¶ The Paragraph

When President Obama won his office, many felt cheered and relieved that a savvy, well-spoken –
"cool" – man of the people had replaced an incurious,
inarticulate – embarrassing – aristocrat as "leader
of the free world." But many right-wing media and politicians
have kept campaigning against Obama, and some have cast silly
suspicion on country’s first black president as a foreign-born Marxist that would "turn
[the US] into a Muslim nation." And, since Obama routed some of the TARP bank bailout money to save General Motors, and some of the Recovery Act stimulus money to create a domestic electric car industry, many right-wingers have gone on to smear GM’s new electric car – the Chevy Volt. In the same silly fashion, some of these right-wingers have painted the car as an "exploding Obamamobile," made in China, that might leave you stranded in the Lincoln Tunnel. But (like Obama) the Chevy Volt is cool. …

Sixty years ago this week, the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll concert took place in Cleveland, the city that now houses the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.1 The concert was the creation of Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed, who called his radio show “The Moondog Show,” himself “The King of the Moondoggers,” and the […]

Throng protests “right to shirk” in Indianapolis On the First of this month, Republican legislators and the Republican governor gave Indiana a so-called “right to work” law.1 2 Except to undercut it, such a law really has nothing to do with the Right to Work, and so should be renamed. For the reason that follows, […]

It’s no miracle. To quickly read the Christian Bible, which holds some 800,000 words, we must cut it down to its essential core.1 Luckily, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, has done that for us – though he meant it just for his own use.2 3 […]

Occupy Chicago guards first aid tent. The day after she got out of jail, Martese Chism gave an interview to Mike Malloy on his nightly radio talk show.1 On Saturday, October 22nd, Chism, and her fellow registered nurse, Jan Rodolfo, were manning the first aid tent at Occupy Chicago in Grant Park, when police came […]