Into your hands, father of mercys, we commend our brother mario. In the sure and certain hope that together with all who have died in christ he will rise with him on the last day. Merciful lord, turn toward us and listen to our prayers. Open the gates of paradise to your servant and help us who remain to comfort one another with assurances of faith until we all meet in christ and are with you and with our brother mario forever. We ask this through christ our lord. Amen. In peace let us take our brother to his place of rest. Thanks be to god. Our closing hymn is 611. Joyful, joyful, we adore thee hearts unfold like flowers before you opening up to the sun above melt the clouds of sun and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day all your works with joy surround you earth and heaven reflect your rays stars and angles sing around you, center of unbroken praise field and forest dale and mountain flowering meadow, flashing sea chanting a
And so one of the things at the very basic level we need to do is just get more people participating. Its hard to run a good democracy with less than one in five people participating. And what that tends to do is bring out the people who are the most focused and organized and generally the most ideological. And its going to take a while to shift that around. The political scientists will tell you thing that is dont make sense to me but theyre pretty consistent on it that moving to more early voting doesnt actually show an increase in turnout. Which again i thought it would. But do you know why we have voting on tuesdays . Because about 200 years ago most people liked to go to church and a lot lived too far from county seat to get there too far on monday. So you go to church on sunday, ride your horse and vote on tuesday. Chris rock said do you know why . Because they dont want us to vote. There is a strong sentiment that hard working folks who dont have an ability to control their own
Can transcend that. That these trends are not permanent. If we listen to another to one another, we can govern even in this polarized environment. We put together a 29 member commission. We had former interior secretary , senator bennett was one of our members. We had a really Knockout Group of people. Former members of congress governors, cabinet officials. Civic leaders, Business Leader people from all walks of american life. We went through an 18 month process and went all over the country california, ohio, philadelphia. We had meetings and engaged the American Public. Then, they had some debate and a liberation. They had and the liberation. Deliberation. They did find common ground. That is our blueprint for strengthening our democracy. It contains 69 recommendations. Three major areas of reform forming congress, forming our elections system, and a call to public service. Not all of these are a magic pill. If we enact them all tomorrow the system is not going to turn around althoug
Notwithstanding the fact that i have a point of view, those are the facts, and nobody can dispute that, i take that and i do not just do a defense of the law, but i argue why it is making difference politically for people, and if reconciliation is used to repeal parts of the law than what i would do is try to have made my case on all these points so that when reconciliation is vetoed, people will understand why it is important. What role do you think in the final two years of Vice President biden in dealing with congress and how would that role differ from the role he has played in the first six years . Im happy to answer that question but make has a perspective but nick had has a perspective. I think he has a significant role to play, from an outsiderss position. He is liked and trusted. So if there is an average tried to get things done, if there is never to try to right now we are in a who struck john stage where they did not retract to become all that is meaningless now. It is mean
Newspaper. The white house released a few themes, the theme of turning the page on recession and war. Why do we start out by what you have learned from the preview this week about how the white house wants to frame tonights speech . The keywords that we will hear from the president are middleclass economics. This in my mind is a campaignstyle speech. The president will be hitting on a number of populist proposals, including Free Community college. He will be talking about a number of tax cuts, billions worth of tax cuts for the middle class. She performed mortgage is cheaper home mortgages. But my colleagues described obama tonight is playing the role of a robin hood, who is taking from the rich and giving to the poor and the middle class. I think we will see this is really the opening shot we are seeing out of the 2016 election. The president certainly wont be on the ballot in 2016 and maybe Hillary Clinton and maybe somebody else, but the president tonight i think is saying this is w