The extended therapy session informally known as the 2008 presidential campaign takes new twists, new turns. We might manage, by the time it’s over, 11 months hence, to figure out what we really want as a nation. Though one tends to doubt it. And if we do figure it out, we’ll almost surely change our minds.

There’re two types of people in the world — those who like real ones and those who like fake ones.

Sure, an argument can be made for fake ones. They’re more symmetrical than natural ones. You can get them as small as you like or so big they hardly fit through the front door.

Since electricity is generated mostly by burning coal, has anyone calculated how much pollution is created by electric cars, even though none of that pollution comes out of their tailpipes?

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani was in Washington on Tuesday to raise money ... and to see me. In a nondescript office building two blocks from the White House, Giuliani answered a wide range of questions on domestic and foreign policy.

Listening to people like Lou Dobbs, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee lamenting the plight of America’s middle class and poor, you’d have to conclude that things are going to hell in a handbasket. According to them, there’s wage stagnation, while the rich are getting richer and the poor becoming poorer. There are a couple of updates that tell quite a different story.

Don’t let anyone tell you nothing exciting ever happens at the Waffle House.

On Wednesdays, we have breakfast at Store 777, the one on Ga. Highway 74 South in Peachtree City. Last week started like every other. I don’t even order any more; Terri knows what I want. Dave varies his breakfast from week to week and requires a bit more time.

My congratulations go out to Doug for a well run and upfront campaign. I truly believe that Peachtree City will be a better place now that he is a part of our new City Council.

No one ever accused Patrick J. Buchanan of lacking conviction or of consulting a focus group before saying what he thinks.

Sixty years ago I was the editor of the daily newspaper at college, and one memorable day in September, plotting the year’s business, we got word that the two big tobacco companies (R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris) were suspending all their ads in the college press. The news was greeted with dismay both by editors who smoked (“We’ll just die from something else,” they harrumphed) and by those who did not, equally affected by this big hole in the advertising budget. Sixty years!

Not long ago I was asking a friend of mine, who has a private jet, about his long-time pilot whom I have known fondly for many years and flown with on several occasions.

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the darnedest, most interesting questions from people in their churches and people they meet. Here are a few that I’ve gotten over the years of my ministry and via email since this column started.

Ahhh, the slow news days of December. A time to read about Hannah Montana’s march across the country, raunchy mannequins in a shopping mall, teddy bears named Muhammad and the return of Don Imus to the airwaves.

With housing prices falling, energy prices climbing and the stock market on a roller coaster, it’s no wonder many Americans are worried about their economic condition.

“There seems to be a pattern here. It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush.”

So said presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., during a speech — specifically on the economy — before a crowd in Knoxville, Iowa. Okay, we understand campaign sloganeering — purportedly funny lines and the like during the campaign season. But shouldn’t the Associated Press, in reporting Clinton’s line, provide the reader with a little information?

People who are in the top 1 percent in income receive far more than 1 percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top 1 percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

Last week, in an article titled “Walking a Tightrope on Immigration,” The New York Times made the fact-defying claim that the illegal immigration issue poses a risk for Republicans who appeal to voters “angry” about illegal immigration. (This is as opposed to voters “angry” that they spent good money buying a copy of The New York Times.)

It is incorrect to assume that all the pro-abortion and anti-abortion arguments have been made. They are centerpieces in vivid, resourceful, emotional and inquisitive thought. Witness the continuing, and intense, curiosity about the presidential candidates and how they feel on the basic issues.

Scripture says to “give honor to whom honor is due.” When I first met Randolph Adler in 1995 he was the founding bishop of a fledgling denomination called The Charismatic Episcopal Church. I met him at a conference somewhere and listened to his teaching on “Signs and Symbols.”

Do you know what math curriculum your child is being taught? Are you worried that your third-grader hasn’t learned simple multiplication yet? Have you been befuddled by educational jargon such as “spiraling,” which is used to explain why your kid keeps bringing home the same insipid busywork of cutting, gluing and drawing? And are you alarmed by teachers who emphasize “self-confidence” over proficiency while their students fall further and further behind? Join the club.

I know, I know, “reading” is a righteousness issue: the kind that brings the well-meaning and high-minded to the table, causes them to pull off their spectacles and pass their palms across their foreheads at the imputation modern kids don’t want to do it.

WASHINGTON — Well-connected Republicans in Mississippi were shocked by more than the unexpected nature of Trent Lott’s announced resignation Monday. They were stunned that Lott, in good health at age 66 and at the top of his game, was leaving the Senate one year into his fourth term in order to make more money.

It finally happened — just in time for the holidays — The Wife’s leaving.

Now I know that’s not a surprise to some of you. How she puts up with yours truly for as long as she has is certainly a modern-day miracle.

James A. Parker was the second son (and fourth child) of John and Martha Byram Parker, and the grandson of Beverly Byram and Sarah Williamson who had moved from Mecklenburg County, N.C. to Pike County, Ga. in the 1820s. James was 11 years old when his grandfather died in 1849 and, as close as the family lived, I think we can assume he was well acquainted with his grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Come in, come in! Close the door -- it’s cold out there. Come stand by the fire. You’re just in time to watch the sunset.

Right in front of you, I’m going to wrestle with some conflicting political feelings.

First up is the runoff race next Tuesday with top vote-getter Mike King facing Doug Sturbaum for the Post 2 Peachtree Council seat.

The Democratic Party of Fayette County has developed a platform on local issues that we would like to present to the voters of the county. While national issues often determine how people will vote locally, we feel that there are valid options available to address local issues and we feel that these options are not being given the consideration that they deserve by the existing governments within the county.

When I and several of the girls came into the theater for the folk art musical, a pleasant man handed each of us a piece of paper with words on it.

Just as Thanksgiving and Christmas come around with predictable regularity, so, too, do Middle East peace summits arrive near the end of modern presidencies.

WASHINGTON — Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the “Club for Greed”?

I have been racking my brain lately - and yes, this does require stretching it out on a medieval instrument of torture (it actually feels good for the first few turns) - not for column ideas but for Christmas gifts. How could I not be after Black Friday, Gray Saturday and Off-White Sunday? What they say is true, if you don’t have your gifts chosen by Taupe Thursday then you must not really love your loved ones.