ELIOT SPITZER'S COMEBACK

Two years ago we were inundated with sexy, personal headlines about Eliot Spitzer and a prostitute. He resigned as governor of New York State.

Last year, Eliot Spitzer appeared occasionally as a guest commentator on various news shows. When CNN announced he'd be joining the network to host a round-table discussion program with conservative journalist Kathleen Parker, I thought good for him!

The stink of the sandal is still there. But when he was Governor, and after, whenever I've seen him as a guest commentator on various news shows, I think he's exceptionally clear, sharp, right on the point.

For more than 8 weeks, the Parker-Spitzer show has been on CNN week nights, at 8 p.m. Kathleen Parker is a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist, a Republican conservative, who's known for bashing the members of her own party -- an interesting contrast to the Democratic Spitzer.

There's a good-size older audience, but the ratings for the age group (25-54), that advertisers want is not good. Though CNN claims they're not worried, there's talk that co-host Parker might be replaced.

On the air, Parker has expressed annoyance with the way Spitzer dominates the show. Last week, she "stormed off the show" in a huff. Though Parker returned two days later and didn't deny that she'd been angry, she muttered sardonically, "I don't storm, I saunter."

Okay -- I admire and respect Eliot Spitzer's opinions, but clearly, he has a problem dealing with women. Like former President Clinton, Spitzer's sexual predilections have been laid out in detail for anyone who's curious.

It's taken time, but the scandal surrounding Bill Clinton has faded. He is a major ambassador in today's world.

Spitzer's skills, like Clinton's, are remarkable. An Obama supporter, Spitzer recently discussed on the air, seven promises the President needs to make in his next speech to the nation. Spitzer's ideas are worth noting. Obama is in a tough spot. He needs media support, and the Parker-Spitzer show could help.

Katheen Parker has said, "I'm a big fan of Barack Obama, not one of those Republicans who want him to fail." She written about President Bill Clinton, and said he should not have been impeached. She believes Anita Hill's allegations against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She's criticized Glenn Beck as a former alcoholic, and said in Beck's last big rally he displayed the "grandiosity of a former addict." She's called Tea Partiers "teabaggers" in an article. She's referred to evangelical Christians in another column as "gorillas," "low-brows," and "oogedy-boogedy." (Definitely, KP has a sense of humor.)

Here my advice, Mr. Eliot Spitzer. You made mistakes. You and your wife Silda are back together -- you've said you see each other every day and every night. Obviously marriage counseling has helped. She's working on her projects and you are working on yours. Maybe you've rebuilt your sexual relationship with Silda ... maybe you haven't. In any case, you have paid a huge price for not being able to communicate with your wife.

You've got an interesting, good partner on the show. Share your passion for truth with her -- hear her -- don't just come to your own conclusions -- hear and deal with what Kathleen Parker says and feels. Let her speak. the two of you could be a dynamite news team.

Silda stuck with you. I'm not sure CNN will. But if you can make room for Kathleen Parker and her ideas in your mind, your show will be a show that a larger audience and I will want to listen to every night.

IS ANYBODY THERE?

When is the last time you looked up at the night sky and saw a sky full of stars?

When I was very little, I looked up and saw diamonds in the sky -- so many sparkling, blinking speckles -- tiny twinkling jewels overhead. My sister said it was the Milky Way. For me, it was a carpet of diamonds, a pathway for me to follow into the future.

And here I am in New York City, and when I look up -- no stars. never a single star. The child in me is convinced there are no stars in the sky above New York City -- just the red glow of lights from the city.

Oh yes, I have certainly thought about life on other planets, and I wonder if there are other worlds in the universe where people might be living -- and yes, I've thought about aliens -- are there, were there, could there be?

I find myself humming the song from the musical, 1776 -- the plaintive, echoing melody -- "Is – any – body – there?"

I guess other worlds are on my mind, because everything around us is so very crowded. There's almost nothing you can do in New York City, without dodging people on the street, saying excuse me, or being jostled, bumped as you enter a store, and stand in line, waiting to ask a question, or pay a cashier.

Queues -- twice today, I was put on hold on the telephone, and told by a recorded voice "you are in queue" -- every day, you're in some kind of a queue.

Well, here's what I found out about other worlds.

Since 2009 a Kepler space telescope has been orbiting our sun. Though there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, there are just (approximately), 500 "exoplanets" (that's what they're called) orbiting our own sun -- no earth-size planet in any star's "habitable zone," where things are not too hot or too cold, but okay for life.

Just a few weeks ago, a planet called Gliese 581g was identified by a team of American astronomers.

Other scientists have been shaking their heads, raising questions about whether it exists at all.

But, if the Kepler telescope, with its sensors fixed at about 100,000 sun-like stars, detects dimming in one of the stars in the Gliese system, (dimming about once every year), it means the planet has an orbit like Earth's.

Gliese 581g could be it. Kepler scientists will make their first major announcement in February, about the planets they've found so far. The sheer number of stars out there makes some earth-like worlds all but inevitable. The search will then be on -- the scientists will be looking for any Earth-like life upon them.

Want to find out? $20 million buys a sightseeing trip in orbit -- there's been a first tourist, a second, a third, and two would-be space tourists, actress Cindy Crawford is one of them.

""Is – any – body – there? Does -- any -- body -- care?" goes the song.

I care! I think a lot of us care, and we're waiting, wondering. Maybe if they lowered the price to $5 million, there will be more tourists signing up for sightseeing trips.

MOST PRECIOUS BOOKS (Video)

John Cullum loved the OZ books. He describes how he prayed, as a kid, that he would never ever forget how great the OZ books were.

Emily, knowing his interest in the Bible, asks if it was his favorite book. JC talks about the Bible stories that were told to him over and over. -- how some of them frightened him -- how he knew them by heart.

Then Shakespeare came into his life. John explains how it happened, and how he was astounded, fascinated, riveted, when he read "Hamlet." It was when he studied the part of "Marcellus," which he was hired to play, that he realized the power of words.

OBAMA YAYS AND BOOS

President Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do.

I'm hooting, clapping my hands, shouting YIPPEE, hurray.

What a relief to find an article written by a Harvard Professor, a guy who's written other books, who's lectured about Obama, taught classes, is respected and praised by the New York Times. Professor James T. Kloppenberg has just published "Reading Obama," a book that I'm summarizing right here, right now, because it's factual and affirmative.


Kloppenberg is telling the moaners-who-think-Obama's-a-wimp -- the complainers-who- think-Obama's-a-socialist, the Dems-on-the- left and the Dem-right-wingers -- that President Barack Obama, (whom you elected), told you before you elected him, that he does not share your belief that the Democrats are right and the other guys, the Republicans, and Tea Partiers are wrong.

Kloppenberg has read, studied, and written about what Obama told us in the two books Obama wrote -- one in 1995, "Dreams of My Father," and the other in 2006 -- "The Audacity of Hope."

(I love the titles.)

Obama said in his published books -- he is wary of absolutes -- he doesn't make blanket statements; he doesn't have pat formulas; he doesn't announce his principles -- he's committed to a "Christian tradition and prizes humility, and social service."

He said that he goes for experimentation -- he won't demonize his opponents -- he seeks them out and listens to them, trying to understand how they think and why they see the world as they do.

(The word is EMPATHY -- Obama has said "empathy" was something his mother drilled into him.)

Obama wrote, "Disagreeing is part of our personalities as Americans .... our differences are important, not trivial."

And pay special attention to this, readers -- Obama said his opponents hold principles, ideas as deeply rooted in American history, American tradition, as his own.

In "Audacity of Hope," he wrote, “I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. That’s what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal … We are all shaken out of our complacency."

Kloppenberg shows, with quotes, that Obama's decisions about health care, financial reform, his opposition to the Iraq war, his support of the Afghanistan war, were based on Obama's ideas and explained by Obama in "Audacity of Hope."

There's much more, many more specifics about Obama in the books which you can buy and read yourself. What delights me is that Kloppenberg's book is getting attention -- he's letting anti-Obama folks know that we are getting from our President exactly what Obama said he planned to do.

In "Reading Obama," author James T. Kloppenberg said that you can be a Republican and completely opposed to Obama, but "We have a man in the White House, a philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in American history. There’s John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln, and, in the 20th century, just Woodrow Wilson.”

So, readers -- next time you're getting into a fight with one of your former friends, who's convinced the country's been ruined, etc. by Barack Obama, you can say I understand -- I don't agree, but I understand -- and maintain the friend as a friend.