Danziger Toon on the New Chief of Staff

[n2doc]

[mopinko]

1. i am sure i would wear myself out today defending the

reputation of the daley brothers. but i will do my best to at least make a token effort. al capone is dead. chicago has no more corruption than any big city. actual legal action is damn rare. i wish people would stop with the tommy gun jokes.
ritchie daley has been an exemplary mayor who has succeeded well in his aim to make and keep chicago a world class city. he did it the dem way. he was reelected last time with 70% of the vote. in a town full of union members.
so i make a personal plea to members to please show some respect for a family that is nothing but die hard democrats.

[JTFrog]

2. +1

[CanSocDem]

3. I'm sorry...

...but my only exposure to Daley politics was the police riot at the '68 democratic convention which I saw on TV and read about in all the liberal media of the day. I was so traumatized that I never forgave the Daley machine, but I have visited Chicago a few times since and found it quite hospitable.

.

[Capitalocracy]

9. Didn't the Mayor Daley of the time characterize the protestors as terrorists?

These guys had better be very different if they want my support. Somehow I doubt they are.

[WinkyDink]

16. The term "terrorist" wasn't in vogue in '68. Daley was a thug, but better than being Milquetoast.

[Cherchez la Femme]

18. I'd rather err on the side of milquetoastery, myself...

a lot less damage that way.

[Capitalocracy]

21. Yes, he used it.

There's a clip of it in the film Chicago 10, and he's quoted as using the term in this Time article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900317-1,00.html

And it was absolutely in vogue back then. It was used to justify torture and mass murder in South America with the United States's help and blessing.

[madokie]

4. Very good

[hlthe2b]

5. I have no problem with Chicago... I have concerns about the

very conservative positions and opinions of Bill Daley-- at least as far as they have been revealed. That discomfort was only slightly mitigated by Howard Dean's comments supportive of Daley last night.

But, face it, Obama's selections have cued up these kinds of stereotypes. The political cartoons sort of draw/write themselves.

[mopinko]

6. and like most stereotypes, they are shallow and incomplete.

really, ritchie daley loves this city, and eats, drinks and sleeps good government. bill's opinions and loyalties are open for discussion. but the old man has been dead for 30 years. and neither of them is bill.

[ieoeja]

7. I agree with the Chicago defense (mobs in the 'burbs). But not Richard the Younger.

He has been a mixed bag. Most of the time he has been protective of the Unions which just about puts him in a company of 1 nowadays. And I love that he sold security upgrades as beautification (less alarming; and it does make the city look nicer).

Yeah, on that last fact I am in a company of 1. But it sure is coincidental that his widest scale beautification efforts -- wrought-iron fencing and concrete, median planters -- do double service as emplaced traffic barriers. So I am sticking to my belief that it is no coincidence and that security, not beautification, is his real purpose.

However, privatizing a tollway, city trucking and street parking is anything but "the Dem way". There are reasons Bob Novak last referred to him as "only nominally a Democrat".

[mopinko]

15. well

he was the third mayor to attempt to get things to grow in the medians on lake shore drive. the others, byrne and washington, failed miserably. and yes, after 9/11 he did what he was responsible for doing- safeguarding government buildings, etc. where other people put up concrete jersey walls chicago put up granite planters. because the guy is a green nut. can't he get a couple high fives for being someone who not only believes in global warming but is in the forefront of redesigning cities for the future? new public buildings built during his tenure have been leeds silver. he has brought an enormous increase in bike usage, green roofs, green buildings. and more.

and the parking meter thing is so misunderstood it isn't funny. we did not sell the parking meters. we allowed a private company to come in and completely modernize an antiquated infrastructure that was at it's limit. there is no way that anybody could have sold the city on investing in that huge of a project, and we really could not have increased the rates without overhauling the system. you just can't expect people to walk around with a pocket full of quarters, and the meters couldn't hold them anyway. using a credit card to pay for parking is a great boon, and is saving motorists tons of money on tickets they would have gotten when they didn't have that pocket full of quarters. so all that is not as tidy as 'the crook sold us out' but it does have the benefit of being accurate.

i could go on and on. i don't give a damn what novak said. he always was full of shit. i live here, and i love the guy. so shoot me.

[ieoeja]

20. I did put his beautification of the security as a positive.

And applauded him for marketing it as beautification. I said "not to alarm the public," but your post 9-11 point is even better. Unlike so many pols, he has not spent the post 9-11 period using FEAR as a constant political tool.

With the obvious exception of Meigs Field, something else I applaud him for even if his explanation was transparently dubious. It was a fucking eyesore. And dangerous. Not so much to the rest of us as it was to the planes landing there. I'm surprised the FAA hadn't already shut it down.


I saw these new meters here and there well before he privatized street parking. But only a handful. I have to disagree on his inability to sell the city on expanding that in a huge way. You know perfectly well that what Daley wanted, Daley got. He sure as hell didn't sell the city on privatizing the street parking, but did that stop him? I know people who had never spoken an ill word about a Daley in their life who now want him run out of town on a rail after that stunt.

[Dappleganger]

13. My objection isn't where he came from or what his name is.

It's the fact that Daley worked for JP Morgan and is one of the THEM.

[GoCubsGo]

14. Exactly.

I am so sick of this "Chicago style" mobster meme, it isn't funny. It's bad enough I have to hear it all the time from wing nuts, despite the fact that their good ol' boy politicians are a zillion times worse that anything Chicago ever had. But, it's even more ridiculous to hear it coming from other Democrats.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. "Ubi Est Mea"

The late columnist Mike Royko, came up with this as the real Chicago motto. The city emblem would have those words printed over the image of an outstretched palm.

[Capitalocracy]

10. Doesn't Obama already have enough problems with being called a Chicago thug politician?

This is a great way to mitigate the damage. Of course, if I agreed with his pick, I'd say he should stand strong and not capitulate. But to take a political hit to make a bad pick? Not so great an idea, I think.

[WinkyDink]

17. With Limbaugh and Beck, yes. With America, I highly doubt it.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Oh,..... so that's what 'the third way' means

Chicago style.

k/n

[lunatica]

12. Lots of cities have undeserved reputations

When I travel out of California and tell people I'm from the Bay Area I get to hear all their 'clever' homophobic jokes about San Francisco and their concerns about Oakland having the 'highest crime rate' on the planet. It comes with the territory.

[Lucian]

19. I like it.

But they should attack him more on his job. He's a fucking banker, another corporate stooge Obama is surrounding himself with.

I fear for our economy now.

[Capitalocracy]

22. That's a much more substantive charge than the sins of the father

But apparently we're not supposed to care that all of Obama's staff is really working for the banks.

[Enthusiast]

23. Plus one! nt