I thought this only happened in movies.  I’ve often dreamt of finding a bag full of drug money on the side of the road.  Although I think I may have chosen to spend the money a little differently ya gotta give this little gipper with a heart a gold some credit.  He tried to do some good, it appears, or maybe he was just too naive to realize what he had.  Or maybe the kid was just trying to make some friends.

I gotta say if I was 16 and found a bag filled with $18,000 the rest of the day probably would have involved the purchase of a jet ski, lots of beer (and I’m talking the good shit, no 30 packs of Red Dog today fellas!!), at least 50 feet of Quiznos subs for my friends and fam, a laser disk player, a stripper, some new whitewalls for my Caprice Classic, a trip to the mall with my best friends, a sword, a monkey, a Curtis Conway jersey, and a new video camera… And I sure as shit woulda picked up the 4 pounds of dope lying next to the cash.  But to each his own, right?

And let this be a lesson to all the youngsters out there, it would behoove you to comb through the ditches of the seediest parts of your towns or neighboring villages, cause you never know when you might find your pot (no pun intended) of gold.  And I wish someone would have told me this when I was a youngin’… but if you are ever high and you come across the gentleman in the picture below, do everything he says, he is the Dragon Master and he knows everything.

Editors note -  Mr. Anseed in no way supports the combing through of seedy ditches in crappy parts of town or the listening to of the dragon master.  It was just a joke.  But he would like to make it known that he fervently supports Jet Skis, swords, monkeys, and The Caprice Classic.

Article via The Chicago Tribune -

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota teen got to play high roller for a day after finding a plastic bag containing $18,000 in a highway ditch, and he gave away thousands of dollars to classmates on Tuesday before authorities got involved.

Dakota County officials are releasing few details about the source of the money, but they have a pretty compelling clue: When the student, a 16-year-old from Rosemount, Minn., led them back to the spot where he found the money, they discovered 4 pounds of marijuana and some scales.

“This is tied in to drugs, obviously,” said Sgt. Joe Leku of the Dakota County Drug Task Force. He would not disclose other details of the case, saying it could jeopardize the investigation.

Investigators learned that a student had been handing out $100 bills when a school bus company reported it to a school resource officer on Tuesday, said Chief Dakota County Deputy David Bellows. The boy had given out thousands of dollars before deputies started going back and collecting the money. They recovered almost all of it, Bellows said.

Via The Huffington Post -

MIKE ROBINSON | December 9, 2008 10:27 AM EST |

CHICAGO — Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama’s election as president.

According to a federal criminal complaint, Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper’s editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democratic governor was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti.

The affidavit said Blagojevich discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a nonprofit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

It said Blagojevich also talked about getting his wife placed on corporate boards where she might get $150,000 a year in director’s fees.

He also allegedly discussed getting campaign funds for himself or possibly a post in the president’s cabinet or an ambassadorship once he left the governor’s office.

“I want to make money,” the affidavit quotes him as saying in one conversation.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement that “the breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering.”

—

The Chicago Tribune is doing a great job of updating the story as more details are released.  You can check out their coverage of the developing drama here.

Via The Huffington Post -

These photos are absolutely stunning.  I am filled with a sense of wonder and awe when viewing images like this.  They are perfect reminders of the limitless possibilities in this world and of the boundless intelligence and imagination of humanity.

Via The Big Picture -

“This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first launched module of the International Space Station (ISS). The module Zarya was lifted into orbit on November 20th, 1998 by a Russian Proton rocket lifting off from Baikonur, Kazhakstan. In the decade since, 44 manned flights and 34 unmanned flights have carried further modules, solar arrays, support equipment, supplies and a total of 167 human beings from 15 countries to the ISS, and it still has a ways to go until it is done. Originally planned to be complete in 2003, the target date for completion is now 2011. Aside from time spent on construction, ISS crew members work on a good deal of research involving biology and physics in conditions of microgravity. If humans are ever to leave the Earth for extended periods, the ISS is designed to be the place where we will discover the best materials, procedures and safety measures to make it a reality.” — The Big Picture

“This high-angle image of the Space Shuttle Atlantis backdropped over a mountainous coastline was photographed on February 16th, 2001 by the three-man Expedition One crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shortly after the shuttle and the outpost unlinked following several days of joint operations of the two crews. The scene was recorded with a digital still camera.” — Big Picture

“Astronaut Donald R. Pettit, Expedition 6 NASA ISS science officer, photographs his helmet visor during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on January 15th, 2003. Pettit’s arms and camera are visible in the reflection of his helmet visor. Astronaut Kenneth D. Bowersox, mission commander, is also visible in visor reflection, upper right.” — Big Picture

“High above New Zealand and Cook Strait, astronauts Robert L. Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang work to attach a new truss segment to the ISS and begin to upgrade the power grid on December 12th, 2006.” — Big Picture

“A spacesuit-turned-satellite called SuitSat began its orbit around the Earth after it was released by the ISS Expedition 12 crewmembers during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on Feb. 3, 2006. SuitSat, an unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit, was outfitted by the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter, which faintly transmitted recorded voices of school children to amateur radio operators worldwide. The suit entered the atmosphere and burned a few weeks later.”  — Big Picture

Check out the rest of the photos here.

This building is tall.  Really really really really tall.  In fact it is now the tallest structure on the planet.  It is diffucult to wrap your mind around the sheer scale of this skyscraper.  Currently a staggering 2,320 ft high the Burj Dubai is, at present, 613ft taller than The Sears Tower and has 50 more floors.  Unbelievably the building is still growing, upon its completion in September of next year it could rise to a height of 2,684ft!  The final height of the building is a tightly held secret and won’t be known until construction is finished.

The first photo comes from yesterday’s excellent Big Picture story “Dubai and the UAE”.

November 7, 2008 - the tallest man made structure in the world, despite being still incomplete. The skyscraper stands at 707 meters (2,320 ft), with 160 floors and growing, and is scheduled to be complete by September of next year. (© Fadi Chami) #

The following hi-res pictures of the unmatched tower come from David Hobcote.  You can check out the full collection at Gizmodo.com here.

From Salon.com -

BILL AYERS TALKS BACK -

By Walter Shapiro

Nov. 17, 2008 | NEW YORK — Proving yet again that there are indeed second and even third acts in American lives, Bill Ayers had transformed himself over a quarter of a century from an on-the-run-from-the-law member of the Weather Underground to a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But because of a single event — a 1995 coffee that he and his wife gave for fledgling state Senate candidate Barack Obama — Ayers again found himself in the cross hairs of history.

John McCain targeted his rival’s associations with radicals like Ayers, and Sarah Palin hyperbolically accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Ayers rebuffed interview requests throughout the campaign, but has dropped his reticence with the republication of his 2001 book, “Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist.”

After appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last Friday, Ayers sat down for a 55-minute interview with Salon’s Washington bureau chief, Walter Shapiro. During the late 1960s at the University of Michigan, Shapiro knew Ayers as a “guy in the neighborhood.” The following interview, conducted in Shapiro’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, has been edited for length.

We had not seen each other in something like 39 years until you walked in. All through the 2008 campaign, I have been telling this story. I ran into you on South University Street in Ann Arbor maybe three or four days before the 1968 convention. And you asked me, “Are you going to Chicago?” And I said, “No, they’re going to nominate Hubert Humphrey.” And you replied, “You’ve got to be there. Great shit’s going to be happening in the streets.”

And you missed it.

Of course, I missed it.

The interesting thing about an event like that or Woodstock …

Which you missed.

Which I did miss, but in a funny way I felt like I was there. Chicago ‘68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I’ve talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock. Interestingly, 24 years from now, everyone will have been in Grant Park on Nov. 4, 2008, because it was another exciting moment when we came together.

Were you there in Grant Park for Obama?

I was there for hours and I couldn’t leave and I’ll tell you why. I’ve been in larger crowds of people before, but I’ve never been in a crowd that large where there was no edge of anger, there was nothing that people were trying to push against, no one was drunk, there was no gluttony. It was simply a gathering of pure joy. Something that would have seemed unimaginable just a couple of years before was now inevitable and unforgettable. Everyone wanted to be there. And the sense of unity and the sense of hope was really palpable and lovely.

So I take it you voted for Barack Obama.

Of course, what were the choices? I voted for Obama and I was delighted that he’s been elected. And, of course, we have to embrace the moment. It was a moment when the American people overwhelmingly rejected the politics of fear, the politics of war and militarization, paranoia and the acceptance of the shredding of our constitutional rights. It was a sense of “let’s move beyond that.” And so, of course, I wanted to be a part of that, and we need to embrace that. I also think — and this is where we need to move in the future — that we cannot believe that presidents save us. They cannot save our lives. We have to do for ourselves the important work of transformation, the important work of reframing the last eight years, the last several decades, into something more hopeful.

Let’s come back to Obama. I’m curious. How many conversations have you had with him over the years? Fifteen? Twenty?

A dozen or 15 perhaps. There was a big thing made this morning [on "Good Morning America"] that I was coming out of my silence. Nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I’m not silent.

But I e-mailed you during the campaign and asked, “Do you want to talk about this?” And you said, “Thanks, great to hear from you, but not at this time.”

Well, what I didn’t want to comment on was the political campaign. I didn’t want to enter into that. The reason is simple: I thought that I was being used as a prop in a very dishonest narrative — and I didn’t want to be part of the narrative and I couldn’t find a way to interrupt it. Anything that I said was going to feed that narrative. So I felt that part of this was the demonization of me — certainly that I’m some kind of toxic agent that has to be feared.

The second thing, and perhaps more important, is that I was being used to try to bring down this promising new leader by the old tactic of guilt by association. The idea that somehow — and this is deep in the American political culture — that if two people share a bus downtown, have a cup of coffee, have several conversations, that somehow means that they share an outlook, a perspective, responsibility for one another’s behavior. And I reject that. That guilt by association is wrong and we shouldn’t buy into it.

Do you feel diminished by Obama repeatedly referring to you throughout the campaign as just some “guy from the neighborhood”?

Not in the least; I am a guy from the neighborhood. And I’m proud of it … And the neighborhood being Hyde Park, which is a very close-knit, very friendly, very politically diverse, very racially diverse. You have all kinds of poles there. You have [conservative] Judge Richard Posner on one pole and Louis Farrakhan on the other. And everything in between. It’s an interesting neighborhood, a college town [the University of Chicago]. It’s close-knit. It’s kind of like Wasilla, Alaska, except that it’s different.

What have your impressions been of Obama over the years?

I met him sometime in the mid-1990s and, as I said, I know him about as well as thousands and thousands of other people do. And like millions of other people, I wish I knew him a lot better now. My impression of him from the start was that this was the smartest person who walks into any room he walks into. An incredibly bright, an incredibly quick person. A compassionate, kind person. And everyone who knew him thought that he was politically ambitious. For the first two years, I thought, his ambition is so huge that he wants to be mayor of Chicago. And that’s where my imagination ran out of steam, apparently, because clearly he had his sights on something else and I’m delighted for him and for the country and the world that he was able to accomplish this.

Still Interested? Read more here.

Watch video from the interview below -

The above rain soaked pictures come from a great photo-story posted on The Big Picture Wednesday November 5th.  You can see the rest of the pics by clicking here.

I also highly recommend you check out Photojournalist Scout Tufankjian’s coverage of the entire Barack Obama campaign.  It is a beautiful, thoughtful, and incredibly detailed photographic journey through every step of President-Elect Barack Obama’s (damn does that feel good to type) historic campaign.  Check out the project here.

Lastly I want to direct you to a slideshow from CNN that covers The Grant Park Election Night Rally.  It takes a few key parts from President Obama’s speech and plays it over some phenomenal pictures of the event.  It is an inspiring tribute to the night and to President Obama’s historic speech.  Check out the “Obama: This is our moment” slide show here.

Thank you to Uncle Chest for sending the CNN slide show and Scout Tufankjian’s “Yes We Can” project.

Enjoy!  Be Inspired!

The Big Picture

You have waited for this moment for so long. A few of you have waited over 100 years for this.  You stood in lines.  You volunteered.  You voted.  You came to Grant Park to watch History unfold.  You can feel the excitement and hope course through the crowd.  The energy is thick and electric.  It is tangible.  You scream with excitement when it is announced that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America.  You cry.  You smile.  You let out a deep breath and feel a calm come over you that hadn’t been there during this entire election.  You feel relieved.  It has finally happened.  It is over and it is just beginning.

You can already feel some of your faith being restored in your country and in its people.  You look at the American Flag waving in the dark night and you feel something inside of yourself that wasn’t there before.  You do not name it, instead you hold on to it, you make it yours, and you promise yourself that you will never in your lifetime forget what it means to be standing where you are right now.  You will never forget this feeling.

Behind you the lights of a great city dance in the darkness reminding you of all that has come before.  Reminding you of the people that built this city and this country and this society.  Reminding you of the struggle, pain, death, and sacrifice.  Reminding you of the people that fought and laid down their lives so that a moment like this could happen.  It is in this moment that you can FEEL the history of this great nation course through your veins and embed in your soul and the feeling is incredible.

It is the back of someone’s t-shirt that breaks the trance.  It reads simply, “This is our time, this is our moment”.   Your smile fads a bit as the enormity of that statement sinks in.  You know that there is still so much work to do.  So many barriers yet to break.  So many changes still to make.  This is only the beginning.  It is only a first step.  The rest is up to us. This is our Time.  This is our moment.

You breathe it all in.  You make yourself another promise.  You kick the dirt at your feet and watch the wind blow it in every which way.  You put your arm around your friend and say, “Yes we can”.

“This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.”

- President Barack Obama -

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

- Barack Obama -