Conservative Republicans revolt - defeat stop gap spending bill - government shutdown looms (again)

The potential of a government shutdown at the end of the month loomed slightly larger Wednesday after a critical measure to fund the government through mid-November was defeated in the House Wednesday evening.


GOP leaders were unable to overcome objections from Democrats who believed the bill did not do enough for disaster victims and from conservative Republicans who wanted to use the bill to cut spending more deeply.


The vote was a significant defeat for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders, who had been confident they could muscle the bill over to the Senate despite protests from both sides of the aisle.


House leaders must now rewrite to appease either Democrats or the right wing of their own party and pass a bill for consideration by the Senate before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, or the government will shut down.

Read the rest here.

Hans Kung is at it again

On Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Germany for a long-awaited visit. Prominent Swiss theologian Hans Küng explains to SPIEGEL why the papal visit will do little to help the crisis in the Church and compares Benedict to Vladimir Putin in the way he has centralized power.

Read the rest here.

Küng is of course a self excommunicated overt heretic. No doubt that explains the persistent attraction towards him felt by the press and media.

Israeli PM: Palestinians' bid for statehood through U.N. will fail

UNITED NATIONS — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that direct negotiation was the only way to achieve a stable Middle East peace and the Palestinian effort to secure U.N. recognition of statehood "will not succeed."

Netanyahu made the remarks at a meeting with President Barack Obama, who reiterated the unwavering U.S. commitment to Israel and told world leaders gathered at the U.N. General Assembly that efforts to impose peace on Israel and the Palestinians would not work.

Obama and Netanyahu spoke at the start of a meeting the two leaders had on the sidelines of the U.N. session.

Seeking to head off a looming showdown over Palestinian statehood and pull his Middle East policy back from the brink of diplomatic disaster, Obama told the U.N. General Assembly, "There is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades."

Read the rest here.

US hikers released from Iran prison after $1 million bail (ransom) paid

TEHRAN — Two Americans jailed in Iran as spies were flown out of the country Wednesday after earlier being released following more than two years in custody.

Reporters saw a convoy of vehicles with Swiss and Omani diplomats leaving Evin prison with Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal inside, heading to an airport in the capital Tehran. Switzerland's ambassador later confirmed they had been flown out on a jet sent by Oman.

Switzerland represents American interests in Iran because the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Tehran and the prisoners are expected to be flown first to Oman.

Relatives of the two men were in Oman waiting for their arrival, and the families said in a statement that their joy and relief "knows no bounds."

Read the rest here.

Last-ditch appeals as Troy Davis execution nears

ATLANTA — Death row inmate Troy Davis neared his execution Wednesday despite a furious last-ditch campaign in the U.S. and Europe to win his clemency for killing a Georgia policeman, a crime he and others have insisted for years he did not commit.

The Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board on Wednesday morning said it would not review its decision to allow the execution to go forward.

Davis was set to die at 7 p.m. for the 1989 killing of off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was slain while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked.

Davis' lawyers have long argued Davis was a victim of mistaken identity. Prosecutors say they have no doubt that they charged the right person with the crime.

Supporters planned vigils outside Georgia's death row prison in Jackson and at U.S. embassies in Europe.

Davis' attorneys Wednesday filed another late appeal aimed at blocking the execution by convincing a judge that some of the original evidence was questionable.

Earlier, defense lawyer Stephen Marsh told The Associated Press that the Georgia Department of Corrections denied his request to allow Davis to take a polygraph test. Marsh had said he hoped the polygraph would persuade the state pardons board to reconsider a decision against clemency.

Read the rest here.

U.S. sharpens warning to Pakistan

The Obama administration has sharply warned Pakistan that it must cut ties with a leading Taliban group based in the tribal region along the Afghan border and help eliminate its leaders, according to officials from both countries.

In what amounts to an ultimatum, administration officials have indicated that the United States will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply.

The message, delivered in high-level meetings and public statements over the past several days, reflects the belief of a growing number of senior administration officials that a years-long strategy of using persuasion and military assistance to influence Pakistani behavior has been ineffective.

Read the rest here.

35 Years Ago: The index fund is born

A revolution of sorts started 35 years ago, on Aug. 31, 1976, when John C. Bogle launched the Vanguard 500 Index Investor (VFINX -0.16%), a mutual fund that holds all the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX -0.17%).

It was the first fund to let individual investors own the broad stock market rather than actively trying to beat it.

"It was a seminal event in investing," says Dan Culloton, associate director for fund analysis at Morningstar. "It introduced passive investing to retail investors and eventually started a slow and steady revolution that continues today."

Read the rest here.

I don't often have nice things to say about Wall Street investors. Jack Bogle is a rare exception. He is as honest as the day is long, and he has spent most of his professional life trying to help the ordinary guy make a little money without getting fleeced by the crooks that prowl The Street. He is the author of many books on investing (most of which are easily readable). I would recommend any of them. Bottom line; low cost - broadly diversified index funds remain one of the best and safest ways to invest for the long term. Thank you Mr. Bogle.

P.S. Anyone interested in getting a primer on index funds and why they work so well might want to visit here.

America's debt woe is worse than Greece's

Editor's note: Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economist, is a William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University, a columnist for Bloomberg and Forbes, and the author of 14 books including "Jimmy Stewart Is Dead" (John Wiley and Sons), "The Healthcare Fix" (MIT Press), and "The Coming Generational Storm" (co-authored with Scott Burns, MIT Press).

Boston, Massachussetts (CNN) -- Our government is utterly broke. There are signs everywhere one looks. Social Security can no longer afford to send us our annual benefit statements. The House can no longer afford its congressional pages. The Pentagon can no longer afford the pension and health care benefits of retired service members. NASA is no longer planning a manned mission to Mars.

We're broke for a reason. We've spent six decades accumulating a huge official debt (U.S. Treasury bills and bonds) and vastly larger unofficial debts to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits to today's and tomorrow's 100 million-plus retirees.

The government's total indebtedness -- its fiscal gap -- now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations -- including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt -- and all projected future taxes.

The data underlying this figure come straight from the horse's mouth -- the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO's June 22 Alternative Fiscal Scenario presents nothing less than a Greek tragedy. It's actually worse than the Greek tragedy now playing in Athens. Our fiscal gap is 14 times our GDP. Greece's fiscal gap is 12 times its GDP, according to Professor Bernd Raffelhüschen of the University of Freiburg.

In other words, the U.S. is in worse long-term fiscal shape than Greece. The financial sharks are circling Greece because Greece is small and defenseless, but they'll soon be swimming our way.

To grasp the magnitude of our nation's insolvency, consider what tax hikes or spending cuts are needed to eliminate our fiscal gap. The answer is an immediate and permanent 64% increase in all federal revenues or an immediate and permanent 40% cut in all federal noninterest spending.

Such adjustments go miles beyond anything Congress and the president are considering. No wonder. They are focused on limiting growth in the official debt, while ignoring what's happening to the unofficial debt. To understand the thickness of their blinders, note that the fiscal gap, after inflation, grew by $6 trillion last year, whereas the official debt grew by only $1 trillion. Hence, our leaders are looking at one-sixth of the problem.

Read the rest here.

Germany reaps rewards of entitlement cuts

BERLIN — The financial crisis has turned Europe topsy-turvy, with governments freezing pensions, unions voting away privileges and a thick web of safety nets disappearing one strand at a time.

But as the role of the state is being reexamined, one country stands apart: Germany, where reforms a decade ago made the country less generous than some of its peers but also helped ease the blow when the rest of the world stopped snapping up BMWs and Bosch washing machines.

Now, as its neighbors are being forced to retrench, and the future of the euro appears imperiled, Germany’s social services are running surpluses, helped by taxes that are among the highest in Europe and difficult sacrifices its citizens have made to jump-start their economy.

Many Germans are peering across their borders and wondering why others can’t do the same, putting intense political pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel not to appear too generous with bailouts. Other countries point out that Germany’s wealth depends at least in part on outsiders spending for German exports.

Read the rest here.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk on anti-Christian discrimination

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk's address to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)...

Mr. Chairman, dear participants in the meeting:

The Russian Orthodox Church considers it to be an important and timely initiative of Lithuania, the current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to hold a special meeting dedicated to the position of Christians in the OSCE region. We value highly also the endeavors of the Holy See, which has taken an active part in organizing the event.

We believe that the time has come to discuss openly the violation of the rights of Christians and respond to this challenge through our common efforts. For decades now the encroachment upon the rights of religious minorities has been widely discussed on the European continent. Yet, practice shows that the position of the majority, which is comprised of traditional Christians in almost all the OSCE participating states, is far from being the best guarantee of their rights. The most convincing example of this was the way the European Court of Human Rights conducted the Lautsi v. Italy case on the question of the presence of crucifixes in Italy’s schools. The resolution of this problem in favor of Christians was possible thanks only to the united efforts of a whole number of countries that spoke out against the Court’s original decision. Among the countries united in support of Christian identity in Europe were Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, and others. This was an unprecedented for our times fact of multilateral cooperation on the grounds of common Christian values.

If in Europe, and in the OSCE region, voices can be heard against the presence of Christian symbols in public life, and there are signs of other forms of an intolerant attitude towards Christians, then this is a good occasion to think upon the reasons for such things. There is a simple axiom, understandable to every educated European. European civilization is a culture that has developed on a Christian foundation. Today Europe, and indeed the entire OSCE region, has acquired a clearly expressed multicultural nature, having become a place of contact between peoples and religions from all over the world. Yet, does this mean that the cultural and religious diversity of Europe definitely threatens her Christian roots? Not at all. The real threat is not in offering to the continent’s new religious and national communities the chance to make use of Christian hospitality. The basic danger is in attempting to use religious diversity as an excuse to exclude signs of Christian civilization from the public and political realities of the continent, as though this would make our continent friendlier towards non-Christians. I am convinced that society, which has renounced its spiritual heritage under the pretext of the radical separation of religious life from public life, becomes vulnerable to the spirit of enmity in relation to representatives of any religion. This indeed does create an atmosphere of intolerance in relation to Christians, as well as to representatives of other traditional religions. This statement can be proved by many examples.

Spain, as well as a number of other countries, has recently introduced a course on "Education in Citizenship" in school syllabuses for primary school pupils, which include sex education. Within this course pupils are indoctrinated with views on sexual relations, which are totally inconsistent with the religious beliefs of their parents. This practice of the course has already resulted in mass appeals to the courts, locally and internationally, but the problem remains unsolved at the European level.

Organizations in the OSCE countries responsible for notifying the public about cases of Christianophobia regularly report cases of persecution of Christians who criticize social evils, albeit that they are legally recognized. For example, clergy and lay believers who criticize homosexuality as sinful often face public ostracism or severe discrimination. Statutory guarantees of freedom of speech laid down in international law are always ignored in such cases.

Christians in the OSCE region are consistently attacked because of their position on abortion and euthanasia. Opponents not only fail to see that behind their false justifications lie the deprivation of human life, but they also question Christians’ right to present their views and their democratic efforts to have them reflected in European legislation. It has been an encouragement and inspiration to see the recent recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe upholding the right to conscientious objection for medical workers who refuse to take part in such operations. I hope that refusal on grounds of conscientious objection will be an accepted approach in the educational and in public service spheres.

We are also concerned about the acts of vandalism aimed against Christian shrines that have become a sad social reality in contemporary OSCE region.

Nowadays, Russian Orthodox Church speaks openly about the necessity of protecting the rights of Christians outside Europe where their lives and health are under threat. These issues are at the top of the agenda when representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church visit the Middle East and North Africa and are discussed in numerous political contexts. In May this year the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a special statement on Christianophobia internationally, in which it expressed concern about the growth of persecution against Christians worldwide. The statement calls for the development of a comprehensive and effective mechanism for protecting Christians and Christian communities subjected to persecution or to restrictions in their religious life and work. We believe that these efforts will improve the conditions of life of our brothers in faith. However, our voice calling for protection of Christians outside Europe will sound more confident and authoritative if it is backed by our co-operation in making OSCE states an example of the upholding of Christian rights and freedoms.

The analysis of research of cases of an intolerant attitude towards Christians demonstrates that the cases, as a rule, bear an anti-religious motive. People who ignore or infringe on the rights and legitimate interests of Christians are often guided by secular maximalism, that is, they proceed from the notion that religion is no more than the personal affair of the individual and does not have a social dimension. In recent years, the OSCE has come to realize that the dominant factor of radical secularism is as dangerous to religious freedom as religious extremism in all its manifestations. This change in position has become possible thanks only to the efforts of Christian non-governmental organizations, which monitor Christianophobia in Europe.

So that the rights of Christians and representatives of other traditional religions in the OSCE region can be effectively defended, the Organization is called upon not only to react to crimes but also to act in consolidating peace between all of the region’s religions. To propose a model of a peaceful inter-civilizational coexistence is a difficult theoretical and practical task, and the search for its solution is impossible without the creation of interactive mechanisms of dialogue among traditional religious communities. This model is needed not only in the OSCE region but also throughout the world, including those places where Christians feel themselves to be especially vulnerable.

The building up of social relations which exclude or minimize the appearance of inter-religious enmity, is unthinkable without paying attention to religious and inter-cultural education, without setting up conditions for the embodiment of ideals of virtue, justice, and mercy in public life, common to the majority of traditional religions. I hope that the work of the OSCE in the sphere of guaranteeing freedom of conscience will be realized in the spirit of sincere partnership of national governments, international structures, experts, and religious leaders who are determined to contribute to inter-religious peace in the OSCE region.

Source

Moscow authorities raze Mother Teresa shelter

As Moscow prepares to unveil a bronze monument to Mother Teresa, the city authorities have demolished a shelter owned by her Catholic order, citing a lack of permits for the running of the building.

The two buildings in eastern Moscow which served as a shelter for the homeless and disabled attracted the City Hall's attention three years ago when the local authorities went to court to force Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic religious organization founded by Mother Teresa, to demolish one of the buildings and remove the top floor from the other.

"No country has ever launched legal proceedings against Mother Teresa's organization," said shelter volunteer Yelena Blinova.

Though Russian Orthodox Church officials, including Patriarch Kirill, tried to resolve the conflict, one of the buildings was destroyed on Friday.

"The demolished building was constructed with voluntary donations from people all over the world, and its destruction is a sign of blindness to human grief and contempt for those who help the poorest," Missionaries of Charity said in a statement, published by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Moscow.

"Everybody knows how hard the sisters have worked for the past 20 years. Did their work bother anyone?" said Pavel Pezzi, metropolitan archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Moscow.

City Hall authorities refused to comment.

Read the rest here.

130 Copts abandon Orthodox Church over divorce rights

CAIRO: The Coptic Orthodox Church was served with court papers relaying the decision by 130 Copts to abandon the Church, leaving them without belonging to a recognized sect.

The decision reflects growing tension between members of the Coptic community and the church over divorce and second marriages permits, a papal source told Daily News Egypt Monday.

The withdrawing Copts can join another church to secure permissions to get divorced and remarry.

They demanded the reactivation of an internal church rule (Law 38) that lists 10 justifications for divorce including maltreatment and madness.

Pope Shenouda deactivated this law in 2008, naming only adultery and conversion to a different sect as the only accepted reasons to obtain a divorce permit.

According to the Egyptian personal status law, Christians who do not belong to a specific sect are subject to sharia, which allows them to seek divorce in court.

Around 2,000 Copts seeking remarriage have held several protests, the last of which was in front of the Ministry of Justice, demanding the reactivation of Law 38 and a moratorium on the current divorce law.

Member of the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod Bishop Salib Matta Sawiris told Daily News Egypt that the church cannot contradict the Bible to solve the problems of those seeking divorce.

"The Bible listed two reasons for divorce and this cannot be changed," Sawiris said.

Source

Scenes from the Patriarchal Liturgy in Belgorod

Outdoor liturgy held on the 100th anniversary of the glorification of St. Joseph (Bishop of Belgorod) on the site of the Mother of God Nativity Monastery that was destroyed by the Communists.

Obama vows veto of plan without tax increases

President Obama struck a combative tone on Monday as called for $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue as part of a proposal to tame the nation’s rocketing federal debt, drawing a sharp contrast with the Republican vision and resetting the terms of the economic debate in Washington this fall.

In a defiant Rose Garden appearance, Obama threatened to veto any plan to tame the debt that does not pair cuts to Medicare and Medicaid with increases in taxes on the rich.

“We can’t just cut our way out of this hole,” Obama said. “It’s going to take a balanced approach.”

Combined with his call this month for $450 billion in new stimulus, the proposal represents a more populist approach to confronting the nation’s economic travails than the compromises he advocated earlier this summer.

It is also diametrically opposed to many of the views supported by Republicans, who want to balance the nation’s books mainly through cutting spending, particularly in Medicare and Medicaid.

Republiacns argue that Obama’s plan to tax the rich is a divisive political strategy. But Obama rejected that view Monday.

“This is not class warfare,” Obama said. “It is math.”

Read the rest here.

Sounds like Obama is taking some lessons from the GOP playbook.

The Hermitage of the Holy Cross West Virginia USA

Chesnokov: Nr.18 An Angel Halt Exclaimed

Liechtenstein rejects plan to legalize abortion

GENEVA — Voters in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein on Sunday rejected a plan to legalize abortion, following a bitterly fought campaign that saw the country's prince threaten to veto the proposed change in the law.

Opponents won the referendum with a majority of 514 votes, out of 11,510 ballots cast. The official count put no-votes at 52.3 percent, ahead of 47.7 percent who favored the plan to decriminalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy or if the child is severely disabled.

Under existing law, women who have an abortion risk one year imprisonment, except in cases where the mother's life is in danger or she is under 14 at the time she got pregnant. Doctors who carry out an abortion can go to prison for three years.

Campaigners for the change argued that the threat of prosecution meant women had to go secretly to neighboring Austria or Switzerland even just to get advice on their options in an unwanted pregnancy.

But opponents in the Catholic majority country warned that the proposal went too far and could lead to late-term abortions of disabled children.

Their concerns were echoed by Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein, the country's de facto ruler, who said in a speech last month that he would use his veto power to block decriminalization.

Read the rest here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: China to 'liquidate' US Treasuries, not dollars

The debt markets have been warned.

A key rate setter-for China's central bank let slip – or was it a slip? – that Beijing aims to run down its portfolio of US debt as soon as safely possible.

"The incremental parts of our of our foreign reserve holdings should be invested in physical assets," said Li Daokui at the World Economic Forum in the very rainy city of Dalian – former Port Arthur from Russian colonial days.

"We would like to buy stakes in Boeing, Intel, and Apple, and maybe we should invest in these types of companies in a proactive way."

"Once the US Treasury market stabilizes we can liquidate more of our holdings of Treasuries," he said.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that a top adviser to China's central bank has uttered the word "liquidate". Until now the policy has been to diversify slowly by investing the fresh $200bn accumulated each quarter into other currencies and assets – chiefly AAA euro debt from Germany, France and the hard core.

We don't know how much US debt is held by SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange), the bank's FX arm. The figure is thought to be over $2.2 trillion.

Read the rest here.

Braving the China Seas

It's called the "South China Sea" and China wants everyone to recognize it just that way. There is no question in Beijing's official mind that this body of water is entirely within Chinese sovereignty. The problem is that Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan all have claims to a portion of that immense body of water by virtue of the fact that portions of their countries are bordered by that sea. This is to say nothing of the competing claims over the Paracel and Spratly Islands. The Chinese attitude is that these are all spurious claims and only they -- and their navy and air force -- can lawfully operate on, in, and above these, up till now, international waters. Everyone else should get their permission. By the way, this assertion is now extended to include the East China Sea, much to the consternation of Japan.

Admiral Robert Willard, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, in most diplomatic terms characterized the increasingly assertive Chinese claims to these waters and islands in the region as "generating increasing concern broadly across the region and require address." When you have the firepower available to Admiral Willard you can afford to speak that softly. An Indian Navy official wishing to remain anonymous responded to a Chinese warship's demand that an Indian assault vessel visiting Vietnam identify itself. He put the matter in more stark terms: "Any navy in the world has full freedom to transit through these waters or high seas [South China Sea]. For any country to proclaim ownership or question the right of passage by any other nation is unacceptable."

The Vietnamese were furious over the incident but allowed foreign diplomats to muster the appropriate aggressive tone without comment from Hanoi. There was no question in Vietnamese diplomatic circles that what had happened was a clear challenge by the Chinese not only to New Delhi and Hanoi but to all who enter their pond without notification.

Read the rest here.

A nice video dedicated to the flagship of the American Merchant Marine currently rusting away in Philadelphia.  It's rather embarrassing that this country can find the resources to preserve ten or more battleships and many other lesser warships, but it can't come up with enough money to restore or at least preserve from slow disintegration the only remaining ocean liner built by the United States and which bears our country's name.

She was the engineering wonder of her age when she took the Blue Ribbon from the Queen Mary and never looked back.  No ship has ever beaten her speed records to this day.  Everyone who was anyone wanted to cross the pond on "The Big U"  A cultural and social icon of a bygone era left to rot. She is the last of her kind.  When she is gone there are no more left.  What a shame.

Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church: The honeymoon is over, but is the marriage?

DUBLIN — Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.

This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.

While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.

His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.

“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.

Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”

He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”

The effect of his speech was instant and electric.

Read the rest here.

Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More of Millionaires

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Read the rest here.

Schism looms for the (Protestant) Church of Ireland

Schism within the Church of Ireland could split the church between Ulster and the Republic of Ireland, church leaders fear, in the wake of revelations the Bishop of Cashel and Ossory permitted the Dean of Leithlin to register a same-sex civil union.

The Primate of All-Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh Dr. Alan Harper told the Sept 11 “Sunday Sequence” programme of BBC Radio Ulster he was “very, very concerned at the potential for division” within the church over homosexuality. He also conceded that clergy criticisms over a leadership “vacuum” among the bishops were “a fair comment in all sorts of ways.”

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

Israel's Right Wing Threat To Democracy

ISRAEL is at a fascinating, and frightening, crossroads. In the last two years the Knesset has proposed and passed laws that seriously endanger Israel’s identity as a liberal democracy.

It began with a law forbidding public commemoration of the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948, known as the Nakba; it continued with the demand for all new Israeli citizens to swear a loyalty oath to a Jewish and democratic country, and recently culminated in a bill outlawing calls to boycott any Israeli group or product — including those from the occupied territories.

On the other hand, in the last two months, Israel’s democracy has come dramatically alive after a long period of hibernation. Protests for social justice have mobilized hundreds of thousands in demonstrations that have the support of 87 percent of the country, according to a Haaretz poll. These protests have become an exercise in direct democracy, forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move beyond party politics and listen directly to the grievances of Israel’s disenfranchised middle classes.

Existential fears have pushed Israelis to the right; only when it comes to social questions are they willing to listen to the largely liberal middle class. Who, then, represents the real Israel? Is Israel an open-minded, liberal country with a developed sense of justice, or is it an ethnocracy with theocratic leanings?

Mr. Netanyahu believes that he can avoid agreeing to a viable Palestinian state, in the face of fierce international criticism, because he is certain that America’s heartland, as opposed to its liberal elites, is tied to Israel on ideological and theological grounds. The ovations he received in Congress earlier this year only strengthened this belief. Convinced that Obama won’t win a second term, he simply wants to hang on until a Republican president is sworn in.

His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has a very different worldview. Mr. Lieberman’s open disdain for European leaders and diplomats is not a failure of diplomacy; he is a shrewd man, who first and foremost seeks to cultivate an image of a strong leader for his right-wing constituency. He believes that the West’s hegemony has come to an end, and that the future lies with autocratic governments like those ruling Russia and China. Hence he believes that Israel has no reason to pander to the West’s values.

To him, liberal democracy represents weakness and he contends that Israel should evolve into a stronger state with less individual freedom. At the same time, he is completely secular: his constituency is primarily of Russian origin, and many of its members are not accepted as Jewish by Israel’s Orthodox rabbinical establishment.

The national-religious parties in the governing coalition, meanwhile, are based on the belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to what they call the Greater Land of Israel. In the long run, they want Israel to be a theocracy based on biblical law. Their participation in the democratic game is based on the prediction that Israel’s demography will inevitably lead to an Orthodox Jewish majority, and that they simply need to make sure that Israel doesn’t give up the West Bank before they rule the country.

The ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and Yahadut Hatorah, also want Israel to become a theocracy in the long run. Until a decade ago, they did not necessarily claim that Israel should hold on to the occupied territories, but they realized that their electorate is right-leaning, and they need space for the rapidly expanding families of their constituency. They see liberal elites as their primary enemies.

The paradox, of course, is that Mr. Lieberman and the religious parties are on opposing ends of the spectrum in other ways. Mr. Lieberman wants a secular state; the religious parties want a theocracy. What unites them is that, for completely different reasons, they have no investment in the values of liberal democracy, which are one of the major stumbling blocks for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. As Israeli liberals have repeated ad nauseam, such annexation will either lead to a binational state without a Jewish majority, or to an apartheid regime.

The coalition partners have found a modus vivendi primarily by uniting in their hatred for the institutions that uphold liberal democratic values: Israel’s Supreme Court, its largely liberal academic community and its human rights organizations.

Israel’s recent falling out with Turkey is just the latest example: Mr. Lieberman made it impossible for Mr. Netanyahu to apologize for the killing of nine people by Israeli commandos on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara last year by insisting that it would undermine Israel’s national pride. When Turkey retaliated with trade sanctions and threats of an increased naval presence in the Mediterranean, Mr. Lieberman called on Israel to support Kurdish militants. Mr. Lieberman keeps upping the ante for being a patriotic Israeli, pulling Mr. Netanyahu along with him.

The staying power of Israel’s governing coalition is primarily the result of the trauma Israelis sustained during the second Palestinian intifada and subsequent rocket attacks. Israelis have trouble trusting anybody but a hard-liner for fear that, once again, they will become targets of terror attacks.

Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition may seem incoherent in its core values, but it has created a potentially explosive mix that has brought considerable damage to Israel, pushing it into unprecedented isolation that is only likely to deepen if a sizable majority of the United Nations General Assembly recognizes Palestine as a state later this month. This would be especially challenging when relations are already strained with historic regional allies like Egypt and Turkey.

The irony is that Mr. Netanyahu himself is not opposed to liberal democracy. But the only way for him to prevent an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders is to hold his right-wing coalition together.

Mr. Lieberman has outflanked him and challenged his leadership of the Israeli right. Mr. Netanyahu needs to keep up with the right-wing Joneses and show that he is no less of a strong leader. The only common denominator of his major coalition partners is enmity to the core values of liberal democracy, and, for lack of choice, he has so far pandered to their wishes.

Source

Georgia Man’s Supporters Fight Execution

“I think if my brother or son or dear friend from college were about to be put to death, and there was no physical evidence, and seven of nine witnesses had recanted and testified to coercion in that original testimony, would I shrug and say, ‘The jury made its decision?’ ” she wrote in an e-mail. “I just want people, particularly all the churchgoing people like me, to look me in the eye and tell me, just once, that this is justice.”

Read the rest here.

Palestinians face US counteroffensive on UN vote

U.S officials are working feverishly to persuade the Palestinians to back down from what is still only a threat to go to the United Nations Security Council with their demand for immediate statehood.

On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he will request full membership at the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes next week.

One official told NBC News after Abbas's announcement that "this is a negotiation. They say they are doing it until they say they aren't doing it."

The U.S. has been resolute in its opposition to the proposed action and is engaged in frantic last-minute diplomatic discussions to try to head it off.

Read the rest here.

Major Air Crash At Reno Nevada

RENO, Nev. — A plane crashed into a seating area Friday at the annual Reno air races on Friday, injuring more than 75 people, 25 critically, officials said. There was no immediate word on deaths.

The accident happened just before 4:30 p.m. during the National Championship Air Races at the Reno-Stead Airport, KTVN-TV reported.

Witnesses told KTVN that planes in the Unlimited race were ascending when one aircraft started to nose-dive and then crashed near a spectator stand in the southeast corner. KTVN said the aircraft was a World War II-era P-51.

An official described the scene to KRNV-TV as "a mass-casualty situation."

A medical official said more than 75 people were injured, 25 critically, The Associated Press reported.

Read the rest here.

Fr. Stephen Freeman On The State

I strongly recommend Fr. Stephen's most recent post on the State.  I am not sure how his views comport with St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, but that is one of the more serious essays of a non-political nature on a political subject that I have read in some time.  I look forward to the comments it is sure to generate.  On which note, please leave your comments there.

Comments are closed.

Patriarch Kyril's sermon on the beheading of St. John the Baptist

A sermon by His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russia, on the Beheading of the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John in the Cathedral church of the Savior in the Old Market in Nizhny Novgorod.

Your Eminences, dear Right Reverend hierarchs, fathers, brothers and sisters!

It is a great joy for me to celebrate the Divine liturgy together with my brethren, the bishops who have come from the dioceses of the Volga region, in this magnificent Cathedral of Nizhny Novgorod, to see the local Church united around its bishop, to see young faces, to hear the youth choir, to see many people, who perhaps have only recently entered Church life, but are conscious that they are members of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Orthodox Church, and to live the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist together with them.

Today we recall a tragic event form the Gospel – the martyr’s end of the Prophet and Forerunner John. This is a day of mourning in the Orthodox Church calendar: we are not supposed to eat any food; bishops and priests wear the vestments which they wear on feast days in Lent. Together with the outward appearance of the clergy and the Gospel and Epistle readings, all this is as it were destined to remind us of the tragedy which took place. The Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John was slain at the suggestion of Herod’s wife who could not forgive the Prophet for his denunciations that she was living illegitimately with her new husband, Herod, because she had previously been his brother’s wife. Of course, the Queen was conscious of her sin. If she had not been conscious of it, she would not have been in such a rage and her rage was such that she was prepared to murder the Prophet, who had enormous authority among the people and with her own husband. She achieved her goal and the prophetic voice of John the Baptist fell silent.

John the Baptist is higher than all those born of women, as the Word of God says of him. This is because he was called to prepare the people to accept the coming of the Savior through repentance. For all sincere repentance presupposes sincere and honest speech. When he who calls to repentance asks unbiased questions he as it were has rights and judgement, he has the right to say what is right and what is wring in human life. And this is what John the Prophet of God did. As the word of God says, John baptised with the Baptism of repentance. He prepared people through repentance so that they would be capable of accepting the word of the Savior, the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ.

People seldom like to hear the truth about themselves, only in rare cases and only strong people. Most only like to hear good and pleasant things about themselves. And when something good and pleasant has been said, then people presume that the person of whom it has been said, must in return for these good words, which are often false and hypocritical, do something for the person who said them. And a large part of our life is more or less built on the basis of this simple logic of mutual deceit. If you examine your conversations with others, with your colleagues, at table, especially with those in positions of authority, you will immediately detect this false note. This false note shows hypocrisy and lieing and it does not deter cunning. Those who come out with false and lying words are capable of any cunning act, certain that their false words disarm those against whom they have ill-intentioned thoughts.

Lieing has not only entered into our personal relationships with those close to us, it is also present in social relations. And where there is lieing, there can be no repentance, no consciousness of sin, no desire to unburden ourselves of sin, and this means that there is no sincere desire to move towards God. This is why the Forerunner, who denounced people so threateningly, was required. No doubt some of them shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment, others did not care, some probably just cursed the man and walked away. But how many people heard God’s truth in his words and were later helped by this to accept the word of the Savior! This is why he is higher than all the saints – he prepared the earth where the seeds of Christ’s preaching fell.

Read the rest here.

Marine Hero Receives Medal of Honor

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defying orders and tempting fate, Marine corporal Dakota Meyer charged five times in a Humvee into heavy gunfire in the darkness of an Afghanistan valley to rescue comrades under attack from Taliban insurgents.

On Thursday, Meyer was presented with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, by President Barack Obama.

Meyer's heroics during the six-hour ambush and firefight saved the lives of 36 people, both Americans and Afghans. He killed at least eight Taliban insurgents. Firing from a gun turret on top of the Humvee driven by a fellow Marine, he provided cover for his team, allowing many to escape likely death.

He was defying orders from his commanders, who told him to stay back. The kill zone, they said, was too dangerous. But the young corporal, just 21 years old at the time, knew his friends were trapped that early morning in September 2009.

"In Sgt. Dakota Meyer, we see the best of a generation that has served with distinction through a decade of war," Obama said during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

Meyer, later promoted to sergeant and now out of the Marines, is the third living recipient and the first Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The modest, soft-spoken 23-year-old now lives in his home state of Kentucky, working construction in the tiny town of Greensburg.

Obama praised Meyer for his humility and work ethic. When the White House tried to reach him in the middle of a workday to tell him his medal had been approved, he worried about whether he could take a call while on the job. So the White House arranged for the president to call during Meyer's lunch break. With a smile, Obama thanked him for taking the call.

On the eve of the Medal of Honor ceremony, Obama and Meyer met in person, chatting on a patio near the White House Rose Garden, over a beer.

Despite Meyer's heroics, four American soldiers died in the ambush: 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, a 25-year-old from Virginia Beach; Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, 30, of Roswell, Ga.; Corpsman James Layton, 22, of Riverbank, Calif.; and Edwin Wayne Johnson Jr., a 31-year-old gunnery sergeant from Columbus, Ga. A fifth man, Army Sgt. Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shiprock, N.M., later died from his wounds.

Meyer says he has struggled with the national attention, with being recognized for the worst day of his life. He requested that memorial services for those who died that day be held in their hometowns at the same time he received the Medal of Honor.

The president assured Meyer that he had let no one down.

"Dakota, I know you've grappled with the grief of that day, that you said your efforts were somehow a failure because your teammates didn't come home," the president said. "But as your commander in chief and on behalf of everyone here today and all Americans, I want you to know it's quite the opposite."

Read the rest here.

Men such as this leave me humbled and awed.

Republicans rewriting state election laws in ways that could hurt Democrats

Looking to capitalize on their historic gains last year, Republican lawmakers in several states are rewriting their election laws in ways that could make it more difficult for Democrats to win.

They have curbed early voting, rolled back voting rights for ex-felons and passed stricter voter ID laws. Taken together, the measures could have a significant and negative effect on President Obama’s reelection efforts if they keep young people and minorities away from the polls.

“It all hits at the groups that had higher turnout and higher registration in 2008,” said Judith Browne-Dianis, a civil rights lawyer who co-directs the Advancement Project, which has been tracking the new regulations.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering the latest, and perhaps most potent, legislation, a measure that would divvy up electoral votes by congressional district rather than use the winner-takes-all approach. The change would almost ensure a net gain of 20 to 24 GOP electoral votes in the 2012 presidential election.

Read the rest here.

Boehner says no new taxes for debt panel

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday reaffirmed GOP opposition to any tax increases to solve the nation’s deficit problem, signaling a swift return to the trench warfare that characterized the debt and spending debate of early summer.

Boehner said that the special committee seeking long-term debt reduction should acheive its mandated $1.5 trillion in savings entirely by cutting federal agency spending and shrinking entitlement programs.

Read the rest here.

Shamelessly stolen from here.

George Weigel Slams The Russian Orthodox Church (Again)

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known for over a century now by his Bolshevik nom-de-guerre, Lenin, was one of history’s greatest mass murderers. In the course of his ruthless efforts to impose communism on Russia and its neighbors through brutal force, terror, and extra-judicial homicides in the millions, he became one of the greatest persecutors of the Christian Church in two millennia. Lenin’s minions killed more Christians in a slow week than the last of the great Roman persecutors, Diocletian, did in years. All this is thoroughly documented—to the point where Russian Orthodoxy considers many of Lenin’s victims as martyrs and saints and celebrates their feasts in its liturgical calendar.

And yet today’s Russian Orthodox leadership cannot bring itself to say that this monster’s mummified corpse should cease, immediately, being an object of curiosity or veneration?

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

George has something of a track record when the topic is the Orthodox Church. File this under "there he goes again." See my response at the T-19 post linked above.

Peter Schiff Testifies Before Congress

Part 1

Part 2

White House ignored red flags in loan to failed solar company

The Obama administration committed more than $500 million in taxpayer money to a maker of solar power panels despite repeated red flags about the company’s viability, NBC News’ Lisa Myers reported Wednesday.

The FBI raided the Silicon Valley headquarters of the company, Solyndra, last week, investigating whether the government was misled when it loaned the company $535 million in taxpayer funds. Solyndra officials say they are cooperating with the investigation.

Solyndra received the loan guarantees in 2009 as part of President Barack Obama’s promise to create millions of so-called "green" jobs. But last month, Solyndra declared bankruptcy, laying off all 1,100 workers.

“The evidence seems to be pretty clear to even the non-lawyer types that this smelled from the very get-go, that this was a really bad deal,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A committee panel, which has been looking into the company for months, will hold a hearing Wednesday on what went wrong with Solyndra. Two company executives are expected to appear before the panel next week, The Associated Press reported.

Read the rest here.

Moldovan Orthodox Church Rejects UN Official's Comments

CHISINAU -- Moldova's Orthodox Church has criticized a UN official for suggesting it has too much influence in the country, RFE/RL's Moldovan Service reports.

The Orthodox Church said comments by Heiner Bielefeldt, UN rapporteur for religious freedom, were "shameless and disrespectful." Bielefeldt visited Moldova earlier this month to gather information for a report he will publish next year.

At a press briefing in Chisinau last week he said the Moldovan government generally respects religious freedom but that the Orthodox Church is "excessively privileged" compared to others.

Bielefeldt pointed out that the top Orthodox priests in Moldova carry diplomatic passports and that the country's law on religious freedom singles out Orthodox Christianity as the country's most-important faith.

He also criticized the church for not distancing itself from a crowd of Orthodox believers that tore down a Jewish menorah in central Chisinau during the 2009 Christmas season.

Read the rest here.

The Vatican's offer to the SSPX

The Holy See is ready for a complete reconciliation with the Lefebvrian traditionalists, so that they accept the content of a brief “doctrinal Preamble”: this is what emerged from this morning’s meeting in the Vatican between Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Monsignor Bernard Fellay, superior of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, founded by Monsignor Lefebvre.

A tempting offer for traditionalists who would be welcomed back into the Catholic Church using the “personal Prelature” formula, in return for accepting what has been defined as the “fundamental basis” for a “future and much hoped for reconciliation.” The personal Prelature formula is a canonical structure which so far, only the Opus Dei has enjoyed, free as it is from any reference to specific territory and from the supervision of local bishops and Episcopal Conferences.

The “doctrinal Preamble” offered today to the Lefebvrians, as foreseen yesterday by the Vatican Insider, is a concise two to three page long text, which reaffirms the fundamental principles of the Catholic faith, needed to maintain the unity of the Church. The Vatican’s spokesman, Federico Lombardi, however, said that its content is supposed to be kept secret.

The Holy See’s newsroom published a communiqué explaining that the text “mentions a few doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine that are necessary in order to guarantee loyalty to the Church’s Teachings and to “feel cum Ecclesia”.” The note, however, left “the study and theological explanation of individual expressions or formulations in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent Teachings, for a legitimate discussion.”

The “doctrinal Preamble” therefore, does not seem to contain an explicit request for “full recognition of the Council and the teaching of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI himself.” This was affirmed by the Secretary of State, in a communiqué published issued in December 2009.

The Vatican’s newsroom said that this morning’s meeting took place two years after the doctrinal talks which made it possible for “the two parties to clarify their respective motivations and relative motivations.” The Holy See’s dialogue with the Lefebvrians started again in 2009 thanks to Benedict XVI., who decided to annul the excommunications of the four traditionalist bishops. Amongst them, was Monsignor Richard Williamson who had denied the Holocaust during an interview. According to Father Lombardi, this morning’s talks were “courteous” and “lively.” The Lefebvrians’ response to the Vatican document will be given in about a month’s time.

The Holy See’s newsroom explained that the Vatican’s offer takes into account “the concerns and the motions presented” by the Lefebvrians “with regard to the safe-keeping of the Catholic Church’s integrity” in relation to what Benedict XVI defined as “the hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council’s break with Tradition,” in a speech to the Roman Curia on 22 September 2005. His interpretation of the Council contradicted the thousand year old history of the Church.

Source

North Korean Army Faces Severe Food Shortages

As much as half of North Korea's army is starving as food shortages that were previously affecting only the civilian population worsen and begin to affect institutions tasked with protecting Kim Jong-Il's regime.

Disaffected North Koreans working secretly as journalists within the country for the Japan-based Asiapress International news agency have smuggled out video footage of interviews with soldiers in different parts of the isolated country, with many complaining of malnutrition.

Asked how many of the men in his unit are experiencing malnutrition, one young conscript said it is as high as 50 per cent in the spring.

"And it will get worse after a while," another soldier said. "After the potatoes are harvested, we only have seven small potatoes for one meal."

The soldier indicated that each potato is only the size of his thumb.

Read the rest here.

10 years after 9-11 St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church remains without a home

...Discussions began for the rebuilding of the church soon after the dust of the disaster had settled and the city had begun to heal. St. Nicholas was an important stakeholder in the dialogue -- legally, as a property owner in the immediate vicinity of the disaster area known as Ground Zero -- and symbolically, as the only house of worship destroyed in the terror attacks.

Almost immediately, the tiny church became a David amongst a field of Goliaths including the states of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, their governors and local officials, several local New York agencies, hundreds of corporations, and of course (and most importantly) the victims' families.

As early as July 2002 -- less than a year after the attacks, the Port Authority issued a statement that affirmed it was looking at six different options for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site. All six proposals that were set forth included "a rebuilt St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church," according to the official press release.

In July of 2008, the Port Authority and the representatives of the church ultimately agreed that the church's existing land would be swapped for a larger parcel less than a hundred yards away.

In exchange for the original church land, the Port Authority agreed to donate $20 million toward construction since the new St. Nicholas church would be built on a platform above a bomb screening center -- not an ideal location for a house of worship that would ultimately become a gathering place of people from throughout the world, as well as the new home to the original St. Nicholas congregation.

Then, abruptly in March of 2009, the Port Authority sent a curt email to the representatives of the church stating that negotiations would be "terminated," ultimately reneging on its previous agreements with the church officials that were well documented and publicly noted by officials.

Shortly thereafter the Port Authority illegally moved in on the Church's property, put up a fence and began excavating on it -- without even notifying the owners -- claiming that they needed to begin construction on the screening center underground.

Read the rest here.

Radical overhaul of military retirement eyed

WASHINGTON - The military retirement system has long been considered untouchable - along with Social Security and Medicare. But in these days of soaring deficits, it seems everything is a potential target for budget cutters. A Pentagon-sponsored study says military pensions are no longer untouchable - they're unaffordable.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports high-level, closely-held meetings are taking place at the Pentagon regarding a radical proposal to overhaul retirement for the nation's 1.4 million service members - a bedrock guarantee of military service.

The proposal comes from an influential panel of military advisors called the Defense Business Board. Their plan, laid out in a 24-page presentation "Modernizing the Military Retirement System," would eliminate the familiar system under which anyone who serves 20 years is eligible for retirement at half their salary. Instead, they'd get a 401k-style plan with government contributions.

They'd have to wait until normal retirement age. It would save $250 billion dollars over 20 years.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office says it's very important that the military attack its retirement issues. "We're talking about an underfunding that starts to look like hundreds of billions of dollars in the next 20 years. And if you want to maintain the core mission which is to defend the nation and have the strategic capabilities we need, we can't have all their money tied up in retirement programs."

Read the rest here.

Sources: Rome prepares document for SSPX

The Roman Catholic blogosphere is alive with reports that the Holy See is preparing to present the SSPX with a two page document that would outline the current state of the discussions between Rome and the Society and present options for moving forward.  The document is to be presented during a meeting on Sept 14th.  While it would be unwise to call the document an ultimatum, if the reports are accurate it would seem to be an indication that Rome wants to begin the process of bringing the Society back into full communion.  I for one am highly skeptical given the very hard nosed positions the SSPX has adopted.  But it will be interesting to see where this goes.

See related posts at Rorate here and here and another post at Fr. Z's blog here.

Euro Crisis: System May "Go Off The Rails"

International alarm over Europe's debt crisis reached new heights on Tuesday, with U.S. President Obama pressing the bloc's big countries to show leadership as talk of a Greek default escalated and markets heaped pressure on Italy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to quash talk of an imminent Greek default or exit from the euro zone, but confusion over whether she would issue a joint statement on Greece with French President Sarkozy sent markets gyrating up and then down.

Confidence in the 17-nation currency area was further dented when Italy was forced to pay the highest interest rates since joining the euro in 1999 to sell 5-year bonds.

"I think there is a possibility, if the wrong steps are taken, that the system goes off the rails," Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Italian carmaker Fiat, told reporters in Frankfurt when asked if the euro's survival was at risk.

Read the rest here.

U.S. poverty rate reaches 15.1 percent

The nation’s poverty rate spiked to 15.1 percent in 2010, the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, providing vivid new evidence about the country’s inability to escape the lingering effects of the recession.

About 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty last year, marking an increase of 2.6 million over 2009 and the fourth consecutive annual increase in poverty.

Read the rest here.

Rick Perry goes on defensive in Republican presidential debate

TAMPA — Texas Gov. Rick Perry found himself on the defensive in a Republican presidential debate here Monday night, pilloried for suggesting that states should take over Social Security, attacked for trying to mandate vaccinations for young girls and roundly criticized for immigration policies he has supported in his state.

Some of the attacks came from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is Perry’s principal rival for the party’s nomination. But in contrast to a candidates debate in California last week, the criticism was just as strong and at times stronger from some of the other contenders.

Read the rest here.

Republicans hope for upset win in special election

NEW YORK — President Obama is not on the ballot in Tuesday’s surprisingly close congressional election here, but Republicans in Queens are doing everything they can to make the race a verdict on his performance.

This bastion of Democrats is tilting toward a 70-year-old Republican businessman who has never been elected to any office, and whose campaign is focused on “sending a message” to Obama — over the economy and his support for a Palestinian state and rolling back Israel’s borders to 1967 lines, a big issue for many Jews in the Ninth District.

Read the rest here.

Newly discovered planet may hold water

Astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of 50 new planets circling stars beyond the sun, including one “super-Earth” that is the right distance from its star to possibly have water.

“If we are really, really lucky, this planet could be a habitat” like Earth, said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

Read the rest here.

Russian Orthodox leader urges Vatican to resolve dispute and pave way for summit

(Reuters) - A senior leader of the Russian Orthodox Church on Monday called on the Vatican to do more to resolve outstanding disputes so that a meeting between Pope Benedict and the Russian Patriarch could take place.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan (Archbishop) Hilarion, urged the Vatican to show "some signs" of readiness to resolve a decades-long conflict between Orthodox and Catholics in Ukraine that has been blocking a meeting of the two world religious leaders.

An unprecedented meeting between Benedict and Patriarch Kirill could begin to heal the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in the Great Schism of 1054.

Read the rest here.

I have said it before, here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating.  I may be Orthodox, but if the home team is wrong, it's wrong.  The Russian Church is skating on very thin moral ice when the subject is the forced unification of the Ukrainian Greek Rite Catholics in the late 1940's.  No reputable historian accepts the claim that it was voluntary and the transfer of church buildings and other property was little more than theft.  Let's grow up, admit the obvious and try to reach an amicable settlement.

My above opinion is utterly uninfluenced by the much discussed, but never materializing, Pope-Patriarch summit.  I could care less about that.  Bickering over real estate is not what divides Rome from the Orthodox Church, and any settlement will not end in restored communion.  Nor will any meeting between Benedict XVI and Patriarch Kyril.  We need to settle the dispute with the Ukrainian Catholics because they were the victim of a great injustice and right now the Russian Church is perpetuating that situation unnecessarily.  

In short we need to do this because it's the right thing to do irrespective of future relations with Rome.

Obama proposes raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for $447 billion jobs bill

President Obama would fund his $447 billion plan to create jobs largely by raising taxes on wealthier families, White House aides said Monday after the president again called on Congress to support the package.

During a Rose Garden appearance, Obama pledged to send Congress the American Jobs Act on Monday evening when the legislative body resumes its session. Aides revealed for the first time that the plan will include limits on itemized deductions for individuals who earn more than $200,000 a year and families that earn more than $250,000.

Eliminating those deductions will bring in an additional $400 billion in revenue, said Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Read the rest here.

Greek economy may be running short on time

Time seems to be running out for the Greek economy.

A year and a half after European officials began scrambling to avert a default by Greece on its unsustainable pile of debt, their efforts appear to be falling short. The growing worries over Greece and Europe in general contributed to a stock market sell-off Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average shedding more than 300 points .

Europe's stronger economic powers — mainly Germany and France — have insisted that Greece get its budget under control as a condition of providing financial assistance. But Greece has been unable or unwilling to meet the "austerity" targets it agreed to. Last week, officials from the International Monetary Fund, one of the agencies Greece is depending on, broke off talks, saying the government had failed to abide by its budget-cutting promises.

On Friday, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that Germany and Holland also said, in effect, "Enough." The newspaper reported the two countries have threatened to block rescue payments unless Greece sticks to its budget promises.

The issue is a central sticking point at contentious discussions in France this weekend among finance ministers of the so-called Group of Seven, including the United States, Japan and major European economies.

"It is completely within the capacity of the stronger members of the euro area to absorb those costs," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at the meeting. "Those costs would be much, much greater for them and their economies if they sit here and do nothing and they recognize that."

Greek officials are in a tough bind. The Greek economy is stuck in a downward spiral with the economy shrinking at a annual rate of 7.3 percent, according to figures published Thursday. Yet the efforts to raise taxes and cut spending are making the Greek recession worse.

Read the rest here.

As I have been saying for more than two years now, Greece is broke.  Period.  They owe more money than they can repay.  The question is not whether Greece will default, but how the default will be managed.

Capital gains tax rates benefiting wealthy feed growing gap between rich and poor

The K Street office of Mark Bloomfield, president of the American Council for Capital Formation, is full of knickknacks collected in three decades of lobbying for cutting the capital gains tax.

The coffee table has campaign buttons that read “Capital Gains = Better Jobs.” One wall displays a blown-up cartoon retracing the steps that led President Jimmy Carter to reluctantly sign a cut in the capital gains tax rate. On a shelf sits a framed, handwritten note from President George W. Bush in December 2003 that says: “Dear Mark, I got your treatise on taxes — many thanks. I will look it over with keen interest. Merry Christmas.”

For the very richest Americans, low tax rates on capital gains are better than any Christmas gift. As a result of a pair of rate cuts, first under President Bill Clinton and then under Bush, most of the richest Americans pay lower overall tax rates than middle-class Americans do. And this is one reason the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country is widening dramatically.

Read the rest here.

Asian Financial Markets Open Sharply Lower

TOKYO — Asian stock markets are sharply lower in early trading amid intensifying worries about Europe’s debt problems. Sentiment also soured after Wall Street sustained heavy losses before the weekend.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average fell 2.1 percent to 8,550.45, hitting six-month intraday lows.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed 3 percent to 19,264.68. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost almost 3 percent to 4,069.8.

Benchmarks in New Zealand and Singapore also retreated.

Read the rest here.

9-11's Self Inflicted Wounds

On Dec. 8, 1951, the day after the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the New York Times’ front page made a one-paragraph mention of commemorations the day before, when the paper’s page had not mentioned the anniversary. The Dec. 8 Washington Post’s front page noted no commemorations the previous day. On Dec. 7, the page had featured a familiar 10-year-old photograph of the burning battleships. It seems to have been published because a new process made possible printing it for the first time in color. At the bottom of the page, a six-paragraph story began: “Greater Washington today will mark the tenth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack by testing its air raid defenses.” The story explained that “the sirens are part of a ‘paper bombing’ of Washington” that would include “mock attacks by atom bombs and high explosives.”

The most interesting question is not how America in 2011 is unlike America in 2001 but how it is unlike what it was in 1951. The intensity of today’s focus on the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 testifies to more than the multiplication of media ravenous for content, and to more than today’s unhistorical and self-dramatizing tendency to think that eruptions of evil are violations of a natural entitlement to happiness. It also represents the search for refuge from a decade defined by unsatisfactory responses to Sept. 11.

Read the rest here.

LORD SAVE THY PEOPLE (CHESNOKOV)

Memory Eternal

On this sad day we remember all those who perished in the attacks ten years ago as also those who have died in the defense of our country.  On a more personal note this morning I learned that Constantino Kiliveros reposed early today after an heroic battle with cancer.  In addition to being a good friend who would give you the shirt off his back if you were in need, he was a founding member of St. Mary Magdalene parish who gave selflessly to the church for decades.

Goodbye Gus.  You will be sorely missed.

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to retire next year

Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia.

The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.

Bishops have privately been arguing for Dr Williams to stand down, with the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, telling clergy he should give someone else a chance after nearly ten years in the post.

Lambeth Palace would not be drawn into confirming or denying whether the archbishop will be leaving next year.

A spokesman would only say: "We would never comment on this matter."

Read the rest here.

Netherlands: All Doctors Must be Complicit in Euthanasia Killing

I have been fighting the international campaign to legalize and normalize doctor-prescribed/administered death since 1993, and this much I know: Once euthanasia is let in the door, ultimately, enough is never, ever enough.

Par exemple: Euthanasia activists often assure that no doctor will be forced to participate in medicalized killing. But I have been warning that this right of conscience is really an expedient, intended to give false assurance while the euthanasia consciousness gestates and matures.

And now the very pro euthanasia Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has stated that all doctors have a professional duty to be complicit in euthanasia–either by killing legally qualified patients directly who ask, or if they don’t want to do the deed personally, by referring suicidal patients to a death doctor who they know will kill.

Read the rest here.

Disaster and my escape to California

Owego NY (My mom's hometown) on Thursday evening.  Click to enlarge.  I-86 used to run on the other side of the river below the bridge but it is gone now.

 

I made it back to California... barely.  With many roads and bridges closed or damaged from Tropical Storm Lee's flooding and I-86 (Rt 17) completely underwater in many areas, I had to go a little out of my way to get to Elmira from Endicott for my noon flight on Friday.  So I left the house at 6 AM.  Took Robinson Hill Rd to Oakdale Rd to Harry L Drive (the only dry part).  Got on 17 East at the mall (west was closed) and managed to get to 81 N towards Syracuse.  Got off at Whitney Point and got on state Rt 79 to Ithaca(!) which eventually took me to state Rt 13 South.  That ultimately took me down to Horseheads which was west of the flooding.  From there I was able to get back on 86 and it was a short hop to the airport.  Needless to say that was a lot of backroads and country driving.  Judging from some of the photos of the flooding I am not sure that I-86 still exists everywhere.  The river might have reclaimed parts of the highway.

As of this writing I have not heard a full report of the flooding at Mom's place out in Tioga Ctr.  Best guess based on neighbor's reports yesterday was that the basement was severely flooded  (6-8 feet) but it sounds like the first floor escaped water damage.  There was no power or functional plumbing.  The area was hit very hard by a flash flood early on Thursday morning   It could be a long time before all of the damage to the house is repaired.  Power will likely be out for days if not weeks.  Mom and my step-father were still at Dad's where we evacuated to on Wednesday last I heard and hope they remain there until the house is habitable.  As bad as that is a lot of people got hit much worse.  Our cousin Dean who has been helping out a lot with my stepfather Hal was completely flooded out.  I am guessing his home which was near a major tributary of the Susquehanna River is a total loss, if it even still exists.  

On a side note my cell phone was accidentally left in my friend's truck last night after he picked me up at the airport.  He is out of town until sometime tomorrow. (sigh).  So I am out of touch by phone for the next 24 hrs.

Rube Bloom & His Bayoo Boys - St. James Infirmary

For the lover of classic Jazz and good music

California: Municipal bankruptcy bill passes

Legislation designed to keep cities, counties, special districts and other public agencies from rushing into bankruptcy is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown after passing the Legislature Friday.

Assembly Bill 506 would bar local government agencies from filing for bankruptcy until they undergo mediation or hold a public hearing and declare a fiscal emergency threatening the health, safety or well-being of residents.

Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, a Fremont Democrat, proposed the measure with support from the California Labor Federation and other union groups whose labor contracts could be jeopardized by local government bankruptcies.

Read the rest here.

Egypt: Protestors storm Israeli embassy

CAIRO — Israel airlifted its ambassador home and sought U.S. intervention with Egypt to help secure its embassy here early Saturday, hours after thousands of Egyptian protesters besieged the building, with several managing to gain entry and fling Hebrew-language documents from a balcony.

Protesters knocked down a 12-foot concrete wall that had been built last week to protect the embassy, which is near the top floor of a 21-story residential building in the upscale Dokki area. At least two protesters scaled the front of the building to pull down the Israeli flag, hanging from the 20th floor. It was the second time in recent weeks that demonstrators had removed the flag.

Read the rest here.

I have been a frequent critic of Israel on this blog. But this is outrageous. Israel has every right to be furious. Egypt needs to get its act together if it expects to be treated as a modern country that respects international law.

Lefebvrians say they will never accept Vatican Council

“If their aim is still to force us to accept the second Vatican Council, the discussions have been clear enough in showing that we have no intention of doing any such thing.”

These were the decisive but prudent words of Bernard Fellay, who was adamant he would not agree to any compromise with the Vatican. On the 15 August, Fellay spoke openly about the talks between the Lefebvrians and the Holy See during the “summer University” of the Society of St. Pius X, fonde by Monsignor Lefebvre.

The transcription of the public interview with the Lefebvrian superior, held by the Society’s press agent, the abbot Alain Lorans, was published a few days ago, on the eve of the meeting in Rome between Fellay and Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which should encapsulate two years of “doctrinal talks” between Rome and the traditionalists.

The Lefebvrian superior’s judgement on the discussions was anything but friendly: “They are not beneficial right now because there is a clash of mentalities… In any case, we are certainly not in agreement. If there is one thing we agree on, that is that we do not agree on anything.”

Read the rest here.

Further evidence (if any were needed) that the SSPX is in fact schismatic.

Quote of the day

“The Cathedral itself is an Episcopal church and it stands to reason that our own clergy serve as Christian representatives,”

-Richard Weinberg, the National Cathedral’s director of communications explaining the absence of any Evangelical, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox representation at an interfaith commemoration of the 9-11 attacks planned at the Cathedral.

HT: T-19

Personally I am relieved that no Orthodox clergy will be there.

Three cheers for Prince Alois

VADUZ, Liechtenstein—People in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein vote next week on whether to legalize abortion—but they know their voice may count for nothing.

The prince has already made up his mind.

Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein, heir apparent to a billion-dollar banking dynasty and de facto ruler over 35,000 people, says he will exercise his veto if the people favor a referendum to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy or if the child is severely disabled.

The announcement last month raised hackles in the Alpine nation. It comes as no revelation that the crown prince has inherited some of his father's strong Catholic views. But voters were surprised by the fact that Alois is prepared to overrule a popular vote if the outcome doesn't suit his taste.

"We think fewer people will vote because they'll ask themselves what's the point. It really is an attempt to actively influence the referendum," said Helen Konzett, who helped gather the 1,500 signatures necessary to call the vote, slated for Sept. 18.

In Liechtenstein, which is smaller than Washington, DC but has its own seat at the United Nations, interfering in a referendum is considered a criminal offense. Only not for the prince, who according to the constitution is immune from prosecution while in office.

Konzett, a mother of two, said efforts to bring Liechtenstein's laws in line with those of neighboring Austria would now likely fail.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

"Any constitution strong enough to prevent a monarch from doing wrong is also strong enough to prevent a monarch from doing what is right."

-The Mad Monarchist

Bulgarian Orthodox Hymn To The Most Holy Theotokos

Scenes from the consecration of the Cathedral of Magadan

Wrapping Up

I am finishing (at last) my business on the right coast and will be returning to CA this weekend.  Limited blogging until then.  The blog has suffered a lot of neglect during this trip but I do expect to return to a more normal level of posting after I get back home.