Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Thoughts While Shaving: Brady Leads Pander Bear by 10 Points! A Great Out for Illinois Dems and Emanuel. More.

  Feast of the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebastea.*
            
                        Brady 47, Pander Bear 37, 6 Undecided. 
            Liberals will deride it as too early to mean anything but they’d be joyously touting it if the numbers ran the other way.  Rasmussen’s latest poll gives State Sen. Bill Brady 47 to Pat Quinn’s 37 with 6 undecided. 
            My view is that Pander Bear aka old Watery Eyes made a Grand Canyon-sized gaffe when he zinged Brady for his position on social issues.  Illinoisans may well have decided: With Illinois 12.8 billion in the hole, if Quinn thinks the major issues are whether or not pharmacists who are conscientiously opposed should be forced to sell contraceptives across the counter, Quinn’s frivolous about governing. They may have added: if Quinn thinks Illinois’ problems center around whether or not the marketplace should determine minimum wage levels or have the state set them…we’d better find another guy. 
             Pander Bear used social issues trying to make Brady look like the painting of three-corner-hatted Pilgrims marching to church.  Instead he wildly overshot. The interesting question is this: When Pander Bear gets down to debating fiscal issues and he owns up to a huge income tax increase will things get any better?   
                                           Good Deal All Around.
            The last presidential chief-of-staff to draw this much fire was crusty Don Regan who served Ronald Reagan…and soon Nancy took matters in her own hands and ditched the belligerent, officious ex-Merrill Lynch boss in 1987. The rap on Regan was that he was becoming too much a prime minister. The rap on Rahm Emanuel is that he is a cursor.  A cursor is a moving pointer that singles out a position.   
               Emanuel is that. He is pragmatically adroit and can spell out a political position to give his party maximum advantage. The odd thing is that Emanuel’s cursor is pointed far more pragmatically than is Obama’s…and that if Obama had listened to Emanuel more, he might not be waist-deep in the Big Muddy with a health care bill that is universal, all right—universally despised. 
                But Rahm Emanuel is also a literal cursor: there are many who have been cursed out by this combative little man of whom at least one congressmen said he is the spawn of Satan who would cheerfully drill the gold from his grandmother’s teeth if by doing so he could achieve his political ends.  
              With the campaign of the hapless Alexi Giannoulias a hideous embarrassment for The Squid, it strikes some that nudging him out of the way would be superb for the party—and by replacing him with Emanuel the party would at last have a competent candidate with whom it would have at least a passing chance to defeat Mark Kirk. 
                              Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground. 
             The question is: is Eric Massa the former Dem congressman from New York’s 29th a fey?  I don’t mean a relative of Tina. 
           Beats me—his bio says he’s married (but no kids), a longtime Navy chief (20 years), gregarious Italian who was special assistant to NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark 1998-2001, signing up after his service as a special assistant to Clark when the general ran briefly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.  Massa’s wife Beverly surreptitiously called Clark in the campaign to tell him that Massa felt ill but didn’t want to bother Clark with it. Clark told him to go to the doctor for a checkup.  Massa did and was told he has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  He claimed Clark saved his life.  
               With Hodgkin’s in remission he ran for Congress in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel, then chairman of the 3 Triple C (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) picked him as a candidate. Massa lost. Emanuel’s term as 3 Triple C ended and he continued as congressman. Emanuel’s successor picked Massa again in 2008 and this time he won in a Republican district 51% to 49%.   
                Massa got hit with a sexual harassment charge by a male aide.  He claims Emanuel triggered it because Massa wasn’t going to vote for ObamaCare.  Sounds goofy to me. Anyhow Massa not only said he wasn’t going to run for reelection but out-and-out quit saying he’s sick of politics.  But he won’t shut up.  He says Emanuel was abusive to him when both were nude in the shower and Emanuel poked him in the chest.  Both are not judicious in word choice involving the King’s English.    
                Why would Massa quit though if the charge against him was so specious?  Strange.  Also the idea that Emanuel wants him gone so his replacement could vote for ObamaCare. That’s strange, too since a special election can hardly be held and completed by the time Mme. Pelosi calls the House vote.  
                What’s your theory?  One thing is sure.  I’m reasonably certain the next Congressman in the 29th will be a Republican.  
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         *: The 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebastea (AD 320). Roman  Emperor Licinius reversed his earlier tolerance of Christians that had started with his brother-in-law Constantine.  In Cappadocia Lucinius decreed that every Christian must abandon his religion under pain of death.  When this news was communicated to 40 young Roman soldiers stationed at Sebasta (now Sivas in Turkey) , they decided not to save their necks by feigning worship of idols and appeared before the governor, Agricolaus and told him so.
         
          The governor declared that they should be punished with a unique torture. The winter’s cold in Armenia was—and is—very severe.  He commanded that all 40 be exposed naked to the cold and left there night and day to die.  The soldiers didn’t wait to be stripped by force: they undressed. Then Agricolaus built a warm fire nearby and created a hot bath so as to tempt them. Didn’t work with 39 but one weakened.  He took the hot bath but the change in temperature made him sick (he later died of pneumonia). The 39 held firm and died of exposure within three days.

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