We've had a nice few days here in Chicago. Aside from some rain and sometimes snow. And spring is very close which means the frigid temps of winter are mostly behind us now.
I'm glad to get these pics before the tree and vines reactivate for the season and cover everything right back up. Only wish that my lenses were available to take even better pics. Better go look for them before everything blooms.
You're free to click on the pictures for a larger resolution.
Shot from 99th Street
You might be able to see here the front entrance is boarded up.
The board is devoid of any events and no flag on the pole. We're looking towards Indiana Avenue here.
This is where my time started. The old Kindergarten classroom.
As always you're free to share your memories of this school whatever they may be. That's what this place is set up for although it seems I have a knack for covering other subjects here.
The people of this state cast 165,602 votes for the current state flag. As our Secretary of State says in a video below this flag got more votes than five of the other designs combined.
Drum roll please…🥁 After receiving 385,000 votes, we have a DECISIVE winner in the state flag redesign contest! The Illinois Flag Commission will now report the results to the General Assembly who will vote on whether to adopt a new flag or keep the current one. pic.twitter.com/CS3RMesLH6
— Secretary Alexi Giannoulias (@ILSecOfState) March 6, 2025
You can see how many votes was cast for each flag here. Only wo of my favored designs in the ten submitted for a new state flag came in the top five votes. That includes the one that had a blue and red stripe on each side of the state seal coming in at #4.
Though I should note feedback on these chosen designs weren't very good. These results will be submitted to the general assembly and who knows the state legislature may still decide to come up with a design for a new state flag.
Though I would still say we could keep the current state flag for the governor. A few states have standards for a state's governor. An Illinois governor has no standard.
[VIDEO] How did every president spend their retirement?
A few of them didn't get retirements as eight had died while in office. Someone like a James K. Polk has died a short time after leaving office - President Polk had the shortest retirement of any president.
Many had devoted their time to writing and speaking. And especially now many former Presidents stay active in someway. Being President is like a very special fraternity - well only men so far have been President - the current President has his predecssor Presidents to lean on.
Regardless after working such a stressful job for four years or longer, a President has earned their retirement once they leave office. Another fact noted the earlier Presidents lost money once they serve. The only recent reported example has been Donald Trump who is said to be a billionaire.
Either aren't you curious how every President has spent their retirement. Check out this recent vid by Mr. Beat.
[VIDEO] One thing I do recall he never mentioned is that he left out that J.D. Vance is the first millennial to be elected to the Vice Presidency. For the record I consider myself a xillennial my birthdate straddles the line between millennial and Gen. X.
I'm sure there are other things I don't recall but if you have some time you have about two hours to watch this live stream from President's Day 2025. Perhaps there are some things not mentioned here that didn't get mentioned as far as the 2024 race.
Mr. Beat's official 2024 election video. That race proved to be such a wild race. Who knew that President Donald Trump would make his return to the Oval Office after what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential race?
One thing that caught my eye in this video is a return to the spoils system. Basically insuring that those within the government are loyalists to your administration. What has been discussed within the populist right has been how the professional bureaucrats of the federal gov't helped undermind administrations they don't like.
America has already had a spoils system and at some point in the past our gov't were often staffed by a permanent bureacracy. And another argument made is that these bureacrats make some decisions over our lives and they're not elected.
With discussions of buyouts and more recently outright firings and even head of "D.O.G.E." Elon Musk declaring in a tweet that the Dept. of Education no longer exists. I'd say as they attempt to make gov't more efficient it seems more and more likely what Trump's priority is, perhaps he doesn't want a professional bureacracy. Perhaps more Presidents should staff the executive branch the way they see fit.
Now I'm sorry for not paying attention to what Trump was talking about during the campaign. And the fact that someone was attempting to kill him during that campaign. It helped to tip the odds in his favor. The use of weaponized "lawfare" was terrible and probably showed that someone was veyr concerned about him. Everything they tried to do seemed designed to keep him from running for President again and they may know full well after 2020 he had unfinished business. I wonder if they had just left him alone would he have just gone away on his own.
Meanwhile you had a President who was showing he couldn't handle the rigors of the job and while it's noted that his Vice President and her running mate breathed new life into the Democratic Party, it became clear to me that the Harris/Walz ticket was going to have their clock cleaned. Yeah Trump didn't perform well in his debate against Kamala Harris, however, it became clear that she wasn't the one either.
I'm curious what many of you think of the 47th President so far?
[VIDEO] Well it's not often we show a video with regards to the history of this state. They did note Illinois' population decline, the election of Barack Obama as President, and the scandal involving former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
[VIDEO] This video was published to YouTube last month before voting started for a new IL state flag. And the guest on this segment - Ted Kaye of the North American Vexillological Association takes a look at the designs for a future state flag.
He notes that the states of Utah, Minnesota, and Mississippi most recently had adopted new state flags and all of those flags were discussed by Kaye on this segment. Mississippi broke the rule of not having words on a flag though allowed this was more or less a political or historic compromise.
I think his views on the state flags designs are semi-similar to mine and I slept on (the wild-card) that I think could make a great flag. The one you see in the screen cap the very top left corner - almost a true tricolor with the white space that is shaped as the letter I - the letter I is for Illinois :P. And I feel as if this could be the most American design possible.
