Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 021, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 9, 2010 Page: 4 of 10
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Viewpoints
Page 4 ■ Thursday, December 9, 2010
Sweetwater Reporter
DEDICATED TO PROUDLY DELIVERING LOCAL NEWS SINCE 1881
1—x Sweetwater 1
Reporter
■ tWIENIBER
| m A 2010
P.O. Box 750/112 W. Third
TEXAS PRESS
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EDITORIAL POLICY
The editorial section of the newspaper is a forum for
expression of a variety of viewpoints. All articles except
those labeled "Editorials" reflect the opinions of the writ-
ers and not those of the Sweetwater Reporter,
STARGAZER
Total lunar eclipse
welcomes winter solstice
The year is nearly over but it's going out with a nice
parting gift — a total eclipse of the Moon which will
be visible across all of North and Central America the
night of Dec. 20/21.
Once each month (actually, every 29 1/2 days) as
our Moon orbits Earth it passes on the opposite side
from the Sun, showing us its Earth-facing side fully
illuminated and called the full Moon.
If the Moon orbited Earth on exactly the same plane
that Earth orbits the Sun, each time the Moon went
behind Earth it would pass through Earth's shadow
cone and we would see a monthly total lunar eclipse.
But since the Moon's orbit is a bit tilted, during
most full Moons it passes a little above or below
our shadow. From time to time, however, it does
pass through the shadow giving us an eclipse. When
only part of the Moon is shadowed, we have a par-
tial eclipse, but when the entire Moon is covered by
Earth's shadow, we have a total lunar eclipse, like the
one coming up.
The first faint shadings of the Moon start around
midnight (all times CST) with Earth's shadow becom-
ing visible at 12:33 a.m. The total eclipse begins at
1:41, reaches mid-eclipse at 2:17, and ends at 2:53.
During the 72 minutes of totality the Moon prob-
ably won't disappear but rather will likely turn a
beautifully eerie coppery color. As sunlight passes
through Earth's atmosphere, bluer light rays are scat-
tered while redder rays are bent more uniformly, with
some bending into Earth's shadow.
This phenomenon, which gives us gorgeous red and
pink sunrises and sunsets, paints the eclipsed Moon
with it reddish tones. As Alan MacRobert of Sky &
Telescope magazine aptly states, the red light bathing
the eclipsed Moon comes "from all the sunrises and
sunsets that ring Earth at the time."
This eclipse comes with some interesting coin-
cidences, the first being that it occurs within a few
hours of the winter solstice. And during totality, the
Moon is situated near where Taurus, Gemini and
Orion intersect, and exactly at the point where the
ecliptic (the path of the Sun, planets, and Moon as
seen against the background stars) crosses the winter
Milky Way. (To the Maya, this was the sacred Place
of Creation.)
As the Moon darkens and moonlight fades, watch
how more stars pop into view. Facing west, look for
Taurus below the Moon, Gemini high overhead above
it, and Orion to its lower left.
* Sky Calendar.
* Dec. 13 Mon. evening: The 1st quarter Moon is
above Jupiter.
* 13/14 Mon. evening/Tues. morning: The Geminid
meteor shower peaks with the best viewing from mid-
night to dawn after moonset.
* 19 Sun.: Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival
honoring the god Saturn, father of Jupiter.
* 21 Tue.: The full Moon is called the Moon Before
Yule and the Long Night Moon.
* 21 Tues.: Winter solstice, the Northern
Hemisphere's first day of winter and shortest day of
year.
* 27 Mon.: The Moon is at 3rd quarter.
* 29 Wed. morning: The star Spica is above the
crescent Moon with Saturn above Spica in the south
southeast.
* 31 Fri. morning: The crescent Moon is to the lower
right of Venus low in the southeast with Antares
(right) and Mercury (left) to their lower left near the
horizon.
* Naked-eye Planets. Evening: Brilliant Jupiter, the
brightest object in the south at dark, sets after mid-
night. Morning: "Morning star" Venus is well up in
the east southeast before dawn with Saturn two fist-
widths (held at arm's length) to its upper right.
* Astro Milestones. Dec. 14 is the 464th birthday
of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), one
of history's greatest pre-telescope observers. Dec. 25
is the 368th birthday of Isaac Newton (1642-1727),
father of modern physics. Dec. 27 is the 439th birth-
day of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), discoverer of
elliptical orbits.
Stargcizer appears every other week. Paul Derrick
is an amateur astronomer who lives in Waco. Contact
him at 918 N. 30th, Waco, 76707, (254) 753-6920 or
paulderrickwaco@aol.com. See the Stargazer Web
site at stargazerpaul.com.
GUEST COLUMN
Reversing the trend to spend
A reporter once asked
Thomas Edison how it felt
to fail thousands of times
while attempting to create
a working incandescent
light bulb. Edison replied
that he hadn't failed — he'd
simply found thousands of
ways that didn't work.
That's worth
keeping in mind
as we assess the
worth of President
Obama's debt
reduction com-
mission. Eleven
of its 18 members
voted in favor of
the commission's
final report.
That means it
didn't attract
enough support
to prompt action
in Congress.
Combine that
vote tally with the fact that
the report itself has won
mixed reviews from both
sides of the political aisle,
and it may be tempting to
dismiss the commission's
work altogether.
But we shouldn't. Like
Edison, we don't have a
failure on our hands — at
least, not if we're willing
to learn from this experi-
ence.
And learn from it we
must. The debt prob-
lem the commission was
charged with fixing is real.
And it's getting worse. The
national debt is set to dou-
ble over the next decade,
spending in Washington.
The inevitable result, The
Edwin
Feulner
due to out-of-control
ft
Heritage Foundation's
Brian Riedl assures us, is
higher interest rates, slow-
er economic growth, and
rising tax rates.
According to the
Congressional
Budget Office
(CBO), President
Obama's pro-
osed budget
or 2011 will
add $10 trillion
in debt over the
next decade. By
2020, the federal
government will
owe $20 trillion,
or $170,000 per
American house-
hold. And that's
not even count-
ing underfunded
obligations from Medicare
and Social Security.
Plain and simple, we're
on an unsustainable path.
The sooner we take a
sharp and sensible detour,
the better.
And that's where the
debt commission's work
comes in handy: Congress
should learn from what it
did wrong.
Its primary mistake: a
tax-heavy approach. When
vou examine the federal
budget closely, it's blind-
ingly obvious thai revenue
isn't the problem. That
cannot be over-empha-
sized. We're not taking
in too little in revenue.
We're spending too much
— way, way too much. And
we should tailor our solu-
tions accordingly, i.e., with
spending cuts.
How, to take one glar-
ing example, could the
debt commission ignore
the trillions of dollars in
new spending that will
occur as a result of the
president's health care
plan? We need to repeal
Obamacare, not allow it
to take effect over the next
few years and move our
nation that much closer to
insolvency.
Yet the commission
that could see no evil in
Obamacare's extravagance
blithely recommended
cuts in defense spending.
We have underfunded
buying the new equip-
ment our men and women
in uniform need by tens
of millions of dollars for
decades. Defense spend-
ing, as a percentage of
gross domestic product, is
actually near historic lows
— about half what we aver-
aged during the Cold War.
And what could supersede
national security? It's Job
No. 1 for Congress, accord-
ing to an under-appreciat-
ed document known as the
U.S. Constitution.
Another serious mis-
step by the commission:
not demanding stronger
reform of the entitlement
programs driving so much
of the rising spending
tsunami: Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid.
Nearly all new long-term
debt comes as a result
of the cost of these three
programs and net inter-
est on the debt. The plan
advanced by Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Alice
Rlvlin, the liberal former
CBO director, offers a bet-
ter model for lawmakers
to follow on Medicare and
Medicaid.
The commission does
deserve applause for
doing one thing right:
starting the conversa-
tion. For far :oo long,
our elected officials have
looked the other way,
or applied quick, short-
term fixes, when faced
with our growing debt
problem. Thanks to the
commission, we're not
only talking about it,
we're getting competing
plans from several dif-
ferent quarters. That's a
refreshing change, to say
the least.
;ep t
; falls
the new Congress. Let's
adopt Thomas Edison's
positive outlook — and
make sure lawmakers
reverse the spending
trend.
Ed Feulner is presi-
dent of The Heritage
Foundation (heritage,
org).
The onus to keep this
momentum going falls to
f
7
"You've given me everything I've ever wanted.
Ooes that mean I've been GOOD?"
GUEST COLUMN
Don 't ask, don t tell, don 't care
Don't ask, don't tell —
don't know why we're still
talking about this. 'Don't
ask, don't tell" is the rule
barring openly gay
soldiers from serv-
ing in the U.S. mili-
tary. This relic of
the culture wars is
so past its prime
that even Glenn
Beck and Rush
Limbaugh don't
spend much time
whipping it up.
The waning days
of the lame-duck
Congress offer an
opportunity to
cross at least one
item off the check-
list of time-consuming
issues of small national
consequence. The House
passed repeal of "don't
ask, don't tell" in May, and
there seem to be enough
votes for it in the Senate,
but the Senate must find
time to do the deed. The
next session of Congress
will further empower a
Republican leadership
less motivated to give up a
matter that lets it throw an
occasional raw hamburger
to a shrinking but fervent
segment of social conser-
vatives — and at no cost to
taxpayers.
It was feared that the
struggle over the expiring
Bush-era tax cuts might
crowd out a quick burial
of "don't ask, don't tell."
With that apparently taken
care of, there seems to be
time to administer the last
rites.
President Obama, most
Democrats and some
Republicans support get-
ting rid of "don't ask, don't
Froma
Hilton
tell." A recently released
Pentagon study found lit-
tle utility in extending it.
Defense Secretary Robert
Gates and Joint
Chiefs of Staff
Chairman Mike
Mullen testified
that openly gay
soldiers pose
no threat to
America's mili-
tary readiness.
On the other
side, a Marine
commandant
and the Army
chief of staff
argued against
letting openly
gay people fight
in combat units serving in
Afghanistan. But they tem-
pered their position, opin-
ing that such change is
inevitable, just not advis-
able when their units are
engaged in deadly opera-
tions.
The other opinions don't
really matter. That would
include the thoughts of
Elaine Donnelly, the high
profile anti-gay-in-the-
militaryactivistwhofound-
ed the so-called Center
for Military Readiness in
Livonia, Mich. Letting gays
serve openly, she told The
Washington Post, "would
be a strong disincentive
for families considering
military service for their
sons and daughters."
That is a remarkable
thing to say because 1)
soldiers are grownups;
they decide whether they
will join the military, not
their mom and dad, and
2) military service is not
some whim. The notion
that soldiers with the grit
to confront Taliban terror-
ists would melt at anyone's
declaration of sexual pref-
erence is both insulting to
them and ludicrous.
Adm. Mullen testified:
"I went to war with them
(gays and lesbians) aboard
a destroyer off the coast of
Vietnam. I knew they were
there. They knew I knew
it. And what's more, nearly
everyone in the crew knew
it. We never missed a mis-
sion, never failed to deliver
ordinance on target."
Israel allows
openly gay personnel in
its tightest combat units.
The armies of Canada,
Britain, Australia and the
Netherlands don't require
soldiers to hide their sex-
ual preferences, and they
have fought alongside
ours.
If this whole issue bores
you to stupefaction, you
are forgiven. Some older
people may have trouble
adjusting to a new social
reality in which homosex-
uality is no big deal. But
there's no stopping the
march of progress. I recall
passing two guys holding
hands at the Omaha air-
port a couple of years ago
and thinking: The days of
persecuting gays are so
over.
Ditching "don't ask,
don't tell" would end
another form of discrimi-
nation while giving the
armed services more fight-
ers to choose from. And it
would end the year 2010
with one less pointless
thing to argue about. Let's
tack "don't ask, don't tell"
on the Smithsonian's wall
of artifacts and move on to
almost any other subject.
To find out more about
Froma Harrop, and read
features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and car-
toonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
The SWEETWATER REPORTER
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Sweetwater Reporter will
publish corrections of errors
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made as soon as possible
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Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 021, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 9, 2010, newspaper, December 9, 2010; Sweetwater, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth229338/m1/4/: accessed May 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Sweetwater/Nolan County City-County Library.