Cleo Laine - Send in the Clowns

I don't know about this strange, kitchy, overstuffed hotel room setting room and dreadful clothes and ovdeeracting BUT...Cleo is one of the great jazz singers and this is a great Sondheim standard.

God, Gays & Guns

What constitutes "worthy" or "legitimate" debate in general elections?

It is (pick one) amazing? scary? laughable? disheartening? to see that Republicans and Democrats and that great arbitrator of All Things American, Wolfe Blitzer (zzzzzzz....), are all still caught in subjects most of us had long settled and abandoned.

God is your own business. Keep Him/Her/It of the hustings. If you've found Him/Her/It, be happy and be quiet.

Gay is your own business. Fred and Frank living next door to Alicia and Torvel is not the end of the human race. Start up the barbecue and be quiet.

Guns...now there's a worthy topic. But the Americans won't have a reasonable discussion and the politicians are terrified of the NRA, so they won't vote on any bill that might limit Ted Nugent's freedom to pack weapons of mass destruction in his Fargo. And Canadians - well, we have a 2 billion dollar mistake to figure out from our last attempt to make sense of guns.

Yet somehow, when the real issues are Health Care (In America, nobody has it; in Canada, we can't keep paying for it.) and Education and Productivity, the populace will once again be derailed by non-issues like God, gays, Abortion and whether or not Paris Hilton is or isn't in jail somewhere for something as we speak.