Moscow: Liturgy in honor of St. George the Great Martyr and Commemorating Victory in World War II

Moscow May 6 2011

SPAM of a different flavor

This just showed up in my inbox somehow getting past my generally very good spam filter.

Do you need a top quality light concealed bulletproof vest??Israeli made. Battle proven. NIJ certified!

Introducing the Robo Level 3A Concealed vest. Light, concealed and comfort.The next generation of bullet proof vests. Less than $370! Retail price is more than $800!Level 3A protection NIJ certified.

Well at least it's not the usual offer for viagra or some new method of enlarging certain parts of my anatomy.  I wonder if someone is trying to give me a hint.  Maybe I need to lighten up on the Anglicans...

California: Jerry Brown's Last Stand

...Jerry Brown was already something of an oddity when he first was elected governor in 1974, succeeding Ronald Reagan, who, like Schwarzenegger, was an actor who became governor. Brown was, at 36, a symbol of the glamour and the restless adventurousness of California, as well as its quirkiness. But California and Brown have changed in the 28 years since he left the governor’s office, and now they are relearning each other. Government has new rules, new problems, new politics and new players. It has grown, particularly in California, more ossified and divided. Term limits, the new governor suggested to me a few weeks after taking office in January, have turned out to be a force for bad, feeding the paralysis in Sacramento. Over late-night glasses of pinot grigio and plates of brussels sprouts at a restaurant near the State Capitol, he talked about lawmakers who now spend so much time worrying about getting elected to another, higher office that they have little time to consider the staggeringly complicated legislation that lands on their desks or to build working relationships with other lawmakers.

“The experts have taken over,” Brown told me, referring to the more permanent class of legislative aides and lobbyists. “The elected people are the ones who ought to be thinking about this, but they are all thinking about their next job. It has actually created more insecurity and less independence on the part of representatives.” The days when legislation could be drafted by five elected officials in a room — the governor and the majority and minority leaders of each party — are gone. The lawmakers and staff members who ran the place when Brown last served as governor are also, for the most part, gone. “The first time I came, most of them were older than me,” he said. Now, “I am older, and they are younger.” Brown, who is 73, was governor when the Democratic leader of the Senate, Darrell Steinberg, entered college as a freshman in 1977.

Brown speaks with the assurance that comes with time and experience — but also with the freedom that comes from being, you assume, at the last station of his career. Age has overtaken ambition; he is almost certainly not going to run for any higher office. By now, the contours of his story are mostly written: his years as governor, attorney general and mayor of Oakland. His races for the White House and the Senate. His squabbles with Bill Clinton and his romance with Linda Ronstadt. His passing fascination with Zen Buddhism and meditation. His trips to India to work with Mother Teresa. His domestic dabbles as a populist, a liberal, even a flat-taxer. Still, there is something slightly bizarre, at least by the usual rules of political advancement, in running for governor after having been governor, not to mention after waging three national campaigns for the White House. Of course, this is the man who ran for mayor of Oakland after he was governor, an odd political move that befuddled even his friends.

Read the rest here

Washington Post: Who is Bradley Manning?

In January 2010, more than 130 people gathered to celebrate the opening of Room B-28, a “hacker space” in the basement of the computer science building at Boston University. The room had two rows of computers running open-source software, and, in conformity to the hacker ethic, its walls were painted with wildly colored murals, extensions of the free expression to be practiced there. That was the reason for the power tools, too — in case someone wanted to build something amazing and beautiful, such as the musical staircase, under construction now, that chimes when you step on it.

One of the visitors was a young Army specialist named Bradley Manning, on leave from duty in Iraq. He had been working with computers, modifying code, since he was a kid. David House, founder of the hacker space, said he immediately sensed that Manning “was in the community,” someone who understood how technology could be empowering. This was the sort of world Manning hoped to inhabit one day, friends said. He had joined the Army so the GI Bill would finance his education. He had his eye on a PhD in physics.

Days later, he would be on a plane back to Baghdad and a culture where rule-breaking was not celebrated. And eight months after that, House — who had chatted with the man for barely 15 minutes — went to visit him in the brig at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, where Manning was being held as the prime suspect inthe largest national security leak in U.S. history.

He is accused of violating military computer security and leaking classified information to the insurgent Web site WikiLeaks. He faces 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy,” a capital crime. The material includes a video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, daily field reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a quarter-million cables from U.S. diplomats around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the cable leaks “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests.”

For most of the past year, Manning spent 23 hours a day alone in a 6-by-12-foot jail cell. His case has become a rallying point for free-information activists, who say the leaked information belongs to the American people. They compare the 23-year-old former intelligence analyst to Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers, and decry excessive government secrecy. “What is happening to our government when Bradley Manning is charged with aiding the enemy?” asked Pete Perry, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network. “Who is the enemy? Information? The American people?”

The case raises troubling issues. Placing information in the public domain has never before been construed as aiding the enemy. Manning had a history of emotional outbursts throughout his youth, and they continued during his Army service, culminating in a breakdown in Baghdad.

How did a young man of such promise wind up in a brig? And how was he in a position to potentially access sensitive material given what the Army knew — or should have known — about him? Who is Bradley Manning, and what made him the way he is?

Read the rest here.

GOP Retreats from Medicare Reform

WASHINGTON — House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were backing away from the centerpiece of their budget plan — a proposal to overhaul Medicare — in a decision that underscored both the difficulties and political perils of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.

While top Republicans insisted that they remained committed to the Medicare initiative, which had become the target of intense attacks by Democrats and liberal groups in recent weeks, the lawmaker who would have to turn the proposal into legislation said he had no plans to do so any time soon.

The lawmaker, Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said that while he still supports the party’s Medicare approach, opposition from Democrats made it pointless to proceed.

“I’m not interested in talking about whether the House is going to pass a bill that the Senate shows no interest in,” Mr. Camp said in an appearance at the National Press Club. “I’m not interested in laying down more markers. I am interested in solutions.”

Coupled with remarks by other House Republican leaders, his statement suggested that the party’s Medicare proposal had been shelved, even though the party’s lawmakers had taken a risky vote to pass the budget in the House just last month, and in the past two weeks had attempted to sell it to constituents in often-stormy town hall meetings.

Read the rest here.

Eternal Memory

Chief Petty Officer Claude Choules, who died in Australia on May 5 aged 110, was the last surviving man to have seen action in the First World War.

On the outbreak of war in 1914 he tried to join the British Army as a boy bugler by lying about his age. Instead he was sent in 1915 to the boys' training ship Mercury, under the headmastership of the athlete CB Fry, moored in the Hamble river. He then completed his training in the former 140-gun wooden Impregnable, berthed in the Hamoaze. He was still there when he heard the news of the battle of Jutland.

In October 1917 he joined the 40,000-ton battleship Revenge as a boy seaman, first class. The ship had fired more than a hundred 15in shells at Jutland, and Choules's next ship was another veteran of the battle, the fast battleship Valiant.

Read the rest here.

Another red day on Wall Street

The US Dollar Index rallies sharply as bonds rise.  Stocks continue their week long slide with the S&P 500 down as of this writing by more than 1%.  Commodities continue to get hammered with near panic selling in silver (down by more than 11%) and oil down near 10% and trading below $100 a barrel.

On the upside this weekend may be a good time to gas up the car.

Bill Gross Warns Of ‘Repression’ In U.S. Treasuries

Bill Gross, managing director of the world’s largest bond portfolio, may reside near his office for Pacific Investment Management Company in Newport Beach, California, but he is still sailing away from U.S. government bonds.

In his investment outlook letter to investors for May, Gross discusses the “immediate threat” that low interest rates in the U.S. pose to investment portfolios. Gross is no bigger fan of U.S. Treasuries today than he was a month ago, when he said he was pulling out of all but a small supply of U.S. Treasuries in PIMCO’s $1.2 trillion bond portfolio. (Read “Bill Gross Shorts Treasuries“) Gross cites an academic paper that refers to the “financial repression” that debt-burdened U.S. and U.K. governments employed in capping interest rates in government bonds in order to reduce the debt to GDP ratio. What worked in the post-WWII era may work again now, but Gross doesn’t want to be around when it does.

As inflation hits U.S. products like gasoline and food, which are excluded from the core measure that the Federal Reserve analyses, indications for job growth and a healthier economy are growing slimmer. “Even if 10-year Treasuries stay where they are at 3.30%, and fed funds close to 0%, savers and financial intermediaries are being shortchanged by both of these yields and everything in between,” Gross writes.

Read the rest here.

A Questionable Veneration

From Rorate Caeli

Mary alone found grace before God without the help of any other creature. All those who have since found grace before God have found it only through her. She was full of grace when she was greeted by the Archangel Gabriel and was filled with grace to overflowing by the Holy Spirit when he so mysteriously overshadowed her. From day to day, from moment to moment, she increased so much this twofold plenitude that she attained an immense and inconceivable degree of grace. So much so, that the Almighty made her the sole custodian of his treasures and the sole dispenser of his graces. She can now ennoble, exalt and enrich all she chooses. She can lead them along the narrow path to heaven and guide them through the narrow gate to life. She can give a royal throne, sceptre and crown to whom she wishes. Jesus is always and everywhere the fruit and Son of Mary and Mary is everywhere the genuine tree that bears that Fruit of life, the true Mother who bears that Son.


To Mary alone God gave the keys of the cellars of divine love and the ability to enter the most sublime and secret ways of perfection, and lead others along them. Mary alone gives to the unfortunate children of unfaithful Eve entry into that earthly paradise where they may walk pleasantly with God and be safely hidden from their enemies. There they can feed without fear of death on the delicious fruit of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They can drink copiously the heavenly waters of that beauteous fountain which gushes forth in such abundance. As she is herself the earthly paradise, that virgin and blessed land from which sinful Adam and Eve were expelled she lets only those whom she chooses enter her domain in order to make them saints.
...
The salvation of the world began through Mary and through her it must be accomplished. Mary scarcely appeared in the first coming of Jesus Christ so that men, as yet insufficiently instructed and enlightened concerning the person of her Son, might not wander from the truth by becoming too strongly attached to her. This would apparently have happened if she had been known, on account of the wondrous charms with which Almighty God had endowed even her outward appearance. So true is this that St. Denis the Areopagite tells us in his writings that when he saw her he would have taken her for a goddess, because of her incomparable beauty, had not his well-grounded faith taught him otherwise. But in the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary must be known and openly revealed by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be known, loved and served through her. The reasons which moved the Holy Spirit to hide his spouse during her life and to reveal but very little of her since the first preaching of the gospel exist no longer.

-(RC Saint) Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?  I ask that as even as I stare at the icon of the Theotokos over my desk. Frankly, this is so over the top that parts of it strike me as straying perilously close to heresy.

Pakistani Army, Shaken by Raid, Faces New Scrutiny

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The reputation of the army, the most powerful and privileged force in Pakistan, has been severely undermined by the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, raising profound questions about its credibility from people at home and from benefactors abroad, including the United States.

That American helicopters could fly into Pakistan, carrying a team to kill the world’s most wanted terrorist and then fly out undetected has produced a stunned silence from the military and its intelligence service that some interpret as embarrassment, even humiliation.

There is no doubt that the raid has provoked a crisis of confidence for what was long seen as the one institution that held together a nation dangerously beset by militancy and chronically weak civilian governments.

The aftermath has left Pakistanis to challenge their leadership, and the United States to further question an already frequently distrusted partner.

By Wednesday, members of Parliament, newspaper editorials and Pakistan’s raucous political talk shows were calling for an explanation and challenging the military and intelligence establishment, institutions previously immune to public reproach.

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

"So when does Seal Unit 6, or whatever it's called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden. Wasn't he, or am I wrong here?,"
-Left-wing radio talk show host Mike Malloy

Source

Christianity Today: From Russia With Love

Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion offers evangelicals more than an olive branch.
Timothy C. Morgan | posted 5/04/2011 08:50AM

Hilarion Alfeyev, the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, located 80 miles northwest of Moscow, has a very big job. As head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Hilarion is responsible for talking to global Christianity on behalf of the 150 million people in Russian Orthodoxy worldwide.

Given his gift for languages, Hilarion arose as an easy pick for the job by Russian Patriarch Kirill. This year, the Russian-American Institute, a faith-based educational and support organization (formerly the Russian-American Christian University), helped Hilarion interact with a cross-section of evangelicals around the United States for the first time. Christianity Today deputy managing editor Timothy C. Morgan interviewed Hilarion while he was in Washington, D.C.

What's the purpose of your trip?

To establish contacts and to find common positions. Often we are in circles in our own ecclesiastical environment and don't communicate with those who might be our allies.

With regard to evangelical leaders, until recently we didn't have any systematic collaboration or dialogue or conversation. Many evangelicals share conservative positions with us on such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage.

Do you want vigorous grassroots engagement between Orthodox and evangelicals?

Yes, on problems, for example, like the destruction of the family. Many marriages are split. Many families have either one child or no child.

There are many incomplete families, not to speak of various homosexual unions, which are equated with the family. This completely changes the whole picture of human relationships. It directly affects the future of many nations. The sign of a spiritually healthy nation is that it expands—it grows. If it shrinks, it is a very clear sign of unhealthiness.

Read the rest here.

Turkey Cultivates Sites of Its Christian Heritage

ALASEHIR, TURKEY — Knapsacks shouldered and bibles in hand, a group of Christian pilgrims from Indonesia, China and the United States trooped into the remains of a fourth-century church in ancient Philadelphia last month. Gazing up at the columns that tower over what is today the Turkish market town of Alasehir, the pilgrims listened as their Australian guide read from the Apostle John’s letter to the early Christians of this city, one of the biblical Seven Churches of Revelation.

“It makes you see the Bible in 3-D and color,” the guide, Dan Fennell, said of his tour of historical Christian sites around western Turkey.

Mr. Fennell, who is based in Jakarta, has been leading pilgrimages to Anatolia for close to a decade. But these visits have become richer and more rewarding, he said, because Turkey has been cultivating the historical sites of Christianity.

“In Laodicea, for example, where we are headed next, you can now see things you could not see five years ago,” Mr. Fennell said of the ruins of the seventh city addressed by the Apostle John.

A Muslim nation long ill at ease with its pre-Ottoman history, Turkey has discovered Anatolia’s Christian heritage as a way of drawing visitors and of cultivating an image as a meeting-point and arbiter of civilizations.

“We have recognized this as a special field of tourism and as a special cultural wealth,” the Turkish culture minister, Ertugrul Gunay, said in an interview in Ankara. By next year, his ministry aims to increase the number of religious tourists to Turkey to more than three million, from 1.3 million last year.

“Until now, our concept of faith tourism was limited” to Muslim shrines “like the Mevlana tomb in Konya or the Halil-Ur Rahman mosque in Urfa,” Mr. Gunay said, “even though Anatolia is the home of important shrines of Christianity and Judaism as well.”

“Now,” he added, “we are working to care for all of these sites, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, without discrimination, to restore them and maintain them and to open them up to the public to visit.”

A case in point is the ancient metropolis of Laodicea, in southwestern Turkey, where Turkish archaeologists unearthed a spectacular church dating to the early fourth century.

Read the rest here.

Georg Friedrich Händel - Organ Concerto - G Moll - Adagio

What Happened to Air France Flight 447?

Late on the morning of April 3, the expedition ship Alucia rocked violently on the South Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a squall. On the aft deck, the crew huddled together in rain slickers and gazed across the heaving seas to a yellow blur on the horizon. This was an unmanned reconnaissance submarine carrying 15,000 photographs that they were nearly desperate to see. But it had buoyed to the surface just as the squall sprang up, and with 30-knot winds and four-foot swells that splashed over the stern, it was too dangerous to retrieve the sub. So they watched and waited.

For eight days, the Alucia had been trolling the ocean near a spot known as the L.K.P., or the Last Known Position of Flight 447, the Air France jet that vanished in June 2009, about halfway between South America and Africa. In the nearly two years since, three other search teams went looking for the wreckage, but this was the Alucia’s first try. The ship carried three Remus 6000 submarines, some of the most advanced underwater search vehicles on earth, which swept the seafloor in 20-hour runs, then surfaced to deliver sonar imagery to the Alucia’s scientific team, who pored over the data in 12-hour shifts around the clock. So far, they had not found the plane, but the day before, one scientist pointed at something unusual on the monitor and said, “What about this?” And ever since, the air on the Alucia was charged.

Everyone knew the stakes. This wasn’t a scan of the Sargasso Sea or a study of salinity samples. The families of 228 passengers were restless for results. The search had already taken two years and cost more than $25 million. Another $12 million was committed to the Alucia this year, but French investigators had quietly decided that this year would be the last. If the Alucia did not find the plane, no one ever would.

As expedition leader, Michael Purcell was equal parts colleague and boss, with a raspy voice and a sonic laugh and a playful sarcasm, but he knew the Remus subs as well as anyone. Looking at the fuzzy mark on the monitor, he knew they had found something unnatural. It was too long and straight to be geologic. It was unlike anything else on the seafloor. On the other hand, if it wasn’t Flight 447, Purcell knew the disappointment would be palpable. As he prepared the photographic sub to return to the bottom for an 18-hour mission, Purcell whispered to another scientist, “I’m 95 percent sure that’s it, but man, if it’s not, it’s going to be a long two and a half months.” The sub went down at 9:45 p.m. At 2 a.m., Purcell was still awake in his cabin. He picked up his journal. “Tired but not sleepy,” he wrote. “May have found the plane today. Everyone is on edge.”

Four hours later, Purcell was up with the sun, and by late morning he was on deck with the crew, watching the Remus bob in the distance. A little after 1 p.m., they pulled the sub onboard and attached two thick cables to upload its data into the computers in the mission-control room. They drew the curtains around the room, so nonscientific crew members could not see in, and yanked the satellite uplink offline, so no one could leak the news. Then they crowded around the computer monitor as the first images of Flight 447 came onscreen: engines, landing gear and sections of fuselage, all unmistakably vivid on the ocean floor. But as they turned the satellite back on and began sending the first photos to air-crash investigators in France, the deeper implications of their discovery were just beginning to surface.

The vanishing of Flight 447 was easy to bend into myth. No other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely — without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar. The airplane itself, an Airbus A330, was considered to be among the safest. It was equipped with the automated fly-by-wire system, which is designed to reduce human error by letting computers control many aspects of the flight. And when, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean, Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky, it was tempting to deliver a tidy narrative about the hubris of building a self-flying airplane, Icarus falling from the sky. Or maybe Flight 447 was the Titanic, an uncrashable ship at the bottom of the sea.

Read the rest here.

Referendum puts strain on Britain’s coalition government

LONDON — Among the fragrant roses behind No. 10 Downing Street, David Cameron and Nick Clegg presented themselves to the British public one year ago as a political dream team: Cameron, a Conservative, as prime minister and Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, as his deputy, in a coalition government blurring the lines between the right and left wings.

Yet as Britons vote on a pivotal referendum Thursday that could change the way they elect their governments, the coalition is no longer smelling so sweet.

Cameron’s conservatives grudgingly agreed to hold the referendum to appease the Liberal Democrats — traditionally Britain’s third-largest political force after the Conservative and Labor parties, and whose support Cameron needed to form a government after a close vote last May. But passage of the measure would arguably aid the Liberal Democrats the most, while hurting the Conservatives in future elections. To defeat it, the Conservatives are being accused of waging a misinformation and smear campaign against their very own coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.

After talking up the fraternal bonds of political friendship only months ago, Clegg is now lashing out at the Conservatives for spreading “lies” and “deceit.” The tension spilled over into a cabinet meeting Tuesday, when the Liberal Democrat energy secretary openly confronted Cameron over campaign materials against the measure that contained personal attacks against Clegg.

The open warfare over the referendum is damaging the coalition, potentially testing its ability to hold together as planned for a full five years. The Liberal Democrats are vowing that win or lose, they will more aggressively challenge Cameron’s Conservative agenda after Thursday’s vote. Already, the Liberal Democrats in recent weeks have come out swinging against Cameron on issues including immigration and heath-care reform.

“The first 12 months, there was a bit of an embed [with the conservatives], but now it is time for us to flex our muscles a bit,” Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ party president, said in an interview.

In the balance, however, is not only the durability of the coalition government, but also a major shift in the voting system.

The ballot measure would dump the current system that elects members of Parliament by simply awarding victory to the candidate with the most votes. It would be replaced with a system similar to the one used to pick the best picture at the Academy Awards, with voters ranking the candidates in order of preference and the losing candidates’ votes then redistributed.

Read the rest here.

Palestinian factions, in Cairo, sign unity accord

JERUSALEM–Fatah and Hamas formalized their agreement to halt a four-year rift at a ceremony in Cairo on Wednesday, raising hopes of an end to a split that left Palestinians under rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We announce to our Palestinian people that we turn forever the black page of division," said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah,adding that he soon will visit Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The start of the ceremony at the headquarters of Egypt’s intelligence agency, which followed a signing of the accord by delegation leaders from both sides, was held up for hours in a protocol dispute.

A Palestinian official told Reuters news agency that there was disagreement over whether the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, would sit with delegation members on the podium or with Abbas. In the end, Mashal sat with the delegations.

Fatah's agreement with Hamas, a militant Islamist group whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, has drawn warnings from Israel and stirred concern in Washington that the accord could undermine peace efforts. Both the U.S. and Israel consider Hamas, which has carried out suicide bombings and fired rockets from Gaza into Israel, a terrorist organization.

But the signing set off small celebrations in the West Bank city of Ramallah and in Gaza City, where young Palestinians shouted: “Fatah and Hamas, one hand!,” and “National unity!” The demonstrators held Palestinian flags and the banners of both factions.

Read the rest here.

Obama won't release Bin Laden post mortem photos

Good for him.  The wingnuts on the far right are already having a cow and spinning more conspiracy theories.  Let them.  This was the right call.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has decided not to release photographs of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's body, a senior administration official told NBC News on Wednesday.

Obama also announced the decision not to release post-mortem photos during an interview Wednesday with CBS' "60 Minutes."

The White House had been weighing the release of a photo, in part to offer proof that bin Laden was killed during a raid on his compound early Monday. However, officials had cautioned that the photo was gruesome and could be inflammatory.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, many of whom have seen the pictures taken by Navy SEALs, agreed with the president.

"In my opinoin there is no end served by releasing a picture of someone who has been killed," Democratic House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said during an unrelated news briefing on Wednesday. "I think there is absolute proof that Osama bin Laden was in fact the person that was taken into custody... killed in the firefight."

"Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway," GOP House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told CBS, "and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East."

Read the rest here.

Wall Street takes a hit; Gold and Silver plunge

After a powerful first quarter stocks have started the month of May on the downside.  As of this writing the S&P 500 is deep into its third day of negative trading with commodities taking the biggest hit.  Oil is now trading at just over $108 a barrel.  Precious metals have been hammered since posting records all through April, with Gold and especially Silver (which rose more than 20% in April alone) in headlong retreat so far this week.  The sell off in metals was however predicted by more than a few traders who warned that a month of record gains was going to cause some major investors to take profits.  Many analysts also cautioned that silver's near parabolic move to the upside had outpaced market fundamentals and it was due for a correction.

The general pattern for metals, especially gold, for the last decade has been two steps forward - one step back - pause - repeat.  Many believe this is a continuation of that pattern.

Old Topic... New Discussion

For those interested there is a (surprisingly adult) conversation going on about the differences in Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology over here... On Papal Primacy and the Independence of Bishops.

HT: Dr. Tighe

A New Saint: Blessed Irodion of Lainici is Glorified

The glorification of St. Irodion of Lainici in Romania. Read the story at Mystagogy.

Holy Saint Irodian pray for us!

Canada: Conservatives win national election

OTTAWA — The Conservative Party will again govern Canada, this time with a majority, following the country’s fourth election in seven years.

In addition, incomplete results late Monday night clearly indicated that the New Democratic Party, a movement with socialist roots, will form the official opposition, which would mean that the vote is likely to significantly reshape Canada’s political left.

It was the first time since Canada became a nation in 1867 that the Liberals, the most successful political party in the country’s history, finished in third place.

The unexpected rise over the campaign’s final days of the New Democrats, a party historically distinguished by its lock on third place, was also devastating for the Bloc Québécois, a party that has championed Quebec separatism for the last 20 years. It was reduced to just two seats and its defeated candidates included Gilles Duceppe, its long time leader.

For Prime Minister Stephen Harper, obtaining a majority was the overriding focus of his campaign. In the end, he did much better than the dozen seats he needed to secure the 155 required for control, acquiring 165, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation projected. The New Democratic Party won 105 seats, well above its previous record of 45, while the Liberals held only 35. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, became its first, and only, elected member.

Read the rest here.

Dining in Old New York

Dinner Menu & Wine List (also beer) from Rector's Restaurant  May 1901 (click to enlarge)

From The New York Public Library Collection

Shamelessly stolen from here. (click to enlarge)

On the demise of a demagogue (Glenn Beck)

On Friday, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, as businesses added jobs for the 13th straight month.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck’s daily cable-TV show.

These are not unrelated events.

When Beck’s show made its debut on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the nation was in the throes of an economic collapse the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

He pushed further into dark conspiracies, urging his viewers to hoard food in their homes and to buy freeze-dried meals for sustenance when civilization breaks down. He spun a conspiracy theory in which the American left was in cahoots with an emerging caliphate in the Middle East. And, most ominously, he began to traffic regularly in anti-Semitic themes.

This vile turn for Beck reached its logical extreme two weeks ago, when he devoted his entire show to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what is happening in our world today.”

Griffin’s Web site dabbles in a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including his view that “present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order.”

Read the rest here.

Benedict XVI sacks an Australian bishop

THE Catholic Bishop of Toowoomba, William Morris, has been effectively sacked by Pope Benedict XVI over doctrinal disobedience for his support for ordaining women priests and other liberal reform.

Read the rest here.
HT Fr. Z who has his own take on the news story posted.

FDNY in Times Square read the news ticker. 343 New York firefighters were murdered by Bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden has been killed

God forgive my celebrating anyone's death, but that murderous SOB is long overdue for his standing reservations in the hot stinky bad place.  One can but hope that the pitchforks have been sharpened recently.  Well done to all involved in bringing this monster to justice.  Bravo Zulu!

Some recent posts on Reactionaries and Monarchy

The other piece of nonsense is that there is a single solution — in this case the thing called democracy, or election — to any problem in social and political life. Why do we need a hereditary family when we can have an elected head of state? As a reactionary, my view is that the great thing about the British monarchy is precisely that no one ever elected them. They have good public relations and conspicuous charm, but that is irrelevant to our constitution’s continuity and tradition. Bright radicals have been trying to pull the same democracy trick with the House of Lords for a century now, and no one has yet come up with a popular solution. Who, one wonders with Henry II, will rid us of these meddlesome fools? For reactionaries, that is one of the great historical questions.

From "In Praise of Reactionaries." I strongly recommend the entire post.
H/T Wilson Unplugged

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the newly-wed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It is very catholic and godly to greatly reverence the Royal Family; like the Tradition of the Church, they are a fundamental connexion to God, and a symbol of the national Christian tradition. You cannot be a good Catholic and support pure democracy in my very humble opinion; democracy is simply the exaltation of oligarchical despotism and authority which comes not from God and by no means mirrors the authority of God in Heaven. If the King is a despot, at least there's only one of him. Nevertheless it is a great day to be English (though not ''British''), and to be Irish. A plague upon enemies of the Crown!

From Patricius.

Some interesting data from the Ukraine

Russian religion oriented and Orthodox outfits reported on the findings of a sociological inquiry conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Ukraine, with the title 'Religion in Ukraine: Confessions, Attitudes, Believers.' Here are the results:

1) 46% of inhabitants of Ukraine consider themselves members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate; 22% belong to the schismatic Kiev patriarchate; Nearly 10% are Uniates; 3% are Protestants; 2% is shared by Latin Christians and Muslims; 1% belongs to the, unrecognised by the Orthodox Communion, Ukrainian Autocephalic Orthodox Church; 1% are members of non-traditional religious movement (whatever those are).

2) 52% of people characterised the relations between the various religious organisations as normal; 6% think they are good; 27% thinks that the relations between religious organisations are conflicting

3) The Western regions of Ukraine contain by far most religious people (96%); In the East it is 71%; 73% in the Central Ukraine; 78% in the South; the least religious are the inhabitants of Kiev (69%); among people in villages it is 84%; 86% of women are religious compared to 67% of men.

Read the rest here. There is some very interesting material there.

H/T A blog reader who asked not to be named.

Yes, they hate us too

Just in case anyone thought that only Roman Catholics were the target of ignorant rants by the theologically illiterate. 

When Jehovah's Witnesses get pushy

Rhonda Kalapach believes Jehovah's Witnesses have no place on her property.

When two of them came to her door, the 60-year-old Monroe County woman asked them to leave. Her husband saw the women from across the street and yelled at them, but they didn’t go.

That’s when her husband, William George Kalapach, came into the home and got his rifle. The women were walking to the car where three other people were waiting, when Kalapach said they weren’t moving fast enough, police said.

Police said he fired four shots into the ground about 11 a.m. Saturday near the car with all five people inside. He is now in county prison, charged with aggravated assault and related charges.

"This is a Catholic home," Rhonda Kalapach said. "This is a devout home."

She said the evangelists ignored repeated demands from her and her husband to leave, forcing her husband to react the way he did.

They were at her door about five to 10 minutes before shots rang out, Rhonda Kalapach said.

"I kept telling them this was a Catholic home," she said. "They were trying to convert me."

She said Jehovah’s Witnesses come to her door about three to four times a year. They visited last winter, she said. Every time they’re told to leave. She said her husband did what he had to do to defend their home, she said.

"He doesn’t think he did anything wrong," she said. "This is private property. If you drive in my driveway, you’re trespassing."

Read the rest here.

Definitely an overreaction.  But yea, I do empathize.

Before 1.5 million John Paul II is beatified

VATICAN CITY — The late Pope John Paul moved a major step closer to sainthood on Sunday at a joyous ceremony that drew more than 1.5 million people, the largest crowd in Rome since his funeral six years ago.

"From now on Pope John Paul shall be called 'blessed,'" Pope Benedict, wearing resplendent white and gold vestments, solemnly proclaimed in Latin, establishing that his predecessor's feast day would be October 22, the day of the inauguration of John Paul's history-making pontificate in 1978.

To the cheers of the huge crowd, a tapestry showing a smiling John Paul was unveiled seconds after Benedict read the proclamation.

St Peter's Square was jam-packed and the crowd stretched as far back as the Tiber River, more than half 550 yards away. The throng of devotees, many carrying national flags and singing songs, had moved toward the Vatican area from all directions from before dawn to get a good spot for the Mass.
Many camped out during the night in the square, which was bedecked with posters of the late pope and one of his most famous sayings, "Do not be afraid!"

In his homily, Benedict noted that the late Pope, whom he praised as having had "the strength of a titan" and who gave millions of people "the strength to believe", had blessed crowds thousands of times from his window overlooking the same square.

"Bless us now," Benedict said.

Read the rest here.

Royal wedding: Archbishop backs William and Kate's decision to live together before marriage

Just when I was starting to have a few nice thoughts about the CofE (it really was a beautiful service) they go and remind me that the Anglican Communion has indeed jumped off a cliff and it is still in free-fall.

The Archbishop of York backed Prince William and Kate Middleton’s decision to live together before marriage, saying that many modern couples want to “test the milk before they buy the cow”.

Dr John Sentamu argued that the royal couple’s public commitment to live their lives together today would be more important than their past.

But Anglican traditionalists criticised the Archbishop, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, for failing to reinforce Christian teaching which prohibits sex outside marriage.

Read the rest here.

I am not sure if I am more shocked by the overt repudiation of elementary Christian morality or the  breathtaking insult to the future King and Queen by referring to the Duchess of Cambridge as a "cow."  Is there no room at all in the Tower?

SSPX: Bishop Williamson hints at sedevacantism

Rorate Caeli has the story here.

Yes, Williamson is a flake and a schismatic.  That is hardly news.  This however raises the rather interesting question (from the Roman POV) of heresy.  Does sedevacantism imply a rejection of what Roman Catholics refer to as the "indefectibility" of the church? I think a good Catholic could make a plausible argument to that effect.

Farewell the Ochlophobist as he closes his blog and returns to Rome

As I noted in a recent post Owen White is shutting down his blog of many years.  In a farewell post he answers a number of questions which I know people (including me) have been asking, either aloud or to themselves.  Most were more or less in line with expectations.  Although his decision to return to Rome took me by surprise.  But these things are always deeply personal and while I know some will criticize him, I cannot.  None of us are infallible in our judgments.  All we can do is try to discern right from wrong as best we can according to such lights as God grants us, and then act accordingly.  In the end we are all (or should be) slaves to our conscience. 

Farewell my friend, and may God grant you many years!

Massive crowds gather for Royal Wedding; The Queen grants new titles to William and Catherine

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and a few others.  A nice wedding present.  They are reporting the The Queen plans to cut out of the reception at the palace as soon as she decently can so the younger crowd can "let their hair down."   Hmmm

Party at the palace!

Cheap Dollar Fuels One-Way Bets in Everything Else

Americans' cheap money spigot remains open and the flow is as fast as ever, meaning the world had better brace for even higher oil, metals and food prices and a weaker dollar.

The clear message from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday was that the U.S. central bank intends to keep interest rates exceptionally low and monetary policy very easy as it continues to try to inflate the U.S. economy back to health.

For investors, he offered further encouragement to keep borrowing in dollars, paying virtually nothing and then swapping those dollars into higher-yielding currencies or using them to buy oil, metals and food futures and options.

This so-called "carry trade" has become the trade du jour, particularly with the dollar's precipitous drop of around 10 percent from its peak in January.

Read the rest here.

BBC website is down

Wow  The BBC website seems to have crashed.

In Praise of Monarchy

I appreciate the small-r republican ardor with which Mark Oppenheimer assails America’s royal wedding obsessives, but he’s fighting a losing battle. “Americans are supposed to loathe and reject monarchs,” he writes, but it’s telling that all his examples of that loathing (“In the earliest years of English settlement, this land was a proud haven for king killers … [we] fought a bloody war for the privilege to ignore the king of England … Anti-monarchism was then written into our Constitution …”) are centuries old, dating from a time when republicanism was an exciting cause rather than a somewhat-ossified assumption. Since those days, we’ve regressed to the (very human) mean: We’re fascinated by the royal family that we once overthrew, we have our own hereditary dynasties (and the slobbering coverage to match), and we’ve gradually turned our presidency into a quasi-imperial office, complete with coronations and cultic devotions and all the rest. True, by the standards of modern history, with its parade of strongmen and caudillos and presidents-for-life, our republican institutions have been impressively resilient. But even the American experience suggests that the anti-monarchical temper Oppenheimer invokes is ultimately artificial and unnatural, a triumph of theory over instinct and idealism over human nature. In their hearts, most people want a king and queen.

The resilience of this impulse, even in a democratic age, is probably the best case for the constitutional monarchies of Europe, their silliness and stuffiness and frequent tackiness notwithstanding. Toasting Prince William and his soon-to-be princess this week, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens made a fine Burkean case for the British crown: “Royalty is the most venerable embodiment of British tradition, tradition is the lifeblood of identity, identity generates social cohesion without resort to force, and social cohesion is the sine qua non of a viable polity.” But I think it’s that “without resort to force” that’s the most important part of the argument. Whatever their customs and traditions, even the most modern polities often find themselves yearning, like the Israelites of old, for a kinglike authority. And the existence of a largely-powerless royal family can be a useful hedge against the perpetual temptation to invest ordinary politicians with quasi-royal powers, and then (almost inevitably) watch them run amok. (The experience of post-Franco Spain suggests that the restoration of a hereditary monarchy after a long period of dictatorship can play a similar stabilizing role.) Having a monarch as the symbolic head of state keeps elected officials in their place, provides an apolitical outlet for popular hero worship and the cults of celebrity, and satisfies the human hunger for ceremonial authority. If it’s an affront to democratic sensibilities, it’s also a safeguard for democratic institutions. Better a real king, crowned and powerless, than the many pseudo-kings who have strutted (and still strut) so destructively across the modern stage.

Source.

There has been a great deal of online monarchist bashing of late. Thought I'd throw this out.

Anyone who favors an elected politician as a head of state over an hereditary monarch hasn't met very many politicians.

- Margaret Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven

Hundreds feared dead in worst tornado disaster in a generation

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Survivors and rescuers combed through destroyed towns and neighborhoods on Thursday, looking for belongings and victims after dozens of tornadoes ripped through the South overnight. The death toll continued to climb in Alabama, and at least 280 people in six states perished in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years.

People in hard-hit Alabama surveyed flattened, debris-strewn neighborhoods and told of pulling bodies from rubble after the storms passed.

"We have neighborhoods that have been basically removed from the map," Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox said after surveying his city.

"It happened so fast it was unbelievable," said Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old retired firefighter who was picking through the remains of his son's home in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham. "They said the storm was in Tuscaloosa and it would be here in 15 minutes. And before I knew it, it was here."

He and his wife, along with their daughter and two grandchildren, survived by hiding under their front porch. Friends who did the same weren't so lucky — Stewart said he pulled out the bodies of two neighbors whose home was ripped off its foundation.

Samantha Nail surveyed the damage in the blue-collar subdivision of Pleasant Grove where hers was the only home still intact. The storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children's toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live.

Read the rest here.

Panel blacklists Egypt for religious oppression

Egypt systematically oppresses Christians and minority Muslim sects, according to a congressional commission that placed a key U.S. ally in the Arab world on a blacklist of nations that routinely abuse religious liberties.

Egypt, for the first time, was designated a “country of particular concern” for the “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its annual report released Thursday.

The independent, bipartisan commission also noted that President Obama has failed to add any country it cited for religious intolerance to a separate blacklist maintained by the State Department.

Countries on the State Department list face some level of economic sanctions.

“There is a problem with the failure to cite countries, and then a failure to take action when countries are cited,” commission Chairman Leonard Leo told The Washington Times.

The commission reported on 28 countries with severe religious strife, citing 14 as the most serious abusers. The commission included 11 on a lower-level “watch list” of nations with lesser degrees of religious persecution and three others where conditions are closely monitored.

Some countries were cited for official persecution of religious minorities or a failure to prosecute suspects arrested for religiously motivated crimes. The commission blamed blasphemy laws in some Muslim countries for religious violence.

Read the rest here.

U.S. High Debt Rating 'Unfair': Weiss

JUPITER, Fla. (TheStreet) -- Weiss Ratings on Thursday released its initial sovereign debt ratings for 47 countries, rating the United States a C (Fair), and ranking the U.S. 33rd on the list.

Saying that "the AAA/Aaa assigned to U.S. sovereign debt by Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch is unfair to investors and savers, who are undercompensated for the risks they are taking," Weiss Ratings president Martin D. Weiss added that an "honest rating" was needed to "help support the political compromises and collective sacrifices the U.S. must make in order to restore its finances."

Weiss Ratings explained that under its sovereign debt ratings scale from A (Excellent) to E (Very Weak), only sovereign countries with "stellar scores" in for major areas - including debt burden, international stability, economic health and market acceptance - would "merit a grade of A-minus or better."

Weiss said that the U.S. government didn't fall into either the excellent or very weak categories, as it ranks 44th for debt burden "primarily because of its large deficits," 32nd for international stability, "due mostly to low reserves," and 27th for economic health "because of recent boom-and-bust cycles." These low rankings were partially offset, as the U.S. ranked 6th " for its ability to borrow in the global marketplace."

Read the rest here.

Dollar plunges as gold and silver break records

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Silver soared to an all-time high on Thursday and gold rose to another record, as a falling dollar and signs that the Federal Reserve would maintain a loose monetary policy boosted precious metals' appeal as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.

Silver briefly climbed to within a whisker of $50 an ounce, eclipsing the peak hit when Texan brothers William Hebert and Nelson Bunker Hunt sought to corner the silver market three decades ago. The metal later pulled back on technical selling.

"Yesterday's speech from the Fed was an acknowledgment of the continuing of the strategy by the Fed and Washington ... to monetize our debt, and basically to devalue the dollar," said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer of Cabot Money Management, which oversees more than $500 million in client assets.

"The metal markets are recognizing that and it is being priced in. What monetization means is that, down the road, we will have more inflation," he said.

Read the rest here.

Former Official Reveals the Fed’s “Dirty Little Secret”

The dollar hit its lowest level since July 2008 Thursday, putting more pressure on savers, people living on a fixed-income and all consumers facing soaring commodity prices, most notably in energy.

Somewhere, Ben Bernanke is probably smiling.

Yes, Bernanke — and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — talked tough about the dollar this week but "currency depreciation is always a central bankers dirty little secret," says Vincent Reinhart, a former director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs. "They don't mind some depreciation at time…The trick is to generate some depreciation but not a lot."

It depends on your definition of "a lot"…

Read the rest and or watch the video interview here.

Cardinal George Suspends Fr. Pfleger (Ultra-Lefty)

The tension that has simmered for decades between the Rev. Michael Pfleger and the Archdiocese of Chicago came to a head Wednesday when Cardinal Francis George suspended the outspoken priest from St. Sabina Catholic Church, the South Side parish he has led for nearly 30 years.

In a sternly written letter to Pfleger, the cardinal said the priest's recent remarks in the media that he would leave the Catholic Church if he were removed from St. Sabina had "short-circuited" efforts that have been under way for weeks to reach an agreement on his transition.

"If that is your attitude, you have already left the Catholic Church and are therefore not able to pastor a Catholic parish," the cardinal wrote.

The cardinal named the Rev. Thulani Magwaza, the associate pastor at St. Sabina, as administrator during the suspension and the Rev. Andrew Smith, a priest at St. Ailbe Parish, as his assistant.

Read the rest here.

On a side note... what is an Associate Minister?  I was RC for the better part of four decades and I don't remember that title, nor female clergy, if that is what Ms. Lymore is claiming to be...

Huge twisters slash through Alabama cities

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Tornadoes killed dozens of people in Alabama on Wednesday afternoon and evening, part of a violent storm system that left destruction and death across a large swath of the South.

Two major cities, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, were hit hard by one huge tornado. President Barack Obama declared an emergency in Alabama, and Gov. Robert Bentley mobilized 1,400 National Guardsmen to help in rescue operations.

The system of heavy winds, rain and tornadoes began late Tuesday and by Wednesday morning had left at least 17 dead in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Then the latest round of storms hit Alabama on Wednesday afternoon and evening, pushing the death toll much higher. The Associated Press said the toll in Alabama was at least 58. A count by msnbc.com that included county-by-county numbers from The Weather Channel and NBC station WAFF of Huntsville showed at least 62 dead.

The storm system was predicted to move on through the Carolinas.

Read the rest here.

Obama Slams "Carnival Barkers" and Releases Long Form Birth Certificate

I don't blame him for doing it, but it was a political mistake.  The "birthers" were tearing apart the GOP and making conservatives look like escapees from the state asylum.  Of course a lot of them won't accept it.  I can already here the cries of "forgery" from the wingnuts.

Read the story here or pretty much on any news site.

A sad note

For those not already aware, Owen White our favorite Ochlophobist, is ending his blog on May 1st.  My understanding is that he plans to delete the blog including its archives, which I find most regrettable.  There is a wealth of great material over there.  If you want to save any of it I suggest doing so soon.

Picture of the day

I have no background on this.  Anyone care to caption the photo?

From Fr. Z's blog.

S&P lowers outloook for Japanese debt

TOKYO — Uncertainty over Japan’s fiscal situation as it rebuilds after last month’s earthquake and tsunami prompted Standard & Poor’s to change its outlook on the country’s long-term debt rating from stable to negative, the ratings agency said Wednesday.

Standard & Poor’s stressed that its sovereign credit ratings on the world’s No.2 economy remained unchanged, but said the March 11 disasters cast some doubt over the country’s economic performance and future debt load.

“Much will depend on Japan’s political leadership and its ability to forge a political consensus on how to offset fiscal measures in the future,” the agency said.

Read the rest here.

Detainees’ Lawyers Can’t Click on Leaked Documents

WASHINGTON — Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends.

Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners.

On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.

Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files “in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards” — handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department’s Court Security Office.

Read the rest here.

Did Obama taint WikiLeaks suspect's right to fair trial?

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has unwittingly waded into a military legal tangle by declaring that WikiLeaks suspect Pfc. Bradley Manning "broke the law." Manning's supporters claim the president's statement amounts to "unlawful command influence" and has jeopardized Manning's chance for a fair trial.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits "Command Influence," in which a superior officer up the chain of command says or does something that could influence any decisions by a military judge or jury in a criminal case. As commander in chief, there's no one higher up that chain than the president.

The tangle started last week after a political fundraiser in San Francisco. Logan Price, a supporter of Manning, got close enough to the president to shake his hand and then plead Manning's case. In an exchange that was caught on a cell phone video, Price claimed that Manning, charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is a whistle-blower not a criminal. Price asked, "Why is he being prosecuted?"

Obama responded that what Manning allegedly did was "irresponsible, risked the lives of service members and did a lot of damage." But when Price persisted Obama shot back, "He broke the law."

A military legal expert says the president himself crossed a legal line with that statement.

Read the rest here.

All eyes on 'Gang of Six' as deficit deal nears

WASHINGTON — They have met in almost total secrecy for months, holed up in an office on Capitol Hill: three Republican and three Democratic senators trying to hammer out a deal to reduce America's vast deficit.

Now, with the "Gang of Six" senators widely anticipated to deliver their proposal in early May, the air of expectation in Washington is acute.

Many believe their efforts represent the only real chance — and a slim one at that — of the U.S. Congress reaching a deficit-reduction deal before next year's elections. A sense of crisis over the $1.4 trillion deficit is gripping Wall Street and Washington, and it's weighing heavily on voters.

"It's the only bipartisan plan around," one Republican political strategist told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen endorsing the proposal before it is released.

Read the rest here.

House Republicans on defensive over budget

ORLANDO, Fla. — Freshman Rep. Daniel Webster was armed with a rainbow of graphs and pie charts, ready to make the GOP's case for budget cuts before his own constituents. He was barely a minute into his prepared remarks Tuesday when the yelling started.

The first heckler shouted his doubts about the Florida congressman's promise to do what is right in Washington. From there, the hour-long meeting in Orlando was filled with a constant stream of boos and questioners in the crowd of 300 shouting over each other.

Twelve minutes into his remarks, Webster couldn't be heard over the shouting on both sides. He tried to continue but then stood quietly for a minute smiling, his hands clasped together in front.

The Republican plan to fundamentally restructure Medicare and cut social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid has at times been a raucously tough sell as its supporters head home and meet with their constituents, including Democrats organized against them. Even the architect of the plan, Rep. Paul Ryan, has been booed, though many of those attending four meetings Tuesday in his home state of Wisconsin were supportive.

The GOP plan passed by the House this month envisions cutting government deficits by a total $6.2 trillion over the next decade. One of its most contentious provisions calls for eventually transforming Medicare into a voucher-like system in which private insurance plans, not the government, pay medical bills. The plan has drawn scorn from Democrats, including President Barack Obama, who want wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes to help reduce the deficit.

Read the rest here.

Tight security planned for Royal Wedding

(CBS News) LONDON - For weeks, Sgt. Richard Brandon's prying eyes have been scanning the royal wedding route. On Friday, the route will be sealed off to the public with snipers on rooftops. But in the run-up to the prince's big day, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports Brandon's job is to zoom in and check out anything unusual, from workers and vehicles to tourist traffic.

"What we've been able to do is look into those difficult to search areas: roofs of buildings, canyons between buildings," Brandon said. "We're like an early warning system."

A system in place from the top down and the ground up.

On Friday, 5,000 police officers will be on duty - most of them unarmed.

"Policing an event like this is particularly difficult because the balance has to be struck between security and allowing the public to enjoy the event, which is what everybody - and especially the royal family - want the public to be able to do," said Peter Clarke, CBS royal wedding security correspondent.

But the terrorists are plotting. Police say the biggest threats of an attack come from radical Irish Republicans or al Qaeda. And there are the anarchists, who have vowed to make trouble and have been practicing. Last December, they surrounded Prince Charles and Camilla's car in Central London, shouting, "Off with their heads!"

There's also a huge police effort dedicated to tracking unstable people, from lovesick stalkers to political zealots. Really anyone who would find the idea of disrupting the royal wedding irresistible - especially with 2 billion people watching worldwide.

Read the rest here.

Ford posts best first-quarter profit in 13 years

DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co reported its best first-quarter profit since 1998 as higher prices for redesigned vehicles including its small Fiesta offset pressure from spiking commodity and oil prices.

Ford's better-than-expected profit, and strongest first-quarter since the peak of the SUV boom, reassured investors after a disappointing fourth quarter.

It also showed the success the No. 2 U.S. automaker has had in getting consumers to pay more for improved quality and technology in vehicles like the Focus compact.

Ford also said on Tuesday that it expected to ride out the disruption in parts supplies from Japan with a minimal effect on its production in Asia, setting the automaker up to take market share from Japanese rivals.

Read the rest here.

Public pensions, once off limits, face the axe

When an arbitrator ruled this month that Detroit could reduce the pensions being earned by its police sergeants and lieutenants, it put the struggling city at the forefront of a growing national debate over whether the pensions of current public workers can or should be reduced.

Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing them to cut the pension benefits of current employees. Now the move in Detroit — made possible, lawyers said, because Michigan’s constitutional protections are weaker — could spur other places to try to follow suit.

“These things do tend to be herd-oriented,” said Sylvester J. Schieber, an economist and consultant who studies pensions.

The mayors of some hard-hit cities have said that the high costs of pensions have forced them to lay off workers: Oakland, Calif., laid off one-tenth of its police force last year after failing to win concessions on pension costs.

Elsewhere there is pension envy: some private sector workers, who have learned the hard way that their companies can freeze or reduce their pensions, resent that the pensions of public workers enjoy stronger legal protections. But government workers, many of whom were recruited with the promise of good benefits and pensions, say that it would be unfair — and in many cases, very likely illegal — to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul takes step toward presidential run

Texas Congressman Ron Paul plans to announce on Tuesday in Iowa that he is forming a presidential exploratory committee.

Drew Ivers, Paul's 2008 Iowa caucus campaign manager, said the Republican congressman will announce his plans Tuesday afternoon at Des Moines hotel.

Paul also will name an Iowa campaign team at the event, Ivers said.

Paul, 75, finished fifth in the 2008 caucuses and has visited Iowa seven times since. He headlined an event in Sioux Center two weeks ago for a social conservative group, and he spoke at a rally for Christian home-school advocates at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines last month.

Paul is a favorite among libertarians and enjoys strong backing by many tea party supporters.

Read the rest here.

Hooray! Gas for 10 cents a gallon

Great news!

Gas is close to the cheapest it has ever been.  Historically, the price of gas between 1920-1970 was generally between 25-35 cents a gallon.  There were of course fluctuations.  The price rose sharply during and immediately after World War II and it fell as low as 17 cents a gallon during the Great Depression.  But the serious and prolonged rise in gas prices which most of us have perceived, and come to accept as normal, did not begin until the early 1970's when two things occurred.  First the Arabs briefly embargoed oil sales which would have driven up the price of gas in any circumstance, albeit temporarily.  The second was that the United States (quickly followed by everyone else) abandoned real money for paper.  Since then gas has been going up in nominal dollars with no end in sight.

But in real money... gas is actually cheaper now then even during the darkest days of the Depression.  How's that?

Silver topped $47 oz. today and briefly flirted with $50.00 oz.  Which means that a gallon of gas is actually about 10 cents a gallon right now, if you can find a dime minted before 1965.  That's because 1964 was the last year the US Government used real silver in its coinage.

I'd start checking the old change jar.

Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark; What It Feels Like When a Superpower Runs Off the Tracks

This can’t end well.

But then, how often do empires end well, really? They live vampirically by feeding off others until, sooner or later, they begin to feed on themselves, to suck their own blood, to hollow themselves out. Sooner or later, they find themselves, as in our case, economically stressed and militarily extended in wars they can’t afford to win or lose.

Historians have certainly written about the dangers of overextended empires and of endless war as a way of life, but there’s something distant and abstract about the patterns of history. It’s quite another thing to take it in when you’re part of it; when, as they used to say in the overheated 1960s, you’re in the belly of the beast.

I don’t know what it felt like to be inside the Roman Empire in the long decades, even centuries, before it collapsed, or to experience the waning years of the Spanish empire, or the twilight of the Qing dynasty, or of Imperial Britain as the sun first began to set, or even of the Soviet Empire before the troops came slinking home from Afghanistan, but at some point it must have seemed at least a little like this -- truly strange, like watching a machine losing its parts. It must have seemed as odd and unnerving as it does now to see a formerly mighty power enter a state of semi-paralysis at home even as it staggers on blindly with its war-making abroad.

The United States is, of course, an imperial power, however much we might prefer not to utter the word. We still have our globe-spanning array of semi-client states; our military continues to garrison much of the planet; and we are waging war abroad more continuously than at any time in memory. Yet who doesn’t sense that the sun is now setting on us?

Not so many years ago, we were proud enough of our global strength to regularly refer to ourselves as the Earth’s “sole superpower.” In those years, our president and his top officials dreamed of establishing a worldwide Pax Americana, while making speeches and issuing official documents proclaiming that the United States would be militarily “beyond challenge” by any and all powers for eons to come. So little time has passed and yet who speaks like that today? Who could?

Read the rest here.

The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness

IT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent. Likewise, entitlement reform requires means-testing the giant Social Security and Medicare programs, not merely squeezing the far smaller safety net in areas like Medicaid and food stamps.

Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of entitlement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.

This lamentable prospect is deeply grounded in the policy-driven transformation of the economy during recent decades that has shifted income and wealth to the top of the economic ladder. While not the stated objective of policy, this reverse Robin Hood outcome cannot be gainsaid: the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent of households has risen to 35 percent from 21 percent since 1979, while their share of income has more than doubled to around 20 percent.

The culprit here was the combination of ultralow rates of interest at the Federal Reserve and ultralow rates of taxation on capital gains. The former destroyed the nation’s capital markets, fueling huge growth in household and business debt, serial asset bubbles and endless leveraged speculation in equities, commodities, currencies and other assets.

At the same time, the nearly untaxed windfall gains accrued to pure financial speculators, not the backyard inventors envisioned by the Republican-inspired capital-gains tax revolution of 1978. And they happened in an environment of essentially zero inflation, the opposite of the double-digit inflation that justified a lower tax rate on capital gains back then — but which is now simply an obsolete tax subsidy to the rich.

In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit. The larger purpose is to assure the vast bulk of Americans left behind that they will be spared higher taxes — even though entitlements make a tax increase unavoidable. Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt — surpassing Harry S. Truman or John F. Kennedy when they attacked big business or Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter when they posed as champions of the little guy.

On the other side, Representative Ryan fails to recognize that we are not in an era of old-time enterprise capitalism in which the gospel of low tax rates and incentives to create wealth might have had relevance. A quasi-bankrupt nation saddled with rampant casino capitalism on Wall Street and a disemboweled, offshored economy on Main Street requires practical and equitable ways to pay its bills.

Ingratiating himself with the neo-cons, Mr. Ryan has put the $700 billion defense and security budget off limits; and caving to pusillanimous Republican politicians, he also exempts $17 trillion of Social Security and Medicare spending over the next decade. What is left, then, is $7 trillion in baseline spending for Medicaid and the social safety net — to which Mr. Ryan applies a meat cleaver, reducing outlays by $1.5 trillion, or 20 percent.

Trapped between the religion of low taxes and the reality of huge deficits, the Ryan plan appears to be an attack on the poor in order to coddle the rich. To the Democrats’ invitation to class war, the Republicans have seemingly sent an R.S.V.P.

Washington’s feckless drift into class war is based on the illusion that we have endless time to put our fiscal house in order. This has instilled a terrible budgetary habit whereby politicians continuously duck concrete but politically painful near-term savings in favor of gimmicks like freezes, caps and block grants that push purely paper cuts into the distant, foggy future. Mr. Ryan’s plan gets to a balanced budget in the fiscal afterlife (i.e., the 2030s); the White House’s tactic of accumulating small-fry deficit cuts over the enormous span of 12 years amounts to the same dodge.

Such fiscal jabberwocky ignores the fact that we have experienced a recession every five years or so for the last six decades; that the budget is now exposed to even more frequent and amplified cyclical turbulence amid the aftershocks of the financial crisis; and that the United States does not have a divine right to issue any amount of interim debt that suits the ideological convenience of the two parties.

Nevertheless, the Democrats are immobilized because Keynesians insist on kicking the budgetary can down the road until cyclical “demand” has in their estimation fully recovered, while Republicans sit on their hands because supply-siders insist on letting the deficit fester until tax cuts work their alleged revenue magic.

Read the rest here.

Bright Week

 

There is no fasting until the Wednesday following Bright Week. This includes Bright Wednesday and Friday. While monastics will continue to abstain from meat, penitential disciplines of any kind during Bright Week are discouraged as we are feasting with the Bridegroom. In the Western tradition fasting during this period was actually forbidden.

During Bright Week the Holy Doors in the church are kept open, including throughout the Divine Liturgy.

Finally, for forty days following Pascha there is no kneeling or prostrations either at home or in church.

60 Minutes on Mt. Athos

Blogger hates my blog and routinely screws up any embedded videos.   You can just go here to watch both segments at the CBS website.

Pascha/Easter Liturgy In Christ The Savior Cathedral

CHRIST IS RISEN!

 Wishing the joy of the Feast to all.

Christ is risen!  Indeed He is risen!

Holy Week Recess

We have now reached the mid-point for Great and Holy Week and as I prepare to celebrate the Great Feast (and the 5th anniversary of my reception into the Church) it is time to sign off.  Barring something urgent there will be no posting between now and Bright Monday.  I wish each of you a blessed Holy Week and the joy of the Resurrection.

The 15th Antiphon for Great & Holy Friday Matins

Archbishop Job of blessed memory chants the 15th antiphon for Great Friday Matins.

The Tears of Holy Mary

Most Holy Mother, through your sorrowful tears we have been interceded. Grant us the same sorrow that when you saw your Son we may also weep for Him who is pure Love.