Different Answers

A rel­a­tive of mine once con­fided that he voted for Ronald Reagan barely more than a decade after he asked that copies of The Daily Worker be mailed to him in Vietnam. I asked him why he did so, and his answer was that he “was tired of feel­ing ashamed of being an American.” 28 years …

The Last Debate

Some ran­dom thoughts from the debate: I’ve twit­tered about this before, but I hon­estly am glad that Obama got a new pro­jec­tor for the Adler Planetarium. The plan­e­tar­ium is a mon­u­ment in it’s own right, along­side the Museum of Science and Industry, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum; the longer it oper­ates the better. …

Pick A Side

Compare: In the years of its rise, the move­ment lit­tle by lit­tle brought the community’s atti­tude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resent­ment, from trust to fear and sus­pi­cion. […] By 1933 at least five of my ten [Nazi] friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intel­lec­tu­als” as unre­li­able, and …

Notes on the Debate

[Disclosure: I live in Chicago, and have finan­cially sup­ported Obama already.] The first note is about the orga­ni­za­tion that McCain cited at the begin­ning of his speech, Citizens Against Government Waste. The one he was using as his cita­tion for the 900-million-dollar fig­ure he was hang­ing around Obama’s neck. They’ve are a lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion, which …