I only jerk off to Garfield cartoons, I think this is considered normal.
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James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American Democratic Party politician from Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most colorful figures in Massachusetts politics in the first half of the 20th century, Curley served four terms as Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, including part of one while in prison. He also served a single term as Governor of Massachusetts, characterized by one biographer as "a disaster mitigated only by moments of farce",[10] for its free spending and corruption.
Curley's first public notoriety came when he was elected to Boston's board of aldermen in 1904 while in prison on a fraud conviction. Curley and an associate, Thomas Curley (no relation), took the civil service exams for postmen in place of two men in their district to help them get the jobs with the federal government. Though the incident gave him a dark reputation in Boston's non-Irish circles, it aided his image among the Irish American working class and poor because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help those in need. During that election, his campaign slogan was, "he did it for a friend."
When Curley was denied by a place in the Massachusetts delegation to the 1932 Democratic National Convention by Governor Joseph B. Ely, Curley engineered his selection as a delegate from Puerto Rico (under the alias of Alcalde Jaime Curleo). Some say his support was instrumental in winning the presidential nomination for Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he broke with Roosevelt after the president refused to appoint him Ambassador to Ireland.
Curley's single term as governor was described by one commentator as "ludicrous part of the time, shocking most of the time, and tawdry all of the time."[41] It began with a shoving match with outgoing Governor Joseph B. Ely, and descended into bare-knuckle politics. Curley expended significant political capital seeking to defang the Boston Finance Commission, which was closing in on the financial malfeasance of his mayoral terms. Committee members were accused of failing to do their jobs and impeached, and investigators were fired. Curley was eventually able to install a more pliant commission membership, under which its attention turned instead to his political opponents.[42] The negative press surrounding these actions ensured a loss of public popularity, as did his failure to significantly address widespread unemployment.
In 1942, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, serving from 1943 to 1947, this time in the 11th district. He defeated his liberal opponent Thomas H. Eliot, a former New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration, in the Democratic primary. Eliot was the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles Eliot. Curley campaigned largely on appeals to working class anger toward the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Yankee upper class. Ultimately, Curley saw an opening in breaking the lock of ethnic politics in the state with the spectre of growing Communist influence. In a quote from a campaign speech which has famously entered Boston political lore, Curley raised the specter of Communist leanings in his opponent saying, "There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Thus, despite his long-proven corrupting influence and antagonism toward the state's native Yankee population, Curley managed to win over substantial numbers of them, winning the election easily.Curley appears to have been paid off by Joseph P. Kennedy (who supposedly agreed to pay off some of Curley's debts, and may have helped fund his 1949 run for reelection as mayor) to leave the Congressional seat open in the 1946 election, so that Kennedy's son John could run for it without significant Democratic opposition.
In June 1947, Curley was accused of accepting $60,000 from a firm he headed entitled the Engineers Group which was under investigation for war profiteering. He was found guilty of mail fraud and was sentenced to 6–18 months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut before his sentence was commuted after only five months by President Truman, under pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation due to Curley's poor health.
As a result of the extensive corruption in city politics, numerous investigations were conducted against Curley's machine. After several campaigns involving bribery, Curley finally faced felony indictments brought by federal prosecutors. Nonetheless, Curley's popularity with the Irish American community in Boston remained so high that even in the face of this indictment he was re-elected on the slogan "Curley Gets Things Done", winning an unprecedented fourth term as mayor of Boston in November 1945.
In a tweak at the state's WASP elite's rupture with its own constituency and origins, Curley appeared at the Harvard University commencement ceremony in 1935 in his role as governor wearing silk stockings, knee britches, a powdered wig, and a three-cornered hat with flowing plume. When University marshals objected to his costume, the story goes, Curley whipped out a copy of the Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which prescribed proper dress for the occasion and claimed that he was the only person at the ceremony properly dressed, thereby endearing him to many working and middle class Yankees.
Apparently this guy was in the Southern Victory series... been awhile but I don't remember that. Books get hella stupid in the final tetralogy though.
Quote from: Kara on August 13, 2020, 02:54:04 PMApparently this guy was in the Southern Victory series... been awhile but I don't remember that. Books get hella stupid in the final tetralogy though.I bet you'd remember if he showed up in the Horus Heresy.
