Entitlement Generation Killing America?

I vividly remember the first time I heard a college professor explain the facts of life to me. No, I'm not talking about the bird and the bees; rather the facts of life for a college student. Gone were the days of high school, where teachers could be talked into accepting late papers and the expected grade was an "A." Welcome to the playoffs of academia, where a "C" is the standard. That was great for me, as I'm the kind of person who won't accept the standard. I earned an A in that class, and continued to pile up the A's as I made my way through...

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The Republicans' Best and Brightest??

Is this really all the modern Republican Party has to offer? Ok, full disclosure: I am, essentially a Democrat. It's hard to really take ownership of  a political party these days, as I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I don't agree with spending money just because we own the printing presses, but I also don't think government should be involved in our personal lives. Since there is not a fiscally responsible party in the offing, I will stand on the side of those who stand up for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning...

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A Mid-September Nightmare

"The thousand injuries of Fortunado I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." - Montresor - "The Cask Of Amontillado" - Edgar Allan Poe I didn't have any idea what time it was, but I definitely knew something was wrong. I woke with a start, awakened by I didn't know what, and instinctively glanced at the glowing alarm clock next to my bed. 3:15 AM The room was dark, but I soon knew what it was that had awakened me. My wife Jennifer was crossing the room holding our screaming three-month-old boy. I didn't...

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The War On Halloween?

Every year right about the end of the Thanksgiving holidays we start to hear the rhetoric heat up surrounding what language we use to talk about that next all-important retail event on the December calendar. If someone says "Happy Holidays," they are said to be anti-religion, and if someone says "Merry Christmas" the argument is that they aren't being politically correct. Welcome to the front lines of what church-going folk often call the "War On Christmas." But what about Halloween? Don't we have a similar battle going on over the language of...

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The 24 Hour News Fallacy

Once upon a time TV actually went off the air at night. I'm barely old enough to remember the nightly playing of the National Anthem and the pattern  and annoying buzz that would follow and remain the only thing on TV until the next day's broadcasts began at some early hour the next morning. TV news used to be something that happened a few times a day, with much of America getting their news right before dinner or perhaps right before bed. I can recall there being the 6 O'clock News and the 11 O'clock news, and that was just about it. And...

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The Music Industry's Biggest Threat?

Perhaps I'm showing my age, or perhaps I'm displaying a certain unwillingness to adapt to new technologies, but I am one who still likes to have a physical copy of music albums I purchase. I like to look at the insert, read the acknowledgments and have a copy of the lyrics. I also like to see who wrote the songs, since so many artists today don't write their own. You can learn a lot about the artist if you know which songs they wrote themselves. That's not to say I don't digitize the music once I buy it; the first thing I do is put the CD into...

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Failure SHOULD BE An Option

Any given motivational speaker, military commander, coach or public school teacher is likely to utter the words "failure is not an option," but No Child Left Behind took the meaning of the statement to new extremes. Literally . . .failure is NOT an option. While I was building my basketball brand I spent more than a decade working in and around public schools, specifically as a special education teacher. I had the "bad" kids, which really just means I had the kids everyone had given up on. They were the ones carrying labels like ADD (Attention...

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Don't Ask, Don't Care!

America had one of its prouder moments this week as it cast aside the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevented openly gay men and women from serving in the military. The demise of the policy, which was a bald-faced example of discrimination in its purist form, is a victory for equality and a breath of fresh air from a government that has grown stuffy in its defense of the indefensible. This issue brings up a larger question, though, one that I've had in the back of my mind for years: Why are Americans so consumed by what goes on in the privacy...

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Obama's Andrew Shepherd Moment

In the movie The American President, Michael Douglas' President Andrew Shepherd wants to be the adult in the room. His Republican opponent Bob Rumson (played by Richard Dreyfuss) and, by extension, the media are harassing him because he has a girlfriend, and Shepherd chooses not to engage. "Nobody wins these fights; they go away," Shepherd told his best friend and chief of staff, played by Martin Sheen. And so Shepherd turns a deaf ear as Dreyfuss' character drills him day after day leading up to the next election. Finally, with his polls numbers...

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