The liberal media say Sen. Blanche Lincoln got re-nominated because she went populist against Wall Street—a thrust to the Left. Every time I saw her on the tube, she was going after big out-of-state labor unions, a parry to the Right. Doesn’t matter because in November she’ll be history.
And watch this one: In the Little Rock 2nd district, former U. S. Attorney Tim Griffin got the GOP nomination. He’s been nurtured for politics by Rove and is thought to be favored over the Dem nominee, State Sen. Joyce Elliott, an African American.
It didn’t take Carly Florina the GOP Senate nominee against Barbara Boxer to forget her mike was “hot” and while conversing with a makeup artist condemn Boxer’s hairstyle. She also did a dumber thing. She criticized her running mate, Meg Whitman, candidate for governor, for going on Hannity on Fox saying it was a very-very dicey thing to do. Why? Hannity is as pro-Republican as you can find! Anyhow Florina had to call Hannity to apologize…saying she meant only a compliment because Hannity is a tough questioner. Yeah, right.
Anyhow, Whitman…a former protégé of Mitt Romney at Bain… strikes me as the more adept of the two (Whitman and Florina). She got out of a bind when she declared she opposed the Arkansas law. Her numbers tumbled. She struck back with a televised endorsement by former Gov. Pete Wilson whose Prop 187 denied benefits to illegal immigrants. That along with Whitman’s pledge not to support amnesty in whatever form, got the numbers zinging back.
Largely uncovered by the national media was a statewide initiative in California which passed 3 to 2 that will scrap the current system of partisan primaries to choose state and congressional candidates, favoring rather a nonpartisan ballot where all candidates regardless of party appear on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters of each party meet in the general election. I hate it because it is likely to produce more “moderate” candidates than those who emerge from the primaries of both parties. Looks to me like those who emerge could be pretty much the same. But then this was Ah-nold’s idea…and that of his Kennedy wife.
Sharron Angle, the newly-nominated GOP opponent to Harry Reid, is double-digits ahead of Reid right now.
Here in Illinois Chicago is going bonkers for the Blackhawks, its hockey team which just won the Stanley Cup. Some years ago there was a frenzy motivated by goofy liberals with nothing else to do to remove the Chief Illiniwek figure as the symbol of the University of Illinois athletic teams. Stupid, utterly stupid. The Chief was a fictional figure and the sanctimonious Lefties thought it was demeaning for the Chief, attired in colorful costume and headdress, dancing up a storm on the field before games. They were going to protect the Indian race against “exploitation” and “racism.” You’ll find that among people who usually don’t believe in higher causes and ameliorate their secularism by making a big case against “racism.”
Digression: I lived through that with Quaker Oats with Aunt Jemima, the fictional character on our pancake mixes and syrups.
Then the big pro-feminist Pooh-bah the Rev. Jesse Jackson met with me and…striding about with his famous pout, his chest puffed out for maximum effect… ordered curtly that the portrait of a smiling woman be eliminated forthwith…as symbol of a southern female slave who was exploited by cruel white men. His passionately oracular sermon about preserving black womankind by Jackson…prompted tables full of black male ministers shouting “yeah! Yeah! Yes, Lord!” ala theAmen Corner in black churches…
The room was filled to the gills with black men—and only one tiny, even then elderly, black woman who sat deferentially in the back, the Rev. Willie Barrow. When King Jesse called for coffee to serve him and his pompously oracular ministerial colleagues, the kitchen door opened and the trays were carried in with no male help at all by shy, spindly teen-age black women. The men gulped up their coffee, demanded some cream and sugar and asked where the sugar rolls were in curt tones signifying chop-chop, all the while some rose and spoke at their places, continuing to bewail the sorry state of black women exploited by Whitey.
They kept the Aunt Jemina figure after I pointed out the anomaly…also the fact that what they should be doing instead of trying to remove a black female figure which stood for $100 million in marketing identification, should be to go to Minneapolis’ General Mills and crusade to make Betty Crocker black. Whereupon a few days later I got a call from General Mills’ CEO saying, “thanks, you sonuva bitch! They’re in my anteroom right now!” Betty Crocker’s still white; Jemima’s still black. The so-called civil rights movement is still dominated by black and white men with the exception of PUSH being headed for a time by Rev. Barrow, now 86. If she has a successor, I haven’t heard of her. End of digression.
Unlike Chief Illiniwek, Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker, Sauk Chief Black Hawk [1767-1838] was a real person and a fearsome one. He was leader by virtue of election not via inheritance. When the War of 1812 started the Brits collected a good-sized force of Indians at Green Bay, Wis. to help the Brits in operations around the Great Lakes. After Chief Black Hawk brought 200 warriors with him, he was given command of the entire Indian army. He participated in battles against the Americans, helping to push them for a time out of the entire Mississippi River Valley at the battle of Credit Island and the Battle of Sink Hole, leading a daring ambush of a group of Missouri Rangers.
After a treaty between the governor of Indiana territory and his army, Black Hawk and his troops vacated their lands in Illinois in 1828 but they came to dispute the treaty, leading about 1,000 warriors into Illinois precipitating the so-called Black Hawk War in which Abraham Lincoln participated as a captain of the Illinois militia. Lincoln never saw combat however. Chief Black Hawk (the only individual after whom a war is expressly named) was captured and imprisoned at Fortress Monroe but then released and died in 1838. The best remembrance of him is the magnificent statue done by sculptor Lorado Taft in a park overlooking the Rock River in Oregon, Illinois.
Not…for God’s sake…that I want Blackhawk dumped but I marvel at the moral selectivity here: liberals rail and rage at a fictional Indian chief and take it as a matter of course that our hockey team is named after a warrior enemy who reputedly butchered with his troops hundreds of Americans—and we returned the violence in kind. The name came to us through the first hockey club owner, Frederic McLaughlin (who later started McLaughlin’s Manor House Coffee). He had been commander of the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 80th Infantry in World War I which was named the Blackhawk Division. Later of course the U. S. Army named the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter after him.
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*: Feast of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion goes back to the 11th century, beginning as a private devotion to pay amends to those who have ignored Christ’s sacrifice and death in behalf of our redemption. It gained national attention through the work of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque [1642-1690], a French nun of the Visitation Order. It is said that she received a vision from Christ Who asked that a feast of this nature be established to remedy the laxity that had grown about the sufferings He made for our salvation. The feast itself languished until 1765 when it was fully observed in France. Almost a century later, in 1856, Pius IX extended the feast to the universal Church and is celebrated on the day requested by Our Lord—the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi or 19 days following Pentecost Sunday.
USS TECUMSEH (Civil War monitor, two different tugboats, and now a TRIDENT missile submarine).
ReplyDeleteUSS OSCEOLA (Civil War gunboat, post-Civil War monitor, two different tugboats).
Heck, we had a USS MOHAWK during the War of 1812, when the Mohawks were on the British side.