Happy Mother’s Day

Tree Huggers
Two of our grandchildren on a wonderful day in May!

Mother’s Day is an interesting phenomenon!
by Charlie Leck

Mother’s Day, as a day of recognition, has a rather complex history. That history predates the establishment of it in the U.S. upon the recommendation by Anna Jarvis in 1912. Jarvis was very specific about the placement of the apostrophe so that it would be spelled as a singular possessive to go along with her suggestion that each family pay respects to and honor its own, individual mother. The U.S. Congress and President Woodrow Wilson made the day a part of U.S. law and most Presidents since have made flowery declarations when each subsequent Mother’s Day rolled around.

In fact, our Mother’s Day has a number of historical antecedents. In ancient Greece there was a festival of Cybele, a mother of a number of important Greek gods. The Romans also celebrated the holiday of Matronalia upon which mothers were presented with gifts by their children.

So there! You would have been lacking in your education had you not be brought up to date on these facts.

In Britain they call the day Mothering Sunday and it is a part of the religious calendar of the Church of England.

Mother’s Day is celebrated on various dates on the calendar, but almost always on Sunday, in nations as varied and different as Norway and Belarus – in Russia, China, Israel, Afghanistan, Laos, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal, Mexico, Canada, Trinidad, Zambia, Mongolia, Thailand, Argentina and dozens and dozens more.

Why not?

No one deserves a day of recognition more than a mother. From the moment of conception, it is difficult for a man to understand what a woman goes through as a mother. First of all, from the time she struggles through those labor pains, she is basically giving up 20 or more years of her own personal and private life. I watch my own daughters parent and marvel at the sacrifices a mother makes for her children. When I suggest some marvelous book that they just must sit down and read, I get this strange, sarcastic look from them that says without saying, “Yeh, right!”

Fathers can seem to escape more and manage to keep something of themselves and a clearly defined independence. It never seems to happen for mothers. Even in private moments their thoughts, worries and hearts are back wherever their children are.

There is no responsibility on earth quite like being a mother and none quite so important.

My own mother died too young, 50 years ago this year. I knew her only from a child’s perspective. I enjoy so, watching my wife, seeing now how mothers relate to their sons and daughters as adults. Still mothers! Always mothers!

The entire institution of motherhood is remarkable and, indeed, deserves to be recognized and celebrated.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you wonderful mothers out there. You are the very glue that holds civilization together! How I wish you could also be our world leaders and the heads of state in so many more nations.

Sunday NY Times & Mother's Day

Only the NY Sunday Times can really add great class to Mother's Day. They've done it again this year and you might want to take it in.

First, the Times asked a half dozen female artists to submit captioned portraits of their mothers. They're really extraordinary and clever. The artist Paloma Varga Weisz says of her mother, "She always has an answer for everything -- even when you haven't asked." [click here to see the portraits]

Then, the great newspaper asked five outstanding women medical or health experts to explain what they would give the developing world for Mother's Day. I was touched by each of the answers but especially by that of L. Lewis Wall, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and anthropology at Washington University. [read their short little essays by clicking here]

LIARS STIRRING UP HATE AND RAGE

I got another of those untruthful emails this week and it really made me mad!
by Charlie Leck

I’m blogging about this today just in case you have also received this awful, purposefully untruthful email about the migration of hundreds of thousands of
Gazan residents to the U.S..

There should be a law against the kinds of terrible lies people send around by the hundreds of thousands in rageful, hateful emails. The problem, however, is that the people who send these things on have received them and believe them – and they’re too lazy to check out the facts, to see if what they’re sending is true.

A recent one came that really made me angry.
It claimed that our President had signed an executive order that would bring hundreds of thousands of “Hamas” Palestinians to American and that the U.S. would provide all kinds of comforts and benefits to these settlers, including housing and food allowances “to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)….” The executive order, the lying email said, called for the expenditure of more than $20 million on this “migration assistance” program. “ Just check the Federal Register of February 4,” the email told us. The sender had apparently not taken the time to actually read the document to find out the truth.

It was in late January (actually) that the President Obama issued a Presidential Determination (#2009-15) that provided up to 20.3 million dollars for “unexpected urgent refugee and migration need related to Gaza.” There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the determination that approved the migration to the U.S. of any Palestinians or Gazans – much less “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas” to migrate to the U.S.. [Click here to read the Presidential Determination 2009-15 as published in the Federal Register on February 4.]

The email stated that the sender had checked the facts and what the email said was entirely true! That’s a bad!

Want to know how the State Department has determined to use those funds. Go to Snopes and read its evaluation of this false email claim. Snopes lays out the facts very clearly.

Then understand that George W. Bush signed a very similar Presidential Determination in May of 2007 authorizing the expenditure of 29.5 million dollars for “humanitarian needs resulting from conflicts in Somalia, Sudan and Chad… and in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Come on folks! Stop forwarding on false emails that just unnecessarily rile people up. Oppose the President if you wish, but do it honestly.

THE BABE DID IT ON BEER, WHISKEY AND HOT DOGS!

And Hammerin’ Hank just did it on grind!
by Charlie Leck

The Great Bambino was known to send a hotdog order up from the dugout to the grandstands. Hot dogs were not a banned substance. Neither were beer nor whiskey banned. Mix in some women and Babe Ruth indulged in them all.

And remember this: The balls they used back then did not have the liveliness they have now.

Nevertheless, Babe Ruth smacked balls out of the park at a greater rate of frequency in relation to the number of times he came to bat than anyone is the history of the game (not, of course, including Mark McGwire or Ryan Howard). It is why he will always be regarded as the home run king of baseball.

Hammerin’ Hank Aaron played in my time – while I was a great fan of the game. He cracked Babe’s record for life-time homeruns. It had often been thought that no one would surpass the Babe. Put Aaron right up there on a pedestal next to the Ruth. They stand alone as the greatest home run hitters in the history of the game.

Way back in ’04, Jeff Kent, an undistinguished player for the Houston Astros, wondered aloud if maybe the great Babe didn’t use steroids. He actually got a few lines in a few papers for that kind of drivel.

If steak, beer, whiskey and women were steroids, you bet he did. The Bambino pounded those things down on a regular – perhaps constant – basis. And, he kept pounding baseballs over the outfield fences.

So, for heaven’s sake, why am I on this subject today?
I’ve been one of the great baseball fans of the ages! I’m not kidding! The best entertainment in the world for me is a sunny afternoon in a beautiful baseball park watching a zero-zero pitchers’ duel with twenty or thirty thousand other fans. I love to hear the vendors hawking their goods and I love the smacking sound of a fast ball landing in the catcher’s glove.

As far as I’m concerned, Take Me Out to the Ball Game is one of the greatest songs ever written. It’s right up there with Beethoven’s work.

Next spring the Minnesota Twins move into an outdoor ball park in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. I’ve taken little drives into town on more than an occasional basis to watch it rise up out of the ground. Each time, with its progress so clearly evident, my heart beats a little quicker as I examine the work.

I’m moving close to the 70 mark in age; yet, I get as excited as a little kid when I think of watching Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel and Francisco Liriano play outdoors in the sunshine on a Sunday afternoon.

Last night I watched on TV as Mauer smacked a single up the middle in the 7th inning to tie the Twins up with Baltimore. The flat-screened high definition marvel in front of me was in danger when the Twins bullpen failed to hold another game. I went sorrowfully to bed.

I love the game so that I’m tormented when I think of the damage that’s been done to baseball by a significant handful of players who cheated.

Barry Bonds (1991 on the left and in 2004 ) did not build his body the natural way.

They enhanced their bodies and strength in ways that were both dangerous and against the rules! These jerks, who smashed the Babe’s records, deserve no positive mention in the Hall of Fame. The same is true for rule breakers in any sport, but I happen to hold baseball and golf up to higher standards than any of the rest. If you cheat, you go on a Wall of Shame list and that’s as far as you go.

Among others, that’s where Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi and Manny Ramirez go. All of them were very fine baseball players, but I’ll tell you this: They would not have had the success they did have without cheating. No way!

So, to a sport that is so driven by past history, past performances, statistics and the great, great records of former players, so much incredible damage has been done and can’t be undone.

In baseball, a player in 2009 isn’t just playing against the other team and its players; he’s also playing against history and the incredible players who crossed the white lines to perform in years gone by. It might sound squirrely, but that is what has driven baseball to such heights of popularity. Illegal users have severely damaged all of that.

Henry Aaron and George Herman Ruth were the best ever at what they did; that is, at hitting home runs. Don’t you ever forget it.

The Hall of Fame belongs to the really great players of the game. My own personal list of heroes sticks both in my memory and my heart as if I was a little kid – Mays, Robinson, Musial, Mantle, Slaughter, Berra, Reese, Kiner, DiMaggio, Aaron, Killebrew, Olivia, Puckett and Carew. Man, my heart starts thumping harder when I bring clear visuals to mind of them playing the game. I saw all of them play in person – real, live-time, on the field – and I don’t mind bragging about it. And, all of them, except Tony Oliva, is in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Oliva, injured seriously too early in his career, has been deprived of this honor that he deserves.

When you put that list up against the list of losers that I mentioned five paragraphs above, you begin to understand how we have all been cheated during the last dozen years.

Yesterday, Manny Ramirez was banned from baseball for 50 games. What a marvelous player he would have been au natural. He may have even ranked up there with my heroes of the game, but we’ll never know.

You want incredible in baseball? I give you the one and only Babe Ruth! Here’s a paragraph from a great story about him by Kenneth Shouler in Cigar Aficionado. [read the entire story].

“Babe Ruth is unquantifiable. In mathematical terms, Ruth's exploits are beyond measure, since no one has even approached them. When starting out, Yankee first baseman Don Mattingly said, "I thought that Babe Ruth was a cartoon character." And why not? His life seems too large to be real. But Ruth defies the common wisdom that scrutiny exposes the failings of even the greatest legends. The details of Ruth's life--his kindness to children and good cheer, his excesses with cigars and food and drink, his uncanny athletic gifts and olympian power--make him even larger. And if he didn't carry a cigar to the plate, a good smoke was an ever present talisman on his infamous rounds of the bars and restaurants of every major-league town he visited.”

Oh how I wish I had seen him play. What a legend. And tonight it’s the Twins and the Mariners. Play ball!

Pray! And Pray Well!

As I told you yesterday, watch Pakistan!
by Charlie Leck

The news out of Pakistan is not good. The Taliban is stronger than anyone expected and they are advancing rapidly through sections of Pakistan’s outer national ridges. The Taliban is taking control of community centers and setting up local governments. Then they move onward. Pakistan’s military is neither proving dependable nor well trained.

Now, remember, this is just the first battle for the heart and soul of the nation – for absolute control. And then remember, too, that Pakistan is one of the nuclear nations. It, we have been told for years, has atomic weapons.

For the Obama administration, the economic catastrophe has been a test; however, it doesn’t compare to the immensity of this problem.

Overnight, one of my readers, who has captured both the essence and the substance of the problem, wrote the following:

Charlie, after reading your blog about Pakistan/Afghanistan I just didn't know what to think or what to say... now, after watching a CNN interview with the Taliban leader, I now know what I think...I’m scared... we're sending 20k more troops and it's either too many or not enough, or both...Pakistan sits on nuclear bombs... they have a weak central government, they always outlast their enemies, they have no strong economy except opium poppies... What good will 20k U.S. military do?

We should be building schools and roads... we should be inventing an economy that can work in Pakistan and Afghanistan... we should be working with Islamic leaders throughout the middle east... throughout the world in building nations that work... that provide hope for kids through education and economy.... let's build Chryslers in Pakistan and Afghanistan... the American people elected Obama to be creative... let's be creative... I’ll stop fearing militant Islam if we work with them on building their future... it's what we should have been doing with the Palestinians and Israel for the last 20 years.

We have the intellects, the diplomats and the investors... let’s help guide the people who need our help, not try to beat them into submission.

Another 4 years of the same old answers could be the last 4 years... we could have a
nuclear war on our hands...Come on Charlie, keep writing... we read too slow!
(Fred, Denver, CO)

Yesterday, the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, met privately with the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the situation in his country. He assured the Representatives that his nation will repel the Taliban from the areas that the terrorist organization recently seized. There were plenty of Congresspeople who heard him and did not feel so certain. Mr. Zardari did not get specific about his game plan.

Today, Mr. Zardari will meet with President Obama. Wouldn’t you like to be a mouse in the corner? Obama’s main concern will be securing those weapons and I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t talk of moving them out of the nation – promptly – if that is possible!

You can bet your bottom dollar that all our leaders in Washington are thinking of that nuclear stock pile that we allowed to remain in Pakistan. Now they’re wondering if we should have taken it out years ago. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is our absolute worst nightmare!

This “Room for Debate” feature in the NY Times presents a number of viewpoints on the question of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and just how safe they are. It’s worth reading. In that debate, Danielle Pletka, who is the Vice President of Foreign and Defense Police Studies at the American Enterprise Institute makes a bold statement about our foreign policy mistakes. The statement sounds like what Fred wrote above.

“What’s the nightmare scenario? This is it. We have another president in Washington who believes that if he only finds the right president (of Pakistan, Afghanistan, whatever), the situation on the ground will improve. Another president who believes that more troops equals better strategy. Another president who believes that nuclear weapons and the creeping domination of territory is something that can be managed by better diplomacy. Another president that has been persuaded, as Secretary Gates said today, that Saudi Arabia can help manage our problems.

“These problems aren’t going to be solved by having special envoys with better titles, or subcontracting American defense to Saudi Arabia. We need clear indications of long term American commitment to the region, training and equipping of the Pakistani military, and effectively integrated military and aid programs. And what of the billions that have already been spent?

“Like soldiers, money should not be obligated without a strategy. Neither Bush or Obama were interested in scrutinizing where U.S. aid goes and what it achieves, preferring to trumpet the mere expenditure as policy. Absent these changes, we are inviting our enemies to believe again in American weakness. And we know where that led the last time.” [Danielle Pletka]

Stay tuned. This is an extraordinary problem

PAKISTAN IS THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

For the Taliban, “laughter is not permitted, not even a full smile [Mobarak Haidar].”
by Charlie Leck

Don’t be distracted by the news out of the Republic of Georgia! In the coming days and weeks, I urge you to keep your eyes focused on Pakistan, because it has become the center of the world.

News stories this morning indicate there is a full out battle between Pakistan and the Taliban (including many Pakistani tribes who support the terrorists). At risk is a major U.S. supply route to Afghanistan and our troops there. Pakistan has been very slow to take up arms in the defense of its national lands and its very existence. More at risk is Pakistan’s collection of nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration has been putting intense pressure on Pakistan to react. Clearly the administration is worried about the presence of those atomic weapons in this equation [read David Sanger’s story in the NY Times of 3 May 2009]. If Pakistan waits until the situation is desperate, it may decide conventional fighting is fruitless. [Here’s the story in yesterday morning’s Wall Street Church about the current fighting.] As the battle wages and the weaker side becomes evident, keep in mind that Pakistan may use these nuclear weapons. Has any nation ever unleashed such weapons, or anything close to such force, against its own people?

If you don’t think the situation is considered grave in some quarters, listen to the way Sabrin Tavernise quotes the respected Pakistani author Mobarak Haidar in Sunday’s NY Times. She said that Haidar was confidently predicting the end of the world.

“All the world’s achievements for the last 500 years are at risk."

Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, is determined to win control of the government.

The battle in Pakistan is between religious extremists and Muslim moderates.

There is nothing more dangerous in society than religious extremism, whether it be Muslim or Christian, or of some other faith. A religious extremist who truly believes he is a soldier of God will go anywhere, fight any fight or follow any command.

There is no way America can allow the Taliban to control a nation that possesses atomic arms. Obama may be forced into a reaction. Then the question arises about whether have we a military adequate enough after Iraq and Afghanistan. George W. Bush left us a weakened homeland is so many ways.

Pakistan has become an important piece in the complex game of global chess.

IT COULD BE A SIMPLE WORLD

This was the tour's well informed and chatty leader, Carl Antholz.

Why don’t we make it simple and just learn to like each other?
by Charlie Leck

Yesterday I took an organized tour of ethnic grocery markets and delicatessens in our metropolitan area. One of our kids has been urging me to do it for quite some time. Wow, did I have fun and I got some eye-popping lessons in life.

I won’t give you a rerun of the whole tour, but I’ll concentrate on the lessons that I learned.

I sat next to a nice lady on the bus. She was a grandmother with a splendid sense of humor and a remarkable attitude. Life had given her some ups and downs, but she was positive and adventurous and hopeful. As well, I got to see a photograph of her granddaughter. You might not be surprised to learn that I found out that the kid is wonderful, beautiful, bright and well behaved.

The tour was organized by an excellent retail operation in Minneapolis called Kitchen Window. It’s a huge store “for the passionate cook” and it has an events manager who puts together all kinds of special occasions and tours about cooking and food. This is a good operation. I remember shopping there when they first opened with an unimpressive inventory. They’ve grown and grown into one of the finest stores of this type in America. I bought all of our wonderful All-Clad cookware there.

Our first stop on the tour, Buon Giorno Italia, is a market I already knew about. One of the kids – the hands-down winner in our family at chefing (I made this verb up) – had already introduced it to me. This place has a superb deli and one can find a remarkable assortment of Italian cheeses and meats there. It’s pricey, but really superb. I can’t find salami anywhere else that matches its assortment and the same is true for prosciutto. They’ve got an outstanding selection of many types of olive oils (though we saw their assortment matched and bettered on the tour). The bakery at Buon Giorno is also excellent and they have a variety of walk-away luncheon items. The adjoining wine store claims to have the best selection of Italian wines in the United States. We also got to take a peek at the very lovely and comfortable restaurant there.

We reboarded the bus and headed out for the heart of St. Paul. My seat companion was not from the Twin Cities area, so I tried to give her a little guided tour of the areas we passed through (I should have been a tour guide because I love to do this).

"There’s where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers converge; and Fort Snelling is over there; and that’s the old Schmidt Brewery sticking up on the right side; and there’s the Minnesota History Center, the Capitol Building and Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Oh yes, and there’s the pretty spiral of Saint Agnes Church."

This grandma expressed a touch of nervousness or unease when we got into a little shabbier section of the city and wondered if it was safe. I pointed out one Hmong market I've always wanted to visit and she expressed concern about the people standing around near the front door.

We arrived and pulled into the parking lot of Dragon Star Oriental Foods on Dale Street.

It was at Dragon Star that I began learning some of life’s lessons.

A lovely, pretty lady mixing a papyya salad.

Beaucoup le monde, they say in French. All the world was at the market. There seemed every hue of skin color, nose shapes and texture of hair. None was not beautiful. Each was wonderful and unique. I realized, after a while, that I was surrounded by kindness. I wandered with my camera and saw dozens of wide bright smiles. I was said hello to in dozens of ways. Heels clicked, heads bowed, eyes blinked, hands waved and palms were upturned.

I knew it was a diverse and multi-cultured world. Now I was realizing my city was the same way. The world was no longer across the seas. Just in the last couple of decades the nation has changed immensely. Barack Obama was telling us this during the campaign. America is no longer the America of our grandparents.

What we must absolutely realize is that it's okay. As a matter of fact. this is all perfectly good and even wonderful.

Dragon Star's customers were as diverse as our nation.

Someone sent me some startling numbers last week. I looked at them for a long time and shook my head in wonder. I also checked them and they proved to be accurate.

If you could fit the entire population of the world into a single village consisting of 100 people living on Earth, that village would consist of the following.

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 Americans (North, Central and South)
8 Africans

I thought about those numbers as I walked around Dragon Star and the rest of the coming day would make me think about them even more.

This handsome, effervescent couple joined us on the tour.

I don't believe I was ever more surrounded with diversity; yet, I don't think I've ever felt more at ease and comfortable and satisfied. I began to wish I was younger because I could feel the world changing and I wanted to enjoy the wonderful coming day when, for sanity's sake, we would all need to get along and like each other completely.

In this village of 100 we spoke about above, there would be the following make up also:

52 women
48 men
30 Caucasians
70 non Caucasians
30 Christians
70 non-Christians
89 heterosexuals
11 homosexuals

This pretty customer wanted her mom to hurry because some funny stranger was stalking her with a camera!

Is it not amazing? Put the world in these small, even minuscule numbers and you begin to see what we really look like.

6 people would possess 50 percent of the wealth and they would all come from the U.S.

80 would live in poverty
70 would be illiterate
50 would suffer from hunger and malnutrition
1 would be dying
1 would be being born
1 would own a computer
1 (yes, only 1) would have a university degree

This clerk, at a Persian deli, The Caspian, had a smile a mile wide for us!

The person who sent me these statistics about our world also reminded me that if I was reading the message -- just reading the message -- I should feel very fortunate because I was not one of the 2 billion people on Earth who cannot read. If you want to see a very attractive slide show that explains these number, go here.


This efficient clerk at Cinco de Mayo Mercado in south Minneapolis waited on us with a smile and good humor.

I'm not trying to frighten anyone or put a downer on you. I'm actually sharing some good news with you. The world is a wonderful place, but the future is so much brighter than we can ever believe and our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to have opportunities I so envy.

There will be more color, and grander music, and new dances, and new openness to grand and lovely ideas about living.

A entire aisle of varieties of olive oil at Bill's Imported Foods on Lake Street.

Yes, I learned some really neat things yesterday about olive oil and soy sauce. These things will come in very handy. I learned, too, that there is a Greek oregano and there are sweet lemons. I saw people buying fish heads and I was introduced to at least a half dozen new potato varieties.

This is a big, wide, wonderful world and we should celebrate it.

Don't be afraid of diversity. The world would be so drab without it. I think God may have had that it mind also.

The world would be such a simpler place if we'd all just get along. I know that's not an astounding thought. Yet, as ordinary as the idea is, so few of us have accepted it.

The Former Vice President Won’t Shut Up

Do you notice that the guy who couldn’t shoot straight, won’t shut up and maybe needs to have an indictment stuck in his big fat mouth?
by Charlie Leck

Vice Presidents normally just survive the terms of office of their Presidents. They generally keep quiet and it’s almost always the best policy to do that. Vice President Joe Biden may have learned that lesson this week – a mere 100 days into his boss’s term at the helm. Biden’s comments about the current virus scare were very absurd and very incorrect. Joe still has some egg on his face that won’t seem to wash off.

But, take the case of Dick Cheney. He’s been babbling and making noise and splashing egg on his face for decades upon decades. I’m not a great student of U.S. History, but a pretty good one; and I don’t remember any other Vice Presidents shooting one of their hunting partners in the face and not feeling a mote of embarrassment about it.

Dick Cheney scowled at the press all during his tenure as Vice President; yet he fed them plenty of information and fire that could come back to haunt him.

Now, far removed from office, he has not followed the established precedent that former Vice Presidents go silently into the night and keep their traps shut.

He’s still thundering!

Even though his favorability rating is racing toward zero (or the toilet –whichever way you’d like to look at it), Cheney continues to speak out against the current President. The guy who, on paper, was his boss is keeping his mouth tightly shut. Republicans at the top wish Dick Cheney would do the same.

I think I know a sure-fire way to shut the former Vice President down. Shove an indictment in his big, fat trap. Then let’s hear him explain away his violations of the law regarding torture and illegal detainment of prisoners who had been charged with nothing at all.

The former Vice President should bear in mind that there is a very large number of people who are of the opinion that this should happen; that is, that he should be indicted. They are also of the belief that the former Vice President needs to spend some time in prison himself. If you don’t believe the movement to indict and take Cheney to trial is more than a small faction, just spend some time on one of the best alternative news sources in the nation – AlterNet.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, as fine a presidential historian as we’ve ever come upon, feels that Cheney is fighting for his legacy. He is not going to run for office. He’s freed from politics.

“His main constituency right now,” Goodwin says, “is history.”

Well, I say, a good federal trial regarding his malfeasance in office will provide us with plenty of information with which we can then establish where he belongs in history.

Some one, perhaps his lawyers, should advise this fellow to slink away and be quiet. That, I suppose, is like telling the proverbial tree not to make any noise when it falls in the forest, which perhaps it doesn’t when there is no one around to hear. Is this point too subtle for Mr. Cheney?

Then, again, perhaps the former Vice President would look good in stripes!