Three years from this moment, we will have had a new President for more than two hours.

It's 12°C (54°F) in Chicago right now. Fifteen degrees (25°F) above normal is great in January. I may have to open a window...or go outside...things we don't normally do around here mid-winter.

"There are SBA loans for this. And I understand for some the word SBA means Slow Bureaucratic Paperwork. I hear it loud and clear."
—George W. Bush

Reported in today's Doonesbury Daily Dose.

Ah, this is more like it. Chicago in January: Windy, snowy, drizzly, and just above freezing. Yum.

Peter Dreier, professor of politics and director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, writes in today's L.A. Times that the paper should revive its history of reporting on labor issues:

Up until the 1980s, most major newspapers, including The Times, had a regular labor reporter. Today, few papers, The Times among them, have even one reporter exclusively assigned to cover labor.

That may be a consequence—even a cause—of declining union membership. But The Times serves a metropolitan area that has become the U.S. capital of the working poor, where more than 800,000 workers (almost twice the national rate) are union members and where (unlike most parts of the country) labor union membership is actually growing.

I couldn't agree more.