Tag: Rahm Emanuel

Rahm, Jewish, trashing Christian values?

I had thought of Rahm Emanuel as Jewish once that I can remember before he joined unthinkingly in the threat to ostracize Chick-Fil-A for its executive’s public statement of Christian beliefs about marriage. It was when he was inaugurated and mention was made of his being the first Jewish mayor.

Unthinkingly, because not even in Chicago is there political capital in parading disrespect for Christian belief and he has not shown prejudice against Christians that I have ever heard of.

Anyhow, he is (slightly, cautiously) pulling back from his unthinking display of liberal allegiance, thanks no doubt to editorial objections on first-amendment grounds and presumably political advice and his own political instinct.

Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values, Emanuel said Wednesday. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values. [italics mine]

On Thursday, a spokesman for Emanuel softened those remarks.

The mayor simply said that Chick-fil-a’s CEO does not share Chicago’s values, the spokesman said. He did not say that he would block or play any role in the company opening a new restaurant here.

If they meet all the usual requirements, then they can open their restaurant, but he does not believe the CEO’s values are reflective of our city.

He’s telling us what he thinks our values are. In any case, he is or was embracing gay-rights fascism here:

Thou shall not withhold approval of the gay culture. Tolerance is not enough. You will suffer if you do not toe the line, as gays used to suffer in days when the pendulum swung the other way. Forget liberalism, substitute intolerance of another kind.

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Have a look also at the New York Sun, which notes this importantly:

. . . [I]t’s hard to think of a difference between the views expressed in the quotations above by [the offending CEO] Mr. Cathy and those one might hear from the Council of Torah Sages or the Archdiocese of Chicago. Or every president of America who has spoken on the subject until President Obama changed his position and declared himself, personally if not officially, for same sex marriage.

Rahm is out of his league here.

Those mood-shifting blues

Rahm Emanuel, Rahmbolina
He'll have to step lively.

Are there newspaper-reading moments when you’d like to see respect for good-old-fashioned mood?

Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel said Friday hes looking for a partner in reform, and he is heartened if Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) is prepared to forge that alliance.

No, Fran Spielman, or whoever to whom you call in your stories, he’s looking for a partner and would be heartened if etc. etc. There is more to life than the indicative, is there not?

And I’m saying this even if you, and to some extent I, have a mayor who also is stranger to mood changes:

Im looking for a partner in reform. If hes ready to do that, Im heartened because we must reform. This is the era of reform, Emanuel said.

Your Honor, attention please: if he’s ready (a big if, very big if), you would be heartened etc. etc. It’s in doubt, Your Honor. In a lot of doubt, in fact. Can you respect that (publicly)?

Continuing:

I want to turn the page and usher in that era, and Im pleased that the alderman is gonna be part of that [you don’t know
that, but say it anyhow] because City Council, the mayor, people I appoint must participate [now you’re talking: this is indicative with a dose
of imperative] in the reform and changes necessary to put the city, its economy, its school system and its public safety on a different course.

And if they do not, then what, Your Honor? Wait. Do not tell us. We want to see this thing work out in its own time. There’s this optative mood in Latin, for hoping and wishing. We could try that.

Ald. Burke might cooperate:

Given the crises that Chicago is confronting right now, we dont have the luxury of engaging in those kinds of divisive matters. Weve got to all pull together. We owe it to the people of Chicago” [he says].

Uh-oh. Those kinds of matters, eh? How many kinds would that be, Alderman, and which ones have priority? Listen, there’s one kind of matter that you are talking about, and it’s white-knuckles economic-catastrophe, let’s-not-fall-in-the-lake matter.

Yes, I like that optative for now. It’s the best I can manage.

When aldermen head for Cal City

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Mt. Baldy, M...
City council could flee to the dunes.

Chicago’s new mayor has big municipal money problems, of course. No kicking can down road can be contemplated.

The changes that Emanuel is likely to pursue could put him on course for conflict with the citys large unionized workforce. The labor unions representing the rank-and-file members of the two biggest components of city government the police and fire departments endorsed Gery Chico over Emanuel, as did the union for city garbage-crew laborers. Emanuel angered them but may have scored points with the broader, tax-paying public with a campaign ad in which he said City Hall is not an employment agency.

I picture him — he’s for hope and change, isn’t he? — calling for major cuts and finding teachers and others lining up outside The Hall for doctors’ permits for missing work, aldermen heading for Michigan City or Evanston, the whole kid and kaboodle (sp?) of labor-union democracy. Fun times ahead as he (we hope) tries to keep Chicago from falling into Lake Michigan.

Eddie Burke, where you gonna live?

A Critical Mass gathering on the Daley Plaza, ...
Will he bicycle to work?

I don’t believe it. He loses the finance committee chair?

Edward Burke: Daley and Burke were never close friends, but throughout Daleys 22 years in office, the dean of the council maintained great clout and amassed vast wealth with his city-related side work due to a non-aggression pact with the mayor. With Daley retiring, Burke scoffed that Emanuel lacked the right approach to dealing with aldermen and he endorsed Chico. Emanuel responded by threatening to strip Burke of his powerful Finance Committee chairmans job.

I’d put such a change up there with Jane Byrne beating Bilandic in ’79. “You did it, Chicago!” Royko rejoiced, celebrating the machine loss. Snow did it, actually.

Tough guy will out

Congressman Rahm Emanuel hosts constituents at...
Isn't he sweet?

Crain’s Chicago Business likes Rahm, arguing persuasively. For openers:

What Chicago needs most from its first new mayor in 22 years is a clean break with the past.

While all the top contenders to succeed Richard M. Daley are political insiders of one sort or another, Rahm Emanuel is the most independent. He’s a product of Democratic politics but not of the City Hall machine.

Etc., including his being a mean s.o.b. (not quoting Crain’s) who will have to deal with others of his ilk. The public employees’ unions, for instance.

Meanwhile, Gery Chico unfortunately continues to pile up endorsements from those very unions, which is not a good sign.

The justice is a lady, so what?

Myra Bradwell
Myra Bradwell had a legitimate gripe.

Ouch and double ouch here, as Mrs. Burke plays the woman card:

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke today rejected the notion that she should recuse herself from deciding on the residency case involving mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel.

“Aren’t we beyond that? Women have minds of their own. We have spouses in every kind of business. Are we returning to the days of Myra Bradwell?” she said, referring to the Illinois suffragette who was initially denied the right to practice law because she was a woman. She went on to become the state’s first female lawyer.

She’s saying the husband would not be similarly advised if roles were reversed?

Roeser for Rahm

Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff, form...
Him and the wolves of LaSalle St.

I find this of more than passing interest.  It’s Tom Roeser on Chicago mayor.  He dismisses Moseley Braun, naturally, for her “masterly ineptitude for administration.”  She would do to Chicago in one term what Coleman Young did to Detroit in 20 years.  (Make it 19.)

Roeser continues:

The only two I have any faith in are Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico…but Chico is malleable and can easily be rolled by the Gray Wolves of the Council.

This be Chicago-dom.  The great Scylla and Charybdis of city politics: rapacious aldermen vs. powerful mayor running weak-mayor governmental form.  Roeser buys the second and says (at this point) he prefers Emanuel:

Rahm is so duplicitous and mean I think he’ll perceive it’s in his own interest not to let Chicago go the way of Detroit.

Point being, you don’t have to like the guy, you just have to respect his ability to save the city.

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Everybody knows this, forever and ever and ever . . .

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
Rhaaaaaaaam-bo!

This be stinky-stinky, in my opinion. The Emanuel-pushers smell a tiny legal problem which they want to head off at the pass. Richie D. points at it a fingerbone of scorn. Don’t gimme that residency stuff, he says. We know that don’t fly. What’s more, we do not intend to let it fly.

Go Richie, go Rahm, they are our men to match this mayoralty. It’s almost like keeping it in the family.

The Medjugorje connection

“The devil inside the Vatican” made a big splash in the UK Times with help from Drudge, a week after it broke in lesser pubs.  It’s a feud between exorcists, per a story by Stephen K. Ryan at ministryValues.com, who says it’s a matter of dueling exorcists.

“Well known Vatican Exorcists” Father Gabriele Armoth and Bishop Andrea Gemma have sharply different views of the scene at Medjugorje, a small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina where many believe the Virgin Mary “has been appearing and giving messages to the world” since 1981.

Amorth,  a renowned exorcist  and vigorous supporter of Medjugorje (He called it a “Fortress against Satan”)  in Rome  released a book of memoirs in which he declares to know of the existence of Satanic sects in the Vatican where participation reaches all the way to the College of Cardinals.

In 1973 he backed up the film “The Exorcist” as “substantially exact.”  In the Medjugorje experience, he sees a remedy now for Satanic influence in the Vatican, concerning which he says Pope Benedict “does what he can,” which apparently is not enough.

Bishop Gemma, on the other hand

one year ago . . .   denounced the alleged visions of Our Lady . . . as the “work of the devil” and a “diabolical deceit” [and] has rejected claims made by the six Bosnian ‘seers’ that they have seen the Virgin Mary “thousands [of] times over the past 27 years.”   

He told an Italian magazine, “In Medjugorje everything happens in function of money: Pilgrimages, lodging houses, sale of trinkets. . . .  It is a scandal.” He predicted a Vatican crackdown on the promoters of the visions.

Indeed, in September, 2008, the Vatican did discipline one of them, Rev. Tomislav Vlasic, a Franciscan priest, “for failing to cooperate with a Vatican inquiry” following his being reported “for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders” and charges that he “violated the Sixth Commandment,” Australia-based Cath News reported. 

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