Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

1. Draft Town is Graft Town.
2. Aramark is Errormark.
3. Blagojevich is Baloneyvich.


4. Rahm Emanuel, financial sophisticate, has a plan.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has offered steps to phase out years-old debt practices he hopes will help improve Chicago’s financial problems.
Emanuel spoke Wednesday before business leaders of the Civic Federation. He was re-elected to a second term this month during a campaign where questions about Chicago’s finances were a key issue.
He says he wants Chicago to end “unsustainable financial practices.” That includes terminating by 2019 a repayment delay tactic, phasing out borrowing for paying out Chicago’s legal settlements, shoring up the city’s rainy day fund and converting variable-rate debt to fixed-rate securities.
Civic Federation President Laurence Msall says the steps could move Chicago in the right direction fiscally. But he says there could be penalty payments for some changes.
Emanuel didn’t provide expansive details or take questions from reporters.

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Maybe he had to get to Draft Town to entertain clients.
5. “In the summer of 2010, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, began recording a secret audio diary, detailing his frustrations with a White House that he believed was too willing to listen to the military and too often mistook domestic political calculations for strategic thinking,” the New York Times reports.
6. Quagmire.
“Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of ‘training and advising,'” the New York Times reports.
“In justifying the continued presence of the American forces in Afghanistan, administration officials have insisted that the troops’ role is relegated to counterterrorism, defined as tracking down the remnants of al-Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and training and advising the Afghan security forces who have assumed the bulk of the fight.
“In public, officials have emphasized that the Taliban are not being targeted unless it is for ‘force protection’ – where the insurgents were immediately threatening American forces.
“But interviews with American and Western officials in Kabul and Washington offer a picture of a more aggressive range of military operations against the Taliban in recent months, as the insurgents have continued to make gains against struggling government forces.”
X2: Obama Doubles U.S. Force In Iraq.
X3: If Obama Apologized For 1 Civilian Death From Drone Every Day, It Would Take Him 3 Years.
X4: “Barack Obama’s proposed framework for the US-led war against the Islamic State will not restrict the battlefield to Iraq and Syria.”
X5: White House Approves Broader Yemen Drone Campaign.
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Obama To Protesters: Violence Is Not The Answer.
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Obama Asks American People To Reject Violence.
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Obama: Violence Not The Answer In Egypt.
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Obama: Violence In Baltimore Is Counterproductive.
7. Baltimore Residents Urged To Stay Indoors Until Social Progress Naturally Takes Its Course Over The Next Century.
8. The resume study was done by the University of Chicago:

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9. The Emperor’s New Clothes.
The Trews is what the news would look like if the news was true.
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BeachBook
* Deluxe Quarter Pounder Gets The Axe.
* Columbia College Administrators Reverse Newspaper Staff Cuts.
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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood Tip Line: If only.

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Posted on April 30, 2015