"...Rawlings?..Yup....Wilson?...Okey Dokey....Armani?...Not So Much...."

Here's a little spirit of the season offering.

The season, of course, being World Series time.

(CNN) -- What sports fan can ever forget it?

The stirring sight, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, of the Packers charging out of the tunnel at Lambeau Field alongside their legendary leader, Vince Lombardi, who is wearing a football jersey, shoulder pads and a helmet as he prepares to coach his squad to another victory.

Or the heroic vision of Coach Phil Jackson with the members of the Chicago Bulls, or the Los Angeles Lakers, gathered around him during a timeout as, wearing his usual game-day attire of shorts, gym shoes and a sleeveless basketball jersey with a number on the front, he maps out on a clipboard the next series of plays for his team to run.

What? You say you don't remember scenes like those? You never saw Coach Lombardi on the sidelines dressed like a football fullback, and you never saw Coach Jackson giving instructions to his players while dressed like a point guard?

That's because it didn't happen. National Basketball Association coaches dress in street clothes; so do National Football League coaches (albeit with team logos).

But -- as you have undoubtedly noticed anew if you've been watching the World Series -- baseball managers don't. They dress like their players, and it's been such an integral part of baseball for so long that fans seldom ask themselves why.

"It's a little like Alice in Wonderland, through the looking glass, where in baseball things are reversed from the way they are in other sports," said John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball. "In trying to explain the reason for it, folklore comes in."

Thorn knows about the traditions of baseball, and the reasons for them, as well or better than anyone alive. He said that in the earliest years of the game in the 19th century, "The person who was called the manager of a team was the business manager -- he was the person who made sure that the receipts were paid and that the train schedules were met. He didn't make any decisions about what went on during a game.

"The person who did that was called the captain. He did what a manager does today, but he also played. So at first, the person we would today call a manager wore a uniform because he was a participant in the game."

The tradition -- sort of -- continued even when, in the 20th century, the people calling the shots in the dugouts became non-players. Some of them wore uniforms even though they were never going to get into a game. But others -- Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics and Burt Shotton of the Brooklyn Dodgers may have been the best known -- decided that if they were no longer baseball players, they shouldn't dress like baseball players.

Their position on the matter was rejected. For more than half a century now, every baseball manager -- like Tony LaRussa of the St. Louis Cardinals and Ron Washington of the Texas Rangers in this year's World Series -- has worn a uniform.

Some people believe that baseball's rules mandate this, although the only rule touching on it -- Rule 1:11(a) (1) -- says: "All players on a team shall wear uniforms identical in color, trim and style, and all players uniforms shall include minimal six-inch numbers on their backs." Nothing about what a manager must wear.

Other people believe that managers wear uniforms because they routinely appear on the field: during pitching changes, and during arguments with the umpires. But the managers, unlike the players, aren't on the diamond when the ball is actually in play.

"Maybe it's just testament to the notion that, no matter how old you get, between your ears you think you're a baseball player," Thorn said. If a big-league baseball manager were to show up in the dugout in a coat and tie, he said, "the decision would bring ridicule and scorn upon him. It would not happen."

At baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, I was told that the best person to ask about the managers-in-uniform tradition was a fellow named Paul Lukas, who runs a website (Uni-watch.com) dedicated to the aesthetics of sports, and who writes about the subject for ESPN.com.

"I don't want to say that it's just one of those things," Lukas told me. "But it's just one of those things.

"Personally, I think it's sort of fun that these guys still like to suit up, and, just like their players, decide whether to hike up their pants cuffs or not. Jack McKeon, the manager of the Florida Marlins this past season, is 80 years old, and I like the idea that he sat in his office in his uniform before each game making the pants-cuff decision."

As the World Series was about to begin last week, I spent a good part of a morning with the eminent philosopher Bob Costas, who broadcasts many sports but loves baseball best. On this particular day -- I promise you this is true -- Costas was getting ready to go to a friend's house to play Wiffle Ball in the front yard.

His position on managers wearing uniforms is clear-cut:

"I like it. Can it be amusing? Yes. What's the reason for it? The answer is, 'That's baseball.' And as with most baseball questions, 'That's baseball' is good enough for me."

I asked Thorn, the official historian of the game, if he thought baseball would still be around a hundred years from now.

"Yes," he answered instantly -- faster than instantly, if there is such a thing.

And does he think that in a hundred years, managers will still be wearing the same uniforms as their players?

"If I had a dollar to bet" -- and if he did, he'd probably be thrown out of baseball -- "I would say the answer is 'yes.'"


It's often fun to come across these "how come we...?" kinds of stories.

Learn something new every day and all that.

In this case, though, I realized after reading that I didn't really know much more than I knew before.

And, boiled down to its essence, it appears that the reason baseball managers where uniforms is because they always did and they still do.

Fair enough.

Though I had hoped for a little more, given that "because they do.."was an answer I was obligated to accept when I was five and the question being asked either eluded or annoyed the parents.

Still, no harm, no foul here.

Or no hits, no runs, no errors, no one left on base, as it were.

Tradition being tradition, I'm in line with the attitude that seeing a baseball manager in the dugout wearing a coat and tie just wouldn't work.

It would seem unnatural.

And inappropriate.

On the other hand, seeing members of Congress start dressing like clowns...

I think we could all totally play ball with that one,

"..I'm Gonna Vote For Him...Who You Gonna Vote For?...You Gonna Vote For Him?...I'm Gonna Vote For Him...You Gonna Vote For Him?.... Who You Gonna Vote....."

When it comes to advanced technology...

...I'm jiggy wit' it.

Moving out several generations ahead of my parents, grands and greats, I have had no problem embracing whatever developments, mechanical, cultural and/or social, have come along, along the way.

I didn't weep and wail bitterly at the demise of my dependable, ga-gunkin eight track tape player when cassette took over.

I was just fine with the arrival of DVD to replace the interminable wait of thirty to sixty seconds of rewinding the VHS.

And I am just fine with food deliciously radiated in the nuclear atmosphere of my microwave.

Truth told, though, there is one little accomplishment in the evolution I could live without.

The opinion poll.

The advance of communicative devices, combined with the ability to turn the information into media spewable data in a New York sixty, has created an atmosphere in which we can be told, almost minute by minute, who's on first.

And who's, or what's, on second.

Theoretically, this is a good thing.

Actually, not so much.

Primarily because it mutates the long ago crafted axiom, "as Maine goes, so goes the nation...".

And while, ostensibly, the goal is to provide us (the well known and oft quoted "American people") with the latest "status" of one political candidate or another, what it really does, I feel sure, is inform some...

...while influencing others.

One long spoken complaint about media projections of winners on Election night has been that, for example, if the folks in California are still voting at their still open polling place while the media projects a winner in New York where the polling place has closed, the overall vote can be influenced by said projection.

The folks in L.A who hear "and we project Ferd Burfurd the winner in New York (and throw in any other state in the Eastern time zone)" might easily have a WTF/what's the use" attitude about bothering to cast any swine stifling pearls.

I think that notion is entirely plausible.

But it's no longer just an Election Day affliction.

The latest "polls" have the Republican nomination process reading like a non-equine run at Churchill Downs.

"Cain regains the lead...coming up the back stretch, it's Romney....while Perry is moving inside and gaining...it's Perry...it's Romney...it's Cain....it's Romney..."

As singer and noted political consultant, George Jones, would say...

"the race is on and here come's pride up the backstretch..."

And Election Day is still an entire year away.

Here's the thing about the polling as regards the polls.

Support for one candidate, or another, ends up being less about a legitimate effort on the part of the average voter (again, one of the much revered and oft misquoted "American people)to study and judge, for themselves, the merits or de, as the case may be, of one candidate versus another and more about that voter going the way the prevailing winds are blowing.

"Well," Mr and/or Mrs. God fearing, good hearted, but essentially politically unsophisticated Everyday American could be saying, "we were thinkin' about voting for Perry, but it looks like Romney is the winner, so..."

Ultimately, the insidious down side is that we end with office holders who are chosen less in the spirit of Washington, Jefferson and Adams...

...and more in the spirit of Michael Jackson.

Starting with its release, in the early 1980's, Michael's seminal album "Thriller" has racked up enough sales to qualify it as the best selling album of all time.

100 million, give or take.

Due respect to the talent involved, though, I think a reasonable case could be made that some percentage of that number, let's say, for the sake of discussion, twenty percent, came from folks who were simply going with the flow.

In other words, eighty million people totally got into, and bought a copy of, Thriller.

And twenty million people bought a copy of Thriller because eighty million people bought one.

Given that perspective, it's not unreasonable to see where the whole process of choosing those who will lead us can go awry.

Admittedly, there's nothing new about some folks doing what they do for no other reason than other people are doing it.

If everyone was as smart and savvy as you and me, the world would be a tedious place to hang out.

At the same time, the technology that now feeds the masses the latest "standings" on a near minute by minute basis may intend to use its powers for good, but, at best, ain't doing us any favors.

Because the choosing of high office holders should be, ideally, the result of individual reflection, consideration and determination.

And not the result of hearing the "daily special" and saying, "I'll have what she's having."

Elections, at their heart, were never meant to come equipped with foregone conclusions.

They should be thrillers.

"...Blindness as a Virtue..."

In the flurry of things being said, it is the unsaid that is most remarkable.


ATLANTA (AP) — Herman Cain is learning the hard way what it means to face the glare of the national spotlight.

After captivating Republicans hungry for an alternative to Mitt Romney, the presidential hopeful has made a series of stumbles that have left some questioning if he's ready for the White House. The Georgia businessman has been on a media blitz since a rise in the polls catapulted him into the top tier of the race for the Republican party nomination.

But Cain has sometimes appeared to be in over his head. In the last week, he:

—Suggested a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico should be electrified to kill illegal immigrants trying to pass into the United States. Cain later called it a joke and apologized if anyone was offended by the remarks.

—Said he would negotiate for the release of U.S. prisoners held by terrorists, then reversed himself and said he had misunderstood the question.

—Muddied the water on abortion, telling CNN that, while he strongly opposes abortion, "the government shouldn't be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make." He later issued a statement reiterating his opposition to abortion.

—Amid criticism that his signature 9-9-9 tax overhaul would force the majority of Americans to pay more to the government, he reworked the plan to exclude the poorest Americans and to allow some deductions. Backers of Cain's original plan had praised its simplicity, and piling on loopholes could erode into that support.

Through it all, Cain has appeared unflappable. He chalks up the reversals to the breakneck pace of the race.

"In a couple of instances ... I misspoke because of the pace of the interview. I don't call it a flip-flop. I'd rather come back and explain to people what I really meant," Cain said Friday after an economic speech in Detroit. "It doesn't send mixed messages. It just shows that I'm willing to correct myself ... if in fact I need to correct myself for clarity. That's what I'm trying to achieve."

For those in the GOP still in search of a candidate to back, his rocky rollout on the national stage has reinforced the view that Cain — he has never held elected office — is not ready for the big leagues.

"I'm looking for someone that's electable and right now I don't think he fits into that category," said 60-year-old Gene Carkeet of Memphis, Tenn., who attended a recent Cain rally there but remains undecided.

Gwen Ecklund, Republican chairwoman in Crawford County, Iowa, said Cain "has had a bad week."

"I do think it made some people take a second look," she said.

Cain's stumbles come as the campaign of rival Rick Perry shows some early signs of renewed vigor. Perry has plummeted in public opinion polls as Cain has climbed. But the Texas governor turned in a spirited and combative debate performance at a recent forum in New Hampshire and plans to unveil his own tax reform proposal relying on a flat tax under which everyone would pay the same income tax rate.

Cain and Perry are competing for support from tea party groups and evangelical voters.

Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist who founded the national Christian Coalition and now heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said Cain is going through the growing pains that come with sudden national exposure.

"It's a learning curve for any candidate who moves from the back of the pack to front of the pack," Reed said. "You undergo the political equivalent of a GI tract exam ... where every word is weighed and chewed over and scrutinized."

Reed said that after months of jumping on every media appearance offered, Cain and his staff must now limit his exposure and hammer home carefully honed talking points.

That's a tall order for a man who has spent years as a conservative radio talk-show host, saying what was on his mind and scoring points for being provacative.

Whether Cain's willingness to retool his 9-9-9 tax plan will be seen as a strength or a weakness is an open question.

"I guess we'll see what the polls say next week," said Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist had been critical of Cain's original proposal.

Not everyone is disheartened by Cain's missteps. Kay Godwin, co-founder of Georgia Conservatives in Action, said she is still solidly behind him.

"''Look at Romney and Perry at the last debate. They can't even be civil to each other on a stage in front of a national audience," Godwin said. "At his core, Herman has the heart to save this country."

The premise of this piece, that Herman Cain is having to put on big boy panties and do a better job of realizing that he's playing in the major league now, is a reasonable one.

And the debate/discussion/dissension regarding the bullet points of the argument is the first, and most obvious, focus on his candidacy.

But,that said, as I said at the outset...

...it is the unsaid that is most remarkable.

Fifty years ago, the idea that a Roman Catholic could be elected President of the United States was the stuff of fictional concoction.

Yet, fifty years ago, that is exactly what happened.

And, from that moment forward, the issue of Catholicism as a disqualifier for high office was eliminated.

(Admittedly, allowing for what fools we mortals be, the issue of Mormonism still awaits the same resolution, but that's another essay for another time.)

Four years ago, the idea that a woman could be elected President of the United States was stuff of fictional concoction.

Yet, four years ago, that is exactly what almost happened.

And four years ago, the idea that a black could be elected President of the United States....

Well, you get the idea.

And, four years ago, that is exactly what happened.

Now, Herman Cain has come along and is being praised/pilloried for everything from "being in touch with everyday America" to "tilting at windmills" in his efforts to secure a four year lease at 1600 Pennsylvania.

And whatever truth or twaddle there may be in his positions on the issues, his presentation on the podium or his political platform in general and whatever verbalization about them may be verbalized, there is one very profound, and poignant, thing being left unspoken.

He is a black man challenging another black man for the highest office in America.

And racism, like feminism four years ago and Catholicism fifty years ago, seems to have been eliminated as a disqualifier for high office.

One pundit observed that this is a testament, among others, to America embracing the philosophy of Martin Luther King.

Fair and obvious point.

Personally, though, I'm just as inclined to see it as America continuing to embrace the philosophy of Christopher Columbus.

We do have a tendency to sail around out there.

But, sooner or later, we find it.

"...You Just Gotta Know...Somebody In That Crowd Is Carrying Pictures Of Chairman Mao...."

Wall Street.

Not so much.

Downtown Nashville.

Now there's a place I spent more than just a little time.

Either way, or either location...I get it.

More on that in a minute.

It’s morning at the Occupation.

Sarah Robey wakes up in a tent on the cold marble slab of Legislative Plaza, like she has every day for the past two weeks. Someone stole her laptop the other day, along with documents she was trying to send to an employer to start a new nursing job. Still, she says, her experience with Occupy Nashville has been “beautiful.”

Robert Dunn arrives for the breakfast shift, threading his way between tents and blanket-wrapped forms snoring under tarps. He sets out thermoses of hot coffee, aluminum trays of bagels and fruit, and whatever hot dish the volunteers might have dropped off.

“They think we’re up here smoking pot and having a party,” said Dunn, a retired engineer, waving a hand at the nearby government buildings and office towers. “But it’s like Archimedes said: Give me a lever and a place to stand and I’ll move the world. Our lever is public opinion.”

What public opinion will make of the 2-week-old Occupy Nashville movement remains to be seen.

“I don’t understand what they want,” said Diana Miller, watching in bemusement as protesters danced and waved signs with messages like “End Corporate Personhood” at theater patrons arriving for the Thursday performance of Wicked at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

She shook her head, not interested in getting any closer to get an answer to her question.

You walk by the plaza and all you see are hand-lettered signs and spray-painted images of upraised fists, a cluster of tents and tarps, tables piled with pamphlets and an odd assortment of people wandering around.

You see the homeless, dozens of them, sleeping in rows against the walls, tucked against the fountains and planters. They were sleeping in the plaza long before Occupy Nashville came along, and the lure of friendly activists with supply tents full of food, bottled water, and warm blankets and clothes has drawn them in droves.

If you come closer, Occupy Nashville participants will be happy to answer your questions, and share the story of what brought them to the movement — job loss, foreclosure fears, crushing student loan debts or general unease about the growing role of money in politics.

What they can’t tell you is how long they’ll be out here. They say they’ll still be on the plaza when the legislature comes back to work in January. They say they believe that a few dozen people sleeping under the stars in the middle of Nashville might be able to make a difference in the world.

“Right now in the world, we’re seeing impossible things every day,” said Raymond Artis, who has camped out a few times on the plaza. “When I was in fourth grade, I used to think I’d never be president of the United States because I was black. Then Barack Obama got elected. ... I think more people will come (out to join the movement). Instead of wondering what Occupy Nashville is about, you should be asking yourself what you’re about.”

Robey, who lost her laptop but not her belief in the movement, is taking a stand for people like her mother, who worked hard all her life but now can’t afford health insurance and can’t afford to go back to school to retrain for a better job.

“There’s a collaboration that happens at night, when we’re drinking coffee and talking and it’s freezing and we’re getting rained on. It’s beautiful,” she said. “Everyone has a story. … We need more people to come up and tell us their stories.”

Occupy Nashville members — they stubbornly refuse to appoint leaders — are keenly aware of the image they project.

“We realize that it’s a fine line between an occupation and an eyesore,” joked Keven VanDenBrink, delivering a box of freshly laundered sleeping bags and clothes. He works nights as a bartender but tries to donate a few hours a day to volunteering, cooking or running errands for the occupiers.

Volunteers spend part of every day sweeping and picking up trash to keep the plaza looking presentable.

Homeless visitors are offered a broom or a poster and asked to take a turn waving signs at passing motorists. Volunteers, dubbed the “Good Vibe” patrol, circulate around the plaza, trying to defuse tensions and deter troublemakers.

The Thursday night Good Vibe volunteers included a wounded veteran who goes by “Country,” and his wife, Jennifer, a former volunteer firefighter who’s seven months pregnant. Country lost a brother in Afghanistan and caught three bullets himself. Now his benefits are being cut and he can’t qualify for disability assistance.

“You say you support the troops, show me you support the troops,” Country said. “I’ve done a lot for the 1 percent, and I feel like they haven’t done anything for me.”

Eva Watler, a massage therapist who has been camping out on the plaza almost since day one, had her BlackBerry stolen out of her pocket while she slept. But that hasn’t changed the reasons that drew her to the movement in the first place — as a self-employed entrepreneur, she can’t afford health insurance, and neither can her brother, who lost his job shortly before he was diagnosed with leukemia and lymphoma.

“A lot of us have been waiting for this a long time. A lot of us have been working toward this for a very long time,” said Watler, who juggles her protest schedule with her appointments with clients.

Some evenings, she brings her massage table to the plaza and offers a free session to anyone who asks.

“I was able to give massages to people who had never received body work before. People who were in pain,” she said. It’s one of her favorite memories of the past two weeks.

Jesse Reichart of Lebanon is studying solar energy technology at Miller-Motte Technical College.

Today, he was dropping off a bag of warm winter clothes for Occupy Nashville participants. This weekend, he and his father are planning to come down and camp out. His father is one of the nation’s “long-term unemployed,” he said, and he’s worried about finding work once he graduates.

“We’re not all crazy lefto wackos,” he said.



First, not to split semantic hairs, but ghosts of English teachers past are volunteering me to respectfully, if irreverently, share with Mr. Reichart that calling yourself a "crazy wacko" is redundant.

Kind of like calling yourself a talentless Kardsashian.

Then again, those whose view of the political horizon comes strictly from the starboard side would probably have no problem calling their port side counterparts both crazy and wacko.

Sticks and stones.

Having sufficiently digressed, though...

Here's the thing.

One recurring theme throughout any and all media blathering about the "Occupy fill in the name of your favorite participant" is the apparent inability of the aforementioned media to determine the answer to the $64,000 question (1.2 million, adjusted for inflation.)

"...uh, what do they want?"

No one seems to know.

If any eyebrows arched, eyes rolling observer knows, they ain't sayin'.

And if any of those on the stand up and be counted side know, they are, admittedly, not doing much of a job of articulating their agenda.

I have a theory.

Imagine that.

I don't think there is an agenda.

Or, at the very least, a checklist.

At some point, or points, in every society's timeline, there are periods where the status quo reaches critical mass, when what is, is simply no longer acceptable or, more to the point, tolerable.

At that point, simple human nature demands that revolution begins.

And just like a novel destined to become classic, the ending is not always necessarily known, or even completely formulated, at the beginning.

In some measure, it's like the quote attributed to, among others, Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle.

"...go as far as you can see...and when you get there, you'll see farther..."

Those who "occupy" are the latest wave of revolution, following, from my P.O.V, the birth of the Tea Party whose genesis was that same rejection of the status quo.

Whether there will be a next wave and another and another or whether the revolution will be put down by those who aren't ready to part with the status quo (think the British trying to keep the colonists down and substitute the greedy trying to keep the middle and lower class down)...

...only time will tell.

The pseudo intellectual circle jerk effort to determine "...uh, what do they want?" is, at worst, an exercise in futility.

And, at best, it is unnecessary.

Because it's the wrong question.

And the right question has an easy, and obvious, answer.

"...uh, what don't they want...?"

Any more of the same old shit.

Any longer.

"...Let's Do Chuck....Chuck, Chuck, Bo Buck, Banana Fanna......"

As if our psyches weren't already standing room only with angst and/or guilt issues, there's a new kid in town.

Name remorse.

(Yahoo.com) What's in a name? Everything. That's why baby-naming books fuel a tireless sector of the publishing industry and why 8 percent of new parents wake up with night sweats fearing they've made the wrong choice.

A new poll, conducted by yourdomainename.com, found that almost one tenth of parents regret the name they've given their child. That's up from 3 percent compared to polls conducted in recent years.

So what's with all the remorse? Two words: Peer pressure.

More than half of the regretful parents surveyed said they opted for names that were trendy or fashionable (Apple, anyone?) in the moment. Thirty-two percent said their child's name ended up being more common then they first imagined.

"Just as our desire for interesting names is rising, so too is our obsession with choosing the right name," Laura Wattenburg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard" tells The Guardian. "Parents willing to go out and change a name is becoming more common because they are conscious they are sending their child out into a competitive landscape, so branding them for success makes sense. If the brand name doesn't work in the first instance, change it."

A baby isn't a brand, but sometimes, a little focus grouping can make parents rethink their gut impulses.

"I first got an inkling that we had given our baby the wrong name when another mother peered into his pram and said loudly, 'So, do you pronounce it Ralph or Raef?' It wasn't the mispronunciation that made me cringe but how horrible she made the word sound; all hoity-toity with ugly, drawn-out vowels," writes Lena Corner, a UK-based mom who changed her son's name from Ralph to Huxley after weeks of agonizing over the decision she made on her son's birth certificate.

For moms of multiples, there's also concern over how kids' names sound together. One mom wrote about her remorse on a parenting forum after she named her twin daughters Rosalie and Violet. "We realized that we didnt like the two-flower thing," she writes. "Within weeks we were becoming more and more embarrassed to even say the name that we had originally chosen for Rosalie, and always found ourselves introducing baby Violet first, since we both loved that name. Silly. I know. But true."

Because naming your child is one of those things you can "prepare for" before birth, a lot of parents find themselves rethinking their decision once they meet the little stranger.

After adopting baby Gabriella, one mom who shared her story on a fertility forum decided her daughter was more of an Abigail. "I had always said I would keep one of the names her mother gave her... But after about a month it wasn't working." So they nicknamed her Abby and kept her legal birth name the same. "Sometimes the name just doesn't fit the child and we have to do what's best for the everyone in the long run."

For parents who want to make a name change official, the process can be arduous. According to experts, a child doesn't recognize his or her name for about five months. But the legal system can take a lot longer than that. Depending on your state, the process involves a petition, a court order and anywhere from $65 to $150 in application fees. That's not accounting for additional legal fees if you hire a lawyer.

But for some parents all the paperwork is worth the reward. "Huxley is now 15 months old and "Ralph" just a far-off bad memory," writes Corner in The Guardian. "It was a difficult thing to do, but at least he's got the right name now."

Like you, I'm guessing, I did, upon reading that piece, a fast mental inventory of my own culpability, or lack thereof, during my turn at dealing out the designations.

Personally, I think I'm good.

First born we named Matthew Aaron. Solid, respectful, classy but not stuffy, a little Biblical while not excessively evangelical (and, truth be told, the Scriptural connotation was value added, we just liked the sound of the name).

No harm, there.

Next born we named Andrew Peyton. Again, solid, stylish while not trendy, classy in a founding fathers/amber waves of grain kind of way, a reverent, but not overwrought, nod to the family lineage (Peyton was the name of a respected uncle [this was years before anyone besides his own family had even heard of the Colts quarterback for those of you who went there])

No foul, there.

Their progeny, I'm proud to proclaim, benefited from the unwritten, but unmistakable, tradition of naming their own with class without cringe, glamour without gimmick and, to a kid, names that reflect who they have, to date, become.

Ella Marie...classic but contemporary, intelligent but hip, savvy but sweet, the eldest of three, but, so far and, I'm confident, from here on out, forever young at heart...

Claire Elizabeth...traditional but unique, classy but brassy, a kid who has a natural ability at balancing being the middle child and putting her own special stamp on this, that and those around her...

Matthew Aaron, Jr....another of those respectful nods to the family (even those the nod-ee in this case is sleeping in the master bedroom with Mom as opposed to heaven with the angels), but very much his own little man from his athletic abilities to his gracious handling of what has to be the mixed blessing of physically resembling a kid named Bieber...

Olivia Paige...a lovely, old fashioned name for a lovely, new fashioned kid who has sass, spunk, style and a sweet smile in her presentation...and that's in just the first five years, the next five should be quite a story...

Six people, two generations.

Not bad, if I do name it not bad myself.

Admittedly, our family, like all families, is not without blemish.

My brother, Blake, dodged the bullet of being named Hugo back in the day.

All due respect to Hugos everywhere.

And my sister, having been stylishly named Laurel Ann, once went through a brief post divorce period deciding that she was going to seek out true love only with men with the surname Hardy, if only for the enjoyment of the comedic effect.

I'll give you a second.

Laurel....Ann.......Hardy.

And, confession be offered, although I've never really been particularly comfortable with my own name (a combined tribute to a respected uncle somewhere and my own father), I suspect that therapy focused on that issue would likely reveal it was more about my lack of comfort with myself than what I'm called.

Well, that and I always saw myself as more of a Paul.

Or Ramon.

Wow. No issues there.

Bottom line...conscience clear on the name game. Every one in this world that I've had a hand, or DNA strand, in can go through life without the burden of living down, or up to, some foolish, vain and/or misguided act committed with pen and birth certificate.

Not a "Moonbeam" in the mob.

Okay. There is one stain on the psyche.

Through the years, I have, though I would offer that it was with best intentions, been guilty of totally blowing it when I handed out the handles.

In fact, to date, my batting average is damn close to zip.

Every time I name someone...

Congressman.

Senator.

Governor.

President.

On those, guilty as charged.

Feel free to call me any name you wish.

"...And Let's Not Forget The Indianapolis Colts..."

Evidence to the contrary around here, life isn't always about politics.

Sometimes, it's about learning new things.

As found, for example, in this article from Yahoo entitled...

"Things You Think Work But Actually Don't"

Most people are well aware of the placebo effect as it pertains to medicine. The idea is that simply thinking that a treatment will cure your symptoms is sometimes enough to make that treatment take effect. For instance, a patient who thinks he's taking Advil for a headache may see his headache go away even if he's swallowing a sugar pill meant to look like a painkiller. The effect is powerful enough that control groups in scientific studies of a treatment's effectiveness will be given a dummy treatment to control for the effect.

But the placebo effect is by no means limited to medicine. In our daily lives we constantly encounter situations where products or services don't work as promised. Yet far from stomping off to complain to someone, we instead come away convinced that the button we were pressing was doing exactly what it said it would. If a button says it will close the elevator doors but doesn't appear to have the desired effect, we still find a way to convince ourselves that it was doing what it said it would.

"Don't assume self-delusion is always willful or conscious," says David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart, a book about self-delusion. "We often engage in something called confabulation, which is basically making up a story we can believe in to explain away behavior we don't understand... We are very good at pattern recognition, and whether or not we have the story correct as to what is causing the pattern, we naturally learn to associate cause and effect."

In other words, if the button says it will close the elevator doors, and the elevator doors don't close until we've been pushing it for 20 seconds, we still manage to convince ourselves that our actions brought about the outcome. It's just like the guy who takes the sugar pill labeled "Advil" — when the headache goes away on its own after a couple of hours, he convinces himself that it was the pill that did the trick.

Here a few examples of how this phenomenon affects us on a daily basis.

The Elevator "Close Doors" Button

Let's start with the most obvious example: That pesky "close doors" button on the elevator. It's a fairly well-established fact that on most elevators it's what essentially amounts to a dummy button.

But it's not as if elevator manufacturers are installing an extra button just to give you an illusion of control. Indeed, McRaney says the button can be activated, but only by certain people.

"The close buttons don't close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States since the Americans with Disabilities Act," explains McRaney. "The button is there for workers and emergency personnel to use, and it only works with a key."

Sure, they could put a sign on the panel explaining the situation to elevator riders, but as McRaney points out, it's hard to justify the time and money it would take. And besides, we'd probably keep pressing it anyway, convinced that this time it will work.

"HD" TV

We're not suggesting that HD TVs aren't really high-definition, though the various technical terminology might make it hard to determine just how good the picture quality really is. But for some people, simply seeing the "HD" label on the TV is enough to convince them that the picture is better, even if they don't have the proper connection or they're not watching an HD channel. Simply being told that it's an HD picture is enough to convince them that the picture is better, and it isn't until their grandkids come over and show them how to find the HD channels that they realize they'd been deluding themselves.

This isn't just anecdotal, though. Dutch scientists conducted a study in 2009 in which 60 people were shown an identical video clip on identical TVs. However, half of them were told that the clip would be in high-definition, and the scientists even attached an extra-thick cable to the back of the TV to complete the charade. The control group was told to expect a normal DVD image.

Afterwards they were asked to describe the picture quality. You can imagine which group thought it was watching the nicer picture.

Of course, at this point HD TVs are ubiquitous enough that most people know when they're seeing a high-definition picture or not. And as one of the scientists explained to New Scientist magazine, the gap between standard definition and high definition is smaller in Europe than it is in the U.S., so it wouldn't be as effective here.

Still, it's a good reminder that an assurance that something is "high quality" doesn't just make it more likely that you'll buy the product — it may also subtly influence your enjoyment of it.

Walk Signal Buttons

Many cities and towns have buttons at crosswalks that allow a pedestrian to speed up the arrival of a walk signal. And in many places, they do exactly what they promise to do.

But not everywhere.

The City of New York admitted several years ago that most of the "push button, wait for walk signal" buttons were no longer active, having long ago been replaced by automated systems that keep all the lights on a set timer. That makes them placebo buttons just like the close door buttons on an elevator.

"Just as with the elevators, it would be expensive to replace or remove all of the non-functioning buttons or to inform the public through some sort of media campaign," explains McRaney. "There is no obvious harm in letting the people in your town keep impotently jamming crosswalk buttons."

And many people will keep pushing away — perhaps a holdover from a time when they remember the buttons working, or perhaps because occasionally they'll get lucky and the light will change right after they push.

Again, in many municipalities these buttons actually do work. In 2008, an investigation by Canada.com found that there weren't any such placebo buttons in Victoria, Canada, though city officials admitted that the buttons varied in effectiveness.

Butt-Toning Shoes

In the case of elevator and walk signal buttons, there's no deliberate deception involved — technology just changed, and nobody bothered to inform the people who were still pressing away in vain. But sometimes you have the classic case of a company making claims that it can't back up.

Case in point: Reebok was just ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to pay $25 million in refunds for claiming that its "toning" shoes would strengthen and tone the thighs and butts of people who wore them. The FTC also banned the company from making similar claims in future advertisements.

The decision is a potential shot across the bow of other companies marketing similar shoes, whose rounded soles supposedly make your thigh and butt muscles do more work as you walk. Despite the big claims by companies like Reebok and Skechers, some experts are skeptical; USA Today last year quoted a professor of medicine who called such claims "utter nonsense" and suggested that their only effect could be to destabilize the Achilles tendon.

Despite these doubters, many customers are quite pleased with their purchase. In a statement responding to the FTC decision, a Reebok spokesman insisted that the company had received "overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback from thousands of EasyTone customers." And while that's probably a bit of corporate over-exaggeration, we don't doubt that many customers did indeed come away feeling like the shoes had improved their butt. Maybe the shoes really did the trick. Or maybe they just thought it did.

Office Thermostats

We hate to break it to you, but big companies aren't just going to let a chilly employee crank the heat up whenever he or she pleases. But if they simply locked the thermostat or put the controls out of reach, the employees would constantly complain.

The solution: A thermostat that doesn't actually do anything but placate the chilly masses.

"In many offices the controls on the wall don't do anything," says McRaney. "Some bosses and landlords feel like they can't trust people not to fiddle with the temperature all day and thus cost them money, so they install dummy thermostats which give people the illusion of control. They work really well, as most people fool themselves into believing they feel the change."

When pressed, most technicians tasked with installing the devices admit that they're merely window dressing. A 2003 investigation by The Wall Street Journal quoted one HVAC technician who estimated that 90% of office thermostats were completely fake (though other technicians gave lower estimates).

We haven't seen any study confirming that people feel warmer after fiddling with these props. But let's be honest: If they didn't work, offices wouldn't bother installing them.

My guess, after reading all of this, is that it's likely that you already knew about some, but not necessarily all, of the items listed and described.

That was true for me.

Thing is, though, given the title of the article, "Things We Think Work But Actually Don't", I have to admit to being surprised at the glaring omission of what think we all think probably ranks as number one on the list.

Congress.

Come to think of it, maybe, in one way or another, life really is always about politics.

"...There Truly Are Forces Beyond Our Comprehension...And We Move Them Around Every Four Years Or So..."

Here's an amazing story.

Subliminal pun absolutely intended.


By Sally Quinn, Special to CNN

When I tell people I have a labyrinth and that I walk it regularly, most have no idea what I’m talking about.

They think a labyrinth is a maze, a place you walk into and then have trouble finding your way out.

In fact it is just the opposite. A labyrinth is a place you go to get found.

For many, walking the labyrinth is a religious experience. There are many famous labyrinths in churches, the most famous being the one on the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France, which dates to the 13th century.

Others see it as more spiritual. Some find it a meditation tool or walk it simply for the peace and serenity that come from being alone and contemplating a problem or issue.

For me it is all of those things. It is a sacred space.

I first encountered a labyrinth at a California spa about 15 years ago. I’d never heard of a labyrinth before and, though some at the spa said it had changed people’s lives, I was skeptical.

But I agreed to give it a try. There was a ceremony in the evening, with torches and drums, and about 30 of us there to do the walk.

I loved the ritual but didn’t really get much out of it. Too many people.

Still, there was something that appealed to me. So the next day, I went up to the grove of live oaks on the hill where the labyrinth was situated. There was nobody there.

I paused at the entrance and took in the surroundings. There was a slight breeze whispering though the leaves and the late afternoon sun had warmed the circle.

I began concentrating on my son Quinn, who had severe learning disabilities at the time and was in a special school. What would become of him? We had had a particularly difficult year and I was in despair.

I entered the labyrinth and began to make my way slowly toward the center. Once I got there I sat down and looked straight ahead. My eyes fell on a huge pine tree in front of me that I hadn’t noticed before.

It had beautiful spreading boughs, as though it was embracing the circle of the labyrinth. It was one of the prettiest trees I had ever seen and it was the only pine amid the live oaks.

I suddenly experienced a shocking stroke of clarity. That tree was Quinn.

He was different from all the other trees but he was more beautiful than they were. I began to cry. How could I not have realized this all along?

That moment transformed my whole view of my son and of me, along with my attitude toward his problems. Not only was he beautiful but he could use his differences to his advantage, helping others at the same time.

The following year I had a reservation to go back to the same spa. Quinn was scheduled to have cognitive testing the week before I left. At the last minute, they had to change the date for when I was to be away.

My husband convinced me to go anyway.

The hour of his testing I went up to the labyrinth, found my way to the circle and concentrated on Quinn for the whole time I knew he would be doing tests.

Later, when we went back to the hospital for the results, we were not optimistic. Quinn had performed poorly on most of the earlier tests. But the doctors said he had the highest score of anyone they had ever seen on one of the tests.

“What was that?” I asked. “The maze,” said the doctor.

Since then, Quinn has written a book, “A Different Life,” about growing up with learning disabilities (we now refer to them as learning differences) and has launched a website called friendsofquinn.com for young adults with learning differences and their friends and families.

He is happily married and has a full and successful life.

I’m not sure I can totally attest to the fact that this is because of walking the labyrinth that first day. But I can say this: Because I told him about my experience with the pine and the oaks, he decided to make a life using his problems to help others.

He has completely accepted who he is and his limitations and has a sense of humor about himself and his issues. His motto for the site is “own it.” And he has.

Does all this add up to a religious experience? Call it what you will. All I know is that my life has become much richer by walking the labyrinth.

Mine is modeled after the one at Chartres Cathedral. It is a 50-foot concrete circle on a slope overlooking a river in the country southern Maryland, surrounded by woods.

It has a path carved into it leading to the center, which is where I meditate.

I always begin my labyrinth walk by concentrating on something I need to find an answer to. I walk slowly at first, really trying to lose myself in my thoughts. The slowness is important because it gives me time to focus on whatever the issue is.

Once I get to the center of the circle, I start meditating. Sometimes I just stand and look out at the river. I might stay there for 10 or 15 minutes.

Other times I sit cross-legged for an hour or so. There are times, too, where I lie down in a spread eagle position or in a corpse pose, or chaturanga, and close my eyes.

I’ve stayed in those positions for hours at a time, completely losing myself to the experience

For me, achieving clarity is the most important benefit of walking the labyrinth. It has happened so many times that I now expect it.

I can walk in the woods or on the beach for hours, thinking about a problem and not be able to come up with a solution. Yet I can spend 15 or 20 minutes on the labyrinth and solve everything.

Supposedly the folded path pattern on the labyrinth mimics the pattern of our brains. Whatever it is, it works for me.


Ms. Quinn's sharing impacted me on several levels, among them the fact that I had, sometime back, a similar experience.

Went like this...

It was a Tuesday, as I recall, autumn, the air filled with that crispness that only the first teasing winds of winter can provide.

After mercifully reaching the just past five phase of yet another underpaid, overtaxed nine to five, I found myself standing in a long line of people. A virtual melting pot of faces, races, creeds, colors and genders (well, actually just two genders that I could be sure of, but, who's to say there wasn't a Chaz Bono type or two quietly in the queue?).

The line moved forward, but at a turtle's pace, not unlike, come to think of it, another day at the DMV or the express lane at the Winn Dixie, you know that feeling, the feeling that you're going to grow old and die there, missing out on the wedding of your child, the birth of your grandchildren, your own fiftieth anniversary surprise party because no one on this mortal coil seems to know how to either fill out a license renewal application correctly or grasp the numerical complexity of having less than fifty items at the checkout clearly marked for ten items or less.

Nearly overcome with a sense of defeat and despair, I felt an urgent temptation to give up, to just walk away, to get out off that excruciatingly slow conveyor, leave that line and try to wander my way back to some sense of reality.

Something made me stand there, though. Maybe it was that innate sense we all possess that tells us that, regardless of the darkness, there is a light to be found if we just remain steadfast in our faith, if we just believe that we can achieve.

Then again, maybe it was that feeling we all have that we've made it this far with the ice cream starting to drip in our little plastic grocery basket and we're bound, damned and determined to have our moment at the scanner.

Whatever the motivation, I knew I had to see this thing through.

Soon, well, not soon, but eventually, I came to a clearing of the masses, the line more behind me than ahead, the herd thinned, enough for me to see what I had not been able to see before.

A curtain, open just enough for me to see there was something of interest behind, still closed just enough to entice and intrigue me. A glimmer of light here, a flash of illumination there and the every now and then sound of a ding, not unlike that ding you hear when the elevator door opens or when that department store ding thing goes off and you find yourself pondering, for a fleeting moment, what the hell is dinging in the housewares/mens's fragrance department of Macy's?

Instinctively, I walked slowly to the curtain, tentative, unsure, yet guided by an inner voice, a voice that was telling me that if I simply stepped behind the curtain, took a leap of faith, ran head long toward the roar, I would find the answers I so longingly longed for and searchingly searched for.

And then...and I can't say exactly when (not so much because of the mysticism of the moment as much as the fact that my watch was running fast and there was no clock on the walls around me), I found myself behind that curtain, a curtain that closed quickly behind me, my heart skippingly skipping a beat, my pulse racingly racing, my head swimmingly swimming, my blood sugar obviously low from crashing after nothing more than a couple of Reese's Cups scarfed down while standing in that damn line for what seemed like a complete television season.

In front of me, simple in its simpleness, complex in its complexity, staggering in its staggeringish-ness-ity...the maze.

Buttons and levers and flippers (oh, my) and labels, oh the labels, names and titles and parenthesis and punctuations and each placed in a mathematically pristine order and alignment, like some kind of mechanical Rubik's Cube, beckoning me to find a solution, but silently mocking me, me, a mere human, standing on the doorstep of the horizon of the threshold of a plane of existence I could only begin to comprehend with merely a mortal's grasp of infinity and a wheelbarrow full of moxy to get me finishingly across the finish line.

Closing my eyes, breathing deeply and exhaling slowly, I summoned up whatever energy I could find in the deepest, most essential deep essential part of me and with no more than the belief that I could do what needed to be done and faith that it wasn't unbelievable to believe that I could do what needed to be done, I reached out and, as if guided by some inner nagging wife, let my fingers do their fingering, buttons pushingly pushed, flippers flippingly flipped, levers leveringly, well, levers leveled, a blinding, blurry frenzy of flying fingers, dancing digits, awesome appendages, I was man possessed, letting myself focus only on being totally unfocused, zeroing in only on being unzeroed, it was a precious few, positively pristine moments of pure human energy harnessed and yet not, effort spent and yet not, a watercolor painting gone all awry and askew, a steamy, foggy, hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer burp in the space time continuum, a really, really bad scene from one of those artsy fartsy movies that makes you feel like taking the director out and beating him bout the head and shoulders...and then......and then........and then.....

...as quickly as it had begun, and happened, it was over....my return to the awareness of my physical existence facilitated by the pushing of one last, final, aint no more buttons to push button...and that damn housewares/men's fragrance department ding thing.

The curtain behind me opened, I turned and I stepped into the harsh, and yet blinding, light of what felt in my heart of hearts place in my heart like a brand new day, a clean slate, a fresh beginning, a new chapter, another piece of pie, a fresh shirt, a new handi wipe not all grungy from that black shit that refused to come off the counter top...

...and the feeling I felt felt like no other feeling I had ever felt....a feeling that I had made it through the maze, that I had conquered the unconquerable, that I had defeated the undefeatable...

...I was amazed that I had mastered the maze...that I had labored the labyrinth, surmounted the solution, porked the puzzle....

And I knew, I just knew in that place where we know what we know and we eventually knew what we knew we would know that my efforts would not be in vain, that I had successfully navigated the sea of uncertainty and that my willingness to stick it out, to have faith, to believe, would result in a upheaval of evil unlike any in the history of mankind, a cry of freedom so loud that it didn't even come close to that cry of freedom Mel Gibson did in Braveheart, at the end there, when they put that really sharp and pointy thing, like, totally into his crotch.

The maze mastered, I knew the clouds would clear and the fog would fade and the mist would, well...not be misty.

Turns out, later that night, when all the returns were counted, those who won gave the same tired victory speeches, those who lost gave the same tired concession speeches and by the start of business the next day, they were all back to recognizing the gentleman/woman from the great state of whatever and hosing us with just about every move they made.

Sally Quinn seems like a nice lady.

And she seems to have found some kind of peace at the end of her labyrinth.

Maybe she should take a crack at using that ability for the good of all.

And run for Congress.

"...Leave Us A Cassette...We'll Count The Ballots and Get Back To You..."

Pop quiz.

What do Washington, D.C and Nashville, Tennessee have in common?

Answer in a moment.

This whole "will Chris Christie run?" thing has, today, reached it's most recent conclusion. (Truthfully, if flip flop was a political liability "pre-running" this guy would be finished before he got out of the gate).

He's not running.

The real "sub-plot" of this whole "will or won't he" thing, though, is being, in large part, overlooked.

The Republican candidate field isn't lacking in numbers. From Romney to Perry to Huntsman to Cain (on Bachmann, Santorum and Donner and Blitzen), the stage seems to have more bodies than the audience at the debates to date.

The field, though, apparently hasn't popped up a stand out.

And the Christie clamor is the best proof that their very best seems to be a choice between fair to middlin and don't do nothin' for us.

Doesn't take a political science major to tell us that doesn't bode well for the Grand Old Party animals.

And the whole thing wafts me back to my Nashville songwriter days.

Many the times, I brought a tape of my three very best, out of the box sure thing hits to this publisher or that producer, ready to be hailed as the next big thing and see my material snatched up like a bottle of Evian on a Texas prairie summer day, only to hear, after all three uberhits had been auditioned, the phrase that any songwriter who has dared to bare has hoped and prayed they wouldn't hear.

I heard it a lot.

And,now, the Republican Party seems have found a use for it as well.

With a roster of candidates both tried and true, both veteran and new, the GOP is still turning its lonely eyes in other directions.

And, with Chris Christie as the most recent and obvious example, Washington D.C. and Nashville, Tennessee now seem to have found some commonality, in their respective applications of the phrase that pays...

"What else ya got?"

"...If He Gets Stoned and Goes On Morning Talk TV, It's Just A Family Tradition..."

Hank Williams, Jr. is, I believe, on record as being a Republican.

At this moment, I think we can all feel a little sympathy for Republicans.



One viewer, posting online upon seeing that interview, put it this way...

"...Because we as a nation look to Hank Williams Jr. for his insight on how to cure a troubled world..."

Couldn't have put it better myself.

"...Best If Used By Election Day 2012..."

Today's musical guest/faux political commentator...

Jerry Lee Lewis.

So to speak.

"...come on over baby / whole lotta "isms" goin on..."

1. Capitalism-
Noun: An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

2. Fascism-
Noun: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

3. Marxism-
Noun- The economic and political theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that hold that human actions and institutions are economically determined and that class struggle is needed to create historical change and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism.


4. Communism-
Noun- A political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

5. Socialism-
Noun- A political and economic theory of that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

For those who lack the time, inclination and/or patience to dissect the data, here's the the way it shakes out.

Subscription, up to and/or bordering on passionate fervor, to any one, or any combination, of numbers two through five...

Democrat.

Subscription, up to and/or bordering on religious frenzy, to number one...

Republican.

Oh...and pit bull like subscription to number one while plotting swift and punitive retribution on any/every one who even acknowledges the existence of numbers two through five?...

Tea Party.

Okay, pathological smart ass-ness notwithstanding, let's label this for what it is.

Labeling-

Noun-Attach a label to (something),assign to a category, esp. inaccurately or restrictively.

Pay particular attention to those last three words.

Inaccurately or restrictively.

Walking around the house naked doesn't make you a nudist.

Listening to Lady Gaga or Katy Perry doesn't make you a fan (especially since you can rarely even turn a radio on these days without hearing one or the other).

And belief and/or subscription to one "ism" or another doesn't make you Democrat, Republican or Tea Party.

And let's not even get started on "ists".

Or colors.

America is not a blue state country.

America is not a red state country.

If anything, America is a purple state country.

A mixture of red and blue, America is a country made up of 311 million (give or take) people from all races, creeds, colors, religious, sexual and spiritual orientations who, by and large, simply want, if nothing else, to do fulfilling work, worship their God, feed and clothe their families, send their kids to a decent school, live in a safe neighborhood and have enough money left at the end of the week to see "The Lion King 3-D" in theaters, having seen it the minimum kid quota of seventy five times on DVD at home.

One reason "the American people" are so disheartened, discouraged and/or disgusted with politics is that politicians spend too much time labeling.

And, as any purple state housewife can testify, it's hard to see the quality of the peanut butter when the label gets in the way.

"...Forget 'How Low Can You Go?'...Let's Go With 'How Far CAN You Put That Tongue Into Your Cheek?'..."

Watching "The O'Reilly Factor" last night while simultaneously laptop editing a new book and playing Jewel Quest Solitaire (I was A.D.D. from about the time Bill and his generation were taking their S.A.T.'s)and found myself torn away from both book and board game just about the time....

....he introduced a segment this way...

"...and now, with a perspective on how the Obama administration is failing the country economically, let's turn to former Bush advisor and political guru, Karl Rove..."

First, don't let anybody kid you.

Bill O'Reilly is one witty mofo.

Second, here's the thought.

Turning to Karl Rove for a "no spin" perspective on anything the Obama administration is doing is a little like.......

"...and now, with a perspective on how Christianity is failing the country spiritually, let's turn to former Christian advisor and fallen angel, Satan...."

Personally, I zealously defend Karl's right to his opinion.

At the same time, I don't usually look for fresh perspective on race relations from Grand Wizards.

Bill, Karl, seriously....

You guys crack me up.

"...Sometimes, The Problem With Turning The Other Cheek Is That It Requries Turning A Blind Eye..."

Louis Costanza understood it forty years ago.

It took me a little longer.

More on that in a minute.


(CNN) -- The U.S. drone killing of American-born and -raised Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a major figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has re-energized a national debate over the legal and moral quandaries of a government deliberately killing a citizen.

The issue has been roiling throughout the U.S. campaign against terrorism, but Friday's drone missile killing of al-Awlaki and a second American, Samir Khan, provided a stark, concrete case of a U.S. policy that authorizes death for terrorists, even when they're Americans, analysts said.

A government source who was briefed Friday morning by the CIA confirmed the U.S. missile strike, which killed two other people in a car in Yemen.

While President Obama on Friday applauded the U.S. action as "a major blow" against al Qaeda, civil libertarians assailed the U.S. decision to kill a citizen.

"The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law," ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. "As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts."

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul denounced Obama for "assassinating" al-Awlaki, saying that the American cleric should have been tried in a U.S. court.

"If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it's sad," Paul told reporters after a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, Friday.

"Al-Awlaki was born here, he's an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes," Paul said. "To start assassinating American citizens without charges - we should think very seriously about this."

But U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the lethal strike was lawful.

"It was entirely legal. If a citizen takes up arms against his own country, he becomes an enemy of the country. The president was acting entirely within his rights and I fully support the president," King said.

Al-Awlaki was believed by U.S. authorities to have inspired acts of terrorism against the United States, including a fatal shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, and the December 25 bombing attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Detroit.

His facility with English and technology made him one of the top terrorist recruiters in the world, and he was considered the public face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.


First things first.

Any reasonable, God fearing human being is entitled to the mixed feelings that are inevitable when a life is intentionally taken.

From "thou shalt not..." to "...judgement is mine, saith...", residence on the mortal coil comes fully loaded with suggestions, guidelines, rules and regs regarding what we can, and cannot, should, and should not, do when it comes to dealing with our fellows.

And anyone who callously and dispassionately ends the life of another deserves whatever retribution awaits.

Here and now.

Or later and wherever.

Simply put, killing anyone for any reason in this life should, at the very least, give one pause.

That said, terrorism, by its nature, is custom made to exploit the very quality in our natures that inspires that pause.

Compassion.

And the accompanying, spiritually instinctive desire to find a way, any way, to forgive our transgressors their transgressions.

Meanwhile, terrorism, as opposed to more historically conventional forms of warfare, operates without any sense of parameter, any sense of "fair or unfair", any acknowledgement that there are any lines that should not, must not and/or will not be crossed.

Religious fanatics in this day and age would view a "Geneva Convention" as a Hyatt Regency full of partying Swiss.

And would have a good laugh amongst themselves about it in the last moments before they landed a passenger jet on the eightieth floor.

All due respect to the voices who are crying out in protest of the methodology employed in the killing of Al-Awlaki, I'm prepared to make what I think would be a compelling case for the argument that this death was no more an "assassination" than was the killing of thousands in Hiroshima in 1945.

And, as a value added to my case, I would offer that until we, all of us, figure out that it is precisely the quality of compassion in our own hearts that those who would terrorize us are counting on in their own hearts to achieve their goals, we will continue to be victimized and terrorized.

In 1945, the United States dropped a big bomb and killed thousands of people to put a stop to an evil entity.

This past week, the United States dropped a small bomb with the same purpose.

And killed three people in pursuit of that purpose.

Forty years ago, my brother-in-law, Louis Costanza listened very patiently as we sat together at a dining room table and I, in my then seventeen year old, Kennedy-esque, we are the world way, lamented the need for more understanding, peace, love and Kumbayah in those turbulent times.

When I finished, he smiled and, again patiently, in his own early twenties way, said to me,

"You're a very compassionate guy....someday that will be your undoing.."

I remember the exact wording clearly after all this time because I remember that it came as a slap to my psyche.

I didn't understand and I didn't like the sound of it one damn bit.

Truth be told, I still don't like the sound of it.

But I understand.