http://www.thedailybackground.com Progressive news and opinions, daily. Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:44:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Obama: "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." McCain: LARRY KING: If you were president and knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, you know where, would you have U.S. forces go in after him? MCCAIN: Larry, I'm not going to ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/05/03/flashback-to-2008-elections/ I'm stunned right now just like everyone else. I think most people never expected this day of closure would come. Almost a decade after the original attacks, the shock that the perpetrator has finally been killed is nearly as shocking as the initial attacks themselves.ShareThis http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead/ So, not only do the Egyptians manage to peacefully unseat a dictator after 30 years of repressive reign, they even clean up afterwards: As the impact of the revolution settled in, some members of the movement that toppled Mr. Mubarak vowed to continue their protest, saying that all their demands had ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/02/12/egypts-revolutionaries-volunteer-to-tidy-up-tahrir-square/ It's not hard to understand why the Iranian government is cheering events in Egypt. Watching what's going on in Egypt right now must be hard for American diplomats and CIA personnel on the job long enough to remember what happened in Iran in 1979. The two situations are eerily similar ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/29/in-egypt-echoes-of-1979-iran/ President Obama's State of the Union speech was pretty decent, I thought. The mixed seating certainly made it a different experience to watch, and made the constant audience cutaways feel less motivated when there wasn't big differences in who was standing up and sitting down. I was impressed at the ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/25/sotu-thoughts/ Not long ago at Groundswell Educational Films (the nonprofit where I work) we paid a visit to J. Fred MacDonald's archival film collection here in Chicago. Fred's archive, which included millions of feet of old films was an incredible thing to see for a budding documentary-filmmaker like myself. On the ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/17/video-an-incredible-archival-film-repository/ This is very cool: this past week the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston announced it has become the first of the presidential libraries to put a major portion of its holdings online. This includes documents, photos, audio recordings, and (yes!) even full-length public domain video with accompanying shot ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/15/fantastic-news-from-the-jfk-presidential-library/ Here are some more of my entries to the National Archives photo contest. Al Capone's Soup Kitchen, then: And now: The opening of the Michigan Ave bridge over the Chicago River then: And now: The Wabash Ave bridge then: And now: Michigan Ave by the Chicago Cultural Center (then a library): And now: ShareThis http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/11/more-nara-photo-entries/ Representative Gabrielle Giffords said on March 25, 2010: “Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there are consequences to that action.” Unfortunately, she was right.ShareThis http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/08/a-tragically-prescient-quote-on-todays-shooting/ So, the National Archives is having a somewhat under-publicized photo contest where the goal is to take photos in the same spot as historical photos from their holdings. The trick is, you have to hold up the old photo from their archives and align it with today's environment. Noticing that only ... http://www.thedailybackground.com/2011/01/02/my-national-archives-photo-contest-submissions/