Like I said....
Same old, same old.
Yep, that's the kind of change I was expecting. And, I am not joking or being snarky.
As a Democratic Party official, he once sent a pollster who was late delivering polling results a dead fish in a box.
Chicago Tribune deputy Washington bureau chief Naftali Bendavid writes that, as about a score of them sat around a picnic table mushily declaring their love for one another, Emanuel picked up a knife and called out the names of different politicians who had "f–––ed us." After each name, Emanuel would cry out, "Dead man!"—and stab the knife into the table.
www.newsweek.com...
"Rahm Emanuel has been described as a street fighter with a killer instinct—as explosive, profane, wired and ruthless—sometimes as a compliment, sometimes not. But no one has ever cast him in the role of elder statesman, at least up until now. Emanuel, a 48-year-old congressman who grew up, somewhat weirdly, to study ballet and practice Chicago politics, has generally adapted to his situation in a combative, not diplomatic, manner. As an indifferent high-school student, he badly cut his finger on the beef-slicing machine at Arby's. That night, after his high-school prom, he jumped into Lake Michigan. The tip of his finger became infected and he nearly died. Ever since, Emanuel has relished raising his hacked-off middle figure at his foes. In conversation with almost anyone about anything, Emanuel uses the F word like a sergeant in a World War II motor pool."
But it may be that the most obvious candidate is Emanuel. He is an old friend of Barack Obama's campaign strategist, David Axelrod (so close that Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel's wedding, an honor that usually goes to a best friend). At the same time, Emanuel worked on Bill Clinton's '92 campaign and was an effective operative in the Clinton White House, and he is tight with various Clinton advisers like James Carville and former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle (whom he calls his "little sister" from the Chicago political wars). He has the loyalty of many Democratic congressmen, whom he recruited and for whom he prodigiously fund-raised, helping to secure the Democratic majority in the 2006 election.
Emanuel is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948.

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Democrats should run on in 2006: universal college education, universal health care for anyone who works, bringing down the national debt and cutting U.S. dependence on foreign oil in half within a decade.
In his own voting record, Emanuel is no Gingrich-style radical. A certified member of the Beltway establishment, and a political centrist to boot, he favors incremental, family-friendly policies in the Clinton mode: tax breaks to help the middle class pay for college, incentives to encourage workers to save for retirement, re-importing drugs to lower prescription costs. He has sharply criticized the president's handling of the war in Iraq, but he doesn't agree with those who say we should pull out immediately, favoring a more gradual withdrawal based on "benchmarks" for training Iraqi troops.
"We're the party of change," Emanuel tells me. "We're the party of a new direction -- a break from rampant cronyism and the status quo. Period."