Rahm Emanuel: C/D? (probably going to be a Chicago politics complaint thread too)

Yeah, at least he doesn't seem socially conservative. Though if ALEC get their claws into him, it might not matter.

Even a legit candidate would probably not unseat Jan Schakowsky so I'm going to just sit back and enjoy this political absurdity.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:49 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, think about it this way: jan can save a lot of money on campaigning this year.

pro-choice republicans are pretty common in Illinois, no? and in New England...

governor's race is definitely a "lesser of two evils" proposition. even is launer wins (yikes), my guess is that neither the senate nor the house will turn over to the GOP so at least there will be MAJOR checks on the gov's power. so it won't get as bad as here in wisconsin, where the GOP owns the government right now.

Or Ohio (sob)

I remember very different times.

Or Ohio (sob)

― we slowly invented brains (La Lechera), Wednesday, March 19, 2014 8:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or michigan, right?

2010 was a BAD YEAR.

Amusing to look at what counties Pat Quinn carried in 2010:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Illinois2010.png/403px-Illinois2010.png.

I assume he'll win Cook again. He he'll still probably lose all those other counties as well, but by bigger amounts this time? Who knows.

cook county is worth over 1/2 of those other counties tho

btw did anyone see that CNN online doc or whatever it was about chicago whose ads featured our man rahm in this steely chiaroscuro portrait? i assumed it was trash.

Here's some good links for you guys:

http://pando.com/2014/04/08/revealed-rahm-emanuels-top-donor-bought-stock-in-marriott-just-before-it-was-awarded-huge-chicago-contract/
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117247/contentious-interview-rahm-emanuel

Oops.

That Marriott thing is so shady.

I'd be surprised but it seems like this shit has basically been happening in the open.

lol @ the first exchange in that interview

"We have a great city. The principal reason is the people. We have very strong middle-class neighborhoods."

Somebody show show him this gif

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2014/04/1.gif

Strong, as in strength. As in the middle class triathletes that still live in the city. Duh.

I wonder how many truly middle class people Rham knows.

I wonder if he could distinguish between a middle class person and a banana.

Anyone else get kind of a Gene Simmons/Gallagher vibe from that interview?

I can't even begin to imagine what that vibe would be. Spitting blood on a smashed melon?

Something like that, but verbally.

It's more a desperate-sounding unearned overconfidence combined with dickishly doubling-down when he knows he's completely wrong.

I think he has his own special brand -- everyone who plays as dirty as he does needs to hide it under a unique façade so as not to be confused with other megalomaniacs.
ugh i can't stand this guy!

i agree about the unearned part though for sure

I loved this interview.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/chicago-deadly-shooting-guns-rahm-emanuel-2014

Stung by a 16% spike in killings in 2012 that led Moody’s, the ratings agency, to downgrade the city’s debt due to its "unrelenting public safety demands", Emanuel promised a tough response. Amid spending cuts, the former White House chief of staff to Barack Obama has ploughed tens of millions more taxpayer dollars into policing. Sure enough, in January he proudly announced that 2013 had seen the city’s fewest homicides since 1965 and lowest crime rate since 1972.

Yet a startling 7,000-word investigation earlier this month by Chicago Magazine cast serious doubt over the crime-busting miracle of Emanuel and his superintendent, Garry McCarthy. It identified at least 18 apparent murders in 2013 that had either been quietly redefined as “non-criminal deaths” or shunted off the city’s books by other statistical sleights of hand.

Professor Eli Silverman of the City University of New York, an authority on the CompStat-style data systems used by police in Chicago, New York and other major cities, told the Guardian he had been contacted by several Chicago officers concerned about the determination among chiefs to drive down crime numbers at whatever cost.

“The pressure from the top is unrelenting,” he said one had told him. “The defenders of the system always say ‘You can’t hide a dead body’,” said Silverman. “But you can reclassify one.” City authorities deny any impropriety.

They juked the stats.

i think all cities do this, maybe it's worse in chicago b/c of pressure from on high?

man if i have to hear about how mayor rahm is courting tech and brought motorola back to the city and then listen to an audio clip of someone talking about where the xbox lounge is at their new merchandise mart hq
i am going to go bananas

hate this guy

he's pretty hate-able, it's true

also reported today: he has agreed to install air conditioning in the remaining 30% (iirc?) of CPS schools that are currently not air-conditioned. he made that pledge.

that pledge made, he returned to his office and went back to feasting on the organs of chicago's impoverished children while laughing heartily at a joke told by one of his many CEO friends.

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2014/04/24/the-new-president-obama-school-even-though-cps-closed-50-schools-last-year/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-rahm-emanuel-chicagoland-met-20140425,0,2516905.story

ha, one peek at that video series and that's pretty obvious. last thing we need is propaganda airbrushing a huge dick (figuratively) on emanuel.

it's too bad chicago politics are so dysfunctional that he's all but guaranteed another term in office.

i think the combo of being brought up in a north shore enclave, surrounded by the rich and powerful, and having basically ZERO capacity for imagining the thoughts and lives of those different from him — evident in any single interview w/ him — and hence having no real (as opposed to slicked-up, fake) empathy basically means this asshole will never change. i'm half-convinced he's a sociopath.

half convinced? i've been totally convinced for some time.

http://www.wbez.org/news/education/chicago-add-new-barack-obama-college-prep-high-school-110073

of COURSE it's on the Near North Side, you know, where all the disadvantaged students live

(ok, to be fair, Cabrini -- but that's almost gone now)

(or I guess it was all gone in 2011--guess I haven't driven by there for a while)

in the near north side there's already Payton. and there's Jones in the south Loop. there's Whitney Young on near West side.

why doesn't he just put it on the south side, like in the 30s somewhere, or father on the West side?

oh, wait, it's Rahm fucking Emanuel.

rahm will be mayor for as long as he wants to be, unless he's torpedoed by some enormous scandal. i don't think he's on some teflon daley family shit, i just don't see him losing. also he's still a folk hero to a lot of dems despite everything, bc he's basically as big an asshole as a lot of republicans.

he all but IS a republican, except on obvious cultural issues like gay marriage etc.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/27635186-452/could-rahm-lose-race-over-bike-lanes.html

On one hand this is just the Sun-Times trying to stoke controversy with a headline. On the other hand, I like bike lanes a lot but it'd still be pretty funny if Rahm lost as a result of his work on them. If we keep building bike lanes despite that, all the better.

I want my bike lanes and Rahm out of office, too.

the new gun control stuff is good, i'll admit. but any mayor of chicago would do that.

he doesn't do anything for other people -- it's all for him. if it makes sense for him to engage in measures that increase gun control, he will. if it does nothing for him, he'll wait til it does and oh well if dozens of people die while we're waiting for gun control to be worth his time.

well to be honest how many politicians aren't thinking of self-interest above all? he's an exceptionally egocentric politician but i think the different is in degree not kind.

i like to believe that there are some. personal history would indicate that i'm not wrong!

surely it is a no-brainer for the mayor of a big liberal city to push for gun control. but that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.

all i'm saying is that he does it when it's convenient for him
like he does everything

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140709/wicker-park/rahm-campaign-donation-from-development-co-raises-concerns-wicker-park