MAYOR DALEY, WORDSMITH

You can always count on Mayor Daley to say something great.

Back in 2001, the Chicago Reader recapped some of Daley's finer verbal moments - The Illustrated Mayor Daley:

"Scrutiny? What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrutined every day." --on whether his brother Bill's potential run for governor would bring added scrutiny to the Daley clan

"We know every one of those children have a lot of ability. They can sing rap better than us." --on public school improvements

"Everybody would like to have a weapon in America....I've got people at City Hall who would like to be armed." --on rejecting a request to arm Aviation Department security officers

"I humble myself every day. I've a very humble person." --on declining to apologize to James Newsome, who was framed for a 1979 murder, then convicted by Daley as state's attorney

"You cannot be closing everything down because you see white powder. More white powder is sold to people in cocaine. When a powder is found on the steps of a CTA platform, if you start closing all the CTA platforms you'll start closing the highways down. You can't do that." --on the anthrax scare

Then, there are some recent Daley gems.

Like when Daley discussed watching Mark Buerhle's recent perfect game:

''I shut it off because I thought it'd be bad luck for him,'' the mayor said.

If Mayor Daley causes bad luck by just watching baseball on the television, what do you think he is doing to Chicago by actually running the city? This can't be good.

Of course, his bad-luck-bringing didn't stop him from showing up at some little league baseball games. The poor little leaguers, I wonder how much bad luck they experienced that day. And - more importantly - what could this mean for the Olympics? [Gasp!] All these sporting events in Chicago...and the mayor will be watching! We can kiss our gold medals goodbye.

Also, Daley finally explained why he can always claim not to know anything about city hall scandals...he just doesn't have all the "facts" figured out. Yeah, facts. That's it. Gotta have the facts:

“You always have to have the facts. Always have the facts," Daley said. "You ask me questions everyday. You ask me questions about anything. If you want to respond to it, you better have the facts. You've got to realize that."

And, the Mayor responded to questions about how violence in Chicago may affect his precious Olympic bid:

"It has no effect because, first of all, if you look at all the victims, they know each other and their offenders," Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley said.

Oh, I get it. It's OK for people to get shot and killed because they know each other. Of course. Everyone's just going around shooting people they know. That explains it!

So, just to recap: the Mayor's got bad luck (avoid his gaze), always have the facts (unless you're Daley, then claim to know nothing), and dont' shoot people you know (shoot people you don't know!). Problems solved. Daleytopia here we come!