'CALLING THE ARCHBISHOPS' BLUFF'

Don't blame me. Blame Mr C. In my heart, I can't blame him at all. It's way past time for the misogynistic nonsense to be over.

In the event that you don't understand Mr C's every word, the transcript is at his blog and at YouTube.

GOOD NEWS! DIOCESES OF DERBY AND GLOUCESTER SAY NO TO ANGLICAN COVENANT

From Tobias Haller at In a Godward Direction:

The Diocese of Derby in the Church of England voted against the adoption of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

Bishops: for 0; against 1 (bishop Humphrey not present)
Clergy: for 1, against 21, abstention 2
Laity. for 2, against 24, absention 1

Tobias says:

Derby has been an Indaba partner with New York and Delhi (India) and according to the Twitter feed comments on the debate the Indaba experience contributed to the negative vote. This is natural, because Indaba represents the ideals the Covenant lauds but paradoxically disables in its notorious Section 4.

Yes! May the vote in Derby inspire other dioceses in the UK to vote against the proposed covenant. The supporters of the document say that there is no alternative to the covenant, but Indaba is one better way forward for the Anglican Communion as opposed to threats of 'relational consequences' for provinces who do not toe the line, although where the line is drawn, who can say?

Update from Nicholas Knisely at The Lead:

We're also seeing reports on twitter from Lesley Crawley's stream that Gloucester has voted against the Covenant as well. We're hoping to find more information soon on that.

It is confirmed that the Diocese of Gloucester voted against the Anglican Covenant. The numbers are below.

House of Clergy YES: 16; NO: 28; 1 abstention
House of Laity YES: 14; NO: 28; 6 abstentions
House of Bishops YES: 1; 1 abstention

'NEWS AND TRUTH ARE NOT THE SAME THING'

News and truth are not the same things. News, at least as it is configured in the faux objectivity of American journalism can be used quite effectively to mask and obscure the truth. ‘Balance,’ in which you have to give as much space, for example, to the victimizer as to the victim, may be objective and impartial, but it is usually not honest. And when you are ‘objective,’ it means that, in your reasonableness, you ultimately embrace and defend the status quo. There is a deep current of cynicism that runs through much of American journalism, especially on commercial electronic media. It is safe and painless to produce ‘balanced’ news. It is very unsafe, as the best of journalists will tell you, to produce truth. The great journalists, like the great preachers, care deeply about truth, which they seek to impart to their reader, listener or viewer, often at the cost to their careers.
....

My former employer, the New York Times, with some of the most able and talented journalists and editors in the country, not only propagated the lies used to justify the war in Iraq, but also never saw the financial meltdown coming. These journalists and editors are besotted with their access to the powerful. They look at themselves as players, part of the inside elite. They went to the same elite colleges. They eat at the same restaurants. They go to the same parties and dinners. They live in the same exclusive neighbourhoods. Their children go to the same schools. They are, if one concedes that propaganda is a vital tool for the power elite, important to the system. Journalists who should have been exposing the lies used to justify the Iraq war or reporting from low-income neighbourhoods- where mortgage brokers and banks were filing fraudulent loan applications to hand money to people they knew could never pay it back- were instead ‘doing’ lunch with the power brokers in the White House or on Wall Street. All that talent, all that money, all that expertise, all those resources proved useless when it came time to examine the two major cataclysmic events of our age. And all that news, however objective and balanced turned out to be a lie.

The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress by Chris Hedges, pp xi and xii.

Thanks to David@Montreal for sending me the quotes from the book, which I have not yet read, but which I intend to read.

I well remember Judith Miller's front page articles during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in the New York Times on the supposed WMD in the country obtained from her Iraqi 'source', Ahmad Chalabi, who was later proved to be lying. Oops!

Brave reporters like Walter Pincus of the Washington Post wrote articles questioning the information on WMD in Iraq but received only back-page coverage.

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.
....

An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces.

Of course, Judith Miller's stories ran on page 1 of the NYT with large headlines. Who you gonna believe? In these times of 'balanced news', you believe what you want to believe. In seeking to provide 'balance' the reporters give equal weight to spurious nonsense and the truth of a situation in order not to appear to be leaning to one side or the other, despite the fact that, at times, there is no sensible other side. And we are left with Stephen Colbert's 'truthiness'.

The Colbert Report
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OUT TO DINNER

In a short while, I will meet Muthah, who blogs at Stone of Witness, and several other folks for dinner here in New Orleans. I'm looking forward to meeting another blog friend face to face. Tomorrow, you'll hear all about our gathering.

UPDATE: Muthah took pictures of our gathering, so I'll wait until I have the photos to write more, if that's all right with the rest of you.

PAY TEACHERS WELL AND YOU'LL ATTRACT THE WRONG SORT

From the DeKalb County (AL) Times-Journal:

State Sen. Shadrack McGill defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators.
....

McGill, R-Woodville, said a 62 percent pay raise in 2007 - passed first by a controversial voice vote and later in an override of a veto by then-Gov. Bob Riley - better rewards lawmakers and makes them less susceptible to being swayed by lobbyists.

Lawmakers entered the 2007 legislative session making $30,710 a year, a rate that had not been changed in 16 years. The raise increased it to $49,500 annually.
....

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.

"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity. (My emphasis)

I don't know but that all sorts of riff-raff might be attracted to run for the state legislature at pay close to $50,000 per year. I know folks who make less, that is, the people who have jobs.

Still, if the Bible says to keep teachers on a short wage leash, perhaps the Christians amongst us should pay attention. But wait! Where in the Bible does it say, "If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach." Can anyone out there cite chapter and verse?

Seems to me that Sen' McGill assumes more character and principles in teachers than in legislators. He could be right.

And what do Meshach and Abednego think about Shadrack's proposal? I guess we'll never know.

Thanks (or no thanks?) to Paul (A.), who sent the link with the following subject line:

At least Louisiana isn't responsible for this representative.

At least...

DIOCESE OF WESTERN LOUISIANA LISTS CANDIDATES FOR BISHOP

Today, the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana published the list of candidates nominated for the position of 4th bishop of the diocese.

Click on the image for the larger view.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF OUR 'CHRISTIAN' NATION

Nevertheless, because the revolutionary leadership sprang from the social establishment in several colonies, it included many who were Anglicans by denominational loyalty, no less than two-thirds of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Elite egalitarians tended to lead these Founding Fathers not to the Awakening but to the Enlightenment and Deism: cool versions of Christianity, or virtually no Christianity at all. The polymath Benjamin Franklin seldom went to church, and when he did, it was to enjoy the Anglican Book of Common Prayer decorously performed in Christ Church, Philadelphia; he made it a point of principle not to spend energy affirming the divinity of Christ. Thomas Jefferson was rather more concerned than Franklin to be seen at church on key political occasions, but he deplored religious controversy, deeply distrusted organized religion and spoke of the Trinity as 'abracadabra...hocus-pocus...a deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign to Christianity as that of Mohamet'. In the face of such low-temperature religion, many on the present-day American religious right, anxious to appropriate the Revolution for their own version of modern American patriotism, have sought comfort in the ultimate Founding Father, George Washington, but here too there is much to doubt. Washington never received Holy Communion, and was inclined in discourse to refer to providence or destiny rather than God.
....

What this revolutionary elite achieved amid a sea of competing Christianities, many of which were highly uncongenial to them, was to make religion a private affair in the eyes of the new American federal government. The constitution which they created made no mention of God or Christianity (apart from the date by 'the Year of our Lord'). That was without precedent in Christian polities of that time, and with equal disregard for tradition (after some debate), the Great Seal of the United States of America bore no Christian symbol but rather the Eye of Providence, which if it recalled anything recalled Freemasonry. The motto 'In God We Trust' only first appeared on the American coin amid civil war in 1864, and it was 1957 before it featured on any paper currency of the United States.

From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCullough, pp. 763-764.

So much for the United States as a 'Christian' nation established by 'Christian' Founding Fathers. Citizens who do not know the true history of the country make up from whole cloth a false history to suit their individual purposes.

You may find this hard to believe, but during all my years in elementary and high school, I said the Pledge of Allegiance minus the words 'under God' and, I came out of that period of my life unscathed. The words were added in 1954, during my university years.

Further reading on the subject of the 'Christian' Founding Fathers in a splendid article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the religious views of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, none of whom would be electable today.

"TWITTER ON"

There’s a little “Occupy” in all of us just waiting to come out and you don’t have to be on the streets to feel it in your gut. Individuals in all cultures now pause—the Church included—when top-down edicts and closed discussions are passed off as normal. The current demand to stop Episcopal Church Council members from tweeting during meetings is an example. OWS is committed to horizontal and radically open discussion. It is “radical” because allowing more and more persons into the conversation revolutionizes what the democratic experience looks like...and is. Indeed, the EC debate engages the consequences of an Information Age but the scent of unfairness when access is denied comes from a far deeper place. Occupy!

From Bishop George Packard on Facebook. A longer version may be found at +George's blog, Occupied Bishop.

What I said on Facebook:

As I see it, transparency is always in order. I don't tweet myself, but I say let them tweet.

"Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops."

...sooner or later. Why not sooner?

DOG TIRED

"An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard. I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.

He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head. He then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious I pinned a note to his collar:

'I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.'

The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar:

'He lives in a home with a non-stop chatting wife, 6 children, 2 under the age of 3 - he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?"

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

STORY OF THE DAY - HALF NAKED

only half-naked in her dream that night
because everybody else was completely
naked & she just had to be different &
when she woke up, she finally figured
out why she spent most of her free time
by herself.

From StoryPeople.