I’ll be having more to say in this slot soon.

Yeh, many problems just go away if talked about enough. But not because the talk, talk, talk solves anything. It’s just that after a while most things decay with time, and something else takes their place, then the talk cycle starts over. And over. And over.

But this one won’t go away. It’s going uncontrollably toward the prediction of most every religion: this world will pass and another will take its place. Science? Not as we know it. Crazy? Maybe. But one thing about these predictions – most match up in one strange way: the end begins in the middle east.

It’s the ultimate battle say prophecies. And how much more ultimate could a battle be than two mid-east countries driven by religion and radicalism throwing nukes at each other?

This one can’t be Obama’d to death. Maybe nothing humans can do will stop it.

But that’s not possible, we usually say. Americans have always been able to solve any problem. We solved really huge ones by taking on the bad guys in two World Wars. But did we? Could it be, that like WW2 was set up by problems left over from WW1, we just keep setting up worse and worse scenarios until we get to the final one?

Item: we’re fighting two wars we can’t win in the middle east! Nothing more than stirring the cauldron. To the point that it’s about to boil over.

Iran? Just how much worse could it get than a raving maniac, driven by religious nuts who don’t care what happens in this world, but think they’ll be rewarded with virgins in the next, having the means to destroy this one?

This one — the ultimate problem — won’t be talked out of existence. Can it be taken out by another war started by humans? The recent record would say no. Prophecy would say no.

And maybe those biblical predictions of Apocalypse are about to become the real Apocalypse Now.

Evan Bayh, who has served two terms as a democratic senator from Indiana, and even been trumpeted as a possible presidential candidate, said it this way as he announced yesterday that he wouldn’t be there after this term:

“For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done.”

Americans are right to be disgusted. Not with Bayh, but with the people who are killing America by going to and staying in Washington with nothing but their selfish interests in mind.

Blame the lobbyists? The arch enemies, the “special interests?” We have seen the special interests. And they are the ones we elected, not the ones who are paying them to do the wrong thing.

Who’s to blame when someone takes a bribe? It’s obvious. The bribee’s the real bad guy. Pass anti-lobby, anti-influence laws? Ridiculous! Those who put the laws in already know how to spin around them. Long before they become laws. And they already know how to blame somebody else long before they need to.

The solution is with those who take the bribes and reward the bribers. DON’T TAKE THEM! Be honest, for crying out loud. Be a patriot. Be a lover of America. Imitate those who founded this place, and were so obsessed with doing the right thing that they put their lives on the line to get it done.

Don’t we wish it were possible to vote them out! But there’s no “none of the above on the ballot.” Maybe that’s that’s the way to get it done. Not just a tea party with speeches. We’ve had speeches about change to the point of vomit.

A “none of the above” on the ballot? But wouldn’t that mean there’d be nobody there to run it? YES! And how would that be different from what we have now?

Democrats Reel as Senator Bayh Steps Aside – NYTimes.com.

Fat chance. They’ve been giving lipservice to that for years. Blame just depends on who’s in power. Democrats most recently held the power, lost the immediate advantage, so now they want compromise.

But it’s like two countries negotiating the end to a war. The one with the seeming immediate advantage dictates certain unacceptable terms going in. It doesn’t work. With terms being dictated, the side disadvantaged still holds hope of a comeback, and attends just looking for a weak spot to regain an advantage.

Like Obama, still saying He’ll consider anything, but some things aren’t negotiable. Then bringing Republicans in for a high-profile meeting, where everybody is shamed into seeming conciliatory, but neither side goes in to give in.

Where were the high-profile, bi-partisan meetings when high-profile bills like health care were being put together to begin with? Are the American people believing that Washington is turning over a new leaf, just because of another meeting?

We knew the answer without a poll, but there is one: a new Washington Post- ABC News poll indicates that the deep divisions remain. Very deep.

Talk about old news! The poll could have been taken years ago.

*President Barack Obama at Press Conference Says He’ll Meet Republicans ‘Halfway’ – WSJ.com.

We all like to think of Doctors as people who always take the high road. Even when they’re played as comics or fools on TV, we still like to think of them as Dr. Welby. For those too young to remember, Marcus Welby, MD was a top-rated show on ABC, starring Robert Young as the perfect, caring, all-wise GP. It aired during a time many people refer to as the good old days (1969-1976).

But times have changed. Not many Dr. Welbys left. Not in this time of managed care, hospital rules and government rulings. You can’t spend more than five minutes with each patient and make the kind of doctor money mothers are proud of.

Not unless you’re taking care of a celebrity. One that has the money to buy you. And the power to make you believe you’re part of that celebrity. And in order to hang on to it, give the patient what he/she wants. And that means feel-good drugs. Feel-good to the point of becoming deadly.

Why, for heaven’s sake? It’s the groupie effect. The urge just to be around celebrity. And it doesn’t take much celebrity. Just let a local TV anchor, or even a week-end weather guy show up in a grocery store and people stare. Then go say to their friends, “Guess who I saw?”

A minor piece I used to do on a popular local morning show got me off a speeding ticket. The cop says, “You look familiar. Where have I seen you?”

I didn’t even tell him where, merely said, “You’ve probably seen me on TV.” That was enough. All I got was a smile and a “You take it easy now.”

It’s like an infection. Celebrity infects everybody, including doctors. I am somebody because I know somebody, or have even seen somebody. Like the silly, screaming girls who surrounded Michael and Elvis, and, yes, all the way back to Sinatra in his young days. They’re called groupies. And we all laugh.

But when one of our supposedly most intelligent and principled lets it take hold to the point of disaster, we need to reassess. Seriously.

For Michael and Elvis, their celebrity, which seemed so fabulous for a time, became very serious. And when doctors became groupies, fatal.

*via Michael Jackson’s Doctor Is Charged With Manslaughter – NYTimes.com.

And congress? All the dreamers left long ago. Either disillusioned or blended in with the reality of politics.

Among the many difficult-to-keep promises Obama made as candidate, were those having to do with stopping the bickering in Washington. Working both sides of the aisle, etc., etc. We really should say, instead of “difficult to keep,” impossible.

“The American people don’t want it.” Heard that before? Of course, and not just from Obama. It’s one of those popular phrases. But nobody can stop the bickering in Washington. Just a discussion of stopping the bickering could unleash a barrage of bickering. And probably a dozen or so bills, each a thousand pages or more. Then everybody would immediately start looking for ways around the bills they had just passed.

Maybe those guys back there – the ones we choose to call forefathers – secretly knew what would happen. That things would just take care of themselves when future politicians like those we have now started trying to control every little thing Americans do. Maybe those wise men, who allowed themselves to be guided by a higher power, knew things would just bog down to this horrible thing called gridlock every time too much self-importance set in.

So why can’t we just do what everybody wants and be done with it? Because all the roads in and out of doing what everybody wants lead to what nobody wants.

What’s the solution? Easy. Don’t stop the bickering. And leave the gridlock in. If not for them, our government would have sold America down the river years ago.

Doesn’t leave much room for those of us who believe in God, but also believe the earth and the universe work in natural ways established in the beginning.

Some remember Superman, in a movie, flying around the earth so fast that he reversed its rotation. That took us back in time a whole day and brought back the life of his girl friend who had been killed the day before. Imagine God doing that. Even the All-Powerful would have a problem. That trick would totally upset the balance of the solar system and probably the universe. And who knows what unintended consequences would come from interfering with earth’s natural processes such as earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and such?

And if God did decide to change the way the universe works just to spare humans from getting hurt, how much hurt should he stop? Would that include reaching down and picking up rocks from playgrounds so no child’s toe ever got stubbed? If you consider that ridiculous, where in the line between tsunami and toe stubbing do you think God should cease interfering in natural processes? And if you pick a point for that, what makes you think your’re so smart?

God as Superman? Jumping in minute by minute to abolish all the stuff some humans consider bad? If he constantly tinkered with the way things work, how could we count on anything happening the same way twice? And how chaotic would that be?

At least that’s what some Maylasian Muslims seem to believe, and burning churches is what they’re doing, writes Seth Mydans for the New York Times.

As he puts it, “Many Muslims (in Kuala Lumpur) are angry over a Dec. 31 court ruling that overturned a government ban on the use of the word Allah to denote the Christian God. Though that usage is common in many countries, where Arabic- and Malay-language Bibles describe Jesus as the “son of Allah,” many Muslims here insist that the word belongs exclusively to them and say that its use by other faiths could confuse Muslim worshipers.”

But wait, there’s more. It is reported that politicians may be fomenting the whole thing to fit their purposes. That “Some political analysts and politicians accuse Prime Minister Najib Razak of raising racial and religious issues as he tries to solidify his Malay base.”

Now isn’t that unusual! Like it’s never before happened that some humans are using the name of whichever deity works to steam up other humans for political purposes.

More fodder for Atheists. If God, or Allah, as the case may be, were as good as their adherents claim, he wouldn’t allow such stuff to happen. Such a great and good wizard wouldn’t allow politicians to steal his thunder by making false claims in his name. And he certainly wouldn’t allow different religious groups to vehemently argue that he’s on their side, and not anybody elses… to the point of killing each other.

Which means, of course, that we’d all be robots, guided by remote control from on high. But then there couldn’t be atheists, because they’d get zapped by the super remote. Same for different beliefs among those who believe there is a higher power/intelligence. They’d all have to believe exactly the same thing.

Which really wouldn’t be believing, would it?

In a campaign, it’s promise. In practice, it’s perform. Which neither he nor anyone else can do, given the fairy tail scenario he set up. The world is reality, not acting according to his or anyone else’s idealism.

He told us we needed a softer touch in dealing with the world. That would make everybody respect us. Doesn’t work, never has, never will. Bullies don’t know respect, they only know fear. It’s just a question of what they fear. Loss of life? Not as long as it’s somebody else’s life, and they always manage to push somebody weaker out front. But loss of power? The leaders of bully regimes will do anything to keep from losing that. Unfortunately, the Obama gang is still stuck at “If they don’t behave there’ll be consequences.” Even a child is unimpressed by such weakness.

He said he’d talk with Iran, as though they’d be nice if we would. Instead they sneer. And they will have the bomb unless Israel does something about it first. Obama won’t. He hasn’t the foggiest notion of what to do. How about bombing, as Reagan did Libya–almost on the Colonel’s head. Sure shut him up. Got rid of his nuke ambitions.

So it’s different with Iran? Same posturing cowards! Pacifists fear that Israel might start a war if they do something like bomb nuke sites. Start a war? Ahmadinejad has declared one already! And it would be much better for the world if it gets fought before Iran has nukes to throw around.

Will Obama get it? Gosh, no. Anything drastic, and he might have to return his peace prize.