Watch it all.

And the moral of the story is–Dads are not in charge. But you knew that–right? Watch it all–KSH.

With Lehman gone, the little oligarchy of banks still dominates Wall Street, but the clique is a little bit smaller. This may be the worst possible outcome for the future of our financial markets. Worse even than bailing all every one of the banks out, or letting them all fail. If the whole system had gone down, we’d at least have the chance to rebuild a better one.

But with fewer giants, there is even less competition on Wall Street than before the crisis. The banks in the now smaller club are even more likely to do what monopolists always do: fight transparency and protect their own profits at the expense of small businesses and consumers. And with fewer, but much bigger giants, it will be even harder for regulators to avoid bailing any one of them out if it fails. No matter how badly their managers behave. Before the crisis, four or five of them were probably too big to fail. Now, they all are.

I never thought I would say that I miss Lehman. But as I look out on the new Wall Street landscape, same as the old one, except worse, I’m tempted to put a few flowers on Lehman’s financial grave.

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A retired Army lieutenant colonel-turned-priest has been elected the new primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, one of the largest provinces in the Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Nicholas Orogbodo Okoh, 57, will lead Nigeria’s 20 million Anglicans following next year’s retirement of Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Episcopal Church’s acceptance of homosexuality.

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Earlier this month, James von Brunn, the 89-year-old bigot charged with killing an African American security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, appeared for a hearing in a Washington courtroom.

Von Brunn, who faces charges including first-degree murder, hate crimes and gun violations, “appeared frail and sat quietly in a wheelchair,” according to news reports. The hearing presented evidence that he was on a “suicide mission,” driven to “send a message to the Jewish community” that the Holocaust is a hoax.

Not surprisingly, the judge ordered a mental competency exam.

In the hours after the Holocaust museum shooting, there were multiple, brazen assertions that American Jews were in profound danger and that the shooting was only the latest evidence of the lurking threats that ought to rouse Jews from their mistaken slumber.

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A failed state also has a huge impact on everyday religious experience and practice. Of necessity, religious organizations have to take over most of the responsibilities and activities that a Westerner might expect to fall to government. Churches and mosques supply social services and, in many instances, take over legal and justice functions as well, providing arbitration of disputes and performing community policing. It is scarcely surprising that Islamic courts thrive in Somalia, Sudan and parts of Pakistan where secular justice is only a vague rumor.

Among both Christians and Muslims, many dream, however fancifully, of full-fledged religious states that could suppress the anarchy and misery. Religious fundamentalism will not diminish until those societies develop strong states that can guarantee the supply of food, water, electricity and sanitation.

Only when we in the global North witness what happens when the state is taken out of the picture do we realize how much of what we regard as natural and in evitable in our religious traditions depends on the continued strength of political order and security.

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Doctors, by a large majority, support adding a government run health insurance program that would compete with private insurance. That’s according to a new survey. What’s been called the public option continues to be one of the most contentious issues in the health care debate, but the survey shows that doctors are already used to dealing with government run insurance.

NPR’s Joseph Shapiro reports.

JOSEPH SHAPIRO: In the survey, nearly three-quarters of doctors said they favor a public option. Co-author Dr. Salomeh Keyhani is a researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Dr. SALOMEH KEYHANI (Researcher, Mount Sinai School of Medicine): The results of the study demonstrated that the majority of physicians support a public option in the United States of America.

SHAPIRO: That included the 63 percent who say they’d like to see patients get a choice of public or private insurance and another 10 percent who favor a public option only. They’d like to see a single-payer system. When the public in general is surveyed, support for a public option has run between 50 and 70 percent.

Read or listen to it all.

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby ”” the powerful American Medical Association ”” both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

Read the whole thing.

After Paris warned that new sanctions against Teheran remained an option despite the likelihood of negotiations with Iran, French President Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the Islamic republic was still working on a nuclear weapons program.

“It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear [weapons] program,” Sarkozy told lawmakers from his UMP party on Tuesday, according to Press TV.

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So maybe it’s not swine flu, but the nation seems to have come down with a serious case of impulse control disorder.

Symptoms include (but are not limited to) Kanye West snatching Taylor Swift’s moment at MTV’s Video Music Awards; Serena Williams threatening, with expletives, to cram her ball down a lineswoman’s throat at the U.S. Open; and Rep. Joe Wilson’s inability to contain the urge to denigrate President Obama while the president was in the middle of addressing the nation on a topic of critical importance.

Wilson’s House colleagues formally chastised the South Carolina Republican on Tuesday.

In the wake of these high-profile outbursts across disciplines — politics, entertainment and sports — many Americans have found themselves asking what is going on. To some, it’s not a coincidence but rather the manifestation of a deepening social dysfunction.

“It’s extremely regrettable, but not shocking,” said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist. “And there is a viral element to it. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point.’ You get to a critical mass of something and it spreads like wildfire.”

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In a hearing today in the141st District Court, Judge John Chupp granted the Diocese partial relief under Rule 12 of the Texas code Rules of Civil Procedure. He ruled that attorneys Jonathan Nelson and Kathleen Wells do not represent the diocese or the corporation which have realigned under the Province of the Southern Cone. He denied a second aspect of Rule 12 relief which would have removed the plaintiffs’ diocese and corporation from the lawsuit filed April 14, 2009.

The judge also ruled that neither the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church nor the Constitution and Canons of this diocese prohibit withdrawal from TEC and realignment under another province. Further, he found that the Diocese had done so at its November 2008 annual convention, saying that “they [the members] took the diocese with them.” The action of the November convention was not, he said, ultra vires and void, as the suit’s plaintiffs have argued. He declared, too, that the Diocese had taken its property with it in realignment. He said he did not consider any court ruling concerning a realigning parish to be applicable in the present case, and he said that he considered it “self-serving on [the part of TEC] to say that [Bishop Iker] abandoned his job.

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Everett P. Pope, a member of the Class of 1941 and a decorated World War II hero, was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery Tuesday, September 15, 2009….

Pope’s Medal of Honor Award for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty” was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but presented after Roosevelt’s death by President Harry S. Truman at a White House ceremony in June 1945. The award citation recounted the harrowing circumstances that faced Pope and his men:

Subjected to pointblank cannon fire which caused heavy casualties and badly disorganized his company while assaulting a steep coral hill, Capt. Pope rallied his men and gallantly led them to the summit in the face of machinegun, mortar, and sniper fire. Forced by widespread hostile attack to deploy the remnants of his company thinly in order to hold the ground won, and with his machineguns out of order and insufficient water and ammunition, he remained on the exposed hill with 12 men and 1 wounded officer determined to hold through the night. Attacked continuously with grenades, machineguns, and rifles from 3 sides, he and his valiant men fiercely beat back or destroyed the enemy, resorting to hand-to-hand combat as the supply of ammunition dwindled, and still maintaining his lines with his 8 remaining riflemen when daylight brought more deadly fire and he was ordered to withdraw. His valiant leadership against devastating odds while protecting the units below from heavy Japanese attack reflects the highest credit upon Capt. Pope and the U.S. Naval Service.

Read it all and if you have time watched the video (link provided in article). They are all dying so fast now, one hopes they get the thanks they so richly deserve–KSH

Sen. Max Baucus spent the past few months trying to negotiate a compromise health care overhaul package that would have bipartisan support. But when Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, finally released the details of his massive bill on Wednesday, there was no sign of Republican backing.

Many Democrats are worried that Baucus offered far too many concessions to Republicans ”” most notably dropping the idea of a government-run health care plan to compete with private insurers ”” without securing any firm support from across the aisle.

The top selling point of the Baucus bill was supposed to be its bipartisan appeal. Without some Republican support, Baucus’ version could end up adding to the cacophony of competing proposals passed by several committees in the House and Senate.

Read the whole thing.

Two members of the Communion Partners rectors advisory committee say the group is striving to be an irenic voice as the Episcopal Church discusses the Anglican Communion’s proposed covenant.

“We aim to be constructive in relationships between orthodox clergy and their bishops whose theology may not be the same,” said the Rev. Leigh Spruill, rector of St. George’s Church, Nashville.

Communion Partners has begun filling the void left by congregations and dioceses affiliated with the Anglican Communion Network, but it is cautious about becoming another political force within the Episcopal Church.

“We’re trying to find a better way than the political structures that have arisen in response to volatile issues,” said the Rt. Rev. Anthony Burton, former bishop of Saskatchewan and rector of Church of the Incarnation, Dallas.

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In a kind of high-level pen pal relationship, theologians from six African dioceses are now exchanging essays about sexuality with theologians from four Canadian dioceses. Dr. Kawuki (Isaac) Mukasa, General Synod’s coordinator for dialogue, paired up dioceses during two trips to Africa, including visits to South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda from July 31 to Aug. 21.

Mr. Mukasa, a native Ugandan, considers this work essential to improving communication within the Anglican Communion, which is divided over the place of gays and lesbians in the church.

In Canada, the dioceses of Niagara and New Westminster have agreed to bless same-sex unions, and several other Canadian dioceses are considering following suit. Most African Anglican churches are conservative on the issue.

Read it all.

Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America’s Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury says that bankers should repent over their mistakes which led to a global financial crisis, but he fears that the financial industry is returning to business as usual.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, said in an interview Tuesday that he senses a feeling of “diffused resentment” against bankers for failing to accept responsibility and that the government should act to cap bonus payments.

“There hasn’t been a feeling of closure about what happened last year,” Williams said in an interview on BBC television.

Read it all.

Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called “Advertisements for Myself.”

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

Read the whole piece.

Archbishop Nicholas Orogodo Okoh attended the famous Immanuel College of Theology Ibadan Oyo State between 1976 and 1979. He was made deacon in 1979 preferred a Canon in 1987, collated Archdeacon in 1991 and was elected Bishop of Asaba in 2001.

On the 22nd of July 2005 the Primate elect was elected Archbishop of Bendel Province at St Matthew’s Cathedral Benin. He was in the Army and fought the civil war. He retired as a Lt Col in 2001 after his election as Bishop of Asaba.

Read it all.

From here:

Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen, general secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) welcomed the news “Nicholas Okoh was present at the foundation of GAFCON and has played a leading part in the movement. Archbishop Okoh has made a significant contribution as the Chairman of the Theological Resource group. He is an able and committed Christian leader and we warmly welcome his appointment.”

The out-going Primate, His Grace Akinola, while commenting on the election, said that the new Primate would be sworn in, in Abuja, next year, stressing that the way the election was conducted was an indication that the Church of Nigeria was moving forward.

“Let us just say God has been leading and guiding us and we have been following His leading. This election has taken us five hours of serious prayer to come to the stage we are. It is not a child’s play and we should see it as what God has done and I feel it is coming with a lot of blessings”, he said.

Akinola said he was happy he was leaving the headship of the Anglican Communion when the ovation was loudest, stressing that he was convinced that the new Primate would take the Anglican Communion to greater heights.

Read it all.

The headline above is from the print edition–KSH.

With cash in short supply but loud mandates from above to keep test scores high, principals say they are confronting some of their most challenging decisions, like small class sizes or tutors in English and math? After-school remediation or extra lunchroom monitors? Chess club or drumming class?

“It’s tough,” said Melessa Avery, principal of P.S. 273, which earned an A on its report card from the city this year. “I want to be held accountable, I’m always open to that, but you are stripping me of funds that have helped me become successful.”

At the start of school, Ms. Avery gathered her staff to tell them it would be one of the most difficult years they would face. This year, the school will have 29 students to a class, instead of 21, four fewer teachers and fewer incentives for students, such as free bicycles.

In a back-to-school slideshow, Ms. Avery told teachers they might be asked to take on multiple jobs. She suggested they scour advertisements for supplies and post cheap finds in the teachers’ lounge, and urged them to hold grant-writing get-togethers.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s New York Times.

Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, plans to appoint a committee on church governance and polity “to examine and explain the history, theology, political structure and practical realities of the ways in which we believe God calls us to govern the [Episcopal] Church.”

In a September 14 letter to General Convention deputies and first alternative deputies, Anderson said that after the July 8-17 General Convention meeting “it makes little sense to speak of governance and mission as two different things.”

“Our church is able to enlist the energy and talent of every member in building God’s kingdom precisely because we make room for the Spirit-seeking wisdom of all orders of ministry in the governance of our church,” she said.

Read it all and follow the link to her full letter also.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Nearly a week after Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) interrupted President Obama’s speech on health care, Congress passed a resolution admonishing him. He’s the first member in the history of Congress to be formally chastised in a resolution for such actions.

At first, Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t seem too interested in going after him for shouting “You lie!” when the president insisted that health care subsidies would not be available to illegal immigrants under the health care overhaul bill.

“As far as I’m concerned, the episode was unfortunate, and Mr. Wilson has apologized. It’s time for us to talk about health care and not Mr. Wilson,” Pelosi said.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The example they use is particularly heartbreaking.

Deep rifts at the heart of Western policy on Afghanistan were laid bare yesterday when President Obama’s top military adviser challenged him to authorise a troop surge that his most senior congressional allies have said they will oppose.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more US troops as well as a rapid increase in the size and capability of the Afghan army were needed to carry out the President’s own strategy for prevailing in Afghanistan as the eighth anniversary of a debilitating war approaches.

His remarks to a Senate hearing came as Bob Ainsworth, the British Defence Secretary, said that the Taleban had proven a resilient enemy. “We’re far from succeeding against them yet but I reject that we’re not making progress,” he said at King’s College London.

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I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Only a few months after General Convention approved Resolution C056, public blessings for same-sex couples have begun emerging in dioceses of the Episcopal Church.

On Aug. 30, E. Denise Simmons, the mayor of Cambridge, Mass., exchanged marital vows with her partner, Mattie Hayes, at St. Bartholomew Church, Cambridge. The Rev. Irene Monroe wrote for the online magazine Religion Dispatches about presiding at the service with the Rev. Leslie K. Sterling, the priest in charge of St. Bartholomew’s, and Jada D. Simmons, a justice of the peace and the mayor’s eldest daughter.

“I was elated to be a part of this liturgical assembly line, helping to make a historic event [happen] within the ecclesial strictures of the church,” Ms. Monroe wrote. “Sterling did the invocation, declaration of consent to marry, and blessing of the marriage; Simmons pronounced the marriage, and I did the homily, blessing of rings and vows.”

Further south, the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, Bishop of Southeast Florida, has authorized his clergy to provide pastoral blessings””but not to preside over same-sex weddings””within about a month.

Read it all.