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Mark Steyn comments on the jihad against Chick-fil-A in Chicago and Boston.
… The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, agrees with the Alderman: Chick-fil-A does not represent “Chicago values” – which is true if by “Chicago values” you mean machine politics, AIDS-conspiracy-peddling pastors and industrial-scale black youth homicide rates. But, before he was mayor, Rahm Emanuel was President Obama’s chief of staff. Until the president’s recent “evolution,” the Obama administration held the same position on gay marriage as Chick-fil-A. Would Alderman Moreno have denied Barack Obama the right to open a chicken restaurant in the First Ward? Did Rahm Emanuel quit the Obama administration on principle? Don’t be ridiculous. Mayor Emanuel is a former ballet dancer, and when it’s politically necessary he can twirl on a dime.
Meanwhile, fellow mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. “If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult,” said His Honor. If you’ve just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn’t the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Mass. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars’ view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail,” Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, “and no place for your company alongside it.” No, sir. On Boston’s Freedom Trail, you’re free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities – or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.
Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster’s head left in Mr. Cathy’s bed was all just a misunderstanding. Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston’s Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective. As the Boston Herald’s Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death. The mayor couldn’t have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi’s position on gays is in a state of “evolution”: He can’t decide whether to burn them or toss ‘em off a cliff. “Some say we should throw them from a high place,” he told Al-Jazeera. “Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement … . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.” Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded: There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one? In Mayor Menino’s Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he’ll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he’ll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony. …
The Trib’s John Kass concentrates on Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
… “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values,” Emanuel said in a statement. “They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members, and if you’re going to be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect the Chicago values.”
Remember that Emanuel flew into a rage when businessman Joe Ricketts, whose children own the Chicago Cubs, dared to even think about supporting an anti-Obama public relations push. When challenged, the Cubs owners fell to their knees.
But there’s one guy whose values Chicago’s first Jewish mayor wouldn’t dare challenge:
Noted anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan loudly condemns gay marriage, but Emanuel needs him. The mayor has lost control of the streets, his police force is vastly undermanned and the street gang wars of Chicago have claimed more American lives than Afghanistan.
Emanuel is desperate. He wants Farrakhan’s army with the bow ties out on the South and West sides to settle things down.
And Emanuel knows this:
Louis Farrakhan isn’t a chicken sandwich.
Boston’s Howie Carr goes after his Mayor Menino who Carr calls “Mumbles.”
… Usually, Mumbles takes his cues in PC idiocy from Mayor Bloomberg. This time, he was driving the lead clown car. And you know the old saying: Monkey see, monkey do.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago instantly jumped on the bandwagon. He took time out from cozying up to well-known gay-marriage supporter Louis Farrakhan to denounce Dan Cathy. Amazing how similar Chicago and Boston have become — both cities celebrate diversity by hating Chick-fil-A and looking the other way at Muslim homophobia.
Oh yeah, and one other thing Boston and Chicago have in common.
Rotten baseball teams. …
Michael Barone says this year’s election is different from 2004.
Does the 2012 campaign look a lot like the 2004 campaign? Many Democrats think so.
And there are some resemblances. As in 2004, current polling suggests a close race and shows only about a dozen states in contention.
As in 2004, the incumbent has been running negative ads against the challenger, hoping to disqualify him as Bill Clinton disqualified Bob Dole in 1996. Many Democrats think that Barack Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s business career will have the same effect they think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads had on John Kerry in 2004.
But, as William Galston of the Brookings Institution, an alumnus of the Clinton White House, writes in the New Republic, “the evidence in favor of all these propositions is remarkably thin.”
Galston points out that in 2004 no single issue was as prominent as the economy is this year and that on most significant issues George W. Bush had a clear edge by the end of the campaign. He cites polling evidence that the Swift Boat ads hurt Kerry less than did Bush ads replaying his March statement that “I did actually vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
Also, he points out that many more voters this year think the nation is seriously off on the wrong track and that the economy is in trouble. Obama’s job rating now is weaker than Bush’s was then.
Galston, as usual, is on target. His analysis tracks with the statement of Democratic pollster Peter Hart (for whom I worked from 1974 to 1981) that Obama’s chances are “no better than 50 percent.”
But there are at least two other salient differences between 2004 and 2012.
One is that the 2004 election occurred during a period of unusual stability in American voting behavior. …
More on the student load debacle. This time from the Detroit Free Press.
Janelle O’Hara knows her college debt isn’t anything close to the financial migraine hitting other college grads.
The 24-year-old pays $150 a month for her $17,000 in federal student loans — not much next to the $300 or $400 a month that some of her friends pay.
One of her friends who didn’t graduate had to choose between rent one month and the student loan payment. Rent won — the young woman needed somewhere to live.
“It’s there, and it’s nagging at you while you’re in school. But it’s nothing like when you get that first notice saying, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to start paying,’ ” said O’Hara, who works full-time as a social media specialist at Michigan First Credit Union in Lathrup Village.
The big number that everyone is talking about is the $1 trillion in student loan debt. But smaller numbers — $150 a month, $350 a month, $500 a month — are eating into individual budgets, too. And that debt leaves younger consumers on edge, wondering whether they’ll be able to buy a new car or get a home one day.
Student loan debt has the potential to be far more burdensome than credit card debt.
Some policy experts, lenders and leaders in financial services are growing more concerned, too, particularly if college grads have trouble finding well-paying professional jobs.
“Debt of this magnitude has the potential to slow down the economy significantly, which affects everyone,”
WaPo’s Reliable Source posts on Michelle’s $6,800 jacket.
Michelle Obama has been criticized for not dressing up enough for Queen Elizabeth II, so she stepped up her game Friday night at an Olympics reception for heads of state at Buckingham Palace. The first lady wore a very fancy J. Mendel capsleeve jacket — “white viscose techno crepe tailored jacket with overlapped side panels and silver embroidery” from the 2013 Resort collection, according to a press release from the company. It’s not in stores yet, but high-end retailer Moda Operandi listed the jacket at a princely $6,800. The White House declined to comment.