Like a lot of media observers, I began seeing the Pentagon's campaign to get 40,000 more American soldiers into Afghanistan ramp up several weeks ago in the mainstream media, at about the same time Disney began rolling the heavy promotional artillery on its November release of A Christmas Carol.

Who are the strongest players in the 'Bill Clinton-Kim Jong-Il North Korean Prisoner Pardon' scene?

The answer is given by Maureen Dowd in the closing paragraph of her column in the Aug. 5 NY Times:

"Hillary and President Obama look bigger when they share the stage with other talented...

From May 1-17, Dottie Dixon, a game-changer of the highest order, takes the stage nightly at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City in her one-woman show, The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon, which chronicles her experiences as the activist Mormon mother of a gay son....

In January, I was in a group that presented ideas to members of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's sustainability team for how to support the city's many green initiatives.

As one of the ideas I brought to the table, I suggested we put solar paneling on the world famous...

Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine sent me a Nasty-gram for participating in Earth Hour.

Now, I'm not exactly the greenest guy on the planet, and I think the environmental movement can do a better job of inspiring instead of proscribing participation. At the same time, I believe that sustainability...

Think about all the things that scared us when we were young. And how we 'grew out of our fears.'

Stage fright becomes grace under pressure. Shivering at the edge of the high dive becomes a love of soaring. Fear of ignorance becomes scholarship. Fear for the well-being of others...

Most American citizens are willing and able, and these days too often desperate, to roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work of salvaging the wreckage of the Bush Era. What are the Republicans in the Senate doing about it? Debating. Posing. Posturing. Hemming. Hawing. Positioning. Naysaying. Fighting. Resisting....

A lot has been made of Team Obama's casting of the key roles in the new administration. There is astonishment aplenty out there that he's put together a team of such strong personalities and former rivals. This is so different, after all, from the Bush doctrine of punishing one's rivals,...

Barack Obama, February 10, 2007: "And if you will join with me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our...

In the title sequence of the movie Hoosiers, Norman Dale, played by the great Gene Hackman, stops twice at a crossroads in rural Indiana to get his bearings. He is a man with a past that he's trying to put behind him, and all he's got to do it with...

We live in a Networked World. A person doesn't have to look beyond the current global roil in the financial markets to see it. Almost everyone's business these days gets conducted at least in part via internet-enabled networks. Being productive in this fluid, hyper-connected environment calls for different kinds of...

There were six men of Washington
To Wall Street much indebted
Who convened to pass a Bail-Out Bill
That no one else had vetted
If it doesn't pass, they promise us
Financial Armageddon.

The first approached the Bail-Out
Like a charity event
...

In the Age of Irony, there is no such thing as just a pig. It's what kind of joke you make about the pig that gets your point across. Its your meta-pig that counts.

Most of what passes for political discourse in the mainstream news media is either packaged, bought...

Dear Undecideds,

A lot of you are hurting. Some of you are people I know and love. Just like you do, I fret about this mess we're in, what with the banks failing, and people losing their homes, their savings, their jobs, their pensions. We've got the terrorist threat that...

People are calling Sarah Palin's candidacy a Hail Mary pass by the Republicans. It is a high-risk, high-reward play made by an over-matched team, true. But the football analogy is not a Hail Mary play, it is a Fumblerooski.

Most people are familiar with the Hail Mary play, immortalized...

This is how we do it, said the Political Masters to the Eager Student. Watch and learn.

Stub Up, Young Candidate. Look at how stubborn we are. You cannot get rid of us. No one can. As moss is to the rock, so are we to the body politic. You,...

It is the energy generated by human beings, and not something found in the ground, the air, the sun or a reactor, that makes the difference between success and failure in most endeavors. Being president of the United States included.

No matter which candidate gets elected in November, more drilling...

The Legion of Conservative Blowhards -- Rupee the Rich, Colder the Ice Queen, Headrush the Heckler, and Shrill the Screamer -- sit at a leather-upholstered booth at the Blood Rare Steak House, swirling martini glasses, pinkie rings and pearls glittering against crystal and candlelight. Colder smokes a cigar. Headrush cracks...

As the first U.S. presidential candidate in the general election with a post-TRON education, and the first adept at using the internet as a media and fundraising engine, Barack Obama continues to demonstrate that he and his team have the chops to relieve the U.S. government of the inflexible and...

1. Make Exxon guy buy Crawford ranch at hefty profit for Laur 'n me.

1A. Get Texaco dude to sell Laur 'n me a place in Dallas, cheap. A big place on a golf course and a lake with a dock you can water ski from with a coach...