The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

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The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Monday that high unemployment and a continued reluctance of banks to make loans were likely to slow the economic recovery for the next year.

And in a departure from the usual practice of Fed chairmen, Mr. Bernanke tried to reassure global investors about the recent fall in the value of the dollar by saying that the central bank was “attentive to the implications of changes” and would “continue to monitor these developments closely.”

It is rare for Fed officials to comment on exchange rates, which for decades have been the responsibility of the Treasury Department. Mr. Bernanke’s message seemed to be that the Fed saw no cause for alarm in the dollar’s weakness and that it would not need to bolster the dollar by raising interest rates sooner than it would otherwise.

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Americans are worried about hidden costs in the fine print of health care overhaul legislation, an Associated Press poll says. That’s creating new challenges for President Barack Obama as he tries to close the deal with a handful of Democratic doubters in the Senate.

Although Americans share a conviction that major health care changes are needed, Democratic bills that extend coverage to the uninsured and try to hold down medical costs get no better than a lukewarm reception.

The poll found that 43 percent oppose the health care plans being discussed in Congress, while 41 percent are in support. An additional 15 percent remain neutral or undecided.

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Former Episcopalians who have found a traditional refuge in Catholicism, where the priesthood remains closed to women and openly gay clergy, are applauding the Vatican’s plan to help additional dissatisfied conservatives convert.

But while the welcome extends to married priests ”” a narrow loophole in the Catholic Church’s celibacy requirement ”” most of those who have already converted say they want to remain rare exceptions.

“We trust the church’s wisdom regarding the discipline of celibacy,” said the Rev. D. Paul Sullins, who left the Episcopal Church 10 years ago with his wife and recently surveyed his colleagues on this issue. “A man who is married has two somewhat conflicting sets of commitments.

“It’s difficult to balance them, and having a family also makes it difficult to move at short notice to another assignment.”

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As over 9,000 ex-service personnel and civilians marched past the cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, two Anglican bishops were questioning the Government’s policy in Afghanistan.

On the Wednesday before, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt Rev Peter Price, asked Baron William Brett in the House of Lords if he agreed “that the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies have resulted in serious civilian casualties and the alienation of the population, producing angry recruits for terrorism, and that together with the Americans we should now, with development, using our military resources, provide security exclusively to protect the strategic rebuilding of the country that is urgently needed?” Lord Brett replied: “I cannot agree with the first part of his question; I do not think there is evidence that the vast majority of Afghans are alienated by what the United Kingdom and its allies seek to do. There is broad support.”

The rationale behind the campaign was further undermined by the Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, in his Remembrance Sunday sermon in Stoke Minster. The Bishop questioned whether the values the UK had sent its troops to uphold in Afghanistan were in fact valued domestically.

Bishop Gledhill said: “We are throwing our soldiers at a nation where the structures are endemically corrupt. We are trying to train up police in a society which is divided and where terrorism reigns. That is a difficult task for our troops and we salute them….”

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United States policy makers, meanwhile, seem equally willing to prolong America’s addiction to cheap money as long as economic recovery seems so fragile, regardless of the effect on the dollar’s exchange rate with other currencies. (When American officials insist that they favor a “strong dollar,” it’s usually a sure sign that they want the opposite.) And why would Americans want to discourage the Chinese from buying yet more dollar-denominated securities? With trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, the Treasury needs all the foreign buyers it can get.

The reality, however, is that an end to Chimerica is in the American interest for at least three reasons. First, adjusting the exchange rates between the currencies would help reorient the American economy ”” primarily by making American exports more competitive in China, the world’s fastest-growing economy.

Second, an end to Chimerica would lessen the potentially dangerous reliance of American economic policy on measures to stimulate domestic purchasing. American fiscal policy is clearly on an unsustainable path, and the Federal Reserve’s negligible interest rates and the printing of dollars are artificially inflating equity prices.

Finally, renminbi revaluation would reduce the risk of potentially serious international friction over trade.

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Kneeling during an ancient laying-on-of-hands ritual, the Rev. Susan Slaughter on Sunday became the first woman ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

Among a sea of friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at St. Luke’s in the Meadow Episcopal Church, Slaughter was ordained by the Right Rev. Edwin F. “Ted” Gulick Jr., bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky, who has also been serving as provisional bishop of the Fort Worth Diocese.

A letter of congratulations from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori read by Gulick said: “I give thanks to God for this sign of the resurrection of the Diocese of Fort Worth. Susan, may his light shine through you. May the widow’s gifts spread throughout your diocese.”

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The echoes of a possible high-powered rapid fire weapon resounded several blocks from the gruesome scene of a deadly drive-by shooting at a home on the corner of Girardeau and McDaniel streets in Walterboro that left three dead, including a toddler and six others were wounded.

According to Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey, Shaniyah Burden, 20 months old, died, as a result, of multiple gun shot wounds and was pronounced at 10:18 p.m. at Colleton Medical Center. Charles Kitrell, 45, died of multiple gun shot wounds and was pronounced at 10:25 p.m. at the incident scene. Christopher Powell, 21, died of multiple gun shot wounds and was pronounced at the Medical University of South Carolina.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the Walterboro Public Safety Department are investigating the violent killing.

According to witnesses, a crowd was gathered outside of a home on McDaniel Street playing cards when a dark-colored vehicle drove by and fired several gunshots at the people. Community members quickly galvanized in response to the ailing victims and were able to transport a few victims, including the Little Miss Shaniyah Burden to the hospital.

Read it all and note especially the pictures. looking at the 20 month old does me in–KSH.

Could the world’s lone but weary superpower actually learn something from China? It’s a politically incorrect question, of course. China is an authoritarian nation; its ruling Communist Party deals ruthlessly with any challenge to its hegemony. It remains, relatively speaking, a poor, developing country with huge problems to confront, massive corruption and environmental degradation being Nos. 1 and 1a. Still, this is a moment of humility for the U.S., and China is doing some important things right. If the U.S. were to ask the Chinese what it could learn from their example, it might gain some insight into what it’s doing right and wrong. Here are five lessons from China’s success story….

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But if Dr Williams has been determined not to make a drama out of this crisis, the Pope has been playing to the gallery. And it’s his strategy we should be focused on. Unlike the Bishop of Southwark, I don’t want Dr Williams to express his “disappointment”, I want him to ask, perhaps a little more politely than in my movie storyboard, what the Pope’s game is.

I’ll tell you what I think it is. Benedict is determined to rebuild his one, true and, importantly, universal Church. Under a banner of doctrinal purity, he is annexing orthodoxy. That’s why, in 2006, he dropped the title Patriarch of the West from the list of handles conferred on the Pope. Too parochial, too implicitly restrictive. Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church is altogether more agreeable to him.

Organic growth is not an option for him, so he must grow the Church by acquisition. The Apostolic Constitution is part of that acquisitive strategy, aimed less at dismembering the Church of England than at bringing home Catholics in America and Australia; but even more significantly being tested as a tool ahead of bringing others, such as the ultra-traditionalist and schismatic Lefebvrists, back into the fold. Benedict wants to consolidate orthodoxy wherever he finds it and, eastern Orthodox patriarchs should note, there can be only one voice of authority and it speaks from Rome. This Pope is on a reactionary and Counter-Reformational rampage.

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The Catholic Church’s influence in Congress came in part from its longtime support for improving access to health care for poor and low-income Americans. “Health care has been one of their basic goals out there for years,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the Democratic sponsor of the abortion amendment.

The church also was able to capitalize on good will amassed from years of working with Democrats on issues such as tax credits for the working poor, Immigration, climate change and nutrition programs. In that regard, it earned a level of trust in way that other anti-abortion groups never could.

The church “played a critical role in a number of initiatives over many years that affect our most vulnerable people,” said Ellen Nissenbaum, legislative director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a group that focuses on policies affecting low-income people.

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After much discussion, the members of the Committee were 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.

Read it all noting especially the Q and A.

Archbishop Duncan, visiting Canada last week for the first time since he became head of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), the first Anglican jurisdiction that crosses national boundaries, earlier this year, says it is the national churches in Canada and the United States — the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church USA — that are the real schismatics, trading in the Bible and orthodoxy for a trendy form of Christianity that is trying to be popular instead of faithful.

Those institutions have “turned so far to the left” they are now on the road to virtual oblivion, he said, pointing to such innovations as the blessing of same-sex marriage.

“They’ll become irrelevancies,” he said during an interview with the National Post. “People who are looking for a saviour who can save. They are really looking for how they can shape their lives and what they can trust in. And what the [national churches] are offering is Jesus Lite. Folks don’t need a Jesus Lite.”

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The committee’s abandonment of this concession means that male bishops overseeing traditionalists would, in some cases, only be able to operate at the behest of women bishops.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said that as things stand, the development seems likely to encourage more traditionalists to convert to Catholicism.

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Many Americans think they live in a society which, more than most, offers citizens the chance to prosper. The US is not the most equal society in the world, and does not want to be. What matters is that a poor man can raise himself up.

Creating an Opportunity Society begins by showing that, especially for the poorest children, this is something of a myth. By international standards, intergenerational mobility in the US is quite low. This will surprise few who have ventured into a US public housing project or troubled inner-city school, but many middle-class Americans never have. The figures show that US children born in the lowest and highest quintiles of the income distribution are more likely to stay there than in Britain, for example, and much more likely than in countries such as Sweden and Denmark.

But what to do about it? The book confirms a finding well established in the literature, that transition to the middle class is all but guaranteed for poor children if they do three things: finish high school, work full time and marry before having children. The US underperforms as an opportunity society because so many of its young people fail at one or more. The book focuses on these areas.

Read the rest here.

Since the start of the financial crisis, Chinese officials have issued a number of warnings that the US should not inflate away its mounting debt burden. Before these latest comments, however, Beijing had generally been most critical of US fiscal policy, urging Washington to spend less.

But speaking at a conference in Beijing, Mr Liu [Mingkang, China’s chief banking regulator] said the Fed’s policy of maintaining low interest rates together with the weak dollar posed a threat to the global economic recovery.

“[It] is boosting speculative investment in stock and property markets and will pose new, real and insurmountable risks to the global recovery and particularly to the recovery in emerging markets,” said Mr Liu, who is chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission.

“The situation has already encouraged a huge dollar carry trade and had a massive impact on global asset prices,” he added.

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We cannot stop the world from rising and doing better at innovation, nor should we want to do so: the rise of the rest is a powerful, positive phenomenon for everyone. But America must adapt to it, not watch quietly as a spectator.

For the past three decades, funding for science research has slipped, the education system has continued to decline, and immigration policy has become less and less rational. Tax and regulatory policies have been made with more thought to domestic special interests than America’s long-term competition.

We have hoped it would all work out, and for a while it did. The seed capital from past decades was strong enough to carry us for decades. We got talent from abroad to mask the erosion at home. We used financial engineering to substitute for the real thing. We borrowed to the hilt and sold each other our homes in an ascending spiral that made us all feel rich. And we kicked all the real problems we face down the road, hoping that someone else would solve them. This too has become part of American culture, a culture that desperately needs to change if we are to preserve American innovation and rekindle the real American Dream.

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There are new problems on the horizon, just beyond those oil platforms offshore. The real has gained almost 50% against the dollar since early December. That boosts Brazilians’ living standards by making imports cheaper. But it makes life hard for exporters. The government last month imposed a tax on short-term capital inflows. But that is unlikely to stop the currency’s appreciation, especially once the oil starts pumping.

Lula’s instinctive response to this dilemma is industrial policy. The government will require oil-industry supplies””from pipes to ships””to be produced locally. It is bossing Vale into building a big new steelworks. It is true that public policy helped to create Brazil’s industrial base. But privatisation and openness whipped this into shape. Meanwhile, the government is doing nothing to dismantle many of the obstacles to doing business””notably the baroque rules on everything from paying taxes to employing people. Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s candidate in next October’s presidential election, insists that no reform of the archaic labour law is needed (see article).

And perhaps that is the biggest danger facing Brazil: hubris. Lula is right to say that his country deserves respect, just as he deserves much of the adulation he enjoys. But he has also been a lucky president, reaping the rewards of the commodity boom and operating from the solid platform for growth erected by his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Maintaining Brazil’s improved performance in a world suffering harder times means that Lula’s successor will have to tackle some of the problems that he has felt able to ignore. So the outcome of the election may determine the speed with which Brazil advances in the post-Lula era. Nevertheless, the country’s course seems to be set. Its take-off is all the more admirable because it has been achieved through reform and democratic consensus-building. If only China could say the same.

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But it’s really just keeping that message of hope and peace out there and alive, and I think what we believe the foundation is, is that Mattie’s message is not unique. He offered us the universal message, you know: Give and you shall receive.

A wonderful reminder in what for many of us is stewardship season.

Democrats have promised that health reform would reduce health care costs, but legislation the House passed last week would increase costs over the next decade by $289 billion. By 2019, health costs would rise to 21.1 percent of GDP compared to 20.8 under current law, according to an actuarial report prepared by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare payment updates for institutional providers, the provisions of H.R. 3962 would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates. In addition, the longer-term viability of the Medicare update reductions is doubtful,” the report said.

In other words, outside of Medicare payment cuts to hospitals, the bill doesn’t curb increasing health care costs. And even the Medicare payment cuts will be difficult to sustain.

The analysis is more bad news for Democrats, who are facing increasing criticism that their reforms don’t do enough to control costs.

Read it all from Politico

They were “happy, fun-loving people”, full of the joys of life. But, after an evening at a jazz concert with their son and his fiancée, Dennis and Flora Milner returned home and gassed themselves in their bed.

Despite being in reasonable health, they had, at the ages of 83 and 81 respectively, chosen to take their own lives rather than face what they saw as an inevitable decline into infirmity.

Their suicides were a collective, personal decision, but also a political one after a lifetime of activism by Mr Milner.

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The committee has since been unable to agree on any compromise deal and will instead recommend to the General Synod, that the Church should proceed with appointing women bishops on the same terms as their male counterparts.

Although individual bishops could still make special provision for traditional clergy there will be no guarantee that their wishes will be catered for.

The decision could shatter Dr Rowan Williams’ hopes of preserving the unity of the church.

Following the Pope’s offer to disaffected Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism, traditionalists had said that they would wait for the Church of England to finalise plans over women bishops before making up their minds.

Fr David Houlding, a member of the Archbishops’ council and a leading traditionalist, said many would now leave.

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“I hate having to use disabled parking,” she said. “I see how people look at me, and I know what they’re thinking. ‘What makes that weirdo think she can park there?’ Sometimes they ask me what I’m doing parked in one of those spaces.”

“What do you tell them?” I asked.

“I just walk away,” she said.

“Why don’t you tell them the truth?” I asked. “Why don’t you look them in the eye and say, ‘I’ve had to park in handicapped spaces since I got back from Iraq, because now I can’t walk past a row of cars without thinking that one of them is going to blow up in my face.”

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Surprising aspects of the document include the provision that married former Anglican bishops can serve as the ordinary, or head of an ordinariate, take part in bishops’ conference meetings and be able to keep the episcopal insignia – for example, their crosier and mitre. Former Anglican clergymen entering the Catholic priesthood in the ordinariate would be allowed to take secular jobs, providing them with a means of supporting themselves. Cardinal Levada said the provision “opens a new avenue for the promotion of Christian unity while, at the same time, granting legitimate diversity in the expression of our common faith”.

Speaking on the day the document was published, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, who is one of the Church of England’s “flying bishops” who minister to Anglicans who do not accept women priests, said that traditionalists have been given what they asked for “handsomely”. He said that any transition would be difficult and it was a time for prayer and discernment.

“If we’re open-hearted and imaginative enough to accept the offer and realise that it will be an untidy transition, but that the ministry is not about that, then the difficulties can be overcome,” he said.

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We have the theory, but await the practice. The failure of “Rome” to inform the Archbishop of Canterbury until the last minute; the bypassing of the bishops’ conferences most affected by the proposal ”“ this is of a piece with the issuing, in 2007, of the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, encouraging general use of the unreformed Missal of 1962, in the teeth of a great deal of episcopal objection.

Why the announcement was made before the constitution was complete, I do not know. But, on the whole, it is not what is being done, but the manner in which it is being done, that is objectionable. A major structural innovation in Roman Catholicism is being introduced without consulting the bishops of the Catholic Church. According to the constitution, “Personal ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church are erected by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith within the confines of the territorial boundaries of a particular Conference of Bishops in consultation with that same conference” (my stress). Too late, as Judi Dench (playing Elizabeth I) said to Sir Walter Raleigh when she stepped into the puddle.

I very much hope that Catholics in this country and elsewhere will warmly welcome into our communion the members of the new ordinariates. Nevertheless, in terms of the relations between Rome and the bishops’ conferences affected, the way in which these ordinariates have been invented is disgraceful.

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Here is one:

To the Editor:

The American Small Business League is concerned that the Obama administration is doing nothing of major significance to aid our country’s 27 million small businesses, or to create jobs.

In August, we conducted an analysis of the government’s small-business contracting data for the fiscal year 2008. We found 60 large corporations in the top 100 recipients of small-business contracts. Also, scores of Fortune 500 firms were counted toward the government’s goal.

As a senator in February 2008, Barack Obama said it was time to end these abuses, yet he has not taken any action to honor his words.

President Obama should support H.R. 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act of 2009. It would redirect approximately $100 billion a year in federal infrastructure spending back to the middle-class economy, saving thousands of businesses and countless jobs.

Lloyd Chapman

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The movie with the most buzz at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was “Precious,” an Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry-produced story of a young woman living in poverty. Precious is a survivor of incest and emotional and physical abuse who is unsupported by the adults around her. The movie is an unlikely hit because of its raw portrayal of tough, even taboo subjects, and because of the searing effect it has on those who see it.

The story of Precious is so unsettling that it would be easy to write her life off as just another product of Hollywood. Her experiences are seemingly unthinkable and it’s hard to accept that her story could be real.

But it is. Even in Charleston.

In our state, a teen gets pregnant every 50 minutes. The teen pregnancy rate in South Carolina increased 8 percent from 2004 to 2006.

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Anrae Hamlin was riding with his cousin in February when two men jumped into the street with guns blazing. Hamlin took one bullet in the leg and another in the foot. As he bled, one of his friends was being buried across town, just days after another shooting.

Hamlin, 20, said he took to carrying a gun for protection and considered exacting some street justice of his own. He said he eventually calmed down and got rid of the gun, deciding it was best to let the law handle things. But he remains cautious when he ventures out in rural Colleton County, aware that tensions always are simmering just below the surface.

“People around here are crazy,” Hamlin said, shaking his head. “People treat guns like water pistols. They don’t think about it taking someone’s life.”

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