Don’t feel guilty because you enjoyed the holidays watching an array of playoffs and bowl games as though Iraq were on another planet. The so-called greatest generation listened to championship and bowl games even though a much larger war raged and everyone having a volatile good time had husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons in the service. The big exception, of course, was that radio commercials always reminded the listeners to continue buying War Bonds and Stamps and ofte...

Since the US is primarily a service oriented nation — 80% of GNP — did you ever wonder how the base economy of production can support all this? Of course, 20% is still a thriving, tidy sum, and apparently insufficient to carry the massive services on its shoulders — or is it? The spin-off effect is geometrical progression. Just as the efficient farmer needs to market his produce and therefore requires an initial service of packing and trucking, which in turn requires outlets for retail, so, too,...

I remember very early television in the late 40s and early 50s when Hollywood only leased out silent films and grade B westerns from the early 30s that were awful. Actually it motivated TV to offer some very good programing by shifting the radio shows to television, like the Goldbergs, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle, along with some excellent, original drama broadcasts, such as “Marty” before it was a movie. Of course, the Soaps were simulcast as well. Because of the innovations to TV, Hollywood f...

 GW Bush: Resolves to trade in his big stick for a sledge hammer.  Cheney: Redeems his “blind” Halliburton stock to rebuild Iraq.  Dean: Promises to speak softly in the South.  Clark: As President-elect will go to Iraq and end the insurgency — echo of Eisenhower.  Michael Jackson: Resolves to metamorphose back to black if acquitted.  Women of Iraq: Resolve to be equal.  Arnold: To Balance budget by saddling California with a huge bond.  Powell: Pledges to remain in office ...

         Widespread gambling is the ultimate roll of the dice turning up snake eyes of addiction. Nationwide there are some eight million compulsive gamblers disrupting their lives and their loved ones. Recreational gambling is not unlike the risk of dependence in illicit drug-use originally socially motivated. The nation has enough problems without every greedy state opening its borders or rivers for the sake of revenue and risking —particularly among the young— a national crisis of compulsiv...

 With the toppling of all the icons and statues of Saddam it is ironic that the right wing is determined to delete FDR from the dime and to replace with the Gipper as vengeance that CBS dared make an irreverent film about the Right’s icon. They are not even satisfied with the wide-spread renaming of countless structures in which Reagan had no part, but have an organization dedicated to have each state in the union to have a minimum of one state landmark named after him in addition to one in al...

 Where have I and the nation been for the last fourteen years since the fall of the Soviets? — our heads have been in the sands of the Middle East. Joby Warrick, a Washington Post staff writer, alerts us to the tiny rogue Transdniester Moldovan Republic “no bigger than R.I.” but a massive dumping ground for Soviet arms during the Soviet Army’s withdrawal. Its chief reason for its existence is a pipeline of arms to fellow rogues and terrorists.  “For terrorists this is [Transdniester] the best...