1. - Excessively Rabid - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 12:03 pm:

   Service manual…. I think suicide by train is a thoroughly rotten thing to do. It makes an uninvolved stranger who is just doing his job the instrument of your death. That person then has to live with it. If you feel you absolutely must kill yourself (which I would strongly discourage, even for the rotten) because your criminal activities are being found out, then leave innocent bystanders out of it.




2. - Vote Quimby! - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 12:05 pm:

   ==I doubt anybody is up in arms about this today.==
   Some of the commenters in “Stupid Quote of the Month” are pretty ticked about the snack tax, but too mellow to organize against it…




3. - Judgment Day Is On The Way - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 12:43 pm:

   Re: LyondellBasell plant in Grundy County.

   First off, this whole issue is over what is called a “turnaround”. It is period where major improvements, repairs, and cleaning are performed while the plant is basically not in operation.

   Estimated completion date is the end of June, 2010.

   LyondellBasell is just coming out of bankruptcy, and has already closed their Chocolate Bayou “cracker” facility and several polymer plants in Europe. They shut down at least one major production line at the Grundy County facility.

   If the polymer market doesn’t recover, there’s likely to have to be even more “adjustments” to the supply side.

   Bottom line: The unions want to make times more difficult for LyondellBasell - well, just remember they have options also. And they don’t have to include an Illinois workforce.

   Just sayin…




4. - wordslinger - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 1:23 pm:

   The Pagano story is stranger than fiction and terribly said. Money, of the lack of “enough,” just drives some good people crazy.




5. - siriusly - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 2:30 pm:

   Since you linked to John Kass’ column about Phil Pagano’s suicide, I must say how awfully rambling (more than usual) Kass was this week.

   He talked about how Orlando Jones and Christopher Kelly were two suicides in a pattern of “buffers” as he called them. He talked about how Jones and Kelly took their own lives because they were taking the fall / being pushed and to protect their political sponsors. He talked about how Pagano and Michael Scott were part of the pattern too.

   Yes, I know there are some strange similarities because they were all under investigation or indictment. But that’s where the similarities end. Did anyone every state that Phil Pagano killed himself to protect another politician? Michael Scott? No, but Kass loves to throw them in with the bunch and call it a pattern.

   And nowhere did he talk about the half-dozen of Blago-confidants that have turned on him and are offering evidence against him (vs killing themselves to “buffer” him).

   Kass’ conspiracy theories are so smoky and detached at this point that he doesn’t even know where allusion begins and the non seqitur ends.




6. - CircularFiringSquad - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 2:41 pm:

   Capt Fax:
   If you calculate teh three issues the Trib did not like and the three they did it looks likes the ILGA batted .500. That would get them to the Hall of Fame or into the lineup batting clean-up for the team that plays in the stadium they tried to get Blagoof to buy.
   BTW the # of Kass comments suggests near record readship of the slop he served up on Pagano.




7. - PaddyBonner - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 2:54 pm:

   I can just hear Whitaker say “It’s bleepin Golden” (as in Quin).




8. - CircularFiringSquad - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 2:56 pm:

   Speaking of the Trib here is another reminder for any listening to them for fiscal leadership( ya out there StateWideTom? NoTaxBill? CommandoKirk?)

   Bankruptcy judge appoints examiner to look at Tribune buyout deal




9. - CircularFiringSquad - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 3:08 pm:

   Trib news gets better…
   Brentwood real estate broker Joan Gardner was suffering such excruciating pain with a swollen knee, months after a fall, that she was homebound, depressed and unable to work. Her doctor and orthopedic physical therapist encouraged her to have surgery, but Gardner declined because, “I’m stubborn and vain.” Instead, she decided to try something different.
   Digging up a number her grocery clerk had given her, Gardner dialed Ken Klee, a UCLA law professor and prominent corporate bankruptcy lawyer who practices energy healing on the side. A seven-year student of more than half a dozen healing methods including reiki’s radiance technique, pranic healing and Theta Healing, Klee practices eight hours a week out of his Brentwood home office, stacked high with stones and crystals, massage table at the center.

   Without touching her body or charging her a fee, Klee waved his hands over Gardner for three hours last December, channeling divine healing energy and helping her clear out anger and other blocks. The next day the swelling in Gardner’s knee was gone.

   “I was in shock. It sounds probably crazy, but it’s the truth,” she said. “I feel like a million dollars, and I have since that day.”

   Stories like Gardner’s raise eyebrows among those in the medical establishment and Klee’s academic colleagues. Once the provenance of faith healers, shamans, ancient and New Age mystics, however, energy healing is increasingly going mainstream.




10. - Six Degrees of Separation - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 3:19 pm:

    I agree, the Kass story about Pagano was pretty pathetic in its development. This is not a story about Chicago politics; it seems to be the story of a guy who put his heart and soul into an agency, by all accounts helped turn around its fortunes tremendously, took a few liberties there (no excuses from here), got called on the carpet (justifiably), and took it way too hard.




11. - Taxmandan - Monday, May 10, 10 @ 4:53 pm:

    I just want to say, that I’m not a fan of the Tribune putting an editorial on the front page as if it’s a regular article.

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