Tag: chicago

[monotone] Bad Mayor Emanuel. Bad.

No biscuit:

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says Mayor Rahm Emanuel “exploded” at her during a conversation in his office about his signature longer-school-day effort, pointing his finger at her, yelling and telling her, “F— you, Lewis.”

“I just want to call it immense disrespect for me and the Chicago Teachers Union,’’ Lewis told the Chicago Sun-Times Friday. “I didn’t appreciate the way he talked to me.”

Are you all ripped up inside about this?  I mean, I am all ripped up inside about this.  I bet you that whoever put this up at Hot Air Headlines is just as ripped up inside about this as I am, too.  I mean, how dare the Mayor suggest that teachers work an extra ninety minutes a day, with a mere 2% pay increase to cover it!  After all, the starting salary is only $50,557/year… OK, so it’s actually $50,577/38.6 weeks, at 6.25 hours/day.  Or $42/hour.  Admittedly, the new arrangement is a hit in salary: more gross, but per/hour goes down to $34.50, assuming that I did the math right – but Chicago is looking at a 635.7 million budget deficit this year.  The well is, as they say, dry.

And I think that the public sector union folks had better start realizing that.  Because, past history aside, when it comes to Rahm Emanuel (or any other Democratic elected offiical) explicitly telling a Big Labor bigwig “F— you” I for one will not be rooting for injuries.  I’d rather that a Republican was doing it, of course, but I’ll take what I can get.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

QotD, Truly Charming Naviete edition.

Megan McArdle, on reviewing a pig farmer’s apparent realization that the locavore historical narrative is, well, a myth about local production that pretends that there was never such a thing as Chicago, and its associated, literally epic meat-packing industry:

I actually had no idea that such obviously ahistorical views were common in the local food movement–indeed, I suspect that he exaggerates.

Ha.

Ha-hah!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Oh, Megan.  Never underestimate the need for humanity to tell itself stories.  Particularly religious stories.  And doubly particularly when the religion that the story is supporting is less sophisticated and intellectually rigorous than, say, Evangelical Christianity*.

Moe Lane

*Call me in five hundred years and we’ll see what faiths are still around.

#rsrh Oh, yeah, they’re electing Rahm Emanuel mayor today…

…whoopty do.  Three thoughts:

  1. Is that how you actually spell “whoopty do?” What’s the etymology on that one, anyway? – What?  Yes, I know: let me Google that for you.  I was feeling lazy.
  2. Does it entirely count as a fixed election if you were going to get the same result anyway from a truly open one? Note ‘entirely.’
  3. We should have put up a sacrificial lamb.  Just to mess with people.

I’d say “good luck” to the winner, except that the winner will be a Democrat, which means that my response is actually “Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.”  And not just for the 600 million deficit that the Democrats have managed to rack up in that city…

Vulgarity on display: antiwar demonstration in Chicago.

OK. I need to apologize in advance for this video footage, given that it ends with some pretty foul things said about the wife of the Israeli Prime Minister.  While I think that it’s important that people see what kind of attitudes and language is considered acceptable by the antiwar movement, I also recognize that actually being exposed to it without warning is unfair to decent human beings.  That’s why I put the video after the fold: the sexual slurs are at the end, right after the conspiracy theories about the Gaza flotilla and wild-eyed accusations of Israeli genocide without bothering to provide any, well, truth.

The good news?  There weren’t many of these fools on the streets of Chicago.  The bad news?  As it stands, they’re all smugly aware that they’ll never suffer any kind of ill effects in their liberal social circles for trying to destroy the nation of Israel.  The worst news? Apparently, some of these folks are Jewish themselves, and I can’t really comment on that without risking a violation of Godwin’s Law…

Oops.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Vulgarity on display: antiwar demonstration in Chicago.

#rsrh Cop-killing trend in Chicago?

(Via Instapundit) The pseudonymous “Jack Dunphy” has just wrote a fairly alarming article on the breakdown of law enforcement in Chicago. When he wrote this:

Three Chicago police officers have been murdered in the last two months, the most recent of whom was Michael Bailey, who at age 62 was only weeks away from retirement. On the morning of July 18, Bailey had finished an overnight shift guarding the home of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and was in front of his own home cleaning his new car, which he had bought as an early retirement gift to himself. He was still dressed in his police uniform when someone tried to rob him. Police officers everywhere accept the risks to life and limb attendant to the job, but it’s generally taken for granted among cops that the uniform will serve as a deterrent against being robbed on the street. What level of depravity has a city reached when a uniformed police officer is no safer from a street robbery than anyone else? More important, what is to be done about it?

…I suspect that he would agree with me about what something will be done about it, whether officially or unofficially.  The police’s ability to function on the street is predicated on criminals fearing them – at the very least, fearing the consequences of killing them – and the police know it.

This is a depressing topic: I will now address something else.

Too good to check: Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor of Chicago?

(H/T: RCP) The thought has John Kass so frightened that he’s ready to beg Richard Daley to stay on – this is roughly equivalent to me begging Paul Verhoeven to direct the movie adaptation of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – but there’s at least one thing going for it: win or lose, Rahm Emanuel would be replaced as WH Chief of Staff. This is another Republican vs. American moment for me: while the former appreciates the way that Emanuel’s reduced the executive branch’s internal infrastructure to a godawful, incoherent mess, the latter recognizes that we’re all better served with somebody who’s at least competent at running a staff.

And, well, I don’t live in Chicago, so farming him off to that city is no skin off of my nose.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Crazy Tree: MSNBC throwing Hanoi Jane under the bus.

MSNBC apparently thinks that the Republicans – not to mention, half of the population of Chicago – are collectively Jane Fonda; and that the IOC are the North Vietnamese. Forty or so years of defensively defending the indefensible by the Left, and it all goes up like a bit of match paper to try to cover up a simple error in judgment by a President who too many people have invested themselves in never, ever allowing him to fail.

Wow.  Can the IOC come back tomorrow and eliminate Chicago from consideration again?  This is proving to be unexpectedly entertaining.

Via @CalebHowe.

Crossposted to RedState.

Olympics 2016: an inconvenient truth for the President.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Let me explain what happened here to President Obama with regard to the Olympic bid.

One has to make a distinction between the people of the world, and the governments of the world. The people of the world generally like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

  • Because we are free;
  • Because we are vulgar;
  • Because we are loud;
  • And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

Meanwhile, most national governments do not like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

  • Because we are free;
  • Because we are vulgar;
  • Because we are loud;
  • And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

So, when the President went to the IOC to get this valuable thing for his home city and country, I’m sure that he thought that he would be able to remedy the situation.  But all that he did was make it clear to people who don’t like us very much – mostly for the ‘vulgar’ and ‘loud’ bits – that he and the USA could be quite gratifyingly (to them) snubbed.  So they did.  And they enjoyed doing it, because they know that there’s damned little that the USA can do to them about it.

Personally, I’m grateful: this is an incredibly cheap lesson in Foreign Relations 120: Why we don’t have better relations with certain countries.  It is my sincere hope that the President take the hint, and stop worrying quite so much about our overseas reputation.  And by ‘stop worrying quite as much’ I mean ‘visibly do not care.’

Moe Lane

PS: There are quite a few governments that do not hate us, of course.  Unfortunately, these days one thing that they mostly have in common is in having been snubbed by this administration.  It’d be great if that stopped happening.

Crossposted to RedState.

The City of Chicago government will be closed today for lack of funds.

No, really.

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago is basically closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed.

They technically ‘moved’ this reduced-services day from New Year’s Eve, and if somebody wants to believe that they won’t have to have that day be reduced-services – or that there won’t be other reduced-service days added – well. Continue reading The City of Chicago government will be closed today for lack of funds.