Newsweek (October 25, 2010) addresses some of the errors made by proponents of the Tea Party in discussing the up-coming election.

Christine O’Donnell, who would be a Senator for Delaware, has taken much of her slant on the Constitution out of context. She told her audience at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., that her “qualification for the Senate is an eight-day course she took at a conservative think tank in 2002.” She said that the Constitution is a “covenant based on divine principles” and that for decades the government has been anti-American and disrespectful of it. She asserted that the Tea Party has rediscovered the true meaning of that "hallowed" document.

The leading speakers for the party, such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have broadcast this latter claim: the Constitution is a holy instruction manual for turning back social progress, turning social security over to private hands, and eliminating regulations on all businesses, public safety and security notwithstanding. They want to return the country to what it was in 1776.

Such dangerous interpretations are based on the mistaken idea that the elite of the Founding Fathers wanted to create a Christian nation. This is not true.

Such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and pamphleteer Thomas Paine set out to create a secular society in which citizens could pursue happiness and did not want a state religion: the Constitution expressly specifies a separation of church and state. The thinkers were men of the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment. They had seen the damage done in theocracies. Indeed many immigrants have fled such countries to live free in the United States.

In this election each of us must assume that the Founding Fathers were correct in wanting a living Constitution. As times change, things not dreamed of in the 18th Century, must be placed into the context of law, to protect the reasonable desires of the voters. Wild assertions do not help us confront the very real difficulties this country faces in the 21st Century.

If you have not gone already, you should take your children and grandchildren to “Romance of the Rails” at the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art in Midland open now through December 13.

Special attractions include famous train photographs by Alden Dow, Keith Burgess, Tim Davis, and O. Winston Link, world class train models, the Michigan LEGO User Group train layout, antique train collectibles and toys.

In addition there are working model railroads: the Saginaw River Valley Model Railroad Club HO scale layout featuring an animated circus, a steel plant, many details including flying kites, a bungee jumper, a hang glider and an operating wind turbine; and the B.E.A.M. Model Railroad Club N scale layout featuring a round house for steam locomotives, a railroad barge, fast food restaurants, and yes, flying kites. The railroads are up until November 14.

The members who were running the trains are very enthusiastic, great to talk to, and extremely knowledgeable about the thousands of details on the railroads. Model railroading is a great hobby for young and old and this show really awakens the flames of yearning to ride the rails.

Be sure to visit www.Healthcare.gov and select Michigan. This is complete information about how the new health care laws affect you.

1. Insurance companies will be prohibited from imposing lifetime dollar limits on essential coverage.

2. Starting in late 2010, job-based health plans and new individual plans won’t be allowed to deny or exclude coverage for your children (under age 19) based on a pre-existing condition including a disability. Starting in 2014, these same plans won't be allowed to deny or exclude anyone or charge more for a pre-existing condition including a disability.

3. If you have children under age 26, you can generally insure them if your policy allows for dependent coverage. The only exception is if you have an existing job-based plan, and your children can get their own job-based coverage. In some plans, you can add your young adult children even earlier than September 2010.

4. Starting in 2014, if your income is less than the equivalent of about $88,000 for a family of four today, and your job doesn’t offer affordable coverage, you may get tax credits to help pay for insurance.

5. Starting in 2014, pregnancy and newborn care, along with vision and dental coverage for children, will be covered in all Exchange plans and new plans sold to individuals and small businesses. An Exchange is a new marketplace where individuals and small businesses can buy affordable health benefit plans. Exchanges will offer you a choice of plans that meet certain benefits and cost standards. Starting in 2010Members of Congress will be getting their health care insurance through Exchanges, and you will be able buy your insurance through Exchanges, too.

These last few days of Indian summer in central Michigan have been splendid. Neither my wife, Nedra nor I am a trained biologist but we love to sit in our back yard in the late afternoon sipping some red wine and watching nature.

Our yard is a perfect grove surrounded by trees and shrubs, with the wide sky above with fleets of cloud ships moving silently from west to east. At its center we have a feeding station with a ground feeder for the squirrels and chipmunks, hanging tubes for the birds, and several bird baths.

We have come to appreciate the group of blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) that come every day. Some people don’t like jays because they are bossy and cause the smaller birds to move over for them. However we have observed several traits that make them personable.

We cannot tell males from females, but each bird has slightly different white markings that stand out against the deep blue of their feathers so we can distinguish one from the other. They have a pouch in their throats just behind the shrewd beak. We have seen these birds take twelve to fifteen sunflower seeds at one visit to the tubes. That is an evolutionary survival benefit that pays off in fewer trips back to the feeder.

We began feeding them unsalted peanuts in the shell and this truly tells of each bird’s personality. Nedra buys seven or eight pounds of nuts from Ric’s Market which lasts at most a week. When I bring out the sack I call “Peanuts!” and within a minute the first blue jay arrives. Sometimes it will issue a raucous cry. The others appear within a minute or two.

There is the skeleton of a dead Hawthorn tree in the yard that serves as their roost during feeding. They also perch on the rain gutters of our family room and high in the shrubs behind us. There are eight to twelve that come regularly.

The most faithful to appear is what we believe to be a family of three. The “father” is brazen and comes closest to take the nuts just two feet away from our chairs. Not only that but if there are two or three peanuts in a cluster he will pick each up, weighing it and then chooses the largest. He often will take the first nut of the afternoon up to the rain gutter, cracks it open and eats the peanuts within. The “mother” is more cautious and takes her picks farther out, perhaps five feet from us. The child was born this spring and has grown to adult size during the season. “He” is a klutz. He swoops down, lands and then hops to the nearest shell. It may well be just a hull but he grabs it and flies away with it. His father often chases after him to scold him.

When a bird has a peanut in its beak it will fly off, each time in a different direction. It will return by a new route to roost and wait for another chance. This may be a way of “confusing” us as the location of its cache of nuts. They come back too quickly to have eaten every nut so they must be storing them.

When we decide to go in we leave a scattering of nuts. The birds clean up after us within a few minutes as the shadows lengthen and evening approaches.

As Pogo once paraphrased, “I have seen the enemy and it is us!”

We don’t like the situation in this country right now, so we want to blame someone, anyone. Some candidates in the coming election have railed against “incumbents,” an easy target but not necessarily a valuable contribution to understanding.

Stand in front of a mirror answer the following questions truthfully. From 2007 to the present did you:

Buy a bigger house than you needed with minimum down and the smallest monthly payments?

Buy a new car with a lot of accessories with zero (or small amount) down and small monthly payments?

Max out one or more credit card paying (again) only the minimum monthly installments?

Chose not to save five or six percent of your income for future obligations?

If you answered one or more of these questions “yes” then you have seen the enemy. You contributed to the tangled mess the economy is in. Yes, the government made it simple to do these things, but no one forced you to take the action. You let the situation govern you, resulting in a cascading financial disaster for everyone.

The current administration inherited the downward turning economy and underestimated its depth. The stimulus bills prevented a depression. The gigantic inertia of the economy made an upturn difficult, but economists agree that the recession bottomed out a year ago, but the return to “normal” will take a long time.

If you lost a job it was because the company you worked for couldn’t afford you. There are only three alternatives:

1. The job you had was outsourced and will never return. You must retool yourself with marketable skills. Healthcare and the information fields will continue to grow and specialties are in demand.

2. The job you had shrank away with the withering demand for the goods or services you provided. You can try a new path by taking courses in a community college or CMU to complete a degree or get a masters degree in your field. When jobs open up (and they will) you will be a better candidate to fill one. When you get a job it may be at a lower salary and reduced benefits. Take it. This will become better.

3. Don’t do anything. Fall below the poverty level and stay there. You will never take pride in yourself again.

In this election determine which candidates have done things to turn the economy around and who has stood in the way. Be careful. You can recreate the same path that is turning this country into third world status or you can insure a steady, if slow recovery.