Here's a preamble to election night:

I am predicting that 26% of single ownership newspapers will call it a landslide for Obama. Only one media conglomerate will refrain from using the word. 66% of those voters who have been calling themselves "Undecided" will admit to fraudulently claiming their independence...

In this dire financial crises, the meltdown of our financial markets and all the other catastrophic descriptions of the current situation, is there nothing profoundly simple and sensible that can be done to calm the chaos and burgeoning sense of panic that is coming on us like Hurricane Jake? The...

If I wasn't certain it would be like pounding sand down a rat hole, I would be taking out full page ads to tell the world I saw the man who should be the Vice Presidential running mate for either Barack Obama or John McCain. For John McCain because he...

In the last 20-minutes of a flight that brought me home from half way around the world the other day, I read about a movie called Stop-Loss and knew I had to see it as soon as I could. Not because it seemed to be an anti-war film. As related...

I woke up this morning and over coffee and my daily newspaper saw the front page story, DELAY IS SOUGHT BY JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ON CIA INQUIRY, read a quote by our new Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, and immediately thought:

"Of course! I know where I heard that reasoning before. In...

Sunday, December 7, 1941, a dozen of us 18-19 year olds at the start of our lives, were rehearsing a freshman production of a relatively silly play, Uncle Stanley Slept Here, on the Esplanade behind Emerson College at 130 Beacon Street, Boston, under the direction of a large-hatted, soprano-voiced, Noel...

So two front page stories in my Sunday paper grab my attention:

"Broken Supply Channels Sent Arms For Iraq Astray." "...billions of dollars in arms handed over to shoestring commands without oversight."

"Death of a Spy Satellite Program; How Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids Wasted Billions."

And as...

Just now, Sunday morning, I finished reading, in the New York Times, Charles McGrath's excellent review of Mailer's life -- and I choose "review" rather than obituary deliberately -- because Mailer was as much a piece of extraordinary theater as he was "towering writer." As I read McGrath's review,...

I met Pete Seeger almost a year ago after seeing an early copy of the film, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. Wishing to be helpful to the film, I drove up to Beacon, NY to meet Pete and his wife Toshi at their log cabin house they...

The media and press today suffer fools and the foolish. Word of John Edwards' $400 haircut might constitute a shock anywhere in the $2.25 per haircut American outback, some of which happily still exists. But college-educated, well-traveled journalists -- at least to any city in their state that's got themselves...

I wrote the below before reading Marty Kaplan's post at 8:40 PM Wednesday night. He said it all and far more brilliantly, so those of you have read Kaplan, think of this as a lame P.S. (Why send it along, then, you might ask. Hey, I have nothing against...

"White House officials on Monday said the political pressure to leave Iraq would abate when conditions on the ground appeared more positive." -- New York Times, today

If I hear the expression "conditions on the ground" one more time...

I'm having difficulty with just about everyone I depend...

There is an element missing in the Democrat/Liberal/Progressive, you name it, response to the mind bending breakdown of everything -- the current administration, tearing at the seams; American leadership's inability to win a war against insurgents, despite its unquestionably superior might; it's utter failure to properly care for the injured...

So here is a thread, yesterday, in the distressed fabric of that day:

Several calls from national newspapers, weekly news publications and one monthly, all looking for a quote as to what I (Anna Nicole is no longer with us, you see) think and/or have to say (they are...

Excerpt from Crooks and Liars:

"...certain parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are uncanny," says Fred Barnes, in the WEEKLY STANDARD. "A new general, David Petraeus, is taking over in Iraq with a credible new strategy, counterinsurgency. Four decades ago, General Creighton Abrams became the American commander in Vietnam, also...

First lesson: You must read the Huffington Post at least daily. Preferably, for your own sense of truthiness and stableness, several times a day. Re the Mastergate/Norman Lear/Larry Gelbart mix and mash, I'd have cleared this up for so many of you days ago had I been taking my...

Any century is lucky if it has a clown or two. The last century had one in Ed Wynn. Not a comic, a clown. THE ED WYNN SHOW, starring this genius, this clown, a must see in the earliest days of black and white television, had one detractor, a television...

"So who are you backing for president on your side -- Hillary, Edwards, Obama, Vilsack -- who?" If I've been asked that question once since the midterms, I've been asked it -- well, once. Maybe twice. But I know it'll come up again and again, so I've given it...

From: Norman Lear, Earth -- To: The Creator, Deity, Supreme Being, Et al

Dear God,

You are in the news so much lately, I figure you must be thinking a lot about what’s going on down here. Not that I need the news to remind me of you, I think...