In a blizzard of ice...

An Eskimo showed me a movie
he'd recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.
Leonard Cohen

I believe that who we are is what we do...

I believe that who we are is what we do. I believe that if there is a larger power, it is the glorious sum of you and me, right here, at this moment, all of us in all our flawed glory.
I believe that when we die, it's lights out. I believe that immortality is no more and no less than what others remember of us after we are dead.

I believe in doing good, and trying to do better. I believe that the meaning is in the moment. I believe that we are responsible for our actions, and for the content of our character.
And just as I believe that some of us are given larger gifts than others, so I believe that the thimble is as full as the cup.

I believe that Benny Hinn is an impostor; I believe that prayer does not cure cancer. I believe that big religion causes war, hinders knowledge and enforces the hierarchy of gender. And I believe that, in most cases, the phrase "faith-based charity" is a bit like the term "socialism with a human face" — it's a nice idea, depending on who's doing the talking.

Yes, I understand that some people need or want the comforts of the church. I find the language of the Bible is a tonic when modern prose has lost its savour.
And I am inspired by church art and architecture — see this Friday's column, on the subject of St. Stephen's. But I am inclined to remain apart.

I saw a photo in the papers the other day, or perhaps it was one of those fleeting clips on television. A man somewhere in America was rebuilding his house. The camera caught him as he placed a Bible in the foundation.

At first, I thought it was a sweet gesture. A split second later, it occurred to me that if he were in another part of the world and he was placing some other holy book in the foundation of his house, I would have thought he was a zealot. And then I balanced my equation: American zealot.

When the big storm hit the Gulf states, the U.S. federal government failed to respond with swiftness or efficiency, but it did not fail to call for help from the public, knowing that help would come first from those in the best position to respond: the faith-based charities.
Who can argue with charity?

I can. Faith-based charities are fine on the surface. What's bad is that the political power of the religious right waxes fat during this disaster.
Any government of the people, by the people, and for the people has a responsibility, not just to protect everyone, but also to prevent anyone from taking advantage in a time of crisis. What advantage could there be?

If the church is asked to carry out the responsibilities of the state, then the state acquires an obligation. You can bet the church will not be shy when the time comes to collect, most likely in the form of some narrow legislation that places the religious above the secular.
In our own quiet way, we have gone in the other direction here. We have reinforced the separation of church and state.

Our premier has averted the establishment of sharia law; and, like a buttoned-down Solomon, he has taken the further necessary step of saying no to all faith-based arbitration.
Had he been a bolder man, blessed with a sense of the larger moment, he might have gone out and nailed a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the front door of every church, mosque and synagogue in the province. He did not. I applaud him anyway.

What he did — or, since we are the state, what he did on our behalf — was an act of political courage. For, just as the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, so the churches of the nation are not the chambers of the state.
That is what I believe.
Joe Fiorito, The Toronto Star

Truth from the Horoscope page...

It's very difficult for you to reconcile your desire for creativity and originality in your life to the constraints that society puts on you to be an efficient and productive person, dear Libra. This is one of the great dilemmas facing a lot of people these days. It's as if you have to hide your real personality in order to live up to what other people expect of you. Some advice for today: don't be so hard on yourself, you're only human.

I'm shocked Rick, shocked....

Some of the Bush administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been awarded to companies with ties to the administration.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have been given huge contracts to start recovery work in the Gulf Coast states hit by hurricane Katrina.

One of the companies is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

On Friday, Kellogg Brown and Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. A Halliburton spokesman said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired.

FEMA also selected Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., to provide short term housing for people left homeless by the hurricane. President Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Experts say it has been common practise in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office. Many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Huricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.

Halliburton alone has earned more than nine billion dollars. Pentagon audits released by the Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

The web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in Washington. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts that are projected to cost over $100 billion.

The executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, Danielle Brian said "The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests.
CBC News

Mr President I feel I have blood on my hands...

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can extinguish, the physicists have known sin: and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
Robert Oppenheimer, Time Magazine, "on developing the atomic bomb"