Year worth remembering

By Steve Young

2013. Wow. Could you be more proud of how this country chose to treat its most recent 365 days? I mean other than the government shutdown, Congress, the Obamacare (disaster of a) start-up, NSA peeping-Tom surveillance policies, Congress, IRS profiling, Major League Baseball's never-will-be-elected to the Hall of Fame antics of the steroidal Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez, vapid filibustering, Phillies/Sixers/Flyers, and Congress... I could drone on, but President Obama has chosen to do that for us.

The good news is that all those embarrassments, missteps, and failures hold much promise for the rest of us if we choose to take the actions necessary to gain something tangibly positive from them. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." In fact, some of history's most profound thoughts seem to be intended for 2013.

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing" - John Powell. In his personal battle of the bulge, Anthony Weiner found his New York mayoral campaign in the dumpster just because he said he was finished with sexting young women except for the ones he continued sexting.

"If an ass goes traveling he will not come home a horse" - Thomas Fuller. Obviously Fuller's ass was not hitched to Miley Cyrus' wagon as the young singer's derriere-pulsating "twerk" at the Video Music Awards worked its way into the Oxford English Dictionary. In the aftermath, England and civility are no longer to be used in the same sentence.

"Every problem has a gift for you in its hands" - Richard Bach. The 76ers finished a pathetic Andrew Bynum-less 2013, which begat a woeful Nerlen Noel-less 2013, which could begat a splendid Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, or Julius Randle 2014.

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail" - John Wooden. The Obama administration had only three years to ready the Affordable Care Act website, teaching us that if you're planning to operate a website to handle tens of millions of visits, don't have your 13-year-old nephew design your site.

"The place is so crowded no one goes there anymore" - Yogi Berra. Republicans said Americans don't want Obamacare while the website kept crashing because so many people were trying to sign up.

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt" - Mark Twain. Pope Francis was called a Marxist by Rush Limbaugh for condemning wealth inequality.

"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing" - Socrates. Seth MacFarlane, writer/producer of Family Guy and American Dad, gave birth to the worst sitcom ever, Dads. Second place: Any film with Adam Sandler, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Sylvester Stallone.

"I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results" - Florence Nightingale. Filibustering became the wasting time du jour as Sen. Ted Cruz's talk-fest to defund Obamacare and decrease taxes did not stop Obamacare and resulted in a government shutdown costing the taxpayers billions.

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" - old proverb. Milwaukee Brewer Ryan Braun and former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong threw everyone under the bus for "lying" about their performance-enhancing drug use until they realized that they were the only people who should have been flattened by the bus.

"Of all my outstanding qualities, and there are many, I think my best trait is humility" - Anonymous. The Selfie.

"Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this" - Homer. For all the suffering, we can take solace that the United States doesn't have exclusive custody of the world's miseries: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.