Free Republic

<p>The portrait gives the impression of a movie poster associated with the 1972 mobster classic, “The Godfather,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola.</p> <p>A video uploaded by the Chicago Tribune on Sunday shows Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass entering Emanuel’s Chicago office to give the mayor his gift.</p>

Here is a direct link to a recent Fox News Poll on the field of mayoral candidates in Chicago, showing Rahm Emmanuel in the lead. From the same source, here is video of former school superintendent Paul Vallas, as he endorses Gery Chico for mayor.

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff, has declared that "you don't ever want a crisis to go to waste." As reported here yesterday, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been busy lately promoting the idea that Obama should move quickly once in the White House to turn various economic and political crises into opportunities to create a "new world order." (The words are Kissinger's.) Kissinger, never one to let a crisis got to waste, has been busy on an important new-world-order project in Russia with Vladimir Putin. Although it has gone virtually unreported in the U.S. media,...

WASHINGTON POST: Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles. "Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to change Washington, vowing to upend the K Street lobbying culture he encountered when he joined the U.S. Senate. But more than a dozen members of President-elect Obama's fast-growing transition team have worked as federally registered lobbyists within the past four years. They include former lobbyists for the nation's trial lawyers association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, drug companies such as Amgen, high-tech firms such as Microsoft, labor unions and the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress." Plus this artful phraseology: In a 2007 speech, he said...

Transition: Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to change the partisan tone in Washington. So why did he pick a take-no-prisoners partisan for his chief of staff?The high-level White House selection of fellow Chicagoan Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the sharp-elbowed, foul-mouthed head of the Democrat caucus, doesn't exactly augur well for the kind of noncynical air-freshening Obama voters had hoped for. After Emanuel helped the Democrats win Congress in 2006, he told a gathering of celebrating staffers and campaign workers that Republicans "can go f*** themselves," according to Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid in her book, "The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel...