Michael McCormick > Recent Status Updates

What a book this is to read, a joy really, even if tonight I just pushed myself to get through the two monsters. How naive Roosevelt and Truman and Attlee seem about Stalin. I mean, what kind of guy do you build a relationship with who killed his first victim when he was in his early twenties? Trump should volunteer to live as a guest of Kim Jong-Un, who killed his own brother. But he won't, b/c Trump = stupid!!

Reading just a little bit of Roberts's "Leadership in War" makes me want to read more of his books, especially the one about Napoleon.

Perhaps the most important thing that I have distilled thus far from reading Mr. Peterson's book, out of the many things I have learned, is the importance of the saying, "to thine own self be true." Mr. Peterson remains true to his values throughout his life and that bedrock of principles carries him from successful point to successful point in his navigation of the river of in his life. I want to be like him.

Maybe one can measure the quality of a memoir like "The Education of An American Dreamer" by how much of a cliffhanger feeling a reader feels while reading it. If that is the case, then Mr. Peterson's book is a thrilling memoir. I have waited 11 years since I bought this book to read it, feeling intimidated by it; but at this point I recommend it to everybody.

I am enjoying reading this book so far.

General Sullivan comments in this book that the lieutenants of 1995 would be the Generals of 2020. Well, this is 2020, and I was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1990, so I guess if things had worked out for me, I'd be a senior O-10 right now. But, as we all know, I quit in 1994, having just become a new O-3. Kudos to the book on the succession planning ideas. This is a great and worthy book.

Great discussion of what strategy is and is not.

I am enjoying General Sullivan and Colonel Harper's book very much so far and have found it quite captivating despite that it was published 24 years ago. I have found a note about a "Team of Teams" in the table of contents, which reminds me of General Stanley McChrystal's, US Army (Retired), book of that title. I'm on a leadership and military lessons for everyone theme right now.

I just finished the story about the Canadian recovery operation. These studies stand well on their own as lessons in leadership. The core takeaway for me thus far in the book is a message of caring. All these years I have thought about my time in Ranger School and what it meant. Now, with Professor McRaven's book, it's like someone finally gives a shit.

Gotta love it! I could not walk into the room with the black boards with all the equations. I sidestepped into the white alcove and stared at the black and white painting. I am disappointed. The painting is just art! The Hoover Digest, they showed me, was in the art section. Matt Damon I am thinking of you. That period was at 106. Ed Norton, how do you figure in? That question mark was at 47.

Guess what? I'm still on page 10. But I wanted to just note here that as I look around, I only see, out of all my books, only two with orange bindings. The first, high and across the room is "Post War," by Tony Judt, who is dead. That book took me about as long to read as the last one I read. The other is "Modern Astrophysics." Michelle M: was your overnight in the dorm proposal a math proof?

Jumping right in...can't wait to get rolling!

Of course, what is most eye opening to read are the success stories, but also things like, "...the central question is not whether the second generation will assimilate to American society but to what segment of that society it will assimilate. " (p.271) This book sets in motion for me whole other questions, such as the place of fourth and fifth generations and beyond as well as the progress of diversity of teams.

Wow, what an eye opener Chapter six is . Basically the chapter confirmed that fluent bilinguals enjoy higher incomes than do monoglots, but my key insight was that I need to keep living right where I do in order for my kids to grow up to be fluent in Spanish! Moving to Westchester, besides the Lyme disease, will present too much pressure for my family to only speak English. Here's looking at going to Spanish Mass!

"Immigrant America" is such a joy to read because page after page is further testament to the truth. "Defending their own particular interests -- defined along ethnic lines -- was the way many immigrants and their descendants learned to identify with the interests of the nation as a whole. With different voices, and in new languages, that process continues today." (p.213) Thank God for Portes and Rumbaut.

I am thoroughly enjoying "Immigrant America: A Portrait." It is an eye opening journey of fact about what has made America great and, as the authors sum up in Chapter One, namely that "...this integration into a single society and culture, or perhaps into several subsegments, is held to be a good thing" (p.73). Anyone who differs with that can come and ask me about how much I love Teresa.

"...Later generations' efforts to maintain a distinct culture have been invariably couched within the framework of loyalty to the United States and an overarching American identity. Today's immigrants, in all likelihood, will follow the same path." LTG Ricardo Sanchez, a Mexican-American, commanded in Iraq. Two "green card Marines" were among the first to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country in OIF.

"...transnationalism offers a viable bridge and platform for successful integration." (p. 79) Isn't that the lesson of Selles and "Vanishing Frontiers"? The President and his Republican admirers couldn't be more wrong. Building a border wall could not be more counterproductive.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg about how far from the truth the administration is about immigration reform.

Done with chapter one after rereading from the first introductory page. I will not say what inspired me today to keep going, but something did and now I feel excited to be reading again! What is more is that even in the first chapter there were ideas and facts and figures that backed up some of my own thinking, thinking that I had from somewhere about what are in the interests of the USA about immigration policy.

PRIDE is the first and most deadly of all the seven capital sins. Its remedy is humility. And so I pray to God to grant me humility as I read "Immigrant America: A Portrait." I pray to God to grant me the humility to recognize when the time comes for me to give up what I have to someone who can perform what I do better, and in so doing, to allow me to repurpose my own life, yet again, for something else.

I am making my way through the prefaces for the fourth through first editions and the acknowledgments for the fourth through first editions. I can already tell that "Immigrant America: A Portrait" is going to be one thrilling read. I can't wait to get further into it. I love to learn and this book is going to teach me a lot. Thank you Professor Zeke Hernandez of The Wharton School at Penn for the recommendation.

One thing for sure that I am experiencing as I read this book is that it is, in fact, eminently readable. Why is that? Is it that our situation has really not changed so much with respect to immigration? And if so, do these articles in the book, published in the early 1990s, therefore hold a natural relevance for today? All I know is that I want to learn more especially from recent sources on the topic.

I am grateful for this book. It is about 26 years old, but I can't wait to get through it and read my next book on the topic, the one that is more current, called "Immigrant America." Whatever the arguments made by the contributors to "Arguing Immigration," things have definitely changed since 1993 and 1994. We had welfare reform under Clinton, for example. We need to keep our population growing.

Here is the deal: I've had this book since I came back to the States in '94. I have been waiting for the right moment to get to it for 26 years. So I have now read the introduction and appreciated every word of it. My plan is to finish it, then to launch into one of the four books that Professor Zeke Hernandez recommends called "Immigrant America: A Portrait," by Portes and Rumbaut to see how things have changed.

What a great read so far from Dean Hubbard and Professor Kane. The book offers incredibly insightful lessons about the importance of institutions in creating entrepreneurial success that drives economic prosperity in each nation state. I cannot wait to read more! "Balance" was published in 2009 but seems just as fresh and sensible and timely right now; am reading "National Affairs" at the same time. GREAT STUFF!!

Just finished first chapter and cannot wait to read more. We have to pull together to stop American decline, and we need to start right now. I am liking the idea of a Constitutional balanced budget amendment. Let's get rid of these entitlements that we will never stop loving unless we are ready for the hard medicine of eliminating them and stopping the growth of wasteful government programs.

My contention is that balance has been struck in the United States between the Democratic party and the Republican party, but more broadly between socialism and capitalism. We have fused what until now has been split: the fierce impulse to band together to help (Democratic party) versus the fierce impulse for individual freedom (Republican party). Now US foreign policy is about bringing the world into the fold.

I think that I may have a broken toe.

The most memorable moment of Army hockey's win over UNH was Daniel Haider blowing his breakaway opportunity by slipping on the ice, then proceeding into the locker room after with a "what's my major malfunction" self-persecution aura.

I really like that kid.

Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin isn't great has never watched her videos. She's a warm, caring person. I like her.

I learned of this book when Newt Gingrich recommended it to his audience when he spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club of New York two years ago. I was a member of that audience. My story is that I immediately felt compelled to purchase a copy, but as happens with me all to often, my will to read it subsided once it arrived in the mail. My ambivalence is hereby gone: I feel a fire in me to read it now.