The Sunday Rumble: 8.9.19

One for 'SoD' and Jimmy:  There is a review in this week's 'Speccie' of a biography of the late General Sir Thomas Graham who fought with distinction in the Peninsular war and ended up as Wellington's second-in-command.  He founded the Perthshire Volunteers, later the 90th Foot which eventually amalgamated with the 26th Foot to form the Cameronians.  The reviewer makes a somewhat obscure reference to more modern times when the Cameronians were stationed in Germany and referred to by the locals as "giftzwerge — ‘poison dwarfs’, the Cameronians being tough if generally diminutive men of Glasgow and Lanarkshire."  Surely not, such a calumny!

 

And now one for my American pals:   The name rang a very distant bell but for the life of me I could not recall anything concerning the life and (well deserved) death of Huey P. Long who was, according to Ellen Carmichael at the National Review quoting the historian Arthur Schlesinger, "the closest thing to a dictator the U.S. has ever seen." 

 

Huey P. Long in 1935 (Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress)

Long was the utterly corrupt governor of Louisiana and a US senator and was shot dead, almost certainly by his bodyguards who, er, 'defended' him when he was punched by a young doctor, Carl Weiss for remarks Long had made about his parents.  I cannot precis the story so go read Ms. Carmichael's article which is fascinating.  It was prompted by the very recent death of the son of the man who punched Huey P. Long.

 

'Downton Abbey' - hoodathunkit?   If, in these proletarian times, 1o years ago someone had asked you to invest money into a TV series based on the lives, the triumphs, the vicissitudes, the loves and the disputes of a frightfully posh and wealthy family in Yorkshire and their 'below stairs' servants, would the second word of your reply been "off"?  If so, you would have missed a goldmine!  Now the film is due out shortly and even more 'dosh' will roll in.  The team deserve every bit of it.  It is superbly written, filmed and acted.

 

Snort/snigger of the year:  'MM', I refuse to spell out her full name lest I lose even more readers, dumps her new baby Archie on 'Harry the Hubby' and dashes over to 'Noo Yawk' to, er, support her best friend, Serena Williams, in the tennis championship final - who promptly loses to some unknown teen-ager!  Simply too, too delicious!

 

Those damned Aussie ruffians!   They should jolly well give us back our 'Ashes' because, er, well, you know, we, sort of, deserve it, don't we?  Oh, take that as a 'NO' shall I?

 

Two women sharing the steering wheel:   A frightening prospect in any situation but absolutely terrifying when the vehicle concerned is the US of A and the women concerned are 'Fauxcahontas' Warren and her 'lyin' liar' friend (allegedly), Hillary Clinton.  Actually, it is reported that they both detest each other but, hey, when it comes to a Presidential election anything is possible.  As Ms. Monica Showalter puts it at the American Thinker site:

"Warren may still not be able to stand Clinton, but Clinton is useful to Warren for rigging the Democratic nomination"

'Over here' and 'over there', politics sure is a dirty business. 

 

"The king is dead, long live the King!"   I refer, of course, to the King of the F1 racing circuits, (Sir) Lewis Hamilton who ran second to young Charles Leclerc for most of the race but due to tyre problems finished third.  Snidey spoilsports, er, like me, might complain about some of the stewards' decisions on one or two of Leclerc's driving 'manoeuvres', including his driving straight over the chicane and thus, technically going 'off circuit'.  However, this was Monza and he was driving a Ferrari so what else would you expect?  Even so, it is now very clear that Leclerc is a superb driver and destined to win several world championships.  Alas, poor Vettel, he is heading for the 'knacker's yard' and I wonder if he will drive again next year.  In the meantime, (Sir) Lewis has a fight on his hands but there are many more races to be run.

And so to bed . . .

 

No more rumbles

 

 

Comments

[Loz]

Ah yes, the battle of Barossa. The last time Blighty attacked taking on odds of 2:1 against, and won?

Falklands came close, but I don't think it was 2:1 from memory.

SoD

[Whitewall]

The reputation of Huey Long continued as caricature of many Southern politicians even to this day. Long, while 'colorful', was an unquenchable appetite for money and power and the forerunner of the Clinton machine. Back then and even today, enemies of either machine would sometimes discover their pre-written suicide notes while "investigating" lawlessness.

[Whitewall]

David, 'Instapundit' has followed D&N this am.

LIBERAL FASCISM, THE EARLY YEARS: Huey Long: Tyrant, Not Benefactor.

[Bob]

“It’s a mistake to regard Huey Long as an ideological figure, a man committed to a program,” Schlesinger said. “I think Huey Long’s great passion was for power and money ..."

"His supporters, then as now, happily overlooked his tremendous moral failings and their institutional consequences ... because he supposedly fought for the common man."

That reminds me of a current American politician. Who would it be? Wait, don't tell me ...

[JK]

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/hattie-ophelia-wyatt-caraway-1278/

https://www.amazon.com/Hattie-Huey-Arkansas-David-Malone/dp/1557281076

(Hattie and Huey: An Arkansas Tour)

I'm surprised David you didn't work in the bit "The tallest tombstone in the United States" part.

Bob,

"That reminds me of a current American politician. Who would it be? Wait, don't tell me ..."

Sorry Bob but because I've got to go pick up a pal of mine so we can make a trip to Barney's for a replenishment of stores I'm gonna have to go ahead and tell you who you're trying to think the name of ...

Hillary Clinton! Of Clinton Foundation fame. And Bill Clinton. Also of Clinton Foundation *fame* - Matter of fact Bob when I get back this afternoon I'll get into Arkansas' only statewide newspaper's archives and find the article within which both Bill and Hill state emphatically (while resident in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion) "We're admirers of The Kingfish from a long ways back and we are intent on doing for Arkansas much of what Huey Long did for our neighbor to the South.")

Hillary went on to mention she "felt a kinship with Hattie Caraway."

Sorry about just being able to provide the teaser for now Bob but should you be impatient you can search for yourself in the archives of The Arkansas Gazette - not to be confused with The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

[JK]

http://www.oldstatehouse.com/publications/circus-hitched-to-a-tornado

Figured David, you'd get a kick outta how an eastern newspaper {NYT?] attempted to describe Huey's campaigning for Hattie was going (at the time) The reporter's phrase to the best of my recollection being, "Barnstorming seems inadequate in attempting to describe this campaign. It's more akin to a circus wagon hitched to a tornado."

[JK]

Pal's just gonna have to wait abit more.

https://books.google.com/books?id=L5t_CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT49&lpg=PT49&dq=Hermann+Deutsch,+%E2%80%9CHattie+and+Huey,%E2%80%9D+The+Saturday+Evening+Post,+15+October+1932&source=bl&ots=1wm19m7_sI&sig=ACfU3U2_DJuzRktYJAzZfaDjSPRk61I4FQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiayvmyysHkAhVCDq0KHdtXAcIQ6AEwBHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Hermann%20Deutsch%2C%20%E2%80%9CHattie%20and%20Huey%2C%E2%80%9D%20The%20Saturday%20Evening%20Post%2C%2015%20October%201932&f=false

David if you feel the need (or interest) to pick just one of the links I've put on here to get a feel for The Huey Long this is it.

It wasn't the NYT as I was guessing above rather the description was provided in the Saturday Evening Post by the professionally trained Chicago reporter Hermann Deutsch. Gives a "real feel" for what Democrat politics was then and how it's come to in the here and now.

Karl Marx never had nuthin' compared to the Democrats.

[Whitewall]

Huey Long also went by the nick name "The King Fish".

[Glesga]

David my oldest brother now deceased served with the Cameronians in Malaya 1951-1953. He told me it was Gurkha jungle training that probably kept him alive during live contact with the enemy. The Gurkhas used to chalk mark the training soldiers boots and puttees during exercise. The Cameronians refused to emalgimate and chose to disband. The 1960s Labour Government were determined to wipe the Cameronians from history. Many Ex Cameronians were the hard core military trainers in the TAVR. RIP Cpl Freddie Wilson Cameroonian in Korea and my drill instructor during recruit training.

[Andra]

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the tennis yesterday morning.
Ding, dong. The witch is dead!!

[Bob]

JK,

In right wing mythology the Clintons play the parts of Satan and all the demons, don't they?

It would also benefit you, and the Brit readers who care, to keep in mind that Old Dixie was Democratic up until the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson famously said "there goes the South" at the signing. He was right. The Democratic "solid South" is now the Republican "solid South". Patrick Buchanan, who was mentioned here recently, was one of the main architects of the change.

[Glesga]

Bob, I knew the Democrats were the rascists. They murdered blacks in New York during the Civil War.

[JK]

Bob is correct folks. So far as he goes.

Arkansas for instance so long as the "by county" urban centers are left out are solid Republican.

But then there's places such as Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and etc having, political affiliation speaking-wise, something very similar to their, for instance, Chicago and Baltimore counterparts. Large minority populations and solid Democrat municipal governments.

Remember too that in a large number of these southern states, the Democrats held the majority of governorships until the election of of Donald Trump. That Arkansas' election cycle by the way, saw the first solid Republican delegation flip since Reconstruction.