HORRID HEADLINES
Which of the Following Disturbs
or Angers You the Most?
Please tell Us Why.
Please tell Us Why.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
28 comments:
IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING, YOU DON'T BELONG HERE, SO KINDLY GET OUT AND STAY OUT.
We welcome Conversation
But without Vituperation.
If your aim is Vilification ––
Other forms of Denigration ––
Unfounded Accusation --
Determined Obfuscation ––
Alienation with Self-Justification ––
We WILL use COMMENT ERADICATION.
IN ADDITION
Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.
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None of the above. Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but most-if-not-all the issues raised are in fact waste products that comprise The Liberal Mountain so cleverly illustrated. However, the illustration, which looks to be of nineteenth-centruy origin, is fearfully out of date, because "Mount Offal" has grown exponentially since those dear, dead days.
DeleteRight now, Mt. Offal must exceed the Matterhorn in height, bulk and formidably challenging aspect.
The Supreme Court's supposed left turn is the most disturbing story because it directly impacts the United States of America, our government, and our personal lives.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the eavesdropping, spying and tracking, but I don't know what we can do about it. I would love for some subversive techies to publish articles on how to foil and corrupt the databases of those who surveil us.
The San Fran Sicko story is unsurprising. We are monkey see, monkey do. Can anyone read that inflated statistic, 28%, and deny there is a recruitment component to this?
Our society is gripped by many sicknesses.
We concur on the Supreme Court. I'm very much afraid that this now-purely-political-branch of government has lost whatever shred of independence it once may have had, and is now working hand-in-glove with the international Corporate-Government-Bankster Oligarchy that rules with a gilded iron hand just behind the scenes.
DeleteWe have only two choices left, I fear:
Either we bend and spread to accommodate the Oligarchs' pleasure in the hope of keeping what we still may have, OR we rebel, as the Founders did, and risk losing our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor as well.
But could there possibly BE any "honor" in knuckling under to the demands of tyrants?
More important, DOES IT MATTER?
As one of most vehement and vociferous founding figures famously said:
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
~ Patrick Henry (1736 -1799)
Do you believe him, or was he in your mind just another crackpot?
o/t - I am SHOCKED to learn that the President is associated with known Communists....
ReplyDelete....NOT!
Ca va sans dire, mon cher, Jean. Nous avons toujours cela connaissons. C'etait domage, naturellement, mais c'etait egalment obvieux.
DeleteFaithful to her roots, she still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
DeletePROVE IT! ;->
Barbara Taylor Bowman is still alive.
DeleteFor several years sheran the Chicago based Erikson Institute. An early Erikson board member was Chicago businessman and "liberal" activist Tom Ayers-father of Weather Underground terrorist leader and long time Obama colleague Bill Ayers.
Bernardine Dohrn, wife of Bill and reputedly the real leader of Weather Underground has also served on the Erikson board in recent years.
Here's some un-related trivia to the Chicago "pay-to-play" culture...
DeleteValerie Jarrett daughter wedding: Besides Obama, who was there...
....Newton and Jo Minow: Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley. When Obama was at Harvard Law School, Minow recommended that Sidley hire him for a summer job in Chicago. Obama took the job and met his future wife, Michelle, at the firm. Minow’s daughter, Martha, is the Harvard Law School dean....
...John Levi: Levi is the Sidley partner who actually hired Obama–and before him, one Michelle Robinson. Obama tapped Levi to be the Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation. Obama also appointed Martha Minow to the Legal Services board....
...Martin Nesbitt: He is a close personal friend of Jarrett and the Obamas’ and lives a few blocks away. Lesser known is that he is the treasurer of the Obama for America campaign committee. His wife, Dr. Anita Blanchard is also one of Mrs. Obama’s closest friends; she delivered the Obama daughters. She is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology at the U of C Medical School–where Dr. James Bowman was the professor emeritus in the departments of Pathology and Medicine....
...John Rogers and his daughter, Victoria: Rogers, the founder of Ariel Investments, grew up with Jarrett on South Greenwood. Years later, by chance, Rogers recruited one Craig Robinson to play basketball at Princeton. Robinson is Mrs. Obama’s brother. Rogers is a major Obama fund-raiser. His former wife–Victoria’s mother–is Desiree Rogers, a former White House Social Secretary whose departure strained the relationship with Jarrett and Mrs. Obama....
...Dan and Fay Hartog Levin: Jarrett was a one-time top staffer for former Mayor Richard M. Daley. When she left City Hall, she landed at The Habitat Company, founded by Dan Levin. She became Habitat president in 2007. Obama tapped Mrs. Levin to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, a position she resigned last year....
---
A further piece of trivia related to the above mentioned "Habitat Company"
...Before Jarrett came to the White House in early 2009, she was a $300,000-a-year executive of The Habitat Company, a Chicago real estate development firm. In 2005, as a Habitat executive vice president, Jarrett helped develop the 46-story Kingsbury Plaza luxury apartment tower at 520 N. Kingsbury St. north of downtown.
The property was owned by Grand Kingsbury LLC, whose managing partner was Habitat Grand Kingsbury LLC, owned by Jarrett, Habitat founder Daniel Levin, Levin’s wife Fay Hartog-Levin and three other top Habitat executives, records show.
Jarrett owned 10.67 percent of Habitat Grand Kingsbury, according to an economic disclosure statement she later filed with the White House.
To pay for the $104 million construction cost, Grand Kingsbury took out a $71.5 million mortgage and also brought in the General Electric Pension Trust, which put up $30.4 million, records show.
By the time the high-rise overlooking the Chicago River opened in 2007, Jarrett was Habitat’s president.
Kingsbury Plaza was sold to the taxpayer-supported Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois and other investors for $160 million in 2013.
By then, Jarrett was a senior adviser to the president.
The GE pension fund received $67.2 million and the Habitat partners got $17.4 million from the sale, records show, with the remainder of the sale price covering the mortgage and remodeling costs.
Jarrett’s share of the proceeds was $1,855,320, according to Cook County property records....
So, Jarrett invests at the height of the real estate bubble and cashes in BIG. So, what "smart investor" purchased Jarrett's original investment?
DeleteAnswer:
Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois for suburban and downstate teachers — the largest state pension system and among the worst-funded in the nation. Most of the Board members were appointed by former Illinois "Governor" Rob Blagojevich, anybody remember him (or want to buy Obama's Senate seat?)?
From a 2014 actuarial statement:
The Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois is funded by Employer and Member Contributions in accordance with the funding policy specified under the Illinois Pension Code (40 ILCS 5/16). The funding objective under the Illinois Pension Code is to Achieve 90% funding by 2045. The 2045 objective was set in 1994 as a 50 yearobjective. While TRS members have always contributed their share, the State funding has been inadequate. This inadequate funding has resulted in TRS being among the worst funded public employee retirements systems (PERS) in the United States. more
More about teacher's fund performance....
According to a number of FOIAs issued to TRS by Corruption Busters, here are the management fees garnered by Wilhelm and the performance of the funds under his fiduciary management on behalf of Illinois teachers:
FY 2005 $280,986 and a return loss of -25.80%
FY 2006 $383,273 and a return loss of -61.40%
FY2007 $534,750 and a return loss of -27.00%
FY2008 $538.092 and a return loss of -17.90%
FY2009 $511,726 and a return loss of -66.20%
FY2010 $334,891 and a return loss of -27.60%
FY2011 $325,379 and a return loss of -65.80%
...and the guy who managed to lose all that money for the teachers? The current Governor of Illinois, of course!
DeletePay to Play. Play to Steal.
The Governor's crown jewel, GTCR is a private equity firm that is not required to disclose the (under)performance of it's funds. But if I were one of their investors, like an Illinois Teacher or the Pennsylvania State Employee's Retirement System, I'd be pretty nervous about EVER collecting my pension
Deleteerratum - further investigation reveals that Governor Rauner's firm actually made money for Illinois teachers. Seems that investments in GTCR were one of the few areas that the Teachers invested in that actually made money.
DeleteThe losses mentioned above were actually racked up by David Wilhelm, former head of the Democratic National Committee and Rod Blagojevich's campaign manager, who resides in Ohio and continues to earn over $3 Million in management fees from Illinois Teachers' Retirement System as a reward for mismanaging $10 Million in pension money funds.
DeleteWow. It doesn't pay to play for the wrong team in Illinois.
DeleteBy running against the Democrats, Democrat/ Union pension fund controllers threatened to withdraw over half of the total sum invested by the current Governor's investment firm GTCR.
Delete*Faithful to her roots, she still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.*
DeleteI should have been more specific. I was referring to the latter part of that site's assertion.
AFAIK, association with known 'communists' isn't illegal.
Or is Bambams a neoliberal 'commie'? ;-)
DeleteAll those headlines sound crazy. Conspiratorial, actually.
ReplyDeleteWhat can we do?
The naming of Army posts and forts varies from Ft. Lewis (after the western explorer, to Ft. Leonard Wood (after the general you was military governor in
ReplyDeleteCuba and the Philippines in the '20s). When I trained as an infantryman at
Leonard Wood and a Chemical officer at Ft. McClellan, I noticed that quite a large number of installations were named after confederate officers : the few honoring
union generals (Ft. Sherman, Ft. McClellan) closed in 1900 and 1999. I'm not sure how they were named, but always thought that much of the Army officer corps are
southerners (VMI, Citadel, Texas A&M etc) , it was natural to think of famous southern generals. We note that tanks were also named after generals. As a Civil War buff, I would get rid of Bragg, Hood and Pickett based on their records, but believe me, the Army will not be changing the names of installations....they have been fighting a correction to a MILSPEC for fifty years and sometimes the Pentagon moves slower than government. !
A part of history I never knew or thought about before. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, BB.
DeleteDo you suppose formally honoring Confederate generals, all of whom were Americans after all, many of whom were educated at West Point, could be interpreted as a gesture of RECONCILIATION? After all, the terrible tragedy of the Civil War centered on "brothers fighting brothers" –– often to the death. Surely, the primary purpose in dealing with the aftermath should have been to reestablish the bonds of loyalty, affection and common purpose that made our nation's founding possible in the first place, isn't that right?
Arrogant, egocentric, self righteous bastards like Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and many similar types, who, –– very much like the nettlesome leftists of today ––, took it upon themselves to correct the faults they perceived in others while failing to examine their own, took a harsh, punitive, ultimately ruinous approach to Reconstruction the result of which was the rise of the KKK and the establishment of Jim Crow laws to try to defend what may have been left of Southern Pride and Southern Interests.
THEREFORE, honoring Confederate leaders by naming forts after them, etc. might well have been wise and good politics.
Surely an idea worth considering? Whether strictly true or not remains to be discovered.
Half of that is bs, half just sordid news pieces from all over the place, all sensationalist silliness.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Do you believe most of the issues cited are mere fabrications of Right Wing propagandists, Jersey, or do you just think that, whether real or not, they could have no possible bearing on our present quality of life and future well being?
DeleteI have decided to be content at being annoyed at my lawn fungus and not much more The world doesn't want my opinion.
ReplyDeleteHoping you are well,
Andie
Hi, Andie. So, you've decided to take Voltaire's advice, as revealed in Candide, to heart, and busy yourself tending your own garden?
DeleteGood for you! That may be all any of us could realistically hope to do anyway. As GeorgeBernard Shaw sagely observed:
"All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isn't a good thing to improve the world, if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything."
~ GBS
'Nuff said?
"nuff said.
Deletexo
I identify with that last graphic!
ReplyDeleteI'm just checking in here to tell you that I'll be back later to discuss these headlines. Errands to run right now.
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
ReplyDeleteSpeak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
Exeunt, with a dead march
~ Shakespeare - King Lear, final speech