NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Click on the image for the larger view.

 

Nick R. Martin at TPM:

The man in charge of running Arizona’s elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he’s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November.

Bennett’s comments came in an interview late Thursday with conservative radio talk show host Mike Broomhead on Phoenix station KFYI.

Bennett said he was following the lead of the state’s eccentric Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fellow Republican who ordered an investigation into the president’s birth certificate last year and concluded the document released by the White House is a forgery. Bennett said he is now trying to get verification from state officials in Hawaii that the certificate is authentic.

Still beating the dead horse.  And Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the perfect choice as a role model.

But wait!

Bennett, the state’s No. 2 elected official just below Gov. Jan Brewer (R), said his investigation isn’t personal. He said the reason he started looking into it is because he got more than 1,200 emails asking him to do so after Arpaio’s investigation came out.

Of course, Bennett is not himself a birther, but he gets emails.  If the birthers are not good for anything else, they are good at sending emails, and attention must be paid to their idiotic fantasies.

Bennett has not heard back from the officials in Hawaii, because they want proof that Bennett is who he says he is.  Take that!  The officials are "tired of all the requests", and no wonder.

Sooo it's possible Bennett will exclude Obama's name from the ballot or, barring that, he will ask all the candidates for certified copies of their birth certificates if he does not receive a satisfactory response from Hawaii.  But one has to ask, what will satisfy the birthers?  Nothing, because they know the whole phony birth certificate scheme is a vast conspiracy to foist on the citizens of the US a president who was not born in this country.

Oh, and Bennett is a Mormon, which, of course, has nothing at all to do with anything.

KINDNESS

Don’t ever be afraid to be tender. Kindness is what saves lives and gives love to the dead of spirit and the dark of heart. Human warmth is the key to happiness. It will melt the hardest of hearts—even our own.
Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB

Bro John Anthony posted in St. Cuthbert's Cottage

SEE THE PRETTY TRUCKS

That's Duarte Square, where Occupy Wall Street tried to settle after the group was forcibly removed from Zucotti Park by the not-so-gentle police.  Alas, OWS was forcibly removed from the barren Duarte Square, too.  Trinity Church Wall Street owns both places.

I must admit that the square is much more aesthetically pleasing to the eye with trucks parked there than with riff-raff in tents parked in the area.  Plus, the church gets paid for allowing the trucks to park in the square, whereas the protestors wanted the space for free.  Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.


From 'New York Magazine'.

Thanks to Ann for the link.

EVERY DOG NEEDS A CAT

I agree, but my Diana thinks differently.  I want a cat badly, badly.

Thanks to Doug.

'OMAR KHAYYAM ON FORGIVENESS AND FALLING OFF THE WAGON'

I singlehandedly keep
this bar afloat.
My heart has bled
with repentance
a couple thousand times.
But if I don’t go on sinning,
what would divine mercy do?
He can’t bestow forgiveness
unless I keep falling
off the wagon.

 Translated by Juan Cole
from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 130

Oh, do I like this. What would God do with godself without sinners in need of forgiveness? Khayyam is such a rogue, but a thinking rogue, and he often makes me smile. (as I said at Juan's blog)

OUR MAN MALCOLM IN THE ANGLICAN JOURNAL

The Rev Malcolm French, Moderator of NACC

From the Anglican Journal in Canada:

An international coalition of Anglicans [No Anglican Covenant Coalition] hopes a model resolution to reject the Anglican Communion Covenant will be accepted by The U.S. Episcopal Church at its General Convention in Indianapolis in July.

The covenant was intended to be an agreement to bind the global Anglican Communion together despite differences about the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of bishops in same-sex relationships.

The coalition's resolution declines to approve the covenant and claims there are better ways to unify the Anglican Communion. It calls on the church to “at every level to seek opportunities to reach out to strengthen and restore relationships between this church and sister churches of the Communion.”

The covenant was never intended to bind the churches in the Anglican Communion together, but rather to discipline the churches in the Communion which strayed from the straight and narrow path by extending equality to all members of the church without exclusions because of sexual orientation.

The resolution submitted to the TEC General Convention 2012 is numbered D007.  "French here.  Malcolm French."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The world would be a fine place, were it not for the people.

(But for me and thee!)

BREAKING THE RULES OF CIVILITY

Here's the book: Rules of Civility.  My friend, to whom I lend many books, insisted that I read her copy, because she liked it so much.  My books are always returned in the same condition they go out to her, even the old, yellowed paperback mysteries, which she is now reading, as she finds my choices of fiction not cheery enough.



One evening, as I read the very first book that I ever borrowed from my friend, I spilled half a glass of wine on it...my one and only glass of wine, I hasten to add, which I did not even get to finish.  I take care of  books, my own and especially those that belong to others, but the book is ruined, though not for reading, as I went on to finish the story.  I will buy another copy to return to my friend. 

 See?  The book is quite a mess.  The jacket came through the wine spill best of all.  From the front, except for a bit of stickiness, you'd never know the accident happened.  The inside is another story.

What about the contents of the book?  Spoiler alert!  I enjoyed it in a quick-read sort of way.  The author, Amor Towles, "is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan", and this is his first novel.   He writes in the voice of the narrator, who is a young woman in her twenties throughout the book, except for fast-forwards in the beginning and end.

The real story begins in the late 1930s, with the young people crashing parties at grand mansions on Long Island, and my first thought was, "Ah, here we are in Gatsby land," and we were, but the author is not Fitzgerald.  Towles writes well enough, but, curiously to me, he often uses British spelling and expressions, which perhaps is the way people from the right families and the right schools and universities spoke and wrote in the 1930s.  The protagonist, Kate (Katya), who is from an immigrant family in Brooklyn, and did not attend the right schools, works her way up from the secretarial pool to a high-powered job at a glossy magazine and marries a man from the right family, schools, etc.  The reviewer at the New York Times, Liesl Schillinger, liked the book better than I did.  I once read a good many books of this sort, but time is short, and now when I read, I want to sink my teeth into something more solid.

And now off to order another copy of the book.

'ROMNEY MITT, THE DEMON BARBER OF WALL STREET'

The latest from Roy Zimmerman.  The make-up....




Thanks to Paul (A.).

SORRY STUDENTS - NO HEALTH INSURANCE FOR YOU

From Laura Bassett at Huff Post Politics:

Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio, has decided to drop its entire student health insurance plan as of the fall semester 2012 because of the new federal rule requiring contraception coverage under most employee and student health policies.
....

The announcement is somewhat misleading. Under the new rule, Franciscan University would not have to pay for any student's contraception. The administration carved out an exemption for religious organizations, including Catholic schools, that would require the insurance company itself to pay for the insured's birth control coverage "directly and separately." Nonprofit schools that don't currently cover birth control can also qualify for a one-year transition period to comply with the new requirement. 

Will the university provide health insurance for their employees?  Or are all the university employees celibate and not in need of coverage for contraceptives?   I checked the website, and not all the faculty are Franciscans.

You'd think the administration would be forced to hand out the contraceptives themselves, but there are so many degrees of separation between the powers of the institution and the actual dispensing of the contraceptives that they appear ridiculous.  They strive for a kind of purity which is impossible to achieve and live in the world.  This from a church that found it acceptable to have a policy of covering up child abuse for decades.  It is a puzzlement.

Let's get this straight: That the students at Franciscan University will not have health insurance is not the doing of the president but rather of the authorities in the Roman Catholic Church.