Eye On The Left: Rahm, Hillary and the young's buyer's remorse

photo Rahm Emanuel

Emanuel Wearing On Windy City?

Chicagoans may have broken off their love affair with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama who left the office to run for mayor of the country's second-largest city, according to the Weekly Standard. According to Chicago Tribune editorial writer Kristen McQueary, the man the city picked was arrogant but accomplished things. The one-time congressman was a tail-kicker but got results. He was a strutter, a finger-pointer and swore like a sailor, but the residents loved it. Now, she says, the emperor seems to have lost his clothes. McQueary says his arrogance is oversized for the record he has amassed, he's beyond bossy and he's a walking personality disorder. Beyond the personal, he hasn't done much to curb the city's debt problem, hasn't solved its pension problem, hasn't implemented campaign promises on education, hasn't solved the "cancerous gang activity and crime" in various parts of the city, and has spent a lot of time out of the city. "A little humility would go a long way," McQueary wrote. "Voters will tolerate a control freak. They'll put up with bossy. But an elitist whose swagger doesn't match his triumphs? That's a bright line drawn."

Hillary And Guns

Her followup address on solutions to the problem will be most interesting to hear, but President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton drew a fairly clear line on guns at a National Council for Behavioral Health Conference last week, saying that "fully licensed" and "fully validated" gun owners cannot be trusted to make sound decisions regarding gun usage. "At the rate we're going," she was quoted by Politico, "we're going to have so many people with guns everywhere, fully licensed, fully validated, in settings where [one] could be in a movie theater, and they don't like someone chewing gum loudly or talking on their cellphone and decide they have the perfect right to defend themselves against the gun chewer or cellphone user by shooting." Of course, there are laws that prohibit people from "defend[ing] themselves" in that way, but she didn't mention that. So how, in fact, she'd like to get the guns out of the hands of licensed, validated owners should make for good political theater.

How Do You Like Him Now?

The labor force participation rate in April for young adults ages 25-29, a category that overwhelming voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, is now at a record low. The annual Young America's Foundation Youth Misery Index, which adds youth unemployment, average graduating student debt and national debt per capita, indicates that no time in recent history have the statistical odds been so stacked against the age group, according to Townhall.com. Last month, 4.3 million young people ages 25-29 weren't working, a number which has gone up 13.6 percent under Obama. Couple that with a record average graduating student debt of $29,400 and each individual's $54,483 share of the national debt, and you begin to see how many youth in the age group have buyer's remorse over their most recent election selection.

Our 'Independent' Press

Four times as many journalists identify themselves as Democrats as those who identify themselves as Republicans, according to a new study by Indiana University. However, for the first time in the study's history, more journalists identified themselves as independents than either Democrats or Republicans, according to the Washington Post. Which, likely, is the journalists' way of saying, "I'm not going to answer that question truthfully, because we're tired of the studies that show we're as biased as we really are." For the record, 50.2 percent of respondents self-identified as independents, 28.1 percent as Democrats and 7.1 percent as Republicans. Curiously, a record 14.6 percent self-identified as "other." It would be interesting to hear a little more about the "other's" identity. The study also indicated nearly 60 percent of the journalists thought their profession was heading in the wrong direction.

Upcoming Events