Mr. Beat teams up with Jared from The Daily Bell Ringer for an engaging deep dive into Abraham Lincoln’s life and legacy. It’s fitting that this video was filmed in Springfield, Illinois, because Illinois is often known as the Land of Lincoln. After moving there with his family in 1830 at age 21, Lincoln settled in New Salem, then Springfield. He worked various jobs, taught himself law, served in the state legislature, practiced law, and launched his national political career from the state—making it central to his path to the presidency.
In conclusion, Lincoln is considered one of America’s greatest presidents for preserving the Union, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and ending slavery—demonstrating adaptability, moral growth, and extraordinary leadership in the nation’s darkest hours despite personal struggles and controversies. Jared (Daily Bell Ringer) emphasizes that Lincoln’s actions strengthened American democracy by showing that a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" could endure and expand freedom.
Get a load of this, this was uploaded to NBC Chicago's YouTube channel. A documentary about a movement for the rest of the state of Illinois to separate themselves from Cook County & Chicago. Legitimate gripes is for example continued control over Illinois by the politicians of the Chicago area.
Might be more to it than that certainly complaints about quality of life, taxes, even mentions of Chicago being less of a goldmine than a financial disaster. Perhaps the divide depicted in this documentary are between the rural and small towns of this state and a big city like Chicago. [VIDEO]
Question to be asked here, how can we make Illinois a better state?
[VIDEO] The four astronaut crew of Artemis II aboard their Orion capsule Integrity will break the distance record set by Apollo 13. They will be the furthest distance from Earth any human beings have been, a record set by the ill-fated crew of Apollo 13 that suffered a castrophic failure that cancelled an attempt to land on the moon.
Hope you enjoy, even if you only watch the replay. At the time I wrote this the crew was about 27 minutes before they reach the far side of the moon, where they will lose contact with the Earth for about 40 minutes.
Now I want to pop Apollo 13 the movie into the old VCR....err get with the times I can stream it now!
I've subscribed to Shawn Woods on YouTube for many years now. He has identified as something of a survivalist and lives in a rural part of Oregon - which explains how he harvested salt from the Pacific Ocean.
Either way I see this project of producing his own bread with his own wheat and his own salt is a fascinating project to share on here. His point with this exercise is to show us how easy it is to produce your own bread and making it with your own ingredients.
You don't have to go to the store!
Alas there isn't a body of saltwater near Chicago. And I don't know too many people who harvest wheat in their backyard in a major metropolitan area. And of course to further harvest wheat to produce flower that seems like a time consuming process although resources are available to make that work.
Would you be willing to experiment with this process? [VIDEO]
I know politics have been the focus of this blog as of late, however, sometimes it's OK to delve into science. Lately space or the universe has been a topic of interest for me.
Somehow I missed the pivot from going to Mars to them talking about Black Holes.
Black Holes seem terrifying if you get caught in one, especially when you reach a point where escape isn't possible then you get the spaghettification effect. You get stretched out, I imagine that as painful, however, we're not going to find out about that anytime soon.
Though of course if Dr. Tyson tells it we might be fine at a certain distance it's not like it'll just suck everything in. And it's interesting how he talks about Black Holes - one can be created if a star wants to explode, however, gravity keeps that from happening.
And also Mars. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars, he's talked about it. Of course what's the economic incentive? Trillions of dollars to make this a reality?
And how did we wind up on the moon by 1969, well more of a geopolitical incentive. Certainly the United States of America had to show the technical superiority to our superpower rivals the Soviet Union. The U.S. has rivals of course in the current world, but there's no Soviet Union - Russia still hasn't matched the power and influence of the superpower it ultimately replaced.
However as the title postulates, "We'll never go to Mars", I hope we do in my lifetime. Besides I just missed the Apollo missions of the late 1960s to earlyer 70s that did land on the moon.
I saw a YouTube short with Mr. Beat where he shows himself returning to his old high school to open his own time capsule dating to his senior year. And it was amazing to see the look on his face, when he found the time capsule and all the things him and his classmates put into it.
Then I got to thinking what would I have put in my own time capsule. Well my own senior year of high school had long passed so I can only speculate. Assuming no other classmates were involved with this, I'm sure I'd leave in it stuff that I was most interested in.
Mostly popular culture I was into such as music, TV, movies, etc. Perhaps a written note (ideally printed from a computer certainly written by hand too). Perhaps a floppy disk as Mr. Beat left one in his time capsule - what would be on it would be a good question and who knew diskettes were on the way out a decade later. That would be the start but I don't want it to be as unwieldy as the one opened in Seward, Nebraska as you see depicted in Mr. Beat's video below. [VIDEO]
Very fascinating. Time capsules that we know about in all history. The one by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams and then some we know about are older than that. And then this one just opened in Nebraska this past July 4th.
Mr. Beat has a time capsule which he even schedule a video to be shared in 2075. We don't know what the world will be in yet another 50 years. Will YouTube even be around? Would even the Internet Archive?
The next question is that if you left a time capsule of your own, what would be in it?
Another great video on gerrymandering. While Geography King does look at Illinois' Congressional map and other states such as Kentucky & Louisiana to see how their maps appear to be drawn to insure political power.
Current Illinois Congressional Districts
One example he gives is looking at the neighboring state of Indiana. That state's congressional map is actually drawn by a computer. However, he uses this site https://davesredistricting.org/ to gerrymander Indiana's districts insuring that no Democrats can get elected to Congress.
I suppose that's the thing about gerrymandering. You have to know which areas will vote for whom. Cities generally will tilt Democrat while rural areas will generally tilt Republican. Indiana is basically a red state thought with blue or liberal enclaves such as Indianapolis in addition to areas like Gary, Lafayette, or even Bloomington - the latter two are college towns.
The trick is to dilute their strength and basically drown them out with those areas that are solidly Republican or conservative. And if nothing else create a district that is competitive where a Democrat would have to fight to win that district.
That's the thing about gerrymandering, as he puts it the politician chooses his voters and not the other way around.
Check out his almost hour long presentation [VIDEO]
Allow me to start by saying the video you're about to see is only about the history of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm in no way equipped to even think I can discuss Catholicism in a theological way. That's really not the point of this post.
With this said earlier this month a new Pope of the Catholic Church was installed in Leo XIV. Not only is the Pope the visible head of the 2000+ year old church he's also a head of state - the microstate of Vatican City which is only 109 acres. It's an enclave of the Italian capital city of Rome.
And just bear in mind why is it the Roman Catholic Church because it's history started with the Roman Empire and guess where is the capital city of the Roman Empire - Rome. Either way we see that the Catholic Church and the Pope had significant influence throughout Europe. The Pope was said to be able to crown Emperors & Kings in addition to being involved with diplomatic disputes.
Let's also add that the Pope used to own more significant territory than Vatican City - which was established as an independent state thanks to the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The so-called Papal States was about the size of West Virginia and then in 1870 Italy eventually annexed the Papal States.
Up until 1929, the Pope considered himself a prisoner in the small area we now call Vatican City as a result of the loss of the Papal States.
The video below by GeoBro discusses how the Vatican lost 99% of it's land (the Papal States). I gave you the gist, the territory gave the Pope a lot of influence. Of course as we know thanks to the number of Catholics in the world the Pope still has a lot of influence [VIDEO]
In light of the historic events of the month of May 2025 I wanted to do a quick recap of what lead to the ascension of Leo XIV to the papacy. Who gets to select the new pope and what exactly is his role? And what is the history of the papacy. Hopefully I'll give myself the time to do that soon.
[VIDEO] Wait until you get to at least the last three cities. And some cities such as St. Louis and Detroit had experienced some form of population decline.
Many cities had some form of geographic advantage. Such as Chicago which historically had a geographic advantage, a hub for transportation, being on the Great Lakes, and being on a river which is connected to other important rivers.
People may emphasize here in this state that Chicago is losing population, however, Mr. Beat state's that that the Windy City is always reinventing itself.
Chicago is a great city, but which of these 25 cities would you choose to live?
[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] Well Inauguration Day has passed in America.
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on Monday - which also just so happens to be the MLK holiday.
In this video, Mr. Beat recites an amalgamated inaugual address taken from past presidents. And also goes over a bit of the history of presidential inaugurations. Like all things in America politics related the festivities of inauguration day has evolved.
I would like to share what happened after President Trump was sworn in on Monday.
[VIDEO] While I did a poor job of really getting at the issues of this election other than perhaps how I believed the Biden/Harris administration was running America and perhaps the economic and crime issues that many Americans are concerned about. Also the immigration issue which President-elect Donald Trump pledged to take on day one. The one thing Trump was on record discussing were on tariffs which is a tax on exports/imports.
We'd have to go back to the 2016 election on which 45th President Trump successfully ran on the idea of America first. Bringing back manufacturing jobs to America as opposed to allowing those jobs to be sent to those nations that offer cheaper labor. And Trump wasn't the only one who had some "protectionist" rhetoric and proved to say some of the same things that President Trump is talking about today.
"Edu-tuber" Mr. Beat looks at what is a tariff and the times they have been used and why tariffs generally aren't beneficial to those nations that issues them. One thing I could see with tariffs is that other countries - as noted in this video - could retaliate with their own tariffs. Also the idea that while goods for consumers are cheaper than ever before the concern could be how expensive these goods could become once a tariff could become issues.
Do you think President-elect Trump's usage of tariffs are a great idea or do you think they may prove problematic in the future?
[VIDEO] Fascinating to see the White House Historical Association visit with the Institute of Heraldry to look at all the symbols of the presidency. From the seal, coat of arms, and the medals the President can issue to military personnel and deserving civilians.
[VIDEO] This caught my eye from John Marshall Harlan High School's YouTube channel.
We get a quick update about what's going on there and what this week's goals are and certainly schedule of events such as sporting events. We also see some staff get notice in this recent update.
I don't want to criticize what they're doing here it's great to see this YouTube channel get updated. I would like to see more people in these vids though granted we may not see students as much as we'd see staff. Perhaps in an earlier weekly update we know some of the staff and hear them speak.
Of course I'd like to see a lot more of what the students are doing. Perhaps something remarkable about a particular student such as their creativity or even their academic plans or even a science project. Perhaps such things were in earlier updates that I have yet to see.
I just view this as very text heavy and perhaps it would be OK if the public sees a lot more about what's going on with Harlan in 2024-25. These are just some suggestions I come up with.
[VIDEO] The term October surprise originated during the 1980 Presidential race between Pres. Jimmy Carter and future President Ronald Reagan. Basically the surprise would be beneficial to Pres. Carter especially if it involved the release of the hostages in Iran which didn't happen after Carter was out of office. The Iranian hostage crisis was the story of that day.
Basically October surprises as Mr. Beat explains seems to be aimed to be beneficial to a candidate or often very negative towards another candidate. And we learn October surprises have a long history in American politics even if it wasn't always known as such.
The original term for October surprises before 1980 and certainly during the 19th Century - the first "October surprise" was during the 1840 Presidential Race between Pres. Martin Van Buren and future President William Henry Harrison..
After the election of 1844, October Surprises were known as "roorbacking". Based on a book that implied that future Pres. James K. Polk had branded his slaves which was proven false and force a newspaper that published the story to apologize. The book "Roorback's Tour Through the Southern and Western States in the year 1836".
A current example of an October surprise in the 2024 race might be allegations of former Pres. Donald Trump's alleged affinity for Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party. That's been going around during the last few weeks of October. Also the comments of a comedian at a Trump rally making a distasteful joke about the American territory of Puerto Rico. It remains to be seen if that will make an impact in next week's Presidential election.
They even touched upon the corrupt reputation of the office of IL governor. Pritzker even joked that he told his son there's a good chance of him going to prison.
Eh, Pritzker's a Democrat but dude, c'mon. You got to set the standard for the office it already has a terrible repution from past Governors, especially the more recent ones. From Otto Kerner, Daniel Walker (what he did had little to do with what he did as Governor to be fair), George Ryan (really same thing it kept him from running for a second term & what did him in was what happened when he was our Secretary of State), and of course our most recent example a man named Rod Blagojevich.
Gov. Pritzker espouses "progressive" values. He spoke about this often in this interview. I'm not a progressive and a lot of his policy agenda I don't agree with, however, unlike some of his more recent predecessors he's actually governing and for that I give him credit. Now if only we could find a Republican who can espouse conservative values for this state.
He did sort of touch about his progressive income tax (a graduated income tax) which failed in front of voters in 2020. He attributes this in part to the pandemic I would agree however he would state that the pandemic didn't enable him to knock on doors. I would say because of the economic downturn as a result of the pandemic probably caused voters to say no.
Also his 2018 election. He said he needed to defeat the then incumbent governor Bruce Rauner who had enough money to self-fund. And to be honest Rauner was terrible and of course he wasn't governing. Two years without a budget with social service agencies forced to shut down because of it.
I suppose the question I wish was asked. Will Pritzker run for a third term? Or is he eying a White House run?
[VIDEO] Our society is divided more than ever before - at least in my lifetime.
We're so divided during the pandemic it was a political position as far as whether or not one should be vaccinated. Democrats seemed to have supported this and generally Republicans didn't.
Abortion rights was divisive. Democrats seemed to generally support the "right" to an abortion while generally Republicans didn't.
Or radical gender ideology. The divide is stark on this one and especially when it comes to children. There is one side who believes that one could determine their gender - regardless of what they were actually born with. The other side just believes it's an inherent trait.
When you hear some podcasts or YouTubers they talk a lot about anything from a "Civil War" to a "national divorce". That's how divided we are some parts of America wants to live or govern one way, and other parts wants to live or govern another.
Mr. Beat in the video above explores how Americans have become so divided and how do we become less divided?
[VIDEO] Damen/Lake opened last month as the newest station on the CTA Green Line. This station is very close to the United Center and among other options this will be where the delegates or anyone else going to the Democratic convention next week will be getting off the train.
And of course this is perfect for other events at the United Center which means Bulls/Black Hawks games in addition to any other events that will take place there when the NBA or NHL aren't in season.
