[slowhandluke]

He wondered if this were smoke or clouds (Neither of which emit light. Duh.)

But it's quite common in urban sprawl for clouds and smoke to reflect the street lights.

I suppose if you were Obama's ghostwriter, and you thought of him as purely a city kid, you might write about his surprise at seeing the milky way. But it would be a strange and poorly educated and extremely incurious young adult who could have lived in Hawaii and Indonesia and Kansas and never looked up on a dark night.

(Did I get the comma's right?)

[Philo-Junius]

For the record, there’s no evidence Obama ever set foot in Kansas until he began his run for President.

His mother couldn’t get out of there fast enough as a teenager, and there’s no evidence she ever went back; it is extremely unlikely she regaled her son with tales of the majestic amber waves of grain to make him want to visit.