Presiden-elect Obama chose Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff Thursday.  Rahm and Obama both are from Chicago and Rahm has brought his Chicago Thug methods with him to Washington.

A former Clinton whiz kid who'd gotten his start as a fundraiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel was connected -- in the three years after leaving the White House (where he'd helped push through NAFTA), he earned $16 million putting together Wall Street mergers. He was also zealously partisan. He had once owned a consulting business devoted to finding skeletons in Republican closets. At a Clinton vicory dinner in Little Rock in 1992, Emanuel celebrated by reciting a hoped-for necrology of Democrats who had "ed" the president-elect. After every name, he stabbed a steak knife into a table and screamed, "Dead man!" 

Rahm Emanuel is a Democratic version of Karl Rove, a pitbull known for intense partisanship and using the F-bomb. This is not a man who is going to reach across the aisle and unite anybody.  The only good thing I see in Rahm Emanuel is that he will stand up to those that want to move further to the left like Pelosi and Reid if it does not agree with Obama's plan.  Afterall, Rahm was there when Clinton went too far left and saw the resulting election victories for Republicans.