Category: Society

  • Anti-Austerity Protests in Spain; U.S. Media Not Reporting

    Police are trying to clear out the massive anti-austerity demonstration that engulfed Spain’s federal district this evening. via Business Insider. Follow the link for photos.  This is us in a few years.  There’s no other way.

  • Painkillers Kill More Than Heroin And Cocaine Combined

    Prescription opioid painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the U.S. than heroin and cocaine combined, according to a new study out of Brandeis University. via Business Insider. I’m fascinated by statistics about how we die.  In Chicago gun crimes get all the media attention however heroin, and now I guess narcotic overdoses actually…

  • Embarassing Americans — And These People Vote

    I received this via email this morning.  I thought it was timely because just yesterday Howard Stern played audio of his producers in Harlem interviewing Obama supporters. There is something very very wrong with the educational system in this country whereas so many can be so ignorant of the most basic facts.  There is no…

  • Two Stabbed Outside Near North Bars

    Two men were stabbed, another badly beaten and a fourth arrested early Sunday morning after a fight on Division Street spilled over onto State Street, according to police. An officer sustained non-life-threatening injuries that didn’t require hospitalization while trying to make the arrest on a 24-year-old man, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli…

  • Streetwise Launches Neighbor Carts

    Rick Jones’ booming voice makes him hard to miss on the corner of Broadway and Wilson Avenue, where he shouts “fresh fruit” to passers-by rushing to and from the nearby Red Line station. Neatly displayed apples, bananas, plums and strawberries line the stainless steel cart that sits behind him. Jones, a struggling veteran, was recruited…

  • Quick Pension Analysis

    Ok, so I was getting asked about this the other day both in person and in the comments about why the pensions are really in such bad shape and what the latest GASB positions mean to the funds.  GASB first. GASB Changes I did some poking around and the recent GASB changes really mean nothing.…

  • Blantly Racist Headline at L.A. Times & Tribune

    White working class: Clinging to guns, religion and Romney via Chicago Tribune. Here is Barack Obama’s full quote: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.  And they fell through the Clinton…

  • Surgeon Sage Says

    “Surgeon Sage Says” (circa 1915)

  • Chick-fil-A Wavies 1st Amendment Rights

    Chick-fil-A has pledged to stop giving money to anti-gay groups and to back off political and social debates after an executive’s comments this summer landed the fast-food chain smack in the middle of the gay marriage debate. The Civil Rights Agenda, which dubs itself the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in Illinois,…

  • 400 Richest Americans’ Worth $1.7 Trillion

    The net worth of the richest Americans grew by 13 percent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday, and a familiar cast of characters once again populated the top of the magazine’s annual list of the U.S. uber-elite, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Koch brothers. The…