Goal for 2013: surprise wife with new mistake

To contact us Click HERE
 OUT TO PASTOR  By Dr. James L. Snyder
Gazette Contributor

The fact we actually survived another year is a tribute to somebody's tenacity; I am not sure whose. I know the only thing that got me through the year was the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and boy is she graciously tenacious. I was sure everything would collapse and, of course, several times I collapsed in my easy chair.

It is a New Year, or so they tell us, but I have my suspicions. After this latest episode with the Mayan calendar, I am not too sure what date it is, or what year it is, for that matter. They certainly got everything wrong and I have my suspicions about the rest of it.

How do we really know that January 1 is actually January 1? Moreover, how do we know what year it is exactly?

I think somewhere along the line somebody has pulled a scam on civilization and has messed up our calendars. If the Mayans got it wrong, maybe we have it wrong also.

Whatever day and whatever year it is I am going to celebrate the New Year. If I am wrong, I have a lot of company.

When we celebrate the New Year, there is nothing new about it. Everything we did last year we are going to be doing this year, only we will be one year older. Perhaps as we get older we forget about what we have done and think we are doing something new. Hooray for senility!

I really do not care about that; my philosophy is, let's do it all over again. If it is worth doing the first time, it is worth doing again.

This brings me to a great point, which is, some things are worth repeating while other things are not. It is trying to find out the difference between these two that makes life challenging. I do not mind repeating things if I am in charge of what I am repeating.

I think we all should choose what we are going to repeat. For example, I wish I could choose a year to repeat.

If I could repeat any year, it would be 1971. That year represents the greatest con in the history of mankind. I am not sure anything like it has ever happened before or since. That was the year I married a young lady who turned out to be the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage.

What bothers me about this is why did she really marry me? Was it my charm and good looks or did she think I was rich? There have been times I have wanted to query her on this very subject, but then I am always afraid she will tell me the truth. I'll just will settle for the fact that it was the year I conned her into marrying me.

We have been a great team ever since. She has kept me straight and I have given her opportunities to exercise that profession, at which she has become quite proficient.

One of the great things resulting from this marriage is how faithful she has been faithful to point out my mistakes. Through her help, I discovered I have made quite a few mistakes.

I begin every year with a clean slate. I am able to celebrate Jan. 1 with no mistakes whatsoever but then the next day my wife begins the ominous task of pointing out my mistakes. This is a joint effort, which leaves me out of joint often.

I have a little theory along this line. I think that if it is a mistake you have made before it should not count anymore. I think the only thing that should be legitimate to point out are new mistakes. I find myself so busy practicing my old mistakes that I rarely get around to making new mistakes.

All these years I have reveled in my old mistakes. Trying to find something new is a great strain on my little grey cells. At this point in my life, they are exhausted and are encouraging me to rely upon those old mistakes and give them a well-deserved rest.

At my stage in life I think new is overrated and, if experience is anything, something new is always taxing and in more ways than one. Do not let the government find out that you have something new or Uncle Sam will come knocking at your door with a gentle request for tax money.

There is an old saying that insanity is doing the same things over and over expecting different results. Well, that does not describe me. I do not want different results. I like the results I have. I like doing the same thing over again because I know what to expect. And if ignorance in this area is bliss, I am the most blissful person on the planet.

But my challenge this year is to surprise my wife with some unexpected new mistakes. At least one! 

To get on the right track for the New Year, I start with the Bible. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV).

Instead of just celebrating the New Year, I plan also to celebrate that "new creature" in Christ. No mistake about it.
 
Dr. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. His web site is www.jamessnyderministries.com

Outracing the Grim Reaper

To contact us Click HERE
  LIFE'S OUTTAKES   By Daris HowardGazette Contributor
            Uncle Hickory made a New Year’s resolution. He swore he would quit drinking. He had been driving while he was drunk and had one of the biggest scares of his life. He claimed the angel of death had come for him. He was trembling as he told us about it.
            He had been to a New Year’s eve party, and the celebration was quite lively. There were many kinds of alcohol, and Uncle Hickory was hard pressed to find one he didn’t like. He sampled all of them, from the lightest beer to the hardest vodka. Of course, he claimed he only had a little of each.
            Once the old year had rolled away, and everyone had toasted the new one, it was time to head for home. Uncle Hickory wobbled his way to his car, feeling happy and light, hardly noticing the cold at all.
            It had snowed heavily the previous two days, and, while they had been celebrating, the wind had kicked up, causing huge drifts. Uncle Hickory’s old car plowed through the drifts, sliding back and forth as he went.
            “Suddenly the road smoothed out,” Uncle Hickory said, “and the car quit bucking and sliding. That was when it happened. I was traveling carefully along at about 30 miles per hour when I saw him approaching in my rear view mirror. He was floating toward me, all draped in black, closing the distance between us quickly.”
            Uncle Hickory shook visibly as he continued. “I knew who he was, and I knew he was coming for me. Even though it was slick and dangerous, I gunned the engine. I reached 50 miles per hour, then looked in my rear view mirror. The gap between us was still getting smaller.”
            Uncle Hickory took some deep breaths, trying to calm himself. “As he was almost on my bumper I put the pedal to the floor, rather to die from a wreck than to have that ghostly demon take me away. The speedometer climbed to 80 then to 90. I looked straight ahead, afraid to take my eyes off of the road. Finally, I glanced in my rear view mirror and no longer saw him. I felt a surge of relief flood over me when...”
            Uncle Hickory paused, the blood draining from his face as the memory came back. We all leaned forward anxious for the rest of the story.
            “Just at the moment I thought I’d lost him,” he continued, “there was a knock on my window. I turned, and there he was right by my door. I looked at my speedometer, and it said I was going over 100 miles per hour, and still he stayed right there. I knew at that point I only had one chance.”
            “What?” we asked.
            “What?” he responded. “I’ll tell you what. I slammed on the brakes and then tore my way across the car and out the passenger side. I plowed through the snow and across the field, running for the light of a house I could see in the distance. I never looked back until I made it safely there. Once inside I looked over my shoulder, and he was gone.”
            A few days later, Bart, a friend of mine, stopped to visit with me. “By the way, how is your Uncle Hickory?”
            “He’s okay,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”
            “Well, I was driving home New Year’s day after working the night shift, and I saw his car off the road, stuck deep in a field. I got out to check on him, and the closer I got the harder he gunned his engine. When I got right up beside his car, I knocked on his window. When I did, he screamed and tore out the other side of his car and took off running across the field.”
            Bart paused, the concern showing in his face. “I tried to catch up to him, but I’ve never seen anyone run that fast, and I finally gave up. I just wanted to make sure he made it home safely.”
            “He did,” I replied. “But if we keep this just between you and me, he just might remain sober.”

 (Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist, playwright, and author, can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)

Eagle with broken wing soars free at Roosevelt

To contact us Click HERE
After months of rehabilitation and preparation, Arizona’s only satellite-tracked bald eagle soared free on Dec. 20 when it was released at Roosevelt Lake by Arizona Game and Fish Department biologists and rehabilitation specialists from Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation of Scottsdale.

 
The 4-year-old male was found at Canyon Lake with a broken wing that required medical treatment. Once the wing healed, rehabilitators at Liberty Wildlife worked with the bird to rebuild muscle strength for flying. 
 
Hatched in 2008 from a nest site near the lower Verde River, the bald eagle was fitted with a solar-powered GPS transmitter prior to release. Biologists are excited at the rare opportunity to now track an adult bald eagle and learn more about its habits, migrations and possible breeding activities. The transmitter is lightweight and does not interfere with the bird’s flight or activities.
 
"It is very rewarding to take a bald eagle that may not have otherwise survived and rehabilitate it to the point where it can be released back into the population, especially a bird that was hatched in the state and will hopefully contribute to the population in the future,” says Kenneth Jacobson, head of the Arizona Game and Fish Department Bald Eagle Management Program.
 
The state had 54 breeding pairs of bald eagles this year. The bald eagle population in Arizona has grown nearly 600 percent since it was originally listed on the federal Endangered Species list in 1978, thanks in part to management efforts supported by the Heritage Fund. The Heritage Fund is a voter-passed initiative that was started in 1990 to further wildlife conservation efforts in the state, including protecting endangered species, through Arizona Lottery ticket sales.
 
Courtship and nest building begin in October and November, and the bald eagles lay eggs from December to March. During the spring, many areas are closed to protect breeding bald eagles around the state. 
 
The Arizona Game and Fish Department manages the bald eagle as part of the Southwestern Bald Eagle Management Committee (SWBEMC), a broad coalition of 23 government agencies, private organizations and Native American tribes.
 
Additional information on bald eagles and the breeding season closures can be found at www.azgfd.gov/baldeagle or www.swbemc.org.

McConnell outraged at having to work weekend

To contact us Click HERE


By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Howls of protest filled the halls of the U.S. Senate today as dozens of Senators expressed their outrage at having to work through the weekend to save the United States from financial Armageddon.

“We’re hearing a lot about the country plunging back into recession and millions of people being thrown out of work,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). “What we’re not hearing much about is how our Sunday is being completely and irrevocably ruined.”

Senator McConnell said that when President Obama called the Senate back to work on a budget deal this weekend, “At first I thought he was kidding. Not only have I never worked on a weekend, I’ve never met anyone who’s done such a damn fool thing.”

The Senate Minority Leader added that “if saving this country means working Saturday and Sunday, then I’m not sure this is a country worth saving.”

“Yes, I know that the fiscal cliff is a ticking time bomb that could destroy the U.S. economy for years to come and take the rest of the world with it,” he said. “I also know that Sunday is Week seventeen of the N.F.L. season and now I’m missing all my games.”

Mr. McConnell said that while “saving the nation may be important to be some people,” he worries that forcing the Senate to work on a weekend is setting a dangerous precedent.

“For years, people have run for Congress because they knew that serving here was synonymous with not working,” he said. “If that’s going to change all of a sudden, a lot of us are going to feel very betrayed.”

Photograph by Brendan Hoffman/Getty.

Not much positive about 2012

To contact us Click HERE

Political satirist Will Durst. (photo: WillDurst.com)
By Will Durst, Humor Timesreadersupportednews.org 30 December 12
nd so we bid a not-so-fond farewell to the bow of 2012, another large unwieldy year, as it sinks slowly over the horizon, wobbling unsteadily towards the graveyard of memory. And cheers erupt from we folks on shore waving the double-handed "L for loser" sign above our heads. "So long. See ya. Don't let the door slam you in the butt on the way out. And if you got any brothers or sisters, don't give them this address."

Normally there's some small sense of nostalgia for a departing annum. An iota of regret for the calendar discarded. Not this one. Getting through the past 12 months was like navigating a Black Diamond ski run in roller skates with the wheels rusted shut. While wearing a crib. It was an oil-soaked pelican of years. The Year of Living Stupidly. Had the same connection to constructive change that Vladimir Putin has to the editorial board of Crochet Monthly. The Chinese need a new Zodiac sign: Year of the Flatulent Weasel.
But in the interest of keeping this particular piece of puffery positive, it might be best if we confine our remarks to reflecting on the good that emerged from 2012.
Okay. Well, that was quick. Wait -- got one: at least the presidential election is over. Of course people are already running for 2016, so we got that to look forward to. Which is real similar to looking forward to having five-year twins playing in the back seat of a cross-country drive with a new set of drums and an unlimited supply of metallic sticks. And tambourines. Tons of tambourines. For four years.
You'd think even your average run-of-the-mill politician would possess the simple common human decency to wait till the current President was re-inaugurated, but nooo. These early birds are intent on stockpiling worms. You know what they say: Early money is like yeast. And very early money is like baking soda. And extremely early money is an egg wash brushed delicately across a pan full of hot cross buns.
When you think about it, the only thing that really went right with 2012 was we misread the Mayan Calendar. Everything else is either worse than we found it or the same. 
Middle East a mess? Check. Crazy people with guns? Check. Weather getting weird? Check. Congress unable to accomplish any sort of worthwhile task, including differentiating between their gluteus maximus and yellow paint? Double check.
Face it. These days, simple survival has become the goal. Continuing existence is the new victory dance. And then, for a half a second you ruminate on how good we got it here. What kind of state the rest of the world is in. And most of our problems just kind of fade away, don't they?
Sure, with great potential comes great responsibility. But it's an exciting time. 15 years ago, the only people with GPS units were NASA. Now we got them in our cars and phones. We're also in the middle of a cheeseburger renaissance and pretty good coffee is available almost everywhere. Not half bad perks. So, what do you say? Shall we give another a year a shot? But just 365 this time around. Don't know about you, but that extra day this year kicked my butt.

SS cuts would be a death spiral for elderly

To contact us Click HERE

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
nationofchange.org

Liberals and progressives who want to cut Social Security? Democrats who want to cut one of their party’s signature achievements? 

“It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge. 

As Christmas Eve approaches, supporters of the “chained CPI” are engaging in increasingly tortured – and positively Scrooge-like – arguments for the President’s callous and economically unsound proposal.

And they’re doing it in the name of the “progressive movement.”

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin …”

The Randian Liberals
We’ll need a name for this new political genre: “Randian Liberalism” might work.
 
A classic in the field is a blog post entitled Dear Liberals, Chained CPI is NOT a “Cut” to Social Security. Get Over It, written by someone calling him- or herself “Deaniac83″ on a website called “The People’s View.”

Serving as a perfect representative of his ilk, this self-described but anonymous “progressive” sneers that the chained-CPI benefit cut has “set off more alarm bells on the Left’s media than Pearl Harbor.” Progressive?

“Charge their doings on themselves,” said the Spirit, “not us.”
Same Old Playbook

The piece’s blend of arrogance and misinformation typifies the new style of the corporate-Democratic loyalist, with rhetorical ploys straight out of the Pete Peterson playbook: Benefit-cut opponents are “zealous liberals” and “ideologues” who speak with “hair-on-fire” hysteria. And this is not a cut in benefits.

When is a cut not a cut? Well … actually, never.

The chained CPI would reduce a 75 year old’s benefits by 6.5 percent and a 95 year old’s by 9.2 percent. The average woman on Social Security received $997 per month in 2010.  Had the chained CPI been put into effect then, when the President first planned to propose it, her monthly income would have fallen to  $933 (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars) by age 85 and $915 by age 95.

But that’s not a cut, scoff the Scrooge Liberals. It’s a technical adjustment.  
 
Death Spiral
The cost-of-living calculation for Social Security is already too low. Something like the proposed “CPI-E” (which adjusts for the costlier goods and services used by the elderly and disabled) would be fairer and more accurate.  Many (though not all) extremely good economists agree with me.

The “chained CPI,” by contrast, lowers the rate at which benefits are increased by factoring in the reduced consumption of certain items – reductions that would be driven by cuts in benefits!

Whatever you think of this approach to economic modeling, it’s a pretty brutal in real-world terms to calculate benefit increases this way. You’re reducing people’s benefits based on the things you’ve helped ensure they can no longer afford.
 
This would quickly become a death spiral to the financial security of the elderly and disabled financial:  They can’t afford beef so they buy  chicken. They can’t afford chicken so they buy cereal. Then they go from cereal to Fancy Feast. From Fancy Feast to Purina. And so on and so on, ad infinitum, Ad nauseum.
 
Say what you will about taking $64 out of a 95 year old woman’s check, but it’s absurd to say it isn’t a “cut.”
 
You know me. I’m just too generous …
 
That brings us to the second, and even more absurd, “liberal” argument for the cut: Current benefits are too generous.  


That will certainly come as a surprise to 8.7 million disabled workers, who currently receive an average of $1,111 per month in benefits – a figure that will be cut even more drastically under the President’s proposal, since they’re expected to live longer on average than elderly recipients.

It will also come as a surprise to knowledgeable economists like Kathy Ruffing and Paul Van de Water, who compared our nation’s Social Security benefits with those of similar programs in other countries.  They note that, in their words:

1. Social Security benefits in the United States are low compared with other advanced countries.
2. Future retirees already face lower benefits (relative to their past earnings) than current retirees as a result of a rising Social Security retirement age and escalating Medicare premiums.

Ruffing and Van de Water found that Social Security benefits in this country provide 41.3 percent a retiring worker’s income on average, while those in other developed countries provide 60.8 percent.


That’s roughly one-third less than other nations’ program — and yet this “liberal” argument claims that our  cost-of-living calculations are so lavish that they must be slowed down.


Know Your Subject Before Lecturing
Of course, these liberals don’t say that benefits are too generous. That’s too nakedly cynical. Instead they deploy rhetoric like “minor adjustment.”
 
But what they’re really saying is “we’re too generous to these elderly, underaged, and disabled recipients.”


That’s partly the result of their callousness, and partly due to their inability to grasp  some of the fundamental concepts of social insurance, as when “Deanian 83″ says that “each additional year lived is an increase in one’s lifetime benefits.”


No.


Social Security is social insurance. Social insurance provides for certain needs when they arise. Social Security is supposed to support our living costs when we’re no longer working. Our cost of living rises with – this should be self-evident – overall increases in the cost of living.


That’s nothing like increases the defense budget, a comparison which “Deaniac” introduces with an embarassingly ill-place “gotcha” flourish. The purchase of weapons systems and the maintenance of a worldwide network of military bases (with thousands of physical facilities) is a matter of choice, not driven by external factors like an individual’s cost of living. Moreover, a military budget is not an insurance program.


Higher Taxes, Too … But Not For the Richest Income
The chained CPI would also raises taxes on all but the highest levels income, by forcing all other earnings into higher tax brackets more quickly.


Deaniac83 celebrated the chained CPI’s tax hike, too. But it’s funny: Randian “liberals” don’t ever get around to explaining why this tax increase on the middle class is not a “tax increase” on the middle class.


I’m sure they will eventually.


Party Line
A piece in this genre isn’t complete unless it marginalizes anti-cut advocates as rigid and hysterical ideologues of the far left, thereby condemning both the arguments and the people making them the Beltway exile of a “shunning.” Deaniac83 doesn’t disappoint.


But prior polls have shown that 75 percent of Republicans – and 76 percent of self-described Tea Party members – oppose cuts of this kind.  That means we have both the facts and the real political center, on our side.

We shouldn’t have to explain these things over and over again. But we do. Why?
 
Often the answer is that they want to argue in favor of a party and a President, not for policies that benefit most Americans. Deaniac83 lays his or her cards on the table: "Let’s get the president’s back. Tell him and Leader Pelosi you support them.”


But some of us support the public interest, not just a political party.  We also support a better understanding of public policy, not the cloud of confusion generated by arguments like these.


Ayn Rands of Christmas Future
Even die-hard Democratic loyalists should oppose a plan that will gravely wound their party’s credibility and popularity for generations to come. Left to their own devices, the party’s leaders have agreed to these unwise and unpopular cuts.


“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.”.


We don’t have to defend the elderly, the disabled, and the children on Social Security, of course.  Instead we can embrace the thinking Scrooge expressed so well, in Dickens’ striking foreshadowing of Ayn Rand’s language and creed:


“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”


If that’s not your philosophy, you can sign this petition calling on our leaders to oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
 
“Answer me one question,” said Scrooge. “Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

 Take action against this benefit cut. It’s the only way to find out.

The Intersection of Guns, Guns and Guns

To contact us Click HERE

Political satirist Will Durst. (photo: WillDurst.com)
By Will Durst, Humor Timesreadersupportednews.org 24 December 12
t’s only human nature to want to take action after such a harrowing traumatic event involving guns. To do something. Anything, to protect our kids. And make sure that Newtown never ever happens again. Here. There. Anywhere.

But while the rest of the nation grieves, familiar opponents on The Gun Issue are focused more on making sure their groups’ messages don’t get trampled in the anticipated tsunami of sorrow. So they preemptively are trying to drown out each other with battalions of bellicose bullhorns, and it doesn’t matter they can’t hear each other because neither side is listening anyway.
That’s the crossroads at which we find ourselves. Again. The intersection of Guns, Guns and Guns. Too many. Too few. Too big. Too small. Too scary looking. Waiting periods. Background checks. Magazine sizes. Access. Transportation. Construction. Registration. Who decides and who abides.
All the old buzz phrases are dusted off. “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” “Increased gun control means aiming better.” “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” Actually, it’s those darn bullets that puncture the skin and bones, creating holes for the blood to leak out of way too fast.
The NRA is busy pumping out press releases arguing that if the teachers had been armed, this tragedy could have been averted. Yeah, there you go. That’s what we need. MORE guns in schools. The major problem with school shootings, are schools. There’s your answer, boys. Want to cut down on school shootings, get rid of the schools. A solution many states are busy implementing as we speak.
Besides, why just arm the teachers? Aren’t we forgetting about our kids? Surely they have the right to defend themselves. The only question is where do you draw the line? Middle school? Fourth grade? Does the Second Amendment guarantee the rights of Toting Toddlers? Should kid-proof trigger guards be illegal? Maybe get Fisher Price to equip classrooms with plastic Day-Glo under-desk holsters.
The left is also once again questioning whether military-type assault weapons have a place in today’s society. To which the right vehemently argues semantics. “Semi- automatic rifles aren’t assault weapons and the left obviously has no experience with guns or they wouldn’t mislabel them and their ignorance on the subject disqualifies them to comment or have any opinion whatsoever.” Known in gun control circles as the “neener neener” argument.
An argument that totally misses the point. Doesn’t matter what you call them. Semi-automatic rifles. Military-type horizontal handheld ordnance. Futuristic flintlocks. Agitation resolvers. Magic wands. Disputatious caramelized pump-action fruit rolls. Stick a feather in their muzzle and call them macaroni if you want.
The basic problem is, the only reason to own a macaroni that can fire hundreds of pieces of lead faster than the speed of sound in mere seconds is to kill PEOPLE. Yes, of course they can be used as legitimate hunting rifles. You can also use a flame thrower to light a cigarette. If you think about it, a hand grenade will signal the end of recess. Need to cut some butter, just pull out the trusty old chainsaw. Of course, be prepared for it to get a little messy around Muffin Time. And right now, we’re smack in the middle of an especially messy Muffin Time.

Call their bluff and go over the cliff

To contact us Click HERE

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blogreadersupportednews.org 26 December 12 
resident Obama is cutting his Christmas holiday short, returning to Washington for a last attempt at avoiding the fiscal cliff. But he’s running headlong into the Republican strategy of fanaticism.

It’s a long-established principle of game theory (see Thomas Schelling’s classic 1956 essay in the American Economic Review) that a fanatic who restricts his freedom to avert a disaster puts maximum pressure on his opponent to give ground.
In a game of highway chicken, for example, the driver that can’t swerve because he’s tied his hands to the steering wheel and chained his foot to the accelerator forces the other to swerve in order to avoid crashing.
The trick is for the first driver to convince the second that he’s crazy enough to have committed himself to instant death if the second doesn’t act rationally.
House Speaker John Boehner’s failure to persuade rank-and-file House Republicans to raise taxes even on millionaires fits the fanatic’s strategy exactly. Boehner can now credibly claim he has no choice in the matter -Republican fanatics in the House have tied his hands and manacled his feet — so the only way to avoid going over the cliff is for Obama and the Democrats to make more concessions.
The White House’s hope of getting the Senate to pass legislation that raises taxes on the wealthy in order to pressure Boehner won’t work because the legislation can’t possibly get through the House. That’s the point: Boehner has demonstrated he has no choice; the fanatics are in charge there.
Obama could decide going over the cliff isn’t so bad after all -as long as he and congressional Democrats introduce legislation early in the 2013 that gives a tax cut to the middle class retroactively to January 1st (extending the Bush tax cut to the first $250,000 of income) and restores most spending — and Republicans feel compelled to go along.
But with Boehner’s hands tied and the fanatics in charge, this gambit becomes far riskier. What if we go over the cliff and House Republicans continue to hold out against any tax increases on the rich while demanding major cuts in Medicare and Social Security?
The path of least resistance is for Obama and the Democrats to offer to keep everything as is, through 2013 -extend all the Bush tax cuts and continue all current spending (lifting the debt limit along the way) -unless or until a “grand bargain” on the budget is agreed to before the end of next year.
This is likely to satisfy enough Republican fanatics to gain a majority in the House. And it would avoid the fiscal cliff, kicking the can down the road and giving everyone more time.
Deficit hawks in both parties won’t like it, but that’s okay. Unemployment is still way too high and growth too meager to justify trimming the deficit any time soon.
The real problem with this gambit is it doesn’t change the game. Even down the road, Boehner’s hands will still be tied and the fanatics will remain in charge — which will give Republicans the stronger position in negotiations leading to a “grand bargain.” Compromise would have to be almost entirely on the Democrats’ side.
That’s why I’d recommend going over the cliff and forcing the Republicans’ hand. It’s a risky strategy but it would at least expose the Republican tactic and put public pressure squarely on rank-and-file Republicans, where it belongs.
The fanatics in the GOP have to be held accountable or they’ll continue to hold the nation hostage to their extremism. Even if it takes until the 2014 midterms to loosen their hold, the cost is worth it.

Evolution is the unifying foundation of life

To contact us Click HERE
 COMMENTARY: GEORGE TEMPLETON    
EvolutionaryJohn Dewey wrote, “Every thinker puts some portion ofan apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what willemerge in its place.”  He felt that past doctrines always require somereconstruction because of cultural, technical, and political evolution.  Forhim, the scientific method, and democracy in politics, education, andjournalism embodied a single ethical ultimate ideal for humanity.  
Educationwas a balance between content knowledge and experiences that would help man tounderstand his relationship to facts and truths, thus acquiring the toolsneeded to become the informed citizenry that would drive social evolution.
Dewey’s views are an anathema to anti-evolutioncreationists who on a recent radio program demonized him as nothing short ofthe anti-Christ.  There was no way that his attack on certainty could bedivorced from their emotional reality.  It is as Georgia’s Republican representativePaul Broun, who sits on the House Science, Space, and Technology committee said:  Evolution, embryology, and Big Bang cosmology are lies from the pit of hell.
The Genesis story about eating the forbidden fruit of thetree of knowledge suggests that people are innocent and virtuous when they areunsophisticated.  Knowledge introduces temptations and opportunities that leadto sin.  Ecclesiastes 1:18 says, “For in much wisdom is much grief and hethat increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
Is ignorance really strength?
Twilight ZoneMathematics is more than numbers.  It is a language and arefinement of everyday thinking.  It cannot prove every truth.  Certainty issubordinate to truth.  Uncertainty is not always a consequence of ignorance. It was Lord Kelvin who maintained that measurement and quantification were thefirst steps to understanding, but quantification does not capture reality asmuch as it creates it.  Certainty seems to be an artifact of human psychologyinstead of an attribute of our world.  Uncertainty is the friend of curiosityand discovery.
More than fifty years ago an aging mathematics professoremeritus explained to his beginning class that they could enter the twilightzone at any time.  You didn’t need a doctorate.  Wonder and mystery existedeverywhere if we would only open our eyes to see.
SimulationComputer games are evolutionary.
A student can write a computer subroutine about half an inchlong to quickly solve problems that would otherwise require years of scienceand classical math study.  The method is listed below to show that it is simpleand obviously true.
1.  Regeneration:  Where you are at depends on where you havebeen.2. Continuity:  What comes in must go out or it will pile up.3. Temporality:  The fastest wins the race and comes first.4.  Linearity:  Make long journeys with a large number ofsmall steps, each resulting in miniscule changes.5.  Evolution:  Obey nature’s simple laws.  They definethe rules but not the complex outcomes that evolve.
ScientificScience is not about making an informed decision based onevidence that fits in with your beliefs.  Life is a dynamic pattern oforganization and patterns are what math is all about.  Our lives are aboutbringing the world outside into harmony with our gut feel.  Science is aboutchanging our gut feel to harmonize with the world outside.
Efforts to discredit Darwin’stheory fail to understand that evolution does not claim that life arises purelyby chance.  Intelligence and creativity are built into the fabric of the cosmosand did not follow the creation of mankind.  In nothing more than chance wefind structure.  In contrast, our efforts to make life more predictable andexplainable lead us to see patterns where none exist.  Uncertainty andambiguity are universal and imply a feared lack of control, but they are alsothe fuel of wonder, freedom, and creativity.   We can’t avoiduncertainty.  We must learn how to live with it.
ProbablyIvars Peterson’s book TheJungles of Randomness describes how we see a lack of intent inanything irregular and disordered, but patterns exist when we are not aware ofthem.  When we see no clear relationship between cause and effect, we assumethat some element of randomness must be present. However, we must distinguishbetween a random process and the results of that process.
Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth century Social Darwinist,journalist, and banker, ignored the debauchery of gambling when he claimed“Life is a school of probability.”  Risks versus rewards are therealities of investment.  Uncertainty is the price of being alive.
We think of randomness as having no pattern, but that is nottrue.  Pure chance can lead to highly ordered results, and a completelyspecified deterministic process can lead to unpredictability.  When we haveonly results we cannot know their cause.  A random coin can come up heads tentimes in a row even though that is unlikely.  
Computer programs can createlists of random numbers that come from a completely determined program.  Whatseems random can be intelligent design, and what seems to be the act of acreator can be pure chance subject to an unknown and unseen probabilitydistribution such as the bell curve that teachers grade by.
Statistical probability that uses sampling techniques, suchas in voter polls, has  to provide the  same results as common sense probability,the kind that comes from counting the number of ways an event can or fails tohappen, but it does so  only when we roll the dice an infinite number of times.  Infinity is important, and thought to be the realm of God, because onlyit guarantees the stable long-term behavior of nature’s laws.  It wasGeorg Cantor, the developer of modern set theory, who proved that someinfinities are larger than others!  His mathematical correspondence would laterbe used in proofs about the limits of human knowledge.
Data and Law  There is a young child’s toy consisting of successivelysmaller concentric disks mounted on a rod so that a conical pyramid is formed. Hindus give us two more empty rods and a total of sixty-four discs.  They explainthat the world will end when we finish transferring the disks to another needle,provided that we move only one disk at a time and we never allow a smaller diskbeneath a larger one.  Examination quickly shows that each transfer requirestwice as many moves as the previous.  If we try to describe the step by stepmovements we are met by increasing complexity and incomprehensible hugenumbers.  Two to the sixty fourth power minus one moves are required.  If wemade non-stop movements every second it would take fifty-eight thousand billionyears, more than ten thousand times the  estimated age of the  earth, toaccomplish the task.
A simple structure subject to a few rules can generate hugeamounts of confusing data.  Data cannot be trusted apart from context. However, science is called upon to infer context given only data. 
OmegaKurt Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorem”showed that math could not prove all truths. Alan Turing’s computer “HaltingProblem” proved that certainty is not computable.  They laid thefoundation for Gregory Chaitin’s extension of what computers can’tdo to what man can’t know.   
Complexity, an argument for intelligent design, is difficultto quantify.  If we can find the underlying laws, complexity goes away. Scientists use computer programs to draw a curve through the data points tryingto find a simplifying relationship.  If this can be done, the data is notrandom and a computer can always find the original law, the conical pyramid andits rules.  Math can always draw a complex curve that goes exactly through thedata points but if the explanation is as complex as the data there is nosimplification.  Then the data is random by definition.  Withoutsimplification, no theory explaining the data exists.
Gregory Chaitin generalized the Halting Problem to allpossible computer programs.  He calculated a precisely defined but unknowable numbercalled “Omega”.  In so doing, he proved that pure randomness is anintrinsic part of mathematics.  No mathematics will ever be able to grasp ultimatereality.      
ChaoticA butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing in March makes the August Atlantichurricane season completely different.  Everything is complex, intimatelyconnected, surprising sensitive to, but ultimately independent of beginningconditions.  Order, not chaos, is the foundation of everything.
The math of chaos begins with simple equations expressingunderlying laws, like those used by our student.  As the simulation begins, itsbehavior is certain, but then accumulated tolerances drive it into wildlyunpredictable patterns.  More information will not make the uncertainty disappear. It is not a matter of our inability to know the present in all its determiningdetails.
In nature, chaos is the rule.  Order is the exception.  Uncertainty,felt to be incompatible with the Almighty, evolves out of certainty even thoughthe emerging patterns express an extreme order, as in snowflakes, instead of anexpected random structure.
EntropyTime is a consequence of change giving birth to causality.  Asthe arrow of time irreversibly moves from past to the future, organizationdecays into disorder and formlessness.
Entropy comes from the laws of thermal physics.  It isdemonstrated by a drop of ink in a glass of water that diffuses and spreadsthroughout, and never reorganizes into the beginning droplet.  The large numberof molecules in the glass causes a gradual spreading of the ink instead of theunseen erratic motion of individual particles.  The certainty of entropy comesentirely from the fact that it deals with immense numbers.  Although entropywins in the long run, structure arises at the expense of chaotic increaseelsewhere.  Locally, the universe has a built-in tendency to order.  However,order is subjective, not objective.  It requires an observer.
DegenerationWe proudly think of evolution as ascendency instead ofadaptation.  Man in the future will be a far more perfect creature.  Could Goduse evolution as his method for creation?
Drummond, in his 1891 work, NaturalLaw in the Spiritual World, argued that deterioration is the law ofnature.  He saw a cycle of youth, maturity, aging, and final decrepitude.  Deathis nature’s natural state.  A universal force leads us to incivility, imbecility,and madness.  We are like the man who falls from a fifth floor balcony.  Thesame force that caused him to fall the first foot will surely make him fall theremaining fifty feet.
Drummond may not have realized that nothing in Darwin’s theory isclearly directional describing an upward force toward improvement.
EvolutionOur mind and substance are different perspectives on a singleunified mysterious reality.  William Byers’s book, The Blind Spot, explains it.  We areunavoidably both participants and observers, both subjective and objective,unavoidably implicated in a river of continual evolving flow, changing thecourse of history while being part of it. 
Knowledge does not come into being fully formed.  Creativesolutions have always been step by step.  Ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve. They don’t just proliferate and survive or die in disputation. Theychange qualities creating new paradigms.  

Explanations take time andresources.  They always reveal new questions requiring further explanation.  Inthis respect, evolution is an emergent property, like Chaos, depending on manyfacts, math, and all the sciences.  It is not constrained to biology, butrather can be recognized as the unifying foundation of life, thought,complexity, and ultimate reality.