LBJ's Game Changer

My grandfather used to love to tell this story.Grandpa was a Texan. In his retirement years, he belonged to a fishing club in rural east Texas, about two hours from his home in Dallas. The clubhouse was set up so that members and their guests could stay overnight, eat their meals in a big country dining room and keep their fishing boats and fishing equipment on the premises.On the evening of March 31, 1968, Grandpa was at the fishing club. I don't...

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The 'Bounce' From Health Care Reform

I know some people who are truly baffled.Barack Obama's triumph in the health care reform battle is an historic achievement, they say. I've heard some people say that, in terms of domestic policy, it elevates him past Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights/voting rights legislation of LBJ's Great Society — and it may lift him above Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.Well, when the chapters on this period in American history are written, perhaps Obama's position among the presidents will be secured. If that's all Obama wanted to do as president,...

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Gosh, Who Knew?

Sarah Klein of Health.com writes, for CNN.com, that a scientific study confirms that fattening foods are addictive.Well, stop the presses.Don't get me wrong. Some studies are necessary to contribute to our knowledge, to help us learn things we don't know. And they can confirm or refute things that we suspect.But, really. Don't we all already know that fatty foods can be addictive? When I was younger, I guess they didn't know as much about nutrition...

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Blow by Blow

Charles Blow writes an interesting column in today's New York Times about the anger of the far right that has been visible for all to see in the aftermath of the passage of the health care reform legislation."Whose country is it?" the headline on his column asks, and Blow proceeds to make the case that, in the words of the old Bob Dylan song, the times they are a–changing. And they can't be stopped.Blow sees this as the general ranting of extremists against the perceived takeover of America by the non–white, non–male, non–straight, non–Christian,...

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Doobie or Not Doobie?

It may be an issue whose time has come. And, if that is the case, there may be no more appropriate place for it than California.Voters in that state will decide in November whether to legalize and regulate marijuana use, an issue that has come before voters in other states in other election years but has always failed.In 2010, however, there is an unusual confluence of issues, like two mighty rivers that meet and create an even greater force, that might make this vote different from the rest. Even if the eventual result is the same, the margin...

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Welcome Back, My Friends ...

... to the show that never ends.If you thought the war was over when the House approved the Senate's version of the health care bill, you were wrong.Oh, it had the aura of finality when congressional Democrats gathered to watch Barack Obama sign the bill into law. And one got the sense that many of the Democrats who supported health care reform sincerely wanted to smooth things over with their uncooperative Republican colleagues and move on to the next issue.However, GOP lawmakers have been talking of tactics for overturning the health care legislation....

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The Sky Is Falling!

Do you recall the fable of Chicken Little?As I understand it, there are several versions of that particular fable, and the moral varies from version to version.But, in the version I remember from my childhood, a falling acorn strikes a chicken in the head, and she concludes that the sky is falling. She decides she must give this information to the king so she embarks on a journey to do precisely that. Along the way, she runs into several other animals,...

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The Shortest 'Papacy'

It has not been unusual for America to have two presidents in a single calendar year.It has happened whenever an election has produced a new president — because either the incumbent president did not run or the incumbent president was defeated. When that has happened, America has begun Inaugural Day (for many years, March 4 — now January 20) with one president and ended it with a different one.Additionally, there have been eight times when a president...

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Timing Is Everything

There is much rejoicing today in some quarters because the House passed health care reform yesterday.And, as E.J. Dionne observes in the Washington Post, Barack Obama and the Democrats made history by passing a health care reform bill.Emotions certainly have been running high on this issue — on both sides, really, although emotions seem to be higher among the Democrats who voted in favor of it. Rep. Patrick Kennedy was practically on the verge of tears — given his late father's commitment to health care reform — when talking about the measure on...

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The LBJ Era Departs

For many years, I worked in a building that was located along LBJ Freeway here in Dallas.I worked for an auto loan company, and I often had to call people — customers, dealers — and sometimes those calls required me to give them our mailing address. More than one gave me a questioning response when I told them the street address."LBJ stands for Lyndon Baines Johnson," I would tell them. If that produced no knowing response, I elaborated. "He became...

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The Turning Point

After winning the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush said he had acquired "political capital" during the campaign.It didn't take him long to squander it, though.And I believe that he began running through his stash on this day five years ago.For it was on this day that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed at her husband's request.The Terri Schiavo case has to rank as one of the saddest episodes in recent American life. It would have been...

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A Close Shave

I have been thinking about when I was a teenager and my parents taught me to drive.Sometimes my father instructed me. If my father wasn't available, my mother did. They had different styles. But they both emphasized the same thing over and over.They told me to keep my eyes on the road.There were a lot of distractions in those days. There are even more these days. I'm sure you've heard the reports of both adults and teenagers texting while behind the wheel — and slamming into the back of the vehicle ahead of them.That's bad enough, but even before...

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St. Patrick's Day

"If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God so as to teach these peoples; even though some of them still look down on me."St. PatrickToday, at your workplace or at school or wherever you happen to be, you may notice more green being worn than usual.That's a sure sign that today is St. Patrick's Day, which is synonymous in the public mind with leprechauns and shamrocks and drinking.Another sure sign is parades, many of which have been annual...

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A Simple Question

I'm like most people who went to college, I suppose. I didn't major in economics.Neither — I would guess — did most of the people who are unemployed today. That's another group to which I belong, although I would be happy to give up my membership in that particular club.Since I have no academic training in economics — beyond those basic courses I was required to take — I hope someone can enlighten me.Let me explain.Obviously, economies are complex things, and the one that dominates our lives today may be more complex than any in my lifetime. There...

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Three Years and Counting

Three years ago today, I smoked my last cigarette.I don't know how old I was when I smoked a cigarette for the first time. I have a vague memory of being with a bunch of my buddies in an empty lot on a warm afternoon. Someone had a pack of cigarettes — Marlboros, I think — which was passed around for everyone to take one. Then a book of matches was passed around and everyone lit his cigarette.To borrow an infamous phrase from Bill Clinton, I don't...

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Is Mubarak Alive?

It isn't my usual procedure to write about rumors, but this one is truly extraordinary. If it is true, it could have some truly profound repercussions on the Middle East peace process.Neal Ungerleider of True/Slant writes that "[t]he talk of the Egyptian blogosphere right now is a fast–spreading rumor that President Hosni Mubarak has died."I've been looking for confirmation, one way or the other, on reputable news sites, but, as of 7:45 p.m. (CDT), I haven't found any reports that Mubarak, 81, who recently had gall bladder surgery, died during...

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The Challenges of Revolution

The word "revolution" seems to be tossed about rather carelessly by some people.Well, it seems that way to me, anyway.I don't mean to say that it is a careless concept. Far from it. A revolution is serious business — by definition, according to Random House, "a sudden, complete or marked change in something."Clearly, that wasn't an idle question the Beatles asked some 40 years ago, and it was asked at a time when revolution was almost literally in...

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