Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

After driving to Atlanta to begin the first leg of our flight to Israel, we checked in at US Airways and the attendant said, “You have one long day ahead of you.” Sitting in a hotel room in Jerusalem just 27 hours after leaving Starkville, my head is still spinning a bit as I consider all the black and white issues in the Middle East – literally.

Hasidic Jews, traditionally dressed in black and white, were walking in the same direction down a labyrinth of narrow little streets in Jerusalem while we raced through Jerusalem traffic in a taxi driven by a man who could make a good living racing in NASCAR.

The latest news here revolves around the attacks and counterattacks along Israel’s southern border with Egypt. Background news continues to be the Palestinian push for independent statehood in the UN in September. How will the Obama administration respond to the Palestinian petition?

After President Obama snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this year, upstaging him with a speech while Mr. Netanyahu was literally on his way to America, it’s anyone’s guess what stance the Obama administration will take regarding the petition.

Interestingly enough, the New York Times reported this past week 80 U.S. representatives and senators were visiting Israel this month, more than ever before. Why all the renewed interest in Israel? The answer may have something to do with how Mr. Obama plans to deal with the Palestinian petition.

These days, answers don’t come easy in the Middle East. While Eli (our son) and I look forward to seeing so many ancient sites across Israel in the short time we’re here, we plan to begin our tour in Bethlehem where we’ll meet a friend who grew up there.

I met my friend in Starkville several years ago, and as fortune would have it, he is here visiting his family and has invited us to join him and his family in a little village outside of Bethlehem.

We are nearing the end of Ramadan, the Holy month of Islam, and will get to see firsthand how Palestinian Muslims celebrate the month when we visit Bethlehem later today. At one time my friend was leader of the local mosque in Starkville. He and I have discussed differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity many times.

Eli and I plan to invest our time the rest of our week in Israel visiting sites first in Jerusalem, then as much of the rest of the country as possible. We’re looking forward to seeing historic sites like the Garden of Gethsemane, Golgotha, the Wailing Wall, Temple Mount, and Dome of the Rock. Simply walking the ancient streets of old Jerusalem promises to inspire us, knowing who’s walked those streets before us.

Interestingly, the Obama administration has removed “Israel” as the designation of parent nation of Jerusalem on all U.S. government websites. What does that mean? Where are we? In a whole new world that is changing moment by moment. We’ll see Bethlehem today.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

Thank God it’s August and Washington is on a long vacation! Maybe “ordinary” Americans can breathe a sigh of relief through Labor Day before American royalty return to DC and the mainstream media return to spinning horrific economic numbers into socialistic cotton candy.

This time next week I’ll be in Israel with one of my sons visiting as many biblical sites as possible to soak in and remember people and events that truly wrought hope and change and shaped world history in unparalleled ways. A trip like this always sharpens perspective of current events.

Do you remember who was president in 1911 or what he was famous for? How about Jesus, Peter, John, James, or Paul – the original one-name pop stars of their generation? (To save you some digging, William Howard Taft was president from 1909 – 1913. I suspect 100 years from now – if we make it that far – people will have equally obscure memories of today’s politics and current events.)

The world has seen many changes in the past 2,000 years or so, yet even our world today revolves around the one most central figure of all human history – Jesus Christ. Why has this Jewish Rabbi continued to hold such sway over the affairs of men two thousand years after his ministry? Though historians and philosophers of all different stripes have offered opinions, no veritable authority has questioned the fact that Jesus commands that central role.

In Jesus’ day government was big…really big…big enough to control everything. There were generally two classes of people: Ruling Elite (government, religious, and business), and “ordinary” masses of people. The world has always had “ordinary” people like us. Jesus spent practically all of his time with ordinary people rather than the elite of his day… that is until the end of his earthly ministry.

Jesus is perhaps best known for teaching and healing folks. He developed a reputation among the religious elite of his day as quite the partier, not only drinking wine but – according to John – making excellent wine out of water for a wedding celebration.

Jesus never acquired great wealth. In fact, as far as we know the only things he owned were literally the clothes on his back. Yet ordinary people were drawn to him wherever he went. They wanted to hear his words, to be healed of various diseases, and to see miracles that were widely reported. Most of all the Jewish people wanted to see for themselves whether this man could possibly be the Jewish Messiah foretold by Isaiah and a host of other prophets.

Oddly enough, today billions of people still seek to hear his words, to be healed of various diseases in his name, and to seek widely reported miracles and salvation by our Savior Jesus Christ. In that regard, little has changed in the past 2,000 years.

Perhaps our salvation today continues to reside in Jesus Christ and not in all the empty promises we hear from royal elite in government, media, business, and academia.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

The latest blame naming stratagem coming from Washington progressives is the so-called “TEA Party downgrade.” Progressives at first tried to blemish Standard & Poor’s (S&P) after they downgraded the federal government from AAA to AA+. They soon saw blaming the messenger wouldn’t deflect blame from Washington since other rating services – Moody’s and Fitch – had been warning for months they might downgrade America’s credit rating too.

Frankly it’s a wonder America’s credit rating hadn’t been downgraded long before now. Were TEA Parties catalysts creating the first credit downgrade in America’s history? Hardly. Progressives who claim that are portraying themselves and America as victims and trying to divert attention from their own liabilities in the matter.

To be precise, S&P offered the following rationale for the downgrade:

“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”

The downgrade is not about TEA Parties but about how Washington is (or isn’t) tackling our debt crisis. For the record TEA Parties wanted to cut much more spending than has been cut in the fiscal consolidation plan, but progressives refused to budge. Progressives’ failure to grasp the importance of dealing effectively with our debt crisis was the catalyst leading to the downgrade.

To be clear, Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame for this debt crisis, which progressives have only lately acknowledged. How bad is our debt crisis? A reader posted the following attributed to Dave Ramsey on my blog in the Clarion-Ledger:

“If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.”

While I haven’t confirmed the attribution, I believe the analogy is accurate and replaces trillions and trillions of dollars with more understandable albeit more incredible numbers.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have become the biggest drivers in our debt spiral, to the point that all three have become unsustainable if not reformed. By refusing to reform these so-called entitlement programs, progressives are dooming all three to certain bankruptcies.

To their credit and with the help of 87 freshmen “TEA Party” representatives in the House, Republicans passed a budget S&P said was sufficient to prevent a credit downgrade. What did Senate progressives do? They tabled the bill. The Senate has not passed a budget in well over two years! “Who needs a budget when one can print and spend as much money as we need?”

Coincidently, a new Rasmussen poll found “just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters think the federal government today has the consent of the governed. Sixty-nine percent (69%) believe the government does not have that consent.”

As my friend says, “I resemble that remark.”

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner
Guest Columnist

Washington is incapable of balancing our checkbook. Democrats stopped the charade of even proposing budgets more than two years ago. Republicans in the House at least passed a budget, albeit with more overspending increasing our national debt by trillions of dollars. Democrats in the Senate killed that budget because it didn’t spend enough.

The latest deal in Washington as I write this column on Monday morning calls for a “trigger” to force Congress to “cut” spending. Let’s be clear: none of the proposals set forth so far “cut” deficit spending. All of the proposals merely slow overspending. The current deal cuts the debt by $2 trillion over ten years, but increases our debt by $8 trillion at the same time!

So, when you see progressives in Washington or liberal media elites wringing their hands over these draconian cuts, rest assured the sky will still be firmly in place in the morning.

Remember also these cuts are over the next ten years. So, when you hear about a trillion dollar cut, we’re talking $100 billion per year, not really that significant when we’re still adding more than $1 trillion to our debt every year – ten times the amount we’re “cutting.” Washington spends roughly $100 billion every ten days.

Americans have been calling for a balanced budget amendment for years. The latest CNN poll shows 74-percent of those polled support a balanced budget amendment. Why? Probably the same reason those in Washington put a “trigger” in the latest deficit reduction/debt ceiling deal – because Washington is incapable on its own of cutting spending.

Remember, merely six months ago President Obama called for more spending (what he calls investment) and no cuts. He asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling with no caveats. How absurd does that sound today?

Washington has been running on autopilot for decades. They have routinely raised the debt ceiling increasing deficit/debt spending (borrowing) with little if any notice until now. TEA Parties have changed all of that.

TEA Parties spontaneously popped up across America in the spring of 2009 after TARP in the fall of 2008, the stimulus of 2009, and all the other bailouts and talk of Obamacare, cap and trade, and innumerable other spending programs. In spite of all the vitriol from Washington progressives and media elite, TEA Parties elected 87 freshmen representatives to the House.

Even now Washington progressives and elite pundits are actually blaming TEA Parties for all the dysfunction in DC! The conversation has changed from ‘business as usual’ and ‘kick the can down the road’ to STOP the madness! Neither progressives nor media elite like the change.

When you hear progressives in Washington or in the media whining about cuts, default, or downgrade on our credit rating and blaming it all on TEA Parties, don’t lose any sleep and don’t believe for a minute TEA Parties had anything to do with America’s economic woes.

Without a balanced budget amendment or pressure from groups like TEA Parties, Washington is incapable of balancing America’s checkbook.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

What happens when ideological platitudes run over real life? America loses jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s just one result of the Obama administration’s new regulations on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

IHS CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) released findings from their study, “Restarting the Engine: Securing American Jobs, Investment, and Energy Security” last week comparing current drilling activity with historic activity. According to the study, bottlenecks will cost Americans $44 billion in U.S. gross domestic product and 230,000 jobs in 2012.

The study estimates the following losses:

150 million barrels of oil next year, or 411,000 barrels of oil per day from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico alone– five times the amount recently released from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
$44 billion of U.S. gross domestic product growth in 2012.
230,000 additional jobs in 2012.
$22 billion improvement in 2012 wages and compensation.
Realizing $19 billion in pent-up capital investment over a three-year period.
$18.6 billion more of federal, state and local, royalties, bonuses and rents tax payments over the next three years.

At a time when the press is taking sides over who’s going to win debt ceiling debates, and political ideologues are waging class warfare over corporate jets and millionaires and billionaires, the Obama administration continues to impede drilling in the Gulf costing jobs and revenue in the name of environmental ideology.

Lest you think this ideology is costing jobs and dollars only around the Gulf region, think again. James Diffley, senior director of IHS Global Insight’s U.S. Regional Economic Group explained, “Each new hire of a platform worker, machinist or other specialist to work in the Gulf’s oil and gas industry results, on average, in more than three additional jobs in an array of industries around the country, whether it be in the Gulf region or a subsea power cable provider in Ohio, a steel manufacturer in Pittsburgh or a software firm in California’s Silicon Valley.”

Ironically, the study projects opening the bottlenecks created by the newest red tape would add $12 billion in 2012 and $20 billion through 2013 in federal, state, and local tax revenues. While Washington progressives are demanding we raise tax rates to grow revenue, because of their ideological extremism they refuse to support one of America’s foundational and important industries which naturally produces tax revenues.

Congress stopped the disastrous “Cap and Trade” bill that would have made America’s energy bills “skyrocket,” but that didn’t stop the Obama administration from implementing essentially the same regulations through the EPA which is finalizing 30 major regulations and 170 major policy rules imposing hundreds of billions of dollars of compliance costs.

Apparently progressive ideologues in Washington care less about America’s bottom line than their own ideological agendas. Perhaps that’s one reason our economy is in the doldrums: big government regulations costing billions of dollars and simultaneously raising America’s energy costs by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Progressive’s ideological platitudes are running over real life in America.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

Pundits and politicians may know DC politics as usual, but they’re clueless about the rest of us. Watching Sunday talk shows it’s obvious those veteran DC observers know how things have worked in the past and are supposed to work today. It’s equally obvious they don’t get the American people who elected a whole new class of conservatives to the House.

Out here in real America we have people who are dependent on government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and pension checks for their livelihoods. Politicians in DC who use these folks as political footballs in their speeches and talking points are not only heartless, they’re clueless about “regular” folks. Not that there’s anything wrong with being “regular.”

Memo to DC Insiders: First, do no harm. Second, stop scaring those among us with your extremist rhetoric threatening to cut off support from those who truly need it.

Essentially DC is wrestling with three huge problems: debt ceiling, entitlement spending, and tax reform.

Do we need to raise the debt ceiling? Yes. If we don’t raise the debt ceiling will the U.S. default on our debt? No, not unless President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner decide otherwise. They make that decision.

Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) have said they would consider lowering the U.S. credit rating if DC did not address the reasons why our debt is skyrocketing beyond our ability to repay it.

Will simply raising our debt ceiling prevent Moody’s or S&P from lowering our credit rating? No. In fact, if DC simply raises the debt limit and doesn’t make significant policy changes reducing deficits and lowering debt, both will probably downgrade our credit rating.

Economists say if Moody’s or S&P downgrades our credit rating, interest rates will rise for everyone. Think credit cards and mortgages.

The second big problem is so-called entitlement spending, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Regular folks have been telling DC experts these are not entitlements because we have been paying for these programs for years.

DC set up these programs as Ponzi schemes. For example, data show Medicare recipients receive three or four times as much money from Medicare as they put in. Where in the world can one “invest” $50,000 in insurance and receive $200,000 worth of coverage? That’s the problem.

Entitlements as they stand are unsustainable and must be reformed if those 50 years or younger expect to receive any benefits at all.

The third big problem is tax reform. Like the weather, everybody talks about it but nobody ever does anything. Raising taxes now probably won’t raise revenue, but probably will stifle the “recovery” even more. Revenue is down because the economy is bad, not because tax rates are too low.

DC experts need to stop spending more than we take in, reform entitlement programs to make them sustainable for all of us, and for heaven’s sake give us a simple and fair income tax without loopholes for special interests. That’s how regular Americans believe DC should work.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

Millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share to stop America’s escalating debt crisis, especially if they’re politicians.

President Obama has called for Congress to eliminate the tax deduction for corporate jets. This move would generate $300 million in revenue per year. Mr. Obama has also called for ending subsidies for oil companies, which would bring in $4 billion per year. He’s advocated raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, that is anyone making more than $200,000 per year.

So far President Obama has not called for any specific cuts of federal spending to reduce deficits, which have averaged about $1.5 Trillion annually during his tenure. He appears more focused on raising taxes to pay for escalating federal spending.

Coincidently, President Obama, a multi-millionaire himself, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his reelection bid in 2012. Campaign strategists say he’s planning to raise $1 Billion.

On the other hand Republican candidates for president are struggling to raise a few million dollars, far from the hundreds of millions of dollars President Obama is raising.

No Democrat is expected to challenge Mr. Obama, so we can safely assume the President is raising $1 Billion to fend off a Republican challenger in 2012. That’s a lot of money.

While our nation is drowning in deficits and debt, our politicians are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their jobs. And, these are the same jobs they’ve used to run up TRILLIIONS of DOLLARS of debt for the rest of us.

Polls show very few of us believe these politicians are doing a very good job. Yet, some bodies are giving them hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their jobs.

Speaking of jobs, the safest place in America to get and keep a job is in Congress or the Obama administration where they received nice raises this past year. Meanwhile the rest of us are watching unemployment creep back up toward the ten-percent mark while the economy produced only 18,000 real jobs in June.

Two years ago President Obama signed a huge stimulus bill he said would keep unemployment below 8-percent. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers reported the stimulus saved or created between 2.4 million and 3.6 million jobs at a cost of $666 billion – for every job accounted for by the stimulus, taxpayers paid up to $278,000. Only among America’s elite progressives would this be considered a success.

Washington has gotten way too big and wastes way too much money. It’s our money. We work hard for our money. And, we don’t like millionaires and billionaires like Mr. Obama wasting our money.

We should tie salaries of Washington politicians and bureaucrats to no more than the median household income in America – $50,221 – and make politicians give leftover campaign contributions after elections to the Federal Treasury to pay down the debt.

Furthermore, if Washington’s multi-millionaire politicians can’t agree to stop deficit spending, we should make them pony up the difference between federal revenue and spending since they’re solely responsible for both.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel L. Gardner

Guest Columnist

America is still great! In spite of ill-advised policies pushed by progressives from Woodrow Wilson to FDR, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and nowadays Barack Obama, America continues to be great because we have a solid constitutional foundation and patriotic citizens.

Progressives look at America and want “to improve” us, to “fundamentally transform” America into a nation with government more akin to Europe’s socialist democracies. Why? Because they honestly believe America has a history rife with imperialism, colonialism, racism, and a hundred other “isms” that fatally undermine their values.

Check your child’s history books. This Fall Mississippi will implement new history curricula focusing on the role civil rights has played from our founding to today. Considering how poorly American students have performed on standardized tests by National Assessment of Educational Progress, I suppose any change couldn’t hurt. In the case of changing curricula parents should trust but verify.

On this year’s test only 12-percent of high school seniors were proficient in their knowledge of history, while MORE THAN HALF of all seniors scored at the LOWEST achievement level “below basic.” Americans spend more money on education per student than any nation on earth. We deserve better results than this.

Unfortunately, too many of our school children don’t know America is great because they’re being taught about all the injustices perpetrated by our Founding Fathers and all those other white men through the centuries who suppressed freedoms of women and minorities.

Of course America has a history of injustices, but we also have a history of triumphs. We have nothing to apologize for. We are a light on a hill, a beacon of hope for people and nations around the globe. We are unique and we’ll remain unique in this world of nations until progressives in the classrooms, Congress, and the White House transform us into a nation of mediocrity.

Ask the hundreds of thousands of new citizens why America is great and they will inevitably compare advantages Americans have enjoyed for more than 230 years with disadvantages they have had in their native countries. A man in India told his American friend he wanted to become an American because “I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”

Consider how overwhelmed emigrants become when they walk through a Wal-Mart or grocery story. God has blessed America and Americans materially by ways and means unmatched in any other nation today. In fact, we are so materially blessed, that’s the charge our enemies and critics make against us – that we have become a decadent and immoral society drowning in our own insatiable lusts.

America is the only nation on earth where one can “become” an American. Will becoming a citizen of Germany make one a German? France a Frenchman? Korea a Korean? Only in America can anyone from any other nation on earth become an American!

With all our blemishes and problems, America is still great! We are the greatest nation on earth. Thank You, God, for blessing America!

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.

Daniel Gardner

Guest Columnist

I love to read a lot of different kinds of books: fiction and nonfiction, books on faith and books on politics, biographies and philosophical treatises.

I’ve just read one of Dean Koontz’s books, Life Expectancy. Some of Koontz’s books are quirkier than others, and Life Expectancy could be one of those life-is-stranger-than-fiction books if it were true. But, it’s not.

The book is an autobiography of a primary character who at times philosophizes about his own significance in the broad scope of life. I’d bet Koontz himself shares this philosophy with his character.

In chapter 28 Koontz writes, “Sometimes, as I’m writing about my life, I get the weird feeling that someone is writing my life as I write about it.”

“If God is an author and the universe is the biggest novel ever written, I may feel as if I’m the lead character in the story, but like every man and woman on Earth, I am a supporting player in one of billions of subplots. You know what happens to supporting players. Too often they are killed off in chapter three or in chapter ten, or in chapter thirty-five. A supporting player always has to be looking over his shoulder.”

At the end of chapter 57 (obviously the “supporting character” survived chapter thirty-five) Koontz writes, “Maybe it’s our free will misdirected or just a shameful pride, but we live our lives with the conviction that we stand at the center of the drama. Moments rarely come that put us outside ourselves, that divorce us from our egos and force us to see the larger picture, to recognize that the drama is in fact a tapestry and that each of us is but a thread in the vivid weave, yet each thread essential to the integrity of the cloth.”

In the real life, true storybook, Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell tells readers of heroism, suffering, and overcoming all odds. Luttrell is the lone survivor of Operation Redwing, an operation by Seal Team 10 deep behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.

On page 359 Luttrell reflects on his own thread in the tapestry of life. “Look at me, right now in my story. Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: if you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.”

Each of us is a “thread essential to the integrity of the cloth,” insignificant, but still essential. Both authors reveal the fictional and true issues and ramifications many of us face as we’re woven into the cloth of time. Who’s to say God is not the author of His Story and we’re supporting characters?

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at Daniel@DanLGardner.com, or visit his website at http://www.danlgardner.com Feel free to interact with him on the Clarion-Ledger feature blog site http://www.clarionledger.com/section/blogs06. Gardner’s columns are also featured on http://dannygardner.opinioneditorial.com

His column does not reflect the views of Starkville-Now.