JESUS AND MO - PAIN

From Jesus and Mo.

GAY PASTOR AND PARTNER ATTACKED IN PARK AT GUNPOINT

From CBSAtlanta:

Six people are facing charges after a gay pastor and his partner were attacked at gunpoint while picnicking at Piedmont Park.
Joshua Noblitt, a pastor at St. Mark's Methodist United Church in Atlanta, told CBS Atlanta that he and his partner were enjoying an evening at the park last Friday just before 10 p.m. when a group of young men approached them.

"They walked up to us and asked 'are y'all gay? We ought to beat y'all for that'" said Noblitt.
Noblitt said that the youths walked off, but returned with a stick and demanded money.
....

One of the suspects pulled a handgun and held it to Noblitt's head, then stole his wallet and cell phone, police said.

I should not be shocked by this story, but I am. Violence against gays in this country is nothing new, but gratuitous assaults such as this are difficult to fathom.

They [the attackers] range in age from 13 to 19.

Teens on a lark.

H/T to Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin.

DARTH CAT PREPARES TO CONQUER THE UNIVERSE

This is Bella, my friend's cat.

Either

a) she sees herself as the cat world's answer to Darth Vader

or

b) she has come to the conclusion she needs to swathe herself in the equivalent of a burka to protect the neighbourhood toms from the mesmerising effects of her loveliness

or

c) she is just horsing about with the rubbish bin lid.

You decide.

Thanks to Cathy for the picture and the words. What do you think?

TARBALLS IN LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN

A tar ball washed ashore near the Treasure Isle subdivision in Lake Pontchartrain as people fish near the Rigolets in Slidell on Monday. (Matthew Hinton - The Times-Picayune)

Seems to me the picture shows something other than a tarball. The tarballs I saw on the beach years ago, were solid objects. What's pictured is what I would call a viscous oil patty, something less than a solid.

From NOLA:

Showing just how unpredictable and all-consuming the massive Gulf oil spill can be, tar balls and small sheens of oil have entered Lake Pontchartrain and are hitting Texas shores for the first time.

John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's coastal stainability program, spotted the first tar balls in the Rigolets Pass on Sunday. By Monday, the blobs of oil had washed ashore as far west as Treasure Isle in Slidell.

Cleanup crews used nets to scoop up the tar balls throughout the day, collecting more than 1,000 pounds of oil and waste. BP also deployed 19 manual skimming vessels and four decontamination vessels to the area, and placed 600-feet of hard and soft boom at a choke point in the Rigolets to prevent more oil from entering the lake. Cleanup efforts are expected to resume today.

Lopez said oil made its way into the lake because of winds from the far edges of Hurricane Alex last week as well as sustained east and southeast winds during the weekend. The winds from Alex pushed a large amount of oil into the Mississippi Sound for the first time, and the east winds during the past few days pushed oil into Lake Borgne, the Rigolets and eventually the eastern stretches of Lake Pontchartrain.
....


"It has a fairly tortuous route to get to the lake, and that's why we're at day 70-something of the spill, and we're just seeing the oil reach Lake Pontchartrain," Lopez said. "This oil we're seeing probably headed east toward Alabama and Florida before it came this way. It's traveled probably at least 100-200 miles, depending on how far east it went."

Also on Monday, The Associated Press reported that Texas crews were removing tar balls from the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island.

The Texas landfall and the encroachment into Lake Pontchartrain weren't unexpected, but they were staggering nonetheless, as the previously spared gateways to the highly populated areas saw the first physical evidence that they would not be immune.

The coastline from Texas to Florida, a vast area, is now affected by the gusher. Staggering, indeed, but entirely predictable, although, from the beginning, there were those who said, "It may not be that bad." I never said such a thing, because I knew it would be that bad and, very likely, worse. We have not yet seen the worst.

COMMENTS DON'T POST

Along with Counterlight, I'm having difficulty with comments. Even mine don't always post. I have your comments in my email notification, but they don't appear in the comment boxes. I'm not blocking or deleting. Perhaps they'll show up eventually.

IS SOMEONE SPOILING FOR A FIGHT?

From Andrew Brown at the Guardian:

The fact that Jeffrey John has been nominated as Bishop of Southwark is intriguing. That it has been leaked reveals a great deal about the civil war within the church of England. Seven years ago Rowan Williams' attempt to get his old friend into the much less important job of Bishop of Reading led to his first – and, it seemed, decisive – defeat at the hands of hardline evangelicals. He cracked after two months of pressure and asked John to withdraw his name, establishing his reputation as a man who could be bullied. If he is beaten again, he is finished. If he wins, he will have shot the rapids and the Church of England will finally emerge from the turbulence of the last 30 years with a fairly clear and fairly coherent doctrine about sex.
....

So: a church in which gays are all right if they are celibate, and women are accepted if they tolerate the people who can't stand them. Will that be the settlement of the fuss of the last 20 years? Perhaps not. Whoever leaked John's name made his appointment almost inevitable. But my sources suggest that the leak came from Evangelicals, not from the liberals. Someone is spoiling for a fight.

Please read Brown's words in between the excerpts I quoted.

Intrigue! Fighting! In the church? Heaven forbid!

Also in the Guardian by Riazat Butt:

Conservative parishes in the Church of England could seek alternative leadership from abroad if a gay man is appointed as bishop of Southwark, clerics warned today.

The argument over homosexual clergy in the Anglican communion was reignited at the weekend when it was disclosed that Dr Jeffrey John, the dean of St Albans, is among nominations for the post vacated earlier this year by the Right Rev Tom Butler. In 2003, John was forced to stand down from his appointment as suffragan bishop of Reading because of his sexuality after protests from traditionalists.

Reform, a conservative evangelical group, has warned the church could split if John, who is in a civil partnership but celibate, is made bishop for the south London diocese.
....

Writing in the Church of England newspaper last week, the Rev Ray Skinner, a rector in Morden, south London, said it did not take "a huge leap of imagination" to predict what would happen should John get the job. "As in North America, with its shrinking liberal Episcopal Church, and growing orthodox Anglican Church, there will be a formal divide. Maybe not immediately, we tend not to rush things. There are two new groups already within the Church of England, one called Inclusive Church, the other the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans linking with other Anglican provinces."

Perhaps, the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks it's time to call the bluff of the Reform folks, but why now? The whole scheme for appointing Dean John at the present time makes no sense to me, but I'm no insider. The ABC may yet come to see for himself what it's like to have foreign bishops invade his territory.

As for the Rev. Ray Skinner's words:

"As in North America, with its shrinking liberal Episcopal Church, and growing orthodox Anglican Church, there will be a formal divide."

Methinks the good Reverend is taking the words at the ACNA website too much at face value.

H/T to Thinking Anglicans for the link to the article by Riazat Butt. I found Andrew Brown's article on my own.

"A COALITION OF THE HEARTLESS, THE CLUELESS AND THE CONFUSED"

From Paul Krugman at the New York Times:

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused.

Read the rest of the column and weep. It's not just Republicans.

But there are also centrist Democrats who have bought into the arguments against helping the unemployed. It’s up to them to step back, realize that they have been misled — and do the right thing by passing extended benefits.

Oh, yes indeed! As I've said elsewhere, "Oh, the heady days of 2008!" Those were the days when we had such hopes for our Democratic president and our Democratic majorities in Congress.

"But that was then."

NEW (I HOPE!) MAXINES

 

 

Thanks to Ann and Doug.

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF SOUTHWARK IN SOUTH LONDON?

The Telegraph is the original source of the story that Dean of St. Albans, Jeffrey John, is favored to be the next Bishop of Southwark. Dr. John (There is another with the same name and title in a different profession.) is in a same-sex civil partnership with another clergyman.

If you recall, some years ago, Dean John was appointed Bishop of Reading, and the date of his consecration was set, but because of the uproar amongst conservatives in the Church of England, and despite the fact that he stated that the relationship was celibate, Dean John was asked to stand down from his appointment by his good friend, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, which he did.

Jim Naughton comments on the latest story at The Lead

Thinking Anglicans posted several links to commentary on the story.

We'll know quite soon whether the story is true or simply misguided speculation, for the meetings to decide upon a candidate for the position of Bishop of Southwark take place today and tomorrow.

Adrian at Pluralist Speaks in his post titled "Restoration" gives us his words of wisdom. Of course, Adrian's post is not really about Dr. Jeffery John, but about Dr. John John. However, there are parallels....

"WE NEED...TO BE FEARLESS AND OBNOXIOUS"

At The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan posted rather splendid words for the Fourth of July, when we celebrate our liberation from the tyrannical rule of the British Empire. (Slight irony alert here, since I have a good many English friends, and Andrew himself is an immigrant from Merrie Olde England - God save the Queen, and all that.)

Initially, I planned to excerpt from Andrew's post, but I did not find a logical cut-off spot. I hope he doesn't mind that I use his entire commentary. Pop on over to Andrew's site to read the words he quotes from Thomas Jefferson, who is no longer included in the recent revision of the social studies curriculum by the Texas Board of Education.

"I believe the blogosphere first truly gained traction in America for a good reason. There is something about blogging's freedom from the constraints of conventional journalism that captures an American ideal: civic engagement totally free of anyone else's influence. It is an ideal of a fourth estate hostile to authorities public and private, suspicious of conventional wisdom, and, above all, confident, even when confidence seems absurd, in the power of the word and the argument to make a difference ... in the end. The rise of this type of citizen journalism has, in my view, increasingly exposed some of the laziness and corruption in the professional version - even as there is still a huge amount to treasure and value in the legacy media, and a huge amount of partisan, mendacious claptrap on the blogs.

But what distinguishes the best of the new media is what could still be recaptured by the old: the mischievous spirit of journalism and free, unfettered inquiry. Journalism has gotten too pompous, too affluent, too self-loving, and too entwined with the establishment of both wings of American politics to be what we need it to be.

We need it to be fearless and obnoxious, out of a conviction that more speech, however much vulgarity and nonsense it creates, is always better than less speech. In America, this is a liberal spirit in the grandest sense of that word - but also a conservative one, since retaining that rebelliousness is tending to an ancient American tradition, from the Founders onward. (My emphasis)

....

Here at the Dish, we try and we fail at this every day. But we have never for a second doubted the imperative of this complicated, difficult and exhilarating task."

I echo Andrew's final paragraph, except for the part about never doubting, for I doubt, on occasion.

Andrew's post is heartening to me, since I've heard and read much about the approaching death of the blogosphere. If blogs die, then they die, and so be it. The new online gathering spots, which appear with the speed of storms off the west coast of Africa during hurricane season, are not much to my taste, I'm sad to say, since many of my friends are there.

If Andrew is correct about "fearless and obnoxious", then I have a way to go.