Gov. Bruce Rauner says the city of Chicago is on the road to bankruptcy.
Rauner says the city is “going down the drain” financially, and voters must consider the city’s financial state when they go to the polls on April 7.
While Mayor Rahm Emanuel was in full campaign mode on Friday – shaking hands and greeting voters at a South Side CTA stop – the governor was at an unrelated event in Kendall County, where he weighed in on the state of the city.
“Chicago is sliding into bankruptcy. They can’t pay their pensions. They can’t pay their bills. The debt has been going up for years,” Rauner said.
While the mayor and his opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, debate the mayor’s decision to close Chicago Public Schools and whether or not to keep red light cameras, the governor says it’s time for voters to consider the city’s finances.
“Who is financially sophisticated to deal with the issues? Who is ready to ready to stand up and fight for the taxpayers in the city and take on some of these government union power issues?” Rauner said
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what he might mean.
I think he means they’re using animal rights as an excuse for a cost cutting measure. I guess he thinks they should keep losing money just to show those liberals who’s boss.
This from a guy who bankrupted a casin0 and a professional football league.
Owning a casin0 and a football team is like owning a right to print unlimited money and only one person in history has driven both businesses into the ground.
11.
Gex
@Roger Moore: From his track record, that may be his business model.
12.
JustRuss
I’m confused. Isn’t cutting services, and hence costs, thereby increasing profits, and blaming those cuts on liberal busy-bodies, an entire chapter in the conservative businessman’s playbook? Why is Trump upset?
Wait..wait…in this case Trump is a customer who likes to watch elephants at the circus. So screwing over your customers to increase profits is bad…if Donald Trump is your customer.
13.
trollhattan
Vlad to the rescue. (I know Betty got there first, but still.)
14.
BerkeleyMom
Now I know why I have always hated clowns.
15.
jl
Are the real and the hoax Donald J Trump twitter accounts the same thing?
16.
Chris
The best post I’ve seen on the subject yet was a Facebook picture of Dumbo reaching out to his mother in the prison car and saying “Good news Mom!” … with a newspaper announcing the Ringling Brothers’ decision lying next to it. ::sniffle::
When the new Republican governor is your biggest supporter, it should probably give you some pause as a Democratic politician. Not that it will. No one ever accused Rahm of excessive self-awareness.
20.
gelfling545
@David Koch: I thought it was homage to his childhood pet guinea pig.
21.
muddy
@JustRuss: He doesn’t want to watch elephants at the circus. He just wants to make sure they go on being abused.
Seriously! The original comment is just so ridiculously disproportionately bitchy it’s almost as funny as the tweet. This guy would literally kick a puppy just to spite PETA.
The best post I’ve seen on the subject yet was a Facebook picture of Dumbo
Updated for the new (sort-of) millennium:
Dumbass! Starring Donald Trump in the title role.
Watch as he turns his “hair” into wings!
Cheer as he dives from the top of the Empire State Building to prove he can fly!
Shriek with laughter when he realizes, around the 37th Floor, that “hair” isn’t aerodynamic!
Applaud as the NYC Sanitation worker hoses down the spot where the late Dumbass made a not-as-soft-as-he’d-like landing!
Bring the kids! Bring your friends! Hell, bring people you hate – because who WOULDN’T like to see The Donald demonstrate his competence yet again.
26.
mai naem mobile
More like Trump wanted to fire at the elephant. This is the same asshole whose asshole son went hunting in Africa and.shot a lion and of course he took a picture of him standing next to the dead lion, probably thought it made him look like a manly man. I hate people who shoot endangered animals.
I can’t even watch the “Baby Mine” scene. Just rips me apart.
28.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Because he’s the World’s Biggest Asshole?
Or was that a trick question?
29.
JDM
Is not Ringling Bros a privately owned business. Why is it that wingnuts constantly whine about privately owned businesses running their business the way the owners want?
30.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: I think I deserve credit for failing to comprehend that degree of assholery.
31.
Gex
@Iowa Old Lady: The reasons everyone else is talking about it is because we have that dreaded, evil empathy thing that is so offensive to many conservatives.
Meanwhile, new construction on Mount Rushmore continues:
Obama extends Family and Medical Leave Act to recognize legally married same-sex couples regardless of where they live.
33.
samiam
Who are you trying to kid Cole. If Griftwald told you Trump was his choice you would suddenly be posting about how “I don’t care what any of you say, I think Trump has some good ideas”.
Once a Republican always a Republican. It’s in your DNA.
Also you can stop with the endless Hillary emails BS trying to soften people up to what you are eventually going to do. We both know you will probably vote for Jeb.
I think I deserve credit for failing to comprehend that degree of assholery.
Absolutely!
It’s like trying to fathom the insanity, stupidity, and evil exhibited by the RWTMs. As Cole (or someone) said a long time ago: Peak Wingnut is a fallacy. With Trump, Peak Asshole will never be reached.
36.
JPL
@samiam: The Grand Old Party is dead. The group that killed it is bat shit insane and that’s not John.
There’s an X-Men book in which one of the characters is being unusually mean (I forget how) and gets told “do you also visit orphanages on Christmas Eve to tell the children there’s no Santa Claus?”
That quote tends to pop back into my head whenever I see something egregiously, ridiculously, cartoonishly dickish. Like this.
Once a Republican always a Republican. It’s in your DNA.
Speaking of X-Men. Genetic determinism, eh?
39.
Ken
@Gex and David Koch: Keeping the business running and generating profits is the old business model. The new model is to have the business borrow a lot of money and use that to pay yourself a huge salary and bonus. Then the business declares bankruptcy and the debt never has to be repaid.
40.
Baud
So is this part of the “calling out” culture I keep hearing about?
41.
JDM
@samiam: That’s totally what I got out of this post.
I’m so glad others are willing to filter out the good tweets so I don’t have to track it all. Who has the time?
Those of you who tweet, how many people do you follow?
53.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: And why can’t Chicago pay? Because they’ve privatized out many of their revenue streams for short term gain at the expense of long term needs.
Because Rahm is so fucking brilliant, you know.
54.
Villago Delenda Est
@Iowa Old Lady: The Donald is an attention whore. He needs attention like the rest of us need to breathe. If he doesn’t get attention, he dies.
In 1967 Irvin Feld bought the circus, but in 1971 he sold it to Mattel. He bought it back in 1982.
Further:
Irvin Feld’s son Kenneth was brought into the company. He now runs it.
Also, the Company has a Conservation foundation for the retired elephants. The current elephants will probably be going there.
56.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Remember the old Spy Magazine called him a “fat fingered vulgarian.” Which was sooooooooo apt.
57.
Tree With Water
Mike Daisey (of the Manchester Guardian.com) called out both FOX and American journalists today. In passing, he noted:
“..Williams lied about where he was in relationship to a rocket attack on a helicopter – but he was in the war zone and there was an attack. He dramatized his experience to tell a good story, though his job was to be a journalist. For that, he faces a suspension that cripples and possibly ends his career, and may be the only prominent American who has ever been punished for lying about the Iraq War..”.
58.
jonas
@Tree With Water: He dramatized his experience to tell a good story
Mike Daisey knows whereof he speaks.
59.
Tree With Water
@jonas: How’s that? I never heard of the guy before.
Update: Forget the question. Daisey explained it himself in the aforementioned article.
60.
Hal
Josh Barro is my imaginary future ex-husband. Plus he seems like a fun person to hand out with, at least from what I’ve seen of him on MSNBC.
61.
jonas
“I for one will never go again”
How much money would anyone like to wager that Donald Trump hasn’t been to a Ringling Bros. or any other circus since maybe he was 5? As if he has season tickets or something.
I hear you on that! Wow! The quality of the animation and music was astounding…whoever drew it understood the emotions deeply — the sweet longing of Dumbo for him mother — yeah — definitely stand out in my memory. Its been years since I saw that segment but I will never forget it
@PurpleGirl: IIRC, it was “short-fingered vulgarian”. It’s such a beautiful term of abuse, in some way I can appreciate without understanding just why it works.
65.
Villago Delenda Est
@Scamp Dog: Yup, that’s the phrase. Spy was a wonder of its time. Nothing was off limits, but they always concentrated on the most deserving.
66.
Bystander
While I also enjoy extolling La Trump’s economic acumen and commercial prowess as much as anyone else, let me remind everyone that compared to George Bush Jr. he’s a piker. It’s not everyone who can destroy a booming economy while plunging the entire world into a multi-year clusterfvck.
67.
Fred
@Bystander: Now Little George had a lot of help so don’t give him all the credit. Phil Graham penned the bill that set up the disaster. And was there ever a more perfectly named bill than Graham-Leach-Bliley?
Bush gave us a hint of things to come: his destruction – until Poppy’s pals bailed him out – of the various companies he ran in the so-called “private sector” gave us a hint of what he could do when allowed near something really big, i.e., the US economy. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it was too big a job even for Poppy’s pals to fix.
Not that they would have, or wanted to, of course.
“Destruction of the middle class? It’s a feature, not a bug.”
– RNC Platform, Points # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (There’d be more, but most Rethugs can’t count past 10 without taking off their shoes or [for the males] pants.)
Normally I wouldn’t care, but an evil motherfucker like that should have his name spelled correctly, so that there’s no doubt who the evil motherfucker is. (In other words, so that he doesn’t get confused with Lindsey Graham. Not that it would happen, of course, but still …)
Zinsky
It must be Hell to have an endless Bad Hair Day.
Kropadope
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what he might mean.
Wag
Trump is just angry that he didn’t get a chance to fire the elephants first.
BillinGlendaleCA
Four word tweet, four word post title. I smell a conspiracy.
JPL
Has Trump ever been to the circus? I just don’t see him mingling with animals.
rikyrah
Chuy Garcia has them scared
First Kirk, and now this clown.
…………………
CHICAGO ON ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY, GOV. RAUNER WARNS
Gov. Bruce Rauner says the city of Chicago is on the road to bankruptcy.
Rauner says the city is “going down the drain” financially, and voters must consider the city’s financial state when they go to the polls on April 7.
While Mayor Rahm Emanuel was in full campaign mode on Friday – shaking hands and greeting voters at a South Side CTA stop – the governor was at an unrelated event in Kendall County, where he weighed in on the state of the city.
“Chicago is sliding into bankruptcy. They can’t pay their pensions. They can’t pay their bills. The debt has been going up for years,” Rauner said.
While the mayor and his opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, debate the mayor’s decision to close Chicago Public Schools and whether or not to keep red light cameras, the governor says it’s time for voters to consider the city’s finances.
“Who is financially sophisticated to deal with the issues? Who is ready to ready to stand up and fight for the taxpayers in the city and take on some of these government union power issues?” Rauner said
http://abc7chicago.com/politics/rauner-chicago-on-road-to-bankruptcy/547978/
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
I think he means they’re using animal rights as an excuse for a cost cutting measure. I guess he thinks they should keep losing money just to show those liberals who’s boss.
Roger Moore
@JPL:
Other than the dead one on his head, that is.
ETA: @rikyrah:
So the obvious thing to do is to keep voting for the establishment candidate who’s been in charge while the city’s finances have been getting worse.
David Koch
What about that racoon on his head?
David Koch
This from a guy who bankrupted a casin0 and a professional football league.
Owning a casin0 and a football team is like owning a right to print unlimited money and only one person in history has driven both businesses into the ground.
Gex
@Roger Moore: From his track record, that may be his business model.
JustRuss
I’m confused. Isn’t cutting services, and hence costs, thereby increasing profits, and blaming those cuts on liberal busy-bodies, an entire chapter in the conservative businessman’s playbook? Why is Trump upset?
Wait..wait…in this case Trump is a customer who likes to watch elephants at the circus. So screwing over your customers to increase profits is bad…if Donald Trump is your customer.
trollhattan
Vlad to the rescue. (I know Betty got there first, but still.)
BerkeleyMom
Now I know why I have always hated clowns.
jl
Are the real and the hoax Donald J Trump twitter accounts the same thing?
Chris
The best post I’ve seen on the subject yet was a Facebook picture of Dumbo reaching out to his mother in the prison car and saying “Good news Mom!” … with a newspaper announcing the Ringling Brothers’ decision lying next to it. ::sniffle::
This is a VERY close second, however.
JPL
@Chris: Aah.. I love Dumbo….
Corner Stone
This Anthony Graves dude is a righteous bad ass.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
When the new Republican governor is your biggest supporter, it should probably give you some pause as a Democratic politician. Not that it will. No one ever accused Rahm of excessive self-awareness.
gelfling545
@David Koch: I thought it was homage to his childhood pet guinea pig.
muddy
@JustRuss: He doesn’t want to watch elephants at the circus. He just wants to make sure they go on being abused.
Iowa Old Lady
Why does Trump care about this?
Chris
@JPL:
I know, right? I can even sit through Mufasa’s death without crying, but Dumbo’s lullaby, nope.
Chris
@muddy:
Seriously! The original comment is just so ridiculously disproportionately bitchy it’s almost as funny as the tweet. This guy would literally kick a puppy just to spite PETA.
SFAW
@Chris:
Updated for the new (sort-of) millennium:
Dumbass! Starring Donald Trump in the title role.
Watch as he turns his “hair” into wings!
Cheer as he dives from the top of the Empire State Building to prove he can fly!
Shriek with laughter when he realizes, around the 37th Floor, that “hair” isn’t aerodynamic!
Applaud as the NYC Sanitation worker hoses down the spot where the late Dumbass made a not-as-soft-as-he’d-like landing!
Bring the kids! Bring your friends! Hell, bring people you hate – because who WOULDN’T like to see The Donald demonstrate his competence yet again.
mai naem mobile
More like Trump wanted to fire at the elephant. This is the same asshole whose asshole son went hunting in Africa and.shot a lion and of course he took a picture of him standing next to the dead lion, probably thought it made him look like a manly man. I hate people who shoot endangered animals.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I can’t even watch the “Baby Mine” scene. Just rips me apart.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Because he’s the World’s Biggest Asshole?
Or was that a trick question?
JDM
Is not Ringling Bros a privately owned business. Why is it that wingnuts constantly whine about privately owned businesses running their business the way the owners want?
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: I think I deserve credit for failing to comprehend that degree of assholery.
Gex
@Iowa Old Lady: The reasons everyone else is talking about it is because we have that dreaded, evil empathy thing that is so offensive to many conservatives.
David Koch
Meanwhile, new construction on Mount Rushmore continues:
samiam
Who are you trying to kid Cole. If Griftwald told you Trump was his choice you would suddenly be posting about how “I don’t care what any of you say, I think Trump has some good ideas”.
Once a Republican always a Republican. It’s in your DNA.
Also you can stop with the endless Hillary emails BS trying to soften people up to what you are eventually going to do. We both know you will probably vote for Jeb.
Iowa Old Lady
@Gex: That I understand.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Absolutely!
It’s like trying to fathom the insanity, stupidity, and evil exhibited by the RWTMs. As Cole (or someone) said a long time ago: Peak Wingnut is a fallacy. With Trump, Peak Asshole will never be reached.
JPL
@samiam: The Grand Old Party is dead. The group that killed it is bat shit insane and that’s not John.
Chris
@SFAW:
“When I See A Rat-Bastard Fly”?
@Iowa Old Lady:
There’s an X-Men book in which one of the characters is being unusually mean (I forget how) and gets told “do you also visit orphanages on Christmas Eve to tell the children there’s no Santa Claus?”
That quote tends to pop back into my head whenever I see something egregiously, ridiculously, cartoonishly dickish. Like this.
Chris
@samiam:
Speaking of X-Men. Genetic determinism, eh?
Ken
@Gex and David Koch: Keeping the business running and generating profits is the old business model. The new model is to have the business borrow a lot of money and use that to pay yourself a huge salary and bonus. Then the business declares bankruptcy and the debt never has to be repaid.
Baud
So is this part of the “calling out” culture I keep hearing about?
JDM
@samiam: That’s totally what I got out of this post.
mtsw
Kinda a ripoff of a 4 year old tweet: https://twitter.com/pourmecoffee/status/142680745704554496
batgirl
@rikyrah: Rahm is running scared. I heard a Rahm campaign radio ad that was all about “Chuy hates Obama” so vote for me. Disgusting.
And for Rauner the answer to everything and anything that has gone wrong is UNIONS. He is a one note man.
Steeplejack
@mtsw:
You remember four-year-old tweets?! What are you, an archaeologist?
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
It’s an excuse to punch hippies and get his ugly mug in the paper. It’s hard to tell which is more important to him.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: I think you mean, “Archivist”.
It’s all the rage, you know.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
@samiam: I know I shouldn’t feed the troll, but this is the funniest shit I’ve read all week. Bravo!
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Noted.
g
“I for one will never go again.”
When do you suppose was the last time he went to Ringling?
g
@Iowa Old Lady: He doesn’t. He just wants attention.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@SiubhanDuinne: Same here.
kindness
I’m so glad others are willing to filter out the good tweets so I don’t have to track it all. Who has the time?
Those of you who tweet, how many people do you follow?
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: And why can’t Chicago pay? Because they’ve privatized out many of their revenue streams for short term gain at the expense of long term needs.
Because Rahm is so fucking brilliant, you know.
Villago Delenda Est
@Iowa Old Lady: The Donald is an attention whore. He needs attention like the rest of us need to breathe. If he doesn’t get attention, he dies.
The solution is to ignore him.
PurpleGirl
@JDM: From Wikipedia:
In 1967 Irvin Feld bought the circus, but in 1971 he sold it to Mattel. He bought it back in 1982.
Further:
Irvin Feld’s son Kenneth was brought into the company. He now runs it.
Also, the Company has a Conservation foundation for the retired elephants. The current elephants will probably be going there.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Remember the old Spy Magazine called him a “fat fingered vulgarian.” Which was sooooooooo apt.
Tree With Water
Mike Daisey (of the Manchester Guardian.com) called out both FOX and American journalists today. In passing, he noted:
“..Williams lied about where he was in relationship to a rocket attack on a helicopter – but he was in the war zone and there was an attack. He dramatized his experience to tell a good story, though his job was to be a journalist. For that, he faces a suspension that cripples and possibly ends his career, and may be the only prominent American who has ever been punished for lying about the Iraq War..”.
jonas
@Tree With Water: He dramatized his experience to tell a good story
Mike Daisey knows whereof he speaks.
Tree With Water
@jonas: How’s that? I never heard of the guy before.
Update: Forget the question. Daisey explained it himself in the aforementioned article.
Hal
Josh Barro is my imaginary future ex-husband. Plus he seems like a fun person to hand out with, at least from what I’ve seen of him on MSNBC.
jonas
How much money would anyone like to wager that Donald Trump hasn’t been to a Ringling Bros. or any other circus since maybe he was 5? As if he has season tickets or something.
Elie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I hear you on that! Wow! The quality of the animation and music was astounding…whoever drew it understood the emotions deeply — the sweet longing of Dumbo for him mother — yeah — definitely stand out in my memory. Its been years since I saw that segment but I will never forget it
Elie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Just for you….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=calHOKucYMw
Scamp Dog
@PurpleGirl: IIRC, it was “short-fingered vulgarian”. It’s such a beautiful term of abuse, in some way I can appreciate without understanding just why it works.
Villago Delenda Est
@Scamp Dog: Yup, that’s the phrase. Spy was a wonder of its time. Nothing was off limits, but they always concentrated on the most deserving.
Bystander
While I also enjoy extolling La Trump’s economic acumen and commercial prowess as much as anyone else, let me remind everyone that compared to George Bush Jr. he’s a piker. It’s not everyone who can destroy a booming economy while plunging the entire world into a multi-year clusterfvck.
Fred
@Bystander: Now Little George had a lot of help so don’t give him all the credit. Phil Graham penned the bill that set up the disaster. And was there ever a more perfectly named bill than Graham-Leach-Bliley?
SFAW
@Bystander:
@Fred:
Bush gave us a hint of things to come: his destruction – until Poppy’s pals bailed him out – of the various companies he ran in the so-called “private sector” gave us a hint of what he could do when allowed near something really big, i.e., the US economy. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it was too big a job even for Poppy’s pals to fix.
Not that they would have, or wanted to, of course.
“Destruction of the middle class? It’s a feature, not a bug.”
– RNC Platform, Points # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (There’d be more, but most Rethugs can’t count past 10 without taking off their shoes or [for the males] pants.)
SFAW
@Fred:
Not to pick nits, but it’s Phil Gramm.
Normally I wouldn’t care, but an evil motherfucker like that should have his name spelled correctly, so that there’s no doubt who the evil motherfucker is. (In other words, so that he doesn’t get confused with Lindsey Graham. Not that it would happen, of course, but still …)
OK, so I WAS picking nits.
JDM
@PurpleGirl:
He must have been really pissed off when the elephants he got back wouldn’t trumpet unless you pulled that enormous string on their backs.