Congress & The President Finish Year With A Flourish

For a President and a Congress that have seemed disjointed for much of the past two years, they sure put on the full-court press in the last two weeks. With the midterm election now history, even a number of Republicans seemed interested in helping to govern the country. The President finally seemed to decide to grab the reins of government and set the agenda, instead of ceding the stage to congressional Democrats. What a refreshing change.* While I didn't completely agree with the President's initial compromise over tax cuts for very wealthy people, including a substantial lowering of the estate tax,** I still have to give him pretty good marks for the last few weeks. Like him, not like him, or indifferent to him, he is the President for at least the next two years, and the country needs a functioning president.

Will the joy and celebration continue? That's the bad news....I doubt it. If nothing else, the race for the White House in 2012 is developing. Republicans will control the House of Representatives and their representation in the Senate will grow, although control remains in Democratic hands. If you think the last two years have been contentious, these next two years COULD resemble a new civil war. We'll have to see what happens. (A Word History is below the notes)

* I have much in common with many congressional Democrats, but Democrats have always been a diverse and somewhat raucous party, and trying to get Democrats in Congress to agree on the time of day can be a thrilling undertaking, let alone trying to get Republicans to go along.

** Until the huge, and growing, income gap is dealt with (and the huge budget deficit), you're not going to hear me say how great it is to lower taxes on the richest Americans.

WORD HISTORY:
Deal-This word, in the noun form, goes back to Indo European "dail/dhail," which meant "divide." This gave Old Germanic "dailiz/dailaz," meaning "part, share, portion." This then gave Old English "dael," with the same meaning. By the Middle English period it had become "dele," and then it moved to the modern spelling. The Old English verb form was "daelan," meaning "to divide, to separate, to distribute." The use in cards is the notion of "distributing the cards to each player," which supposedly began use in the 1500s. The idea of "bargain" comes from the notion of "portion," with the parties involved getting a "portion" for their own interest. The word, in its various forms, is quite common in the Germanic languages: German has "Teil" (teilen, in the verb form), some Low German dialects have "Deel," Dutch has "deel," West Frisian has "diel," Norwegian and Danish have "del," Swedish has both "del" and "dela," Icelandic has "deila;" all with the same basic notion of "part, share, portion."