Search Results
Why Rahm Emanuel Will Be Mayor of Chicago For As Long As He Wants (but not President)
[Click above to embiggen: how Rahm Emanuel became Mayor of Chicago in the first place]
Today, a friend of mine sent me this article by Rick Perlstein entitled “Rahm on the Ropes” and asked me what the feeling is here in Chicago towards Rahm Emanuel (and what that portends for his future as Mayor). Anecdotally, here a few recent things to note about the man (or lizard, in my opinion) who will be Mayor of Chicago for as long as he wants (but that’s as high as he will ever go):
* I happened to be at O’Hare Airport for something in January and needed to take the Blue Line back into the city. I was SHOCKED to learn that it now costs $5.00 to board a CTA subway train at the airports; apparently, that fee hike took effect that very week. There was actually a CTA employee stationed at the turnstiles because passengers getting on the train were confused and angry that the automatic system was deducting $5.00 from every train card instead of the normal $2.25 to ride. ”You can thank our wonderful mayor for that”, the clearly perturbed black CTA worker said, with a dramatic roll of her eyes and a knowing nod that expressed she didn’t like the fare hike any more than passengers did. The entire ride into the City was nothing but grumbles from people upset by how much it cost to ride the train. People were fuming in their seats…and frustrated there was nothing they could ever do about it, knowing that in Chicago once the price is raised on something it will never, ever come back down.
This move to double the train fare from the Airports was made because under Emanuel the City is going out of its way to soak tourists and travelers for as much as they can while they are here, figuring that people won’t stop coming to Chicago just because the train ride from the Airports costs double what the CTA charges to board at any other station…but what the City doesn’t think about is all of the black people who work at the airport and take the trains to get there. 90% of the TSA workers in Chicago are black, as are the food service, retail, and other airport employees. Since they board the trains at the Airport to ride home, Emanuel just doubled what it costs them for the return trip of their daily commute. That adds up to a lot of money per month for people working minimum wage…and I can’t imagine that’s not having unintended consequences in other aspects of life in the city, since it’s NOT just the tourists who are being gauged by this fare hike.
* Blacks are also going to be dramatically impacted by the plan to shut down the Red Line completely in May for a 5 or 6 month overhaul of the tracks on the Southside. The line’s being closed after the Roosevelt stop…and that will affect all the stops south to 95th/Dan Ryan. For those who don’t live in Chicago, these are the stops that are mostly used by black people (who will now have to struggle with shuttle buses to get to their jobs in other parts of this very segregated city). Emanuel claims that shutting down the entire line will save time and money, as opposed to only shutting it down on weekends to do track rehabilitation work. Right now, only a few people here and there talk about this disaster coming…but that’s because the trains are still running and no one is really paying attention. But, when May hits and the CTA trains stop serving the Southside…it’s going to get ugly.
* Public relations telephone polls and surveys happen all the time, with people calling every few weeks to ask opinions on Rahm Emanuel. That never happened when Mayor Daley was in office. The entire time I’ve lived in Chicago I was never polled about the Mayor until Emanuel took office…and now it seems like someone’s polling Chicagoans about a new crisis a week with him. An awful lot of money is being spent on this…and it makes you wonder why, since Democrats have a lock on the Chicago Mayor’s office (and, thus, you’d think they wouldn’t need to keep polling so much). This leads me to believe that people are grumbling so much with Emanuel as Mayor that Democrats want to keep tabs on the discord and always know just how upset people are on a rolling basis.
* There’s anger at Emanuel for his ineptitude in handling the teachers’ unions last year, but more people are upset that Chicago doesn’t have a casino. I hear that one all the time, because people say we’re losing jobs and money to Hammond, Indiana (just across the Illinois border) or to the casino that’s out in the suburbs and reachable by Metra trains. I’m from Cleveland, which fought a downtown casino for decades, and I’ve never understood the logic of allowing gambling residents to board buses to take their money to other states (or cities) to play their slots…when a city can keep that revenue (and all those jobs) in its city center. People seem to think having a casino means their town will turn into the dystopian “Biff’s” version of 1985 in Back to the Future…but does anyone really believe that having a casino in Chicago will suddenly make this city more corrupt or crime-ridden? I say at this point the city needs to do whatever it can to create jobs in Chicago and keep all the money it can…instead of letting anything leave for Hammond (which, incidentally, generates $22 million in tax revenue a month from its casino…and almost all of that is from people in Chicago who race across the border to hit the slots). Emanuel came into office promising that his bad temper and caustic way of doing things would pay dividends with stalled projects like the casino…but people have not seen that at all.
* Murders are out of control here and the street gangs do not fear the police or any kind of prosecution. It really is like the days of Al Capone again…and taking a trip to the Southside is like playing Russian roulette. Everyday life in Chicago feels less safe than when Mayor Daley was in office. I’m not sure why that is, but I think there was an emotional connection to Daley that made him feel like a no-nonsense uncle who’d crack skulls if the need arose. Daley seemed in control at all times…and that just made those of us who live here believe that he could apply the right pressure in any situation to make things happen. Emanuel has never seemed in control like that, and I think the thugs have absolutely no fear of him or any belief he can get the cops to really crack down on crime. So, essentially it’s become a free-for-all with Emanuel as Mayor.
* Cigarettes are $11 a pack now in Chicago, which is a big deal to all of the native Chicagoans. What I mean by that are the people who were born and raised here and live mostly in places like Bridgeport or off Polaski and in all the working-class neighborhoods with all the post-WWII squat brick single family homes. These are the people who obsessively play the lottery every day and who still smoke like chimneys (honestly, never, ever get behind one of these people in line at a convenience store because they take FOREVER picking out their lottery numbers and grumbling about the price of cigarettes…you will never be able to dash in and out for something quickly when they are in lottery or cigarette mode). Chicagoans are either natives or they’re young people who moved here to find jobs but leave after about seven or eight years when the weather gets to them or they realize life is probably a lot easier (and better) in other cities like Dallas or Austin. The people who were born in Chicago, have lived here their whole lives, and will no doubt die here are a different breed with vastly different concerns…and chief amongst those is the price of cigarettes. Most of these people find ways to cross the border into Indiana and buy “their smokes” at Wal-Mart over there, where a whole carton is now about the price of three or four packs in Chicago.
I need to note here how lizard-like and unappealing Rahm Emanuel is in general. He is not a nice person, and that shows. Truthfully, a nice person probably can’t really be the Mayor of Chicago but I will tell you that people loved Mayor Daley…even if they grumbled about him. Daley was charming and likable…and because he was Mayor for decades I think people just got used to him being around and accepting he was in charge. Following an affable figure like Daley with a caustic and petty man like Emanuel was a very strange decision on the part of Democrats in Illinois. I think it was really the worst move they could have made…and that a black Mayor would have been able to really crack down on the crime and bring the murder rate back into “acceptable” levels.
Conservatives never understand just how big a role race plays in Democrat politics, but in Chicago everything is about race. And to win the Mayor’s race, you have to remember that Emanuel needed the vote split 6 ways along specific racial lines…so willing clowns like Carol Mosely Braun, Patricia van Pelt Watkins, and William Dock Wells III gleefully split the black vote in the 2011 Mayor’s race…while buffoons Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle split the Hispanic vote to help Emanuel. Mosely Braun received a lot of money for her role in this and was able to wipe out a great deal of her longstanding debt by agreeing to be a stooge for Emanuel. Some of these others just liked the attention of being “a candidate for Mayor!” or enjoyed building some name recognition. It was all a big game though, because Democrats knew that having three black candidates on the ballot instead of just one meant that there was no way Chicago would have a black Mayor. Similarly, ensuring there are two Hispanics on there to split the Spanish-speaking/illegal Mexican vote means that Chicago doesn’t have a Hispanic Mayor. This is the game that Democrats play here that works so well in such a segregated city. All Emanuel needed was to be the only white person in the race and he’d win…which he did.
Republicans don’t even field a candidate for Mayor in Chicago because I think they are afraid of being punished for “interfering” with the Mayor’s race. Everything in this town is quid pro quo, so I think if Republicans don’t run anyone for Mayor then Democrats agree not to go after the seats of the token Republicans who do hold office in the Chicagoland area. And those Republicans enjoy being tokens and having their little positions, so they don’t ever want to rock the vote.
I always hope black people wise up one day and see how Democrats treat them no better than animals…because if Carol Mosely Braun and William Dock Walls III had just dropped out of the Mayor’s race in 2011, then that Patricia van Pelt Watkins could have solidified the black vote against Emanuel….while the Hispanic vote was still split between the two Spanish-speaking candidates…and I don’t know if Emanuel could have won if blacks were all focused on just one candidate.
But, getting people to see things like this is very much like herding cats. I’m really at the point of just giving up and accepting that this is how it’s always going to be in this city, where people have become so dumb that they’ll always fall into whatever trap Democrats set for them. Even though it keeps hurting them all on a personal level that they just never connect back to keeping Democrats in office.
I don’t see how Rahm Emanuel is ever ousted from the Mayor’s office because of how expertly the Left exploits race in this City…but I don’t see how this would ever translate into a presidential run for this lizard. Barack Obama owes everything to being “black”…and the last five years of American politics have been anomalous because we’ve had a black man as the head of the Democrat party. Things change immensely in 2016 when a black person most likely will not be at the top of the Democrats’ ticket…or even be in contention for the nomination. What has Rahm Emanuel ever done that would convince black people to support him with the same level of enthusiasm they’ve shown for one of their own like Obama? It’s ludicrous to think that. So, he (and any non-black Democrat) will be at an immediate disadvantage in 2016.
Next, you need to look at this man’s physical appearance and personality…and see that he is very much lizard-like. He’s also foul-tempered, bitter and angry, and prone to hurling curses and vile pejoratives at people he disagrees with. Emanuel is a very unstable person with possible bipolar disorder…and he’s infamous for sending dead fish to people in the mail or screaming at men while nude in the Congressional gang showers.
Emanuel is also gay and has staffed his Mayor’s office on the fifth floor of City Hall with as many Zac Efron-looking young male interns as he can find. Watching the Oscars, it was hilarious to see George Clooney dragging around yet another woman as his “date” or to see the other Hollywood actors who sport their own “beards”…and it’s so funny to me that a lot of straight people can’t tell that Emanuel’s gay. He’s a former ballerina who used to frequent the Man’s Country bathhouse here in Chicago before becoming a big national name…and his marriage is very much one of convenience. There are scores of young guys here in Chicago were part of a Rahm Emanuel “placement program”, where they had to be his boy toys for a while…but then were ultimately rewarded with recommendations into the top law firms, brokerage houses, or whatever after Emanuel moved onto the next hot young thing. This has been going on for years…and is the sort of thing that happens all the time in politics, particularly when it involves people who consider themselves untouchable (like Emanuel).
Could a foul-tempered, mean-spirited, and lizard-like petty tyrant become President? I don’t think so, because though Barack Obama’s personality is actually a lot like Emanuel’s (and they seem to have similar taste in boys) there was a stark difference in how the public at large reacts to these men. The majority of Americans like Obama, think he’s “cool”, and have a generally good impression of him on a personal level. They know nothing about who he really is and don’t really care, because they like supporting the “hip, black guy”…and that’s a brand that’s served him and those around him very well. Rahm Emanuel just doesn’t have that going for him….and he can’t suddenly transform himself physically into an attractive and likable person. The lizard in his DNA just can’t be transformed enough for him to run for President.
This is actually kind of like the Ministry of Truth that is our national media talking about Michael Bloomburg running for President when that just never made sense either. Bloomburg is not as lizard-like as Emanuel, but he still gives many people the creeps…and that’s a high hurdle to face before he’d even have to justify his policies and decisions in office to people. Democrats are great at hiding someone’s past or obscuring their personal beliefs and record…but even the best spinmeisters on the Left can’t take a naturally unappealing person who gives people the creeps and make that person into a credible presidential candidate. Andrew Cuomo’s going to have a big problem with this too, if he really thinks he can become a presidential candidate…and so for the good of the country I think it might be funny and interesting to see Emanuel, Bloomburg, or Cuomo mount an ill-fated presidential campaign. I just hope Republicans aren’t stupid enough to run someone even more unappealing against a guy like that.
Every day I realize I’m really nearing the end of my time in Chicago. The city is getting to me…and the fun I used to have here is just largely gone for me. There’s just too much wrong with the place since Emanuel became Mayor and things I used to be able to tolerate when Daley was in office just seem to bother me more now that Emanuel’s the public face behind these policies. The classic example I’ll leave you with is the city’s never-ending quest to snatch revenue from Chicagoans via parking tickets. There is an elaborate game that any driver in the city needs to play to avoid parking tickets…where there’s often a half a dozen signs giving conflicting instructions, with oddball requirements and warnings posted that require LSAT or SAT-level logic deductions to figure out if, yes, you can actually park in that spot today. Chicago has always been this way, but for some reason it felt like more of a game than an ordeal when Daley was Mayor.
I don’t know if that will make any sense to you, but when Mayor Daley was the public face of the City this “try not to get a parking ticket no matter how hard they try to trick you” thing felt more like an adventure…like, by parking your car you were engaging Mayor Daley in a high-stakes board game played on the streets of Chicago…and whoever knew the rules better won, but Daley wasn’t necessarily rooting against you and wouldn’t be upset with your beating him. With Emanuel, it’s just a totally different vibe now. Whenever Justin and I go anywhere and he parks the car there’s a real negative energy involved with the parking signs or dealing with the incredibly expensive parking meters. I feel a real heaviness in the air when I’m standing there in the cold with my notebook, trying to figure out if today is the third Friday of a month or a day when there’s a Sox or Cubs game or if there could be considered more than two inches of snow on the ground…or whatever other bizarre clues the signs are giving us to indicate whether or not we can park in that spot.
Since Emanuel’s been Mayor, it just feels like the game is now rigged and the deck is so stacked against everyone that I don’t wan to play anymore. I feel oppressed and overburdened by the action of the City of Chicago that it drains my energy to stand there and contemplate the parkings signage. This is not just because I’ve been living here for so long that the “adventure” of the Daley days is gone…it really is like playing Monopoly or Clue or whatever, but instead of playing it with a jovial person you like it’s now a game against a lizard-like and mean-spirited jackass. And it’s emotionally draining after a while.
I pick up on other people in Chicago feeling like this these days…and I don’t see how this man could mount a national campaign for office when this is the sort of impression he leaves on people.
Have You Ever Seen Changeling? It’s actually worth your valuable time (and really inspirational too).
The movie Changeling is not the 70s horror flick with George C. Scott and the ghost boy in the wheelchair (that would be The Changeling…and it scared the bejeebus out of me as a little kid…because apparently the addition of an extra three letters equals pure terror).
In 2008, Angelina Jolie starred in Changeling and I purposefully avoided seeing it in theaters because I’ve long believed Angelina Jolie is a cuckoo-bird. She wore a vial of her brother’s blood around her neck for a while, apparently dated him around the time she won her Oscar, and then stole Brad Pitt from Rachel from Friends. Being gay, I’ve never understood her sex appeal…but instead thought she was trash for participating in adultery. While I typically enjoy movies set in the 1920s and am fascinated by stories based on real-events, I just couldn’t get beyond my dislike for the actress to see this movie when it was new…and in years since I honestly never encountered it on DVD or on Netflix or even thought of it again.
But, while I was sick this last month I watched a lot of movies on Amazon Instant Video and somehow accidentally ordered Changeling when I probably wanted The Changeling…and so felt obliged to let the movie play, regardless of Angelin’a presence.
I’m truly glad that I did because not only was Angelina very good in the role (and gorgeous, too, incidentally…looking spot-on perfect as a woman in the 1920s without a vial of her brother’s blood in sight) but the story itself introduced me to two new American heroes in the form of Christine Collins and the Reverend Gustav Briegleb.
Collins (portrayed by Jolie in the film) was a mother whose young son went missing around 1927 in Los Angeles while she was away at work. The Los Angeles Police Department was the most corrupt in the world at the time and decided it wanted some good publicity…so they shipped in a runaway boy they found in Illinois and tried to pass him off as Collins’ son Walter. When Collins insisted that this stranger was not her son, the police ultimately decided to lock her up in a mental ward to shut her up so they wouldn’t have any more bad press over the fiasco. It’s so sad to admit it, but this is the sort of thing I can honestly see happening here in Chicago with Rahm Emanuel as Mayor and Democrats running the Justice Department nationwide.
Briegleb was a man with a radio show at the time who realized what happened to Collins and vowed to broadcast every day on the subject until everyone in listening range was riled up against the police for their abuse of power. He did just that…and ultimately forced Collins’ release. Watching the movie, he seemed to be the Andrew Breitbart of his day…which made me doubly sad because neither he nor Andrew are around anymore.
After Briegleb rescued her, Collins went after the police, sued the primary guy responsible for what happened to her, and kept suing him again and again through the years trying to force him to pay her the judgement she was awarded (which would have been about $400,000 adjusted for inflation). Someone with this sort of tenacity is amazing here in 2013…let alone in 1927 in Los Angeles…when no doubt most of her peers were terrified of being killed by those crooked cops in a “traffic accident” or “robbery” or something.
The movie could have been a gruesome, scary, serial killer story…but instead it was a very inspirational tale of a woman who just would not be broken and one who never gave up on finding her son. Christine Collins was absolutely amazing. I really hope that if I ever had a kid I’d fight for him or her as much as Collins waged all-out-war for hers.
I enjoyed the movie so much that I spent a few days researching what happened to everyone after the story told in the film ended. True to form, Christine Collins spent the rest of her life looking for her son. She lived until 1964 and apparently had to use aliases and change her name here and there because people affiliated with the crooked cops kept bothering her…even decades later. But, still she kept up her battle against the bad guys. And she never gave up hope that her son was still out there somewhere. Gustav Briegleb kept calling out the crooked police until the day that he died…and together with Collins he so embarrassed the City of Los Angeles that new laws had to be passed to prevent the police from ever again having the ability to just throw someone in a mental ward when they wanted to silence the person.
2013 is really starting out to be a bleak year and though the Ministry of Truth that is our national media won’t admit the obvious, we really are in an economic Depression. Things will get much, much worse in the days ahead as all of the many taxes prescribed by Obamacare drive companies out of business or force massive layoffs. Simultaneously, never in our lifetimes have we had so many people in government who believe they can do whatever they want to people and that they are answerable to no one. It all feels very reminiscent to Los Angeles in the late-1920s when Collins and Breigleb fought back.
I think a lot of you out there are going to be fighting back in your own ways in the years ahead. I hope you never go through anything like what happened to Collins…but in whatever challenges you do face I do hope you never give up, never surrender, and that you always speak truth to power. People today are scared of our government and the power it wields…and some are even afraid of being “disappeared” somewhere because they oppose what the Left is doing to the country (and what it will do in the next four years).
What I liked most about the movie Changeling is that it illustrates there is indeed an alternative to being too afraid to take on the “big guys” or the all-powerful government. I’m sure Collins was scared…and Angelina depicted her as being unsure what to do at times…but she would not let those monsters break her.
And in the end it was actually she who embarrassed and broke them.
What a great movie this ended up being…so good that I ended up doing something I almost never do and I bought the DVD so that I can watch it again one day when Justin’s home too.
It really is worth your valuable time the next night you want to put something on your video screen.
URGENT NEW YORK GROUND REPORT: Violence to break out this weekend over the Marathon’s diversion of resources
Today while Justin and I were driving to Wisconsin and back to do some canvassing for Romney/Ryan in the morning, I used the time on the road to make calls to a handful of friends I have not yet been able to reach in New York City. All of them live in Manhattan and were spared any direct damage from Hurricane Sandy — but all of them have friends and family in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island, and other areas that were impacted by flooding and wind damage. Most of these people do not know each other…but EVERY CALL WAS THE SAME.
Immediately after we established they were fine and had survived relatively in tact, all of them said a variation of this to me: THERE IS GOING TO BE VIOLENCE THIS WEEKEND. BECAUSE OF THE MARATHON.
The anger in these people’s voices was thick when they talked about “that (insert expletive here) Michael Bloomberg and that (another expletive, this time really colorful) Marathon”. The only thing I can compare this to is one of those episodes of 20/20 where they report on some kind of caged animal attack…and they begin the segment by showing some rube taunting a lion for the delight of roadside tourists…and anyone with sense to them can just SEE that the lion is getting angrier and in moments is going to maul that Bubba. There’s this tension you feel as a viewer, just knowing what is going to happen, but being unable to stop it.
THAT is how my New York contacts report on the mood in the city right now…with the wealthy New Yorkers like Bloomberg completely oblivious that they are taunting an angry lion by going forward with the Marathon.
One of my friends used to date a Port Authority cop and is still friendly with him. She tells me that the cop is enveloped in a sense of pure dread headed into this weekend. This is a cop who worked recovery operations and was on duty at the dumps sifting through rubble after 9/11 looking for body parts to identify…and he says that right now he feels the worst he’s felt since then. He is horrified by the Mayor’s decision to go forward with the Marathon because “people are going to die when the fighting starts over this”. The cop describes New York right now as “a powder keg” and Bloomberg is lightning the fuse by diverting generators, food, water, and other resources to the Marathon.
Anyone with sense about him would postpone this event, or cancel it outright this year. But Bloomberg is pressing ahead with this because Democrats can’t risk political fallout for admitting that New York hasn’t yet recovered from the hurricane…and in doing this, Democrats are actually sealing their own doom because hosting the Marathon will result in more anger and damage to the party than canceling it would have. This is why Democrats should never hold high elected office…they forever make situations worse by trying to cover things up, hide the truth, or score political points.
An ex of mine who lives in the city and is a comic book artist told me his family on Long Island are furious and are now voting for Mitt Romney because they are disgusted with Democrats; this is an ex who wouldn’t speak to me from 2008-2010 because I backed McCain/Palin after the nomination was taken away from Hillary in 2008. He finally admitted I was right about Obama after Obamacare passed, because his dad is a doctor and told him that the mandate and all its 20 myriad taxes would destroy the economy as we know it and ruin medical practice in this country. My ex’s parents have never voted Republican in their lives but are doing so on Tuesday…and he reports that many of his parents’ friends and their families are doing the same. Once again, this is first hand reporting on the ground telling you that Hurricane Sandy did not help Obama…but it actually damaged Democrats immensely, only the Ministry of Truth won’t report on that. ”It’s kind of like the dam hurts with all the flooding and people are letting all their pent-up frustration and anger burst out…and it’s all going towards Obama,” my ex reported. ”And with them going ahead with the Marathon people are saying it’s just because canceling it would hurt Obama, so people are angry. There’s going to be a riot this weekend, I really think there will be”.
It’s ironic, too, because for the longest time the Left has tried to scare conservatives by claiming that blacks would riot on November 6th if Obama is not reelected…and, thus, one of the reasons giving for reelecting him was to keep blacks from rioting (so vote for Obama because otherwise the cities will burn). Democrats are now pushing forward with this idiotic Marathon while people in New York are in need of those resources to meet their basic needs…and not a single person in the party has sense enough to see the explosion of anger this is going to cause.
“It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be Rodney King bad. Just angry people smashing things and killing people because they are so mad that food and water and electricity is being taken for the Marathon but not given to them. I think they’re going to attack the Marathon runners and beat them. If I knew anyone who wanted to run that race, I’d tell them to just not come because they are going to get hurt”, one of my friends from college, a public school teacher in NYC, told me this morning. She believes that throngs of New Yorkers who have no heat, food, water, or electricity (or even homes) are going to descend on the Marathon route and take their anger out on the people running the race and “beat the (expletive) out of them”. She thinks they will also mob the Marathon headquarters “and take what they want” before the race even starts.
For the last two months, the Ministry of Truth has been constantly pushing stories designed to terrify Republicans and cripple them with frost-fingered fear in the lead up to this election. Great Merciful Zeus, it is a divine irony that the people who need to be truly afraid right now are Democrats…because they are playing with dynamite in regards to this Marathon and they are completely ignoring the dangers in going forward with an event that sucks resources from hurricane-affected areas just so the very wealthy can have their massive parade/party throughout the city.
“What you don’t understand is what a nightmare that race is in a normal year. It makes life Hell on us under normal circumstances, especially with all the people form out of town who come to clog up the city. You want to do THAT right NOW when all Hell just broke loose? Are you out of your damn mind?”, another friend said. I sympathize with this because when Chicago hosts big public events life grinds to a halt in the Loop. All summer long, various neighborhoods hold street festivals that disrupt life for whole weekends. A few times a year, Chicago shuts down certain major roads for bicycle races, marathons, 5ks, or whatever. One time, Mayor Daley allowed Michigan Avenue to be shut down for Oprah Winfrey for THREE DAYS (I believe she was being moved from one part of town to possibly the lake, which might have been a more natural habitat for that charybdis).
I think if Hurricane Sandy happened in Chicago, Mayor Daley would have postponed a race that was supposed to be run the very next weekend. He would have had sense to know that people would explode with anger if basic needs weren’t being met but the City diverted resources to a race. Rahm Emanuel, the current Mayor, would probably let the race proceed because he’d be more worried that canceling the race would disappoint people…and then they wouldn’t vote for Obama on Tuesday as a result. It looks like Michael Bloomberg is in the Rahm Emanuel school of thought.
I really hope New Yorkers can keep it under control but I’ll tell you that Chicago was mighty cold and wet today. Justin and I have everything we need, yet I woke up this morning and felt pretty snappy because I do not much like the cold. I had to really control myself to be polite to Justin and he had to restrain himself because he hates driving but we wanted to hit Wisconsin every day to canvass before the election. I can easily see how New Yorkers who are wet, cold, hungry, and living in the dark would be ready to explode with the slightest provocation. I’ve been to New York many times and people there are on the edge of violence on a gorgeous, breezy, bright summer day. So many people in such a tight space puts everyone on edge…and then throw in a hurricane flooding the subways and forcing people to walk two hours over bridges and through damp tunnels to get to work…and you have people who will be furious that a City that can’t get its act together to restore life to normal can take the weekend off to screw around with a race?
There is no way that this ends well…unless someone makes Bloomberg postpone or cancel the Marathon.
“It’s going to get ugly. Real ugly. Please pray that people stay patient and don’t explode”.
For any of you that were afraid Hurricane Sandy would end up helping Barack Obama…I hope you now see that it’s really DEMOCRATS who should be afraid of the damage this storm is going to do to them between now and November 6th.
DOOM ANTIDOTE: The Last Days of the Obama Regime (Part 2)
Last night, in the White House:
With a hurricane bursting levees, flooding major cities, stranding people on top of buildings, and destroying homes, the President of the United States slouched indifferently in his chair as his top advisors quarreled to see who could invent the best strategy for taking full advantage of the natural disaster. ”Never let a crisis go to waste!”, David Axelrod shouted. “Rahm Emanuel always said that. I know him, he’s from Chicago like me! I ate a sandwich with him once and mine was tastier than his because I put relish on it”.
“Shut up, bitch,” the President snapped. “I fired Rahm’s punkass because he was always giving me grief about my drugs, always trying to hassle me. He’s a killjoy! I don’t need that. I’m the President! I can do as I please!”. Much like his never-serious Vice President Joe Biden, while images of disaster and suffering flashed across the view screens President Obama giggled and smiled, delighting in the chaos he saw everywhere in the storm’s wake. ”Wow! Lookit! All that got smashed! HA! That truck there is BUSTED. Lookit that house! It’s all, like, SMUSHED. HA HA! Drowned turkeys”, Obama laughed, making more than a few of the staffers huddled around him anxious. He was enjoying all this far too much and was clearly drunk with power (amongst other things).
“Mr. President, maybe you shouldn’t be so openly happy about people losing their homes and all that damage being done to New York. You’ll give the game away,” Stephanie Cutter cautioned, risking the ire of a petulant man-child who treats every event before him as a source of personal amusement. Her words were met with a cold, dead stare from goblin-like Special Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett, who crawled out from a hole in the wall covered in spiderwebs to shoot back at Cutter.
“Don’t spoil the President’s fun, Stephanie. You are merely a RESIDENT of the United States and he is the PRESIDENT of the United States, with a “P”, and that rhymes with “T” and that stands for “Tyrant”. He can do as he pleases here in River City. Haven’t you heard of Nate Silver, Stephanie? NATE SILVER. Well, NATE SILVER says that President Obama can be in office as long as he likes and InTrade says this election is all but over so you better know what side your bread is buttered and stop trying to take away the President’s buzz. Let him enjoy himself. It’s his right, you killjoy”.
“Now, Valerie, I love and fear you and all, but we can’t believe our own hype here. Nate Silver’s a clown and you know it. We just send him out there to tell craziness to the loons on the Left. That guy could sell snow to an Eskimo, if the Eskimo was a lefty who believes all snow is proof of global warming. We can’t start buying our own propaganda and inventing our own reality. We’re not producers at MSNBC for Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake. That’s why I wear this pedophile-grade mustache on my face. I call it my cookie-duster. It makes me look like such a cartoonish buffoon that I keep myself grounded when I see myself in the mirror because otherwise I’d be so devilishly handsome,” said Axelrod, while brushing a few crumbs from his trademarked “duster”.
“Shut up bitch, I can’t hear the screaming and the crying. The crying is the best part. My mother told me one day I’d be the man to make so many scream and cry and lose it all and I only wish she was here to see it. I’d have made her so proud, presiding over all this destruction. It’s my finest moment and no little bitch is going to take it from me,” President Obama commanded. With a dainty swirl of his left wrist he silently ordered one of the shirtless young male staffers to refill the golden cup in front of him with more of the noxious tea he had specially imported from Pakistan (which he, of course, pronounced as POCK-EEE-STAHAN).
The dark circles around the president’s eyes were thick and his lips seemed so slight and brittle they could break off into dust. His eyes never left the video screens as a helicopter hovered over flood waters and collected images of heartbreaking ruin in America’s coastal northeast. A smile never left Barack Obama’s face, as wide and bright as the Joker’s grin that Joe Biden favors.
“This means I’ve won the election. I am the President, and something bad happened, and when something bad happens that means I win. This is the October Surprise! Charles Krauthammer agrees and so does Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen. They have gone on the tee-vee and said I have now won because New York and New Jersey are in misery and I was on a throne in the middle of the hurricane when it happened. Therefore, I have won,” Obama beamed. He rose from his seat and took swirling bows, like a maharaja or foreign potentate in an old-timey vaudeville act set in the distant East. He beckoned for the buff young men around him to shower him with rose pedals and he spun around like a ballerina twirling as the fell to the ground around his feet.
“Mr. President, those people are fools and attention-seekers. None of that makes any sense. They’re self-promoters who wanted to be on tee-vee last night so they said what the networks wanted them to say, but we can’t believe our own lies. They’re good lies, sure, because I make a lot of money inventing all our lies…but if we start believing this stuff too then we’re just stupid. It makes no sense to think that all this destruction is good for us. You’re not realizing that we’re all incredibly incompetent and that there’s no chance in Hell that any of this mess is going to be cleaned up any time soon. For all these years Democrats have called George W. Bush a monster because he didn’t stop Hurricane Katrina from damaging New Orleans and that it took so long to clean up the damage there, but what’s happened to New York is a bigger mess than that and we just aren’t competent enough to even get the power back to 8 million affected people by the time of the election. There’s no way this is a good thing for us, no matter what Pat Caddell says to get himself on tee-vee last night. That man would admit to keeping squirrels in his underpants if he could go on QVC to see his face on the tee-vee selling diaper rash cream if he had half a chance,” Axelrod admonished, while Barack Obama glared at him through long, noisy slurps of his tea.
“Barack needs a little sugar,” the President purred, as the young male aide rushed for a bowl and spoon. ”I like it sweet and flavorful. I want it hot…and steamy. I like it…”
“Mr. President, PLEASE! That boy is the grandson of an important Senator. PLEASE Mr. President, this is not Afghanistan and he is not a dancing boy!,” Cutter exclaimed, causing Valerie Jarrett’s eyes to flash gold with anger for a lightning-quick instant. Jarrett was angry now for Cutter yet again interrupting the President’s amusements. This was her second strike of the night.
“The President can have what he wants and who he wants. He is the PRESIDENT and will be for the indefinite future. If he believes this storm has won him the election, then it is true, and he can have any white boy he wants to do with as he pleases. It is his right and he is owed this,” Jarrett asserted with a sharp stab of her long, goblin finger. Born and raised in Iran, Jarrett was accustomed to Muslim men behaving like pampered divas and demanding sweet tea and sweeter diversions from the young men in their entourage. Jarrett’s role in the White House was to make sure Barack Obama had everything his heart desired without the public at large ever knowing about most of it. Save for a few missteps like the one in Denver in early October, Jarrett had performed her service well to Obama, the god-president.
With the shirtless young aide now nestled in his lap, Barack Obama asked about postponing — or even suspending entirely — the election using Hurricane Sandy as an excuse. ”We’ll tell them that we’ll have the election a year from now, when all the storm damage is repaired. But, next year we’ll have a new storm and I’ll tell them we need to suspend it again. This is how we’ll do things for many years to come and soon all will forget there was ever meant to be an election,” the President conspired, while running his long and fragile fingers in loops across the young man’s bare chest. Eyes wide, the panicked aide’s face betrayed the fact he was equally terrified of not just what Barack Obama wanted to do to the country, but to himself personally.
“MR. PRESIDENT! This is madness! You can’t suspend or postpone anything. I know a lot of websites have been inundated with crazy people who suspect this is what you are up to, but we just can’t do something like this. You could never get away with this. You tried suppressing the bad jobs report data and stalling those numbers until after the election but too many people caught wind of it and hammered their Senators and now Congress is forcing us to release that report on time this Friday. If you tried to postpone or suspend the elections then there’d be an even bigger firestorm. You just can’t believe you have the power to do these things!”, Cutter explained, her voice frantic and her heart racing with fear of the Goblin Queen circling her in the shadows.
“Ms. Cutter, I think that’s enough from you this evening. You’re upsetting the President and you have work to do elsewhere, thank you,” Jarrett dismissively scolded as she hurried Cutter to gather her things and leave the room. ”I think the President would like to be alone now, as it stands, so this is a good time for us all to adjourn”. With that, the assemblage of advisors left the President of the United States alone in the dark with the young male aide to get up to who knows what as images of destruction scrolled across the screens and a demented smile flashed on Barack Obama’s face.
****************************************************
I have no way of knowing what’s really happening inside this White House, but this is how I honestly picture the current President of the United States behaving himself, based on what I see happen every day in this Regime. I also extrapolate a lot of his behavior from the wealthy and powerful gay men here in Chicago who treat subordinates like meat. I can easily picture Barack Obama objectifying the young male aides around him the way the owners of the bars in Boystown treat the shirtless (and often straight) bartenders who endure nonstop sexual harassment because they really need the money they can rake in at those joints while their bodies are buff and their looks are cherubic. I see no indication whatsoever that Barack Obama doesn’t behave this way with the young men who are always accompanying him on “golf outings” or whatever.
It’s hilarious that there are people out there who are oblivious to the fact that the 44th President of the United States is clearly a gay man who behaves like he’s a Muslim potentate instead of an elected public servant. The decadence and indifference of this Regime is epic…truly like something out of a vaudeville production set in an incense-drenched Persian court instead of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After Obama’s out of office in 2013, I expect a great many tales to leak of what really went on behind closed doors while this particular gay man was the President. Somewhere Rock Hudson is smiling that FINALLY a guy got away with more in the closet than he did for all those years.
I really hope the little tableau above has driven home the point of how stupid it is to go around saying that Hurricane Sandy is going to benefit Barack Obama in any way. It’s just dumb, and while I know the fear porn merchants out there are LOVING this opportunity to terrify you with bizarre stories of how Obama’s going to profit from this disaster…that’s just not true. While I do believe Obama enjoys seeing Americans suffer because his mother Stanley Ann Dunham taught him that the West suffering “for its sins” was a good thing…and I also believe Obama is foolish enough to think the hurricane is good for him…I just don’t see any logical upside of this for the Regime. By Friday, New York City will still be largely without power in many places and the slow-moving, insolent union work crews dispatched to clear the burroughs of damage will still be inching along at a snail’s pace (just like they did with the blizzard last year that they refused to work hard to clear way efficiently). Here in Chicago — another union-and-Democrat-dominated town — I’ve seen people foam at the mouth with anger after a storm when a fallen tree has blocked an intersection for more than two days. I’ve heard plenty of tales from other Democrat-controlled areas where politicians paid the price for a lot of slow-moving union crews who kept services impeded for too long after a violent storm. The taxpaying public might be blind to how much the unions cost municipalities in benefits and other concessions…but these people get FURIOUS lickety-split when these union crews don’t do what they’re supposed to do after some disaster.
I expect Hurricane ANGER to smack Democrats all up and down the east coast by Friday because the mess this storm left won’t be cleared away by then. I don’t think it’s even going to be removed by Election Day..and by then many voters will be frustrated and angry that they’ve been given the runaround by the various government entities that are supposed to be helping them during this crisis. If you have ever tried to get a straight answer from someone on the federal or state payroll on any question important to you then you can imagine what the people in New York and New Jersey are going to be going through in the next few months as they try to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. The incompetence of the public sector union employees who work for our government is exasperating. This is not going to buy Barack Obama any political points. Expect big FALLOUT, not great benefit, for Democrats in the days and months ahead.
I think it’s incredibly irresponsible of any conservative writer or pundit out there to freak people out with tales of Hurricane Sandy “changing the dynamic of this race!”. I hope you are smart enough by now to know when someone just wants to be on tee-vee and is saying what the networks wanted the person to say to go on the air. If you don’t know how this works, I’ll explain some behind the scenes for you: a producer will call you to book you as a guest on a show, and in the pre-interview the producer tells you generally what she wants you to say on the air. Tee-vee producers have lists of people to call for a wide variety of subjects. If they want the segment to be about how Hurricane Sandy has “changed the dynamic of the race!” then a producer in New York will call up people from the Rolodex who will say what the show wants them to say. There are scores of conservative writers and pundits who JUMP at the chance to be on television and will say whatever MSNBC, CNN, and (yes) FOX want them to say so they can be on the air. It’s fun to be on television…and it raises your “Q” rating so that you can then book bigger shows or get better book deals (your “Q” is how well known you are to a wide audience, as in Oprah Winfrey has a higher “Q” rating than Stacey Dash, though the latter is clearly someone I’d much rather personally spend time with).
The producer tells you how long your segment will be and generally lets you know what the host of the show will ask you…and the producer will say, “Now, you believe Hurricane Sandy has changed the dynamic of this race…RIGHT?”. If you want to go on the show, have free makeup applied to your face by a professional, drink all the soda you want in the green room, and get to be on camera that day you say, “Oh, yes. I believe Barack Obama will win now because there was a storm somewhere and people are going to want him to be President for four more years because there was a storm”. The excited producer will then usually smile through the phone, tell you what a big smarty you are, and congratulate you on being picked up in a town car and driven to the studio later that day (at the show’s complete expense, of course). Some people absolutely live for this stuff and dance around like a cat in fluffy pajamas, so overjoyed they “get to be on the tee-vee today!”.
THIS is why you see clowns like Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell falling over themselves to say ridiculous things on the air…because they enjoy attention, free Cokes, and wearing makeup on tee-vee and will say just about anything to be in the spotlight.
I think the Obama Regime really does BELIEVE it can get away with just about anything…but in the last four years these people have proven themselves to be completely incompetent. I take this as the clearest sign ever that a benevolent God truly does exist and loves this country immensely…because while malicious in the extreme, Barack Obama is one of the least competent men to ever serve as our president. He and his hangers-on have proven themselves to be bumbling buffoons time and again…so the thought of them suddenly whipping into shape and harnessing the power of a hurricane to save their hides and repulse the Republican tsunami that’s going to sweep them out of office in SIX DAYS is just absurd.
I know today is Halloween and some of you, for whatever reason, enjoy scaring yourselves and others…but get real.
There is a greater chance of me one day becoming President myself than of Barack Obama getting a second term.
And if I ever DID become President, I can promise you the young male interns and staffers would be safe from pawing (but that Mecca and Medina would probably be glass parking lots less than a week after my Inauguration). So, I’d be the total opposite of Barack Obama in office.
****************************************************
This is an Open Thread so post anything you think is important today (though, no doubt, about ten people will say “I can’t find the open thread” on some other article. Sigh).
What’s REALLY helpful is a Ground Report from you detailing what YOU observe in your part of the country.
* Is Mitt Romney going to win your state?
* What are your friends and family saying about the election?
* Who do you see spreading fear porn out there — and are you chastising them for it?
* Picking up an signs of the Left realizing they’re losing?
* What’s something YOU are doing today to help Romney/Ryan win big in SIX DAYS?
DAILY DOOM ANTIDOTE: Ohio, the heart of it all edition — 10/19/2012
[ City of Light, City of Magic: As goes Greater Cleveland, so goes the nation ]
Before we talk about Ohio, my home state where I was born and raised, I want to tell you about something unexpected that happened for Justin and me in the last few weeks that I hope you get to experience for yourself on a bigger scale in the next few months: the calm and serenity of terrible people moving out of your lives for good.
I’ve had this apartment for a few years now and only had great neighbors in the building until the people downstairs moved in last October. Justin and I are on the third floor of an old Victorian here in Boystown that at one time was probably a well-to-do family’s home (carved up in later years to make four apartments; one each on the garden level and then first, second, and third floors…our place, I think, was once an attic). I’ll call the people who lived below us for the past year Seamus and Sally, the worst neighbors I’ve ever had in 35 years on this planet.
It started immediately with these people, with loud pounding and yelling every time Justin and I walked up the steps to our place; because of the way the building was designed, the stairs to our apartment actually ascend that flight directly over Seamus and Sally’s bedroom (which is not our fault…and we need to walk up the stairs to get home as neither of us are vampires who can fly or turn to smoke to get home). This immediately freaked Justin out, because he’s the kind of guy who’s devastated for days if he accidentally steps on a ladybug or smashes a few flowers because he’s not paying attention to where he’s walking. One day I caught Justin slowly walking a step at a time, pausing with each step, taking ten minutes to get up the stairs because he didn’t want to make any noise and upset the neighbors.
Oh, I put an end to that lickety split because we pay good money to live here and should be able to come and go from our apartment like normal people…without the neighbors below banging on the walls and screaming for us to be quiet while we’re just walking up stairs for a minute a few times each day. It’s just not appropriate for the new neighbors to pound and scream and attempt to bully Justin into walking up the stairs like he’s an octogenarian with hip problems because they’ve scared him into being a mouse in his own house. So, I contacted the landlord and asked him it Seamus and Sally had been given a tour of the apartment before they rented it and if they happened to notice the fact that, yes, the stairs leading to the apartment above went right over the bedroom in the apartment below. If they wanted to live there, they needed to realize that people would be coming and going like normal regardless of their presence downstairs.
The landlord said he would talk to them and get the banging to stop, and it eventually did. But then Seamus was mad about that and decided to start causing other problems for us. Based on my interactions with the two of them, I’m convinced everything these people did to us for the last year was 100% Seamus’ idea, because Sally was at least polite (she even invited everyone in the building to a Halloween party when they first moved in, before they started the banging and weirdness). To be honest, I think Seamus had a problem with Justin and me being gay and living above them…which is foolish when you think about it because Seamus and Sally chose to live in BOYSTOWN. Apparently, the same kind of problem is happening in the Castro district of San Francisco, too, where straight couples have been moving into the gentrified areas that have been gay ghettos for decades…and then the straight people have a problem with the gay bars, businesses, and people who were in the neighborhood before them.
Things I’d order from Amazon.com would go missing, despite that never happening ever before; our building has no doorman but there’s a vestibule where UPS or FedEx leave packages. Coincidentally, after we told the landlord to stop Seamus’ banging my books would go missing from the vestibule instead of being there for me when I got home each day (the way they had been waiting for several years before Seamus and Sally moved in). ”Someone” started leaving garbage and junk mail by our steps, when that never happened before the people downstairs moved in. All those flyers, takeout menus, local newspaper coupons, etc. that used to pile up in the vestibule were mysteriously being carried over to the steps to our place and dumped on the floor there…making us have to remove those things every day, for no good reason.
And then the weird notes started appearing on Justin’s car. Nasty, vulgar notes that would criticize Justin’s parking…always along the lines of “Hey, faggot…try not leaving so much space between you and the car in front so other people can park you a**h***!!!!”. Which is ridiculous because cars come and go in this neighborhood with great frequency and Justin doesn’t drive his car every day. It might be a week between drives anywhere…and in that time several cars in front or behind him could move, with lots of people parking and repacking around Justin. If the note-writer didn’t like the space around Justin’s car, then he should really be blaming the people who parked around Justin…not Justin or his car that hasn’t moved in a week.
Justin was afraid I couldn’t prove it was Seamus leaving the notes on the car but I waited until the notes got REALLY vulgar and nasty, with lots of “faggot this” and “faggot that” in them and then I showed Justin how perfectly the notes compared to the Halloween party invitation that Sally had printed out and slipped under all the doors last October. The notes and that invitation were printed on the same printer using the same paper, with similar punctuation and repeated use of (!!!) to end sentences. There was also a distinct line here or there that the printer made on all the pages as it pushed the paper out after printing. I’m not a forensic expert, but it sure looked like whoever sent the Halloween invitation was also leaving the nasty notes on Justin’s car.
So, I looked up Chicago’s discrimination statutes on this sort of thing and typed up a letter to our landlord noting that what was being left on Justin’s car clearly could be a matter for the police or the City if we needed to take things to the next level to get this to stop. I included the Halloween note comparison to those notes and a copy of the contemporary log I’d maintained of all the little nasty things these people kept doing to Justin and me and formally asked the landlord to put a stop to all the things that have been mysteriously happening since Seamus and Sally moved in downstairs…and let him know that if it didn’t stop we’d be forced to go to the City for help next.
We never heard anything else from the landlord after his “I’ll take care of it” reply to me, other than a few emails here and there where he would use some excuse to tell us about something related to the building where he’d always slip in an “I just want to let you know what good tenants you are and how much we enjoy having you in the building” line to us. We really like our landlord and really love the building…but were hoping Seamus and Sally were just a temporary burden in our lives.
When they moved out without fanfare earlier this month it was a night and day change in energy at home for us. Justin and I had always been on edge wondering what Seamus would do next. Walking up the stairs, Justin forever had a panicked look on his face, hoping he wouldn’t make enough noise to prompt a return to the banging. There are no more nasty, homophobic notes being left on Justin’s car criticizing him. The piles of junk that Seamus was clearly throwing on our stairs remain in the waste basket by the door in the vestibule, where that junk alway stayed before Seamus and Sally lived in the building. With them gone for several weeks now, things are back to normal here, how they were before these two dreadful people became a daily problem for us.
Sitting here, I realize this is the sort of relief we’re all going to feel once the Obamas move from the White House to that estate in Hawaii they’re headed towards to start his post-presidential life. As soon as they step onto the 747 that’s going to carry them from DC to Honolulu next January, it will feel even better than Seamus and Sally packing up their Toyota and heading to Evanston or wherever. I hope in his post-presidency we see as little of Barack and Michelle as Justin and I are seeing of Seamus and Sally these days.
I’m amazed, really, just how much better it is with those terrible neighbors gone. They caused a lot of tension between Justin and me because his natural response to bullies is to try to augment his own behavior so he keeps off their radar and remains as quiet as possible to not upset them. My response to guys like Seamus is to document the bad things they do and ultimately filed charges against them if other formal complaints don’t work to end the bad behavior. So, there was a daily clash between the two of us whenever Seamus would get up to his tricks…and all that energy wasted on this is now going to more positive things. We’re both so much happier now that the terrible neighbors are gone.
I have a feeling you’re going to feel the same way when the Obamas are our of our collective lives for good, too.
Probably by spring of 2013 the elation of them being out of the White House will subside a little and we’ll all be able to look back on the nasty things the two of them did for four years and appreciate how lucky we are that they didn’t have two terms to double this grief. Someday, we might even see a silver lining in all this because it really will be a decade or more before another Democrat is in the White House…and when that happens it will be people more like the Clintons, in the way the Clintons were the first Democrats allowed back into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the dreadful Carters. So, we’ll probably have a nice stretch of 12 or 16 (or even 20) years without any Democrats in the White House…and a term or so after that of people who deliberately try to be nothing like the Obamas in the way the Clintons purposefully were nothing at all like the Carters. For a lot of us, this means that Barack and Michelle will really be the absolute most terrible people we’ll ever have to deal with in “the people’s house”.
And soon they will be Honolulu’s problem, so living in Chicago not only will Justin and me be rid of Seamus and Sally but we won’t have Barack and Michelle as our “neighbors” in Hyde Park, either.
I can’t even begin to express how wonderful that will be.
******************************************************
As part of the Doom Antidote today (not that anyone with any sense to them should be buying any of the Ministry of Truth’s propaganda and Doom Reports today, since it should be clear to you that Mitt Romney is going to win…with the only question remaining just HOW BIG that win will be) I wanted to talk a little about Ohio, the state I lived in before I moved first to Pennsylvania and then Chicago for work. I will always love Ohio, especially the Cleveland area I grew up in, but I left because Democrats drove all the jobs out of the city (and state). If I wanted any sort of future at all, I knew I had to resettle elsewhere…or just resign myself to living a meager life with what little opportunity remained in a place driven into the ground by the labor unions and Democrat politicians.
I actually keep in touch with a lot of friends from high school via Facebook and other avenues and I want to talk to you today about Cuyahoga County (the largest county in Ohio) in particular since the scoop I’m getting from them on the ground is fascinating.
While I have not lived in Cleveland in about 8 years now, I still think I know the basic nature of the people there. Greater Cleveland encompasses all of Cuyahoga County the way that Chicagoland takes up all of Cook County here in Illinois. Though Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are not one in the same, technically, all the suburbs that surround Cleveland and the city itself are the entirety of Cuyahoga County. ”Cuyahoga”, for those curious, refers to the crooked, serpentine river that winds through the city of Cleveland; yes, this is the river that caught fire in the 70s and the one that rats could run across by leaping from one bit of floating garbage to the next for many years.
I’ve always been surprised when people say that Chicago is the most segregated city in the country because it’s actually a lot like Cleveland, where I grew up. In Chicago, you have the gay neighborhood of Boystown, college kid places like Wrigleyville, the yuppies on the Gold Coast, all the cops and firemen and union guys in Bridgeport, the young families in Lincoln Park, the Hispanics in Pilsen, the lefty elitists in Hyde Park, and the blacks in the Southside. Because Chicago is so big, each neighborhood feels like its own mini-city within the larger City of Chicago.
With Cleveland being so much smaller, the suburbs of Chicago form something similar to the neighborhoods I described above. The gays are in Lakewood. The lefty elitists are in Shaker Heights or Chagrin Falls. Blacks are in Cleveland itself and also East Cleveland. The cops and firefighters and union guys are in Euclid. Then there’s a place called Parma (and the nicer Parma Heights) that always brings a smile to my face because there’s no real equivalent to it here in Chicago; the people of Parma are mostly descendants of Polish people who came to America around WWII or so, and who have built a unique community in Greater Cleveland with pink flamingos on the lawns, guys walking around in black socks with sandals, and a strong desire to prove how smart they are by always voting for who they think is going to win the national election. When I talk about Clevelanders (and people in Ohio in general) wanting to feel like winners by backing the candidate they believe is going to triumph in the end, a lot of that drive originates with Parma residents (and similar people in Brook Park, Brunswick, Independence, North Royalton, etc.).
Ohio’s marketed as “the heart of it all” by the convention and tourism board but it’s really more the “bellwether state” because I think Ohioans — and the people of Cleveland in particular — are a natural indicator of what’s going to happen in an election on the whole. Despite a habit of repeatedly sending Democrats to high office, Clevelanders aren’t lockstep Democrat voters the way people in Chicago or New York or Philadelphia are. I think this is because the suburbs of Cleveland have a lot of influence in Cuyahoga County itself. People make fun of Parma for the flamingos and the socks but the people who live there are nice, hardworking, and love America. That’s really how most of the suburbs of Cleveland are…so Cleveland itself may have had Democrat mayors exclusively since the 1980s but none of these people have been cuckoo birds or or Leftist kings (like a Rahm Emanuel is, here in Chicago); I think the good people in Parma and the other suburbs keep that from happening because the culture in Cleveland is not one that allows people to openly embrace the Left.
Cleveland is a place where not much good ever seems to happen and people tend to hitch their star to one crazy scheme after another. I’ve written about this before on this site many times in the past, but through the years Clevelanders have hope their salvation would be a new baseball stadium…until that didn’t work and they decided it would be a new basketball arena that would save the city. They tried that, and then next up was a new football stadium. Or a shiny new mall downtown. Or maybe a convention center. Or a casino. Or a new aquarium. It’s a lot like The Simpsons episode where a guy comes to town and tells everyone that the answer to their prayers is in fact a MONORAIL. In all seriousness, as someone who was born and raised in Cleveland, I can honestly say I am STUNNED that Cleveland has actually never built a monorail as the latest in a long line of “answers to our prayers”. It’s not that the people of Cleveland are gullible…it’s just that they are open to just about anything that’s presented to them that makes them think things could get better if they give this new thing a shot. When it doesn’t work, there’s no grumping or recrimination…they just move onto the next idea forever optimistic that SOMETHING, one day, will save the city of light, city of magic that is my hometown.
Please keep this all in mind when thinking about how Ohio will vote in this election…because Barack Obama’s hopeychange express was the monorail Clevelanders believed would save the day back in 2008. They’ve now seen Obama has failed, just as the endless stream of big promises made to Cleveland about one fanciful thing or the other over the years have failed. And Clevelanders are ready for the next thing presented to them as a solution to their ills…and that is Romney/Ryan and America’s Comeback Team.
While it’s true that there are usually enough black and union voters in Cleveland to run up solid margins or Democrats in the state of Ohio, the suburbs around Cleveland that impact Cuyahoga County as a whole will not be voting for Obama this year. Democrats will not win Parma, and Parma is the key to Cleveland. The people of Parma gave Obama a chance last time and many probably enjoyed helping the first black president “make history”. But they’re over that and looking to the future now and they want the next plan to succeed…the plan pushed by Romney/Ryan.
I went to high school in Parma Heights and a lot of my former classmates still live in the area or in other Cleveland suburbs. Reports keep coming in that these people, and their friends and neighbors and coworkers, are voting for Romney/Ryan. They are not sitting home, and they will not vote for Obama again. Many of them did that in 2008 and have decided “it’s time to give someone else a chance because Obama didn’t work out the way we wanted”.
If I can communicate anything about Ohio to you it would be this attitude: you might not see Ohioans foaming at the mouth angry about Obama, but that’s just not their style. Ohioans are not complainers and are typically not as vocal or in-your-face as, say, Chicagoans. I am anomalous for a Clevelander in that I put my opinions out there in a public way. Most people back home are more reserved and not so open with what they are thinking or feeling. They just get up, get dressed, go to work, and then look forward to coming home to be with their families. Political involvement is the last thing on their minds. But they will vote…and those votes will go to Mitt Romney this time.
Either Obama loses Cuyahoga County outright (which could happen, because blacks in Cleveland are upset with Democrats over abortion and gay marriage and will be sitting home on Election Day in higher numbers than ever) or it’s such an anemic win that he doesn’t get the numbers he needs out of Greater Cleveland to carry the state.
From what I am hearing, people on the ground in Ohio’s other main cities of Toledo, Akron/Canton, Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati believe black turnout there will be incredibly low as well…and that the suburbs around those urban centers will solidly go for Romney.
This means Obama is one and done…and out of our lives in January of next year.
I don’t think any of this sentiment registers in polls or is being factored by the analysts in the Ministry of Truth. I don’t know if that’s purposeful on their part, or they just look down on the people in places like Parma, Ohio and don’t stop to think about what these folks will really be doing on Election Day. I also don’t think Minitru wants to admit that Americans genuinely wanted to elect a black president in 2008 and they really wanted the man to succeed…but when they saw he failed and couldn’t deliver they knew they needed to move on to someone who could keep his promises. So they are firing Obama and replacing him with Romney but they’re not doing it with any hard feelings.
According to my Ohio contacts, people just want the Election to be over…for the Obama years to become part of the past and history…and for the future to start fresh with Romney in just a few months.
Are you seeing or hearing anything like this where you live?
Do you have a ground report that’s similar about your home town?
This is an open thread, so please also look for any good articles that can help people understand where this election is headed or give a fuller picture of the race than what Minitru is painting.
Why the Obamas’ REALLY lost their law licenses. Answer may surprise you.
Because I live in Chicago, one of the questions I get asked a lot via email or comments on this site is if I know why the Obamas both lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois (not that a lack of license can really stop a Democrat from practicing law…just ask Elizabeth Warren about that). I think I know why they lost their licenses, but the answer may surprise (or disappoint) you.
According to people I know who worked with Michelle Obama when she was employed by the City of Chicago, Michelle hated being a lawyer. The work was too hard and she was not very good at it. The reason Michelle went to work for the City is because she was hired via a recommendation from Jesse Jackson which then qualified her as a “Jesse Hire”; this is slang here in Chicago for an “untouchable hire”, meaning this is someone on the City payroll who can never be fired or even disciplined in any way because their employment was a political favor to someone. In Michelle’s case, that someone was Jesse Jackson and Michelle was thus one of the many black people working for the City at Jackson’s insistence who were not expected to actually do their jobs and instead could read newspapers, shop in catalogs, play Minesweeper on their computers, or just spin aimlessly around in their swivel chairs all day. Michelle reportedly took two or even three lunch breaks a day, would disappear for hours, went on constant “personal appointments” and treated her work space at the City like it was an airport lounge: a place to go for a while to kill time where she could snack, peruse magazines, gossip, and talk loudly on the phone with girlfriends and laugh and laugh and laugh.
No one could say boo to her and a LOT of resentment developed, of course, but this is how Chicago operates and even Mayor Daley (who ruled the city as a king) was terrified of angering Jesse Jackson because Jesse’s big threat was always to find some excuse to dispatch the Rainbow Push Coalition to the streets to rant, rave, scream, and protest that Daley was…wait for it…bet you can’t guess…RACIST!
So, “Jesse Hires” were a form of extortion of the City that required people Jesse personally recommended for jobs be essentially given paid positions to read newspapers and talk about babies for as long as they wanted. It’s not just Jesse who gets these “hires’ though. A lot of Aldermen have them, too…and as long as the Aldermen are in power and have votes the Mayor needs for certain things, then friends and family of the Aldermen get to work for the City in positions similar to the one that Michelle Obama held after she left Sidley Austin. This is all pretty common knowledge in Chicago. Before I was identified as a political writer and my cover was blown (I used to write this site anonymously until Fran Eaton of the Illinois Review outed me for personal reasons because she wanted to help an ex-boyfriend get back at me), I used to work freelance gigs for the City doing event planning or coordinating special projects…which was ridiculously lucrative and a lot of fun. I will never, ever be able to land one of those freelancing assignments again because I’m clearly no fan of Rahm Emanuel but back in the Daley days when I was doing these gigs I saw a lot of these “untouchable hires” just taking up space in the various offices I’d visit in my day. These people were always kept in the very back, in cubicles, and some of them would even sleep during the day. Once, I saw a group of them playing cards…in a work area, not a break room. Some of these positions require driving around town but it’s not really with any particular goal in mind. They might be listed as delivery people, but they don’t deliver much and spend about 7 hours just cruising around, stopping for snacks, maybe going to a movie. Whatever they want.
Michelle Obama “worked” in this capacity for a few years, until Valerie Jarrett (whom she became friends with during her stint as a “Jesse Hire”) took her with her when she went over to the University of Chicago Medical Center. I believe at that time that Barack Obama was already a state senator and it was clear he was being pushed for bigger things…so it was natural for the Medical Center to want the senator’s wife on the payroll so that they could funnel money to him through her as rewards for steering legislation towards passage that would benefit University of Chicago. This is how Chicago works, folks. Michelle didn’t do any more work at the Medical Center than she did for the City and her job duties involved trying to keep black people from going to the emergency room at the hospital for treatment without insurance and instead go to these sub-par “medical clinics” that the Medical Center wanted them steered towards instead. At one point, Michelle received a ridiculously large raise right around the time that the University of Chicago received a massive funding infusion for the Medical Center from Springfield, where Barack Obama was on his way to becoming a United States Senator. Surely this was just a coincidence and was not a way for University of Chicago to buy favor from the next US Senator representing Illinois by dramatically increasing his wife’s pay to over $300,000/year for doing relatively nothing all day.
After Michelle vacated her position in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign full-time the Medical Center did not bother replacing her and eventually eliminated her old job…since there was no need for this position or the expenditure as it was only there in the first place to buy influence from Michelle’s husband.
Read the rest of this entry »
DAILY DOOM ANTIDOTE: Prevent the corrupt media from using next debate to change meme — 10/9/2012
[ Is the plan to allow the Tokyo Roses in conservative ranks (like Erik Erikson at RedState.com) to bloom again after the next presidential debate on October 16th and declare "Romney fumbled!" or "Obama's back in the game!"? Let's eliminate the possibility of this happening by declaring it unacceptable right here and now for any conservative writer to help the corrupt media change the narrative to a "Romney blew his lead!" and "Obama's winning again!" storyline. ]
It’s amazing what a different that Denver presidential debate on October 3rd, 2012 has made in conservative ranks because I almost feel that a “Daily Doom Antidote” is no longer needed because I don’t see any conservative writers — not even the biggest Tokyo Rose out there, Erik Erikson at RedState.com — claiming “Obama is winning!” anymore. I’m convinced that Erikson was being paid by CNN to purposefully depress and demoralize Romney voters by “being a conservative voice that admits Obama is winning and all hope is lost”, but that debate was such a disaster for Democrats that even Erikson was forced to back off or lose all remaining credibility. I know that even Erikson isn’t shameless enough to try to claim that Joe Biden will win the debate tomorrow against Paul Ryan (or after the debate try to convince his readers that “Biden’s performance was a game changer! Obama’s winning again!”) but I am concerned that the plan for the Tokyo Roses is to wait until after the October 16th Town Hall debate between Romney and Obama to start a “Romney fumbled! Romney has blown his lead! Obama is back and can’t lose now!” meme.
I know this is what the corrupt, vintage media in this country WANTS to do because it serves as Obama’s personal Ministry of Truth (Minitrue, for short) to churn out propaganda like this. If Obama manages to stand upright, can focus on keeping his eyes from staring blankly ahead or meandering down to the floor for long lengths of time, and strings two or three sentences together relatively successfully then Minitrue will declare Obama the undisputed winner of the next debate. That’s when the Tokyo Roses will bloom again in the garden of conservative writers like Erikson to insist the Town Hall was “a game changer!” and the hacks will all have at it, doing what Minitrue wants and expects them to do if they want to continue being the “go-to conservative” for guest slots on CNN, MSNBC, or wherever.
I just have an incredibly hard time believing any of this will work because the sad truth is that Barack Obama is on way too many narcotics for him to whip into shape a week from now.
It should be clear to anyone watching him that the man has a serious drug problem and needs to be in Betty Ford, not preparing for a debate. Valerie Jarrett was supposed to be watching him and was charged with keeping his drug use to manageable levels and making sure it didn’t interfere with his presidency, but clearly she failed. This issue caused the friction between first Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel and then ultimately Jarrett and Bill Daley, which is why Obama goes through Chiefs of Staff like Liz Taylor went through husbands (may she rest in peace). Without a TelePrompTer he can read from, Obama is lost and his brain can no longer access the information he needs to deliver verbally.
Remember those commercials in the 80s where someone fried an egg in a skillet and said “this is your brain on drugs?” while doing it? Educators could easily show high school students footage of Barack Obama at the Denver debate as a cautionary tale to warn them about the consequences of drug use. Barack Obama is this generation’s Judy Garland…which is fitting, since he’s always been a friend of Dorothy.
*****************************************************
MUST READ: This is pretty much a historic event because I am asking you to read something that Andrew Sullivan wrote. Yes, THAT Andrew Sullivan…the guy who had a complete nervous breakdown yesterday, so please savor every word of this column. He just LOST IT. Seriously. In a nutshell, he ranted and raved at Barack Obama for “throwing away the election in that Denver debate”. He really turned on Obama in a heartbeat. It is a sight to behold.
LOOKIT THIS: While we are on the subject of Denver, here’s another take on “why Obama lost” that’s fascinating. Essentially, the Left is admitting that all the things conservatives have said about Obama for years are all true and they were put on display in one place at the same time in Denver: his arrogance, his poor work ethic, his dependence on nonstop praise from the Ministry of Truth that is the corrupt media in this country, etc. What’s fascinating to me is that all of this is stuff I think people should instantly see whenever they look at Obama but for whatever reason the general public didn’t notice until last Wednesday.
AWESOMENESS: I really have to hand it to Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection because the man’s relentless pursuit of Elizabeth Warren for all her many bizarre lies might actually lead to the woman being prosecuted for a crime. We’ve all mocked “Fauxcahontas” for lying about being a Native American so she could benefit from Harvard’s affirmative action policies and earn promotions she didn’t otherwise deserve, but Jacobson’s proving that Warren also practiced Massachusetts state law without being a member of the Massachusetts bar or being in any way qualified to represent clients in the Bay State. Democrats in the state at first refused to look into any of this, but Jacobson kept up the pressure and now the governing body assigned to investigate improper conduct by attorneys is being forced to get involved. Absent Jacobson, this would not have happened.
I highlight this because in olden days this country actually had a media that was interested in stories like this, with journalists who hoped to make names for themselves by rooting out corruption and exposing people like Warren for improper conduct they engaged in repeatedly. That was before the media in this country became Minitrue, a de facto arm of the Democrat Party. Absent any professional media doing its job, people like Jacobson have stepped up to fill that niche and stories indeed still break…it’s just that citizen-journalists and amateur sleuths are the ones breaking them.
I want to take this as another opportunity to encourage all of you to stop using the pejoratives “blogger” or “blog” and delete them from your vocabulary. If you call someone like Jacobson a “blogger”, I want to ask you to never come back to this site again because I don’t want you as a reader. I’m dead serious about that too, because I am tired of conservatives helping the Left every day by using the words Democrats WANT you to use to disparage and diminish the people who work hard every day to break the stories that Minitrue deliberately won’t touch. The Left goes out of its way to say things like “blogger William Jacobson” because that diminishes his work and attempts to relegate him to the same realm as people who maintain rarely-updated web pages about their household pets or a vacation they took once many years ago. THOSE people “blog”. Jacobson — and other conservative writers like him — deserve much more respect than that because the work they are doing is important and vital and is purposefully NOT being done by Minitrue because it hurts Democrats. Calling sites like Legal Insurrection “blogs” is just rude of you…and ignorant, too, because they are much more important than that.
Words matter. They’re really like tiny magical spells. Words shape public perception and are artfully crafted in sentences by talented wordsmiths to impact elections by either driving memes that benefit one side or the other or by mitigating things that are harmful to protected parties. If you watch carefully, you’ll see that the writers and talking heads that comprise Minitrue never, ever use words that put Republicans or conservatives in a good light…and go out of their way to use terms like “blogger” or “blog” to lower the credibility and respect afforded to conservative writers whom the Left seeks to diminish. Meanwhile, conservatives stupidly call people “bloggers” and help the Left in its mission because “this is how I always talk and I’m going to use the words I want and nobody can tell me any different”. That’s why Republicans also keep using the word “liberal” to describe Democrats, even though that’s the word Democrats WANT them to use and it’s how they describe themselves because focus groups have shown that most Americans associate the word with “openness to new ideas” and “the desire to work with all sides” when nothing could be further from the truth about the Democrat Party today. These people are Leftists and calling anything other than that (or “lefties” as a variation on the theme) is foolish. Words matter. So stop using terms that help the people you DON’T support…and stop using words that HURT good people who are on OUR SIDE.
I know it’s hard, but if you ever wonder why nothing ever changes in this country and why the Left always seems to win the messaging wars it’s because you keep saying “liberals” and keep calling conservative writers “bloggers”. If you would only decide today was the day you were going to stop doing this, it would be a step in the right direction. And it would mean that tomorrow you could start trying to get big leaguers like Rush Limbaugh to stop using the word “liberal”, too, which is one of his favorite words to say (I know)…but unfortunately railing against “liberals” has been his schtick for many years and it’s hard to get people in conservative ranks to switch strategic gears with verbiage.
Notice that Democrats have no trouble doing just that, though. This is fascinating for me because I was raised a Democrat and remained one until 2008…and branding and messaging were drilled into us. As a Democrat, for whatever reason I just always picked up on whatever the new marketing strategy was for whatever issue I cared about and followed the new verbiage that went with it. If you ever listen to Democrats, they speak consistently from the same script and echo the same terms over and over again. This is because everything they say has been focus-group tested and high-paid consultants worked hard on determining the absolute best way to present issues to sway people to the Democrats’ side. I think the Clintons perfected this sort of thing during their time in the White House and it became part of Democrat political culture after that.
If a word or phrase doesn’t get a desired reaction from the public, you’ll never hear a Democrat say it again. If someone does, there will be calls and emails and texts telling that person to stop it. One consequence that’s common is that you will never see that person give a live interview again if he or she can’t stop using the verbiage that doesn’t score well for Democrats.
Conservatives tend to roll their eyes at this stuff, but corporations live and die by their marketing and understand the power of words. That’s why PR teams make so much money and branding is the life blood of businesses.
I really wish Republicans would start to understand this instead of taking the weird attitude that “that stuff doesn’t matter” or “I’ll talk how I want and I don’t care about branding”. Democrats don’t pay attention to this stuff because it’s fun or they have nothing better to do. They focus on it because this is how they persuade people to their side.
Words matter.
*********************************************************
What else is on your mind today?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
What’s happening on the ground in your state?
This is an Open Thread (as is every Daily Doom Antidote) so have at it and try to find good articles or other links that counter any doom and gloom that Minitrue tries to instill in Republican ranks today.
Rahm Emanuel Terrified of Something in Chicago: Another round of expensive telephone survey polling underway
So, my boyfriend Justin’s been avoiding a mysterious caller coming from the number (720) 582-8383 for the last week and this morning I told him to just take the call because it was most likely a political survey and I’d answer it for him. It was a research company in Denver, Colorado hired by Rahm Emanuel to poll Chicagoans about what they think of him. I had an awful lot of fun taking this survey and telling the pollster how bad a job Rahm is doing…and was interested in the amount of emphasis that was given to Rahm’s dealings with the police and the scary rise in crime and murder that’s been happening in Chicago for the last couple of years.
If you don’t answer pollsters when they call you, I wish you’d reconsider that because it’s actually a lot of fun. About midway through the survey, though, I have to admit my eyes did start to glaze over because the guy who called me was not very good at his job and went through it all in a monotone that made me itching to hang up. I bet a lot of people do indeed hang up or get bored as the questions just keep coming. The whole call took about 12 minutes or so to finish. Justin, of course, didn’t want to talk to the man on the phone but was fascinated by my talking to him and camped down on the floor by my desk while I went through the survey.
First the pollster asked to speak to “Justin” and I said that was me (since Justin didn’t want to talk to anyone) and he then asked if I still lived in Chicago, which I did.
He next asked if I had time to take the survey and promised it would be quick…then he told me it was a survey on local government in the City of Chicago. Now, you need to read between the lines to figure out that Rahm Emanuel paid for this and so you don’t know at the very beginning whether that’s true or not…but by the end of the call if you pay attention to how things are phrased it becomes clear this was Rahm paying for a poll to determine how badly he’s being perceived by voters in Chicago and how this might be dragging Democrats down in Illinois for the presidential election. Calls like this did not come to Justin when Mayor Daley was in office, I think largely because people just accepted Daley as the King of Chicago and his favorability numbers were pretty consistent always. The sun rose in the morning, the Cubs lose baseball games, and Richard Daley is Mayor of Chicago. That’s how life was here for many, many years. It’s a whole new ballgame with the former ballerina, Studio 54 club kid, and closeted homosexual Rahm Emanuel in office though.
The survey started off by asking my opinion (from 0-100) of various political and governmental figures affecting Chicago. Here is who the pollster asked about and how I scored them:
Barack Obama = 0
Some French named person I had never heard of whose last name stared with a “B” = Never heard of him
Police Chief Someone or Another = 15
Somebody Murphy Something = 10
Rahm Emanuel = 0
Karen Lewis, the woman who looked like that secretary in Monster’s Inc. and is the teachers’ union president = 0
Alderman (the pollster just said “Your Alderman”, which for us is Tom Tunney) = 0
Next, the pollster went through a list of issues and asked if I thought they were important problems facing Chicago. The list included: education, crime and youth violence, corruption and cronyism, public services, police staffing, and the city budget (which is being prepared now and will be unveiled soon…and I think this was the purpose of the polling).
During the call, there was a purposefully confusing switch from “rate this 1-100, with 50 meaning you have no opinion” to “now rate these as Strongly Agree, Agree Somewhat, Disagree Somewhat…” and other variations like “I agree strongly but have recently changed my mind…” etc. The reason they do this is so you are forced to think about what answer to give, instead of just sitting there saying “Agree” over and over again. I think they change the format of each set of questions so that the people being polled don’t zone out and start saying the same thing over and over to finish the call faster.
There were probably about 8-10 different sections in the poll, and many of them run together now in my mind though I literally started writing this ground report on the polling the minute I hung up the phone. I mostly said things were terrible here in Chicago and that Rahm’s doing a bad job as Mayor, which is true. One of the questions was actually written by Rahm himself, I think, because it had his particularly brand of conceited stink to it — this involved asking what I felt about Rahm as Mayor and was skewed so you could only give answers like “I had high hopes for him but he disappointed me” or “I expected a lot from him and he delivered”. There was no option to say that you never liked him and always thought he was strange and weird and he pretty much has turned out to be that way in office too.
Some of the issues touched on in the poll:
* that gang and youth violence has reached epidemic proportions and people don’t feel safe living in Chicago anymore
* taxes are driving business out of town
* Rahm cares more about downtown than neighborhoods
* there are not enough police and the police we do have are lazy or are assigned to cushy neighborhoods instead of the war zones on the south and southwest side
* there are not enough youth programs so kids turn to gangs and violence for something to do
* unemployment is higher than what’s being admitted in the media
* Rahm is a bully who rules the city through fear and intimidation
* people are afraid the City is trying to trick them with hidden fees or hard to understand fines
* would people accept a $5 tax per month on energy to pay for more cops
* should more money go to schools despite poor student performance
* do you feel safe leaving your house in Chicago?
I don’t want to joke about this, because it’s serious, but with that last one you have to ask people here in Chicago “when was the last time you were robbed by black youths?” instead of “were you ever mugged?” because if you live in Chicago you will at some point be mugged by black youths who are allowed to run wild here in this city due to political correctness. I was last mugged here in the summer of 2009 I think…and Justin was last mugged in maybe 2008. It was a group of 3-4 black males who jumped both of us…and it’s usually 3-4 black males who have jumped everyone else I know that has been mugged in Chicago at one point or another. Justin’s mugging happened when he was leaving an “El” station downtown around 10pm one Saturday night and mine happened when I was walking through Lincoln Park near the zoo at around 9pm just after dark in maybe August three years ago (they jumped out of the bushes at me where they had been hiding and my brain at first processed the muggers as monsters, trolls, or maybe escaped zoo animals until I realized they were just criminals who wanted my phone, wallet, and digital camera).
I guess you could say that crime happens in all major cities but in Chicago there is a weird obsession with pretending that black people aren’t committing these crimes and that young black men in particular are note roaming the streets in gangs to mug people or rob them with weapons. Did you read the Harry Potter books and feel frustrated when the idiots in that series kept trying to pretend that Voldemort was not back and that his followers the Death Eaters were not trying to murder people again? Those clowns were so afraid of whatever that they purposefully kept themselves from even saying Voldemort’s name and instead would whisper “He Who Must Not Be Named” when talking about him in euphemism. It’s like that in Chicago with black people from the south side: it’s not socially acceptable to talk about blacks riding the El up north to commit crimes in Boystown, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, or wherever because Democrats in Chicago want to pretend that black people aren’t doing this…and that they aren’t coming up north to hunt and prey on white people before riding back home to the south side with their loot.
It’s racist, of course, to point this out and the lefties rev up to scream “Not all black people are doing this so you can’t make generalizations!”. Well, I was mugged by 3-4 black thugs. Justin was mugged by 3-4 black thugs. I have at least a dozen gay friends who were mugged by gangs of 3-4 black thugs in the last five years. So that’s not a generalization, it’s a criminal pattern.
And it’s not going to stop so long as the police department here in Chicago is prevented from “generalizing”.
Since most of the survey was about police and crime and the budget — and just one or two questions was about education — I think Rahm has moved on from the teachers’ union strike and is worried about new threats to his standing as Mayor. Remember that Rahm grew up politically in the Clinton White House and that the Clintons are big on using polling to make decisions. The last segment of the survey was about the City budget and the pollster asked if I was aware that a budget would be released soon. Then I was asked if I had positive feelings about Rahm’s solutions to city problems, which was more of that nonsense like “creating after school problems to keep youth out of trouble” and “creating a new position of Small Business Liaison to help small businesses grow in Chicago”. No mention was made about lowering taxes in Cook County to entice businesses to return to a city they fled, of course. In case you don’t know this, Chicago is the most heavily-taxed and frequently fined city in the country…beating even Los Angeles.
I actually really love living here though, but Justin wants to move south. He’s afraid I’m going to upset Rahm Emanuel too much with something I write and I’ll be murdered in a “mugging gone bad” when it will really be a political hit from Rahm just to shut me up…and no one will ever be able to prove otherwise since there are so many of these muggings and random killings here. Part of the survey asked if people felt Rahm was a bully or if he ruled through fear and I guess that’s true, but I look at the guy and I’ve never been afraid of him. I think it’s because I’ve heard all about what he used to do in bathhouses and I know all about how he used to pick up young guys at MiniBar or how he’d abuse his cute, young male interns. Somehow, this makes him seem more Liberace than Al Capone to me. I know Rahm’s health isn’t good and that word on the street here in Chicago has been that he has HIV and that he’s had it for years (probably picking it up in a bathhouse or from a rent boy while he was still in DC). I just don’t see Rahm becoming a fixture here in Chicago the way Daley was and personally hope the “Think Squad” of prominent black Chicagoans I know will succeed in finding a great black candidate to run against Rahm for Mayor in the next election. Because that’s who it will take to beat Rahm…the next Harold Washington or someone of that sort of stature. Democrats, however, are successfully pitting blacks and Hispanics against each other here in Chicago so that Rahm can hold power…and no doubt the Left will pump some idiot like Luis Guitierrez up to think HE can be the next Mayor, so that votes are divided and Rahm squeaks to a win. You would be stunned by how stupid Guitierrez is and how much ego drives some of the fools here in Chicago.
But, Rahm’s not healthy enough to rule this town as King for decades like Daley…so either he’s booted in the next election or his health renders him a two-term Mayor of Chicago. I don’t see him being around for much longer than that. I also can’t imagine his general nastiness and caustic personality will wear well through the years if already he’s having to poll people to see if they think he’s too much of a bully. Mayor Daley never had to do that, and he was actually kind of a bully himself…but he was an endearing bully who got a lot of good things done. So far, Rahm has no visible achievements as Mayor of Chicago besides an increased murder rate, a teachers’ union strike, and disruptive events like the G-8 nightmare back in May.
He’s sure spending a lot of money on polls, though.
Politicians do that when they are scared of something.
This close to a presidential election I think Rahm is actually worried about his bad press and poor job performance lowering Democrat turnout in Illinois. It’s still not probably that Romney will win Illinois, but it is actually possible this year. That’s huge news that no one is really writing about because they think it’s so bizarre to imagine Obama losing his “home state”. But, it actually COULD happen.
If not, there’d be no poll like this running right now. Why spend this money when they don’t have to?
DAILY DOOM ANTIDOTE: Why 2012 is not 2008 for Democrats — 10/5/2012
Let’s spend some time today to get to the root of why 2012 is not anything like 2008 for Democrats; this really cuts to the heart of why Barack Obama will lose to Mitt Romney in a few weeks and should help those of you with annoying, braying Eeyores in your life silence these perpetual doom-and-gloom machines.
I love anecdotal evidence that we collect here at HB because I think it paints a fuller picture of what’s happening on the ground nationwide than the columns written about the election by members of the corrupt, vintage media who’ve devoted themselves to Obama as his Ministry of Truth (Minitrue, for short). A personal observation of mine has been that Obama-loving trolls have become virtually extinct on the Internet this year. In fact, they are rarer than the unicorns of hopeychange these days. Back in 2008, however, any site that was pro-Hillary or pro-McCain/Palin was deluged by insidious cyberstalking trolls and malicious kool-aid gulping goblins who’d try to post the absolute most hateful things about anyone not supporting “The One”. These trolls are largely absent now. It’s often weeks between appearances of such Obama acolytes in our spam filters here…and I’ve noticed that even on sites that are not moderated the trolls have completely vanished.
Great examples of this can be found on entertainment sites. I enjoy monitoring People.com and EW.com for any articles remotely related to politics. Back in 2008, these threads would be filled to bursting with pro-Obama remarks and anyone criticizing “The One” would be mercilessly assailed by these Obama trolls…who, of course, would call those not supporting him “racists” and other vile pejoratives. In 2012, it’s now rare to see anyone say nice things about Obama and the people who express disappointment in him or say they are voting for Romney are not maligned very much, if at all.
In 2008, the fear of being called a “racist” for not voting for Obama was incredibly strong in a lot of people, especially those who wanted to prove how not-racist they were by doing anything they could to help the first “black president” be elected. In 2012, after four years of nonstop screams of “racism” whenever Obama was criticized or challenged on anything, the accusation of “racist!” has lost all its power. Sure, the usual token black writers at various publications overseen by Minitrue continue to churn out incendiary columns accusing people who don’t support Obama of being racist or who use racism as a constant excuse for Obama’s failures…but few listen to these clowns anymore. When Obama’s loss is examined by historians many years from now I think it will be clear that constantly accusing people who didn’t support him of being racist was a foolish strategic move on Obama’s part since it completely burned away any residual white guilt he could have benefitted from in 2012. I know it alienated a great many people and members of the black community now resent Obama for “ruining white guilt”, which is something that blacks have always exploited to their advantage for decades. All that’s gone now…and along with it the fear a lot of people had about speaking the truth about the ills of the black community. Obama exploited all this for his own gain in 2008 and tried to milk it for all it was worth this year…but in the end he hurt the black community most of all because the most powerful weapon and lobbying tool blacks held has been depleted and won’t ever be as useful again.
The biggest difference between 2012 and 2008 that’s never talked about by Minitrue is that the 2008 election was a fluke and a fad. I’m 35 and can sit here and think back on all the fads that I remember that swept the nation and made people crazy for a while, either to buy something, become fans of people or a group, or to be terrified of something. I invite you to make a similar list, but here’s my rough remembrance of the fads I’ve lived through:
1983 — Thriller, where even white people I knew wanted to dress like Michael Jackson and had his red leather jacket…and went on and on about the special effects in that video…and there were Jackson dolls too that grown adults went nuts for. It was nonstop Thriller/Michael Jackson for a few years when I was in grade school and I just never understood what the big deal was.
1985 or so — Cabbage Patch Kids…which resulted in hysterical frenzies at stores with people snatching up these dolls (once again, I couldn’t understand this)
mid-80s — Halloween candy terror scare…where people who love fear porn went insane thinking there were razor blades in Halloween candy, forcing everyone to get their candy x-rayed at emergency rooms (thanks local news fear porn peddlers!)
mid-80s — the “people are tampering with bottles at the store and putting things inside terror scare”…similar to the Halloween one, but this time it was making everyone scared to death of buying things at the store because someone could have tampered with it.
1988 or so — New Kids on the Block…where the girls in my grade school class would scream if they even saw something with NKOTB on it (and of course they never could see that one of them was clearly gay)
1990s — I was too old for this, but the Pokemon and anime fads hit hard at this time, with the generation below me that was still young enough to play with toys while I was in high school started to go nuts for what I think is poorly-drawn and ridiculous cartoons…but it was a big fad back then.
late-90s — Beanie Babies…do you remember when people would get into physical fights over these and grown adults would obsess over getting variants of this or that stuffed animal that they thought they could invest in like they were made of gold? I remember a story on McDonald’s putting Beanie Babies in Happy Meals and refusing to sell the toys without the meals…and people were actually buying them and then throwing away the food right outside the restaurants because they just wanted those Beanie Babies. People went out of their minds for these toys. Grown adults. Completely insane for stuffed animals, to the point where they thought they could retire if they bought enough of these and found someone to buy their collection in a few years. This really happened.
late-90s — Furrbies and Digipets. I still don’t know what these were, really, but I remember when Rosie O’Donnell was still pretending to be straight (and having on-air “crushes” on Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Scott Wolf and other closet cases) she’d go on and on about these on her daytime TV show. And then she got bitter and angry and went crazy.
also-90s — the e-coli fear porn scare…where people were told by Minitrue to be terrified of eating meat because it could have e-coli in it!
2001 — 9/11 hysteria…where for several years people were so shellshocked by 9/11 that they couldn’t think straight and any criticism of the government at all was considered traitorous. You might not remember this, but I do because I was a Democrat back then still and though I never hated George W. Bush I didn’t much like him when he was president (and in fact I only appreciated the man after he left office and saw what he was replaced with). But I do remember those early years after 9/11 where anyone saying anything about Bush’s handling of Iraq and Afghanistan was pummeled to the ground by people who’d say things like “we’re at war” and “that’s unpatriotic”. It was a giant, angry, hive mind mentality in response to Islam’s attacks on America.
2001 — pro-Muslim political correctness…this was the most bizarre fad of all and it’s still raging, with people feeling some strange need to pretend that Islam really didn’t attack us and that Muslims aren’t really irrational monsters who seek to destroy the West and murder scores of innocents. George W. Bush started this when he kept insisting that Islam was “a religion of peace” after Muslims murdered thousand of people on American soil (including a personal friend of mine), destroyed the World Trade Center, smashed a plane into the Pentagon (because the White House was too hard a target to spot from the air), and attempted to blow up the US Capitol (but were thwarted by passengers who stopped them from reaching DC). I cannot begin to tell you how much I want this fad to end and for the American people to wake up and see that Islam is as evil in the world as Nazism was back in its own heyday.
2000s — the boy bands fad…there was a new group of them every week it seemed, with some kid in there for every demographic. And, funnily enough, at least one boy from every group ended up being gay (with ‘NSync having THREE gay members) and the teenybopper girls (and Rahm Emanuel) who loved these groups had no idea they were crushing in the wrong places.
2000s — the iPod/iPhone frenzies…the iPod is old news but people are still all about their iPhones. I can remember back in 2005 when I first moved to Chicago everyone was all about their iPods though, and the iTunes store, and whatever. I’m not a big music guy and will sometimes put the radio on or listen to a song on YouTube but I’ve yet to buy anything from the iTunes store.
2008 — Barack Obama…another frenzied fad that swept the nation…with a slick marketing and branding campaign that whipped people up into a frenzy. There was never a political campaign like it, with literally everyone working in TV and radio and in newspapers just about ordering people to vote for him. He had his creepy “Eye of Obama” symbol everywhere, his weird Smurf-blue color scheme, his own special font…and it was just endless and horrible and took until about 2010 or so to completely wear off. But this support, like all fads, definitely did end.
There is no similar “must vote for Obama” fad here in 2012.
The media won’t talk about that because Minitrue won’t admit that Obama only won in 2008 because he surfed a once-in-a-lifetime (thank Hera!) perfect tsunami of fads. Americans wanted to prove they weren’t racist and elect a black president…and so, CHECK!
Republicans nominated a grotesque, goblin-like very old man that few people ever really liked and Obama was something new and shiny in a country where new and shiny lends itself to fads…CHECK!
People were tired of George W. Bush and would have elected anyone that Democrats put up that year, and Democrats chose to have a black president before a female one (I’ll let you in on a little secret and it’s that Democrats really don’t like or think much about women…that’s why it’s so easy to reduce them to talking vaginas at their convention; Democrats are misogynists at heart and really hate women so the first female president is going to be a Republican and we may or may not already know her depending on how well Romney does in his presidency and if he sets Paul Ryan up to win in his own right in 2020)…Barack Obama fit the bill of a black candidate that didn’t come across like a nasty Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton race-baiter (though he really was like them at heart)…and so, CHECK!
Minitrue’s members had been taught his journalism school that Mission Critical was to “atone for the sins of the past” by doing everything in their power to elect a black president…and Obama came along, so CHECK!
The public fell in line, with a large number of people hoping that by sending Barack and Michelle to the White House and gaining a black First Family for this country we could all turn the page or entirely close the book on accusations of racism in America. That, however, didn’t happen because Democrats want to keep exploiting racial grievance and strife for political purposes. They are like the Ty Toy Company still making Beanie Babies at late-90s production levels and wondering why people aren’t buying those as much anymore. Democrats don’t understand that people have moved on. Minitrue doesn’t understand that voters have moved forward and don’t want to resample the old, stale kool-aid they may have loved so much just four years ago.
Barack Obama was a disappointment to many and embarrasses a lot of his old voters in the way people who hoarded Beanie Babies or fought tooth and nail for Cabbage Patch Kids back in the day. I don’t know what it is about this country that makes people go crazy together every once in a while for something they collectively decide is THE BEST THING EVER but that’s what happened in 2008. Those of us who were immune to the fad don’t understand what people ever saw in Obama any more than we “get” what girls loved about the New Kids or ‘NSync back in their days. It just completely escapes us, like we’re immune to a virus or something that renders other people nuts for a while.
But there’s just no denying that whatever propelled Obama into the White House last time is just not present here in 2012. Minitrue is pretending it’s still there…and is running polls that claim it’s still there…but the fad is over.
Please remind the Eeyores in your life about the many fads Americans went through, and then discarded…and apply that sentiment to Barack Obama’s hopeychange fad of 2008. I think even the most demoralized and irritating Eeyore can see that 2012 is very much different from 2008…no matter what the tee-vee is saying because Minitrue has a vested interest in lying and pretending the fad never died.
*****************************************************
What else is happening where you live?
What are people on the ground by you talking about?
Will Barack Obama win your state or has the fad been broken enough that sensible people will make the right choice this time?
Time to tell everyone you know about Jeremiah Wright’s “Down Low Club” #BarackObama #PresObama
Dr. Jerome Corsi has bravely broken the longstanding embargo on talking about Jeremiah Wright’s “Down Low Club” at Trinity United Church of Christ here in Chicago. You can read his article on this HERE, via WND.
Like “Fight Club”, the first rule of the “Down Low Club” is to never talk about the “Down Low Club”. If you do, you will be murdered. That’s not a joke. There were a string of murders from 2005-2007 that involved men who were killed because they had knowledge of Jeremiah Wright’s Down Low Club and the closeted gay black men who partook in the club’s orchestrated cover-up of their homosexuality.
In Corsi’s article, he talks about three of the murders (including Donald Young, whom you may have heard of). I also believe a string of bizarre assassination-style killings in Boystown around that same time are also linked to the Down Low Club…but these were white men on the north side of Chicago who were murdered in their apartments by someone the police here never would admit was a serial killer. I moved to Chicago in the spring of 2005 and back then the strip of gay clubs called Halsted was plastered with flyers warning guys to be careful with whom they were bringing home since a murderer was loose killing guys who frequented the bars in Boystown; for those who can remember back to the 90s, this is the same area where Jeffrey Dahmer picked up some of his victims. Chicago was also where John Wayne Gacy (a delegate for Jimmy Carter!) also hunted.
Back then, Mayor Daley did his best to cover up the murders and the corrupt, vintage media worked as a Ministry of Truth (Minitrue for short) for Democrats, as always. “Nothing to see here! Move along!” was the motto of the day, but it never made sense why the killings just stopped at around three guys or why those guys in particular were chosen by the killer.
In 2007, when Donald Young was murdered in his home around Christmas I was already working on the Hillary Clinton campaign and was told repeatedly by my black friends that Young was killed because he started talking to people about Barack Obama being gay. Hillary’s campaign knew about Obama’s antics on the Chicago gay scene where he was jokingly known as “Bathhouse Barry”. What conservatives don’t understand is that Hillary couldn’t use anything salacious she had on Obama because she needed the black vote behind her if she won the nomination. Hillary’s hands were always tied when it came to nuking Obama with his homosexuality because if it was tied back to her then blacks would be alienated from the Clintons forever since they “went there” and “ruined” the first viable black presidential candidate. There’s another reason that Hillary Clinton would never out Barack Obama and it’s simply that — despite what the obsessive Hillary-haters have felt for twenty-odd-years — the woman is actually a very nice person who just never wanted to go nuclear on anyone. That right there might mean she wouldn’t have made a good President, if she isn’t willing to dump her biggest weapons on an enemy…but I will leave that up to you to decide for yourself.
To this day, people in Chicago are still scared about being murdered for talking about Barack Obama being gay or about what goes on at Trinity United with the still-active “Down Low Club”. Young, gay, black men are mentored into the club and are eventually paired up with often unattractive and difficult to deal with straight black women who never have boyfriends (since guys don’t want to have anything to do with them). A friend of mine in the “Think Squad” of prominent black professionals I talk to regularly calls these women “heifers” and says it’s very common for “cake boys” to be paired up with “heifers” so that “dummies are fooled” into thinking they are straight. Besides the Obamas, famous examples of this are Steadman Graham and Oprah Winfrey (he’s gay, while she’s just plain nasty and conceited), Star Jones and her gay husband whatever his name was, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Plummer (who eventually came out and left her), and Will Smith and Jada Pinckett (who are actually both gay…which is really rare in these arranged marriages because typically gay guys are not married to lesbians for some reason).
It’s kind of hilarious that straight people can’t see this stuff for what it really is, but then again for many years people believed that Rock Hudson and Elton John were both really married to women for love, too.
In retrospect, that’s laughable and crazy…but so will it be in about 5-10 years when the truth about Barack and Michelle Obama comes out as well. And it will come out, too, as soon as people are no longer afraid of being murdered for talking about it.
Chicago is ruled by fear. Living here, people are terrified of the City coming after them with tickets and fines for all sorts of things. Literally, the City tries to trick you into getting parking tickets by posting sets of signs that restrict parking in ways more Byzantine and tangled than the logic problems on an LSAT exam. Then there’s the very real fear of ever saying and doing something to offend an Alderman…who will often times set out on a course of vengeance against you that results in all manner of fines, your losing your lease, your business license being taken away, etc. These guys operate with impunity like mafia Dons in most cases. If you run afoul of the Democrat Party here in some way, you could lose your job if pressure is applied against your boss to fire you…or you’ll just be beaten by goons hired by precinct captains and ward bosses one day. The police will show interest in ever investigating your beating…or your murder if it was politically ordered by Democrats or friends of Democrats. When you land at O’Hare or Midway and see Al Capone’s face on shot glasses and tee shirts just know that his spirit is very much alive in this city, especially with Rahm Emanuel in the Mayor’s office.
Rahm is gay too. I have friends who have slept with him. And, yes, he’s a total bottom if that’s not too much information for you. For years, Rahm has exclusively hired little gay interns who resemble the Hollywood stars that Rahm years for (if you go to the Mayor’s office and see a lot of guys who look like Zac Ephron hanging around, well now you know why). Rahm’s also been very generous politically with his toy boys…ultimately graduating many of them from his stable into choice positions in law firms and brokerage houses by using his political connections. A lot of these guys are straight, too, by the way…but that’s called “gay for pay” when good looking straight guys and gym bunnies essentially prostitute themselves to older gay men for the chance at gaining access to high-paying careers in a bad economy. You probably don’t want to know what some straight guys are willing to do for a while to land big careers in Chicago. This stuff has been happening for years and is very similar to the way Hollywood studios are run. Very few big name male actors made it to the top without being a bottom for a while on casting couches “paying their dues” to the gay producers, directors, and executives who promised them big things down the line.
Rahm Emanuel is worse than Barney Frank in a lot of ways, but everyone’s always been too terrified of him to speak openly about the things he does. He’s sent people dead fish as warnings…has screamed naked at people in the Congressional gym…and here in Chicago as Mayor he holds the Sword of Damocles over a great many heads with the ability to summon any number of goons to persecute and harass people at will. This is what happens when Democrats are re-elected to office over and over again for generations in a city like Chicago.
All this will end one day, because if enough people ridicule the likes of Rahm and Obama the fear people have will vanish. Ridicule is the antidote to fear. Conservative writers never want to touch these topics because they’re afraid of being blackballed for talking about Rahm or Obama being blueballed and jonesing for the old days when they could just head to the baths any time they want and engage in the activities they liked doing with other guys. Take a look at Erik Erikson at RedState for instance. Do you notice how he’s slowly readjusting what he writes to suit Minitrue’s narratives now that he’s working for CNN and wants to eventually be a full-time personality there? When the big money is pushed in front of conservative writers, they lose interest in writing stories that damage the Left and instead think about all the cool things they’ll get to buy when they sell out completely to Minitrue’s wishes.
I’m surprised Dr. Corsi has put everything on the line and taken on the Trinity United story and the Down Low Club. He’s a brave, brave man. No doubt, he’ll have speaking engagements canceled and will have trouble booking himself on radio and TV shows in the future because when you start telling the secrets about gay politicians there are consequences for you personally and professionally. Minitrue will punish you…but other conservatives will as well since they want to stay in Minitrue’s good graces (in hopes they can become the next Erik Erikson).
A lot of the stuff that people don’t know is because Minitrue doesn’t want you to know any of this…since it hurts Democrats.
But, it’s all there. Like I’ve said a thousand times already, people talk about this stuff NONSTOP in the bars and gay clubs here in Chicago. It’s not a secret to any of us on the ground. Every black person I know has intimate knowledge of the Down Low Club. It’s as well-known as the gospel choir and serves as distinct and important a purpose. Every black church has a “program” like the Down Low Club, though few to none will call it that. Some white Baptist churches have misguided efforts like this too…where clearly gay men are pushed to marry the women in the church that no straight men wants. This prevents the women from becoming spinsters and gives the gay guys the beards they need to be productive (and reproductive, in cases like Obama’s) members of society. What better way to disappear the gay guys in your congregation while simultaneously getting rid of the women that have bad attitudes or are too ugly for straight guys to want anything to do with?
I know it’s bizarre to come to the realization that a closeted gay black man is currently President of the United States…but that is reality, folks. I’ve told you before that I had an aunt who was in LOVE with Liberace all through the 70s and into the 80s…and even ten years after his death she STILL would not admit the man was gay. I heard from my cousin that it was only about five years ago that she FINALLY took down the pictures she had of him in the little shrine she’d created of his memorabilia (and sold it all on eBay). There are older women I know who still walk around brokenhearted over Rock Hudson. In a few years, the teenyboppers of today will be doing the same thing over Taylor Lautner, Zac Ephron, and Leonardo DiCaprio. I don’t know why straight people have such a hard time sometimes picking out gay guys…but then again, I’m oblivious to most closeted lesbians so maybe it’s something that only gay guys can spot in each other.
Trinity United has a lot to lose and will not respond well to Dr. Corsi’s expose. I expect the blowback to be fierce. I hope he’s ready for it. There are a lot of powerful and influential black gay men in Chicago who had their marriages of convenience arranged through Jeremiah Wright who will not want their covers blown. A few Bears players. Doctors. Lawyers. Political figures. Ministers. CEOs. You name it.
And, of course, the current President of the United States too.
But you already knew that.
