THE WALL

A funeral service is held for a woman who just passed away.  As the pallbearers carry the casket out, they accidentally bump into a wall.

They hear a faint moan.  They open the casket and find that the woman is actually alive.

She lives for ten more years and then dies.

They have another funeral for her.  At the end of the service, the pallbearers carry out the casket.

As they are leaving, the husband cries out, "Watch out for that wall!"


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Odds are the husband was a Republican.

NO ISOLATED INCIDENTS

Rep Todd Akin (R - MO)

Asked why he doesn’t support abortion in most cases of rape, he responded, "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

Richard Murdock (Candidate for Senate - R- IN)

During last night’s Indiana Senate debate, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock went too far when he said, “…even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Rep Joe Walsh (R - IL)

Abortion bans don’t need exceptions for the life of the mother because of “modern technology and science,” Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) said Thursday.

“With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” of an abortion necessary to save the life of the mother, Walsh said after a debate with Tammy Duckworth, his Democratic opponent....  “… There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”

Add Paul Ryan's personhood bill to amend the US Constitution: "To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization.",  Romney's all-over-the-map-but-he's-against-abortion statements, and anti-women shenanigans and misstatements of biology I have left out, and what you have are not isolated incidents but proposed policies that are part and parcel of the Republican Party.  If you don't believe me, look at their platform, pages 13 and 14.  Republicans, all of you, you own these men and the anti-women policies.  They're yours.  

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

 

The pollsters tell me, as of today, the election is a dead heat, but I'm having real trouble wrapping my head around that piece of information.  The election on November 6 should be a landslide in favor of Obama...a landslide, not because Obama did everything right in the last four years, for I have issues with certain of his policies, but the president did much to better the lives of the citizens of the US. Below is a list of the top-10 accomplishments of the Obama administration from The Washington Monthly.  See details and the rest of the list here.

1. Passed Health Care Reform
 
3. Passed Wall Street Reform

4. Ended the War in Iraq

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry

8. Recapitalized Banks

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi

I favor certain of Obama's accomplishments over others, but I measure them against what Romney offers the electorate. What are Romney's accomplishments?

1. Signed Romneycare into law as governor of Massachusetts.

2. CEO of Bain & Company, co-founded Bain Capital 

3. CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Romney backed away from Romneycare, then reclaimed the program, then backed away again.  Perhaps there was further waffling that I missed.

Romney accumulated vast wealth during his association with Bain.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move.And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.

....

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

....

The only ones who profited in a big way from all the job-killing debt that Romney leveraged were Mitt and his buddies at Bain, along with Wall Street firms like Goldman and Citigroup. Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation, says the criticisms of Bain about layoffs and meanness miss a more important point, which is that the firm's profit-producing record is absurdly mediocre, especially when set against all the trouble and pain its business model causes. "Bain's fundamental flaw, at least according to the math," Ritholtz writes, "is that they took lots of risk, use immense leverage and charged enormous fees, for performance that was more or less the same as [stock] indexing."

So.  After all the skullduggery, destruction of businesses, and death of jobs, to the great financial benefit of CEOs and top management, Bain produced only a mediocre return for its investors.  Every voter should read the Rolling Stone piece.  It's long but very revealing of the real Mitt Romney, who would trash and pillage the country in a worse way than I ever imagined.  If you thought Gordon Gekko was bad....

QUESTION OF THE DAY

 

Premium binders are on sale at the local office supplies store.  Shall I buy several binders and fill them with premium men?

TODD AKIN PUTS FOOT IN MOUTH AGAIN

“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, you know ‘fetch.’ She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

All right, Claire McCaskill is a Blue Dog Democrat, but Akin takes the analogy way too far.  How can anyone vote for this man?

In case you've forgotten, Akin is the guy who said women do not become pregnant from "legitimate rape".

POTEMKIN VILLAGE

 

Read the entire column.

WENDY LIKES THE BATHTUB

Slurp, slurp, slurp.

So I like to drink water in the bathtub. Do you have a problem with that?

Please do not note the rings around the bathtub.  The post is all about Wendy, who lives with my son and his family. 

REST IN PEACE, GEORGE MCGOVERN

 

Despite a landslide loss to Nixon, McGovern's candidacy and particularly his opposition to the Vietnam War was embraced by the left. McGovern later described the loss as one of the most disheartening points in his life, as South Dakota Public Broadcasting's Charles Michael Rays reports for our Newscast desk.

"I thought the program I spelled out there was the truth," McGovern said. "I thought it was best for America and I'll go to my grave believing America would be better off had I been elected."

As I will go to my grave believing the country would have been better off.  Remember, we voted in Tricky Dick and the Watergate gang again, and despite Kissinger's "Peace is at hand" announcement preceding the election, the war continued until our ignominious departure in 1975.  Nixon was the first and only president in history to resign the office in disgrace.

George McGovern was a brave man, an eloquent man, and a good man. I'm proud to say that I voted for him in 1972.

Isn't the picture splendid?

THE DODOS OF OUR DAY

The Dodos of Our Day 

Pity the pretend defenders of decency, 
the protests of baffled bullies in the pulpits 
of patriarchal privilege who’ve long relied 
on the fiction of feminine weakness and sin 
to justify the unearned dominion of males 
so easily distracted, disturbed and undone 
by the merest glimpse of soft flesh, of female skin 
that the only way to control themselves is to 
smother women and girls under cover of veils 
and social rules that treat all issues intimate 
as property safe only in male possession. 
Pity those cold and desperate to re-assert 
authority over bodies not theirs, frantic 
with fear of women thinking, working, threatening 
the oppressive cultish deference to all parts 
masculine required to preserve the lie of strength 
exposed in equality, in women living 
by their own choices, without “father’s” permission. 
Sad it is to see the Akins, Imams, Romneys 
irrational flailing ignorance in defense 
of a “right” devoted to hiding the ego 
fragility of the few who must be “in charge” 
to feel secure, the few who over-compensate 
for their own faults with weapons and words demeaning. 
Pity them, so dependent on their own fiction 
that just a little truth can mean their extinction.

(Marthe G. Walsh)

The flightless dodo bird is extinct, but it's human namesake is not...alas.

Many thanks to Marthe for the poem.

THE BISHOP, THE DIOCESE, AND THE CHURCH

Sorry, but I don't know how else to give the background to the story of Bishop Mark Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina vis-a-vis the Episcopal Church, except to quote the first two sources whole and entire.

Disciplinary Board for Bishops certifies that South Carolina Bishop has abandoned the church

[October 17, 2012] The Disciplinary Board for Bishops has advised Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori that the majority of the 18-member panel has determined that Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Diocese of South Carolina has abandoned the Episcopal Church “by an open renunciation of the Discipline of the Church.”

Following complaints of 12 adult members and two priests of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina, the determination was made under Canon IV.16(A).

The 18 member board – composed of 10 bishops, four clergy, four laity – issued a letter dated September 18. Following the assembly of numerous documents, the Presiding Bishop received the letter in her Church Center office on October 10; the letter was received via U.S. Mail.

On Monday October 15, the Presiding Bishop called Lawrence and, speaking directly with him, informed him of the action of the Disciplinary Board.  She also informed him that, effective noon of that day, the exercise of his ministry was restricted. Therefore, under the canon, he is not permitted to perform any acts as an ordained person. 

From here, Lawrence has 60 days to respond to the allegations in the certification.

Acts of abandonment

The Disciplinary Board for Bishops cited three particular acts of abandonment

“Bishop Lawrence failed to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church” by presiding over the 219th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina on October 10, 2010, at which the following acts were adopted, without ruling them out of order or otherwise dissenting from their adoption, but instead speaking in support of them in his formal address to the Convention.”

“Bishop Lawrence further failed to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church” by presiding over the 220th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina on February 19, 2011, at which Resolution R-6 was finally adopted on the second reading, without ruling it out of order or otherwise dissenting from its adoption.”

“On October 19, 2011, in his capacity as President of the nonprofit corporation known as The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina, Bishop Lawrence signed, executed, and filed with the Secretary of State of the State of South Carolina certain Articles of Amendment, amending the corporate charter 4 as stated in Resolution R-11, described in paragraph 7.c above. That amendment deleted the original stated purpose of the corporation “to continue the operation of an Episcopal Diocese under the Constitution and Canons of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America” and replaced it with the stated purpose “to continue operation under the Constitution and Canons of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina.”

“On about November 16, 2011, in an apparent effort to impair the trust interest of The Episcopal Church and of the Diocese of South Carolina in church property located in that Diocese, Bishop Lawrence directed his Chancellor, Wade H. Logan, III, to issue quitclaim deeds to every parish of the Diocese of South Carolina disclaiming any interest in the real estate held by or for the benefit of each parish.”

  South Carolina Episcopalians explain complaint against bishop:

With much deliberation, Melinda A. Lucka, an attorney in the Charleston, S.C. area and an active communicant in the Diocese of South Carolina, requested that the Disciplinary Board for Bishops review various actions of Bishop Lawrence that have taken place over the past two years. Ms. Lucka asked the Board if it could make a determination as to whether or not the actions were consistent with the mission and polity of The Episcopal Church.

Lucka made the request on behalf of 12 lay communicants and two priests in the diocese. The communicants are: Robert R. Black, Margaret A. Carpenter, Charles G. Carpenter, Frances L. Elmore, Eleanor Horres, John Kwist, Margaret S. Kwist, Barbara G. Mann, David W. Mann, Warren W. Mersereau, Dolores J. Miller, Robert B. Pinkerton, M. Jaquelin Simons, Mrs. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, John L. Wilder, and Virginia C. Wilder. The clergy who were named are longstanding Episcopal priests Colton M. Smith+ and Roger W. Smith+.

Generally, names of individuals who initiate ecclesiastical requests are held in confidence through privacy provisions of the Canons; however, the complainants in this request gave their approval to allow themselves to be made known to the Bishop.

Lucka said that they agreed to be named “as a courtesy to Bishop Lawrence, so as not to be cloaked in a shroud of secrecy.” They hope that this “will prevent any suppositions that may be asserted in the upcoming days or weeks that The Episcopal Church may have initiated or encouraged the filing of this request.”

“They also want to clarify that although most individuals are members of the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina, an organization of mainstream Episcopalians in the diocese, this was not an action taken by the Forum or its Board. In addition to the individuals who made this request, there are many, many other loyal Episcopalians in the diocese who felt strongly that Episcopal Church officials should review the Bishop’s actions.”

“There is definitely a place for orthodox and evangelical views within the diocese; that’s the beauty of being under the large tent of The Episcopal Church; however, viewpoints and practices in the diocese began to take large leaps away from the broader Church when various actions took place. Severing the legal connections to the governing laws of the Church and essentially forming a new corporate entity, outside of The Episcopal Church by changing the diocesan corporate purpose statement to no longer accede to the Constitution and Canons of our Church seemed to be going too far out of bounds.”

“The hope of these individuals is that the diocese will continue to be a home for all Episcopalians to worship and live together in God’s love through Jesus Christ. They ask the Church for prayers for the Bishop and all involved.”

The names of the complainants are now known.

Partial responses by +Lawrence and the diocesan officers are quoted below.  For the complete responses follow the links.

The Episcopal Church (TEC) has made an attack against our Bishop and Diocese, in the midst of efforts for a negotiated settlement, which has fundamentally changed our common life. You may have heard or read about this over the last week but it is vital today that we all understand what has occurred and what it means as clearly as possible.

-----------

This action is a deplorable assault upon the Bishop of this Diocese. The attack came in the midst of negotiations whose stated intent was to find a peaceful solution to our differences with the Episcopal Church.  It involved a process in which there was no prior notice of the proceedings, no notice of the charges against him nor any opportunity to face the local accusers (who remained anonymous until today).

The rhetoric of the response is typical of +Lawrence.   The bishop seems to have survived the attack and assault and is not yet a martyr to the cause, but he stands ready.  From his words in the past, I've suspected that long-suffering Bishop Lawrence was desirous of martyrdom, and perhaps he believes he already wears the martyr's crown, but - alas - not everyone would agree.

What was the Disciplinary Board to do once the diocese voted that the Constitution and Canons of the Diocese of South Carolina trumped the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church, the church in which the bishop vowed to "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church", and +Lawrence did not object?  In which church did Bishop Lawrence think he was consecrated bishop, and on what basis does he now see himself as released from his vows?

Still +Lawrence will stand in the breach and protect the diocese, which he now claims has been abandoned by the Episcopal Church, along with its bishop, which is himself.  How much more clearly could the diocese and the bishop have declared their independence from the Episcopal Church at their convention?  I'm not grasping the logic here.  Kendall Harmon, Canon Theologian, says:

As a result of TEC's attack against our Bishop, the Diocese of South Carolina is disassociated from TEC; that is, its accession to the TEC Constitution and its membership in TEC have been withdrawn.

The diocese withdrew at its last convention, and the bishop did not object, and now they say they have withdrawn because of the attack on their bishop?  What am I missing?

H/T to Thinking Anglicans.