Welcome to Chicago, Rahm. You must be new around here.

The Illinois Supreme Court may have declared Rahm Emanuel a Chicagoan, but I have my doubts.

Not after I received the email from his campaign.

It warned of the snow. He gave us a half a dozen tips on what to do.

Like: “If you must go outside, wear several layers of warm, dry clothing. Keep your extremities covered. Wear hats, gloves, winter boots, and warm socks.”

Sorry. But no real Chicagoan would talk like that.

Wear gloves if you go outside?

A real Chicagoan would have said, “Don’t go up Lake Shore Drive because the stupid ass-holes that presently run this city don’t know enough to close it down when sixty mile an hour winds are creating ice on the road three inches thick.”

The wear gloves suggestion is from a guy who admits he didn’t have to shovel his own sidewalk yesterday. I just can’t trust a guy who doesn’t shovel his own sidewalk.

By the way. Miguel Del Valle shovels his own sidewalk.

And so did Anne and I with the help of our neighbor next door. He had a kidney transplant six months ago and he was shoveling two feet of snow yesterday. Uh, Rahm?

Gail Collins in this morning’s NY Times:

The blizzard of 1979 is world-famous because Chicago’s snow removal efforts went badly, causing everyone to turn on then-mayor Michael Bilandic, who was kicked out of office six weeks later in the Democratic primary. Coincidentally, there’s a Democratic primary coming up this month, and candidates have been shoveling snow off cars and sidewalks all around the city. 

Not content with snow removal photo-ops, Rahm (I Live Here!) Emanuel, a Chicago mayoral candidate, also wasted no time in sending off a storm-related e-mail, offering “a few helpful tips” on how to weather the weather. They included: “Don’t make any unnecessary trips outside.”

People, if someone was preparing to walk off into 2 feet of snow without socks and boots, do you think an e-mail from Rahm Emanuel would make that person think twice? Let’s see a show of hands.

Back to the Lake Shore Drive fiasco.

For those of you from out-of-town and may not know, hundreds and hundreds of cars were stuck on Lake Shore Drive for over 14 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning because the present Daley administration didn’t have the brains to close it during rush hour when the storm hit.

Since then, Daley won’t talk about it. He sent his Chief of Staff to face the press and said they take responsibility for the decision but would do it again.

I’ve never understood politicians who say they take responsibility for something and then say they didn’t do anything wrong. That’s taking credit, not responsibility. Does Daley want to take credit for what took place on LSD Tuesday?

But the Lake Shore Drive fiasco should be a lesson to us.

I’m not discussing Carol Mosely Braun this morning. She’s busy apologizing for calling another candidate a crack head. Too sad a situation to even make fun of.

Rahm and Gery Chico have been able to convince some voters that they are in the hard-ass management mold of past Chicago mayors.

Like Richard Daley the younger.

But the LSD fiasco is just the latest in a long line of Daley mismanagement disasters: Mayoral control of the schools, the Olympics, parking meter privatization and selling off the Skyway.

It is amazing that the local press buys into this well-managed city crap.

And while Rahm and Chico may know that you should wear your mittens if you go outside in a blizzard, anyone who would hand them keys to the city deserves to have been in one of those cars on LSD Tuesday night.