It's Time for Obama to go Home

It's time for President Obama to go home to that place which gives him the strength and spirit to be our leader. He needs to go back to the South Side of Chicago. He needs to go back to the Trinity Church and join in the choir singing -- being there with Michele, with his two girls by his side.

I wish he was back there now, instead of in the White House, where he gets paler and weaker every day. Washington DC is just sucking the life out of that man. Those people aren't his true friends.

Go home, Mr. President. Go home to the South Side of Chicago.

I've been talking with a woman who comes from the South Side. She's a white woman, from the far, far South Side, but that doesn't matter. I recognize the energy that she has -- a kind of energy that comes from what may be America's largest and most powerful neighborhood.

Mayor Daley, father and son, are from the South Side. It's real.

The most important decision Barack Obama ever made was to choose that neighborhood as his home. He had a rootless childhood and then earned a law degree from Harvard. He could have lived anywhere in the country and made a very handsome living. He could have lived in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or Honolulu -- the world was at his feet.

But he choose Chicago, and he chose the South Side, and that's why he's the President.

He could have had a good and prosperous life in San Francisco or Manhattan, but he would not have become President.

I know, and he knows, it was that neighborhood that got him where he is today. That neighborhood and his remarkable wife Michelle who is rooted on those streets.

And that "reviled" church, that wonderful, soulful, gospel-truth church, where he sat in the pews every Sunday morning for so many years -- appearing diffident, appearing detached. That doesn't matter. He heard the singing and the preaching, and those words gave him the power to become President.

Go back home, Mr. President. Go back to your church and your barber shop and your streets of gold. Yes, they are streets of gold, if you have the eyes to see that.

Big City Values. I support President Obama because he represents big city values. The vast majority of Americans live in the big cities and their suburbs. This is who we really are, and this is where we will solve our problems and make our future.

I think this small town talk is all nonsense. I have lived most of my adult life in a very small town, LaConner, with less than one thousand people. I love it here. It's a great place to live and raise a family.

But to say that a small town is the embodiment of civic virtue -- that's a joke. We are no more honest, no more courageous, no more generous, and no more patriotic than our friends in the big city.

The people of small towns have no more virtue, and no fewer vices, than those who live in the big cities.

LaConner is my home and my source of strength, but our President needs to spend more time in his home and find his strength again, and that's in the South Side of Chicago.

The Frog Hospital T-shirt. The spring subscription drive will be underway soon. And this year we have something new and special -- a Frog Hospital T-shirt. As soon as we get it finished and ready to ship, we can make this offer -- when you a buy a srubscription you will receive a free T-shirt. This is going to really awesome.

The Frog Hospital Book. Sometime after the T-shirt extravaganza, the Frog Hospital book will be published, probably this summer. I got the manuscript back from the editor and I am making revisions. I have read the manuscript numerous times, and I still like it, so I think it will be a pretty good book.

When I'm finished revising, the manuscript will to to a proofreader and then to the book designer, and then to the printers. I'm working with a great group people on this.