Common Sense Shall Prevail!

Watch and listen to this man. Sure, it's 12 and a half minutes...but that's a very short amount of time in your entire life, isn't it?

Richard Epstein KNOWS Obama, and is undoubtedly a better lawyer than both Obamas combined!

“He passed through Chicago without absorbing much of the internal culture,” says Epstein of the president.

“He’s amazingly good at playing intellectual poker.

But that’s a disadvantage, because if you don’t put your ideas out there to be shot down, you’re never gonna figure out what kind of revision you want.”



Just take some time, make some time...for this.

Ah, yes...I remember it well...

...47 years ago today...when the best of times became the worst of times.

Chicago Sun-Times November 23, 1963

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
May 29, 1917-November 22, 1963

Rest, Bambi...rest.

Laurie Bembenek
15AUG1958-20NOV2010

I met Laurie in the mid-90s, just before she moved to the state of Washington. Both our dads were Milwaukee Police, and she had begun painting some very nice little works...we had a lot in common. She didn't keep in touch, but I'd hear about her struggles from time to time.

Her ex was a dirty cop, and I, for one, continue to believe Laurie was innocent.

Rest, Bambi...just rest now.

Sunday Morning Offering...or more Obama Gibber-Jabber

Yesterday, that boy-man said this:

"I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive," Obama said.

"But at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing."

Obama acknowledged that as president he does not have to go through pat-downs and other normal security procedures at airports, since he flies on Air Force One.

There is another way--it's called 'profiling', used with a great measure of success, BTW, in...Isreal!

Consequently, I am moved to present this:



Produced, BTW, by Sean Hannity

H/T Weasel Zippers

Gettysburg: November 19, 1863

President Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address (John Hay copy)


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—

that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Elihu Vedder 1896: Government (Lobby of main reading room, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC) Photo: Carol Highsmith 2007

Giant Man with Orange Hair

And the winner of the Olympus BioScapes photo contest is...

The eyes of a daddy longlegs (Harvestman), showing the lenses (two large ovals), retinas and optic nerves.

Source: Dr. Igor Siwanowicz / Olympus BioScapes

The image is a depth color-coded projection of a confocal image stack.

See more here.

I expect to see this soon as one of Michelle O's "party dresses", don't you?

Simply the BEST!

From the Chicago Tribune:

Sara Paretsky earns top mystery writer award

Sara Paretsky, courtesy of http://www.iliasspeis.co.uk/

Mystery Writers of America has chosen Chicago author Sara Paretsky to receive the group's top honor next year.

The group announced today that Paretsky would receive its Grand Master award next April in New York. The organization says the award is the "pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing" and was established to acknowledge important contributions to the genre.

Paretsky created feisty female private detective V.I. Warshawski in the 1982 novel "Indemnity Only."

Her latest book, "Body Work," was released earlier this year and is the 14th installment in the Warshawski series.

The mystery writers' group says Warshawski challenged a genre where "women typically played minor or passive roles."

Past winners have included authors Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King.

*********

Congratulations, Sara!

Christmas Splendor!

Here is the Great Tree in the Walnut Room at Macy's (formerly Marshall Fields) on State Street in downtown Chicago--and isn't it spectacular?

I am so pleased Macy's has kept up this tradition!

Detail of this year's theme "BELIEVE, WISH, IMAGINE"

The things that look like 'dotted hanging strips' are actually LED lights, that shoot down the tree randomly for an absolutely gorgeous 'falling snow' effect.

Unfortunately, the State Street window displays are not anywhere near this exciting holiday design level. They're paper/board constructs of the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" theme--quite dull, difficult to photograph, and not nearly as 'animated' as they were touted to be.