Nothing like the value of a couple of conversations. I was having kind of a bad day today and was feeling a bit blah and put upon. So I headed over to the Y to swim some laps (more on that at some point in the future) when I was done I walked around a bit and ended up talking to this guy who also attended NIU (a few years before me) and just had a nice chat. Kind of reminded me about what I had to be thankful for.

Then I was putting some gas into the Taurus and ran into (not literally) a former TA I seem to run into every 5 years or so and had a nice chat with him for about 10 minutes.

Nothing like a good conversation to brighten your day.


OneMan.

Because it was worth $1,700 to have the new carpet in time for the inaugural.
Can't afford to pay doctors on time but we have money for this stuff. It's called Hubris people, please enjoy the next 4 years of it. If nothing else Citizen's for White should pick up the tab for this one.

OneMan

The Beacon has a story today about a stem-cell spending bill put forward by Tom Cross and others.
Grand Old Partisan, looks at it from a race for the 14th standpoint and makes an interesting point about the impact of this move on Cross' chances for congress if he were to run.
I really think I am going to take Cross at face value on this one. That he is motivated in large part by his daughters illness and not some political calculus.

This is a chance to make my daughter's life better -- to maybe someday make her diabetes go away," Cross has said of stem-cell research. "How can I not support it?"

I would have to say if my child has diabetes and I thought something might help end that disease I would be all over it.

OneMan

Ruben Zamora has filed as the third candidate in the 3rd ward aldermatic race. Zamora who lost in the primary to challenge Speak Hastert in 2006 and was the democratic candidate against Hastert in 2004 is now running for alderman. Ironically, the other candidate running against Alderman Stephanie Kifowit, Jim Nesbitt is a resident of Hometown (the sub-division next to where the drive-in used to be). I wonder how he feels about the new Hometown development and how hard he will push on the money/land for the school district.

If anything I think Ruben helps Alderman Kifowit in the race by splitting the 'ticked at Kifowit' vote. I also think he may have a shot since he will have some name recognition and he will be able to raise some money. It also sets him up to run for the Democratic nod again in the 14th. So all in all a smart move on his part.

Zamora said he appreciates the infrastructure improvements made by incumbent Alderman Stephanie Kifowit, but he believes he can add a level of accessibility, a "government open to ideas."

OneMan

From Sneed a couple of days ago.

School chums . . .
Dateline: The Blastoff Line -- It's a big month for two Saint Felicitas Grade School graduates.
Translation: Astronaut Joan Higginbotham and new Cook County Board President Todd Stroger were a year apart at the South Side grade school. Higginbotham, class of 1978, recently launched on a 12-day mission as part of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew while Stroger, class of 1977, was sworn into office last week.

Because getting a BS in Electrical Engineering, two masters degrees and earning the NASA Exceptional Service Medal as well as getting the Commendation of Merit for Service to the Department of Defense (DOD) is just like getting appointed to replace your dad on the general election ballot. Nepotism meet hard work, hard work try not to sneer at nepotism.

Since I have posted videos to YouTube, I now get message notifications that are basically spam. You figure an outfit like YouTube would want to nip that in the bud.

OneMan

I think him doing the theme really makes it at the end



Could you see Hillary doing this?

The Onemanafesto part 2: (I will be revisiting the technology stuff at a later point).

The Blago Project: The state Republican party should file an FOI request about any and all subpoenas that have been received by state departments and the governor's office. Once the request is denied they should file suit to get the information, make the administration specify in court why they disagree with the opinion of the Attorney General. Lets start getting them on record about this stuff.

OneMan

Rick has an interesting post about how AdSense is being used relative to Sen. Obama. His observations on why Sen. Durbin's web site shows up as part of the list are worth the read alone. For the next question why am I not doing this with the 'domain'? Well I don't want to appear official so even if the traffic increase would be nice my fear it that folks would end up thinking it is an official campaign site. Besides for the media frenzy that would cause, I think I would end up just ticking people off.

Also Rick is looking for a Wii, so if you can help a brother out.

OneMan

The Courier News had a story about the candidates thinking about running for Hastert's seat if he does not run again. It tossed the normal GOP names out, Lauzen, Schmitz (who both look like a go if it happens) as well as a few others such as Oberweis (big shock), Kane County board President Karen McConnaughay and Steve Rauschenberger.

As for the Democrats, it tossed out Chapa La-Via and Weisner, but didn't go into much detail since it appears they didn't respond to their questions.

OneMan

Time has picked up on the Obama Warren thing now as well.
I guess my question is still, is someone's stand on abortion a showstopper when it comes to discussing anything else with Christians? I guess for whatever reason I really don't see the logic in that. If nothing else by screaming about it, they are just giving Obama more media coverage.

The last thing that political evangelicalism should do is play the fundamentalist to Warren's Graham. There are those like David Kuo, the former second-in-command at George W. Bush's faith-based office who expressed his frustrations in the recent book Tempting Faith, who feel that, as he puts it, "there is one camp [in Evangelicalism] who truly want to follow Jesus, and another, much narrower, the Christian political power brokers, who want to follow conservative politics." He thinks the latter will soon be exposed to the majority as wordly operators rather than God's servants and shrivel away. He regards some of Warren's more prominent critics this week as prime examples.

If those critics want to hang on a little longer... or for that matter, if they want to prove Kuo wrong both in his assessment and his prediction... or if they'd simply like to live up to the full meaning of their pro-life commitment, they might consider letting Warren host Obama in peace. Otherwise, more broad-minded Christians may eventually demand a different kind of leadership.

OneMan