Free Republic

Sometimes you wonder what planet Vice President Dick Cheney is living on. Last month, speaking of the war in Iraq, Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a prickly interview: "(The) bottom line is that we've had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes. It is hard. It is difficult." Anyone keeping up with the daily news from Baghdad knows that few people in the last few months -- especially those in the military -- are bragging about big successes to quell the violence in Iraq. Even within the White House, Cheney seems like a man lost in...

<p>On a bustling Saturday afternoon a silent, generational war started at Abercrombie & Fitch, the teen retail clothing store in the San Francisco Shopping Centre, an urban mall at Market and Fifth streets.</p> <p>A girl of maybe 15, wearing braces and hip-hugger jeans, fingered a shrunken, see-through T-shirt that coyly advertised "Hottie Brand Cocoa." Her mother, noting her daughter's interest, eyeballed the stack of shirts and grimaced. She moved purposefully on, but her daughter lingered, hope in her eyes. After a minute, she gave up.</p>