SEN. DAVID VITTER WRITES

What Sen. Vitter wrote:

Dear Friend,

If you didn't get a chance to watch President Obama's address on fiscal policy yesterday, you might be better off. It was nothing more than a partisan campaign-style speech that doubled down on raising taxes.

What the president has failed to realize is that the problem isn't that our taxes are too low – it's that the current spending habits in Washington have created a recipe for disaster. The answer is not increasing taxes or perpetrating ugly class warfare, but to make bold spending cuts so we don't leave this fiscal mess for our children and grandchildren. Increasing taxes during this economy would seriously hurt America's job creators.

If it weren't such a serious problem, it would almost be comical that the president claims that Obamacare will help reduce the deficit yet fails to acknowledge how much his failed bailouts, stimulus and other reckless spending have contributed to the fiscal mess we're in....

What I wrote:

Dear Sen. Vitter,

I watched the speech, and I thought the president's suggestion that the rich pay their fair share of taxes for the privilege of living in this great country was one of the best parts of the speech.

I also noted that the president placed the blame for blowing the budget squarely where it belonged, on the tax cuts for the rich and two off-budget wars that were never paid for during the presidency of George Bush and his Republican cohorts running wild, including you.

You have a nerve, Sen. Vitter. Do you think I'm stupid?

June Butler

And if asking the richest amongst us to pay their fair share is "perpetrating ugly class warfare", then I quote George Bush and say, "Bring it on!"

UPDATE: My friend Counterlight reminded me in a comment of Warren Buffett's words in a CNN interview with Lou Dobbs:

BUFFETT: Yeah. The rich people are doing so well in this country. I mean, we never had it so good.

DOBBS: What a radical idea.

BUFFETT: It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.

The interview took place in 2005! The inequities are even greater today.

LET'S NOT FORGET...

...who blew the budget. The best of Obama's speech yesterday, in my humble opinion:

America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the Baby Boomers.

But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program — but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts — tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our nation’s checkbook, consider this: In the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.

But that’s not what happened. And so, by the time I took office, we once again found ourselves deeply in debt and unprepared for a Baby Boom retirement that is now starting to take place. When I took office, our projected deficit, annually, was more than $1 trillion. On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more.

Others, such as Kevin Drum at Mother Jones and Duncan Black at Eschaton, agree with my humble opinion.

Let's not forget.

KATE DIDN'T NEED TO DO IT, BUT SHE DID

From the Guardian:

She probably didn't need to do it, but when one is about to marry a chap who will one day become Defender of the Faith, it is probably just as well to tick all the boxes: Clarence House has announced that Kate Middleton was confirmed last month by the bishop of London into full membership of the Church of England.

Middleton's confirmation at a private service – she had already been christened into the CofE as a child – serves to dot the Is and cross the Ts of her allegiance to an institution in which she will inevitably spend a lot of time in coming years, especially when Prince William eventually becomes its supreme governor.

Alright then. Everything is in order. No chance at all that anyone will harbor doubts that Kate is a closet Roman Catholic, thus making her ineligible to marry an heir to the throne.

Unlike the dead-ender birthers here in the US, including the man with the awful comb over, Donald Trump, who continue to shout loudly that President Obama was not born in the US and is thus ineligible to be president. The Donald now speaks of running for president. Oh joy!

"THESE SHORTAGES WILL AFFECT YOU"

From the Borowitz Report:

Exporting Democracy Has Led to Shortages of it in U.S., Experts Say

Wisconsin, Florida Hardest Hit

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – The U.S. policy of exporting democracy abroad has meant that there is very little of it left at home.

That is the grim assessment of a new study commissioned by the University of Minnesota, which predicts that if the U.S. continues to export democracy at its current pace it may completely run out of it at home by the year 2015....

Read the rest over there. Borowitz has a special treat for you, a picture of the man with the tan, John Boehner.

Let me think. That's only 4 years away. Grim, indeed. I could still be around. The predictions that jump ahead to 2025 or 2040 don't worry me much, because know I will have left this good earth, but for my ashes. I do feel a bit sorry for the rest of y'all, though.

ALL CATS ARE BAREFOOT

see more So Much Pun

Thanks to Lapin.

EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES SAYS NO TO ANGLICAN COVENANT

Full text of the response of the Diocese of Los Angeles follows here:

The bishops, clergy and laity of the Diocese of Los Angeles, at the request of Katharine Jefferts Schori, our Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, and Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine, Esq., Executive Council member and Chair of the Executive Council D-020 Task Force, have actively engaged in discussion, discernment, study, prayer and dialogue concerning the proposed final draft of the Anglican Covenant. The study culminated at our Diocesan Convention, held December 3 and 4, 2010, with round-table discussions in which more than 800 delegates, representing our 147 congregations, participated.

This discernment leads us to recommend that The Episcopal Church not endorse the final draft of the Anglican Covenant but that we patiently continue the conversation out of our bonds of affection and mutual loyalty to the entire Communion, for the following reasons:

One of our chief strengths as Anglicans has been our ecumenical availability to Christians who find in us the essence of the faith once delivered to the saints, along with latitude in “things indifferent.” We have been a tradition of bridges, not walls. Ours is a tradition that has upheld seven Ecumenical Councils, three historic Creeds, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and a liturgical heritage blessed by the Book of Common Prayer expressed and celebrated through a wonderful variety of cultural influences. Our tradition holds Holy Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation, the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds, the two sacraments instituted by Christ himself: baptism and communion and the Historic Episcopate essential to our faith. It is a tradition of reason that values the scholarly pursuit of truth which has allowed our Anglican ethos to be the middle way of a catholic and reformed faith “not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth” (Collect for the Feast of Richard Hooker). Our hope is that our prophetic witness of openness to the Spirit’s actions might not be foreclosed by a desire to stake out too narrow a spiritual turf on which to stake our flag, but rather a desire to continue to be obedient to the Spirit’s call on our church.

The Episcopal Church was founded in democracy and has enjoyed a polity which is free and democratic since 1789. This long-standing course cannot be reversed. We do, however, acknowledge, honor and support the differences in polity and governance that distinguish the various churches of the Communion. We believe respect for those differences is a crucial component of our tradition that should undergird any Anglican Covenant. For that reason, we support Sections One and Two of the Covenant, which positively affirm the foundation of our faith, our common Anglican vocation, and do not challenge our unique polity.

We are concerned about the omission of the laity from Section 3. As St. Paul teaches, we are all of us the Body of Christ and individually members thereof (I Corinthians 12). There are four orders of ministry in the Church – bishops, priests, deacons and lay people, who also minister as members of the baptized people of God. Such an ecclesiology should both undergird the theology expressed in the Covenant and the church structures developed as means of connecting and serving the churches of the Communion. A Covenant to which we could subscribe would need to re-imagine the Instruments of Communion to provide a stronger representation from all the orders of ministry.

Section 4 is of greatest concern. It creates a punitive, bureaucratic, juridical process within the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, elevating its authority over the member churches despite previous affirmations of member church autonomy (see, e.g., Section 4.1.3). It contains no clear process for dispute resolution, no checks and balances, no right of appeal. The concept of mediation, introduced in Section 3.2.6, is not mentioned in Section 4. The covenant’s focus on “maintenance, dispute and withdrawal” bodes of an immobilized church mission instead of one that is flexible and prophetic. For these reasons, we cannot agree to Section 4.

We cannot endorse a covenant that, for the first time in the history of The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion, will pave the way toward emphasizing perceived negative differences instead of our continuing positive and abundant commonality. We strongly urge more direct face-to-face dialogue, study, prayer and education before the adoption of a document that has such historic significance in the life of the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church. Our differences should not be seen as something that must be proved wrong or endured but rather a motivation to dig deeper into discerning God’s purposes for God’s church.

In conclusion, the Diocese of Los Angeles thanks and commends the entire Anglican Communion for taking this time of holy discernment and suggests that the period of discernment continue so that no hasty decisions are made that would undermine the process of conversation and reception by all the churches of the Communion. We pray that the Holy Spirit illuminates our future steps so that we all may celebrate our common bonds of affection while respecting our varying cultures, ethos and polity within the one body of Christ.

Respectfully submitted,
The General Convention Deputation and the Bishops of the Diocese of Los Angeles

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - "SPEAK TO HIM"

Speak To Him

Speak to Him thou for He hears,
and Spirit with Spirit can meet -
Closer is He than breathing,
and nearer than hands and feet.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

THE GAY PASSION OF CHRIST CONTINUES...

4. Jesus Preaches in the Temple (from The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision) by Douglas Blanchard

“And he was teaching daily in the temple.” -- Luke 19:47 (RSV)

All kinds of people crowded around Jesus when he taught at the temple: male and female, young and old, rich and poor, healthy and sick, people from every race and nation -- and the queer ones: women who acted like men, men who acted like women, those who loved someone of the same sex, those with bodies somewhere between male and female....

Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 of the Gay Passion of Christ series are now posted at the Jesus in Love Blog. The combination of Doug Blanchard's paintings and Kittredge Cherry's words, along with passages from Scripture is powerful, indeed. The series will run daily throughout the Lenten season. See for yourself.

JUST IN TIME...

Holy Week approaches...


From Time:

Just in time for Easter, an Israeli television journalist has produced a pair of nails he says may have been used to crucify Jesus Christ. "We're not saying these are the nails," says Simcha Jacobovici, holding aloft a pair of smallish iron spikes with the tips hammered to one side. "We're saying these could be the nails."

Alrighty, then. Let your imagination run wild, and lots of things could be. I mean, you never know.

The case for the possible rests on a specific combination of research, surmising, guesswork and either the ineptitude or the skittishness of Israeli archeologists who inventoried the tomb thought to contain the bones of the Jewish high priest who ordered Christ's arrest. The tomb, found in 1990, appeared to contain the ossuary, or bone box, of Caiaphas, the jurist who paved the way for the crucifixion.
....

"When you raise the question of Jesus' crucifixion nails," Jacobovici says, "there should be a lot of skepticism."

Indeed the case arrives with no shortage of loose ends. The IAA's inventory states that one nail was found on the floor of the tomb, or cave, and another was found inside an ossuary. But there were 12 ossuaries in the tomb, and there is no record of which one it was in.

So what's the story here? Old nails were found. The nails may have been in what certain archeologists think may be Caiphas' tomb. Somehow the nails may have been separated from the rest of the contents of the tomb. The nails could be the crucifixion nails.

No shortage of loose ends, surely, a tangled trail, and lots of speculative leaps. The many "may have been", "could be", "appeared", "thought to" ought to give the reader pause.

Israeli TV and The History Channel, which should perhaps change its name to the It Coulda Happened Channel, will feature the documentary by Simcha Jacobovici, titled The Nails of the Cross. Jacobovici says:

"I don't think anybody's going to say, 'Crucifixion Nails' exclamation point," Jacobovici says. "I think they're going to write, 'Crucifixion Nails' question mark."

But there is no question mark in the title of the documentary, Mr Jacobovici.

JESUS AND MO - SEXY

Click on the strip for the larger view.

Pace, JCF.

From Jesus and Mo.