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For the record, you name it, I was against that war to begin with. And as Dad said more than once, while most of the country waves the flag and cheers another war and demands that everyone "suppport our troops," it will be people like us who actually do anything for them when they return.

So I again have a hotel room with a spare bed for the night (e-mail just confirmed the scheduled roommate really isn't arriving tonight, so maybe I will take his bed instead of my sleeping bag) and again I offer a room to a guy trying to extract cash from passerby, and again he's a homeless veteran. Or a victim of the worst civilian knee operation ever. In any case he was the only guy on the street to have faith in the Bears winning tonight, which they did.

My takeaway: It is a bad sign in our country when a more than $400 a night hotel room doesn't include internet and people ask me for money outside Union Station while I'm wearing my second-worst pair of shoes (and for those who don't know me, these are bad -- a guest at the hotel already asked if I walked from Boston, based on the Celtics jacket which is in somewhat better condition, but has been ordered bleached or destroyed by two of the girls who have cared about me most).