Religion Dispatches
…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…
Read More
…ciety,” he said. CNN traces the start of the backlash to early 2016 when a number of political leaders began making “unprompted attacks on Indonesia’s LGBT community.” It notes that conservative Islam is a growing political force, evident in the arrest and conviction of Jakarta’s Christian governor on blasphemy charges. The report says human rights activists have been disappointed by President Joko Widodo’s “lackluster” defense of LGBT people. Sal…
Read More
…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…
Read More
…lots of other North Carolinians’) values like so much heresy. Every time I buy something with sales tax, I tacitly support that government. So I do feel personally out of place, without recourse, isolated, backward. I offered this concern to Bell when we spoke on the phone. He responded thoughtfully, but cautiously. “Oh yeah. See the thing is: we actually do have real, life-or-death problems going on. And many of us are totally convinced that this…
Read More…peat Pope Benedict 1. Order unkosher communion wafers 2. Get a little behind in work 3. Party like it’s 1483 4. Two-four-six-eight, who should I excommunicate? 5. Order Mother Teresa sticky buns 6. Fine vendors selling Pope on a rope Bristol Palin 1. Pray for mom’s soul 2. Buy Revolve 2010 (Biblezine) 3. Get Promise Keepers application for Levi 4. Become a True Woman 5. Baby Making Time! 6. Refill prescription for Prozac Spencer Pratt 1. Get saved…
Read More
…ou’re never going to use.” Now aside from the fact that “forcing” women to buy health insurance policies that cover prostate cancer is, in the bad vacation home analogy, like “buying a bungalow on the Jersey Shore that you are never going to use,” Shimkus is correct. Before the ACA, many individual insurance policies didn’t cover maternity care. Women who wanted that luxury needed to pay for a pregnancy rider that ran about $5,000—in other words,…
Read More
…y. Or you can’t, if you don’t have the money. But at this table nobody can buy the bread and wine. It’s just given away. And so that is how we run the food pantry. You can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you can’t deserve it. You make the point of not making people sign up, or sign in, the way we do if we need government aid. Right. You don’t have to prove anything. The imitation of God’s gesture in feeding us all is frightening, and difficult, and e…
Read More
…ing’s Speech. On the internet no one knows you stammer; in front of a microphone it’s something else. Even so, identity evolves not only with internet-based social media, but also through earlier forms of media. The radio was the new medium of the day, and radio broadcasts play the role in The King’s Speech that computers do in The Social Network. As in so many of this year’s films, Prince Albert/King George VI must confront his past, relatively-h…
Read More
…Easter dinner like a good boy priest, quite another to invite the guests, buy the food, cook the meal, entertain, and do the dishes as an adult member of a family. I am not suggesting that everyone has to live the same way, but I am underscoring that the voters in this case had little standing on the topic they chose to consider. I would hesitate to vote in a parallel synod of priestly celibacy about which I have no experience. Until this unworka…
Read More
…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…
Read More