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?
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Kevin…here is a poll discussed in an editorial at Investor’s Business Daily titled “Could Obama Lose His Home State Of Illinois?”
The article ends with this…
“Unfortunately for the GOP, they wrote off Illinois before the campaign season began,” noted Miller. “Considering that President Obama may underperform by a large percentage, and that his numbers in Cook County are not nearly as strong as they were four years ago, Illinois could have been in play. It may not be too late to make Illinois purple.”
In 2000, Al Gore lost the presidency, not because of hanging chads in Florida, but because he couldn’t carry his home state of Tennessee.
If Romney wins big, Illinois may be part of the landslide. If Romney loses narrowly, Illinois might be proof of the folly of listening to the conventional wisdom and might be the big one that got away.”
Read the whole thing for the actual polling data…very interesting.
http://tinyurl.com/CouldObamaLoseIllinois
or
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/100512-628435-polls-show-obama-could-lose-illinois.htm#ixzz28dokQdWP
I posted the article yesterday to ask if Mitt should dump some money into advertising in IL. If this is true then he should maybe carpet bomb IL for a few days to see how his inside polling there looks. If he moves the needle up? Go for it. Heck he’s dropping money in Minnesota for crying out loud. Nothing is out of reach guys. Nothing.
Rham would have lasted about ten minutes during the period before about 1950. With that mouth a real man would’ve busted him in the beezer. Or, perhaps, a real woman like my Momma would’ve slapped the mouth right off his face.
We have made a few gains since then but, overall our society has been regressing toward another Dark Age. And we haven’t much longer before the regression is irrevocable.
In 1820 he would be face down on a New Jersey hilltop.
Clay and Calhoun disagreed for almost 20 years in Congress but they never used a third of Rahm’s rhetoric.
In the late 1850′s Georgia’s Alexander Stevens made an impassioned speech for a compromise to save the Union that moved Abe Lincoln to tears. There were giants in Congress at one time, real giants.
Hmmm. Very strange polling, indeed. Did they ask your ethnicity and age? Wouldn’t that be important information? I love polls. i never get any polling calls.
The Karen Lewis description is pretty funny, since my Little Honey Badger said the same thing about her when we saw her on TV two weeks ago (“Look! It’s Roz!”). We also think Susan Estrich sounds just like Roz. Seriously, close your eyes the next time she gives an interview. I love that woman and her 4 pack-a-day croak.
Oh, this might be off topic but I didnt see any open thread for this. I’d like to report how much fun I had this morning combatting Leftist feigned outrage over the Paul Broun Jr “scandal”. They “found” a video of this Representative from GA saying that evolution is a lie from the pit of hell. This is very upsetting because he serves on the Science Commitee and he is a medical doctor. (I don’t agree with him but I defend his right to his own beliefs.) I have a Facebook friend from CA who is pretty left leaning, as are her friends. She posted her usual “How can anyone be so stupid?! Where do they find these crazy, backwards people? He must be a knuckle dragging Southern idiot!” post and all her Lefty friends chimed in to bash the guy. I mention that he’s a Creationist and there is this thing called Article 6 of the Constitution that prohibits a religious test of elected officials. No answer from any of them on that one. Then I say that he was probably elected by people who know full well what his religious views are. Crickets chirp. I do a little reaserch and find that Paul Broun Jr previously donated more money to Democrats than Republicans and by the grace of the gods of Irony, I find this:
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3679
At the very end, they did ask these questions:
Sex = male
Year you were born = 1985 (for Justin)
Ethnicity = I said “mixed” (to screw with them)
Do you have any Hispanic ancestry? = said “Yes” (to screw with them)
Highest level of education = post-graduate
Which Party are you (in this order they asked if you were Democrat, independent, some other party, or Republican) = said Democrat (to screw with them)
Asked if I was “Liberal, Independent, or Right wing” = I said “the first one”…and I want you to notice that Democrats use the word “liberal” AS A GOOD THING and never, ever refer to Republicans as “conservative” but as “right wing”. So you are a damn fool if you keep using “liberal” to describe these people when they are so careful with their own words. Stop helping them, dummy!
At the very end they asked for my first name and I said “Justin”.
That last question was their way of making sure they were talking to the person they called, because at the beginning they asked “Is this Justin XXXXXX” and I said “Yes”. At the end, they asked for my first name thinking if I lied just to talk to the pollster I wouldn’t remember that I was supposed to be “Justin”.
Kevin, if you’re looking to move, I’m sure you could mix things up a lot in the San Francisco area. It’s probably a little better in regard to crime, just as wacky politically, but you’d like the weather a LOT better, and it’s just a beautiful place and needs to be redeemed from the crazies.
Enlarge further the Paki roomie and Obama on the sofa pic…..
.they are holding hands yes…
but Obama’s penis is erect and out…the Paki roomies other hand behind his knee is reaching for erect exposed penis….
also wonder what Obma’s free hand to his left is on? A rifle butt perhaps
http://moralmatters.org/2012/10/01/voting-for-the-gay-obama-and-the-christian-vote/#comment-2073
This governing by polls is asinine. If he doesn’t know how to fix it, why did he take the job?
As for the “thug” culture, (see not racist) when the president of the US of A parties with those who’s songs (???) glorify all of the antisocial behavior that plague Chicago what do they expect these kids to do? Knit?
To paraphrase Golda Meir – Peace will come when the blacks will love their children more than they hate us.
Sorry just my feelings.
* taxes are driving business out of town
and
* would people accept a $5 tax per month on energy to pay for more cops
Do the people who prepare these surveys even read what they’ve written?
They realize that taxes are a problem, but are unable to come up with any outside of the box solutions other than more taxes.
You know what a good response would be if asked if you are willing to pay more in taxes to support XYZ initiative/program:
“Has the mayor considered taking the money he is spending on all these goofy surveys and instead put it toward initiatives/programs like XYZ, if he cares as much as he claims?”
I have a question about polls.
Yesterday I was polled. It was for the presidential race. She asked for me by name. Who did I vote for before? Who am I going to vote for now. How sure am I of who I am going to vote for. What party do I identify myself with, etc. (I lied on everything).
BUT, they asked twice during the poll of what TIME of the day I was going to vote. Why would they ask that? She asked it at two different times during our conversation and had me narrow it down to an hour. I told her between 11am and 12pm.
Your thoughts on this? Why would they ask a question like this? FWIW, I live in the boonies of upper Michigan, so it’s not like I’m in Detroit or anything.
Not sure why they asked about the time of day you will vote, I look forward to Kevin’s response. I have been asked if I would vote absentee, early vote or on election day and I think the reason for that is to time mailings of campaign literature. There is so much campaigns are building into their databases, both sides do it.
In Washington state we have a charter school measure on the ballot. I had a poll call about it and one of the questions was if I were Tea Party affiliated. That was near the end of the call.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if Rahm is polling about the crime wave in Chicago, isn’t that a good sign; a case in which his political self-interest is married with addressing the biggest problem facing Chicago today?
Hey Kevin,
Thanks for answering the question I asked on the last Open Thread. Actually what Rahm did says a lot. I am sensing covering his butt if Obama does lose big this year. Rahm is protecting what he has. If IL is close Obama is toast.
The questions were stupid. Governing by polls? Its not governing. Rahm was hired to do his job, he needs to do his job. He knows right v wrong. He actually did stand up against the Teachers Union which was a good thing. he’s capable of discovering a solution, His problem, like every othe democrat of the Clinton years problem is this: He wants to be all things to all people. He can’t be. and he knows that. Just do what your elected to do Rahm. He’s too corrupt to let his conscience guide him.
Why do you like living in Chicago so much? The one-party misrule and tyranny, the violent crime, killing prosperity w/taxes & regulations–I would feel like a slave instead of a free man if I moved there. I’m not attacking or criticizing. Your enthusiasm for the place bewilders me.
Why should he move? The only reason I moved from the West coast is because I simply could no longer afford it, I miss it dearly.
I answered a call today from a cell phone..I have not been answering any calls that ID as toll free or that I know are political calls..I refuse to yammer anymore to the RNC that they get no $$$ ,I do send my membership dues..but that I donate to the individuals that I want to..and I name names..Mia Love, Alan West, Josh Mandel, Michele B, etc, etc, .but since this was a cell..I thought it may have been a client of mine..anyway..lady asked if I was…..yes, I said…she then proceeded to invite me to an Obama rally in Columbus ( I swear he has been here 4 billion times..screwing up the traffic..etc.) I told her..”that I would rather have flaming bamboo shoots pounded under each of my toe nails”!!!!I wanted to ask her why she was wasting this call on me since I have been a registered Republican since…1960!!!!! Stupid!!!!! I probably should have asked that question first..since she was scrambling to get off the phone..my parting words were…”He is going to lose in a freaking landslide”! Now, you have a nice day!!!
They need to find a clone of Adrian Malik Fenty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Fenty) ora clone of Corey Anthony Booker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Booker)