Memory Eternal

 

Margaret Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven

Excepting Churchill, she was Britain's greatest political leader since Disraeli.

Vigil for the Annunciation and the Life Giving Cross

SOS: America's flagship is in danger

Philadelphia (CNN) -- For me, touring the SS United States felt kind of like I was exploring my grandmother's attic for the first time, not knowing what I'd find.

The ship offers lots of room for surprises. It stretches the length of New York's Chrysler Building and is 100 feet longer than the Titanic.

Its legendary decks were the site of untold stories, where movie stars rubbed shoulders with famous musicians and kings.

And it's fast. On its first voyage, the SS United States set a trans-Atlantic speed record -- three days, 10 hours and 42 minutes -- a feat that has never been surpassed.

Read the rest here.

The last and only truly American transatlantic super ocean liner may be heading for the scrap yard.

Egypt: Muslims Again Attack Coptic Christians

CAIRO — Police firing tear gas joined with a rock-throwing crowd fighting a group of Christian mourners Sunday in a battle that escalated into an attack on Egypt’s main Coptic Christian Cathedral that lasted for hours.

It was the third day of an outburst of sectarian violence that is testing the pledges of Egypt’s Islamist president to protect the country’s Christian minority, and by nightfall Sunday at least one person had died from the day’s clashes, bringing the weekend’s death toll to six.

Read the rest here.

The Queen gets a raise (and it's about time)

The biggest financial blunder in royal history was made by mad old George III when he came to the throne in 1760. Because his grandfather, George II, hadn’t managed to pay for civil government, as he was obliged to, the new king cut a disastrous deal: he gave up the hereditary revenues from his Crown Estate in return for Parliament paying the civil government bill, and giving him money from the Civil List.

Today, the Crown Estate has a property portfolio worth £7.6 billion – including 356,000 acres of farmland and forest, and a chunk of the smartest bits of London – and an annual profit of £240.2 million, in 2011/12. Meanwhile, until this year, the Civil List was paying the Queen only £7.9 million a year. You do the maths – George III was no accountant.

Last week, all that changed as, for the first time in 250 years, the monarch got their hands back on the Crown Estate – or a small, but extremely valuable, chunk of it.

After the Coalition’s 2010 Spending Review, George Osborne announced that, from this year, the Civil List would be replaced by a new Sovereign Support Grant – paid for by 15 per cent of the Crown Estate revenue...

...The monarchy remains astonishingly good value – at under 58p [that's pennies A/O] per head of the British population, or around 0.005 per cent of total public spending. That’s not much to pay, in return for secure constitutional government, a dose of national pleasure and incalculable billions in tourism income and national branding value for UK plc.

Read the rest here.

A Quick Reminder

Comments on blog posts that are more than ten days old are moderated. With rare exceptions I usually don't allow comments on long ago posts especially if they are controversial. Those kind of comments can be unfair when put on posts where the original discussion has died. So if the post has fallen off the front page of the blog chances are I consider the comments to be closed.

Germans are shocked by a private glimpse of their leader

BERLIN — The photos were splashed across the top-circulating tabloid in Germany this week — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “secret family life” uncovered for all to see.

The secret? That she has a private life.

Unlike their counterparts in the United States, many European leaders keep their personal lives out of sight, and Merkel may be the most intensely private of them all. Her husband, a chemist, skipped her first inauguration in 2005 and rarely appears with her in public. Her political friends have never visited her at home. And she is rarely photographed wearing anything other than a suit.

Merkel’s deep-cover privacy is aided and abetted by a high-minded German mainstream media that rarely deign to report on anything they deems outside the realm of her political decision-making. But with Germany increasingly calling the shots in Europe because of the economic crisis in the 17-nation euro zone, more people are hungry for a glimpse of what makes Merkel tick.

Read the rest here.

I have long thought that our presidents have ceded a bit too much ground to the press in terms of the often intrusive coverage.

Msgr Charles Pope Takes on the Episcopal Bishop [sic] of DC

It was sad to read the public comments of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington denying the importance, or need for the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead,  going so far as to imply this teaching was “outlandish. ” More on that in a moment, but first some background.

Some time ago I brought a former Episcopalian into the Catholic Church who, after the Rite of Reception gave a great sigh of relief and said, “I know the Catholic Church is not without problems, but at least I know the Bishops actually hold the Christian faith. It is such a relief to be in the harbor of truth.”

I remember at the time wondering with him if that wasn’t a bit of an exaggeration of how bad things were in the Episcopalian denomination (this was about 1990). But he showed me a scrapbook of article after article of dozens of Episcopal “Bishops” denying quite publicly the divinity of Christ, the Virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, that there was any inherent conflict between Christianity and Unitarianism, etc., not to mention a plethora aberrant moral stances.

Most notable among them, but not at all alone, is now retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong who still freely roams the halls of Episcopal parishes and openly calling the Nicene Creed “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John” and declaring that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins, even going so far to say that we are not sinners at all [*], in outright contradiction to Scripture (e.g. 1 John 1:10) and, frankly, common sense.

The scrapbook was quite thick with painful articles of Episcopal bishops and clergy saying and doing the most incredible things, outright denying basic dogmas. Indeed, when a Christian leader publicly denies the divinity of Christ, or the Trinity, of the redemptive power of Jesus’ death he/she is no longer a Christian at all.

Read the rest here.
HT: A blog reader.

North Korea Urges Foreign Embassies to Consider Evacuating

MOSCOW — North Korea has advised foreign diplomats to consider evacuating their embassies in Pyongyang in light of increasing tensions in the region, Russian and British diplomats said Friday.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters traveling with him in Uzbekistan on Friday afternoon that Moscow was seeking more details about the North Korean statement before making a decision about whether to evacuate.

Read the rest here.

OK. Am I the only one getting tired of this overweight guttersnipe's endless BS? Seriously. As we used to say in the Navy, $#!t or get off the pot. But I suspect that even this delusional narcissistic clown  grasps that if he actually does lob a Nuke, at anyone, that his country will be turned into a glow in the dark parking lot in the space of about 20 minutes.

On which subject it might not be a bad idea to make that point to China since they are...
a) The delusional narcissistic clown's chief benefactor and...
b) They share a common border with the future glow in the dark parking lot and...
c) Radioactive fallout can be damned indiscriminate as to where it drifts.

Quote of the day...

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

-President Grover Cleveland in a message to Congress explaining his veto of a $10,000 appropriation for the relief of drought stricken farmers in Texas

80 Years Ago Today

The greatest act of criminal larceny in the history of the United States...

Executive Order 6102

HT: Wilson Revolution Unplugged

Remembering the Martini Nazi

Just click here.

RIP: Roger Ebert

Famed film critic Roger Ebert has died of cancer at 70. He was a class act. Sadly his longtime TV partner Gene Siskel also died of cancer in 1999. Memory eternal.

New York: Fast Food Workers Strike

They work for some of the biggest businesses in the United States, yet they are among the country's lowest-paid workers.

On Thursday, fast-food workers staged walkouts at McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell and other restaurants in New York City to call attention to their plight. Organizers scheduled the job actions to commemorate the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 45 years ago in Memphis, where he was supporting a strike by sanitation workers.

"It's not enough," Elba Godoy, a crew member at a McDonald's just a few blocks from Times Square, said of her $7.25-per-hour minimum wage, which helps support her extended family of seven. "They don't like [that we're out here], but we have to do it. We cannot survive on $7.25."

Godoy and her colleagues are seeking a raise to $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. The walkout is part of a national movement by low-wage workers to raise wages and gain rights.

Read the rest here.

I think this is a great example of a libertarian response to abusive behavior by employers. The employers are clearly taking advantage of their workers. I mean come on! 7.25 hr in New York City is scandalous. What's more is that the employers know that most of their employees are paid so poorly they qualify for welfare and food stamps. In effect this is a tax payer funded subsidy for greedy corporations. Liberals argue that the answer is to raise the minimum wage. But that's a lousy idea because while $7.25 hr is outrageous in New York City there are some places in this country where it's an acceptable albeit low paying wage and raising the minimum wage might kill the jobs in question.

The correct answer is that workers, being the free agents of their own labor should have the right to get together and collectively tell their employers to cough up or go without their services. The article suggests they are shooting for an unreasonable wage ($15 hr) but that is probably just a bargaining ploy. In any case McDonald's etc. should be ashamed of paying people in that area such a low wage. I wish the employees luck in their battle and would boycott fast food in support except of course Lent kinda covers that. And in any case I swore off fast food over a year ago for health reasons.

Japan Launches Massive Money Printing

TOKYO — In its first policy steps under its new governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, the Bank of Japan announced Thursday it would seek to double the amount of money in circulation over two years, initiating a bold bid to end years of falling prices and dispelling market fears that Mr. Kuroda might fail to follow up his recent tough talk with concrete action.

The central bank said it would aggressively buy longer-term bonds and double its holdings of government bonds in two years, in effect doubling the money in circulation in the process. The bank will aim for a robust 2 percent rate of inflation “at the earliest possible time,” it said.

“This is monetary easing in an entirely new dimension,” Mr. Kuroda said following the bank’s decision.

Read the rest here.

Dems Revel in Mark Sanford's Win

"Hey boss, you're not gonna believe who those idiots  nominated this time!"

Democrats are relishing in a surprising opportunity to possibly pick up a House seat in a solidly Republican district in South Carolina, where Mark Sanford is hoping to stage a political comeback next month.

Sanford, the embattled former governor who left office in 2011 under a cloud of scandal following an extramarital affair that publicly wrecked his marriage, officially won the Republican nomination for the May 7 special election to fill the vacancy in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. He beat rival Republican Curtis Bostic in a runoff election with about 57 percent of the vote.

Though Sanford represented this reliably GOP district for three terms in the 1990s, he faces a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, a Clemson University administrator and the sister of Comedy Central personality Stephen Colbert.

For Sanford, a onetime conservative rock star who had once flirted with the possibility of seeking the Republican presidential nomination, next month’s special election is a shot at redemption, both personal and political. His 2009 admission of an affair with an Argentinian woman, María Belén Chapur, and bizarre subsequent explanations of his absence to pursue that affair, nearly ruined his career and left a lasting negative impression with voters that could help Colbert-Busch score an unlikely victory.

Read the rest here.

Speaking of Womyn Priestesses

Do read this hysterical post over at MCJ. (Caution language)

Memo to my Anglican readers: Doctrine Matters

Less than a month after sponsoring an event for Virginia Episcopal clergy featuring a speaker who denies both the afterlife and unique divinity of Christ, Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has presided over a service featuring a similarly controversial figure.

In a Good Friday service at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, retired Bishop John Shelby Spong decried the Nicene Creed as “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John,” asserted that several of the apostles were “mythological” and declared that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins.

The three hour service featured a series of six meditations by the retired Newark bishop interspersed with prayers led by Johnston and a hymn promoted by the Center for Progressive Christianity entitled “Welcome doubt: Refine our thinking.” Johnston’s promotion of Spong, whose Newark diocese famously declined by 40 percent during his tenure, further undercuts the Virginia bishop’s claim to be creedal and orthodox.

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

(I am posting this here instead of T-19 out of deference to their house rules. They get a bit touchy over comments critical of Anglicanism.)

Why is anyone even remotely surprised? Seriously. This is the perfectly logical devolution of a "church" (or communion if you prefer) that at its inception tried to wedge St. Athanasius and Calvin into the same pew and still visualizes them communing from the same chalice. Of course any "church" that attempts such is a fraud. But even now we have Piskies obsessing over the whole gay thing but who were/are totally unconcerned about women's ordination and even more serious doctrinal issues. That's why Mr. Spong is the poster child for what Anglicanism is all about.

Because when you boil it all down Anglicanism is just one endless series of theological and doctrinal compromises made by people for whom the only real heresy is dogmatism and intolerance of endless dialogue. The fact that an overt apostate like Jack Spong is called a "bishop" by the Episcopal Organization is just further evidence that it has devolved into little more than liturgical Unitarianism. Some of the other branches of the Anglican tree are not as advanced in their own decay. But the seeds of their destruction are already planted. They were sown more than 500 years ago.

Virginia Candidate for Governor Defends Law Criminalizing Sodomy

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) is urging a federal appeals court to overturn a three-judge panel's decision to declare an anti-sodomy law unconstitutional.

The Washington Blade reports that Cuccinelli filed a formal "petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state's sodomy law. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on March 12 that a section of Virginia's 'Crimes Against Nature' statute that outlaws sodomy between consenting adults, gay or straight, is unconstitutional based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003 known as Lawrence v. Texas."

Cuccinelli will be formally nominated as the Republican nominee in this year's governor's race by the state party at its convention May 18.

The move could potentially have repercussions for his gubernatorial bid in a state Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012. It also comes just as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering two cases dealing with gay rights, after the national party has urged Republicans to accept gays and lesbians, and as Senate Republicans like Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois have announced their support for same-sex marriage.

Read the rest here.