It happened his first year as Governor. Concerned about the impression his non-riding would have with Texas voters, his Staff decided it'd be best if they staged a photo-op on a horse. They picked out the steed they thought best for the novice rider, and two of his aides helped him into the saddle. No sooner was he seated, though, when the horse bolted, took off with no warning whatsoever. Mr Bush clung bravely to the reins, and tried to wrap his legs tight around the haunches, but the speed of the horse, coupled with the wild motion of its galloping, threw Mr Bush from the saddle.

To the horror of all the witnesses, Mr Bush's foot became ensnared in the stirrup, and though he crashed hard to the ground, he was trapped and drug helplessly behind the charging steed. Some of the younger aides rushed after him to help, but it was hopeless -- the galloping beast rushed ahead, and Mr Bush bounced wildly behind, his arms flailing helplessly, his head and shoulders repeatedly smashed on the hard ground beneath the thundering hooves.

It seemed, for a moment, that all was lost and Mr Bush would be pounded to death before his horrified Staff. Shouts of anguish and despair arose from them all and the end seemed inevitable, but fortunately, all the hubbub alerted the WalMart manager, who stepped outside and pulled the plug.

And so, you can understand, ever since "the incident" Mr Bush has shied away from the ponies. . .

in which one hour equals $30 million, a day is $720 million, a week is $5 billion, and a month $20 billion. Then I insert the terms as possible.

"Yes, I think the town should build a new library -- after all, it'll only cost $3 Iraq Hours."

"A new highway through that part of the county would be great and would only cost $1-1/2 Iraq Weeks to build."

"It's true, health care for all children in this state would be expensive, but we're only talking about $4 Iraq Months each year."

It brings the cost of the IraqAttaq in to sharper focus, and helps people conceptualize in easily understood terms the tremendous, needless drain this occupation exerts on all our lives. It's also a somewhat innocuous way to bring the Catastroph@#k into normal conversation (especially these days, when so many former supporters are loathe to even consider this disaster's true impact on the world).

let's see, when I graduated high school, in the early '70s, I'd dealt with the murders of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; saw a localized war in Vietnam explode into a regional conflagration with tens of thousands of American soldiers dead and countless Vietnamese, maybe a million or more, slaughtered; witnessed fellow citizens shot down in the streets for daring to protest the increasingly reckless and illegal actions of an out-of-control President; huddled beneath school desks in mock anticipation of nuclear annihilation; witnessed a police riot in Chicago, and the disintegration of the social bonds in my hometown (Los Angeles), as well as countless other flashpoints for riots across the land -- Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Louisville, and more; saw and participated in a raft of protests against the war, against social conditions, prison conditions, the grinding poverty that is life for too many millions in America; gasped in horror when Charles Whitman climbed the Texas U tower, reeled in shock when the Manson Family preyed together; sputtered in near impotent rage when the government refused to heed Rachel Carson's warning how we are poisoning ourselves and endured instead a corporate media blitz about the dangers of littering; debated the inanity of television and the dumbing of America; worried and complained that the media didn't cover the proper issues, that it too often gave only the government line and excluded alternative voices; worried about wars, and rumors of wars, and the relentless stockpiling of nuclear weaponry; sat in shocked disbelief as Munich unfolded; watched as a plethora of terrorist groups highjacked planes and used them as weapons against their "oppressors," flying them to Cuba & elsewheres, threatening to kill the passengers; wondered at the long-term effect of the OPEC embargo as the realization of oil's end became all too real . . . and these are just what I remember off the top, quickly typing in the wee hours of the morning.

My schooling was bracketed by a death in Dallas and wanton killings in Kent. The dream -- the national fantasy inculcated into so many after the War -- died with JFK. But the hope . . . the hope spawned by Jefferson, reaffirmed by Lincoln, restored by Franklin Roosevelt . . . the hope remained, and beats as strong today as it did when I received my first diploma. From that hope we generate anew the dreams that will carry us into the future, a future that grows increasingly bright . . .

The renowned psychotherapist Viktor Frankl dedicated his life to learning why some people can survive the unknowable while others succumb to what can only be seen as the mundane.

Years in Theresienstadt and Kaufering, followed by release at last from Auschwitz, granted Dr. Frankl a unique perspective on life and the psychology of its meaning. From his experiences, Dr. Frankl formulated a radical psychotherapy, a form of existential analysis he defined as the will to meaning, in which he sought explanation for why some find purpose and responsibility in their lives and others do not.

Beyond this psychological theorem, however, Dr. Frankl’s enduring contribution to the world of ideas resides in his assertion of what he believed is the core of human freedom, the basic block upon which we build our lives and our psyches.

Behind the camp wire, Dr. Frankl lost everything that gave purpose and meaning to his life: from the material to the sublime...his home and career, his humanity and sense of self. Of an extended family that spanned generations as much as geography, only a sister emerged with him to reclaim the fragments of their lives.

But in that shadowland between death and the grave Dr. Frankl learned that all can be taken from a man but one thing: the first and last of the human freedoms — the ability to choose our attitude in any situation, the possibility to choose our own way. It is this spiritual freedom — which even the Nazis in their death factories could not deny — that helps give life its meaning and imparts to it purpose.

has roughly the same population (25 million), and about the same number of foreign troops as California has law enforcement (~150,000). For the past three years, the foreign occupation troops have functioned as the law within Iraq.

Here's the true comparison: Would anyone in this country be complacent if -- on average -- 2.3 policemen were being killed in California every day? If 2600 police officers had been killed in California in the past three years, would anyone feel this was anything less than total anarchy? Would any pundit scoff and compare California to, say, Darfur, and conclude that the situation's acceptable because it could be much worse?

And this doesn't begin to include the civilian toll. Who believes that carbombs and IEDs, dozens of citizens dead in the streets on a regular basis, thousands kidnapped and hundreds assassinated, beheadings, churches bombed and clergy hacked to death with machetes, undrinkable water, people freezing to death in the dark . . . who believes such a total disintegration of civilized society in the most populous State of the Union would warrant a shrug or a smirk or a dismissive wave of the hand? Who would send snarky emails about such Left Coast chaos? And how long would a politician -- any politician in any state or at any level -- how long would they last in office if they made smug and condescending comments about how well the true situation is in California? How obscene would observations about school paintjobs be in such a crisis?

Send these thoughts to your Dad. Let's see what smug answers he may have for this scenario.