Archive for September 23rd, 2010
Every Republican should be like Chris Christie when they grow up
Honestly, this guy should give seminars to Republicans on how to man-up and deal with crazy people.
When you watch videos of Christie, we want you to do something that you might think sounds silly at first, but we’re serious and real here.
When you watch Chris Christie in action, in a clip like this, we want you to sit back and think about how YOU can be more like him in your OWN lives. Particularly when dealing with YOUR elected officials.
Christie is always professional and, in our opinion, polite to the people he dresses down. But the man knows his stuff, is on his game, and is hyper-confident and aggressive. There is no mousing around issues. He does not let people get away with any garbage. It is The Chris Christie show wherever he goes and we wish conservatives coast to coast were just like this.
We can count on our hands how many time someone in public life became a person we LEARNED FROM and wanted to pattern ourselves after in some way, but we’re being serious with you when we say we study Christie and try to emulate his demeanor and forthright delivery in our own lives.
It’s hard living in a Leftist controlled town, and being in the gay community here in Boystown where there’s massive pressure to shut up and sit down if you believe in anything outside what Democrats approve for you. While we’ve never been shrinking violets, we have to admit that there have been times when the Left’s relentless attacks and constant hammering have worn us down. People like Chris Christie, and Governor Palin, seriously do give us the inspiration we need to stand tall, never back down, and refuse to be bullied.
Just like in the video above, the Leftists crumple and wilt when confronted, because they are so used to being the bullies, and so accustomed to conservatives running in terror from them.
If more conservatives have a little Christie in them, just imagine what a nightmare life could be for the Left.
Tell us in comments if Christie and Governor Palin inspire YOU to do anything or give YOU the same kind of confidence recharge.
GREAT MERCIFUL ZEUS: Carly Fiorina lets Barbara "call me Senator" Boxer have it
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/2j4RF6cx0SY?version=3]
The ad’s fantastic, and is not just an excuse for us to inaugurate our new “Great Merciful Zeus” attention-grabbing GIF.
We hope Fiorina plays that tape of Boxer JUST ENOUGH in the leadup to November.
The trick is, we don’t know what “just enough” is for the state of California.
Here’s the thing…even after seeing Boxer dress down that general during a Senate hearing several times already, probably around 10 times since it happened, it still makes us physically sick to see Boxer’s smug, crumpled face going on about how hard she worked for her title.
It’s the word “title” that really gets us…because we think about people working hard across the country every day, just to try to make a living…and here Boxer is obsessed with a title. The arrogance and entitlement in that is just so stark and naked.
Thank goodness Boxer isn’t, because we’d now be blind as well as disgusted.
We don’t, however, know how Californians react to things. Everything we see is from the perspective of the Midwest, which is usually good as a general guidelines for how people react to things nationwide, but we don’t know if CALIFORNIANS are irked by Boxer’s emphasis on her title the way we are.
And if they are, what’s the perfect number of times to play this thing so that it saturates the voting public without making people numb to it.
Ideally, as a voter, after seeing this commercial enough, people should want to go into a voting booth to take that title away from this woman, saying “What are they gonna call you now, huh, Barbara?” as they vote for Fiorina.
This makes us think of the most ridiculous and asinine aspect of Boxer saying what she said: even after she leaves the Senate (hopefully next year), this terrible woman will get to be called Senator for the rest of her miserable life. In the United States, it’s protocol for an official to maintain the highest title they ever received for the remainder of their existence, for formality. So, Boxer will always be “Senator Boxer”. Technically, no one has to put a “former” in front of that. Obama will always be “president Obama”, for the rest of his life, no matter what. A whole lot of Democrats, in the fall, will lose the offices they cling to…but they will very much get to keep calling themselves “Senator”, “Congressman”, and whatever.
To us, Boxer, who knows this, looks all the more ridiculous since that title — so important to her — is something she does not, in fact, have to work so hard for. It’s hers as long as she’s breathing. It will be on her tombstone someday in the future when she’s had her last breath. The title’s not going anywhere.
But, hopefully her employment soon will be.
Katy Perry's not the only celebrity guesting on Sesame Street: Mittens Romney did an episode too!
This is the liveliest and least boring we’ve ever seen Mittens Romney.
And look at the great tan he’s got!
A little too Charlie Crist, maybe, but an improvement over the funeral home pallor he normally sports.
Why he’s doing a TruBlood spoof is just beyond us, but whatever.
Nice to see Mittens exploring other potential career paths so he has something to do when he’s not the 2012 nominee, if President Palin doesn’t want him for her Cabinet.
The guy’s so wooden maybe he should audition to be an actual cabinet.
You know, honestly, we really could go on all day.
Katy Perry on Sesame Street: too sexy?
Here’s one of these things that we’d love moms and dads to weigh in on in comments below — and we’ll give you our take on it from Boystown so we can all see how differently we approach something like this.
First off, we love Katy Perry. She’s adorable.
We’ve told you before that none of us here are big proponents of the whole “fairy’s princess” concept, where gay guys have a sidekick straight girl they take everywhere with them, to laugh at their jokes, act as their living dress-up dolls, and play wingman in bars to go up to guys and slip them their gay friends’ numbers. It’s unhealthy for women to do this for any extended period of their lives, and the gay guys should be able to function without sidekicks.
That said, any time Katy Perry wants to move to Boystown and play dress up and be our sidekick, she’s more than welcome. She’s just so adorable, and that bears great repeating.
Now, the whole controversy raging involves the clip above, where Katy is wearing a chartreuse low cut dress that we think is darling on her. MAYBE we would have had a little more fabric around the cups, but we see girls walking around in dresses like this all the time…and not just in Boystown. It’s a typical summer party dress for fashionable girls in a big city, so we think she is dressed appropriately…and looks very cute…for television.
When we look at women, we don’t see them in a sexual way, however, and instead are focusing on her color choices, her makeup, the darkness of her hair, her pretty eyes, and how the fabric of the dress moves and catches the light on camera. There’s a great balance of color against Elmo’s red, which is probably why the costumer choice this, with red and green being complementary colors and Elmo’s fur being enough orange to balance the yellow in the chartreuse. The whole thing pops…and not once in all of this did we think of Katy’s breasts in a sexual way, because that honestly doesn’t register to us.
Likewise, we bet the costumer on this shoot was gay…the camera and video guys were gay…and Katy’s actual dresser and stylist were probably gay. So, there’s a good chance that almost everyone involved in this shoot never saw Katy in a sexual way.
But, that’s how some moms saw it…and they complained to PBS so that Katy’s bit with Elmo won’t ever air on Sesame Street…which is a shame, because it’s a very cute piece, and a nice reworking of Hot & Cold for the show.
The female body is a beautiful thing and should not be covered by a burqa. There are times when some elements of American society veer precariously close to feeling Muslim…intolerant, reactionary, irrational. Tipper Gore’s lunatic crusade against rap music in the early 90s comes to mind. While this maelstrom against Sesame Street isn’t in the league of jihad, we don’t think Katy exposed herself, behaved provocatively in the clip, or did anything particularly immodest. She’s a pretty, healthy, anatomically correct young lady who is covered up everywhere she needs to be.
The dress is a little low-cut for our taste, as noted above, but it’s not offensive.
Here’s Ariel from Disney’s Little Mermaid, for instance…baring a lot more than Katy Perry did in that frock. But, it’s just a cartoon, and not live. And Ariel is supposed to be swimming, not playing on Sesame Street. But, where are these lines drawn and who draws them…and are there lines for guys we don’t know about too? Just in case any of us ever get to Sesame Street.
There’s speculation that what’s really driving this is some sort of backlash against Perry for other songs and videos she’s done, but we’re at a loss to think of anything vulgar in her body of work. She always dresses young and sexy, because she is young and sexy. There’s no need to get Cass Elliot’s muumuus out of storage in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and force this young woman into them.
Should someone like Katy never wear a bathing suit in public, because that would be offensive to parents with children?
Should all bikinis be banned?
Should women never again wear evening wear because they might be photographed and a child might see those pictures somehow?
Now, we’re getting to sound like Islam…and that’s scary.
We seriously want parents to chime in on this thread because we don’t know where the line in the sand is with this stuff. We recognize parents are hypersensitive with anything to do with their children, and understand that. If we had kids, we’d probably go ballistic over all sorts of things.
But, at least for us, Katy Perry’s chartreuse party dress would not be one of them.
What think you?
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Just because it’s an excuse to see Linda Evangelista in the middle of the day, in a flashback to a time when supermodels ruled the world, as well as an illustration of what IS most definitely too sexy (and funky) for Sesame Street:
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UPDATE: We’re really enjoying hearing the parents who are chiming in on this. It’s fascinating to us, because none of us are probably ever going to have kids, and we don’t think about children much in the course of a day, so we find it very beneficial to keep the input here.
So, if you haven’t had your say, we very much encourage you to…and if you don’t have kids, we’d like to hear from you as well. It’s a very interesting topic for us and you are giving us into worlds we aren’t, and probably won’t ever, be part of.
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UPDATE: Someone sent us an email and asked how WE would have styled Katy Perry for her Sesame Street appearance…and here’s what we would have put her in:
Something fun, outlandish, imaginative, that reflects her style and definitely was "playing dressup" as the sketch with Elmo required.
In looking at shots of Katy to find a dress for her, we also did realize something else about all this that no one has mentioned yet.
All this fuss about Katy’s top…but no one has said a word about Elmo running around totally naked the whole time.
At least Perry wore clothes, right?
Answering the weird questions of Google search results
Lately, we’ve been fascinated by some of the strange things that people put into Google that lead them to HillBuzz. Here’s a snapshot of some of these today, along with direct answers to these questions:
Click to embiggen
(1) What did Hera look like?
A: She looked just like this:
(2) Black lady blasts Obama town hall meetin:
(A) Here you go…she’s pretty damn awesome. And, we do not believe, a plant.
(3) Naked woman and man paintings:
(A) it’s called the Internet. We’re sure you can find those on your own. If any of us take up painting and/or modeling, we’ll be sure to let you know.
(4) kal penn gay
(A) He sure is. And he’s single too, now that he and Obama have broken up. Go for it.
(5) Is Barbara Mikulski vulnerable?
(A) You mean, like, emotionally? Probably. Soften her up with Beaches or Terms of Endearment. That always works on us.
(6) Do you have to carry an id?
(A) Yes, you do, if you want to get into any bar or even some restaurants in Chicago. You also need it to use a credit card in about 60% of the stores here too. Yet, we’re supposed to be outraged that Arizona requires people to produce some documentation of citizenship and legal right to be in this country…when we’re all in our mid-30s now, clearly over 21, and have to show an ID to be let into a bar in Chicago? Why do we need to show our ID when we are clearly overage…and why do we need to show an ID to use a credit card? If we were Mexicans, we’d be rolling in the street wailing about how unfair this is. Instead, we just carry an ID, as all people should, present it when asked, and don’t wet our pants over it.
(7) What is Obama’s real name?
(A) Your guess is as good as ours, since he refuses to show his birth certificate…but our BEST guess is that his name is legally Barry Soetoro, because that’s what his birth certificate would have been changed to when Lelo Soetoro legally adopted him in the 1970s…and there is no notation in his books that he ever legally changed his name back to Barack Hussein Obama Jr. That’s the name he’s gone by, but what his legal name is ACTUALLY on his birth certificate is a mystery because he won’t reveal that. Possibly because of the inconvenient fact that Indonesian adoption changed his name legally and there’s no way to hide that. Hence, also, why he’s been hiding his transcripts. Either the grades were bad or he was officially registered as Barry Soetoro on those transcripts too.
(8) Who will buy my $2 bill for a lot more
(A) A fool. Because $2 bills are worth $2 and that’s that. It’s apocryphal that $2 bills are rare or valuable. They are a cool thing for grandparents to give out on birthdays and they sure are more fun that two singles…but they aren’t worth any more or less than two George Washingtons. If you want a bunch of them, just tell your bank and they either have some on hand or they can get some. Since most people don’t like using them, they are invariably crisper and less worn than singles. Sometimes, though, if you try to use one at a gas station or a fast food place, the cashier will look at it and think it’s not real. On occasion, someone standing in line will be foolish and offer to trade you a $5 for that $2 bill, thinking it is rare. If that happens, take that $5 and run before anyone talks that fool out of it. If you are ever heading to Boystown, stock up on the $2 bills because go-go boys love them. You’ll make all sorts of new friends because they, too, think these are more valuable than they really are and instead of spending them they will probably save them up…or they will trade them to dumber strippers who will do the $5 for a $2 thing, in which case you’ll be very popular with all sorts of well-built guys in jock straps as long as your supply holds out.
(9) How do Democrats feel about Islam?
(A) Apparently, they love it. Can’t get enough of it, in fact. Part of this is because the Left controls the Democrat Party now, and the Left hates anything that is patriotic or pro-American. Since Islam hates America, the Left embraces Islam, without really understanding it. The Left hates Israel, too, as well as other US allies, and Islam hates Israel as well, so these things tend to overlap a lot. The funny thing is that Islam hates Democrats and the American Left just as much as Islam hates Republicans and the American Right. When Muslims blow up buildings, hijack planes, and murder people, the don’t first stop to separate the Democrats from the Republicans. Democrats love Islam so much, in fact, that they fully support building the Ground Zero Victory Mosque at Ground Zero — and have even gone so far as to try to claim that “Ground Zero” should actually just mean the literal footprints of the Twin Towers, and not all the buildings hit with parts of the hijacked jetliners or damaged/destroyed in the Islamic attack on America on 9/11. Democrats ignore the fact that Muslims named the Ground Zero Victory Mosque project “Cordoba House”, after Cordoba, Spain…which was a city Islam conquered in the middle ages after slaughtering thousands of Europeans. The ground they soiled with all that spilled blood was used to build a triumphant mosque, in keeping with the Muslim custom of building such a prominent, towering mosque on land that was won in battle, taken from an enemy, where said enemy’s blood was spilled and thousands of infidels were murdered. That’s why Cordoba House needed land where a building was damaged by the 9/11 hijackings…and they found it in the Burlington Coat Factory building that was hit by parts of the jetliner that took down Two World Trade Center. The Ground Zero Victory Mosque is meant, like Cordoba House, and other mosques in the Islamic tradition, to be seen by future jihadists as a symbol of Islam’s conquest of America. Democrats including Andrew Cuomo, Kristen Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, and the current “president” all support and applaud the building of this Ground Zero Victory Mosque. Democrats are, in a word, sick.
MIDWAY AIRPORT MYSTERY: Second City Cop eyes needed on this — what happened at Midway Airport yesterday on a Southwest flight from Cleveland?
We got this as a comment in another thread, but it’s an interesting enough mystery to repost on its own. Can anyone shed any light on the following:
I had my dose of security tonight.
Long story short. I was going from Cleveland to Chicago to Vegas, via a plane switch in Chicago (Midway).
Flight was uneventful itself. When we landed, the crew made the normal announcement about staying seated until we got the “word” from the pilot, which everyone ignores once the plane stops.
Today (now, yesterday) was different. About 2 minutes after the official announcement, the flight attendant YELLED the orders into the P.A. system, telling us to return to our seats until further notice. We sat there for ten minutes in silence. Suddenly, officials from Southwest, TSA, and City of Chicago cops boarded our plane in some kind of hurry. They immediately grabbed two young white kids from the rear of the plane and frog-marched them off, especially after asking about their carry on luggage, which was also removed. We never did find out why.
After about 10 minutes more, we were cleared to deplane.
It was scary, I almost missed my connecting flight to Vegas (which was like 3.5 hours of being a piece of luggage going up and down on airport steps) and I feel lucky to have survived the entire ordeal.
And I left out the part about TSA isolating me for special scrutiny because my carry on contained nothing but:
8 pkgs. Mrs. Weiss Soup Mix
5 lbs. Kahn’s all beef hot dogs
and 5 loaves of Orlando Italian Twist bread (no seeds)They almost made me miss the aforementioned flight to Chicago over that one.
I’m going to bed, folks. My nerves are shot.
Anyone reading this have any police connections that could find out what those “two white kids” did on the plane to warrant them being pulled from that Southwest flight when it landed at Midway Airport yesterday?
It was a Southwest flight from Cleveland to Chicago…we don’t know the flight number yet or the time it landed at Midway, but police boarded the plane and took “two white kids” off it, “frogmarching them”, which we think means they were handcuffed.
What could they have done?
Theories?
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UPDATE: From comments below, here’s the best theory so far:
* What if the “two white kids” had violated parole by leaving the state of Ohio?
* Our read on this would be that if the parole said they were not allowed to leave state lines, then the parole would not have been broken until they actually flew out of Ohio’s airspace, right?
* If buying a ticket and boarding a plane is not enough to violate the parole, then the cops would have to wait until these guys crossed the state line…and the earliest they could have been collected for the parole violation would be when the plane landed in Chicago, Illinois…across state lines.
* Anyone in law enforcement able to say if this is a correct read on the law here?
* We’re guessing when they had their IDs scanned at Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, they showed up in the law enforcement system…then Cleveland called ahead to Chicago to alert them that these parole violators would be on the plane.
* Just a guess…because we didn’t think law enforcement cooperated like this, even with Homeland Security.
Anyone with insight?
Chicago Mayor's Race Update: Keep your eye on Tim King from the Urban Prep Academy
Tim King, center, is one of the most interesting names to crop up as a potential Chicago Mayor.
Here are a few updates on what we’re hearing on the ground in regards to the race to be Chicago’s next Mayor, now that Mayor Daley has decided to retire with this term:
(1) It’s surreal to read what the national media is saying about Rahm Emanuel becoming our next Mayor, because the man is almost universally hated on the ground here. ”Creepy” is probably the nicest thing we’ve ever heard anyone say about him. Being re-elected to Congress forever in a safe Democrat district is different than becoming Mayor of Chicago. Just look at the horrible person that is Jan Schakowsky…the woman is married to a convicted felon, is as nasty as we’ve ever seen anyone behave in real life, and states openly that she can treat her constituents any damn way she pleases because she is never seriously challenged in a primary and the Republicans will never run a decent candidate to unseat her. The woman’s a horror, but she’s right. On all counts. She’s got that seat in Congress for as long as she wants it. But, that’s it. She won’t ever be a US Senator…or Governor…or Mayor of Chicago because people hate her guts and she knows it. She’s power-mad and crooked, but notice how she’s not even dropping feelers out there to see if she could make a Mayoral run, because she knows better.
This is the same boat Rahm Emanuel is in: he could have been Congressman Emanuel for as long as he wanted, and he’ll probably end up getting back into Congress somewhere in Chicagoland after he leaves the White House, but he’s too hated to be Mayor. Not “disliked”. Hated. And for good reason. All those stories you hear of him accosting people in showers, berating them, sending people dead fish in the mail, swearing up a blue streak. Emanuel might think this stuff is funny and cute, but it’s not received well, even here in Chicago. Just about everyone in politics here has been on the receiving end of some nightmare or another from Emanuel…and it’s true that a lot of people do fear him. But whoever said that fear is the best asset for running for Mayor of the third largest city in the country, where someone would control a massive amount of patronage?
At the end of the day we don’t think the Illinois machine would get behind Emanuel because every day would be a pissing contest with him. In the Mayor’s office, it’s a new fight to the finish on something every morning, and we just don’t see how any of the political powers in this state would want to create a scenario where they’d constantly have to battle Emanuel over everything when keeping him out of the Mayor’s office prevents that. Think about this. Mayor Daley has an awful lot of faults, but he got along with just about everyone. Even his detractors like the guy, as a person. He was an iron fist wrapped in a lovable velvet glove. Daley had a temper, but he largely kept it under control, and treated people well. The first adjective that come to mind with Daley are not “creepy”, “foul-mouthed”, “crazy”, or “vindictive”.
After all these years under Daley’s control, and so many people dependent on the gravy train that Daley created…generations of people, in fact…we just can’t imagine the powers that be deciding caustic and unstable Rahm Emanuel is the best person to take the reins and keep the machine running smoothly. Without the combine behind him, we don’t know how he’d make a serious run for the Mayor’s office because he does not have the popular support of Chicagoans. He is not a beloved, or even liked, figure. We just don’t see how this happens.
He might want this to happen. He might indeed leave the White House to make it happen. But he won’t get the Democrat nomination no matter how much he wants it.
Ironically enough, this feels a lot like Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007. At that early stage, when we first started working for Hillary, we remember all of her confidants and the media talking about what a sure thing her nomination would be…and that she would just waltz into a coronation if she wanted it, as the 800 lb unchallenged gorilla. But, of course, the DNC had other plans, and the Left took Clinton down because it saw someone else who could be better counted on to do what the Left wanted him to do, and would toe the line in terms of what the Left needed to get done. So it was Obama who was awarded the nomination, and Hillary Clinton was shut out into the cold.
THAT is what’s going to happen to Rahm Emanuel in Chicago. And the media will be shocked and surprised…because we are starting to believe the pundits in the national press really are stupid.
(2) Speaking of which, the media keeps talking about Jesse Jackson Jr. being a candidate for Mayor…when this man’s career beyond his Congressional seat is completely over. Like Schakowsky, he’s a terrible person, but he can keep that seat in Congress as long as he wants it. He’ll never have a higher office though, not after being caught trying to buy Obama’s Senate seat from Rod Blagojevich for millions of dollars AND the use of one of Jackson’s personal hookers, a blond woman who used to be a restaurant hostess and masseuse. All of this has just started to come out recently, and of course won’t be actually investigated by the Obama Justice Department, because black people can’t commit any serious crimes in this administration (see Eric Holder’s treatment of the Black Panther voting intimidation case). He might dream of being Mayor, or running for the Senate, or a great many other things, but Jackson’s not going any higher than that measly seat in Congress, which he will keep as long as he wants it.
(3) Our thinking is that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart will still be the Democrats’ ultimate Mayoral nominee…and that the Republicans will run a crazy person, a stuffed animal, or a cardboard cutout of a cartoon character and won’t actually put up a serious challenge to the Democrats, because they never do. Welcome to the Cocktail Party GOP in Illinois.
(4) Someone very interesting has recently come on our radar as a possible Mayoral candidate, and that’s Tim King, the very personable and effective man who runs the Urban Prep Academy in Chicago. He’s a Bill Cosby sort of figure here in town, who does not accept any of the many excuses for failure the black community offers. He demands excellence in the charter school he runs and takes young black men from the streets and turns them into college-bound scholars with respect for themselves and their communities. We know people who know him personally, and we’ve been told he’s a future national star, with the goods to deliver. We’ve only begun to check him out and see what he’s all about, but when we’ve heard people talk about him running for Mayor, we see eyes literally LIGHT UP with excitement, with everyone agreeing he’d do an excellent job for the city…and could actually be just the man to get the dreadful Chicago Public School system under control. If the black community put him forward as a candidate, and solidified behind him early, he’s just the sort of guy who could pull support from other demographics across the city, because the success story that is the Urban Prep Academy is one of those feel-good, inspirational tales that everyone we know on the ground wants to be a part of. We could, actually, very easily see ourselves campaigning for Tim King…there’s something electric about him…and it’s the same sort of feeling we get seeing Lt. Colonel Allen West speak.
(5) Carol Mosely Braun has announced, however, that she’s going to run for Mayor. She won’t win the nomination, and she’s only doing this to appear relevant. We’ve never heard a nice word said about this woman, and Chicagoans have more or less forgotten about her. The last thing anyone can remember is that she was mugged in Hyde Park a few years ago. She has no base of support, but she could potentially keep Tim King from registering as a viable candidate if her mothballed political organization can revive itself into relevance before he could build a network of his own. This would be a great shame, because she’s be killing the chance for a new, fresh face to enter the scene by trying to Norma Desmond herself onto the stage for one last hurrah in the spotlight.
All of this considered, whenever there’s an election, we like to think about the candidate who best balances out some deficiency in the last person to hold that office.
This is usually most easily seen in presidential elections…where nationally voters tend to elect a president who remedied the flaws of the guy (up to this point) who held the office before her or him.
In 2000, a big deal was made about getting a drama-free president married to a “traditional” wife who would come to Washington and get down to business, being more of a CEO than a “feel your pain” Clintonian president…and so George W. Bush was the man for the job, and not Al Gore.
In 2004, when the Democrats ran John Kerry against Bush, Kerry didn’t present any qualities that needed remedying in Bush, as far as the public saw, and the nation did not want to replace the strong, outdoorsy, tough Bush with the effete, wimpy, flip-flopping Kerry, so Kerry lost.
In 2008, after having eight years of cowboy Bush and his CEO-style, Americans were sold a bill of goods by the media that they needed hip and cool professorial Obama to remedy all the evils of the Bush Administration, particularly “our global image” so voters deluded themselves into believing we needed a president that Europe and the intellectual elite loved (and just look how that worked out).
2012 will be time to remedy the Obama disaster, and the president to do that will be tough, unapologetically patriotic, committed to cutting spending and reducing the size of government, and standing up to all of our enemies abroad while seriously smacking our political establishment around in Washington. You betcha.
Here in Chicago, what sort of candidate will be a remedy to Mayor Daley? Who should follow a personality like him?
This is a tough one, because Chicagoans aren’t used to having anyone in that office BUT Daley, because he’s now been in there for over 21 years. Most Chicagoans have lived a large chunk of their lives with him in office. He’s been as steady a part of our existence in this city as the Hancock Building and Michigan Avenue have been. But, in recent years, people have grown tired of the debacles like the whole parking meter situation and the accusations of Daley being crooked. We know the Machine controls the city, and voters are tired of that. This has been a royal fiefdom for Daley for decades, so perhaps voters will try to buck any dynastic push Democrats make to keep the city in machine hands. Maybe they will want an outsider to take charge…someone like Tim King perhaps…or Tom Dart, the Sheriff, who could be seen as just the guy to come in and clean up all the corruption, like Elliot Ness.
We just don’t have a good feeling yet on what the public really WANTS in a Daley successor.
But, the one thing we CAN tell you is that we’re hard-pressed to imagine a scenario where voters would want to follow up 21 years of draconian Daley rule with a foul-mouthed, mean-spirited, vindictive, fish-mailing, creepy, closet-case like Rahm Emanuel. Who, to be honest, looks too sickly to run for Mayor, or anything else, really.
There’s really a very good chance THAT’S why he’s going to be leaving the White House, and that Mayor’s race talk is just cover. He’s looking very gaunt. He’s walking funny. His eyes seem glazed over at times and when we’ve watched him on camera he’s had trouble focusing. He looks very sick to us.
It would not be surprising AT ALL if he leaves Washington in a swirl of talk about running for Mayor, only to come to Chicago “to consult his family and think about it”, before announcing “a family meeting was held and I’ve decided to spend more time with my lovely wife and wonderful children being a good father to them and making money for my family in the private sector”.
And then he’ll drop from the radar, perhaps for good, or maybe when someone like Schakowsky or Mike Quigley (who now holds Emanuel’s seat) decides they don’t want to be in Congress anymore, he’ll run for that sort of office again.
But, we don’t think he’ll ever be Mayor of Chicago, a Senator, or a Governor.
He’s just too nasty of a human being for that, and he’s not at all good at hiding it.
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UPDATE: Someone asked about Lisa Madigan, the state’s Attorney General, because the local news likes to claim she’s running for Mayor too.
Here’s the thing with Lisa Madigan: she wants to be Governor of Illinois.
Or, rather, her FAMILY needs her to be Governor of Illinois because there are a lot of things the Madigans could do with her father controlling the legislature in Springfield and darling daughter Lisa in the Governor’s Mansion.
The two of them, joined together like this, would be a destructive force of pure corruption in this state the likes of which have never been seen. And for Illinois, can you even fathom what that would mean?
Lisa Madigan could be Senator Madigan right now because she’s someone Rod Blagojevich would have appointed to the US Senate instead of Roland Burris just to get her out of the state and away from him. But, her father, Mike Madigan, did not want to lose Lisa in the state. She’s too useful to him.
When it was time to have a Democrat nominee for the US Senate, Lisa Madigan was who Democrats wanted to run. Lisa said she didn’t want to be Senator, but wanted to be Governor.
It seems to be the working theory in the Madigan household that she will get only one shot at running for Governor because as Attorney General she does not have a controversial record of achievement to run on. Meaning = as AG, she gets to say she was tough on criminals, which everyone loves, and that she was competent, and people like that.
It’s sort of the way Obama played things, too…get a nice position, don’t do anything controversial, make as little noise as possible, and then wait for your promotion.
As a Senator, Madigan would have to do things…and create a paper trail and record. That makes it hard to run for Governor.
Being Mayor of Chicago is a nightmare job , as we’ve been told repeatedly by a lot of people.
We asked many Chicago politicos about whether Lisa Madigan would run or not and we are always told “No, because she wants to be Governor, and if she’s Mayor, she’ll fail just like whoever gets the job will fail, and that’s it for being Governor”.
Lisa Madigan is the girl who’s father got her a big job at a company. Lisa wants to be CEO of the company. People who don’t have an important father and who want to get ahead take on the most difficult projects because if they succeed they will get noticed and then promoted. Lisa does not have to take risks to get noticed. She’s Lisa Madigan.
All she needs to do is wait for the right opportunity to run for Governor and the Democrat machine will pull the levers for her to get there.
She thinks that Bill Brady will be beatable in four years when he is up for re-election in 2014, so that’s where her eyes are set.
If she WOULD run for Mayor of Chicago that means the Madigan Family Plan has changed and they believe that Brady would win a second term in 2014, thereby pushing Lisa’s chance to be Governor to 2018, which is so far away.
When you meet this woman in person, there’s no passion in her. There’s no burning desire to help people, to accomplish something grand, or even a lust for power. She’s very low-key and passionless. Drab is a good word for her. She’s polite and friendly and very nice, but forgettable. If she was played in a movie, Rachel Dratch from Saturday Night Live would take the role, and would wear one of her Debbie Downer getups.
The sole reason she wants to be Governor is to help her father get up to whatever he wants to get up to with her in that position.
Taking a risk at falling on her face as Mayor of Chicago would jeopardize that plan…and she’s just not a risk taker like that.
