sued the state with four physicians that treat terminally ill patients and a nonprofit patients’ rights group.

“The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity,” McCarter said in the ruling.

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Aslan, Ohio–As jobless numbers reach levels not seen in 25 years, another crisis is unfolding for millions of people who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, joining the ranks of the uninsured.

The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

Wendy R. Carter, 41, who recently lost her job and her health benefits, is struggling to pay $12,942 in bills for a partial hysterectomy at a local hospital. Her daughter, Betsy A. Carter, 19, has pain in her lower right jaw, where a wisdom tooth is growing in. But she has not seen a dentist because she has no health insurance.

Ms. Darling and Wendy Carter are among 275 people who worked at an Archway cookie factory here in north central Ohio.

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In the year after his return, Blaufus repeatedly enrolled in college classes and then dropped out. He got married four months after coming home, to a woman who left him shortly afterward. Looking back, Blaufus says the war changed everything.

“I understood I could die any day. So I was constantly doing stuff that a 24-year-old shouldn’t be doing. I bought a house ”” I didn’t even look at the house before I bought it. When my marriage ended, the need for everything ended along with it.”

That house has now fallen into foreclosure.

Blaufus has been hospitalized twice since he got back for acute post-traumatic stress disorder.

The list of things he can’t do is long: sleep, eat in front of other people, go running or hiking. He even had to re-learn his favorite thing: playing the guitar.

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Christian Aid partner organisations in Zimbabwe are responding to the cholera outbreak which is now affecting the entire country.

According to the World Health organisation more than 12,000 cases have been reported and 565 people have died.

In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, the Dabane Trust, a Christian Aid partner which specialises in drought recovery programmes, is providing an emergency response in both the city and in the outlying rural areas.

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The most vocal statement against the resolution came from the Rev. Roberts Smith, rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Riverside.

The resolution states that the moratorium violates church canons, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Smith said he agreed with the canons, but he said the moratorium correctly barred from the office of bishop people in same-sex relationships.

“What the Scriptures consistently condemn is homosexual sex, the practice of homosexual sex,” Smith said. “If you read the Scriptures, you’ll see it there again and again. It’s not a matter of orientation. It’s a matter of practice.”

St. Michael’s illustrates how the debate over homosexuality has caused deep fissures in the denomination.

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Driving your car may take on a new and larger meaning ”” for your wallet.

To fix its crumbling roads and bridges and rescue the state’s financially challenged public transit system, a draft report made public yesterday says the state should consider charging tolls at the state line on every interstate highway and creating a new tax for each mile a vehicle is driven.

The report calls for tolls on a new Sakonnet River Bridge, increasing the state gas tax and a long list of other things related to using the roads. One proposed tax would apply to anything made from petroleum, from paint to detergent to plastics.

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Father Hawkins is Dean of Cathedral Church of St Alban the Martyr, Prince Albert.

Retired Milwaukee Bishop Roger White said the convention would disrupt the global Anglican Communion and severely harm relations with other churches.

White said he believed at least 50 percent of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. member, would cut off relations with the Episcopal Church and declare it out of communion.

White also said theology took a back seat at the convention. The House of Bishops has not adopted a theological paper on sexuality drafted by the Committee on Theology, and the convention ignored the paper by taking action on two specific cases, he said.

“My personal feeling, as far as the polity of the church is concerned, is that is doing things the wrong way around,” White said. “I feel that is a very dangerous way to live, and it’s certainly not the way that we’re supposed to do it.”

–From a 2003 AP story about the aftermath of the 2003 General Convention

Read them carefully and read them all.

From here:

“The formation of a parallel province is aspirational claim at this point. While the Archbishop [of Canterbury] has made clear his displeasure with the Episcopal Church, he has made clear his equal displeasure with these attempts to reorder traditional Anglican polity,” Henry D.W. Burt, secretary of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, said in a statement yesterday.

“He did so not only by not inviting Bishop [V. Gene] Robinson of New Hampshire to the Lambeth Conference, but also by excluding those bishops irregularly consecrated under the auspices of overseas provinces….”

The Rev. Canon Robert G. Hetherington, retired rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, reacted to yesterday’s announcement by saying, “I think it’s too bad. It’s something that’s been coming.” He added that he thinks the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, had “bent over backwards to be helpful and try to accommodate some of [the breakaway congregations’] views, to be inclusive of them … I have tremendous respect for his leadership.”

Hetherington added, “In my view, the great thing about the Episcopal Church is we’re not a doctrinal church. You’re not a member based on some narrow set of beliefs. It’s a place where divergent views can be expressed and held and you’re still part of the same body. That’s the sadness of this group leaving, that they just don’t want to be part of the family anymore.”

Rector Gregg Riley of Grace Episcopal Church in Monroe said the beginnings of the separation surfaced in July of this year when conservative Episcopalians met in Jerusalem for the Global Anglican Future Conference.

Riley, who attended the conference, said archbishops, bishops and laity from 17 of the church’s provinces met to “determine the way forward for conservative Episcopalians in North America who felt like the Episcopal Church was going in a different theological direction ”” away from Scripture and away from the teachings of the Church.”

Riley, who described Grace Episcopal Church as a conservative congregation, said he would wait three to six months to consider affiliating his church with the breakaway group.

“Individual parishes will wait and see what the constitutions and canons are like,” Riley said. “We’ve got to wait to see as far as the particulars: who’s the leader, how an individual would affiliate with it.”

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Organizers of the new Anglican Communion in North America include leaders of the Reformed Episcopal church, which has churches in Deming and Los Lunas with a total membership of about 200, said the Rev. Win Mott, pastor of the St. Augustine Anglican Church in Deming.

The new denomination is an attempt to reunite conservative churches that have splintered from the U.S. Episcopal church over the years, Mott said. “The Anglican movement in the United States is fragmented,” said Mott, who is also assistant bishop for the 11-state Diocese of the West for the Reformed Episcopal Church. “Now we’re trying to glue it back together.”

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Realistically, how viable is the new denomination?

Historically, in the Anglican Communion, to form a new province required four existing dioceses to organize it and put forward a constitution. We have those four dioceses in Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, [San Joaquin, Calif.; and Quincy, Ill.]. ”‚.”‚.”‚.

I think the figure they were using [Wednesday] is .”‚.”‚. 100,000 average Sunday attendance. So it’s certainly viable financially, and it’s certainly viable in terms of number of dioceses involved because there are four already existing dioceses.

What do you foresee, legally and financially, for the local congregations that want to remain in Episcopal Church? Are lawsuits likely?

The congregations in this diocese that want to remain in TEC [Episcopal Church] will have to organize a new diocese or join an already existing diocese such as our neighboring Diocese of Dallas. I have offered my assistance to help them achieve this, as has the bishop of Dallas.

I certainly hope that lawsuits over property will be avoided and that a negotiated settlement will satisfy the interests of all parties. Sadly, the TEC authorities have been all too eager to litigate in disputes like this. However, unless the local churches want to litigate against the Diocese of Fort Worth, there isn’t much that the TEC leaders can do about it. Charity and forbearance are required on both sides.

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St. Paul’s Episcopal Church long has been known as the historic Capitol Square church with a socially relevant ministry.

In time, it also will be known for “doing brave, bold things,” said the Rev. Canon D. Wallace Adams-Riley, the church’s new rector.

The church has a rich legacy of “real flesh-and-blood ministries that stretch back to the 19th century with the orphanage. It’s always been a part of who we are and there’s a sense we want it to be even more so,” said Adams-Riley, 37.

He will be formally installed tomorrow as the 15th rector in the church’s more than 160 years. The Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, will preside over the service.

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Norway officials are considering disbanding the town’s police department.

Mayor Brad Fogle, in presenting the town’s proposed 2009 budget for first reading at Monday night’s Norway Town Council meeting, said the police department is currently costing the town more money than it’s generating.

Norway currently does not have a full-time police department and is not seeking a full-time officer at this time, Fogle said. The town’s proposed spending plan for 2009 allocates $152,500 for the police department.

“We have been discussing the possibility of not having a police department for several months. Right now, we only have a part-time officer and although he works very hard, the police department is actually costing the town at this point. I prepared this proposed budget, but I want everyone to understand that we may decide to disband the department completely,” Fogle said. “And, if we approve the budget tonight, it is with the understanding that we may amend this budget during the second reading in January, or we may decide not to have a police department at all.”

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