There's a first time for everything -OR- Erkel eats it.

You get used to things. Velocitized? Hurtling through space on this orb, we tend to focus on the shit that's exploding in our immediate path. Everyday IEDs thoughtlessly strewn about to await the hapless and/or pre-occupied. Doggedly, restlessly, ruthlessly pursuing the daily grail.

Once in a while, in a moment of pique or melancholy, a disturbance on the periphery commands one's attention. Such is life. Be it a human train wreck, a particularly spectacular disintegration of the fabric of our society or a tiny car filled with clowns, we pause. It's in the DNA?

It's there whenever you look and thanks to the 24/7/365 "news" and the intertubes, you can dip your ears and eyeballs into the batshit crazy randomly and always find pure gold.

What does any of it mean? To you? To me? To the local grocer who always has a smile on his face?

Oh yeah, Erkel. Todd `Erkel' Stroger
(seeing is believing)


That's the Toddster, sitting in Daddy's chair.
Running the 19th largest government in the country was his birthright. Being inept, disingenuous and ignant, was his CHOICE. But hey, dis is Crook County. Mare Daley I's Crook County. Still in flux, still in transition from a obviously rigged and controlled machine with a maestro at the controls to the balkanized seats of power and authority in play today.

Daley I spoiled Chicagoans. You can lay out and document the sleaze, power and corruption that Richard J. Daley controlled, but at the end of the day, his reign was the deal of the century. Everything worked, almost everything dovetailed flawlessly. One ring to rule them all... a blend of good and evil in which the final score was almost always acceptable.

His crooks were mindful that their livelihood relied on the grumpy old man and the grumpy old man was mindful that pissing everybody off doesn't win elections.

It's taken 33 years for the dust to settle from Da Boss' passing. The tumblers have now clicked back into place with a Daley in City Hall and a Stroger at the Crook County Board. Gone is the Richie Daley who fumbled frequently and honored his Dad's alleged IOUs to his cronies. He's grown into the job.

Sadly, Erkel won't get that opportunity. He loaded the gun his ownself by passing out do nothing jobs to every. single. relative and friend of relatives who had or obtained his phone number who then hired all their friends and relatives, bankrupting the county with NO discernable benefit to the peoples. He aimed the gun hisownself by insisting on the biggest tax increase evah to sustain this unsustainable exercise in incompetence. Then he fired the gun at hissownself by vetoing repeal of his tax increase when the county commissioners found and took the opportunity to undo his fuck up. Just in time to assure a one-term Erkel reign.
Right when it will be in Daley's best interest to retake control of county government and reassemble the empire.

Welcome to Chicago. The city what woiks. On the make for the 2016 Olympics.
Coming Soon: County wide restoration of the way things woik.