By DALE McFEATTERS, Scripps Howard News Service

There's nothing to warm the heart of an aging generation more than reports of sniping, resentment and hostility between younger generations.

Generation X, in particular, feels slighted by its place in the birth order, stuck between the baby boomers and Gen Y, the Echo Generation.

If there is actually a devil, maybe financier Bernie Madoff really did make a deal with him -- it? -- the classic Faustian bargain.

Recently, after my wife and I saw our No. 2 son off to Iraq after his mid-deployment leave, I wrote how airport security has made a shambles of the traditional farewell.

THIS COLUMN UPDATED WITH INFO ON HOW MILITARY FAMILIES CAN GET GATE PASSES

Welcoming members of the military home hasn't changed much over the last century, although now they invariably arrive by commercial jet instead of a train or troop ship.

With all the fights he has going -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the two little nuts in Iran and North Korea -- you wonder why President Barack Obama would pick a fight with Fox News. But he has.

Looking for a one-stop source of advice on sex trafficking, fraudulently obtaining mortgages, opening a brothel, tax cheating and shooting your husband?

Your go-to source for help appears to be certain offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose acronym, a nut, now seems singularly appropriate.

Those critics of President Obama who feared he would use his back-to-school speech to indoctrinate America's use with socialism were closer to the mark than they realized. Thanks to sophisticated mind control techniques Obama learned in a Far Eastern madrassa, he is capable of imparting powerful subliminal messages.

Congress is returning to Washington and President Obama's health-care overhaul is in trouble thanks in large part to the noisy misinformation spread at town-hall meetings while lawmakers were on their August recess.

After North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi may be the world's most widely ridiculed leader. Wait, it gets better: He's making his first visit to the United States in September.

The fate of the economy may rest on those little shoulders sagging under the weight of their huge backpacks as they trudge back to school.

The American economy is 70 percent driven by consumer spending, and the problem is that consumers aren't spending. This is holding back not only our own economic recovery, but recovery in Europe as well. The French and Germans are counting on us.