It's Not Whether He's Willing to Hug You . . . .

It's how big a knife he's going to put in your back while his hand is back there.

Apparently the Illinois Democratic delegation to the DNC (Motto: "We hate each other almost as much as we hate the rest of you.") has been mending fences, at least in public. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (yes, the son of THAT Jesse Jackson--when you hear people talk about Reverend JJ shaking down Budweiser, the payoff was a beer distributorship for JJ Junior) surprised everyone by apologizing to Bobby Rush (yes, that Bobby Rush, of Black Panther fame--Chicago politics are nothing if not entertaining) for offending him--after Rush had just sat down from a speech in which he described JJ Junior as one of the "lesser birds of the sky, looking for a way to take the eagle's place." From there, it snowballed.

JJJ hugged Rush.
Then he hugged Debbie Halvorson, another Democrat who hates him.
Then Dick Daley joined in and gave JJJ another hug.
But the big moment was when Blagojevich and Mike Madigan hugged each other without inserting any knives. Frankly, it's a little creepy. Imagine if you happened upon a pit of horrible, cannibalistic monsters which had always been too busy eating each other to come out of the pit after you. . . . and they were cooperating. And building little ladders. Not good.

Of course, as spooky as it is to see Illinois Democrats tolerating each others' presence, there's not much reason to think it will go on. We shall see.