"Wake Up Call" is a dopey cliche. G.W. Bush recently inappropriately used another cliche: "Graceful Exit."

Cliches are a major part of G.W.Bush's world. Everything that happens, he and ilk try to find a cliche to describe it. They believe that constitutes good speech and real wisdom.

This is not the wake up call! You missed the wake up call long ago. This is the bed on fire around you, and the roof coming down on your head, Mister Bush! No more graceful exit, either. You need to scramble down the fire escape right now.

We will arrest you when you get to the bottom, and we will put you in a nice fireproof prison where you will get a real wake up call every day at five am. No exit of any kind allowed until your sentence is up.

The real software world has moved on. Here is an example. My bride is running this project right now:

My American wife is putting together a software product with a couple other Americans and half a dozen South Asian people plus several Chinese people (all located here in the USA). They get occasional programming help from Chinese people working for their American company in China.

The product they are developing is going to be used first in South America, and then in China.

Three important conclusions:

1. Most of the programmers are Indian and Chinese, but most of them are here in the USA. And they have great jobs. They can afford nice houses and college for their kids.

These are not people "doing the jobs Americans don't want to do," as that out-of-date twit G.W. Bush imagines. They are doing the jobs Americans really want.

2. They are writing code in the USA, to be used in China and South America. That is not outsourcing. But they are not American. So is that outsourcing? No. At least it does not fit what we all think we know about outsourcing.

3. We need to crank up American education, or provide some sort of Data Apprenticeship Program, so that Americans can get these jobs.

Finally, even though software outsourcing only has been going on for a few years, it already has mutated, and we need to think about it as it really is, rather than as we imagine it.

John McCain is rejecting the new report, and calling for more troops. Joseph Lieberman is taking a contrary pose, too.

McCain will be in a strong position if he gets people to believe that victory still is possible. People will flock to him.

The new Baker Report is meant to put the idea of victory in Iraq behind us. But if McCain and others keep that idea alive, I am afraid we are dead.

Some of you who do not like or get Garrison Keillor are very much like the bumbling people who live in Lake Woebegone, but your manners are very much worse.

Poster TK of the Red Star: Do you realize that GK's entire schtik, his whole fame and fortune, his complete "genius" boils down to being an anachronism?

Do you think "A Prairie Home Companion" is the hippest, most cutting-edge name he could come up with for his radio show? It's not. It is an anachronism. On purpose.

GK is a great story-teller. It helps if you know who he is, and if you can hear his voice telling what he writes.

Much of your criticism reminds me of people who do not know that Paul McCartney once had a band called the Beatles, and people who pronouce Mozart as it is spelled, and people who think of Alphabetical Order as a fairly advanced concept.

More basic background knowledge would increase your comprehension and enjoyment of Garrison Keillor's writing, and of many other aspects of life. Read something else for a while, and listen to "A Prairie Home Companion," and then see what you think about GK.

Merry Christmas to all!

If McCain leads Americans to believe that victory in Iraq still is possible, they will flock to him and vote for him.

If McCain actually had a plan for victory, Hooray!

But he does not have such a plan. There is no such plan. Shame on John McCain!

John McCain spent part of the early part of the Vietnam war flying over the country. And then he spent the rest of the war locked up in Hanoi.

He had a very intense experience, but not a broad view. Most of what he knows now about the Vietnam war, about the lesson of Vietnam, comes from reading about it and hearing about it, after it ended.

He does not have first-hand personal experience with the strategic, political, societal, international effects of the Vietnam War. Those of us who were lucky enough to stay out of the Hanoi Hilton, we who saw that war develop and deteriorate daily, we are in a a much better position to draw conclusions from Vietnam, and apply them to Iraq.

John McCain is falling back on patriotic cliches, misplaced idealism, and theoretical solutions. I do not blame him for his approach. I honor his service to the USA. But I will not follow him. He should be listening to us.

And we say that the lessons of Vietnam are that we never should have gone into Iraq, and that we cannot win a military victory in Iraq.

Is there really a pitcher named Gil Meche? Or is this a joke I did not get?

There is a famous mythical pitcher named Gil Gamesh. And there is a famous myth named Gilgamesh. If a real pitcher named Gil (ga) Meche exists, he is worth every penny of $55 million.

Lowdown... The dirty,dirty, dirty Lowdown...

Very few of our diplomats in Latin America speak Latin.

...fooled people at the beginning. I even though maybe Saddam might set off a nuke as the American troops moved across from Kuwait to Iraq.

Hooray for the Senator for speaking out! Yessir! It's criminal.