It was to be a short visit for the G-shevs. More than four days in the U.S. and Raisa's VISA card bill would shatter the fragile Soviet economy.

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Think about last time you were broke ... now how well did it go with spending your way out of it? Did that work?

I'm certainly not fearful.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

Sometimes you need a B-2 bomber and sometimes you need your mother.

It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.