MY HEART BLEEDS FOR THEM

From Yahoo Finance:

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.
....

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
....

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. "Could you imagine what it's like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?" (My emphasis)

Heaven's no! Working folks who must manage without huge salaries and bonuses DO NOT understand the stress of people with incomes of $350,000 or more, when each month they may be challenged to pay for the necessities of life such as food, housing, and health care and perhaps some months be forced to do without one or the other of the necessities.

What the stressed-out high earners may have to give up:

$7,500 a year for a golf club membership
$30,000 a year for a peer-learning group for investors
$32,000-a-year for a daughter's prep school tuition

Mark Brunson, who blogs at Enough About Me, sent me the link and thought at first, as I did, that the article was satire, but indeed the article is serious.

HEY BLOGGER! HEY BLOGGER!

We now have the new comment format for our blogs, but the function to subscribe to a comment thread is missing. One would assume that 'new' would be an improvement. How is removing a function that is valued by many an improvement? Come on Blogger! Some of us want to have continuing conversations in blog comments and like receiving email notifications when someone responds to our comments. Now we must continually check back by clicking on the URL for the blog for responses.

HEY BLOGGER, PLEASE REINSTALL EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS FOR SUBSCRIBERS! PLEASE! GIVE US BACK OUR CONVERSATIONS!

UPDATE: Penny at One Cannot Have Too Large a Party informs me that the 'subscribe' function is available in Blogger's embedded comment format, so I switched. I hope a good many of my blog friends make the change. Still, the 'subscribe' function should be available in all comment formats.

FLAGPOLE

A team of engineers were required to measure the height of a flagpole. They only had a measuring tape, and were getting quite frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole. It kept falling down, and they couldn't tell from the ground if the top of the tape was even with the top of the pole.

A mathematician comes along, finds out their problem, and proceeds to remove the pole from the stand, lay it on the ground, and measure it easily.

When he leaves, one engineer says to the other: "Just like a mathematician! We need to know the height, and he gives us the length!"


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

OBAMA - 'YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT VALUES?'

I keep on hearing these same folks talk about values all the time. You want to talk about values? Hard work has a value. Looking out for one another has a value. The idea that we're all in this together, and I am my brother's and my sister's keeper, that's a value.

President Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, said Obama was not campaigning. All right, then.

ARCHBISHOP JANUS

Click on over to MadPriest's place, Of Course I Could Be Wrong, to read the latest incredible, yet true story about Archbishop Janus.

ROMAN CATHOLIC NUNS FILE BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF OBAMA HEALTHCARE EXPANSION

The Franciscan Sisters of Mary arrived in St. Louis in 1872 and later took on ministering to patients in hospitals. (NYT)

From Think Progress:

As further proof that conservative efforts to paint President Obama as the enemy of religion are a red herring, nearly two dozen leading Catholic nuns filed a brief in the Supreme Court last week supporting the president’s signature legislative accomplishment. The Catholic sisters who joined the brief include the leaders of many prominent religious orders providing health care and other services to the needy.

In the AMICI CURIAE brief, the sisters say:

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national healthcare crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women, and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment. The health care bill . . . will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children.

Brave, sisters! Preach it!

Having attended Roman Catholic schools with women religious as my teachers, I know 'Sister' is always right (at least, almost always). Thanks be to God for these courageous women, whom the RC hierarchy declare unfit to serve as priests...the church's loss, surely.

N/T to Katie on Facebook.

BLOGGER SPAM DETECTION WORKS

Blogger's new word verification function with its fuzzy double set of letters is so difficult to use, that my readers complained of trying 3 or 4 times without success to post comments, because they could not decipher the fuzzy letters. Since my own frustration matched theirs when I posted comments on other blogs, I decided to disable word verification here at Wounded Bird to see what followed. After a week, I'm happy to report that the Blogger spam detection function works quite well, as of now. Spam is screened out, and legitimate comments come through. The occasional signed anonymous comment goes into the spam folder, but I check frequently and send the comments through to the blog and delete the spam. I hope I've not spoken my public praise too soon, only to experience a breakdown of the system within a short time. For now, I'm optimistic.

IF WE PAY, WHY CAN'T WE PLAY?

As I understand, the Anglican Communion Office and the Anglican Communion News Service are funded by all of the churches of the communion. The churches have been tasked with deciding whether or not to adopt the proposed Anglican Covenant. One presumes a choice here, whether to adopt or not. Why then do the ACO and ACNS provide only pro-covenant material? It seems to me that the proper and fair thing to do would be to provide both pro and con information, so that the dioceses and the various churches in the communion are better able to make informed decisions.

It's not as though well-reasoned statements against adopting the covenant are non-existent. The No Anglican Covenant Coalition website offers such material from voices of members of different churches throughout the communion, and, in addition, offers pro-covenant material, including a blatantly anti-American paper by Peter Doll, Canon Librarian of Norwich Cathedral, which was sent out to all Church of England bishops by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Why can't those of us who have serious doubts that the covenant is the solution to the present troubles and disagreements in the communion have our voices heard through the ACO and ACNS? Publicizing only pro-covenant material prejudices the vote in favor of the covenant, and the actions of the ACO and ACNS are not right and not fair.

CLOWNS ATTACK WALL STREET BULL

From George Packard, Occupied Bishop, on Facebook:

At the bottom of Broadway, in the heart of the NYC financial district, there's this statue of a bull. It's become iconic for the over-hormoned culture on Wall Street. I attended clown training last night and this is one of the results...

Oh no! You clowns are under arrest for attacking our national idol, the Golden Calf - er - Brazen Bull of Wall Street.

UPDATE: Read George's latest post at his blog, titled 'A Lenten Return for Occupy'.

TWO CHURCH OF ENGLAND DIOCESES VOTE 'YES' TO ANGLICAN COVENANT

The Dioceses of Sheffield and Winchester voted to adopt the Anglican Covenant. The count is now 7 CofE dioceses voting in favor of the covenant and 10 voting against.

My dream is for the Church of England to kill off the covenant, and then the rest of us in the Anglican Communion can forget about the pernicious document and stop talking about it.

H/T to Simon Sarmiento at Thinking Anglicans.

Cartoon by MadPriest.