The conviction of three British Muslim men of a plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, and of a fourth for a related conspiracy, has told the world how close it came to reliving the horrific trauma of 9/11 when four American airliners were used as flying bombs. It is not clear how many aircraft the British conspirators hoped to bring down, but the death toll could have exceeded the 2,993 (including 19 terrorists) who died in those 2001 attacks. As happened after the so-called 7/7 and 21/7 attacks in London in 2005, this case draws attention to a small number of very disaffected young British men of Pakistani origin who invoke their religion to justify mass attacks on innocent people. Leaders of the Muslim community welcomed the verdicts, as did many ordin-ary British Muslims, but undoubtedly there are still potential terrorists at large. A significant fringe of Muslims in Britain either sympathise with them or are at least ambivalent.

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GALSTON: Well, we have to understand the mission in light of 9/11. The attack on the United States, which killed thousands of civilians, was conceived and launched by Al-Quaeda using Afghanistan as a base, with the Taliban government sheltering them, and the piece of the mission on which everyone agrees is the importance, the urgency, and the moral justification, the defensive justification, of making sure that Afghanistan cannot again serve as a base for terrorist attacks on the United States.

ABERNETHY: Okay, so what are the means to that end? How do we do it?

GALSTON: That’s one of the questions that’s being debated in Washington right now, and there are two basic options. Option number one is to try to create an Afghan government that is legitimate, enjoys the consent of the people, and has the capacity to prevent Al-Quaeda and other terrorist groups from acting on its territory. The other possibility is to abandon the hope of creating such a government on the grounds that we don’t have the capacity to do it, and focus instead on direct attacks on Al-Quaeda and other terrorists, using drones, using bombs”¦

ABERNETHY: In Pakistan as well as ”¦

GALSTON: ”¦and special forces, in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, absolutely.

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IN THE political dictionary he first published in 1968, William Safire, who died on September 27th, devoted an entry to the word “normalcy”. The term was made popular by Warren Harding, campaigning for America’s presidency in the wake of the first world war. It was inescapable after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Normalcy is what people call normality when they no longer take it for granted. No surprise, then, that the word reappeared in the communiqué released by the leaders of the G20 group of big economies after their Pittsburgh summit on September 24th-25th. After the wrenching economic crisis of the past year, people crave stability and predictability””in short, normalcy. But how far off is it? And what will a “normal” world economy look like after the biggest financial bust since the Depression?

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Clair “Toby” Touby and others are concerned that Bishop William Love is trying to lead the Diocese of Albany out of the Episcopal Church altogether.

“He says he is not going to leave, but actions speak louder than words,” Touby said.

Touby, who lives in Saranac Lake, is the president of Albany Via Media, a group of moderate to liberal Episcopalians. He has been urging parishioners to attend a series of meetings Love has held throughout the diocese in the past few weeks.

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We do not believe a property lawsuit is the best response to a congregation’s departure from the Episcopal Church. The number and intensity of lawsuits involving the Episcopal Church should be a source of shame for anyone who takes seriously these words of St. Paul: “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers” (1 Cor. 6:7-8).

In too many cases, the Episcopal Church and departing congregations have convinced themselves that crushing their opposition is a matter of Christian stewardship. Both sides depict themselves as victims who have been forced into lawsuits by malevolent forces. Both sides sink millions of dollars into legal fees, even while loudly proclaiming how much they would rather spend these funds on Christian mission.

Amid this chaos, the Dennis Canon becomes the usual standard for sorting out who has a legitimate claim to property. It is good to have a standard for resolving property disputes, but the Dennis Canon too often could be judged by what our Lord had to say about another law: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8).

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Ten American troops were killed at the weekend in two surprise attacks that caused alarm in Nato’s US-led coalition.

In one, hundreds of insurgents attacked a pair of isolated outposts in eastern Afghanistan, killing eight US soldiers and several Afghan policemen in the deadliest battle in 15 months. Scores more Afghan policemen were reportedly captured by the Taleban.

In the other an Afghan policeman opened fire on the American soldiers with whom he was working in central Wardak province, killing two and injuring three.

It was unclear whether the policeman was working for the Taleban or simply ran amok but the attack fuelled the distrust that many Nato soldiers already feel for the Afghan security forces that they are supposed to be working with and training as part of the coalition’s eventual exit strategy.

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In terms of numbers, the Anglican Church isn’t a very big player in Samoa.

But the scale of the tsunami disaster is such that no-one with any Pacific connections has been left untouched by it ”“ including some leading figures in the Diocese of Polynesia.

Take Taimalelagi Fagamalama Tuatagaloa-Leota, for example.

Archdeacon Tai, as she’s known to hundreds in this church is a Samoan living in Auckland. She has served as the Anglican Observer at the United Nations, on the Anglican Consultative Council, as a Diocese of Polynesia representative to the General Synod, and earlier this year she was priested.

For her, the impact of the tsunami is profound.

One of her adult sons was in a van that was swept out to sea by the tsunami. He finished up half under the van, impaled by roofing iron. He’s critically injured, and is in Apia hospital.

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The war in Afghanistan is at a crossroads. President Obama will soon decide whether to commit more U.S. troops to a conflict that’s already on the verge of becoming the longest military action in American history–or perhaps begin to dial back our commitment there. It’s been more than eight years since the war began, and for much of that time, it was a conflict that took place at the margins of our awareness. First the quick fall of the Taliban regime made Afghanistan seem like a problem largely solved. Then the extended agony of the Iraq war drew all eyes in that direction. But the problem wasn’t solved, the Taliban insurgency sprang back to life, and now Afghanistan is a military and political conundrum: Is it in our national interest to double down, or is the conflict an impossible one that will only come to grief?

In August, photojournalist Adam Ferguson, who has visited Afghanistan repeatedly to document the lives of U.S. infantrymen, landed there again, this time on assignment for TIME. His mission was to join Apache company, a detachment of 102 soldiers who had arrived a month earlier to establish a combat-operations post in the Tangi Valley, not far from Kabul. An incongruous strip of greenery between two bone-dry mountain ranges, the valley has become a flash point for the Afghan insurgency. By the time Ferguson got there, 26 men of Apache company had been wounded in the seven weeks since their arrival, and one had been killed in action–all from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the deadly little bombs that lurk anywhere.

To convey the truth of a soldier’s life in a place like that, your pictures have to delineate a wide range of experience, from pain and grief and anxiety to loneliness, mischievousness and sheer boredom. The images have to find an equilibrium between the war zone as a place of jangling danger and abrupt violence and the war zone as the temporary quarters of young men far from home who are simply trying to get through the day with some semblance of normality. There will be blood, but there will also be mealtimes, horseplay and video games. Recall the old dictum by the great photojournalist Robert Capa: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” What our photographer has attempted here is to get close enough.

Read it all and check out all the photographs.

Important note: this article is inaccurate and it is possible that there will be a correction coming in which case I will seek to post it–KSH.

The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina has for years objected loudly to what it considers liberalizing trends in the Episcopal Church, and now has proposed to begin the process of breaking away from the national church body. It is doing so not only because the Episcopal Church ordained in 2003 an openly gay bishop, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, but for a variety of reasons, most of which are theological in nature, many diocese officials repeatedly have said.

In mid-September, the diocese’s standing committee and deans, under the leadership of Bishop Mark Lawrence, published five resolutions to be voted on at a special diocesan convention scheduled for Oct. 24 at Christ Church in Mount Pleasant. The meeting was called in response to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., in July, during which bishops and delegates decided overwhelmingly that gays and lesbians in committed relationships were eligible for “any ordained ministry” and that gay unions were not inconsistent with the principles of the church.

Since “the governing bodies of The Episcopal Church have failed to operate within the boundaries of its canons and continued participation in such behavior would make the Diocese of South Carolina complicit in this dysfunction, be it resolved that this Diocese authorize the Bishop and Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from all bodies of The Episcopal Church that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them,” the diocese’s Resolution No. 2 states.

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The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to announce as early as Monday whether it will hear a property-rights case between the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach.

The court’s decision on whether it will hear the case could affect another parish formerly associated with the Episcopal Church: St. Luke’s Anglican Church in La Crescenta.

On Sept. 30, Judge John Shepard Wiley, Jr., of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Fourth Appellate District, ordered St. Luke’s to surrender the church property to the diocese by Oct. 12. The diocese plans to re-establish St. Luke’s-of-the-Mountains Episcopal Church. The Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles, will preside at a service of reconciliation at 2 p.m. Oct. 18, the feast day of St. Luke.

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In a 24-7 media world, one would have expected the story of Roman Polanski to last, oh, about 9 1/2 minutes. He raped a girl, admitted it, fled the country before sentencing, was caught again and now faces justice.

On what planet is this controversial?

We might shrug and say, “Only in France,” where the culture minister called the arrest evidence of “a scary America that has just shown its face.” Or, perhaps, we say, “Only in Hollywood,” where more than 100 filmmakers and actors have petitioned for Polanski’s release.

What’s more likely is that we have reached the point, identified by the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at which deviancy has been defined down to such an extent that we no longer recognize it. If it isn’t deviant for a 43-year-old man to stalk, drug, rape and sodomize a 13-year-old girl, what is?

Yet, during the past several days, Polanski has become a true cause celebre, point man in an international incident that has individuals and nations weighing in and staking out positions.

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With the Senate Finance Committee set to approve its health care bill this week, Democrats are tantalizingly close to bringing legislation that would make sweeping changes in the nation’s health care system to the floor of both houses of Congress.

Party leaders still face immense political and policy challenges as they combine rival proposals ”” two bills in the Senate and three in the House. But the broad contours of the legislation are in place: millions of uninsured Americans would get subsidized health benefits, and the government would move to slow the growth of health spending.

Senior Democrats said they were increasingly confident that a bill would pass this year. “I am Scandinavian, and we don’t like to overstate anything,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and an architect of the Finance Committee bill. “But I have a solid feeling about the direction of events.”

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After all the dedicated work of the bishops and deputies at General Convention, Straub reports that only 19 resolutions were not acted upon at the General Convention 2009.

Of the 19, Straub said, most were duplications of those that had been submitted and parts had been incorporated into resolutions that were considered. “Legislative Committees routinely ask to be discharged from considering further this kind of resolution, but by the end of Convention, committees are meeting only to vote on resolutions that have been amended by the other house,” he explained. “These were left behind.”

He added, “Five resolutions were incomplete: that is, they were perfected by a legislative committee, debated and voted on in one house of convention, but for one reason or another (usually time), the matter never came to the second house.”

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Check out the second chart–it is very sobering.

Update:In a time of globalization, this chart is fascinating also (make sure to click to enlarge).

We know of the works of the Cappadocian Fathers as they developed a terminology in support of the Trinity and have been honoured for this in the Orthodox Christian tradition. However, there are other, now mostly forgotten, intellectuals who argued with as much intensity on the other side of the question. Eunomius, another Cappadocian, but of more humble background, made himself the target of the Fathers by the relentless way in which he used logic to clarify theological issues, arguing that it was the distinction between Father and Son that mattered, not the “one in substance” of the Trinitarians. He was taunted for having the philosopher Aristotle as his bishop and inspired a rush of responses “contra Eunomium” ”” against Eunomius.

This fertile tradition of debate was infused by the richness of pagan thought but not diminished by it. It faded at the end of the century, largely through the legislation of the emperor Theodosius I (379-95). The Eunomians and those who believed Jesus had seen himself as subordinate to the Father were declared heretical by law and pagans were silenced. A great deal was lost.

I am not a theologian but I do try to read some theology to understand the issues in contemporary debate. All too often I get stuck on sentences that mean nothing even on the third or fourth reading. As a historian I am often frustrated to be told that there is only one historical explanation for a supernatural event when the evidence is insufficient to support any at all. I have seen theologians taken to task for a wholly inappropriate use of logic. Very often theologians seem unaware of how weak their arguments are to anyone with a philosophical background. It is then that I think of the wisdom and confidence of Basil of Caesarea. His broad training in “profane” subjects served only to enrich his theology and strengthen his arguments and did nothing to diminish his Christian compassion.

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Apologies have been extended to people in the Anglican Diocese of Chelmsford in England who felt they were not consulted in process to choose the next bishop.

The acting diocesan bishop, the Bishop of Bradwell, Dr Laurie Green, sent out a letter saying: “We are really sorry that some people feel they have not had sufficient and time and warning to offer their submissions in the Vacancy in Sea process within our Diocese.”

The Rev John Richardson hosted a discussion on his blog about who the diocese should look for to follow the Rt Rev John Gladwin who retired at the end of August, after he became aware of a groundswell of dissatisfaction amongst members of the diocese who felt left consultation process.

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Earlier in the summer, the Episcopal Church decided to take steps toward creating a service for gay unions. The move, while controversial, continues the Episcopal Church’s branching from its Anglican roots. In 2003, the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay clergy member.

Few religious leaders contacted by the Sun-Times News Group about either the ELCA or Episcopal changes wanted to speak on the issue. Most of those who did declined to be identified. Their reasons for not wanting to speak varied, and perhaps could be an indicator of the divisive nature of the progressive movements of church leadership.

One local Episcopal clergy member spoke at length about his reluctance to potentially adopt any sort of rites for gay unions and cited a rule that would give discretion to individual churches over such matters.

That same member of the clergy requested that the Chicago diocese be contacted for further comments. Calls placed to the general number of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago went unanswered.

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Cristen Chinea, a senior at M.I.T., made a confession in her blog on the college Web site.

“There’ve been several times when I felt like I didn’t really fit in at M.I.T.,” she wrote. “I nearly fell asleep during a Star Wars marathon. It wasn’t a result of sleep deprivation. I was bored out of my mind.”

Still, in other ways, Ms. Chinea feels right at home at the institute ”” she loves the anime club, and that her hall has its own wiki Web site and an Internet Relay for real-time messaging. As she wrote on her blog, a hallmate once told her that “M.I.T. is the closest you can get to living in the Internet,” and Ms. Chinea reported, “IT IS SO TRUE. Love. It. So. Much.”

Dozens of colleges ”” including Amherst, Bates, Carleton, Colby, Vassar, Wellesley and Yale ”” are embracing student blogs on their Web sites, seeing them as a powerful marketing tool for high school students, who these days are less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.

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A specter is haunting Europe ”” the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

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As I’ve been traveling around the diocese speaking at Adult Forums on Parish Visitations, or meeting with clericus and deanery gatherings in preparation for our upcoming Special Convention on October 24 at Christ Church, Mt. Pleasant I have often been asked questions which are worded differently but I believe in each case are trying to get at the same concern. Sometimes the question comes as “Bishop, what do you hope to accomplish through this Special Convention?” Other times it is worded, “What can we (the laity) do to engage this challenge our church is facing?” It is addressing I believe something I was trying to get at in several sections of my Bishop’s Address to the Clergy on August 13. Perhaps it is best termed “The Power of Followership.”
As anyone with even a dabbler’s acquaintance with the literature of Business and Management can attest, much has been written in the last twenty years or so on leadership. Business gurus like Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, Max DePree and others have written prolifically on the importance of leaders in both the private and public sectors of society. Clearly many of our institutions in the business, political, educational and ecclesiastical spheres have faltered from a distinct dearth of leadership.

What has received sparse, even parsimonious treatment in this spate of leadership books, however, has been the power of followership. The first person I heard pointing this out was Robert E. Kelley, a professor of Business at Carnegie-Mellon University. Business Week once described him as an “entrepreneur of the mind.” Some years ago I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Kelley lecture on “The Power of Followership.” I thought it was a helpful corrective to our recent leadership-intensive-managerial world. He suggested that many of our institutions did not understand the power of followership””that is, those followers who without star-billing bring enthusiasm, intelligence, self-reliance and innovation to the pursuit of organizational goals.

Only a few of Jesus’ early disciples became profoundly influential leaders and their names we can quickly list. But frankly in most cases the real success of those He called “to follow” him was seen not in the power of their leadership but in the power of their followership. And in most cases that’s what they were””followers. For instance, we do not know the names of those who first preached the gospel in Antioch though the church they founded was arguably the most dynamic Church of the First Century, as least for reaching the Roman world for Christ. The Book of Acts speaks only of those scattered because of the persecution of Stephen who on coming to Antioch spoke (gossiped the gospel) to Hellenists. “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.” (Acts 11:21) I believe it is just as true in the Church today. Whenever a parish and diocese can make enthusiastic, intelligent, innovative, self-reliant and Spirit-led disciples the power of followership will become an immeasurable force for growth and mission, including the power to transform the culture.

This, unfortunately, is often the forgotten key to any Church’s success. As I put it in the recent “Bishop’s Address,” if we in the Diocese of South Carolina are going to engage the challenges facing us in the culture and the church “we need believers who are informed, engaged, missional and faithful.” This is all about the power of followership””equipping and unleashing the laity to engage the culture that is permeating both the church and the world. The conversations we are having in our congregations and deaneries in preparation for the upcoming Special Convention, and the proposed resolutions, (as well as the Convention itself) are not ends in themselves: they are steps along the way toward that greater purpose and goal. While acknowledging the ever present need for leaders and leadership we should not forget the equally crucial power of followership””in fact I write this today in this Diocese of South Carolina in praise of followership!

–(The Rt. Rev.) Mark Lawrence is Bishop of South Carolina

Nowadays you practically have to kill somebody to get blacklisted in Hollywood. Mere rape, by contrast, scarcely jiggles the needle of outrage. Producer Harvey Weinstein actually went so far as to describe Mr. Polanski’s odious conduct as a “so-called crime.” The names of such noted filmmakers as Mr. Allen, Jonathan Demme, Michael Mann, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh can be found on an international petition whose 100-plus signers “demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.” Equally predictable was the response of European bureaucrats such as French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who called Mr. Polanski’s arrest “absolutely dreadful,” adding that it made “no sense” for him to be “thrown to the lions for an ancient story.”

We need not take the remonstrations of the French too seriously. They have a long history of forgiving their own artists for pretty much anything, up to and including open collaboration with the Nazis. Far more interesting was the response on this side of the Atlantic. At first, American reaction to the arrest appeared to be breaking along the usual red vs. blue fault lines, with much being made of the fact that Samantha Gailey, Mr. Polanski’s victim, has said that she’s forgiven him (though that didn’t stop her from suing him in civil court in 1988””or from accepting an undisclosed out-of-court settlement to drop the suit).

But the cultural tide started to turn on Monday when Kate Harding, a contributor to Salon.com, wrote a column called “Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child” in which she pointed out, bluntly and accurately, that Mr. Polanski “gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her. . . . There is evidence that the victim did not consent, regardless of her age.” Ms. Harding’s piece included a link to the transcript of Ms. Gailey’s 1977 grand-jury testimony, in which she described with gruesome explicitness the crime perpetrated on her person””a crime of which Mr. Polanski acknowledged his guilt in court.

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Any person’s conversion is by nature an individual and idiosyncratic journey, and Mr. Oren’s reflected not only his visceral sense that Orthodoxy had a “core of holy tradition” but also his intense concern over theological concepts like giving the Eucharist to baptized infants, which may not animate other believers quite the same way.

Yet in its broader outlines, his movement from the Protestant realm into the Orthodox one, specifically into the Antiochian branch, attests to a significant and fascinating example of denominational migration. Over the last 20 years, the Antiochian Orthodox Church ”” with its roots in Syria and Lebanon and its longtime membership in the United States made up almost entirely of Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants ”” has become the destination of choice for thousands of Protestants of Northern European ancestry.

The visible shift began in 1987 with the conversion of nearly 2,000 evangelical Christians, led by Peter E. Gillquist and other alumni of the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Campus Crusade for Christ. More recently, a wave of converts has arrived from such mainline Protestant denominations as the Episcopalian and Lutheran.

Some 70 percent of Antiochian Orthodox priests in the United States are converts, according to Bradley Nassif, who, as a theology professor at North Park University in Chicago, is a leading scholar of the religion. A generation or two ago, Professor Nassif said, converts made up barely 10 percent of Antiochian clergy.

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President Obama got what he said he wanted when United States negotiators met with their Iranian counterparts this week in Geneva: direct engagement, without preconditions, with Iran.

But the trick now for Mr. Obama, administration officials concede, will be to avoid getting tripped up. In other words, is the Iranian government serious this time?

The clearest risk is that the Iranians may play for time, as they have often been accused of doing in the past, making promises and encouraging more meetings, while waiting for political currents to change or the closed ranks among the Western allies to break.

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Writing in the ecumenical journal Touchstone, [Leon] Podles argued that it’s especially important for Christians and other religious believers to understand that anger is not always a sin or an emotion that must be avoided. In fact, there are circumstances in which it is a sin not to feel anger. The ultimate question, he said, is whether anger leads to rational, constructive, virtuous actions.

Who would argue, for example, that it was wrong for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to feel righteous anger about the impact of racism and economic injustice on the lives of millions of black Americans? Who would argue that it was wrong for Nelson Mandela to draw strength from the anger he felt during his 27 years in prison under South Africa’s apartheid regime?

It’s crucial in both of these cases, stressed Podles, that these men did not allow their anger to turn into hatred of their oppressors.

Instead, it led to courageous and strategic acts to accomplish worthy goals.

“Anger must be more than mere emotion,” he stressed. “Anger must also be proportionate to the evil that provokes that anger. Take road rage, for example. That kind of anger is completely irrational and it accomplishes nothing.”

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Anglicans have never claimed to base their decisions solely on the Bible, [Katharine] Jefferts Schori said. “We start there, but that’s not the only piece we bring to our decision-making.”

The few biblical passages about same-sex relationships may be talking about exploitive relationships, she said. “Jesus doesn’t say anything about same-sex relationships of the kind the church is talking about.”

Jefferts Schori also drew fire during and after the General Convention for her sermon denouncing “the great Western heresy” that people can be saved as individuals. Salvation happens within a community, she said.

She defended herself on Friday.

“People took it out of context,” Jefferts Schori said. “You can’t be in a right relationship with God without being in a right relationship with your neighbor.”

But she declined to say people can’t be in a right relationship with God without being in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, she said. “God is at work in the lives of people who are not consciously Christian.”

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Watch it all–and do you know the reference in the title above?

Vigeland: You spoke with about a thousand workers, non-management types about their perspectives on work. What did you hear?

Davis: We were somewhat surprised to hear that over half of these workers feel that their careers are stagnant or in limbo.

Vigeland: And did they tell you why?

Davis: Yes, they did. How I would term this is they said that they were “in the no.” They had no challenging assignments, they have no opportunities to learn new skills, they have no room to advance, they get no recognition and they have no line of sight to how their jobs fit in with the objectives of the organization.

Vigeland: Then how do those feelings of stagnation manifest themselves in the workplace. What’s happening?

Davis: People are going to actively seek new jobs as the economy improves. People are saying things like, “I just do what’s asked of me, nothing more, nothing less. I just do my job and go home.” As opposed to people that say, “I’m interested in what I do, I’m excited about going to work.” And it has a negative impact on productivity and quality and customer service in organizations.

I caught this last night while running some errands and it blew my mind. Over 50%! Incredible. Read or listen to it all.

Employers cut another 263,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8%, raising worries that the persistently weak labor market could undermine a nascent economic recovery from the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression.

The economy, by most accounts, has begun to grow again. But Friday’s Labor Department report underscored the risk that without jobs, consumers won’t have income to spend and that will restrain growth and give employers little reason to resume hiring after 21 consecutive months of job losses.

The bleak report comes amid continuing talks between the White House and Congress on extending of some parts of the stimulus package enacted in February, such as unemployment benefits and health-insurance subsidies.

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Watch it all–makes the heart glad.

Check it out.