Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.

What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor. The worthiness of the man in the white socks who would pull out a picture of his grandkids from his wallet. For us, the factory would never do. And turning away from our birthright - our grandfather in the white socks - is the thing that ruined us.

There's not much a newspaper reporter can do about dead men. But a newspaper reporter and a cop and a judge can deliver some justice. That's why the founding fathers wrote it up the way they did, I suppose. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Everyone is entitled to those things.

Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.

Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.

At the end of the day, the Detroiter may be the most important American there is because no one knows better than he that we're all standing at the edge of the shaft.

Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so toxic.