Category Archives: Uncategorized

I think the most shocking thing about the 700 billion handout is how it was started.  The United States has over 300,000,000 people, with the largest economy in the world.  The financial debacle has been brewing for decades and probably a dozen administrations.  Tens of millions of people are directly involved with it.  How did the Bush administration react?  With a THREE PAGE plan!!!!  Three Pages.  The manual to my TOASTER is longer than that.  It takes more than three pages to describe how a toaster works, but that is all that it takes TO FIX THE LARGEST ECONOMY OF THE WORLD.  The ineptitude of this administration is amazing.  A third grade book report on Charlotte’s Web is probably about 3 pages.  I am not surprised at all that it is over 400 pages.  You know, something that an adult could right.

Either way, I think the plan is stupid and flawed.  What we really need is New New Deal.   Something that fixes our infrastructure, not swaps one piece of paper for another.  You can’t drive on paper bridges, you can’t teach kids inside of a figure in a database.  You can’t rebuild levies with stock swaps.  We need to roll up our sleeves and actually start making things again.  That is how you really fix this country.

Sadly, I am not hearing this from either candidate.  All I hear is Change.  Change to what?  We are dealing with a pivotal point in American history, and we are talking about gay marriage and hockey moms.  The best qualified people, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden  sadly do not have the presidential nomination.  We have a motivational speaker and grandpa running for president.  It is a hard choice, and frankly, I think they both suck.

Enough ranting for now.  Later today we are going to visit the Heston Steam Museum for the first time with Glenn.  I haven’t been there in 20 years, probably, and Tiffany and Glenn have never seen a steam train.  I hope the weather holds out.

Finally found a decent way to upload my photos and post them on the blog.  So, to that end, either use the page navigation to the right or explore:

Black and White

Decay

Flowers

Parrots

I was finally able to capture some mysterious wild parrots (parakeets?) on Bell Avenue in La Grange. This has no relation to Bell Avenue in Chicago, this Bell runs East/West. These birds feed around 12:15 P.M. every day, and I was finally able to capture some photos.  Today I saw nearly a dozen birds.  Weird man.

I really don’t understand the huge urgency behind bailing out Wall Street.  These “Toxic” loans have been on the books for years now.  The whole ‘crisis’ has been brewing for 30 years now.  70’s inflation busting, 80’s S&L debacle, the 90’s stock and Internet bubble, the 00’s housing and credit bubble. One bubble after the next, with no popping.  It all boils down to the fact we need to start making things in this country instead of moving paper, flipping burgers, offering credit, and suing each other.  That crisis can’t be fixed in 7 stinking days by the people who helped create this problem in the first place.  We need a correction, not a bailout.

Took some ‘arty’ photos yesterday and today.  Here are a few to look at:

A very rusted bike.  In the full shot, you can see how it has left rust stains on the concrete!

I really hope no one is riding this scary beast.   The chains/cables are the least rusted things here.

Just a sunflower.

I also tried some black and white photos.  This was done on the camera to make sure the shots worked ok.  Photographing in color and changing to black and white may of worked, but it is a lot easier this way.

A lone light pole against a scary looking sky.  I didn’t expect this shot to work so well.  The photo you see is not cropped, just resized for uploading.

Just a weed in from of some railroad tracks.

Finally, some perspective:

I read an interesting opinion in the Tribune today, it said we are having September 11th weather.  Other than the horrible events, the weather that week was just wonderful, just like this week.  Only this time, we have the stock market tanking and goodness knows how many banks are going to fail.   So, just take a walk and enjoy the weather.  We will make it through.