Duty, Honor, Country meet the Hollywood Media

If you want to know exactly how many US dollars the federal reserve has printed and given to the US treasury or one of its many other currency manipulation schemes you had better be spectacularly patient; spectacularly good at searching and analyzing and probing into the most esoteric and camouflaged financial reporting ever conceived.

On the other hand if you want to know the most intimate details of the lives of twin sisters Natalie Khawam and Jill Kelley, just Google their names.  You will get court records and you will get 911 call transcripts and very specific dollar amounts for credit card balances and monthly interest charges and defaulted debts and on and on.

We would venture to guess that you could probably determine the sister’s brassiere size(s) and contents of their makeup kits with a little probing.  We already know more about their emails and their involvement with top military brass in the Tampa, FL area than we know about terrorist attacks on our embassies and other foreign outposts.

But we, at TheFundamentals, tend to focus on financial matters.  Here is what we learned about the gals who were the focus of much time and attention from our top brass military heroes:

·         She (Natalie) was more than $3 million in debt, records show. She had blown through four jobs in five years and sued a former employer for sex harassment. She had had three failed engagements, left her new husband and moved in with her sister where she quickly began hobnobbing with military brass and others in Tampa's elite circles.

·         Jill Kelley knocked on doors up and down Bayshore Boulevard, asking homeowners if their house was for sale. She wanted the prestigious address, and she got it. In June 2004, the couple paid $1.5 million for a 4,800-square-foot brick mansion with stately white pillars and a view of Hillsborough Bay, just six miles from MacDill Air Force Base.

·         Records show the Kelleys created a cancer charity in 2005. According to its 2007 tax return, The Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation's primary purpose was to "conduct research studies into efforts to discover ways to improve the quality of life of terminally ill adult cancer patients." Natalie Khawam was also named as a director of the nonprofit. But of $157,284 raised in revenue that year, meals and entertainment accounted for more than $43,000 in expenses, legal fees more than $25,000, and automotive expenses more than $8,800.

·         Scott Kelley (Jill’s husband) was making just the minimum payment on a Visa Signature card that had accumulated a balance over $70,000 and was taking on hundreds of dollars in interest each month. According to a lawsuit filed this year, Kelley defaulted on that card in 2010, the same year Regions bank sued him and his wife over a debt in excess of $250,000. Chase sued for more than $25,000 and Regions Bank filed to foreclose on their Bayshore home. The bank said it was owed more than $1.7 million, and that it had not gotten any payments since Sept. 2009.

·         They (Kelley’s) defaulted on more credit cards and the lawsuits stacked up, but they continued to host parties and held tight to their friendship with Petraeus.

·         Khawam, who worked as a lawyer at the Tampa law firm Cohen, Foster and Romine, sued her employer, accusing the firm's business consultant of sexual harassment. The firm's founder Barry Cohen shot back with a giant stack of evidence to the contrary, accusing Khawam of "fraud." He presented Khawam's bankruptcy filing from April 2012, which showed she owed $3.6 million to creditors, lawyers and others who had loaned her money. The filing showed she owed a lawyer in Rhode Island $300,000, a man in St. Petersburg $600,000 and Scott and Jill Kelley $800,000.

Source for all these specifics – Tampa Bay Times website:  http://www.tampabay.com/

Just think what we could find out – what the electorate might learn about our government(s) – what the effect could be on America’s political process; our republic; our selection of elected officials; our massive bureaucracies and endless high paid bureaucrats, if the Hollywood media could devote this kind of attention to important matters rather than Hollywood matters.

Freedom of the press doesn’t guarantee good information anymore than one man – one vote guarantees a democracy.  Any freedom or right without discipline and responsibility is a waste – just as America’s Hollywood media is a waste.  And, in case you may be connecting the dots, those stars on the uniforms and those ribbons still walk around embellishing those bodies with legs that go in the pants one at a time.