O Hare Terminal Five

I recently went on a bike trip to the Pyranees in France. I trained for this for over six months, slaving away in my basement on a trainer as well as doing other workouts in the hostile winter here in exchange for two weeks of payoff on the mountains in France. Everything went wonderfully on the trip (more on this later). I was pretty excited when I was packing and leaving. It was the sort of feeling that you got in college when you knew you were going to ace a test. All the preparation and pre-work was done, it was simply time to perform.

Read more

Anti-Assad Syria Rally in Chicago July 3

There is a large anti-Assad (Bashar al-Assad to be specific) occurring today in River North in Chicago. The rally is supported by many organizations as detailed here. The plight of civilians in Syria is horrible and the true colors of the Assad regime are unfortunately coming through.

The rally had speakers from the community and people driving by honked their support. If for some reason you aren’t aware of the situation in Syria there is a massive popular revolt and the government is using shocking force on the civilian population, including tanks, artillery, and other heavy weapons on basically an unarmed populace consisting of their own citizens.

Generally when people compare “X” to Hitler the comparisons are over-wrought. In the case of Bashar al-Assad, however, at least you can understand where the protesters are coming from. I also think that the “Hitler” reference is meant to jolt people into at least considering their plight.

The incident with a 13 year old child Hamza is cited on this protest sign; he was apparently tortured to death in a horrible manner that I won’t cite here but you can read anywhere on the internet for more information. One of the Chicago Boyz commenters said “this was bad even for an Arab country”. From my perspective not only was it evil it represented shockingly poor tactics for Bashar; it is incomprehensible what this could accomplish.

Here and at Chicago Boyz we are keen commenters on history so any time you compare someone to Stalin it also gets us interested; I think that the Stalin references are also relevant since Russia is blocking security council action (along with China) on Syria.

Cross posted at LITGM

Around Chicago June 2011 (more)

Upper left – a car that should definitely not be on the street – a Lamborghini parked right out on the street on a busy Friday night in River North. Upper right – all I could think of when I saw that ridiculous photo of a laptop strapped to the handlebars of a motorcycle was “Get a damn iPhone or a Garmin”. Really… that is plain crazy and in a nutshell explains how having the most up to date laptop has gone from a must-have to an I’ll-wait-a-while type of purchase. Lower left – can’t argue with that sentiment about spring, but funny that it is on a trash bin door. Lower middle – great license plate on a truck in front of the post office. Too true and it should say retire at 50 but that probably won’t fit on the plate. Tzar bar – popped up in my neighborhood on Ontario and funny that the name of what was essentially the Emperor of Russia is now a trendy name for a nightclub. Pictures here looks like a fun and expensive place to visit if you are under 30 and can burn a few hundred bucks / night and stay out until daylight.

Cross posted at LITGM

American Majority Grassroots/Activist Training Saturday, June 25, 2011 from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM (CT) Oak Lawn, IL

Our nation was founded by ordinary citizen activists desiring a government that was accountable to the people. Today, ordinary citizens across our nation are tired of the status quo and ready to engage for the betterment of their communities. American Majority’s political training addresses these passions by providing education and resources to help you meet your goals.
 
American Majority along with the Chicago Tea Party will conduct a Grassroots/Activist training that will provide citizens with the tools necessary to win elections and implement limited government and free market principles.

I am going.

You should too.