3 Beautiful Things

3 Beautiful Things I saw/experienced today:


My puppy


A single dandelion seed


The flavor of the new black currant tea
that I bought recently.

Exit Strategy

"If there's anything this President'll respond to it's written criticism."

Presbyterian court clears lesbian pastor on wedding charges

by Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has reversed a lower court's censure of a lesbian clergywoman who performed what critics called same-sex weddings for two lesbian couples in California.

"It is not improper for ministers of the Word and Sacrament to perform same-sex ceremonies," ruled the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a decision released Monday (April 28). "At least four times, the larger church has rejected overtures that would prohibit blessing the unions of same-sex couples."

The decision about the Rev. Jane Spahr, who was charged in 2004 and initially cleared in 2006, hinged on language in the church's Book of Order, which defines marriage as "between a woman and a man."

The high court found that the lower court in the church's Synod of the Pacific (SPJC) was mistaken in its determination last year that Spahr had violated that language.

"By the definition in (the Book of Order), a same-sex ceremony can never be a marriage," the high court ruled. "The SPJC found Spahr guilty of doing that which by definition cannot be done. One cannot characterize same-sex ceremonies as marriages for the purpose of disciplining a minister of the Word and Sacrament and at the same time declare that such ceremonies are not marriages for legal or ecclesiastical purposes."

Same-sex ceremonies and marriages should remain different, the court declared.

"We do hold that the liturgy should be kept distinct for the two types of services," it said. "We further hold that officers of the PCUSA authorized to perform marriages shall not state, imply or represent that a same-sex ceremony is a marriage."

Spahr, 65, said she was "grateful" for the decision, which she considers an affirmation of her longtime ministry to gays and lesbians.

"The church is a place of welcome and hospitality in which I will continue to honor relationships of love and commitment, regardless of sexual orientation," she said in a statement.

Uman's Healthcare Plan

So what is Uman's health care plan? Here's my plan:

1) Pharmaceuticals & Research
The Pharmaceutical industry has the highest profit margin of any industry in the world (including oil!), reaching as high as 26%. This is achieved in two steps:
(a) the government uses our taxes to pay pharmaceuticals millions of dollars, in the form of research grants to develop new drugs. In essence, the government is contracting with the pharmaceutical industry to develop & provide a product just like they do with every other kind of contractor.
(b) through lobbying and patent laws, pharmaceuticals get to have exclusive production and charge high prices for their medicines to "recoup" the cost of R&D that they didn't actually pay for.

The first step in the Uman Healthcare Plan is this. If a pharmaceutical takes American tax dollars for R&D (and they all do), then the drugs they develop are owned by the American people. That means no exclusive production. That will immediately bring prices down.

It is, of course, a myth that this would lead to a drop-off in advanced medicine. The government is ALREADY paying pharmacies to develop new drugs.

This is not limited to drugs of course. The same thing happens with all high-tech diagnostic equipment like MRIs. A *huge* portion of our tax dollars are spent in these two areas: drugs and lab work. My last CT Scan cost $1400. For an hour's worth of work. That is simply ridiculous.

2) Re-enable advertising regulation.
Since the Clinton years, pharmacies have been able to advertise directly to consumers instead of to doctors. The result? Patients self-diagnose, walk into a doctor's office and say, "I have such-and-such, prescribe this new drug I saw on TeeVee." And it works. It means that doctors are giving out FAR more prescriptions now since this advertising than before. The second plan in Uman's Health Care system is to stop pharmaceutical and lab companies from advertising prescription drugs and tests to consumers.

3) Life expectancy and culture
We are living longer. And we live in a culture that is too afraid of death. So we keep people alive under every possible circumstance instead of allowing people to die with dignity. Terry Schiavo's care cost $80,000 a year just for the nursing home! That's $1.2 million for the 15 years she was there. Let's put this in perspective: a whopping 30% of our total health care bill is spent on end-of-life care. More than half of all Medicare expenses are spent on people who live less than two months. The third, and doubtlessly the least popular plank in the Uman Healthcare Plan is two-fold. First, educate and pass good laws that permit people to die with dignity, and second, pass guidelines and regulations that limit the amount of money spent on hopeless end-of-life treatment.

4) Although there is no government panacea, a single-payer plan (universal health care), has the greatest potential to provide the best care for everyone. Already studies show that the government is currently paying out more than what it would spend on universal health care! There would be a massive simplification and streamlining of hundreds of different processes from eligibility to claim payment, as well as underwriting, sales, and so forth, which would immediately make the system far more efficient. The fourth plank in the Uman health care system is to institute universal health care similar to that in Cuba, Canada, France, and nearly every other western nation in the world. At least 8.5% of the health care premiums is spent to offset services for uninsured patients.

5) Reform malpractice litigation. I want to tread carefully here because I believe that a person ought to be able to sue in the case of negligence. But, I do see many problems in our present malpractice litigation. To wit:
1) it is never guaranteed that a surgical procedure will have a positive outcome. People need to stop expecting too much. An imperfect outcome should not be grounds for litigation.
2) Awards should be based on the facts of the case, not how bad we feel for the victim. Large awards typically reflect a jury's empathy for the victim, not a determination of negligence on the part of the health care team. For example, in Terry Schiavo's case, the husband was award $1million because the obstetriction failed to recognize a diagnosis of bulimia (which was later disputed). In my mind this is an award based on empathy, not on the facts.
3) there needs to be sane limits or regulations/guidelines on how much can be awarded, and how much lawyers can take as a contingency fee. It is insane to me that lawyers "get rich" out of other people's problems, so much so that out of a relatively large award, the lawyers get such a large share that the victim is not much better off.

6) Along with the single-payer plan, institute a federal common-chronics plan that deals with the largest and most common utilization of health care: asthma, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis. A national common chronics plan would lower the cost of treating these diseases. Of course, some of these diseases can be helped by making other sensible regulations. Malpractice suits account for about 10% of the healthcare cost.

Now, can I be President please?

Man Cleared by DNA evidence

Just another reason why we shouldn't have the death penalty and appeals should be more lenient in accepting recanted testimony and new evidence:
===
DALLAS, Texas (AP)
A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing.

[snip]

Woodard was sentenced to life in prison in July 1981 for the murder of a 21-year-old Dallas woman found sexually assaulted and strangled near the banks of the Trinity River.

He was convicted primarily on the basis of testimony from two eyewitnesses, said Natalie Roetzel, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas. One has since recanted in an affidavit. As for the other, "we don't believe her testimony was accurate," Roetzel said.

Like nearly all the exonorees, Woodard has maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison. But after filing six writs with an appeals court, plus two requests for DNA testing, his pleas of innocence became so repetitive and routine that "the courthouse doors were eventually closed to him and he was labeled a writ abuser," Roetzel said.

Full story here.
Support The Innocence Project.

Cheney will make Bush Look Like Gandhi

McCain's Crappy Health Care Plan

See McCain's health care plan below. It is an insurance company's dream! Individuals have absolutely NO CHANCE of getting a sweeter insurance deal than corporations who get group insurance, assist in getting discount contracts with providers, who are savvy to the health insurance market, who have an incentive to get the biggest bang for their buck.

Individuals have no clout to force improved service, no insider knowledge, no understanding of how insurance plans work, no underwriting leverage, no discount contracts. Furthermore, individuals will have the tendency to buy the cheapest health insurance they can, meaning that the industry would go back to what was once called "indemnity major medical," meaning major emergency coverage only (the highest profit insurance for insurers). Anyone with a history of health problems will get reamed by this plan! Underwriters, knowing an individual’s health history, will only offer plans with huge premiums because individuals have no group with which to share the burden with like a corporation does. Individuals with typically good health will simply not buy insurance (which makes it worse for the people who do because only sick people will buy insurance, driving the costs up).

The "tax credit" is just mumbo-jumbo, it simply will not do the job. Insurers will eat it up. A "non-profit" plan to help pre-existing conditions already exists. It’s called Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and they've been unable to keep costs down. (By the way, insurance companies, though they are as inefficient as any big industry, has relatively modest profit margins, <4%).>

This is, simply put, the WORST POSSIBLE thing that we could do in America for health care.

McCain unveils new health care plan

Posted: 08:00 AM ET

(CNN) –-A tax credit to help individuals and families buy health insurance will be at the heart of a health care proposal Sen. John McCain is expected to unveil Tuesday.

The credits will spark greater competition among insurance providers and put “individuals and families back in charge” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will say during a speech in Tampa, Florida, according to excerpts of his speech released by his campaign.

Millions of Americans would be making their own health care choices again,” McCain will say, according to the prepared text of the speech. “Insurance companies could no longer take your business for granted, offering narrow plans with escalating costs.”

In McCain's plan, individuals will be eligible for a $2,500 credit and families a $5,000 credit to help buy health insurance if they do not subscribe to health insurance provided by an employer. The government would directly send the money to insurers.

McCain will also propose that the government set up a non-profit Guaranteed Access Plan to provide coverage to individuals who are denied coverage from private insurers due to pre-existing conditions.

Oblate Retreat

Today we had our annual Oblates of the Order of St. Benedict retreat at the Mt. St. Scholastica monastery in Atchison. The retreat was led by our Oblate Director, Sister Therese Elias. The topic this year was the historical roots of monasticism. St. Benedict lived in the 6th century. The martyrdom period was the 2-3rd century. In the 4th & 5th century, there lived the Desert Fathers & Mothers (the abbas and ammas), the historical roots of monastics who left Rome (which they thought of as the false world with its vices) to live semi-solitary lives in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine and Syria (which they considered to be the real world).

One of the most striking things I heard was this quote from Belden Lane:

"I really don't want a God who is solicitious of my every need, fawning for my attention, eager for nothing in the world so much as the fulfillment of my self-potential. One of the scourges of our age is that all our deities are house-broken and eminently companionable. Far from demanding anything, they ask only how they can more meaningfully enhance the lives of those they serve."
Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

Obama and Race

This is an interesting analysis from Daily Kos:

Way back in February, the day of the Potomac Primary, I wrote that what happened in the mountains of Virginia and Maryland could presage what would happen in the Appalachian parts of other states. Clinton pulled up to 90% in some of those counties, and she's won the Appalachian regions of every state contested.

On Wednesday, I was in Inez, Kentucky, the Appalachian town where L.B.J. declared war on poverty forty-four years ago this month. John McCain was on a tour of "forgotten places"...After [McCain's] speech, I left the county courthouse and crossed the main street to talk to a small group of demonstrators holding signs next to McCain’s campaign bus. J. K. Patrick, a retired state employee from a neighboring county, wore a button on his shirt that said "Hillary: Smart Choice."

"East of Lexington she’ll carry seventy per cent of the primary vote," he said. Kentucky votes on May 20. "She could win the general election in Kentucky." I asked about Obama. "Obama couldn’t win."

Why not?

"Race," Patrick said matter-of-factly. "I’ve talked to people—a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man." Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

"Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race."
What about race?

"I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion. After 1964, you saw what the South did." He meant that it went Republican. "Now what caused that? Race. There’s a lot of white people that just wouldn’t vote for a colored person. Especially older people. They know what happened in the sixties. Under thirty—they don’t remember. I do. I was here."

The Only Woman Jesuit

Secret, Perilous Project
by Fr. John Padberg, SJ

Previously, in the mid 1540s, Pope Paul III had directed Ignatius to accept Isabel Roser and two companions as members of something like a women’s branch of the Society of Jesus, but that experiment did not last.

Juana entered almost ten years later. In 1552 the princess, 17 at the time, married the heir to the Portuguese throne. When he died two years later, she returned to Spain.

Young, beautiful, and aware of her royal position and power, Juana was also endowed with a talent for ruling. While her brother, Philip II of Spain, was in England as husband of Mary Tudor, he made Juana regent. From 1554 to 1559 she was the effective ruler of Spain.

Juana had an additional ambition: to become a Jesuit. Telling none of her family, she informed Spanish grandee Francis Borgia, an early Jesuit, that she wanted to join the Society of Jesus.

The idea was heaped with danger for the Society. Her father, Emperor Charles V, and her brother Philip would be furious with her and the Jesuits for wrecking possible future dynastic marriage plans for Juana.

Yet, the new, small, and in some places highly suspect Society could not afford to alienate Juana—depending in part on her good favor for its existence in Spain.

The Society in 1554 had officially been in existence for only fourteen years, yet by Ignatius’s death in 1556, there were already 1,000 Jesuits. Men were flocking into the order enthusiastically. Women, too, were attracted and wanted either to found a separate female branch of the Society under the control of the general or to enter directly into the Society itself.

The first of these alternatives had been tried by Isabel Roser in 1545, who got the pope to write a brief allowing her to take the vows of the Society and ordering Ignatius to receive her. In December 1545, Ignatius did receive her vows and those of two other women, but the text of the vows carefully made no mention of entrance into the Society itself. This so-called women’s branch of the Society did not last. Roser had been a great friend and patron of Ignatius for many years, but after she took vows she made impossible demands, continued in her own ways, and demanded interminable hours of spiritual direction (more than all the rest of the Jesuits in the Roman Curia combined). In May 1546, Ignatius asked the pope to dispense the recalcitrant Roser from her vows. As a result of this failed experiment, Ignatius got a brief from Pope Paul III in 1547 forbidding the Society to take under its obedience communities of religious women.

Then came Juana. She wanted, and got, for herself not a separate branch of the Society but membership in the Society itself.

So perilous was the project that all existing Jesuit correspondence about the situation avoids her name, using the pseudonym Mateo Sanchez, or Montoya, instead. In a quandary, Ignatius appointed a committee to advise him. It recommended that Juana enter the Society as a permanent scholastic; truly a Jesuit but forever in formation. Otherwise, with solemn vows, she would have been—according to canon and civil law—legally dead, dispossessed of everything, and incapable of ever marrying again.

With the novel, simple, and terminable vows of a Jesuit scholastic, she could have separated from the Society if necessary. When Juana pronounced her three religious vows as a Jesuit, absolute secrecy was enjoined on everyone.

She could make no obvious change in her manner of life. So, for her, poverty meant leading a rather austere life at her already simple court. Chastity meant never marrying again. Obedience—well, her letters show her sometimes trying to give orders to Ignatius and Borgia.

This secrecy was imposed not only because of Juana’s position but also to preclude at all costs anyone else following her example. Ignatius and his committee saw the problem of responding to the possibility that a whole crowd of high-born ladies would be knocking on the general’s door for entrance into the Society.

The secret was so well kept that no one ever suspected it. And as far as is known today, Juana lived the rest of her rather short life (she died at the age of 38 in 1573) as the only woman Jesuit.

Original Source: Company Online!: A Magazine of the U.S. Jesuits

Food Fight: How International Aid Fails the Poor

From Christian Century and Bread for the World:

By David Beckmann

In 2006, the United States provided 6 million tons of food aid to agencies such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and Save the Children...why would any agency reject U.S. food aid?

Yet that's exactly what CARE did last July, when officials announced that beginning in 2009, CARE will forgo $45 million a year in U.S. food aid. The organization based its decision on disagreement with a practice known as monetization, the process of selling some of the U.S. food abroad in order to raise needed cash for development projects and administrative costs...CARE maintains that the sale of this food in the fragile markets of recipient countries competes with the sale of food produced by local farmers, causing prices to drop and lowering farmers' income. After careful study, CARE has determined that the benefits of monetization are simply not worth the costs....

Originally food aid programs were seen as a way of disposing of large surplus food stocks owned by the federal government....But those government surplus stocks no longer exist. Today the U.S. government purchases food through regular U.S. commercial channels. The law requires this; it favors agribusiness interests and U.S. shipping companies even though the end result is higher-priced commodities and transportation. If the aid groups were allowed to consider cheaper sources of food and transportation, they would save both money and time.

The law also requires that the vast majority of food aid donations be made into ready-to-eat products or otherwise processed before being shipped. At least 75 percent of food aid must be shipped on U.S. flagships, despite the fact that our domestic shipping fleet is small and normally more costly than its international competitors. The bottom line? More than half of the U.S. food aid budget is consumed by administrative and transportation expenses.


Finish the rest of the story here.

Political Interference at EPA

"Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency scientists complain they have been victims of political interference and pressure from superiors to skew their findings, according to a survey released Wednesday by an advocacy group.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work....

Asked to respond to the survey, Shradar, the EPA spokesman, said, 'We have the best scientists in the world at EPA.'"

BAM!! And they're patriotic too! That oughta shut up you pesky journalists!

Read the whole article.

Jesus Loves You, but...

Private Religion

I hear over and over again that we need to privatize religion (as I was reminded again in a youtube video that someone sent me from Americans United for Separation of Church and State). By this they mean, keep it in the privacy of one's own home, don't bring it into the public square, don't express it in public, and (of course), don't bring it up in politics or government.

But religion can't be privatized. Whether it is Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, or Wicca, religion is inherently communal.

To use a bad metaphor, to privatize religion is something like asking you to play baseball in the privacy of your own home. It doesn't work. You have to have other players, you have to have coaches and umpires, you have to have teams, you have to have fans. It's the nature of it. You can fruitfully practice throwing a baseball with your son in your private backyard, but ultimately, when it comes time to "play the game," you have to do it in community.

"Life in community is no less than a necessity for us, an inescapable 'must'... all life created by God exists in communal order and works toward community." -- Eberhard Arnold


P.S. You don't have to privatize religion to have separation of church and state or a pluralist nation.

P.P.S. If you force people to play baseball "privately," you'll destroy it, which, I suppose, is the point for those who are advocating private religion.

The Problem of Evil

There is an interesting debate starting on BeliefNet on the problem of evil between Bart Ehrman and N.T. Wright, both powerhouses in theological and NT studies.

Link is here:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/

One of the things that constantly comes to mind, is this. IF there is no God, then the evils of nature that Bart Ehrman describes (tsunamis, mudslides, et. al.) simply aren't evil. There is no longer any ground to say, "this is not how God ought to operate!" They are just random acts of atoms and physics.

He might as well argue "there is no such thing as logic! Here, I'll prove it to you."

There must be a God to complain to in order to give meaning to the very question he raises.

The Bible Complicates Things

The Bible Complicates Things
By F. Richard Garland

Sometimes I am tempted to quit reading the Bible - it complicates things! Just when I think I know what it says, I read a passage again in a new translation or out of a new context, and discover something I had missed.

Lately, with the topic of immigration so much in the news, I decided to see what the Bible had to say about aliens. Wow! Did I get an ear full?! Our ancestors in the faith, notably Abraham and Isaac, were aliens. Very early in scripture the law of the community made equity clear: “There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.” [Exodus 12:49 and Leviticus 24:21]

Business conduct was required to be honorable and attentive to the poor and the alien: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field … You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien.” [Leviticus 19:9-10]

Those who are not just towards the alien are subject to divine disapproval: “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan and the widow of justice.” [Deuteronomy 27:19] “I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against … those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” [Malachi 3:5]

As for today’s controversy about illegal aliens, the Bible says: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” [Leviticus 19:34]

Ah, the Bible! It complicates things!

Read the rest of the post.

Clinton Can Still Win

Ginger

Here's a nice pic that Dean took of me with Ginger a couple of weeks ago.

Curtains

This weekend we got curtains on the window in the living room (finally!). It took a trip to the hardware store, but it worked out. Also changed the decor on the altar table and the shower curtain and towels in the bathroom.

Wendell Berry on Ends and Means

" . . . we have come to attribute to ends a moral importance that far

outweighs that which we attribute to means. As though we have arrived in our
minds at a new age of fantasy or magic, we expect ends not only to justify
means, but to rectify them as well. Once we have reached the desired end,
we think, we will turn back to purify and consecrate the means. Once the
war that we are fighting for the sake of peace is won, then the generals
will become saints, the burned children will proclaim in heaven that their
suffering is well repaid, the poisoned forests and fields will turn green
again. Once we have peace, we say, or abundance or justice or truth or
comfort, everything will be all right. It is an old dream.

It is a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends is no discipline at
all. The end is preserved in the means; a Hope lives in the means,

not the end. . . . That good ends are destroyed by bad means is one of the
dominant themes of human wisdom."