A Good New Year's Resolution

The following poem would be a good one for a new year's resolution.


If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;

If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

The NSA…men who found the needle…and the haystack

“Most people look for the needle in the haystack. The NSA takes the whole haystack home.”


Terre Haute – Indiana Not too many months ago I read a major newspaper’s article about “the most powerful man you have never heard of.” General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, more commonly known as the NSA, had a large clandestine program. They had told the public they did not do large collections of metadata. But we have since found out that that was the “least untruthful answer” possible. It was a very kind way of saying they had lied.

But earlier this year, in one of the biggest stories of the decade, Edward Snowden, security contractor, hacked some fire walls, did some things we are still not sure of, stole a still unspecified amount of documents, possibly 1.7 million according to some, and told the world that the American government was tracking millions of calls daily, keeping tabs on allies, bugging headquarters of European Nations, and even bugging the phone of the head of Germany. It reminds one of the Cold War.

The official story is that this is to protect the nation against acts of terrorism. According to the Washington Post, one of the first to report the story, we still do not know of a single time when terrorism was actually stopped or stalled because of it. It was also declared, under the official story, to be constitutional.

A judge in Washington DC recently declared it “almost certainly unconstitutional” while another just yesterday declared it to not fall without of the realm of “unreasonable,” and thus to be indeed constitutional.

The one who said it was constitutional was a George Bush appointee, the one who said it was not was a Bill Clinton appointee.

Although the president is in Hawaii, during the holidays he is reading a 304 page report with almost fifty resolutions for an overhaul, by a committee of five. In an opinion piece one of them said

“Several news outlets have reported that the review group had called for an end to the program, but we did not do that. We called for a change in approach rather than a wholesale rejection… But make no mistake: The review group reaffirmed that the program should remain a tool of our government in the fight against terrorism…It has the potential to prevent the next 9/11.”

When the president comes back to Washington the debate will begin about the overhaul. The only thing we know for sure will happen is that the president will be nice to the press when he talks about it, and that, he said, is one of his New Year resolutions.

Andrew C. Abbott

A Collage of Quotes

All taken from memory…. “Quotes taken from memory are a wonderful thing, they allow you to add your own words to someone else’s to make your point better, and then leave someone else with all the blame, and yourself all the credit.” –Sir Walter Scott.

“If Moses had thought of it, Moses would have said it!” Peppermint Patty, Peanuts comic strip.

“Quotes are the raisins we season our oatmeal with.” -Gerry Spence.

“Great men are forged in fire. It is for lesser men to light the flame.” –British script writer Steven Moffit.

“I have never made a mistake while working, I have only discovered 50,000 things that do not work.” -Attributed in various forms to Thomas Edison.

“If it happened, I would never know.” –American worker, when asked if he was afraid of the high level explosives he was working on for the Manhattan (A-bomb) Project.

“Everybody’s got a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.” -Mike Tyson.

“Strategy without tactics is a slow course to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” –Sun Tzu: Art of War.

“If the Federal Government was put in charge of the Sahara Desert, within five years there would be a shortage of sand there.” –Milton Friedman, Economist.

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why what he predicted yesterday did not happen today.” –Lawrence J. Peters.

"The shrewdest observer of human nature ever, invented the eraser." Peppermint Patty.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, when asked what his strategy was during the Civil War replied “Get there the fastest with the mostest.”

“Don’t duck men, they couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…” last words of an officer before being shot during I believe the Civil War.

The Spirit of Christmas: Part 1

Terre Haute, Indiana – There have been times, in the history of the world, when the clouds of prejudice, hatred, unkindness, and selfishness fade away for a moment, and the truth of enlightenment pushes away the mists. Some of those have been in forming unity, such as when the European Union was formed.

Others have been in law and government, such as when the constitution was written, and America was formed with its system of checks and balances. There are great moments in human history, such as the discovery of gravity, the first climbing of Everest, the invention of the computer, the Rise of Rome, the writing of great books.

But the greatest event in human history, after its completion, the one so important that we form the way we measure time and years of everyone else relative to it, was the life of Jesus Christ.

He was born during the reign of Rome’s first emperor, when memories of civil war were fresh in everyone's minds, and unrest from the zealots over the census was beginning.

Christ's birth disproved many statements by apostates and others throughout the world. He did not come as a warrior, as some thought, but as a child. He did not come as a king, but was born in a child. He disproved men like Hitler, a man filled with more hate than nearly anyone else in history. God did not hate the Jews. His Son was a Jew.

Many who claim to be his followers would not have recognized the Christ they claim to worship. A man who ate with both the rich and the poor, sat with the intellectuals and the fishermen, was popular with many, and hated by many. He came not to condemn the world, for it was condemned already. He came to save it.

He exhibited the spirit of Christmas.

Andrew C. Abbott