WHAT IS A WOMAN?

A real woman is a man's best friend. She will never stand him up and never let him down. She will reassure him when he feels insecure and comfort him after a bad day. She will inspire him to do things he never thought he could do: to live without fear and to forget regret. She will enable him to express his deepest emotions and give in to his most intimate desires. She will make sure he always feels as though he's the most handsome man in the room and will enable him to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, invincible . . . .



Oh, wait . . . I'm thinking of vodka.

Never mind.


Don't blame me. Blame Paul (A.). I can't imagine how Paul's lovely wife puts up with him.

PRIMATE MADE ME DO IT

Picture and headline "borrowed" from Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish.

The link to Christopher Ryan's article in Psychology Today is worth a read.

First off, chimps aren't "our closest primate cousin," though you'll need a sharp eye to find any mention of our other, equally intimately related cousin, the bonobo in most of these "news" stories. Like a crazy relative who lives in a shed out back, bonobos tend to get mentioned in passing-if at all-in these sweeping declarations about the ancient primate roots of war. There are plenty of reasons self-respecting journalists might want to avoid talking about bonobos (their penchant for mutual masturbation, their unapologetic homosexuality and incest, a general sense of hippie-like shamelessness pervading bonobo social life), but the biggest inconvenience is the utter absence of any Viking-like behavior ever observed among bonobos. Bonobos never rape or pillage. No war. No murder. No infanticide.

Our bonobo cousins could teach humans more than a few lessons. Not a new thought, I know.

Disclaimer: Neither Andrew nor I is responsible for stray thoughts that pop into your mind from viewing the picture and the headline out of context, which thoughts have nothing whatsoever to do with Andrew's post. :-)

BRAVO, MICHAEL!

From an opinion column by Michael Gorman in the Daily Comet in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

The Nov. 2 Election Day is still months away, and already the name-calling between U.S. Senate candidates has become the hot topic on some news websites.

I haven’t heard many people talking about the race outside of the newsroom here, but the contest between U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-L.a, and U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, is going to be bitterly fought to the end.

Vitter will be scratching and clawing to hold onto his seat in the Senate even as other Republicans throughout the nation are expecting an easier time of it.

Melancon, meanwhile, will be trying desperately to oust Vitter from the Senate and claim the seat for himself.

If Vitter had been content to sit back, contribute his normal sound bites to the hate-mongering GOP crowd and unleash a torrent of anti-Obama ads this fall, he would probably be assured re-election.

After all, here in Louisiana, Obama is immensely unpopular, a fact that will only be worsened by his ongoing attempt to shut down much of the Gulf oil-and-gas activity.

Vitter wasn’t content with doing his job. Several years ago, he fessed up to being involved in a prostitute ring in Washington, D.C.

The prostitute in the center of the case has since died, hounded to her grave by federal prosecutors for her part in what is, if nothing else is, a two-party crime.

Vitter, who has acknowledged his involvement, went free with no prosecution and is now trying to continue representing our great state.

Even if his admitted sins had stopped years ago, Vitter would probably be assured of re-election.

Louisiana has never been very hard on its politicians. Just tell us what we want to hear and behave any way you like. We’ll keep sending you back to D.C.

Another scandal that some female voters might understandably find offensive has rocked Camp Vitter.

Brent Furer was a trusted aide to Vitter in 2008 when Furer pleaded guilty to holding a girlfriend at knifepoint and stabbing her in the hand.

People who might be willing to look the other way and forgive Vitter’s embarrassing sexual exploits might find the issue of domestic violence a bit more unappealing.

Vitter says now that he knew about Furer’s crimes and disciplined him. However, Furer kept his job working for the gentleman from Louisiana.

Even women who find Vitter’s disgusting brand of hate-based politics engaging might be turned off by his continued support of a victimizer of women.

Two years after the violence conviction, the incident finally cost Furer his job. A change of heart on the part of his boss? Nope. Did Furer mend his ways and decide that he had not been sufficiently punished for his crime? Nope.

What drove him out of the Vitter fold was that news about his conviction made it into the news.

So, as long as it’s just between you and Mr. Vitter, everything’s OK. Once it makes the news, all bets are off.

For his part, Melancon is making hay while the sun shines.

Read the rest here.

Bravo, Michael!

Let me tell you my friends, it takes courage to write such an opinion column in Vitter country, but I'm thankful that our local editorial page editor stepped up to tell the truth about our senator. Folks need to know. Vitter may still win the election, but he shouldn't. Any senator who knew that a member of his staff had held his girl friend captive and slashed her with a knife, and permitted the person to continue in his position for two years, does not deserve his place in the US Senate.

BISHOP OF MONTREAL APPROVES LITURGY FOR BLESSING CIVIL MARRIAGE WHICH INCLUDES SAME-SEX COUPLES

From the Montreal Anglican: (pdf file)

Staff

In response to a request from the Diocese of Montreal Synod in the fall of 2007, reaffirmed the next year, Bishop Barry Clarke has approved a liturgy for the blessing of previously solemnized civil marriages, tacitly including ones between same-sex couples.

He presented copies of the liturgy at the May meeting of the Diocesan Council. While the liturgy is already available in French and English, the bishop said that on his return from the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada in Halifax in June he would be writing to clergy and parishes to explain the process. The liturgy is adapted from the

Book of Occasional Celebrations produced by the General Synod of the national church in 1992.
The leaflet, with about 10 pages, contains a note that the liturgy was commissioned by the bishop in re -sponse to the 2007 motion requesting “that the Bishop grant permission for clergy, whose conscience permits, to bless duly solemnized and registered civil marriages, includ ing marriages between samesex couples, where at least one party is baptized; and that the Bishop authorize an appropriate rite and make regulations for its use in supportive parishes as ministries.”

This is the only explicit reference to same-sex marriages in the document.

A “Protocol for Use” includes provisions for a 60-day period between a request and the blessing and for a request to the bishop. Only priests authorized to solemnize weddings may preside and “no priest shall be obliged to bless a civil marriage.”

(Here are the “Protocol for Use” and preface of the new liturgy for the Blessing of Civil Marriage authorized by Bishop Barry Clarke and tabled at the May meeting of the Diocesan Council.)

PROTOCOL FOR USE

• The couple shall provide legal documentation as proof that the civil marriage has taken place;

• The couple shall commit to meeting with the priest to discern their reason for seeking a blessing upon their marriage;

• There shall be a minimum of sixty (60) days between the initial request and the blessing;

• At least one of the spouses must be baptised;

• A request for the blessing shall be made to the Bishop;

• The blessing shall be entered in the vestry book and noted as a blessing in the parish marriage register;

• Only priests holding a valid authorisation to solemnise marriages shall be permitted to preside;

• No priest shall be obliged to bless a civil marriage.

This process will be monitored and adapted as necessary.

This liturgy was commissioned by the Bishop in response to a motion passed at the 2007 Synod of the Diocese

of Montreal and affirmed by the 2008 Synod.

2007 Motion

Be it resolved that this Synod re quest that the Bishop grant permission for clergy, whose conscience permits, to bless duly solemnized and registered civil marriages, including marriages between same-sex couples, where at least one party is baptized; and that the Bishop authorize an appropriate rite and make regulations for its use in supportive parishes and ministries.

......

PREFACE

According to Western Christian thought, the ministers of marriage are the two individuals who marry each other. From the point of view of the church, the role of an ordained minister in a marriage service is to pray for God’s blessing on the marriage which the couple ministers to each other. (From the point of view of the state the minister may have other civil functions to perform.) An ordained minister offers the prayer of blessing because he/she is the appointed leader of the congregation assembled for this particular act of worship.

The church recognizes the validity of marriages which have been solemnised in accordance with its understanding of marriage, whether or not the exchange of vows took place in the context of an act of worship at which one of its ordained ministers presided. A civil ceremony at which two people took each other as spouses with the intention of lifelong commitment is a complete and valid wedding. People enter marriage through the forms of civil ceremonies for a variety of reasons: because of cultural differences, to appease families, because they were not practising Christians at the time. Sometimes they later wish to affirm the Christian nature of their marriage by a ceremony which culminates in a solemn prayer for God’s blessing on the marriage.

There is an intimate relationship between the vows of marriage and prayers of blessing which may follow them, even when there is a considerable interval of time between the two events.

Nothing that is done in the blessing of a civil marriage should reflect negatively on the original exchange of vows. The blessing of a civil marriage is not a second marriage. The marriage vows should not be repeated.

This service should not be used in contravention of diocesan regulations relating to remarriage after

divorce.

Good news from Montreal!

At first, I was going to do a partial quote with a link, but I decided to go ahead and post the entire text of the article in the newspaper.

Thanks to David@Montreal for the text.

AND THE OIL GUSHES ON AND OUT INTO THE GULF

From the Daily Comet:

Robotic submarines working a mile underwater removed a leaking cap from the gushing Gulf oil well today, starting a painful trade-off: Millions more gallons of crude will flow freely into the sea for at least two days until a new seal can be mounted to capture all of it.

There's no guarantee for such a delicate operation almost a mile below the water's surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.

"It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said.

Who amongst us with a functioning brain would think that capping an oil well a mile under the sea is like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste? Plus BP's previous failed attempts to cap the well are not soon forgotten. And do you really believe that if the new cap is successfully installed that it will capture all of the oil from the well?

PROTECT ME, PLEASE, FROM FEMALE MINISTRY!

From Riazat Butt at the Observer:

The Church of England was facing a fresh crisis tonight after the archbishops of Canterbury and York failed to win enough support for a compromise over women bishops at the Church's General Synod.

New concessions to traditionalists in the church, proposed by Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, were rejected by the Anglican clergy, although most bishops and laity at the Synod voted in favour. In dramatic scenes at York, shocked members of the Synod pleaded for time to pray and reflect on the vote and to consider the implications of the rebellion against the two most senior figures in the church.
....

The archbishops' amendment would have given traditionalists the protection they wanted from female ministry, averting a schism over the ordination of women as bishops. (My emphasis) Sentamu and Williams had proposed a special class of bishop to look after parishes who do not wish to have female bishops. The idea angered supporters of women clergy, who wrote to ask the archbishops to withdraw the amendment.

Dear me, yes! The traditionalists need protection from female ministry. What are we, every single one of us, but black widow spiders gone wild devouring not just our mates, but any male in sight? We are beyond dangerous.

Had the amendment been passed, it might have minimised the numbers of clergy converting to Roman Catholicism under an initiative launched by the Vatican last year. A meeting was held in Leicester for those Church of England clergy interested in taking up the Catholic offer.

I doubt passing the amendment would have changed the numbers of those who will leave all that much. If traditionalists depart for Rome in great numbers, I'll be surprised. The Holy Orders of the clergy amongst them will be null and void, and that can't be a pleasant prospect.

The arrangements under which the dioceses would have operated, had the amendments passed, would have been a complicated tangle. And what if either of the two archbishops participated in the ordination of a woman bishop? They would be tainted by the process, and would not the whole line of episcopal succession in the Church of England be put to ruin?

My heart is with the women in the Church of England and their supporters. Even as I write about these matters from a distance, I feel the anger rise within me. I stand in solidarity with the women who have to hear the insulting crap over and over. And I stand in solidarity with LGTB persons who endure listening to the same insulting crap and worse from people who call themselves Christians. Tell me what any of these shenanigans have to do with the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And I would not put it past the archbishops and their supporters to attempt another 11th hour scheme to have their way and possibly succeed. But, at the very least, the archbishops now know that they have lost the support of a good many bishops, priests and lay folk in their own church.

Thanks to Cathy for the link to the article.


UPDATE: And the wall erected around Ruth Gledhill's blog seems to have been breached as Thinking Anglicans posts her latest entry:

Canon Celia Thomson of Gloucester gave one of the best speeches illustrating the problems with what the Archbishops proposed:

‘This is the source of such sadness, such dismay among the ordained women at all stages of their ministry. The effect would be to legislate for the automatic transfer of episcopal authority in law in a way that would not only damage the authority of a woman bishop but also undermine the whole nature of episcopacy in the Church of England.’ She said the nominated bishops were ‘flying bishops’ by another name and that concept had not worked, in particular for women. It could also open up demands for alternative episcopal oversight in other areas where people did not agree with the diocesan bishop.

But even worse, it would send out a ‘damaging message’ about the Church to the wider world.

‘If the Church is seen to discriminate against women by law, not only will it compromise the ministry of women bishops in future and by default of all its women priests, but more fatally, the mission of the Church in the 21st century. Many people will de sair of the Church. Most people under 40 simply cannot understand it and so dismiss our beloved Church as irrelevant in our life and in attitudes towards the world.

Brava, Canon Thomson!

Ruth adds:

Synod is chastened right now. But it shouldn’t be. It should be celebrating.

Well done the clergy. There is a God, it seems.

Amen, and amen, and amen!

Thanks to Lapin in the comments.

IVOR, IS IT REALLY NOT THAT BAD?

Once again from NOLA:

Residents of south Louisiana who got to know former LSU professor Ivor van Heerden as a tireless critic of the shoddy levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers might be surprised when they see his latest foray into the public arena: on a BP website, where he seems to be downplaying the environmental effects caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

"The public gets the perception that this is the black, heavy, tarry stuff that is in ship's bunkers and it covers everything and smothers it and just kills it, but that's not the kind of oil we're dealing with," Van Heerden says in a video on the BP website, dated July 1. "It's a very, very light oil. It's almost like diesel, and it breaks down very, very rapidly, especially here in Louisiana where it's very hot during the day and the water has suspended sediment in it so it may actually get hotter, and all of those combine with the fact that we have naturally in our system, the organisms, the microbes that break down the oil."

Van Heerden, a marine scientist, is still in the middle of a court fight with LSU over the university's decision not to extend his employment contract this year despite his leadership of a state-sponsored forensic investigation into the reasons levees and floodwalls in the New Orleans area failed during Hurricane Katrina.

Grandpère and I know Ivor, and we've always believed him to be a man of integrity, warning about the continuing and rapid erosion of the Louisiana coastline and the inadequacies of the levees in and around New Orleans years ago and in the aftermath of Katrina and the federal flood, although with his warnings, he put his job at LSU in jeopardy and was eventually fired.

In the video at the BP site, Ivor says, in effect, the damage is not that bad. You hear him say that in their excursions on the shoreline and in the marshes, they find that penetration of oil into the marshes is minimal, that the type of oil that is present has a short life, that they find tiny little tarballs and no black, heavy, tarry stuff, and reiterating that the oil and the dispersants break down quickly.

There are no pictures and no mention of the nasty, smelly tar patties on the beach and in the marshes and the long streaks and patches of reddish crap in the water. I doubt that Ivor would lie, but it seems to me that he puts a spin on the story by what he emphasizes and what he leaves out that is generally favorable to BP. The company Ivor works for, Polaris Applied Sciences, is under contract to BP to assist in clean-up operations, and they are not paid to give BP bad PR.



Read blogger New Orleans Ladder for another take on the story.

Whenever anyone says to me of the damage from the gusher, "It's not that bad," it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I've seen and heard too much to convince me now that "It's "not that bad".

UPDATE: And the video shows no pictures of oiled birds.

DEEPWATER HORIZON NEWS

From NOLA:

BP will begin replacing the cap on its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico today with a tighter-fitting model that could prevent oil from gushing into the sea entirely, the federal government's point man for spill response said Friday morning.

The multistep process could be complete as soon as late Monday and, if successful, could bring to an end a more than 80 days of oil gushing continuously into the Gulf, said Thad Allen, a retired Coast Guard Admiral who as National Incident Commander is overseeing BP's efforts to rein in the oil gusher.

We shall see. I hope the new cap fits better than the old cap. That the cap will entirely stop the flow, I find hard to believe, but I pray I'm wrong.













Also from NOLA:

For the first time Friday, the Coast Guard and BP acknowledged that a mysterious second pipe, wedged next to the drill pipe in what remains of the Deepwater Horizon's riser, is fouling up the works where the Gulf of Mexico well is spewing hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea.

"We used a diamond saw and we got inside. We found there was actually two sets of drill pipe there," said retired Adm. Thad Allen, the top U.S. Coast Guard official overseeing the response to the nation's worst-ever oil spill.

Some experts say a second piece of drill pipe in the riser could have prevented shear rams on the rig's blowout preventer from sealing the well and permanently cutting off the flow of oil after the April 20 explosion. The presence of two pipes could have also contributed to BP's failure to make a clean cut on the riser when securing the existing containment dome, inhibiting its ability to collect the maximum amount of oil.

Whoops! Another pipe! Who knew? Not BP or the US Coast Guard, or did they?

The Coast Guard's acknowledgement of the two metal tubes Friday -- and a subsequent reference by BP to its plans to tie the two pipes together as the company installs a new oil-collection system over the shaved-off riser -- actually comes more than a month after the Department of Energy noted the second pipes using special imaging technology. At the time, BP dismissed the Energy findings as "impossible" because only one pipe in sections was used for drilling, a Tribune News Service story reported last month.

I've lost count of the number of BP's "impossibles" which have proved themselves to be entirely possible, including the original explosion.

And remind me again who the Coast Guard works for.

ALLEN TOUISSAINT - "SWEET TOUCH OF LOVE"

A 180 degree turn from the Trollopian drama presently being played out in the Church of England.

And don't we all need Allen's "Sweet Touch of Love"?

RUTH GLEDHILL AND OTHERS SAY....

Check out the link below at USA Today which will send you to a site to which I will not post links, where you can read Ruth Gledhill's entire article in the Times of London today. Ruth's story is behind the subscription-only wall at the Times. Are you following me?

The beginning of the story from USA Today:

Ruth Gledhill Religion Correspondent The Times July 9 2010 Liberal members of the House of Bishops could launch a protest on the floor of the General Synod in York The Archbishop of Canterbury is facing an unprecedented rebellion from bishops in the....

Tomorrow, other newspapers will, very likely, have the story.

UPDATE: The Guardian's editorial is well worth a read.

The Church of England now expects both the benefits of establishment and the cultural freedom of private religion. At the very least, a national church should not become disconnected from the best values of the country it serves. But as the general synod, which begins tonight, will again confirm, the Church of England is strangely unwilling to do this. It devotes a shocking amount of energy to debating the supposed inferiority of women, gay men and lesbians. These issues matter intensely to some believers inside the church, but they make it look intolerant to the much larger number of people outside it.
....

Rowan Williams...once noted: "We have a special relationship with the cultural life of our country and we must not fall out of step with it if we are not to become absurd and incredible." He said it. But the truth is that his church fell out of step long ago.

Mercy me! How does one extricate oneself from such a tangle?

And our own Jim Naughton of the Episcopal Café has his say in the Guardian.

If the synod allows the Archbishop of Canterbury to further compromise the authority of a bishop over his or her diocese in order to appease opponents of opening the episcopacy to women, I suspect the Church of England will muddle along as it always has. A church that can ignore the fact that it has gay bishops ordaining gay priests who live with gay partners, while its leaders enforce various sanctions on churches for having gay bishops who ordain gay priests with gay partners, can allow sexists to dictate the terms on which it moves toward gender equity without being undone by cognitive dissonance.

Similarly, if the synod should acquiesce in the House of Bishops' desire to embrace the Anglican Covenant, which would significantly diminish the ability of lay people to influence the Communion and effectively elevate homophobia to near creedal status, I imagine that many in the English Church–and other churches for that matter–will shrug their shoulders and carry on, living their lives the best way that they know how. They might, perhaps, be embarrassed by the bishops' attempt to re-establish an empire administered from a palace in London so long after the folly of such an enterprise was made manifest, but the average church-goer has learned to ignore church politics as a matter of self-preservation.

Ouch!