Why I Oughta...

 I own exactly one camouflage item of clothing.  It is this Doug Hayse for Illinois State Representative camo ball cap.  Based on the data on the Illinois Department of Elections site , it appears that this hat is from the 2004 general election cycle.  That means that I've kept this hat for more than 15 years.  But, I only wear it one day a year:  Christmas Tree Farm Day.   Just filing this away as one of my Christmas traditions  - I've successfully been able to file this hat away in with the rest of our holiday decorations.  Just to be pulled out when the tubs of decorations come out each Thanksgiving-time.   I'm pretty sure it started because we had (historically) went down to the Tammen Treeberry Farm in Braidwood.  That was in, or pretty darn close - to the district Doug Hayse was running in for State Representative.  If I was doing - (which...NOTE TO SELF: I should do one this year, right??) - one of the "my favo...

Early this morning, the folks at ProPublica Illinois released a widget that documents the fundraising and spending of the gubernatorial candidates in Illinois .  Well...it shows most of the candidates - the ones who are *in* the race with a shot at winning their respective primary.  I'm embedding their widget below.  ( Also...one cute thing to mention here:  the url of the story is at: their domain/nerds/story.  Nice touch, right?? ) Loading... There's obviously some interesting things going on here in the race ( like JB Pritzker's burn rate ?!?) that smarter and more tuned in political people can provide context on, but the reason I'm posting this is that it reminds me of the old days. The old days?  Yeah...like back in the mid-aughts when there were plenty of local bloggers - and specifically local political bloggers - that had their own little homesteads on the Web .  That's when I fell in love with the Web and met so many people ...

Neil Steinberg from the Chicago Sun-Times always does the best obituaries .

Today's "Throwback Thursday" post is the latest in the series here on the blog featuring some photos that I recovered from Flickr and transferred to Google Photos recently.   You can see the details here, including a photo of Da Mare and myself at the Joan ! These photos in this post are from October of 2005 and are from a fundraiser that was for my campaign for re-election to the Frankfort Village Board held at Die Bier Stube in Frankfort.  As you can see, the 'guest of honor' that night was former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson.  Yeah...pretty cool, right? How this came about is an interesting story about my time in politics - both at the local level as a Village Trustee, and in State politics as the driver and digital hack for Tom Cross, the then House Minority Leader in Illinois. Over the course of a few years and during dinners, time at the GOP convention, and assorted other what-have-yous, I was able to get to know The Governor and his right-hand-ma...

Now that we got that State of the State nonsense out of the way, we can talk about the big things. Remember this ? If Dring can get on the stick, we'll launch in the coming weeks. I think we're near 40. Any submissions? Send them in, please...

Doing an entire 'Year in Review' would be daunting, as I can't quite remember what happened 6 weeks ago, let a lone 6 months ago, but what I can do is tell all you--my loyal readers--what I think was/is the biggest story of 2005 in and around Chicago. ....Drum roll please........... The Biggest story in 2005 was the City of Chicago's 'about-face' on live, outdoor music in the City's parks. What? Live music as the biggest story of the year?!? WTF, Parrillo?!? What about the 'Drought of '05', or the White Sox, or Hired Truck, or Marshall Field's closing? Well...those are all good stories. They're all qualified for 'Biggest Story of the Year', but they don't have the same impact to me as the City's Leaders embracing live music. I wrote about it back in July when both Lollapaloza and Intonation were put on to rave reviews, despite the repressive heat. Dunno if you realize what is happening here. We just went from th...

For the U.S. Senate Seat, that is. I've heard a bunch of names bantied about and some make sense and others don't. The obviously most intriguing one is Patrick Fitzgerald. It seems like he's not interested in the job. His spokesman for the 'G' says: “[Patrick Fitzgerald] is not running for any electoral office. He has had no discussions with anyone about this matter," Sanborn said. "He is very happy with and intends to keep performing the job he has. I am denying there is anything to this whatsoever.” So, of course, the Illinois Leader (the conspiracy theorists that they are), say that the 'insiders' floating Fitzy's name just want him out of Illinois. There may be a bit of truth to that, but more importantly, he may be the only  guy  that can win. There are some other interesting names that I can think of. Corrine Wood. I always thought that this was going to be her seat. She had to run for Governor a few years back. She could have pas...