This One Chart Will Fill You With Despair for Chicago - Hit & Run : Reason.com

This One Chart Will Fill You With Despair for Chicago - Hit & Run : Reason.com: 
"Residents of Chicago are technically on the hook for more than $250 billion in debt issued by four different government agencies (not including the federal debt, which is a whole 'nother ball of wax).

• There's the city of Chicago, of course. 
• But then there's also the Chicago Public Schools and 
• Cook County, which includes Chicago and some surrounding suburbs. 
• And, lastly, there is the state of Illinois. 

All four of these public entities are deep in debt, thanks largely to the pension promises made to public employees and decades of failing to meet those obligations.
Here's how it looks in one graphic from the latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, issued by the state, as highlighted by Mark Glennon at WirePoints Illinois, a state-based blog covering politics and economics.
If you're a resident of Illinois, and particularly if you are a resident of Chicago, avert your eyes:"

Psychologists say more and more young people are entitled | indy100

Psychologists say more and more young people are entitled | indy100:
"Research has discovered that large amounts of young people are developing an entitlement complex.
The psychological trend comes from the belief that you are superior to others and are more deserving of certain things.
This form of narcissism has some significant consequences such as disappointment and a tendency to lash out.
Pschology Today reports that some examples of entitlement range from the disregard of rules, freeloading, causing inconveniences and like to assume the role of leader when working in groups.
So called Millennials, who were born roughly between 1988 and 1994, tend to have this characteristic as a 2016 study found.
The University of Hampshire found that youngsters who were studied on issues of entitlement scored 25 percent higher than people aged 40 to 60 and 50 per cent higher than those over that age bracket.
Dr Joshua Grubbs, who conducted the research, which was published in the Psychological Bulletin is quoted by Spring as saying:

• At extreme levels, entitlement is a toxic narcissistic trait, repeatedly exposing people to the risk of feeling frustrated, unhappy and disappointed with life.
• Often times, life, health, ageing and the social world don’t treat us as well as we’d like.
• Confronting these limitations is especially threatening to an entitled person because it violates their worldview of self-superiority.

Read on!

#1 This day 1954-----The Crew Cuts - Sh Boom Sh Boom

Connecticut is circling the drain financially - Hot Air Hot Air

Connecticut is circling the drain financially - Hot Air Hot Air
"This is one of those situations where we might be able to take two seemingly incongruous facts and put them together to find a deeper meaning.
Ready?

• Fact number one: Connecticut is one of the richest states in the nation depending how you measure such things. 
• Fact number two: Connecticut has managed to run up nearly $75B in debt and is teetering on the edge of being in worse financial shape than Puerto Rico. (The Daily Beast)

...While ballooning payments for  public employees’ guaranteed pension and health benefits for public employees and teachers are the main cause of Connecticut’s fiscal misery, the state continued borrowing with the abandon of a teenager let loose in a Forever 21 with her parent’s credit card..."

You ought to know!

Support for Redistribution Shaped by Compassion, Self-Interest, Envy - Reason.com

Support for Redistribution Shaped by Compassion, Self-Interest, Envy - Reason.com:
"...Self-interest also played a role: support for redistribution was higher in people who thought that they or their family would benefit from it personally.
The more surprising findings involved envy and fairness.
Envy, directed toward those better off than you, predicted support for redistribution.
"When a rival outperforms you in some activity, your relative standing decreases," said Sznycer.
"People sometimes act to chip away at their rivals' advantages, even when that also harms third parties or even sometimes themselves."
...When given two hypothetical policies—lower taxes on the rich resulting in more revenue to help the poor versus higher taxes on the rich but less money for the poor—one in six people preferred the second, more spiteful option.
This willingness to hurt the poor to pull down the rich was predicted only by the individual's proneness to envy.
Fairness looms large in political rhetoric and theories of justice.
But differences in subjects' taste for fairness did not predict how strongly they supported redistribution.
The results were the same in the United State, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel: support for redistribution was predicted by compassion, self-interest, and envy, but not fairness."
Read it all.

AM Fruitcake

History for August 2

History for August 2 - On-This-Day.com
James Baldwin 1924, Carroll O'Connor 1924, Peter O'Toole 1932


Wes Craven 1939, Lance Ito 1950, Victoria Jackson 1959 - Actress, comdian


1861 - The United States Congress passed the first income tax. The revenues were intended for the war effort against the South. The tax was never enacted.


1887 - Rowell Hodge patented barbed wire.


1892 - Charles A. Wheeler patented the first escalator.


1921 - Eight White Sox players were acquitted of throwing the 1919 World Series.


1939 - Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging the U.S. to have an atomic weapons research program.


1939 - U.S. President Roosevelt signed the Hatch Act. The act prohibited civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.


1945 - The Allied conference at Potsdam was concluded.


1990 - Iraq invaded the oil-rich country of Kuwait. Iraq claimed that Kuwait had driven down oil prices by exceeding production quotas set by OPEC.

Former Obama Aide Ben Rhodes now a person of interest in House Intelligence Committee unmasking investigation

Former Obama Aide Ben Rhodes now a person of interest in House Intelligence Committee unmasking investigation:

"Former Obama White House National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is now an emerging as a person of interest in the House Intelligence Committee’s unmasking investigation, according to a letter sent Tuesday by the committee to the National Security Agency (NSA). This adds Rhodes to the growing list of top Obama government officials who may have improperly unmasked Americans in communications intercepted overseas by the NSA, Circa has confirmed.

The House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-CA, sent the letter to the National Security Agency requesting the number of unmaskings made by Rhodes from Jan. 1, 2016 to Jan. 20, 2017, according to congressional sources who spoke with Circa."

The Media's Shameful Refusal To Report On Put | The Daily Caller

The Media's Shameful Refusal To Report On Put | The Daily Caller:

"Since last November, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have obsessively shifted blame for their improbable election loss to Russia, pointing to Russia’s suspected role in leaking hacked Democratic National Committee emails to Wikileaks.

While the delightful irony of the Left morphing into anti-Russia hawks shouldn’t escape those of us who spent decades resisting appeasement of the Soviet Union, we shouldn’t outright dismiss Russia’s interest in influencing U.S. policy, either."

The way we were-----The Seekers - A World of our Own (1965 - Stereo, enhanced video)

Must read! Excellent analysis-----Steve Russo - The Biggest Scandal in DC While the press has been...

Steve Russo - The Biggest Scandal in DC While the press has been...
"The Biggest Scandal in DC
While the press has been promoting a ridiculous and ass backwards Russian collusion story, it has been sitting on a far bigger story: 
The likelihood that the Congressional Democrats financed and enabled the largest espionage ring in U.S. history. 
This story has been percolating on the internet for weeks with no mainstream media coverage. 
It got a tiny, misleading smattering of coverage this week when the FBI arrested Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s internet employee, for trying to flee the country after transferring almost $300,000 dollars to Pakistan.
1. Who coordinated the hiring of the Awan brothers by dozens of Democratic Congressman?

2. Why were they so grossly overcompensated (millions of dollars) for no work?

3. Were they kicking back money to the Democrats, doing “dirty” work for them, or blackmailing them?

4. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep the Capitol Police from searching her laptop they had confiscated from Imran Awan?

5. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep him on her payroll after the Capitol Police further barred him and his brothers from accessing Congressional computers?..."

MUCH more here!
Read on!

More than 1,200 signatures challenged in recall against Flint mayor | MLive.com

More than 1,200 signatures challenged in recall against Flint mayor | MLive.com:
"FLINT, MI - Over 1,200 of the signatures to recall Flint (DEMOCRAT)  Mayor Karen Weaver were forged or otherwise manipulated, making recall efforts invalid, alleges a forensic document analyst hired by the embattled mayor.
According to a letter signed by Weaver challenging the validity of the signatures aiming to recall her and submitted to the Genesee County Clerk's Office on Monday, July 31, "more than 1,200 petition signatures should be invalidated because of signatures, addresses, and dates of several submitted petitions obviously lack validity and genuineness."
The 5,951 petition signatures - verified by both the Flint City Clerk's Office and the Genesee County Clerk's Office - were scrutinized by Robert D. Kullman, a forensic document analyst at the East Lansing-based Speckin Forensic Laboratories, Weaver's letter said.
"My examinations revealed changed/altered dates within the circulator signature block, dates on the signature lines that were after the date in the circulator signature block, information in the signature lines (addresses, zip codes, dates) that were not written by the signer," Kullman's analysis said..."

Say, Whatever Happened To 'We Can't Drill Our Way To Lower Prices'? | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD

Say, Whatever Happened To 'We Can't Drill Our Way To Lower Prices'? | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD:

"Last week Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) told investors that it expects oil prices to be "lower forever." We're still waiting for all those people who were only recently complaining about higher-forever oil prices to admit their mistake.

It wasn't that long ago that President Obama was mocking Republicans for their "three-point plan for $2 gas: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keeping drilling."
He went on to say that "the American people aren't stupid. They know that's not a plan."
Renewable energy, he said, was the only way to solve the "problem" of high oil prices."

Australia Tampers With Climate Data | The Daily Caller

Australia Tampers With Climate Data | The Daily Caller
"Australian scientists at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) ordered a review of temperature recording instruments after the government agency was caught tampering with temperature logs in several locations.
Agency officials admit that the problem with instruments recording low temperatures likely happened in several locations throughout Australia, but they refuse to admit to manipulating temperature readings.
The BOM located missing logs in Goulburn and the Snow Mountains, both of which are in New South Wales.
...BOM has been put under the microscope before for similar manipulations.
The agency was accused in 2014 of tampering with the country’s temperature record to make it appear as if temperatures had warmed over the decades, according to reports in August 2014.
...Marohasey said BOM adjustments changed Aussie temperature records from a slight cooling trend to one of “dramatic warming” over the past century."

Ben Carson Exposes $500 Billion In Government WASTE…Guess Who’s Going DOWN For It?

Ben Carson Exposes $500 Billion In Government WASTE…Guess Who’s Going DOWN For It?: 
"...Carson made a shocking discovery, Obama’s former HUD secretary, Julian Castro, wasn’t doing his job, Conservative Fighters reports.
Carson was made Housing and Development secretary by President Trump.
As a HUD Secretary, Carson arranged and audit of the agency. 
What he revealed was surprising: 520$ billion were revealed in bookkeeping inaccuracy.
“The total amounts of errors corrected in HUD’s notes and consolidated financial statements were $516.4 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively,” was written by the auditors.
...These bookkeeping”errors” are likely intentional embezzlement by Democrats who were emboldened to do so under Obama. 
These bookkeeping “errors” are not made by mistake. 
They were presumably intentional frauds by Democrats who were encouraged directly by Barack Obama.
...Just think, if Hillary Clinton had won, we never would have known this was happening!

Lunch video-----First Time Both B-29s Are Airborne - Oshkosh 25 July 2017

Noon-toon

An inconvenient commentary: 5 times climate alarmists made horribly wrong predictions – TheBlaze

An inconvenient commentary: 5 times climate alarmists made horribly wrong predictions – TheBlaze:

"Climate-change alarmist Al Gore’s newest fear-mongering film, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” arrived in select movie theaters over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, the film is full of dire warnings about the future of mankind and its allegedly dangerous use of fossil fuels.

However, before you trade in your car for a bicycle or your steak for insects, consider that for nearly 50 years, climate alarmists have been desperately trying and failing to predict the downfall of human civilization. Here are just five examples of the many times climate alarmists gazed into their crystal balls and ended up looking more than a little foolish."

Blog: Check your 'cognitive privilege,' all you smart people!

Blog: Check your 'cognitive privilege,' all you smart people!
"Progressives, crazed with identifying new forms of oppression attached to the currently fashionable catchword "privilege," have finally embraced the stupid as a victim class.  
Hey, let's celebrate stupidity!  

In this case, one funded by taxpayers.  
The following is from a genuine column in the student newspaper of the University of Iowa.  
A student suddenly has discovered that being smart is just like being white: an unfair privilege.  
Dan Williams writes:

...There are many kinds of privilege besides white privilege: cognitive privilege, for example. We now know that intelligence is not something we have significant control over but is something we are born with. We are living in a society in which success is increasingly linked to one's intelligence. ...Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.

Once we have admitted the reality of privilege itself and identified some species of privilege, we are better able to talk about the temperature-rising topic of racial privilege.

...Stupidity, it should be noted, is also a characteristic acquired according to degree of effort.
...Merit is under attack on both the left and the right, in part because it is so often confused with education and privilege..."
Read it all!