President Barack Obama's Asian trip has been on the political calendar for many months. So has the climate summit at Copenhagen in December.

I understand the outrage over new federal guidelines suggesting a much more limited (and less expensive) approach to screening women for breast cancer. I just watched Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., explain to one of the cable news networks that she caught her own breast cancer at 41 and if she had followed the new guidelines she probably would not have caught her cancer and could have died from it by now.

As jobs disappear and families struggle to make ends meet in this recession, we're spending less, especially on luxuries. But according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a record number of American families not only can't afford luxuries - they can't even afford food.

I was in Chicago with time on my hands and the sweet woman murmured to me - you know how this goes - "Would you like to see the Art Institute?" and I was thinking No No No God No, and I said, "Sure. Fine." "You wouldn't rather do something else?" she said. "No," I replied. That's the correct answer when a woman asks you about art. Yes, absolutely, ma cherie.

For more from Dave Granlund, visit www.davegranlund.com.

In this economy, you take good news where you find it, so we'll happily greet the drop in the state's unemployment rate announced this week. From 9.3 percent in September, the rate fell to 8.9 percent in October - the first monthly decline since June 2007.

 "Don't you say anything bad about Sarah Palin," admonished one of my sisters. "We love her. Be nice to her."

I'm getting a little tired of hearing the word "cautious" used, as if it were a bad thing, to describe U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley.

NO DATAThe European Union can't be accused of being dazzled by celebrity and star power in its choices for its first president and first foreign minister under the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty.

"Life is Short. Have an Affair." So reads the slogan for The Ashley Madison Agency Web site, a business devoted to helping married men and women sexually hook up with others.