I believe McClellan, but such tell-all coming-outs have so much more impact and feel of fair play when the source foreswears any profit from the revelations. Instead, we live in a society where Jose Canseco - Mr. Steroid, himself - is laughing all the way to the bank, cashing checks from his tell-all books that name names. It is so much more courageous when somebody makes a stand at a difficult time. I despise the Bush Administration’s (a.k.a., The Titanic’s) tactics, in general, but can’t abide the seeming disingenuity of McClellan’s all-too-obvious timing: let’s kick the Prez when he’s down, and while even the rats are jumping off the sinking ship.

Trickle-down economics help the rich get richer, and contribute to the widening disparity in America between the wealthy and the poor. The wealthiest one percent earns more than 20% of all income, while the lower 50% earns a combined 13%. Trickle-down may’ve had some theoretical basis in the Reagan Era, when the extra income saved by rich people paying lower taxes was often used to reinvest in American business, goods and services. Nowadays, that saved money is funneled largely into their overseas investments. That is why inequality is growing. On the other hand, bottom-up economics provides all people with the basic means to be productive, whether it’s job re-training, universal health coverage, quality education and transportation, affordable child care, etc. The problem, regardless of which view you take, is there are so many needs and so little money to go ‘round. With the Baby Boomers moving into retirement age, the need for health care/Medicare, and social security is rising. Meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure is in a shambles, if you look at the statistics on the state of the roads/bridges (remember the collapse in Minnesota last year?), the nation’s electrical-grid system that portends to be woefully inefficient for future energy demands, on and on. Meantime, sales and payroll taxes take a larger bite out of low-income Americans’ paychecks than higher-income. Of course, if George W. Bush weren’t pumping tens of billions of dollars into Iraq, some of that money could’ve been pumped into education, job re-training, and business investments to ensure America’s long-term economic stability.

The U.S. military-industrial complex accounts for nearly half of the world’s annual arms expenditures. In his 1961 “Farewell Address” Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the conjunction of the arms and defense industries came with grave consequences: the disastrous rise of misplaced power. We’ve seen that manifest itself in Vietnam, and now, in Iraq.

Indira Ghandi

Candy is great, for sure, but let’s cut right to: I want to know the name of the dog.

Fortunately, in the radio & record industry, the mega-corporations’ own greed seems to be killing them off. People are bypassing the expensive CD’s and music-based terrestrial radio stations in favor of digital downloads on computers, iPOD’s, and the like. Can anyone think of other industries where the goose is killing the golden egg? Phyllis, above, I believe is referring to the trickle-down economics re-popularized during the Reagan Administration. I’ve always thought that’s a good name for it, because the people on top of the food chain trickle down on top of those at the bottom, if you know what I mean.

Greetings, TS. I have not read that publication, but my mindset stems from my work in the martial arts. Things that seem impossible are shown to be possible. For example, if you extend your arm, fist up, across somebody’s shoulder and resist while they try to lower or bend your arm, they will be able to do so if they have much strength. Then have them do it again, but this time with palm up and imagine the energy flowing out of your fingertips. They will not be able to bend your arm, no matter how strong they are. Many things like this have I experienced. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendi…

I’d be a hypocrite - shush! - if I bad-mouthed high-tech too much, since I’m pounding out these letters on a computer keyboard. But we’ve allowed techology to make us a lazier, less sociable society in a lot of ways. The choice of a zillion TV/radio channels is nice on the one hand, but the fragmentation of the tuner dial into so many different programs or musical choices also lessens the likelihood that we’ll have something in common to talk about at the water cooler. In the 1970’s, it wasn’t uncommon to hear Led Zep (hard rock), Neil Diamond (pop), and Crystal Gale (country) all on the same channel. People watched most of the same programs at night on the TV networks. Another thing high-tech has seemed to do is speed of the frenetic pace of society. I suppose many of these “complaints” are unavoidable, and there is a counter-balance of good, obviously. I wouldn’t want to give up the DVD player or the computer, e.g. But when some people say they prefer the relatively quieter/friendlier lifestyle of yesteryear, I can relate.

Ha, ha! Agreed, TS. The Food Pyramid today compared to 30 years ago is almost completely upside down in terms of FDA-recommended diet. Psychology is now getting into a lot of the mind-body connection, discovering that the two are not always separable, and that there are physiological answers to many psychological problems, and vice-versa. There are many aspects of the martial arts that exemplify the power of the mind in unleashing the possibilities of the body.

Kitty, please don’t feel old with all the tech-talk. People are always more important than technology, and when someone said that they’d like to find a TV remote they can actually figure out, I can relate. What good is technology, if the common person (you and I) can’t use it? Some people want a million features, and that’s fine. But companies should also make simple products for people who are not as tech-savvy.

It is true: the next two elections are vitally important, because you’re voting not just for the next president, but for the sway of power in the U.S. Supreme Court for, potentially, decades to come. And I feel the Supreme Court will be wielding much, much more influence on the direction of this country in the years to come. Whether it’s abortion, the state/regional battle pending over diversion of Great Lakes water via pipeline to the increasingly parched Southwest states, and all the economic fights that will emerge between the needs of the increasingly populated states down South and the long-term economic crises of the Midwest manufacturing/automotive/steel states that are losing jobs and money at an astonishing rate.

The OBD II Pocket Scanner. Whenever your ‘Check Engine’ light comes on your dashboard, this device can be plugged in underneath the dash to quickly assess the nature and urgency of the problem. It could be something as simple as you forgot to put your gas cap on, or a faulty spark-plug wire. Another gadget I have is the Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (WS-110). It’s the size of a lighter, but does everything my 5-pound Marantz portable cassette recorder did in the 1980’s. My background is in radio news, and I used to lug this heavy tape recorder around to news conferences or interviews. If I had to send audio back to studio from the street, I would screw the mouthpiece off a phone, attach the wire from the Marantz to the metal prongs inside the mouthpiece with alligator clips and then hit play. For the voicework, I had the same set-up, and would simply speak into a microphone. You could activate the amp in order to use the mike by pushing the play button down, and then the pause button (so the tape audio wouldn’t play while you were speaking). Because large tape recorders would take up too much space on a lecturn or table at a news conference, and the source didn’t want a zillion microphones on the podium, there would be just one microphone attached to a mult-box out of view of the TV cameras. Radio reporters like myself would unsnap the microphone, so that the three prongs would be visible, and then insert that into the XLR jacks in the mult-box. You could have 30 or more reporters’ microphones receiving audio this way, yet only one microphone would be visible on stage. Nowadays, the digital recorders are so tiny, it’s largely a non-issue for reporters to place them on a lecturn or table in front of the speaker. And because the recorder and microphone are all in one unit, there is no need for the reporter to have a long cord attached to the microphone and ride gain or continually hit pause/play.

Naw, otherwise men would be doing the same thing as the dog. I love dogs so much.

I didn’t know that! Morgan is one of my favorite actors.

I loved ‘The Electric Company’. The kids in my fourth-grade class would always cheer when we were paraded to another class down the hall, and all these kids from three classrooms would sit down together and watch that show on UHF in 1971-‘72.