When I see what's become of sports, I can hear myself getting older. I wonder what I'll put my poor grandchildren through in the future.

Inside a digitally interactive living room in the future, with an old, decaying man in his wellness chair, surrounded by family for Super Sunday.

Of course, cigarettes and beer have been outlawed by the federation, so everyone is munching on synthetic chips and washing them down with powdered milk.

ESPN announcer: "Welcome to Super Bowl LXXV live from Dubai in the beautiful United Arab Emirates, where the Mexico City Bills will play the Jakarta Jaguars for the Exxon Mobil Vince Lombardi Trophy, presented by Wal-Mart. The players have their bubble suits on and are ready to hit the generously-padded field."

It's hard for me to believe other parties haven't had more success in America.

Voter apathy is at all-time highs. People need short, simple messages that don't make them think. People like to identify with one group and align themselves with everything they believe rather than thinking for themselves. After all, the game will be back on soon.

This candidate is patriotic. That one is tough on crime. He likes guns. She thinks this issue is black. He says it is white.

Don't waste time trying to understand vagaries and intricacies. Keep it simple.

For the third time this year the federal government found itself on the verge of a shutdown - setting the stage for yet another spending showdown that serves to prove how deep the political divide now runs.

An agreement must be in place by Friday - the final business day before the new federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1 - in order to keep Washington running through Nov. 18. Failure to do so would force several federal agencies to cease operations; it could also mean adding to the already heavy burden many victims of natural disasters currently bear.

However, Monday brought some rare good news. The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it was able to reclaim some unused funds from past disasters, which may allow FEMA to stretch its relief funding through Thursday or Friday - assuming no new disaster strikes before that time and there isn't a greater-than-expected number of people who apply for emergency aid.

Woody Allen once said his only regret in life was that he hadn't been born somebody else.

I'm feeling a little that way today, having just come upon something I wrote almost 20 years ago, a column that of all the columns I have ever written fills me with the most remorse.

It was about "meetings," the self-help kind, which, in a hugely misguided attempt to be ‘funny,' I decided to parody.

"Once, only old guys with thinning hair and pinstripe suits went to meetings," it said in paragraph two. "Or fat ladies in hats. Or members of Alcoholics Anonymous."

Having long been a fan of the cinematic arts and not a particular connoisseur of political theatrics, I did bravely watched snippets of the GOP presidential debate on Sept. 22 - there wasn't much else on TV.

I'll tell you, with the value of entertainment provided by the Republican candidates for the White House, I would have not watched a second had "Napoleon Dynamite" been showing on cable.

Seriously, out of 477 channels, I perused not one second of Pedro's campaign speech for class president. Just once, I want Mitt Romney to let everyone know his "skills" are good enough to "hook up with chicks." Pedro knows how to woo the voters. But does Michele Bachmann have the cunning and prowess of a Liger? I think not.

Pity New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Sure, he seems to have everything going for him these days - approval ratings in the mid-60s, the state's books are temporarily balanced, got most of his agenda (even legalizing gay marriage) through the Legislature this spring, rave reviews for his handling of preparations and aftermath regarding a pair of recent tropical storms.

But he now finds himself having to rely on the federal government for assistance. This is where the pity comes in.

New York and several other states have appealed to Washington for emergency assistance in the wake of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. The two soaking weather systems packed plenty of punch and did plenty of damage.

FEMA has responded ably and admirably. But in a year rife with natural disasters from tornadoes to wildfires to just about everything in between, the agency is all but tapped.

"It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant."

Twenty-five years ago, on a Friday night in October during the fall of 1986, I took my girlfriend (now my wife) to our first movie together.

We were sophomores at the University of Notre Dame and were looking for something to do. We didn't know anything about the show that was playing at the university auditorium that evening - other than it was going to get us out of the library and away from our textbooks for a night. And we were totally down with that.

The movie playing was "Stand By Me," a coming of age story based on the novella "The Body" by Stephen King. And I liked it. So much so, in fact, that I went back the next night all by myself.

Imagine that tomorrow your boss at work came into your office and said that because your personal goals are aligned with company goals and because you enjoy the people you work with, that they are no longer going to pay you and that you should start working for free, and of course have the same energy, creativity and enthusiasm. What would you say?  Well, that's what you ask of volunteers on an ongoing basis.

The management skills you learn at work can be of great value to the religious and/or civic organizations you love. Are you a member, future leader or leader of a volunteer organization? If so, your proven business leadership and management expertise can help energies and grow your organization's volunteer base, cultivate future leaders, organize events and programs, and have some fun in the process.

There is a timeliness to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' United Nations gambit this week that should not be lost on any American.

Abbas' bid for U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state - whose creation was ordered in U.N. Resolution 181, the same 1947 resolution that created Israel - comes barely a week after this country marked the 10th anniversary of the worst acts of civilian terrorism in American history. The scale of retrospection brought about by the 9/11 anniversary was a testament to the effect the events of that grim day continue to have on our national psyche.

We spent the decade that ended two Sundays ago reacting to the attacks by imposing security measures. At home, we did that with metal detectors, color-coded alerts and mind-boggling new methods of airport security. Abroad we waged a "war on terror" with mixed results.

Abbas' arrival at the U.N. this week is a sobering reminder of the excruciatingly difficult task that remains if we aspire to ever address terrorism in a way more meaningful than merely protecting ourselves from the next attack.

OK, let's drop this silly idea that only the wealthy are job creators — right now.

Businesses hire people when they require employees to meet the demands of their business. They drop people when they do not have enough business to require their services.

Businesses do not hire people because the tax code is a certain way or because the labor market is a certain way or because a certain party is in power.

I was always skeptical of claims that say, for example, a fast-food restaurant would fire workers if they had to pay them higher wages. When I was a young student, I worked at plenty of those jobs, and it was plain to see that they never had even one more person on the clock than was absolutely required to keep the place going.

I never met a restaurant manager whose thought processes went anywhere along the lines of, "Well, I really could get by with six kids on this shift, but seeing as how the minimum wage hasn't been increased in years, I'm gonna go ahead and schedule eight of them. Just to help them out a bit."

It's jarring when you compare the awe-inspiring story of Dakota Meyer's heroic efforts to rescue fellow Marines from a firefight in Afghanistan with a recent Gallup poll that shows Americans are more concerned about health care, immigration and Social Security than they are about war.

Jarring, but maybe not surprising. Despite the horrific and heroic events playing out daily in Afghanistan and Iraq, two factors conspire to dull us to the pain and drama.

One is the protracted economic calamity right here at home, one that has crushed many and frightened all. The other is a volunteer military that means millions of Americans who have no family in harm's way can focus on their own pain or simply carry on as if it were just another beautiful day.

This editorial isn't a call for a return to the draft; it's to reflect on and amplify the amazing efforts and sacrifices being made while we, often blithely, move through our days.

Political candidates say all kinds of crazy things on the stump. Sometimes they repeat rumor as fact, sometimes they make stuff up, sometimes they exaggerate. You try to cut them some slack, because it's wise to pick your battles, because none of them is immune to it, because having a camera or microphone shoved in your face recording every word is no picnic.

But sometimes they commit a real doozy that, left unchallenged, can get out of hand, with consequences that can prove quite regrettable.

Case in point is Minnesota congresswoman, tea party darling and GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who during and after a recent debate, expressed her opposition to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for pre-adolescent girls, calling it "a very dangerous drug" and linking it to "mental retardation," reportedly because some mother in Tampa, Fla., told her so.

The following is (not really) a message from your superintendent of schools:

Hello, parents! We hope you and your children are adapting well to another new school year. As you know, as a district we are dedicated to your children's education, health and welfare, not necessarily in that order.

With that in mind, we have elected to cancel outdoor activities until further notice in the wake of the discovery of West Nile virus in a mosquito within town limits. According to the Department of Public Health, it was just a single mosquito, and since it was found in a car with New Jersey license plates it was likely driven here from out of state, possibly last year.

Still, we prefer not to take any chances and will be doing our best to keep your children from exposure to air, particularly outdoor air. To that end, we have cancelled or postponed the following activities:

Americans are getting poorer.

The Census Bureau reported Sept. 13 that 46.2 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010, the highest number since the government began counting 52 years ago. That works out to be 15.1 percent of the population, the highest proportion since 1993.

It isn't just those at the very bottom who are losing ground in the current recession. The feds report that median household income, the best measure of the economic health of the middle class, fell 2.3 percent between 2009 and 2010 to $49,400.

Even for those fully employed, income levels have been stagnant for more than 30 years. The Census Bureau reported that the median income for a male worker, employed full time and year-round, now stands at $47,715. In 1973, that figure was $49,065, in 2010 dollars.

If anything, the poverty numbers understate the difficulty millions of families face. The federal poverty line in 2010 was $22,313 for a family of four. Try surviving on that in a high-cost city. A 2003 study found that it took more than $51,000 for a single parent with two small children to survive in Boston without government help.

Taking a page from the Republican playbook, President Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet Monday, saying he would veto any deficit reduction bill that comes up short of giving him 100 percent of what he wants - in this case some $1.5 trillion worth of tax increases on the wealthy and on corporations, mostly through letting the Bush tax cuts expire and closing various tax loopholes.

Right back at him, Republican leaders immediately said any tax hikes would be dead on arrival in Congress.

Assuming the president doesn't bend as he has before, perhaps Americans should begin preparing right now for the automatic cuts set to kick in Dec. 23 if the parties cannot reach agreement - some $1.2 trillion in defense and entitlement spending reductions over the next decade, courtesy of the debt ceiling legislation - while looking to their chance in November 2012, to fix the obvious failure of divided government in America. Let's face it, their competing visions of what's best for the nation - or at least for their core constituencies - and of what constitutes "balance" are irreconcilable.

This Labor Day, workers need to beware: Management may be making it harder to retire.

Dave Granlund cartoon on Hamid Karzai and corruption in Afghanistan.

Chris Britt's editorial cartoon on GOP leaders fueling the fires.

Bob Conroy cartoon on taking a step back and looking at the big picture.

Joe Liccar cartoon on Vice President Biden's cursing and being a poor role model for kids.