I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved….Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore
Psalm 16: 7-8;11
In an interview on the FOX Business Network, Geithner said the U.S. government stands to profit from many of the rescue deals made to big banks a year ago at the height of the financial crisis.
Later in the interview, Geithner told Liz Claman he does not support a tax on stock trades.
On a transaction tax proposal that has been kicked around in Congress as a way to generate much-needed revenue, Geithner said, “I don’t think that specific thing is the way to go.”
Asked about the recent decline in the value of the dollar against other global currencies, Geithner declined to point to a specific value at which point the Treasury Department might grow concerned.
After a gun-wielding 14-year-old killed his son Jason at the local high school, Anglican minister Dale Lang led a memorial service and publicly prayed for the killer and his family.
That was 10 years ago, and to this day, the Taber, Alta., resident continues to share his story and message of forgiveness.
Lang was in Toronto Nov. 20 for a restorative justice conference to speak about forgiveness as a means to break a cycle of violence.
“If I was still angry at that young man for taking the life of my son, I would be doing more damage to my wife, to my family and to myself,” Lang said.
“If you stay in that anger for any length of time, it will become like a prison, a place that’s very difficult to leave. When we choose to forgive, we can make the choice even though sometimes it’s incredibly difficult and sometimes it will take a while to get to the path of forgiveness.”
Confrontation is threatened by traditionalists in response to the latest news from the Revision Committee on Women in the Episcopate which has ruled out the structural changes demanded by those opposed to women bishops.
After its third meeting, the Committee said it was “unable to identify a basis for specifying particular functions for vesting which commanded sufficient support both from those in favour of the ordination of women as bishops and those unable to support that development. As a result all of the proposals for vesting particular functions by statute were defeated.
“The effect of the Committee’s decision is therefore that such arrangements as are made for those unable to receive the episcopal ministry of women will need to be by way of delegation from the diocesan bishop rather than vesting.”
More than a million American households lost access to basic banking services like savings accounts last year, bank regulators say.
Those families are among 30 million households that have little or no access to such services, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Poor, minority and immigrant families are especially hard-hit.
In all, 25.6 percent of U.S. households either lack bank accounts or use payday loans, check-cashing services and other costly alternatives to traditional banks, according to the survey.
Obama can’t be fairly blamed for most job losses, which stemmed from a crisis predating his election. But he has made a bad situation somewhat worse. His unwillingness to advance trade agreements (notably, with Colombia and South Korea) has hurt exports. The hostility to oil and gas drilling penalizes one source of domestic investment spending. More important, the decision to press controversial proposals (health care, climate change) was bound to increase uncertainty and undermine confidence. Some firms are postponing spending projects “until there is more clarity,” Zandi notes. Others are put off by anti-business rhetoric. The recovery’s vigor will determine whether unemployment declines rapidly or stays stubbornly high, and the recovery’s vigor depends heavily on private business. Obama declines to recognize conflicts among goals. Choices were made — and jobs weren’t always Job One.
Ruth Hassell-Thompson was a young girl decades ago when her older brother, a gay man, vanished from her deeply religious family, moving away to escape their disapproving father.
Ms. Hassell-Thompson, 67, searched for years, finally finding him in a village in the south of France. When she urged him to come home, he said that “my father doesn’t want to see me.”
“But your sister does,” Ms. Hassell-Thompson recalled telling him, her voice breaking as she stood on the Senate floor on Wednesday and publicly revealed her brother’s story for the first time.
Americans need to know how the administration plans to reduce a 10.2 percent unemployment rate ”” a 26-year high and rising. They need to know how the government will foster hiring and help replace the eight million jobs eliminated so far in two years of recession. Economic growth alone cannot repair damage that severe.
First, President Obama must change the terms of the debate. When he announced the job meeting last month, Mr. Obama said he was determined to meet the “great challenge” of unemployment. In the next breath, he tried to dampen expectations, warning of the “limits to what government can do and should do.” He said he was open to “responsible” and “demonstrably good” ideas to create jobs. It would be tragic if that pre-empts bold ones.
Mr. Obama’s mixed message in the teeth of a crisis seems intended to appease Republicans and conservative Democrats who argue that federal budget deficits preclude more aid to combat rising unemployment. The argument is wrong, and giving it credence puts politics ahead of Americans’ needs.
How do we encounter the poor? Are they simply the recipients of our unwanted clothing or our spare change, forgotten until we are confronted by a Salvation Army bell-ringer or a donation-collection truck?
Jesus called the poor blessed because they more readily recognize and receive the kingdom of heaven. People who are the most vulnerable often discover that what they need can only come from God.
Each meeting with shelter or a meal or the kindness of a stranger can be seen as divine providence.
“I think a gay candidate has a strong possibility of being elected,” the Rev. Altagracia Perez, rector of Holy Faith Church in Inglewood, told me. “Most people I’ve asked say she’s their first or second choice. She has a great resume.”
“I think Mary has a great chance,” said the Rev. Brad Karelius, rector of Messiah parish in downtown Santa Ana and a senior priest in the diocese. “There is aggressive lobbying by the gay-lesbian constituency here to get a gay bishop.
“Her biggest challenge – I’m saying this as a lifelong Californian – is the culture. This is the most religiously diverse area in the world … and I don’t know how East Coast formalities would work here.”
Susan Russell, the former president of the Episcopal gay caucus Integrity and a priest at All Saints Church in Pasadena, told me that Ms. Glasspool had been “well-received.”
The Rev. Frank Kirkpatrick, a professor of religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and author of a book on the Episcopal Church’s divisions, predicted the election of a new gay bishop would not cause more parishes to break away.
“I think the people who wanted to leave have already left,” he said. “Sure, I think it would anger some people. But (Robinson’s election) is when the inflamed passions on this came to the fore. Everything after that is a footnote.”
The Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and a prominent Episcopal conservative, said it’s unclear whether more U.S. parishes will leave if a new gay bishop is elected.
But, he said, “It will continue to drive a wedge between dioceses like mine and dioceses like Los Angeles.”
President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan changes the equation. The first reinforcements will be Marines headed for Helmand — and a likely showdown in Marjah. There will be hard fighting ahead, just as there was last summer when Marines entered Nawa and other Taliban strongholds. But with enough resources and enough patience, there is little doubt that American troops and their Afghan allies will be able to secure key areas of southern Afghanistan that have slipped out of the government’s grasp.
Then they can begin the hard work of building Afghan government capacity — a process that has already started in Nawa, where the district governor is working closely with the Marines to provide essential services to the people. Local merchants are even taking the initiative to string power lines, previously nonexistent in this impoverished community.
The questions that remain unanswered after the president’s West Point address: Will the troops have the time and resources needed to win? “Win” is a word that Obama avoided. He cited his long-standing goal of “disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist allies,” but he spoke merely of his desire to “break the Taliban’s momentum” rather than defeat it altogether. He spoke of wanting to “end this war successfully” but said nothing of winning the war.
A New Jersey inmate who was ordained a Pentecostal minister in prison nine years ago but was banned from preaching behind bars won back that right in a negotiated settlement stemming from his lawsuit.
Howard N. Thompson Jr., convicted of murder in 1985 and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, had preached at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton regularly for years until corrections officers prohibited preaching by inmates in 2007.
The settlement was negotiated between the state attorney general and the American Civil Liberties Union, working on Thompson’s behalf.
OSV: What exactly happened? This had been going on for a long time: a lot of women had been coming in and having abortions, so why did you leave at this point?
[Abby] Johnson: The difference is this: Most abortion procedures are not done with ultrasound guidance. So that means that they go in, and they do the abortion. They do an ultrasound before the procedure is done. They don’t do an ultrasound during the procedure, so you don’t actually see what is going on inside the uterus during the abortion procedure. The reason they don’t do it is that it takes longer, and industries like Planned Parenthood, who are trying to pump out as many abortions as possible per day, don’t want to take the time to do a more accurate procedure. They just want to do them as quickly as possible to get more women in and out the door.
But this particular physician, for whatever reason, chose to do an ultrasound-guided procedure on this patient and called me in the room to assist, which was not something I usually did as director. But I did go in to assist, and my job was to hold the ultrasound probe on the woman’s abdomen during the procedure so he could visualize the uterus during the abortion. What I saw during the procedure was so gruesome to me, and something I had never experienced before, that I just thought, “I’ll never do this again.”
Can we talk, here? I mean, just you and me? No blame; no shame? Let me start the conversation (right now it’s a monologue but I hope you’ll join in, right?). Here are the facts: three out of four of our finest entrepreneurial leaders in charge of a failed “start” eventually leave the Episcopal Church, after leaving the ministry. Do you understand the significance of that well-documented statistic? It means that, while we say we want to learn from our failures, we don’t quite know what to do with the very person who needs to lead the inquiry! It means that, while we love it when industry leaders advise us to “fail early and fail often” to discover what works, we’re still a little scared when it comes to shamelessly and blamelessly working through our own failures in order to discover what works. It also means that, while we get awfully passionate about recycling tuna cans and paper towel rolls, we don’t know how to “recycle” our own best leaders. We let them wander off stage to fend for themselves without even thinking to ask, “How can we help you find your next post in our church?” or, “How do we learn from this venture so that we do better the next time?”
Thirteen embryonic stem-cell lines were approved for use by U.S.-funded researchers today, the first of hundreds of cell colonies that may become available under new polices promised by President Barack Obama.
Stem cells taken from days-old human embryos can be kept alive indefinitely in solution, and have the ability to turn into about 200 cell types in the body. Use of these so-called cell lines is opposed by some people because extracting them destroys the embryos. The stem-cell expansion was announced today by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, in a telephone briefing with reporters.
Despite Barack Obama’s face featuring prominently on the evening bulletins on the various televisions positioned around one of central Kabul’s large and grimy restaurants, tonight few of the diners were taking any notice of the news that an extra 30,000 US troops would be arriving in Afghanistan soon.
“It is just a political decision taken by the Americans, it has nothing to do with us,” said one customer.
Those watching were sceptical about the chances of the surge bringing peace. “Wherever the foreign forces go they are attacked and it is the civilians who always get killed,” said Mohamad Ashraf, an economics graduate, as he tucked into a dinner of fried mutton.
The outside world may be focused on Iran’s intensifying confrontation with the West over its nuclear program. But at home, Iranians are more concerned with an ambitious and risky new effort to overhaul the country’s troubled economy.
If it goes awry, the plan to phase out Iran’s system of state subsidies, which has existed for decades, could profoundly destabilize the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has aggressively championed change. But it could also help wean Iran from its dependence on foreign gasoline and insulate the economy from new sanctions ”” which are a strong possibility if Iran continues to defy Western pressure over its nuclear program.
The new plan has been the subject of frenzied debate in shops, blogs and homes across Iran, not to mention the Parliament. Lawmakers across the political spectrum have warned of catastrophic price shocks once subsidies are lifted. Conservatives seem deeply worried about the repercussions, with some saying the plan could lead to a crime wave, or worse. Opposition leaders like Mir Hussein Moussavi have begun hinting that the government’s failure to stem economic pain could become their new rallying cry.
A “Tobin” style tax on financial transactions is not the best way to raise cash for bank bailouts, a senior official from the European Union’s executive body said on Wednesday.
The G20 group of leading countries asked the International Monetary Fund at a meeting in Scotland last month to come up with options by April for a possible transaction tax, “insurance” levy or resolution fund paid for by banks.
It would help refund taxpayers for huge bailouts and pay for future rescues.
The European Commission, which participates in the G20, told a European Parliament hearing on transaction taxes it was not working on such a proposal, there were doubts about its impact, and several issues need clarifying.
“It leads us to the clear conclusion that such as tax is not the right instrument. It’s not a secure instrument,” said Alexander Wiedow, a director in the commission’s tax unit.
Yet another commission reports that TEC is in steep decline. We are helped to digest this news with the sweetener that there are good things going on as we decline! So what happened to us?
The extraordinary thing about all this is our fairly sudden and dramatic collapse. The late fifties were a time of growth in numbers, income and “membership” both in England and the US. Over 3 million people in the US identified themselves as Episcopalians. New church plants were on the rise and special shorter courses were established in seminaries to train older men for ordination. For the CofE, things were better than at any time since Victoria died.
I do not for a moment believe that suddenly in the sixties people became less religious or religiously inclined. I do believe that Anglicanism lost its nerve. I do believe that we began to produce a leadership, lay and ordained, that assumed that the voices heard in academia and among the “culture-vultures” reflected the thoughts of most people. Yet the “intelligentsia” of that day ”“ I am not speaking of truly educated people ”“ no more reflected the feelings and thoughts of every day people then than they do now.
We went for a ride with “right thinking” people and still not cannot get it into our heads that these people, what ever their social or political ideals, are a vocal minority.
The vast majority of people were left out of this small company of the self-obsessed.
Classic Anglicanism always described itself as a “via media,” a “middle way” between the Protestantism of Geneva and the Catholicism of Rome. Anglicans claimed to be the authentic Catholic Church of England, that little dispute in the 16th century over papal supremacy being merely an “unfortunate incident” – so very English and polite. Sadly, the “via media” proved to be untrue for some of the greatest minds the Anglican Church ever produced, and a succession of brilliant converts – Newman, Chesterton, Knox, Benson and Muggeridge, to name but a few – found that the true Catholic Church of England was the Church the martyrs died for, in union with Peter.
However, even until comparatively recently, while the Anglican Church held to the ancient creeds of the Church, the possibility of eventual union with Rome could still be prayed for, and worked towards.
All that is now, tragically, a thing of the past; we have all seen on our television screens the implosion of the Anglican Communion over its abandonment of the traditional morality of Christendom for the
last two thousand years.
The Anglican Church is now completely divided – split here in the United States into at least three distinct groups. Large groups of the Anglican Church in Africa will have no contact whatsoever with the Episcopal Church in America.
First with its unilateral decision to ordain women and then with the consecration of an openly homosexual man as a bishop, the U.S. Episcopal Church signaled that the “via media” was over, and the Anglican Church had decided to join the mainstream of other Protestant churches who were rejecting the consistent witness of Scripture and tradition over ordination and sexual morality for the “zeitgeist” of contemporary culture, whatever it may be.
“You can’t stop a train that’s being fueled by cheap money,” as the Federal Reserve keeps its target interest rate near zero, said Mike Farr, president of the portfolio-management firm Farr, Miller & Washington. “We still have a day of reckoning ahead, but that day is being delayed for now.”
Eric Kemp was not only the longest serving diocesan bishop of recent times but also the last “old-style” Anglican bishop who, once enthroned in his cathedral and ensconced in his palace, could retain his see for life. For centuries bishops were allowed, indeed expected, to hold their sees far into old age and die in office. Since 1975 the Church of England has required bishops to retire at 70, but the legislation did not apply to those already in post.
With the retirement of David Sheppard from Liverpool in 1997, Kemp alone remained. Hence it was something of an irony that Kemp, one of the Church’s leading canon lawyers and someone who played a large part in the revision of Anglican canon law, became the last vestige of the older order. He was Bishop of Chichester for 27 years from 1974 until 2001, 16 of them beyond the new retirement age, during which his contribution to the diocese, the Church of England and the wider Church was a particularly distinguished one.
The Church of Sweden (Svenska Kyrkan) is bleeding members at an increasingly rapid pace, at the same time as membership rolls in Islamic, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christian assemblies are on the rise.
Between November 2008 and October 2009, nearly 72,000 people, or roughly 1 percent of the church’s 6.8 million members, asked to leave, according to church statistics reviewed by the TT news agency.
The number of people abandoning Sweden’s largest church is roughly 20,000 more than the previous year.
Five members of an unregistered Chinese Protestant congregation have been sentenced to two years in a labor camp following a police raid on their church, a monitoring group said Wednesday.
The report comes less than a week after five leaders of the same church in the northern province of Shanxi were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years on charges including illegal assembly, the toughest punishments against unofficial church leaders in more than three years.
We have now reached the stage of the health-care debate when all that matters is getting a bill passed, so all news is good news, more subsidies mean lower deficits, and more expensive insurance is really cheaper insurance. The nonpolitical mind reels.
Consider how Washington received the Congressional Budget Office’s study Monday of how Harry Reid’s Senate bill will affect insurance costs, which by any rational measure ought to have been a disaster for the bill. CBO found that premiums in the individual market will rise by 10% to 13% more than if Congress did nothing. Family policies under the status quo are projected to cost $13,100 on average, but under ObamaCare will jump to $15,200.
Fabulous news!
“No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study,” said the New York Times, while the Washington Post declared, “Senate Health Bill Gets a Boost.” The White House crowed that the CBO report was “more good news about what reform will mean for families struggling to keep up with skyrocketing premiums under the broken status quo.”