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MAIL CALL
This essay has an air of inevitability about it. If a pitcher stands on the mound and expectorates on the baseball, the batter should know that the next pitch will inevitably be a spitball which will start out at waist level and sink to his shoe-tops by the time it crosses the plate. There is…
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DIGESTIVE DIFFICULTIES AND THE WAR ON TERROR
The king of Crawford, Texas, George III, has frequently said that he consults with outside experts on monumental decisions, but in the end he says he relies on his “gut feelings.” Reliance on King George’s gut feeling has brought on the disaster in Iraq and the so called war on terror. While King George says…
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BOXSCORE ON THE WAR ON TERROR:
After every professional sporting event, a box score is kept. The box score records how many runs and hits there were, how many shots were taken, how many assists there were, and such things as passed balls, and wild pitches. A box score on Bush’s war on terror as 2006 draws to a close would…
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WAR ON TERROR
The news from Washington, particularly the White House, tells us that we are fighting a war on terror. This old under-educated, inarticulate clod is baffled by that description. What war are we talking about? And are the American people genuinely terrorized? The imprecision of the language in the so-called war on terror is immense. When…
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BERNICE and WERNER’S UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Bernice Hughes and Werner Friedli, two likeable people, have been waiting since 1944 for answers to their questions. At this late date, I am still unable to provide them with suitable answers. But I will offer their questions to you in the hope that you may have a suggestion or two. Let’s deal first with…
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THE 0-FER FACTOR
The Salvation Army, the Baptist Young People’s Union, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Luther League (Missouri Synod) have approved this essay only on the ground that I disclose that it is a political and not a baseball essay. But to make my point it is necessary to call on the practice of baseball…
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REALITY AND AMERICAN CONSTERNATION
This morning, March 6, Tim Russert asked General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, how the war in Iraq was going. To save space, I will condense his answer into the thought that the war is going swimmingly. Everything is on schedule and soon there will be Iraqi boys fighting the insurgents over…
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ARMY SERIAL NUMBER (ASN) 17077613
If one were inclined to study a map of the United States, he would discover that in the middle Western part, there is a river that flows from the north and winds up in New Orleans. That of course is the mighty Mississippi, which was celebrated in 1927 by Jerome Kern’s production of Showboat. In…
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“THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME”
LES GUÊPES, 1849 JEAN BAPTISTE ALPHONSE KARR This essay has spent a longer time than normal in gestation. I had intended to dictate it on Memorial Day, but the news from Iraq was so depressing that I could not bring myself to work on it. Now that the essay has emerged from the womb, let…
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THE PENTAGON’S EASTER SURPRISE
On Good Friday, 2007, which was April 6, the Pentagon leaked the information that 12,000 National Guardsmen would be activated and called to service starting early next year. They will be sent to Iraq and will serve at least one year there.* There are some significant thoughts about this development. This will be an involuntary…