Today's Opinions

With precinct caucuses now in the books, the 2010 election season is officially under way. Caucuses are an important first step in the nominating process, through which each major party selects its nominees for the general election this fall. 

With the exception of presidential nominations, there isn’t much public attention given to the way parties pick their candidates. It’s as though each November we’re presented with a ballot listing a Democrat, a Republican and perhaps one or more third-party candidates, with the winner assuming public office.

Dominick Paoloni will be giving President Obama a bit more time to actualize his campaign promises. He’s disappointed about what hasn’t been delivered yet — the public option, a return of civil liberties repressed during the Bush regime, and troops out of Iraq. With his expertise in finances, this Lookout Mountain resident is thinking (and that’s refreshing) about why Obama has moved so far to the right of moderate.

The great New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell has an unfailing ability to find interesting things to write about. In his recent collection of essays titled “What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures,” he explains what makes some topics so interesting. “Curiosity about the interior life of other people’s day-to-day work is one of the most fundamental of human impulses,” he writes.

We are relational beings, and we’re interested in how others live their lives.