I've spent thirty years in the corporate world as a grunt. My fame and fortune is based on what I bring to the company. I recall a time when CEO's and their protegees were compensated the same way.

Today, I watch all levels of foolishness appear as the operatives are now not to deliver the best or challenge potentially wrong thinking, but to comply. Why? Leaders comply so other leaders will promote them. It matters not whether the course of action is one of creating greatness or driving over the cliff.

When follow the leader rather than be a leader is the course, and the route to the cliff laid out by Mapquest, what remains important is to wave and smile as the car goes over the cliff. Possibly there's a promotion in there on some twisted notion of being a good solider for the general.

Good organizations should be able to derail bad ideas, but we've lost that part of the ethic. The pie is only about money...no matter how you slice it.

We're headed for trouble as leadership is now bred via this highway-to-hell to take, like the author so clearly states. A good window from the 100th floor might have less negative impact on Americans than these creeps ripping us off.

My father, a very wise man 81, says "Don't blame the leaders, blame the followers. We're too damned indifferent. We reap what we sow." Lemmings...all of us lemmings for allowing this to take place time and time again.

The outrage sleeps behind emptiness that our culture has sown. "Hey, it isn't my kid..." You know the drill. You can say I am a cynic, but way back, Alex De tocqueville predicted that a democracy as open as this could breed an isolation and apathy among the people under the guise of individual freedom of choice.

It would be nice to regenerate community here, but it seems to deteriorate with each new assault of outrage. We simply turn our heads because we believe we can. We can't. And to make it worse, I believe the govt. know it and uses our collective apathy to their advantage.

Can we wake up? I agree that poets can say so much, express in such a compressed way the follies of our intent and the suffering of all victims of war. But, face it, we don't read much poetry or take poets all that seriously either.

The solution is probably to package it in sound bytes complete with musical preludes. Package it and sell it with a scratch off lottery ticket that promises the hope of instant wealth for those who read the message.

I am old enough to remember first hand my peasant grandparents who came here from Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century. So many of the dishes we ate as young American children were vegetarian.

In their pre-America days meat was a luxury that, hopefully, made it to the table on holidays. All other days were filled with delightful meals of greens, grains, legumes, veggies all spiced to perfection.

As they became wealthy here, meat became the norm. My grandfather succumbed to a heart attack at 78. My grandmother lived with vigorous health and completely independent into her mid 90's. She attributed her vigor to her preferred diet, that of a vegetarian.

I took up vegetarianism for 14 years for health reasons, just breaking that meat-fast this Christmas. Since returning to eating meat, my health has changed, and not for the better. I am going back, began it yesterday, in an effort to feel better. I have empirical evidence in my own body of the difference between the two.

It had nothing to do, for them or me, with higher morality. For them it was how peasants ate. For me, it is probably aligning my body with my genetic makeup.

Long live dandelions with olive oil and garlic!

King says "Yes, in my book I say that's a question I will not take up. I think my stance is rather beautiful because it's about "agnosis"; that means not knowing."

I am consumed with the notion of whether there is a God or whether there is not. I tend to the atheistic position, but really, agnosis may be the only rational way to view the matter with the beauty of wonderment and inquiry intact.

I read Dawkins and found some of his absolutes as dogmatic as those of Fundamentalist Christians (who scare me). "Not knowing" is the only answer with intellectual integrity. One may choose to examine or to make decisions based on faith, one way or the other. I just can't do that.

A theory that makes sense to me is one that says religion and deity is something our human minds have conjured, not from superstition or fear, but that religion is a product of the human ego designed to give us hope. We are so infatuated with our being that we cannot fathom the idea that we exist here only for a short time, regardless of the good we might do. We give ourselves a need to do right or even to simply go on because there is something out there for us that transcends our human frailty. I am nearly convinced this is true.

King is the most rational clear voice I have heard in a long time. I am thrilled she has something to say, and I will be reading it by the end of the day.