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You've seen this gag in a hundred old cartoons: Cat turns to flee angry dog, steps on a rake instead, knocks himself silly. It's not sophisticated humor, but it is a visceral illustration of an abiding truth: Panic can make you hurt yourself.

Some of us, I think, need reminding. Consider the case of Rachael Ray and the scarf that made people scream.

Ray, of course, is the preternaturally perky host of cooking shows on the Food Network -- and a spokeswoman for Dunkin' Donuts.

In that capacity, she wore the aforementioned scarf around her neck in an online ad -- and people started screaming. It seems that in the eyes of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and a handful of blogosphere blowhards, the scarf resembled a kaffiyeh, the Arab headdress most infamously worn by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Me, I thought the paisley scarf resembled a paisley scarf, but then I haven't been taking my paranoid lunatic pills lately, so what do I know? Those with more discerning vision cried foul, and late last month, the doughnut maker crumbled, pulling the ad lest anyone assume the company was selling mass terror along with its iced coffees and crullers.

Every day when I sit down at my desk, I look straight at the Tankman.

The Tankman is the unbelievably brave Chinese man who stood before a line of tanks near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, as the Chinese government moved to crush pro-democracy demonstrators in June 1989.

This month marks the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacres. The site of the 1989 bloodshed is a central venue for the Beijing Olympics. The torch ceremonies were held there, and the Olympic marathon will start there.

China's government has made this dark page of its history into a taboo subject, forbidding the media to discuss it. Journalists who've done so have been jailed.

An estimated 180 Chinese arrested during the Tiananmen events still remain in prison, according to Human Rights Watch.

Wichita became the latest of many communities in Kansas to acknowledge and act on the threat of smoking in public places. In doing so, the state's biggest city took a step in the right direction. The problem is that it didn't go far enough in establishing new rules to protect the community against the irrefutable health hazards of secondhand smoke.

Garden City's comprehensive public smoking ban, enacted in January 2007, prohibits smoking in virtually every workplace, and is a model for other communities interested in protecting all citizens and visitors from secondhand smoke. Positives of the move are evident in cleaner air in places people gather. Plus, Garden City didn't experience business closings that many opponents of the smoking ban predicted.

Unfortunately, Wichita came up short in endorsing a compromise measure that fails to acknowledge that all citizens deserve equal protection from a known health hazard.

In doing so, a city that should be progressive instead set a poor example for a Legislature that will again take up a statewide smoking ban -- and, when it does, has an obligation to pursue a more restrictive ban that's not only health conscious, but also is fiscally responsible in curbing health problems that end up costing all Kansans.-- Garden City Telegram

Cedar Crest event -- Auctioning a hosted dinner sounds like a good contribution to a charity, but when it is the governor's mansion and a political group, it is a dangerous practice. More bad judgment was shown when the governor went ahead with a reception when it was (auctioned to Wichita abortion doctor George) Tiller. Not only is Tiller a lightning rod for controversy, he was under investigation at the time by former Attorney General Paul Morrison and subsequently was charged with multiple misdemeanor charges related to his abortion practice.-- Hutchinson News

There seems no stopping Barack Obama, not solely because of his obvious appeal, but because who really wants to be the one who stands athwart history yelling "Stop!" when this particular history is so compelling?

And so charged.

It is compelling, no matter one's politics. Watching Obama give his celebration speech Tuesday night, I became aware that I was smiling. I slapped myself, of course, but the fool thing wouldn't go away.

It is hard not to smile when Obama is smiling. It was simply satisfying to witness the birth of this new political offspring after centuries of labor. We were all midwives in that moment. Bravo.

It's too bad John McCain didn't say something along those lines instead of starting the general election off with a badly delivered attack on Obama. McCain's performance Tuesday provided a glimpse of the downer aspect of competing with this particular foe.

"When Kansas goes Democratic in a presidential election is when hell will go Methodist."

-- Mel Kahn, professor of political science at Wichita State University

"Right now he's a hot ticket and should be. It's a historic event. But will it last?"

-- Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, on Barack Obama's nomination

"I just wish Big Jay and Baby Jay could have come with you. Barney was looking forward to meeting them."

Recently we had a garage sale, and at the end of the day two people came by and starting riffling through a set of sleight-of-hand tricks that my 13-year-old was trying to sell together in a tin. They took first one item and then another down the driveway for close examination.

Without a word or a look, the woman put some of the items back, but kept a disappearing coin trick in her hand. We were looking to see if she was going to walk off with it, or what.

The man finally came back and put all his items back, but dug around and around, pulling together a deck of trick playing cards. He dug them out one by one, walked down the driveway and sorted them by suit, and then counted them and counted them again.

He finally came to our checkout table and said sheepishly that they were Vietnamese. Though this was not a huge revelation to us, it seemed his way of explaining their strange behavior, and I thought surely this was some cultural thing I just didn't get. I tried hard not to let irritation and suspicion pepper my thoughts, as I smiled and nodded in his direction.

They looked around at some more sale tables and finally came back and, with very hard concentration, asked how much the cards were. I tried hard to explain in simple terms that they were all part of a set, and that we didn't want to break up the set, but he could buy the whole set for $3.

Kansas was poised to move to the front of the health reform pack this year -- or so we thought. After all, the Legislature voted unanimously last year to create a premium assistance program.

Premium assistance, which isn't all that revolutionary, would have helped about 24,000 uninsured Kansans. But the program, which costs taxpayers about $1 million to design, will now be relegated to the legislative scrap heap, another indication of benign neglect toward the poorest of the poor Kansans.

Let's face it: Our current health care system is an expensive, bureaucratic mess. But Kansas cannot sustain this structurally flawed system for many more years. Getting a handle on health care costs, quality of services and access to care are key to preserving a competitive edge for Kansas employers and employees.

It is obvious that health reform needs funding. Otherwise, it is meaningless. However, there were initiatives presented this year that would not have cost Kansans a dime to implement, yet they weren't approved either. The statewide smoking restriction in public places would have had a tremendous impact on Kansans' health outcomes. Yet it also was left for another time.

What was accomplished in the final days of this session was not health reform, in spite of the bloated claims accompanying the equally false and pretentious title of the final legislation passed.

How quickly time passes, how urgently things stay the same.

Not so long ago, Bill Clinton was the man of the moment, the one who was going to put Democrats back in power and baby boomers in charge. His defeat of George H.W. Bush with 43 percent of the vote wasn't just a changing of the guard. It was a baton passing from one generation to the next.

The rest you know: the triangulating, the interning, the squandering. Then came Hillary Clinton's turn. And then, apparently, it went.

The primaries finally are over, and Clinton has missed her date with destiny.

And she missed it in no small part because of that man from Hope, Ark. Contrary to the braying of the wounded sisterhood, Clinton's defeat hasn't been the result of misogyny. She was defeated by her husband and by her own party.