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 …

Elections

[Disclosure: I dropped a day’s pay on Obama’s cam­paign about a week before the pas­tor thing hap­pened, and hope I never feel com­pelled to write about this elec­tion again.] Matt Taibbi is (as usual, and in spite of his ridicu­lous hump­ing of Hunter Thompson’s legacy) repeat­edly cor­rect in his assess­ment of American pol­i­tics as a bunch …