Creek of Consciousness

First the lemonade stands, now the treehouses. Did an interview on the radio a few weeks back with lawyer Dave Roland of the Missouri Freedom Center about how he's fighting cities outlawing children's lemonade stands (Thanks, Dave, for decriminalizing all the lemonade stands in Greeley, Colorado). Now Washington's WTOP Radio reports a Fall Church, Virginia, man has run afoul of zoning law for building his kids a treehouse. My question to lawyer Roland: why are cities doing this? His response: "Because they can"...The Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married received an e-mail from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) calling upon her to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Is it that when there is well orchestrated, well-funded ongoing disruption, we should look for the union label?...Wall Street Journal says GE getting concerned about Tea Party flack for GE's close ties to Obama administration. CEO Jeffrey Immelt is even catching it from Mom -- his parents are big conservative media consumers and she told him not to join President's jobs council. Journal says GE claims crony capitalism charges are overblown..Joplin, Missouri's big need is for cash, according to my latest check of the post-tornado situation ...What do five of the last six presidents have in common? Except for George W. Bush, every president since Gerald Ford was left-handed. Before that, you have to go back to Harry Truman. And prior to World War II we had no left-handed presidents (except maybe James Garfield, who was so ambidexterous that he could write a sentence in Latin with one hand while writing the same sentence in Greek with the other!). Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt wrote a few years back that the reason we have all these latter-day lefties-in-chief might be because of abandonment of the old practice of imposing right-handness on all children... Danger -- old jokes ahead: Hold up your left hand. If you hold up left hand, your right hand is left, right? -- How many people would give their right arm to be ambidexterous? -- Do left-handers fight for their rights? And, yes, I am left-handed (Left on, brother!)...Lions and Tigers and winners, oh my! Some of the best news writing shows up on the sports page. Regarding the turnaround of the 4-0 Detroit Lions, Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay says: "Your average sentient human chooses to endure only one Lions game per year, on Thanksgiving." And that, he says, is just "an escape hatch from family dysfunction."