While the premises stand firm, 'tis impossible to shake the conclusion.

The mayor's control of the big stuff has been responsible, in recent years, for the hideous rehab of Soldier Field, the construction of the vastly overbudget Millennium Park, the destruction of a municipal airport under cover of darkness, the continued rise in property taxes, the overpriced and much delayed Brown Line reconstruction (which is causing long delays on the Red Line), and the Pink Line addition coming at the expense of other services on the west side, as well as sweeping education and public housing policy changes that allowed Daley appointees to hold thousands of kids back or kick thousands of families out of their homes.

If a clever, kind, gentlehanded little girl could get a crumb of bread down their throats, it would do no harm; but all rough, violent, clumsy manipulation is as bad as the throat-tickling of the hard-fingered hangman.

In that condition he hasn't got a halfpenny to scratch himself with — an irreverent departure from the pious 'not a penny to bless himself'; or two ha'pennies for a penny, nor a brass farthing or a penny to his name.