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Exclusive! Rahm Yuks Up O’Connor Kerfuffle With Fallon

Another Beachwood Special Report

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel would not say Wednesday whether it was appropriate for his City Council leader to push through an ordinance that limited the power of a city watchdog who a week earlier had opened an investigation into the alderman,” the Tribune reported earlier this month.
But the Beachwood has learned through our Kick Jimmy Fallon In The Nuts Affairs Desk that Emanuel finds the whole thing quite funny.
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Posted on August 27, 2014

Ald. Butch O’Connor Cassidy & The Sundance Mayor

By Steve Rhodes

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel would not say Wednesday whether it was appropriate for his City Council leader to push through an ordinance that limited the power of a city watchdog who a week earlier had opened an investigation into the alderman,” the Tribune reported earlier this month.
Huh, that’s odd. Patrick O’Connor, the alderman in question, is Rahm’s floor leader. You might say they are thick as thieves. O’Connor doesn’t make a move that Rahm doesn’t approve or order. And yet . . .
“After last week’s City Council meeting, Emanuel distanced himself some from O’Connor’s ordinance, saying ‘This was the City Council, not what we did.'”
Excuse me for finding it hard to see the difference.
I also find it hard to believe that O’Connor was freelancing. After all, he’s the Butch Cassidy to Rahm’s Sundance Kid.

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Posted on August 19, 2014

George Ryan Is Unrepentant

By Ed Hammer and Steve Rhodes

Former Illinois governor and convicted felon George Ryan appeared on Windy City Live recently and repeated several claims that bear vetting – and that the media should be prepared for in future interviews and his forthcoming memoirs. Let’s take a look, in three parts.
Part 1.

1:41: “I really wasn’t in prison. I was never behind bars. I was in a camp, I could’ve walked out any time. I could’ve gotten in a car and driven away. There were no guards.”
While it’s a bit of a stretch for Ryan to claim he wasn’t in prison – it’s called the Oxford federal prison camp – it is true that Oxford is what is known in the business as a Club Fed.
From a 2007 Tribune report:

The prison camp has no cellblocks, provides a track for walking and offers classes in culinary arts and college correspondence courses, according to federal officials, ex-inmates and visitors.
And come next spring, when people from his home state flock by the thousands to their seasonal cabins, Ryan could be planting flowers on a landscaping crew sprucing up the grounds of the wooded camp.
“It’s like a hotel in there,” said Ken Driscoll, an Oxford businessman who has toured the facility several times. “It’s clean and comfortable and quite quiet.”

2:10: “It was just a total waste of time, frankly.”
2:55: “They oughta have some education programs.”
Well, apparently they offer GED courses because Ryan turned down entreaties to teach one. “I’m not a teacher . . . You have to have some training. I’ve never had training as a teacher.”
4:10: What did you learn? “I learned that it was kind of a waste of time . . . ”

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Posted on August 14, 2014

How Politicians Manipulate Your Vote

By Scott Jones/Serbin Media

The 2014 midterm election is less than three months away, and if you think you know who’s getting your votes this year, think again: your vote is being manipulated. Bill Maher’s Flip a District campaign to manipulate a Republican candidate out of office and replace him with a Democrat is one example of pure manipulation, but it’s far from the only one. Politicians and their campaigns will do everything to manipulate your thinking.
Colin Christopher is a clinical hypnotherapist and author of Success Through Manipulation: Subconscious Reactions That Will Make or Break You. Colin has studied the thoughts, beliefs, philosophies and behaviors of what makes people do what they do for more than 15 years.
He says every public official has teams who research what voters think about the candidate and his opponents. They then create a plan to change the voter’s perceptions, greatly manipulating the public’s opinion and in many cases significantly changing the outcome of the election.
He says there are many ways politicians manipulate your thinking to win your vote:

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Posted on August 7, 2014

Illegal Spying Below

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation

To celebrate the Fourth of July, EFF teamed up with Greenpeace and the Tenth Amendment Center to launch an airship (yes, you read that correctly) over the NSA’s sprawling data center in Utah. Acclaimed filmmaker Brian Knappenberger documented our campaign in a short, powerful video. Check out the video and share it with your friends.

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Posted on August 6, 2014

The Beachwood Radio Hour #17: Candid Chicago

By Steve Rhodes

Featuring Ald. Patrick J. O’Connor, God’s Special Creature.
Plus: Lollapaloozers, The Political Odds, Derrick Rose Is A Saboteur, The Cub Factor, Junkies In Narcissistic Denial, Crime Is Down & Weekend Classifieds.

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Posted on August 2, 2014