Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     One of our biggest military heroes, General David Petraeus, has been caught with his literal pants down! Perhaps I am being naive, but I cannot understand how anyone, particularly a high-ranking government official, can get involved in sexual hanky-panky, and think he can get away with it. What would make Petraeus betray us? (OK, so they can't all be great.)      I am reminded of the story of a little dog who was crossing the railroad tracks when a train came along and cut off his tail. When he turned around to look at it, another train came along and cut off his head. But he was not the first dog to lose his head over a piece of tail. Think of John Kennedy, Bill Clinton and John Edwards.      With cell phones as ubiquitous as potato chips, privacy is a thing of the past in today's society.      But when one is in a position of power or fame, thinking with the wrong head poses an even greater danger. ...

     The history of politicians being caught with their pants down, literally, goes back a long way, but until Bill Clinton's adventures came to light, no one seemed to care very much. And it seems as if the burden of infidelity has fallen more often on stalwarts of the Republican party.      Oh, I know the Democrats have had their free-swingers, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, John Edwards and the fore-mentioned Bill Clinton, but they are not the ones who are out there preaching “family values” as part of their party platform. And although the Democrats have often engaged in “left-wing social engineering,” they are not attempting to highjack must-pass bills, e.g. raising the debt ceiling, by attaching “right-wing social engineering” anti-abortion and anti-gay riders to it. (Left-wing and right-wing social engineering terms were raised by Newt Gingrich on the May 15th telecast of Meet The Press. On May 17th he asked everyone to forget he e...