Is this Indian Summer?

When I was young, the Chicago Tribune published a political cartoon on its front page called "Injun Summer." The appearance of the cartoon seemed to coincide with a spell of warm weather in October. The paper doesn't publish it on the front page anymore, but sometimes it appears in their magazine. I had a copy of the cartoon in my classroom for several years, but I don't know whatever happened to it.

Today feels like Indian Summer. The official definition is a warm spell after the first hard frost. We had the hard frost last week, at least officially. I'm not sure that we have had it on the North Shore yet. Today is warm. I have the patio doors open and the warm breezes are blowing in.

I'm getting sick of the negative political commercials on TV. We had two hot contests for Congress in the area, now our district is in play too. I once taught a unit on propaganda in my social studies class. I used political commercials for material to analyze. We learned all the commonly used techniques, and lo and behold, the commercials used almost every one. Just remember, propaganda always has a large amount of truth, but the way the truth is presented or twisted is what makes the propaganda. There is only a tiny bit of falsehood involved. I have read that negative commercials are effective, but after you have seen the same commercial about 50 times, sometimes 3-5 times an hour, I doubt their impact. However, there is another belief: if you hear a lie over and over again, people begin to believe it.
Our races in Illinois must be close, because the Republican National Committee is sponsoring several commercials now. November 7th can't come soon enough.