What happens if we can't trust anyone?

A very rich, very well-respected man killed himself today, another of the victims in Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme that has victimized some of the wealthiest, most influential people in the world.

Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, whose family name is among those listed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, apparently opened his veins with a box cutter and took sleeping pills in his office. He didn't leave a note, but the word is that his investment decisions that put his clients into Madoff's scheme will result in a 10-figure loss.

I don't know why he killed himself, whether it was because he was ruined financially and would no longer be rich or that he felt a sense of dishonor over what his decisions had cost his clients, among whom are Liliane Bettencourt, the world's wealthiest woman.

One of the hardest hit investors in Madoff's scheme is hedge fund Fairfield Greenwich Group, which reportedly lost $7.5 billion. FGG is being sued for failing to protect its investors.

Now $50 billion seems like a lot of money, and I'm sure that if you or I squandered $50 billion, we probably would lose sleep over it. But in the overall scheme of things -- mostly meaning numbers so large they're beyond our comprehension -- it's a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Really. A recent study by Oliver Wyman, the management-consulting firm that’s part of Marsh & McLennan, total wealth held by the world’s financial millionaires is $50 trillion.

That's right, with a "t," and those are just the millionaires. So even if $50 billion with a "b" has vanished from their accounts, that's one-tenth of one percent of their wealth. It means that of every million these guys have, they lost $1,000.

Of course that's ridiculous. A lot of really rich people didn't have any money invested with Madoff, so a lot of people who couldn't afford to lose money probably lost some through their 401(k) accounts or other investments.

That's not the biggest problem here, though.

The biggest problem is that the last 30 years of Reagans, Bushes and Clintons have cost us so much of our regulatory safety net that an awful lot of Americans have to be wondering where -- if anywhere -- they can put their money and feel safe about it.

I was invested relatively conservatively in my 401(k), but I've lost almost a third of its value this year. And that's with a reputable company.

Our economy is tanking, but half the stories about the money the Bush Administration is using to bail out the financial sector are about how much of it is going to year-end bonuses and other perks for executives. There's little or no federal oversight of the bailout; Bush has so hollowed out the federal government that it barely works anymore.

I don't know what's going to happen if people completely lose faith, if they start putting their money into their mattresses instead of their retirement accounts. There really is still a chance that our entire economy could implode.

I'll tell you what would really hurt. If Madoff winds up with a short sentence in some country-club jail and still gets to keep some of the money he stole, we are going to see riots in the streets.

Too bad he didn't have the decency to kill himself.

It's looking like a devilish future

"What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing.

"He will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance ... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen."

-- AARON ALTMAN, "Broadcast News," 1987


A report out of Denver says that Dean Singleton, who owns the Denver Post, is taking advantage of the woes of the competing Rocky Mountain News to tell his unions that he needs to cut $20 million in operating expenses to remain competitive.

Here's what it means:

Within the next 2-3 years, Denver may just become the first major American city without a metropolitan daily newspaper.

The Rocky has been losing money for a long time and may not survive. Many newspaper owners would be happy to lose their competition, but that isn't enough for Singleton. He's using the weakness of his competitor to go after his own employees.

I was one of those employees for more than eight years at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, and I saw Singleton and his minions cut our staff from one that was doing an outstanding job covering its own area as well as reaching out to do important projects to one that almost disappeared as a force in its coverage area.

In 1999, we had two columnists, excellent Hollywood coverage and a strong sports department as well as top-flight local coverage. Our owner, Donrey Media, wasn't known for paying well, but we still managed to have a good, experienced staff.

Within five years, our staff had been cut by half and we were sharing coverages with the San Bernardino Sun, which previously had been our most bitter competitor. This is vintage Singleton. He combines all his papers in a region to save money. That means seven or eight papers in Los Angeles all use the same reporter to cover the Dodgers, or the Lakers, or USC football.

It also means less regional, national and international coverage, with the Associated Press picking up most of the slack.

It means less talk about getting the story or covering the news and more about "servicing our customers."

In Southern California, Singleton's people just announced that six different newspapers -- the Sun, the Daily Bulletin, the Redlands Daily Facts, the Whittier News, the Pasadena Star-News and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune -- are going to share a copy desk at San Gabriel.

It's "more efficient," which of course means fewer copy editors doing more work, and it will certainly mean editors who may never even have visited Redlands or San Bernardino editing stories about those cities.

Lower standards, bit by bit.

Flash over substance.

Several years ago, Singleton's minion who is in charge of all those papers gave us a speech about why the railroads vanished. They thought they were in the railroad business, when they were really in the transportation business.

He said we needed to be aware that we're not in the newspaper business, we're in the information business.

So if newspapers disappear in favor of Blackberries, laptop computers or PDAs, it's really no big deal as long as the folks who own the newspapers can still make money off them.

Sound like someone has been taking lessons from the Devil?

It isn't about covering the news, or holding out for the truth, or forcing government to be responsive to its citizens.

Nope, it's about keeping that revenue stream coming.

My old friend and editorial cartoonist Gordon Campbell says the current media is vanishing and the future will all be about "citizen journalists" blogging and posting the news on the Web.

God help us. How will anyone ever be able to tell the difference between truth and lies, gold and pyrite, silk and straw? Without responsibility for what they publish, folks can put anything out there and half the people in the country will believe it.

"Rush Limbaugh sodomized by amorous rhino"

I posted that in a satirical piece a couple of weeks ago, making very clear that it had never happened. But I would be willing to bet I could go almost that far with an outrageous lie and plenty of folks would believe me.

I've always wondered why newspapers are run for profit anyway. Why shouldn't they be not-for-profit, semi-public enterprises dedicated to the truth above and beyond the balance sheet?

Riddle me this: What other for-profit business has Constitutional protections?

If newspapers are going to survive in this country -- heck, maybe if telling truth to power is going to survive -- we need to get rid of the Singletons and force newspapers to be run for some reason other than lining people's pockets.

It isn't too late, but it's getting there.

Immigrant shows us best of being American

Most of us can only dream of handling tragedy with as much grace as Dong Yun Yoon, the San Diego man who lost his entire family when an out-of-control F/A-18D Hornet fighter on a training mission crashed into his home Monday.

The plane crashed after the pilot ejected to save his own life, but the South Korean immigrant's words for the Marine flier were only kind.

"I heard the pilot is safe. Please pray for him not to suffer from this accident. I know he is one of our treasures for our country. I don't blame him. I don't have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could."

Actually, he blamed himself and told the press of his father-in-law, who was on the way from Korea to grieve for his lost wife, his daughter and his granddaughters.

"I don't know what to tell him. I don't know how he'll ever forgive me."



There has been a lot of talk this year about greatness, and millions of Americans believe that we have elected a great man to be our next president. I believe that's yet to be seen, although I like Barack Obama and have high hopes for his presidency.

But there is one thing I do know.

Dong Yun Yoon is a great man.

A great American.

Amazing baby has flown the coop

Our three weeks with my lovely granddaughter Madison Kastner, aka the Amazing Baby, ended Saturday when her parents took her north to Seattle for three weeks with the other grandparents.

They'll be there through Christmas before returning home to Beijing in time for Maddie's first New Years Eve.

While they were here, my mother and my brother came out for the baby's baptism, and one picture was taken of baby, mother Pauline, grandmother Nicole and great-grandmother Yvonne. I haven't got that picture readily available, but here's one that cuts out the middle two generations and shows Maddie with her great-grandmother.

It's sad to realize we won't see the Amazing Baby till next summer, but we're happy to have had this time with her.

Au revoir, Madison.

There are many roads to Damascus

When I was much younger and far more callow -- I believe it was during the Nixon administration -- a friend and I shared a common hobby.

We made up lists of people who would be taken out and shot if we ruled the world, which is a pretty ridiculous hobby. Our lists weren't based on political opposition or good and evil, but mostly on people who offended our sensibilities. For example, we thought the Osmond Brothers were a pale imitation of the Jackson Five, so Donny and his siblings would have been on the list..

Ditto for people who brought 11 items into the 10-item line at the supermarket or folks who parked their cars across two spaces at the mall.

At any rate, with sunshine coming to Washington in the form of the Obama administration, I've heard people reviving my old game -- but with lesser penalties. Rush Limbaugh seems to be on a lot of those lists, and I can certainly understand why. The Fat Man has been a thorn in the side of decency for a long time now, and there are few messages more downright tacky than his unrestricted free-market drivel.

But as a Christian and an optimist, I'd rather see Rush change.

Not that it wouldn't sort of a hoot to hear one morning that Rush had slipped and fallen into the rhino cage at the zoo, leading to an amorous rhino deciding that the corpulent Mr. L looked like a pretty attractive mate.

"Limbaugh sodomized by amorous rhino"

Yes, there's a definite beauty to that headline, especially if we were to learn that he was with child, er, rhino. But I would be the first to admit how callow those thoughts are. I would much rather see Rush really read the Bible and realize there are few things Christ cared more about than doing right by the poor.

Imagine Rush telling his audience they ought to be contributing both time and money to help reduce poverty in America.

Now you and I both know that's never going to happen. Limbaugh isn't making $35-40 million a year to do anything other than stir up the yokels so that they don't realize how badly they're being sodomized by the rich.

But we can hope, and we can certainly try to change hearts and minds as we finally approach the end of the Bush years in Washington.

It's worth the effort.

Black Friday tragedy hits close to home

A lot of people are going to write a lot of nasty things about what happened at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., yesterday morning when shoppers trying to be first into the store at 5 a.m. for Black Friday specials knocked an employee down and trampled him to death.

We're going to hear how horrible our consumer society is, and how screwed up people's values are.

We might even hear mean stuff about the kind of people who shop at Wal-Mart.

Sorry, but none of that is the real story to me. This is the first year in the last eight that I wasn't out as a reporter Friday morning covering the pre-dawn rushes to get incredible bargains at the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

I've talked to people who waited in line 15, 20, even 30 hours to get things they could never come close to affording otherwise. And let me tell you, those lines are getting longer every year and it's not because the deals are getting better.

Yes, there's something in the air in those early-morning lines, and contrary to what you might think, it isn't greed.

It's desperation.

For the last six years in George W. Bush's America, people are working harder and harder for less and less money. Statistics I saw recently said productivity is up something like 20 percent over that time, while real wages are down between 1-2 percent.

Good old George Dubya accomplished what Ronnie Reagan only dreamed of; we're now the ultimate trickle-down society. Folks at the top get rich, and when they mess up they get bailed out. The rest of us stay up all night trying to get decent Christmas gifts for our kids.

I guarantee you there wasn't one person in line for those 50-inch plasma TV sets at $798 just to get a bargain. Everyone in line for one was there because it was the only way they could even dream of buying one.

I don't know what the other bargains were, but there are way too many of us now who can't afford the so-called "good life." Maybe that's a good thing and we'll eventually transition to a society based less on possessions and more on values.

Maybe.

But I guarantee you one thing: Before that happens, a lot more people are going to get trampled.

Time's perspective not always a comfort

It has been 10 months since one man brought my journalism career to a premature end, at least for now. And while I wrote recently about how this man and others in the company were without honor, I think there may actually be more to it.

I think for the last couple of years of my 29 years in the business, I might have been working for a man who was losing his mind.

I really don't know any other way to put it. So many of the things this man did were only borderline rational, and although I always wrote off his aggressiveness and his mood swings to "short man's syndrome," there might have been more to it.

I still remember the way he ranted at me again and again about how he was my boss when he called me in essentially to fire me, even though he extended it over a weekend. And he was completely infuriated when I refused to beg for my job during the second interview when he finished the task.

And when my last four words to him were "Steve, I forgive you," I honestly thought he wanted to hit me.

But the capper on it all came four weeks later. He had confiscated a piece of my personal property -- a Rolodex filled with phone numbers -- and I had asked that he return the Rolodex, even if he wanted to keep all the phone numbers.

My Rolodex came to me via UPS in an unmarked box -- broken into 15 or 16 pieces.

When it happened, I laughed at the thought that a vice president of a major media corporation had been so angered by the fact that I told him I forgave him that he felt the need to completely destroy my property.

But it's actually fairly creepy to realize someone hates you that much, and I'll admit I've had nightmares about it that have recurred time and again this year. I'm sure he would be happy to know that.

But I still forgive him. I've had a very relaxing year, and I've spent a lot more time with my lovely wife than I could when I was commuting 86 miles a day. My blood pressure is back to normal for the first time in a few years, which is also good. I'm pretty sure that's a direct result of not working for him anymore.

I do still have friends there, though, and I worry for them. I'm sure he isn't getting any better, and as the economy has turned down, he probably is feeling a lot more pressure.

I hope he can get some help.

I may be going back to work soon. I don't need to work, but I hate to see all my years in the newspaper business end on that note. If I do accept a job, though, I'm going to make sure of two things.

The people I work for need to be honorable -- and sane.

Living 115 years must be amazing

I found myself thinking about Edna Parker this week.

Parker, who died Wednesday in Shelbyville, Ind., had been the world's oldest person for the last year or so of her life. She was born April 20, 1893, so she didn't just live in three centuries during her 115-plus year on Earth. She inhabited them. She started school in the 19th century and was still urging people to get "more education" in the 21st century.

One part of her story made me feel very sad. She married her childhood sweetheart in 1913, when she was 20, and lost him in 1939 to a massive heart attack.

Imagine losing the love of your life when you're 46 and then living for another 69 years. She continued living alone in the farmhouse they had shared until she was 100 years old.

She lived long enough that she outlived both of her sons. When she died Wednesday, she was survived by five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren. Imagine getting to see four generations down the line past yourself; most of us never get to see more than two.

I have been overwhelmed by the miracle of my baby granddaughter, who was born just two months ago. I literally cannot comprehend seeing little Maddie as a grandmother with my great-great-grandchild in her arms. I cannot even imagine being at the halfway point of 115 years of life, of seeing the world in the year 2065.

I was in high school in 1965, and I have recently been reconnecting with some of my friends from those days. The thought of approaching a 100-year reunion at which I would certainly be the only attendee just blows my mind.

One of the saddest statements I've ever heard is that if you live long enough, you will lose everyone you loved. With so many descendants, that didn't happen to Edna.

I do hope that when she showed up at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter had something to say to her.

"Edna, we're glad you're finally here."

Thanksgiving is truly the weirdest holiday

Thanksgiving used to be so simple.

You got together, you watched football, you ate a massive turkey and you fell asleep. It was a big Norman Rockwell thing, and at least in the '50s and '60s, when many of us were kids, it was usually just your family and maybe a grandparent or three.

But the holiday has taken a real beating in the last couple of decades. We've read books, we've seen television shows and we've gone to movies showing us how grown-up baby boomers, some with kids and some without, have returned home loaded down with all their resentments.

This will be a strange holiday in a way. I haven't gone "home" for Thanksgiving in more than 20 years. When you live on the West Coast and your parents live on the East Coast, you tend to focus on Christmas when you can make it back at all.

This will be the first Thanksgiving since my dad died, and the first since my granddaughter was born. My mother and my younger brother are flying in for little Maddie's baptism this weekend, and they may or may not come over for dinner today. If they do, it'll be the first time in my memory that we have had four generations of our family in the same room.

That's sort of wonderful, but the dinner won't measure up. It'll be the first time I've made Thanksgiving dinner, and I didn't feel confident enough to tackle a turkey and stuffing. I'm doing a beef roast, along with numerous side dishes.

But it isn't without controversy. My wonderful son and his fiancee came over a little while ago, and Virgile let me know in no uncertain terms that he didn't find microwaveable mashed potatoes acceptable. Yes, he offered to make "real" mashed potatoes himself, but that didn't make me feel any better.

Oh, well. He's a great kid, and if this is the worst dysfunction our family has today, I suppose we almost qualify for a Norman Rockwell portrait.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The greatest athlete I ever saw

I was a sportswriter for nearly 17 years, and I have been a sports fan for nearly half a century.

A little while back, someone asked me who was the greatest athlete I ever saw. At the time I went back and forth between Michael Jordan and John Elway, with Wayne Gretzky out there on the fringes of the argument.

I settled on Elway, maybe just to be a little ornery, but I did see him do some amazing things as the Denver Broncos quarterback during the two years I lived in Colorado.

But I think overlooked the greatest -- mostly because I was counting only humans.



The only athletic performance I ever saw that literally gave me chills -- and not just the first time I saw it -- was Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. The horse they called Big Red had already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes and was trying to become the first horse since 1948 to win the Triple Crown.

Sham, a great horse in his own right, had battled Big Red valiantly twice, coming up second in both races, and he was battling him again deep into the backstretch.

But Secretariat broke his heart, pulling away to the most dominant victory in the history of the Triple Crown. He won the race by 30 lengths and his time in the race is still the fastest ever on dirt for a mile and a half.

The greatest athlete I ever saw?

Big Red, no doubt.

The ineffable sadness of being

The first time I met my lovely granddaughter, Madison Nicole, I was definitely happy. Maddy is a beautiful baby -- she doesn't carry any of my genes -- and a total delight. She slept on my chest for more than an hour on her parents' couch in Beijing.

That was five weeks ago, when Maddy was only about two weeks old.

Now she's closing in on two months, and she and her parents are visiting us in California. While she is growing beautifully, smiling and grabbing at things, and I'm very happy to see her, I'm feeling sort of a curious sadness as well.

I didn't know why at first, but now I'm starting to understand it.

My own experience with fatherhood began when my children were 12 and 7, so I never had the opportunity to enjoy them as infants. When I see my son-in-law Ryan carrying the baby and talking to her, I'm sort of sad that I never had the chance to do that. Both Pauline and Virgile already had experienced quite a bit by the time I met them, and they were definitely too big to hold in my arms and carry around.

It's funny. I married for the first time at 25 and for all intents and purposes it ended when I was 29. More than one person told me it was a blessing we hadn't had any children to be hurt by the divorce, and most of the time I agree with them. My life would certainly have been very different -- I would never be living in California, for one thing -- if I were a divorced dad.

We all make choices in life. We accept some things and miss out on others, but when my first wife and I split up, I would never have dreamed that I would be a month shy of my 43rd birthday when I remarried. I never would have dreamed that I would never father a child.

It's a very strange feeling to be happy and sad at the same time.

Very strange.

Amazing Baby appears on NORAD radar

The Amazing Baby, also known as my tiny little two-month old grand daughter Madison Nicole Kastner, is on her way to America.

As I write this, little Maddy is flying across the Pacific Ocean en route to Seattle. Her parents are following close behind in an airplane.

It will be wonderful to see her again. The first time I heard her voice, it was over a phone line. She was 10 minutes old. The first time I held her, in her parents' apartment in Beijing, she was about two weeks into her journey toward the 22nd century.

When she arrives at Burbank Airport this evening -- yes, in an airplane -- she will be a few days short of two months old. She and her parents will be visiting for three weeks, and my only regret is that baseball season is over and I won't be able to take her to a Dodger game.

Sure, the Lakers are playing, but it really isn't the same. This child needs to learn at an early age that baseball is more than just a sport, it's a way of life. I learned it from my grandfather and there's nobody better to teach her than me.

I can hardly wait.

Even the worst day on the golf course ...

I didn't really start playing golf until I was in my forties.

Oh, I had gone out a few times when I was younger, but I never really took up the game until my knee was too bad for basketball, my shoulder was too bad for football and my eyes were too bad to see a baseball.

It's a shame I didn't start sooner. During the years I was working in St. Louis and in Reno covering sports, there were often outings for sportswriters connected with tournaments. I missed out on those.

When I first started playing full-length courses around 1996, I was horrible. I'd score something like 130 for 18 holes, and learning that only about 10 percent of golfers ever break 90 didn't make me feel any better. I was about as far from breaking 90 as Sarah Palin is from being president.

Actually farther.

But my game started getting better, and about eight or nine years ago I broke 100 for the first time. That was a big deal to me, and it was an even bigger deal a year or so ago when I finally managed to get my score under 90.

I'm not consistent. I played 36 holes today with my friends Chuck and Mick out at the lovely and challenging Empire Lakes Golf Course in Rancho Cucamonga, California. My first round was my worst in years. I was breaking in a couple of new clubs and I shot 111.

But after we broke for lunch, I came back and shot 91 in the afternoon.

Not a great day, golf-wise, but a wonderful day overall. Golf courses are so beautiful, and I'm a firm believer in the old saying that even the worst day on the golf course is better than the best day at work.

I'm already looking forward to our next time out.

There really is a 'banality of evil'

I used to think the worst thing that could happen to me personally was losing my job.

Then I lost mine. I was fired from what had been a 28-plus year career as a journalist at least in part because I wouldn't lie to readers who were calling in to complain about changes in the paper that were making the product they received worse.

I was supposed to string them along, to make them believe there was a chance the paper would go back to the way it had been, but I refused to tell them that. I told them changes were being made for financial reasons and that it didn't matter how many people complained or cancelled their subscriptions.

That was almost 10 months ago, and if there's one thing I've learned in that time, it's that there isn't a real big market for over-50 journalists who can't be hired at entry-level salaries.

Of course, that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the other lesson I learned -- that while I might miss the salary, I was actually much better off not working at a place where the people in charge have no sense of honor.

I'm sure the man who fired me doesn't think of himself as a bad man. He and I never got along, and in the end he didn't want me working for him. But the idea of lying to readers, the idea of pretending that he cared what they thought when he knew his mission was to cut costs and downsize the newspaper, was a terrible thing.

Some of you may not see it that way. Twenty years after the Reagan Era, when movies told us "greed is good" and many people believed that if someone was rich, that person must be a better person than someone who wasn't, things like "truth" and "honor" may seem like horribly outdated concepts.

In 1963, in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem," Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil." Her thesis was that many of the great wrongs of history, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by psychopaths or sociopaths but by ordinary people.

Arendt understood that Adolf Hitler and other great instigators were certainly evil, but in many cases, the people who actually carried out their orders -- the ones who actually did the killing -- were little more than bureaucrats or minor functionaries.

Nothing better describes the banality of evil than the statement, "I was only following orders," and there are few better examples than the bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann.

I'm certainly not equating what has been happening in business -- all the downsizing and budget cutting that has affected so many lives -- to the Holocaust, but if you work for someone who lacks honor, it sears your soul.

I'm purposely not mentioning any names here. Those of you who know me well know where I worked and who my former boss was. He wasn't any fearsome troll, just a short, balding little man with a family and a mortgage who was doing what his boss wanted. And the fact that I have occasional nightmares about what happened just tells me how lucky I am not to be there anymore.

These days I work only for my wife -- taking care of her and cooking meals -- and myself. I'm writing a book that has nothing to do with my career or what happened to me, and it is a joy to work on.

I'm healing and I'm lucky. I'm reasonably well off and nearing retirement age, so I will never again work for people I can't respect, people who lack a sense of honor.

I have no critical feelings toward people who do so because they need their jobs to support their families. I'm realistic. We can't all just say no, even to the banality of evil.

But I sure am glad I can.

The challenge is not hating the haters

The engine had barely cooled on the Obama Victory Bus when the haters began fighting the next battle.


It was Wednesday morning on the West Coast, and the electoral votes in Missouri and North Carolina hadn't even been determined, and Rush Limbaugh was already saying it was time for the game to begin. The game, of course, being the battle to defeat Barack Obama by hamstringing his administration and then beating him in the 2012 election.

A few hours later, Sean Hannity was saying that he wanted Obama to succeed but then following it up by saying Obama was still a mystery to him because of all these iffy connections like William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.

One day later, Anne Coulter was writing in her syndicated column that now that the election was over, Obama could go by the name he really wanted to be called by -- B. Hussein Obama.


The important thing to remember about these people and the others like them is that they never stop battling, that any defeat is seen only as a temporary setback on the road to ultimate victory. Limbaugh has been on the air for more than 20 years now, and he has often said that he won't retire until everyone in America agrees with him.

Since he has somewhere between 15 and 20 million listeners out of more than 300 million Americans, the Fat Man might be broadcasting long after he no longer has anything to say.

Hannity and Coulter are actually far more obnoxious than Limbaugh, largely because Rush at least makes the effort to seem friendly and amiable. Both Little Boy and Rabid Annie make frequent use of anger, sarcasm and total disdain for those who disagree with them.


One of the major differences between those on the left and those on the right, at least the ones who aren't the most extreme, is that liberals are usually willing to grant that their opponents might have a point. Conservatives tend to feel their way is the only way and their opponents are not only wrong, but stupid or even evil.

That's where Coulter comes in.

Her entire schtick is outrageousness, and she feeds off the hatred of others. The thing I've seen that seems to bother her most is being laughed at -- or ignored.

That's actually the best route to go with all three of them. We need to listen to reasonable people on both sides, but we don't need to make the extremists on either side richer or more famous just by letting them upset us.

It's why I'm actually not that upset that Al Franken appears to have lost his bid for the Senate in Minnesota. It isn't that I wouldn't have minded another vote for the Democrats, but I really don't think that one of the qualifications for being a senator should be writing a book called, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot."

Even if he is.

Amazing baby coming to America

The amazing baby, my granddaughter Madison Nicole Kastner, will make her first visit to America next weekend.

Madison, who is growing like the proverbial weed, was born only seven weeks ago in Beijing. We had the opportunity to spend 10 days with her in early October, and we have been missing her ever since.

But next weekend, she and her parents, my lovely daughter and her husband, will be coming to the States for a six-week vacation. We get them for the first three weeks, and little Madison will be baptized at our church at the end of the month. Then in early December they'll move on to Seattle to visit the other grandparents and spend Christmas with them.

We've picked up all sorts of goodies, including a bed, a playpen and a car-seat base, so we're definitely more than ready for their arrival. We'll introduce Madison to as many people as possible; it's never too early to begin her campaign for the 2048 presidential race.

We are living in historic times

I'm sitting here in my dining room in California, about an hour before midnight, thinking about something I never expected to see.

If the present numbers hold up, Barack Obama will not only have been elected president, he will have won by an electoral landslide. If Obama's leads hold up in Indiana and North Carolina, he will not only carry every state John Kerry won in 2004, he will have turned around nine different states that George W. Bush won.

Some of them, in fact, are states Democrats just don't win.

Indiana and Virginia, for example, were last won by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Jimmy Carter won North Carolina in 1976.

That's a lot of elections, a lot of times Republicans have been able to take their votes for granted.

Obama won two states that are critical to any GOP winning coalition -- Ohio and Florida -- and he won both by significant margins.

It looks like the final count will give him 364 electoral votes to John McCain's 174.

I'm sure the Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys of the world will discount this election by saying the collapse of the economy this fall doomed the Republicans to defeat. But I think there's more to it than that.

Millions of people who had never voted before came out for Obama this time, and I think it was because instead of trying to frighten people into voting for him, he tried to inspire them.

He ran a mostly positive campaign.

And in the end, there didn't even seem to be a Bradley Effect. Obama's race helped him as much as it hurt him, and I believe it will mean a great deal in the face America shows to the world.

We live in historic times, and I for one am glad I lived to see it.

Maddiebug, Maddiebug, fly away home

There's one thing that sort of stinks about being a baby.

No, not that. What I mean is that during your first year of life, when you're experiencing everything for the first time, you don't form any memories of it.

The amazing baby, Madison Nicole Kastner, had her first Halloween the other night. Little Maddie was wearing a costume that I picked out and purchased for her.

We got it at Target when we were shopping for some other things for Maddie. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was perfect, but my lovely wife Nicole (who has wonderful taste), didn't like it.

If Nicole has one flaw, it's that she doesn't have a real great sense of humor.

But I bought it anyway, and her folks loved it.

As you can see, Maddie is perfect in her little ladybug costume.

Too bad she won't remember it at all.

'Jib'Jab' still funniest site on the Web

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Many of us who love Jib-Jab discovered it during the 2004 election campaign when the Jib-Jab guys poked fun at the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry with its parody of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."

Since then, more and more political parodies have added to the legend, and Jib-Jab has become one of the leading political satire sites on the Web. Unlike YouTube and its terrific videos, Jib-Jab is done as a cartoon parody. Once you've seen its versions of Dubya, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton, you'll never look at the real thing the same way.

Jib-Jab's take on the 2008 election, "It's Time for Some Campaignin'," was done before the vice presidential candidates were picked, so we don't get the Jib-Jab take on Sarah Palin.

We do, however, get the opportunity to put ourselves into the video, which I did. The picture -- the only one I had that would fit -- is from 1967.

Hope you enjoy it.

Who cares if politicians are 'Godless?'

What's the most private thing we have?

I suppose there are a few possibilities, many of which would involve various little bits of nastiness we wouldn't want anyone to know about, but it seems to me the most private thing any of us have is our relationship with God.

That's why politics has become so incredibly annoying. This isn't just a liberal or conservative thing, either. I'm annoyed every time I hear a politician -- as I heard Barack Obama Wednesday night -- close a speech by saying, "God bless the United States of America."

But it happens all the time. The chances of an avowed atheist winning any sort of important office these days are about the same as Rush Limbaugh getting his clothes anywhere other than the Big & Tall Men's shop.

So I guess I shouldn't be as outraged by Elizabeth Dole as I am.

Dole, the one person Republicans always used to trot out to prove they didn't hate working women, is running for a second term as senator from North Carolina. She's struggling badly and appears to be on the verge of losing, which I suppose is why she had to play the "God" card.

Now Kay Hagen is anything but Godless. She's a Presbyterian and a former Sunday School teacher, and that isn't her voice saying "There is no God," even though her picture is on the screen at the same time.

But Dole is trying to tell us, even if she doesn't come right out and say it, that electing Hagen would be voting for an end to Christmas, forcing little children to dress up as Satan for Halloween and boiling puppies.

Jeez, Elizabeth.

You used to be so reasonable.

The fact is, there are far worse things a senator could be than Godless.

Just ask Ted Stevens.

Just for laughs, here's my prediction

This isn't meant to be a political blog; I do that over at Capitol Hill Blue and have a lot of fun with it. Mostly this site to me is about the things that really matter in life -- love, family and personal relationships.

But as the most interminable election in U.S. history draws to a close, I thought I would weigh in on how things will finish. My guess is Obama will win, although not by the electoral landslide some folks are predicting.

I think he'll break through in Ohio because of the economy, and in Virginia and Colorado because of a changing electorate, while McCain holds onto Florida, North Carolina and other states like Indiana that rarely if ever go to the Democrats.

If there's a surprise in this election, I think Missouri -- which almost always goes with the winner -- will miss out and go for McCain this time. I think it'll be a race thing.

The only southern state Obama will carry is Virginia, although I think he'll take three of the eight states in the Rocky Mountain West.

Anyway, it'll be 311-227 for Obama.

Check back Wednesday and see how far off I was.

Amazing baby is part Leporidae

I'll bet you didn't know this, but the most amazing baby in the world, my granddaughter Madison Nicole Kastner, is part Lepidorae.

Now before I send you scooting off to Wikipedia to find out what it means (although I'll give you the link right here), I'll tell you that Lepidorae is just the high-falutin' way of saying rabbit. You betcha it is.


See, even winkin' Sarah Palin agrees with me. They've got some pretty big Lepidorae up on the Northern Frontier, even if they just call them rabbit stew.

Anyway, when little Maddie was still in the womb, she apparently did a great deal of kicking. So her mother, the amazing Pauline Nicole Kastner, gave her the nickname "Thumper."

Now whether she was a "thumper" or a "kicker" is a point that could be argued, but somehow I don't think the nickname "David Beckham" would have been quite as cute for a little girl baby.


"Thumper," on the other hand, is your basic adorable nickname for a baby, and it's really quite rare for a baby to have a full-fledged nickname before she has ever walked, talked or stolen a hubcap.

It usually takes longer. I believe George "Dubya" Bush didn't get his nickname till he was 33, although I'd put Maddie's intellect at 5 1/2 weeks up against Ol' Dub at 33.

Of course all of us who have seen the movie "Bambi" knows that Thumper was sort of a sidekick to the adorable little deer, and I think that's where the analogy falls apart. I don't think Maddie is going to be anybody's sidekick; my guess is that by the time she's 30, she'll either be a movie star, a Nobel Prize winner or the Queen of the world.

And just in case you've forgotten how to scroll down, we'll leave you with a picture of the adorable little tyke.


Or does "tyke" refer to a boy baby?

I never had learn these things. This is my first experience with a baby since my own younger siblings were born, and I was still sort of a tyke myself then, albeit 11 years old when the last one came along.

Anyway, meet Maddie/Thumper, the amazing baby/bunny.

Massachusetts story a real tragedy

Christopher Bizilj, an 8-year-old from Ashford, Conn., died Sunday afternoon in Springfield, Mass., after firing a micro Uzi submachine gun at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo.

The boy aimed at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger, but it was the first time he had fired a fully automatic weapon and he wasn't ready for the recoil. He lost control of the gun and shot himself in the head.

The Boston Globe has the story, along with more than a hundred comments from readers. Once I got past the first couple, I couldn't bear to read them. As a father, I found myself wondering what kind of parent would let an 8-year-old handle a fully automatic weapon.

It isn't as if I'm an anti-gun nut. My son has fired both rifles and shotguns, but in both instances he was at least 11 years old and did it under adult supervision at Boy Scout camp. I would never have allowed him to fire a fully automatic weapon without first understanding everything about it -- and never at age 8.

I'm sure the boy's father will regret his error for the rest of his life. It just shows that with children, you always have to be on guard. Tragedy can strike just like that.

There are people on both sides who will use this politically. The gun issue is one of the most contentious we face, and there doesn't really seem to be any way to agree.

I'm really not that concerned about gun control anymore. That we should keep guns away from criminals, the mentally ill and small children seems to me a given, and the tragedy here is that a small child tried to use a big weapon.

It's a shame no one stopped him.

'Burger Time' a blast from my past

As you can tell if you've been visiting this Website, I recently discovered a site that has a lot of great Widgets.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Widgets are little add-ons that spruce up Websites either by providing links or by adding humorous or entertaining content.

When I saw "Burger Time," I knew I had to add it to this site. When I was working in Anderson, S.C., in 1983, my friend Charlie Bennett and I used to go out after work and play arcade games.

Editor's note: Weren't you 33 years old then?

And your point?

Editor's note: A little old for video games, weren't you?

Excuse me. You're 55 years old and in love with the Olsen twins.

Editor's note: That's different.

Why? Even if you add their ages together, they're only 44. You're old enough to be their grand -

Editor's note: Watch it. I don't think of them in that way.

What way?

Editor's note: You know.

Don't worry. I know you're not a creepy pedophile, but you should definitely remember the one about people who live in glass houses.

Editor's note: Oh, all right.

Anyway, Widgetbox is really cool, and I've added plenty of them to this site. But I knew once I saw Burger Time for the first time in maybe 15 years, I had to preserve it on this site.

Try it out.

It's fun, which is more than I can say for spending 18 hours a day watching "Full House" reruns.

Amazing colossal baby growing fast

Here's another update in the world of Madison Nicole Kastner, the most amazing baby in the world.

Editor's note: Not again. To listen to you, nobody ever had a grandchild before.

And your point?

Editor's note: There are thousands of babies born every day, and I'm sure some of them must have grandparents.

Hey, isn't it time for that "Full House" marathon you wanted to see?

Editor's note: Oops, gotta go.

Don't hurry back. Anyway, little Maddie, who is eligible to run for president in 2044 despite being born in China and not having a $150,000 wardrobe, had a checkup the other day. She was five weeks old on Friday and she already weighs 10.4 pounds.

At this rate, she'll be towering over the skyscrapers of Beijing before her parents finish their tour there next summer.

Good thing all the weight is muscle. Otherwise we'd have to put her on Atkins.

What's the big deal about gay marriage?

My friend Mitch is really worried about Proposition 8 on the California ballot in two weeks.

Prop 8 is designed to reverse a decision by the California Supreme Court authoring marriage between two partners of the same sex. Mitch, who calls himself an "orthodox" Christian (he doesn't like the term fundamentalist), likes the idea of gay marriage only a little more than he likes gin and coke.

In fact, when the court announced its decision, he was very upset.

"This gay marriage thing is terrible." "Why?" "I've been married to my wife for nearly 30 years. I don't want to have to divorce her and marry a man."

Now you and I both know that sounds goofy, but it's no worse than some of the lies the Christian Right is spewing in its efforts to defeat Barack Obama and keep Republicans in power. One of the groups teetering on the edge of the lunatic fringe is Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of James Dobson's group.

This group has publicized "A Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," basically saying that if we elect the Democrats, every single bit of the far-left's dream agenda will be implented during his first term. In addition, Russia will run rampant, the U.S. will suffer several more 9/11-type attacks and Tel Aviv will be destroyed by an Iranian nuclear weapon.

I don't want to go into the letter any deeper -- click on the link and read it if you want -- but Dobson's people basically warn young evangelicals who are voting for Obama because they like his idealism that they could be destroying America in the process.

The one thing that is obvious to me in this is that with Jerry Falwell dead and Pat Robertson selling vitamins, Jimmy D is trying to step up and become Mr. Christian Right.

Just as Republicans have been doing for 30 years to mobilize their base, the letter is about 90 percent "God, guns and gays." The rest is national security. Of course Jimmy cares very little about the economy, or Wall Street, or the fact that his beloved GOP has presided over an ever-widening wealth gap.

The good news is that most folks aren't listening.

Polls released today show Obama ahead in states like Indiana and North Carolina, and dead even in North Dakota and Montana. McCain and Palin are sinking fast.

In fact, my friend Mitch isn't as goofy as I said. Once I told him that if was against gay marriage, he should just stay married to his wife, he breathed a sigh of relief.

The even more amazing news?

He's thinking of voting for Obama.

SNL pulling out all the stops

"Saturday Night Live" is really making the most of this election.

We've all seen Tina Fey's spot-on impression of Gov. Sarah Palin. Remember, Fey already had left the show and moved on to her own situation comedy, so getting her back was a coup.

But last night SNL topped even that coup by bringing back Will Ferrell for his impression of President Bush. Ferrell left the show years ago and has become a major movie star.

What's next? Dana Carvey coming back to play Poppy Bush? Dan Aykroyd coming back to play Nixon?

One thing is certain: SNL has certainly added a touch of fun to the endless election.

Amazing baby turning into chipmunk

I was surprised when I got the most recent update on my granddaughter, the amazing Madison Nicole Kastner, to learn that she apparently has more than a few chipmunk genes.

I wonder what she's storing in there.

Maybe little Maddie is worried that she doesn't know where her next meal is coming from -- pretty much the same place every meal she has eaten in her life has come from.

I'm reminded of a Rodney Dangerfield joke:

"I get no respect. When I was a baby, I was breast-fed by my father."

Or another one:

"I get no respect. My mother didn't breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend."

Trust me, that hasn't been Maddie's problem.

Everybody loves her, which is just the way it should be when you're five weeks old.

Effective ad lets young girls speak out

I saw this ad first on the Perez-Hilton Website, and I had been looking for it on YouTube ever since.

It seems to me that the idea of young girls questioning -- and admonishing -- GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on some of her beliefs is a highly effective one, and it must be working because almost everywhere I have seen it online, comments from the right are practically rabid.

One of the most common ones seems to me to be way off base, the idea that adults are putting words into the mouths of young girls and having them say stuff they don't understand.

Not to much, I think. Most of those young girls looked old enough to understand what they were saying.

One question I wish I had heard:

"Sarah, do you really believe Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to Sunday School?"

Might make for an interesting answer.

Friendship often means tough choices

"Nothing is more important than friendship. Not fame. Not money. Not death."
-- BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY

Along with family, I've always considered friendship the most important thing in the world.

There's nothing harder to win -- and all too often easier to lose -- than good friends, especially friendships that last a long time.

That's why when two people in less than 10 days said to me, "I thought you were my friend," I knew I had to stop and reassess what I was doing.

For the last 16 years, I have been a member of a Rotisserie baseball league. For those who aren't familiar with the term, it's also known as "fantasy" baseball. A group of people -- usually guys -- get together and draft teams of major league players and then compete with each other for prize money based on how well their players perform.

For the last 14 years, I have been commissioner of the league, a league based on friendships and one that has been remarkably stable in terms of its membership.

The last couple of years, though, there has been more than the usual amount of bickering and arguing. People have been upset by this and have been looking for solutions, with terms like "cutting out the cancer" being thrown around.

In trying to keep the peace, I took the coward's way out more than once. People have been asked to leave the league, something I didn't want to see happen. I'm ashamed of myself and the way I behaved.

That leaves me with no choice but to stand on the principles I tried to ignore and leave the league.

I'll certainly miss it. It's been a big part of my life for 16 years.

But sometimes there really is only one choice.

If you want to be a person of principle, you have to stand on principle.

Even when it hurts.

The greatest baby in the world

I had always heard it, but I never believed it until recently.

The birth of your first grandchild makes you crazy -- in a good way, of course.

I wasn't around for the birth of my children -- I didn't meet Pauline and Virgile until they were 12 and 7 -- so I missed most of the horribly, adorably cute period.

I'm not missing it this time. My little granddaughter, Madison Nicole, has got to be the greatest baby in the world. Look at that picture of her at the age of only three weeks. Have you ever seen such an alert expression on such a lovely baby?

She's one month old today, and she's already learning to roll over.

Pretty great, huh?

Couric seems to be having more fun

I've always liked Katie Couric.

Maybe it's just that she grew up about 10 miles from where I did in Virginia, although she's seven years younger than I am. Maybe it's that we both went to the University of Virginia, although I took the Sarah Palin approach to college and Virginia was only my first.

Maybe I just like perky and bubbly.

Whatever the reason, I was glad to see her get the job anchoring the CBS Evening News, and I'm not convinced things still won't work out for her there. She seems to be having a lot more fun with her video notebooks, and she acquitted herself quite nicely with her Palin interview.

The other night she was one of the guests -- along with the two presidential candidates -- at the Al Smith dinner, and Couric seems to be enjoying an inside joke. If you look at her hairstyle in the picture, it's what Matt Drudge calls a "Sarah Palin hairdo."

Now I don't know whether Katie is a Democrat or a Republican, although I have my suspicions. But I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a McCain/Couric ticket than with the present one.

Too bad it's too late to change.

Greater love hath no man ...

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).”

When I was younger, I was in at least two different relationships -- one sanctified by marriage -- in which the object of my affections told me that if I ever left her, she would die.

Neither woman was particularly of the genus dramus queenus, but in the end both of them decided that life without me was better than life with me. As far as I know, both women are still alive many years later.

So when it came to questioning whether anyone really needed me, I was at the least a little skeptical. One woman I was involved with did die a few years after knowing me, but it was a swimming accident and I was thousands of miles away at the time.

Recently, the question came up in my mind. My beloved wife, who has numerous psychic scars from a childhood marked by neglect and a first marriage marked by abuse, has been going through a difficult time. One of the most important touchstones in her life is our love for each other, and I said something in hope of reassuring her.

"I would do anything for you," I said. "I would die for you if it were necessary."

It's easy to say. I've led a relatively selfish life, too many times that it was all about what I wanted and too many times I have come up short.

But I realized something and I mean it with all my heart. If the choice comes, particularly after a fairly long life, it's better to die for someone else than to live for yourself. And if I had the chance to save my wife ... or my children ... or my grandchild ... and didn't take it, I'm not sure I could live with myself.

My wife is a wonderful, loving person who is almost too fragile to live in this world, and I love her with all my heart. My children -- Pauline and Virgile -- are mine in every way except blood, and they are both going to have amazing lives. And my 4-week-old granddaughter, little Madison Nicole, just might live to see the 22nd century.

I'm not afraid to die. I believe Jesus redeemed me with his sacrifice and that my faith in him will save me.

But when I do die, I would like it to be for something.

I hope that isn't too much to ask.

An amazing call, an amazing feeling

I got a phone call Thursday that at first I thought was a crank call.

Somebody told me to hold on, and then I heard someone crying. Not just crying, squalling. The first voice, which I hadn't recognized, was my son-in-law. The second was my granddaughter, who was exactly 10 minutes old.

Wow.

One of the great regrets of my life is that I wasn't around for my two children's early years, so I never went through the whole delivery-room, brand-new-baby thing. The closest I ever came was inadvertent. I turned a page in one of my friend Mick's photo albums and saw a color picture of his firstborn child coming out of his wife.

Definitely too much information.

This was different, as you can see from the picture. My first grandchild, Madison Nicole Kastner, was born Friday in Beijing, China, and it looks like I'm finally going to have to come to terms with the fact that I'm not 22 years old anymore.

I'm a grandfather.

I couldn't be happier.

We should want leaders better than us

When Sarah Palin suggested that she was a good candidate for vice president because people could "relate" to her, I had to wince.

It seemed like another example of George W. Bush winning in 2000 because more people thought he was the kind of person they would like to have a beer with, another example of why America has far more problems than it did eight years ago.

I'm not even sure folks were right about the beer.

Here's the choice: Al Gore might have been pedantic, the kind of person who went on and on about boring subjects, but Ol' Dubya would have been snarky and sarcastic and might also have stuck you with a nasty nickname.

Throw in VP candidates Lieberman and Cheney and 2000 might have been the all-time worst year for guys you'd want to share a beer with.

Here's the question, though. Think of the people in the world with whom you most enjoy drinking beer, and then picture them in the White House. When I think about my three closest friends, I wouldn't want any of them within five miles of the Oval Office. All three of them have been through personal bankruptcies and two of them totally lack even a modicum of common sense.

The irony of it is, I can picture all three of them enjoying the heck out of Dubya's Flightsuit Adventure.

I don't want people like me running the government.

I want experts, people who have trained for it, and yes, wanted it badly.

I don't want a vice president who can't raise her own children well enough to keep them from getting pregnant or getting arrested.

I don't want a president whose only success in life came from using his father's name.

Jimmy Carter had the right slogan -- "Why Not the Best" -- even if he wasn't the right guy to fulfill it.

We ought to demand the best.

Not the friendliest.

"A republic, if you can keep it"

With all apologies to Benjamin Franklin, we're losing it.

When Old Ben, the sage of Philadelphia, came out of the meetings designed to put together a constitution and a system of government for the brand-new United States in 1787, someone asked him what sort of government it would be.

"A republic, if you can keep it," Franklin answered.

Well, Ben, it's almost gone.

Thomas Frank, whose amazing books "One Market Under God" and "What's the Matter With Kansas" have chronicled so much of what's happening in America over the last 25 years, has come out with a book that's even scarier than those two.

"The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule" describes what has been happening for the last 30 years or so as the Reaganauts, the Gingrichites and the Bushmen have taken over Washington. Frank tells us how they've hollowed out government departments, failed to enforce regulations or collect fines from corporations and just basically put foxes in charge of all our henhouses.

It's as good an explanation as any of how we have been sliding farther and farther down the slippery slope toward oligarchy since the mid 1970s, and how it's extremely difficult to imagine getting back so much of what we've lost.

What are some of the cornerstones of a true republic, one in which the weak are protected from the strong?

I would guess that an educated electorate is the first one, and anyone who doesn't think people are getting stupider over the last 30 years isn't paying attention. What kind of America is it where 65 percent of adults don't read books, and a good chunk of the ones who do read only pulp fiction and political polemics?

An independent media serving as a check on corruption is another. The independent, non-corporate media is all but gone. All that's left is five or six big companies more concerned with their stock prices and balance sheets than covering the news.

Real religious values matter too, and too many of our people have either lost their values or fallen for those who say either than the apocalypse is coming or that Jesus wants them to be rich. Whatever happened to being our brother's keeper?

Nope, we've slid so far and yielded so much that it probably will take some sort of revolution to get it back.

Quite frankly, I'm not expecting one -- at least till "American Idol" is canceled.

Abstinence only training is naive

Sarah Palin is the subject of this post, but it isn't about politics at all.

It's about raising kids.

As a proud member of the Christian Right, the GOP vice presidential nominee is opposed to abortion, not so high on birth control and very much against sex education in schools. The Alaska governor supports so-called "abstinence only" education, as do many conservative Christians.

And she has a 17-year-old daughter who is five months pregnant.

I don't want to be critical of young Bristol Palin, who probably never asked her mother to become a national candidate and make her a national scandal. Kids make mistakes, and at least she has a supportive family who will help her with the issues involved with being an 18-year-old mother.

But I'm highly critical of abstinence-only education, because once you get past that, you're left with nowhere else to go. You teach your kids to "just say no" to their hormones, and once a "maybe" or a "yes" has slipped in there (no pun intended), that's it. They don't know how to cope.

I raised two children, and I was pretty much the one responsible for their sex education. What I told both of them was that it would be a terrible idea for them to have sex while they were still in high school. I told them that they weren't mature enough emotionally to deal with it, and that there were all sorts of possible bad consequences -- pregnancy, STDs, loss of reputation, etc.

I told them in no uncertain terms that having sex in high school was a bad idea.

Then I told them that if they were going to ignore me, they ought to be aware of things like birth control and so-called "safe sex."

My friend Mick -- my own link to the Christian Right -- told me I was giving my children mixed messages, that by telling them about condoms, I was telling them -- wink, wink -- that it was really all right.

I told him I was treating them like intelligent human beings and respecting them as individuals. My daughter did get pregnant, but it wasn't until she was 27 and had been married for more than a year. My son is 23 and engaged, and as far as I know has no offspring running around.

God may give absolute messages.

We shouldn't.

We really are our brother's keeper

After listening to Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight, I found myself wondering what the Republicans would say to counter Obama's soaring rhetoric.

I know I could just have turned to Fox News to hear the junior partner in the firm of Fat Man and Little Boy -- Sean Hannity -- but believe me, life is too short to listen to Hannity or to his senior partner, Rush Limbaugh.

I figure they'll go after him on the "big government can't do things as well as the free market" attack, saying that America works best when the government gets out of the way and allows real freedom.

Except it never does.

Get out of the way, I mean.

Look at all the tax breaks and subsidies available to big corporations and those who are already rich. Look at the obstacles in the way of folks really pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

Heck, some of their "self-made men" were anything but. Limbaugh's first job in radio was at a station his father owned. George W. Bush never had a company where he wasn't either backed or bailed out by his father's wealthy friends.

So anybody who needs help getting started -- scholarships, loans, tax breaks -- certainly shouldn't feel guilty.

America works best when we help each other.

It's a pretty good message.

It's best when I stay home

I've been to three political conventions, none of them as a delegate.

I attended the first night of the 1980 Democratic Convention in New York as a college journalist, and I don't remember a thing about it. I didn't have to write anything until a month later, and by then I was concerned only with sounding cool for my audience.

I covered the 1996 Republican Convention in San Diego and the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles as a columnist. I wrote every day on subjects as varied as Operation Rescue and Caroline Kennedy. My most exciting moment was when Bob Dole yelled at me to get off his lawn.

As enjoyable as they may seem when something exciting happens, nominating conventions have a tendency to be very boring. If you watch on C-SPAN instead of one of the commercial networks, you're just as likely to hear a speech by the assistant to the associate secretary of commerce as you are to hear Ted Kennedy or Joe Biden.

And if you're actually on the floor, good luck at seeing all the interesting people in the seats who get pointed out.

Actually, it's better when I stay home. Democrats in 1980? Lost. Republicans in 1996? Down the drain. Democrats in 2000? Nope.

If they're smart, they won't let me in.