(from John Shelby Spong.com)
"We reference Jesus because he is the life in which this God
experience has come to us. It is only institutional religion that
interprets this experience as a solitary one. Jesus is the way to God
for me, but I will never say that he is the only way to God. That would
be to claim more than I am competent to claim. I cannot force the Holy
God to live within the boundaries of my limited understanding of the
holy. That would be to claim that I can embrace all that is God inside
the finite limits of my human(ity).
A great debate has gone on in Christian history for centuries as
to whether Jesus is different from you or me in substance or in degree.
The majority opinion in “orthodox” Christian circles maintains that he
is different in substance and creeds and doctrinal statements make that
assumption. There has, however, always been a minority opinion, an
undercurrent flowing in Christian history that asserts that this
difference is only in degree. I can locate that in the 14th
century writing of Meister Eckhart, who succeeded Thomas Aquinas in his
theological chair. I find it present in my great mentor, John A. T.
Robinson, particularly in his book, The Human Face of God. I
find that position persuasive for if God is one, and if God is real,
then the God experienced in Jesus has to be the same as the God
experienced in everyone else, and if the humanity of Jesus is real, then
it has to be the same humanity that you and I possess. Jesus becomes,
thus, the defining life, that is, Jesus is the life through which God
has been met and engaged in a full and special way. That is a difference
in degree not in kind.
I do meet God in the lives of those you mention and in many
others, but I recognize that God because that is the same God I believe I
meet in Jesus of Nazareth."
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Have you seen the sunrise
Over the ocean
Out of the sea
Marvel at the notion
How can it be
Many are your bad times
That's what you tell me
That's how you feel
Seems they might as well be
But tell me
How do you know they're real
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
There's so much pain
And so much suffering here for you
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
That's just your pessimistic
Point of view
Can you feel the power
Of trees in the forest
Birds on the wing
Moving hour by hour
Mysterious thing
Gaze upon the mountains
Rising above us
Touching the sky
Can this power love us
You have your doubts
But you don't know why
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
There's so much pain
And so much suffering here for you
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
That's just your pessimistic
Point of view
How did you ever become so jaded
Now you can only see what you created
You're so blind
The more that you look the less that you find
It's your mind
You refuse to put faith into something sublime
On your time
Your convenience means everything
See this thing is bigger
It's bigger than we are
You have to admit
Think you've got it figured
You know where it fits
It's not scientific
You can't replicate it
It just can't be done
No one's ever faked it
Just have some hope
You're not the only one
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
There's so much pain
And so much suffering here for you
It's not a perfect world
This one that we're all living in
That's just your pessimistic
Point of view
Somebody's recent survey of voters concluded that 56% are ready to vote every member of Congress out if there were a place on the ballot to do so. And each political spectrum surveyed agrees with liberals at 55%, moderates 55% and conservatives 58%. Furthermore, the freshmen Republicans who took control of the House of Representatives in January on the premise of bringing CHANGE have even disappointed their supporters.
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. . . like Mitt Romney, whose family fortune is valued at about $250 million, pays only a 15% effective income tax, surely we whose families have nowhere near that amount of money, and who work hard every day for 30, 35 or 40 years to make but a mere fraction of $22 million annually have absolutely no right to complain about paying over 35% in taxes. Everyone plays on a level field in Mitt's free market and what's stopping you and me from making a $250 million fortune? Laziness, of course.
RIGHT???
Of course if you lean right, you have the "Other" top choice of Gingrich, who paid about 31% and whose proposed changes to the tax code would allow someone in a position comparable to Romney to pay $0 income taxes.
Tough Choice. Mmmmmmm!!
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney owns investments worth
between $7 million and $32 million in offshore-based holdings. These accounts enable wealthy investors to
defer paying U.S. taxes on some assets, according to tax experts. Romney is purported to have
at least six funds set up in the Cayman Islands but he has not identified all or the size of his accounts there. There is no indication Romney uses the accounts to dodge any
U.S. tax obligations. Although the Caymans have often been associated with
individuals and corporations seeking to avoid paying U.S. taxes, there is no evidence that Romney holds such accounts for this purpose.
It is legal for U.S. residents to own investment accounts that
are set up there — if they file the proper forms with the Internal
Revenue Service and pay the appropriate taxes.
Legal? Yes. Ethical?
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. . . schmate of the union. . . sounds good. . . can it all be done? . . . I'm listening not watching. . . are all the republicans stone-faced, sitting with their arms folded? . . . I can only picture it. . .
For the Obama record, here are some facts regarding promises made and goals accomplished. . . (based upon story By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs
Writer)
'. . . Sometime this spring, the Supreme Court will determine whether
Obama’s signature accomplishment – the law which expands and
fundamentally redesigns health insurance in the United States – will
survive. If the Supreme Court permits the law to stand, Obama will have
accomplished much of what he pledged to do in his Feb. 10, 2007 speech
in Springfield, Ill., when he formally launched his presidential
campaign: “We will have universal health care in America by the end of
the next president's first term. But the Obama plan won’t be fully implemented until 2018. The major overhaul of the nation’s health care system stands as one of the largest legislative achievements in decades.
The presiden hasn’t closed Guantanamo Navy Base as a prison camp for al-Qaida members and other terrorist suspects, as he pledged to do in an executive order he signed on the day be took office in 2009. But this was largely to due to Republican opposition.
When Obama signed the $825 billion economic stimulus plan into law in February of 2009, there were 141.7 million Americans working and 12.5 million unemployed.By February of 2011, two years after the stimulus was enacted, there were 139.5 million Americans working and 13.7 million unemployed.
Between the month he signed the stimulus into law and February of 2011, the unemployment rate went from 8.1 percent to 8.9 percent. These numbers explain Republican criticism of the stimulus as a squandering of taxpayer money that didn’t result in increased employment. In recent months, the jobs data has improved but there were still almost one million fewer people employed last month than when Obama signed the stimulus into law. Obama’s critics on the left, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, argue the stimulus was too small, while Obama’s defenders say it prevented a far worse economic slump.
The Obama administration also decided to spend $80 billion to keep General Motors and Chrysler alive, and as of last November, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $35 billion of that money had been repaid to the Treasury, $7 billion had been written off as a loss, and $37 billion was still outstanding. The two car companies are still operating; in fact, GM reported a few days ago that it has reclaimed its title as the world’s largest seller of automobiles.
Obama himself said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in 2008, “We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.” Clinton served for eight years and Obama has served so far for only three, but the Census reported that median household income, adjusted for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent between 2009 and 2010. This was part of longer-term trend that predates Obama’s presidency: since 2007, median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the peak ($53,252) that occurred in 1999.
The Census also reports that the poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent—up from 14.3 percent in 2009, the third consecutive increase in the poverty rate. When Obama launched his candidacy in Springfield in 2007, he portrayed these economic woes as Bush Era problems, about which the Republicans were in denial: “For the past six years, we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter. We've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion.”
One sector of the economy where Obama appears to have fallen short is housing. In his first debate with John McCain in 2008, he said: “We've got to make sure that we're helping homeowners, because the root problem here has to do with the foreclosures that are taking place all across the country.”
In the face of Republican opposition, Obama has been unable to fulfill his promise to enact legislation reducing use of tax deductions by upper-income taxpayers and raising income tax rates for those with incomes over $250,000. But as part of the health care law he did increase Medicare taxes on upper-income people. The law also other imposes other major tax increases including the penalty on people who choose to go without insurance and the tax on high-cost “Cadillac" health plans which takes effect in 2018.
Obama promised in 2008 to cut taxes for “95 percent of working families.” The 2009 stimulus included more than $300 billion in tax cuts and credits — including the Making Work Pay Credit, a big tax cut for workers earning less than $75,000 and couples making less than $150,000 a year. Making Work Pay has now been replaced by the payroll tax cut.
Although the House passed a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas bill in 2009, Obama along with Sen. John Kerry, D- Mass., Sen. Joe Lieberman, I- Conn., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., the three Senate leaders on the issue, failed to come up with the compromises needed to pass a bill. The effort died in the summer of 2010. The Obama administration has made grants and loans to alternative energy companies, but it was embarrassed when $535 million in taxpayer money was lost in a loan to Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt last September.
Obama shored up the liberal wing of the Supreme Court by appointing Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
And he pleased gay rights advocates when he ended the legal defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Obama also ended the Clinton Era “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on gays serving in the military.
He also made recess appointments to National Labor Relations Board, which helped fulfill a campaign pledge he made in 2007 to help union organizers “lift up this country’s middle class again.”
As Obama promised to do in 2008, he has withdrawn American troops from Iraq. He has also ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden and American-born Moslem cleric and al-Qaida organizer Anwar al-Awlaki. He has continued and expanded the use of drones to kill alleged terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere.
When Obama took office there were 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. In March 2009 he announced he’d send an extra 4,000. On Dec. 1, 2009, he increased U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan by another 30,000, bringing the total to 100,000. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said.
He lashed out at “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” And on the night he won the Iowa caucuses, he said that he and his supporters had “beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism … .” But the Washington reform groups Common Cause and the Center for Public Integrity have accused him of falling short of his anti-lobbyist rhetoric.
Obama signed an executive order on his first day in office which imposed limits on former lobbyists and others who worked in his administration. An ex-lobbyist working in the administration could not for two years after his appointment be involved in any policy matter on which he’d lobbied in the two years before his appointment, or work in a federal agency that he had lobbied within the two years before being appointed.
But the executive order provided a waiver from the rules if it was deemed in the national interest. Former Clinton administration Defense Department official and former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn was given a waiver to serve as deputy secretary of defense. And the New York Times reported in 2010 that White House officials regularly met with lobbyists at the Caribou Coffee shop down the street from the White House, avoiding disclosure on the public White House visitors’ log.
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Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman, chided Obama last year for accepting campaign funds for his 2012 run which were raised by “bundlers” working for Washington lobbying firms. '
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No, this is not a Baltimore city sewer system resident. This is the world renowned Punxsutawney Phil and maybe it's just a little early to talk about the groundhog or what he implies/represents, I just can't seem to help myself.
As I've grown older, I seem to cope progressively more poorly with winter weather. I don't remember exactly when it began but I would guess something like almost thirty years ago. It probably reached a plateau about five years ago, at which time I vowed to myself to minimize the whole thing in my mind and just cope with it as best I can or . . . no . . . better.
I believe I made some honest progress on that front and even this year in particular I try NOT to complain about cold, snow, heavy winter clothing, snow, shoveling snow, pulling muscles while shoveling snow . . . NONE OF THAT!
But as I sit here at 6AM wondering what to write and hearing that the temperature today will actually reach well into the 50s (F), my icy hands and dog-cold nose (even with the heat ON) are making me pine for warmer weather.
But I honestly and sincerely promise that I will just buck-up and not complain.
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. . . at Brewer’s Alley Songwriters’ Showcase. . .
Tony Denikos, (pronounced "Deh-nigh-kiss"), writes,
records and performs some of the most refreshingly down-home Americana
music in the country. A native of Laurel, MD, Tony's wide range of
influences include artists such as John Fogerty, John Prine, Lowell
George, Graham Parker & Bruce Spingsteen
Tony recently
released his third CD Already Gone (2009). It immediately charted at #2
on the Euro Americana Charts and at #7 on the Freeform American Roots
Chart. Already Gone is a collection of 11 distinctive tunes that
explore the entire spectrum of Americana music. This CD is full of
cutting lyrical wit, breathtakingly personal storytelling and foot
stomping backbeats. There are stories here that everyone can relate to
about love, working class attitudes, hope, regret, forgotten patriots
and unwitting heroes. Fans of roots guitar and fine musicianship will
appreciate the world class cast of players, including: drummer Timm
Beiry (Nils Lofgren, Danny Gatton); bassists Dave Roe (Johnny Cash,
Dwight Yoakam) and Dave Jacques (John Prine, Emmylou Harris);
keyboardist Phil Madeira (Emmylou Harris); and, guitarists Gantt Kushner
and Warner E. Hodges (Jason and the Scorchers).
You can catch
Tony performing his songs at venues and festivals from New York to the
Carolinas � including venues such as Rams Head on Stage ,the Maryland
Seafood Festival, Columbia Festival of the Arts, the Vintage Virginia
Wine Festival and many others. He performs solo or with a band - always
presenting to the listening world a writing style and performance
uniquely his own. His songs will stay with you long after the lights
fade to black....
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