Taking Back the Territory

Welcome back to camp. I’m moving back to the long term pattern of writing on Wednesday and publishing on Thursday, starting this week, for a vast number of reasons, not the least of which being that I just couldn’t find time to write anything on Tuesday of this week.

But hey, I’m here now, the rest of the family by choice has headed back to their homes, or toward the airports and it’s just the wife, the dog, the cat, and I. We’re going to be here in Mobile AL through the weekend, making a run to Tallahassee for the actual weekend, to visit with my mother, because we rarely get to see her, while living at opposite ends of the country, then starting the slog back to WA to start packing and sorting for the great relocation… Assuming of course that everything works out, and we close on the farm near Rodgersville TN.

Anyway, booze is in the slide out pantry next to the fridge, dinner will probably be leftovers, the fridge is so full that you can’t see the light come on. One thing is sure, we’ll eat something good. As always, please notice the cup at the tip jar Where we restock the bar. Of course, I thank the current contributors to the ‘keep the author lubricated’ fund. It’s what keeps me doing this.

That picture above was a part of growing up for nearly everyone in my generation in the US, and the generation afterwards as well. Now we have this:

With the notice in small letters “Formerly Aunt Jemima.”

Well Aunt Jemima was only one of the victims of the Culture wars, there was also the “Land of Lakes” Indian maiden, in typical “by the power of white girl” fashion, they took away the Indian, and kept the land, so that the logo suddenly just had a picture of a lakefront, instead of the traditional Indian.

Then there was the various sports teams, like the Cleveland Indians, the KC Chiefs, the Washington Redskins and so on. All of which were pressured by what was believed to be overwhelming sentiment that “this is demeaning to the minorities” to change their names, and logos. Most of them bent the knee.

Along with this was a rewriting of history. We’re going to look at just one of those rewrites as the easy example. If you believe NY History dot Org, https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/labor-and-industry/aunt-jemima/ they will tell you that:
Advertisers based the character of Aunt Jemima on the minstrel song “Old Aunt Jemima.” White enslavers frequently called enslaved women who worked in the home “aunt.” White men in blackface typically performed the song. The white salesman who created the fictional character of Aunt Jemima rooted the character in slavery and connected white consumers’ romanticized view of the “Old South” with their easy-to-make homemade pancakes.

Aunt Jemima is also associated with the racist stereotype of the “mammy,” a Black female housekeeper. The mammy is devoted to her white enslavers and appears happy to serve them. She is depicted as loyal and kind but lacking intelligence. As the family’s nanny, the mammy was shown to lovingly raise the white children, while ignoring her own.”

The problem is that this is a lie. Not just a lie, but a DAMNED lie.

Let’s look at a different take, from that horrible right wing rag ABC news, (damn, I sprained my tongue on that one.) https://abcnews.go.com/US/untold-story-real-aunt-jemima-fight-preserve-legacy/ I’m snipping the most pertinent info:

You probably have never heard her name, but Nancy Green has likely been in your kitchen before. Green created the Aunt Jemima recipe, and with it, the birth of the American pancake.

"Her face on the box, that image on the box, was probably the one way that households were integrated," Sherry Williams, president of the Bronzeville Historical Society in Chicago, told ABC News.”
After a long search, Williams finally found Marcus Hayes.

"When I found out about it, to be honest, I was shocked, and excited at the same time. Living in the United States, some African Americans, as you may know, it is hard for them to go that far back, to get who they're connected to," Hayes said.

Hayes remembers hearing stories of Green's pancakes.

"It was so good that the boys would now tell everyone ... the milling company heard about it ... they came and sought her out," Hayes said.

And just like that Aunt Jemima was born. It made its debut at the World’s fair in Chicago in 1893.

As legend tells it, Green sold 50,000 boxes of the now famous pancake mix.

"She was the trusted face. Back then, you know, anybody who would look at an African American woman cooking, they knew that they can trust her cooking, that she could cook,” Hayes said.

But for all those years, ads by Quaker Oats for Aunt Jemima never mentioned Green.

Green lived until the age of 89 but died after being hit by a car in Chicago in 1923.

After her death, female ambassadors hired by Quaker Oats continued the legacy.

Lilian Richard was one of them.

Richard put her small Texas community on the map and as a result, Hawkins, Texas, is considered the pancake capital of the state.

Unlike Green, Richard has her own headstone and a plaque in Hawkins.

The town also holds a pancake breakfast every year.

“One of my cousins, she would dress up in the same type of clothing that my Aunt Lillian had ... she would get up and tell the story to those that attended the ceremony that did not know,” Vera Harris, a descendent of Richard's, said.” Both of the women involved became quite well off, and made more than just a little money off the stuff. You would think that this would be a thing to hold up, even if as a “Hidden Figures” piece. But no.

The left, which is who was pushing all of the rebranding couldn’t care less about the truth, they had found something that could be viewed with outrage, and a narrative created. So, they did. Go ahead and re-read both of those versions of history, just to let it sink in. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. Because that’s not the only time this shit has happened.

The Washington Redskins artwork was created by Walter S “Blackie” Wetzel, 50 years ago. Blackie Wetzel was a Blackfeet tribal chairman and, for a time, the president of the National Congress of American Indians, an influential position in which he worked toward securing housing and job training for Native Americans.

The logo was a composite of portraits of a Blackfeet chief named White Calf (who was marketed to wealthy tourists of Glacier National Park as Two Guns White Calf). Blackie considered the logo a sort of “unification symbol” among Native Americans, according to an interview of his son by Dave Caldwell. link here.

All of this was pushed through during the last administration while Covid was raging, the left had everyone wearing face panties, and it looked like they would be in ascendency forever.

Oh my what a difference four years makes.

Bud Lite showed that, while the left screams and cries and talks a good game about “we’ll ruin you if you don’t do what we demand!” Left boycotts don’t seem to have much actual effect on the market (see also the Feb 28 “don’t buy anything” movement, that went virtually unnoticed by anyone’s bottom line.) When you piss of the right, they actually can do some real damage to your stock value.

As a result, some of the companies and teams have decided to tell the left to piss up a rope. Others are so far resistant. There is a rumor that Aunt Jemima is coming back. Snopes and a few other MSM types are saying it’s bullshit, but then they’re the same people that told the companies that “everyone wants you to change that, because it’s RACIST.” These are also the folks that told you Biden was “as sharp as he ever was” (OK, that may not be a lie, he was always about as sharp as a Cueball) and that Trump was going to lose to Kneepads Harris.

Time will tell, and this may very well be a ‘trial balloon’ floated to see what reactions are.

I think that we should encourage PepsiCo (the owners of Quaker Oats, who in turn owns the products formerly known as Aunt Jemima) to ‘do the right thing.’

In Navy news: the USS Carl Vinson pulled into Busan, about 200 miles southeast of Seoul, as part of ongoing efforts by the United States and South Korea to strengthen cooperation and train for threats posed by North Korea, according to a South Korean navy news release. The aircraft carrier was accompanied by the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser, and the USS Sterett, a guided-missile destroyer.

That puts two CVNs in little boy Kim’s face at the same time, since the Washington’s birds can reach anywhere on the Korean peninsula from her home port in Japan. Do I expect Kim to put two and two together and reach four? Well, no, but we can hope that at least Kim’s mummy and daddy- Xi the Poo and Putin the Butcher can do basic math.

On the subject of Putin, and of course Zalinski, since it seems these days that you can’t talk about one without talking about the other… Look, Z man apparently got some really bad advice from the Democrats that he met with prior to meeting with Trump and J.D.

I don’t know why that idiot would take the advice of a group that just got their ass whipped in the elections, but, well, I guess if you’ve been given money and consideration from people for three years, you trust them even when an uninterested party would look at you and say “Dude, do you think for a second that they have your best interests at heart? Sweet Summer Child, that’s not how D.C. politics works!”

The fun part of course being that the DNC and their reps, including the folks that met with Zalinski, don’t seem to understand how National Politics works in the new paradigm.

A few years ago, if a president had the sort of unpleasant conversation on national TV that was the Trump-Zalinski meeting, all sorts of shit would hit the fan, polls would fall through the floor, and the president would be ripe for manipulation by the ‘Democratic Education, Propaganda, and Entertainment Complex.’

That was Zen, this is Tao!

The Trump election pulled the curtain back, and DOGE turned the spotlight on the little snake oil salesman pretender who has been claiming to be The Great and Powerful OZ. It’s a new game, and the rubes are starting to realize that they’re being played.

In point of fact, that little set-to might actually work in Trump’s favor, as the EU and not so Great Britain are suddenly realizing that the US may just not have their back, if they continue to lay back on their couches and demand more grapes peeled. (to mix a metaphor)

Suddenly the European powers are talking about actually getting serious about having something more than a corporal’s guard worth of military and defending Europe themselves. Which is just what Trump has been demanding that they do for the last eight years.

Since it’s been clear for years that if the shit hits the fan in the Pacific, there won’t be anything but ‘thoughts and prayers’ coming out of NATO command to assist our play, we MUST pay more attention to Occupied West Taiwan and what that bastard Xi has in mind in the way of Hegemonic action, because we’re going to be standing almost alone.

(yes, I recognize that Australia will be in the mix, as will Japan, South Korea, the PI, Canada, and New Zealand. Japan packs a punch above her weight class. The rest of that list? We’ve got more MUSEUM SHIPS than they have ships… More reserve aircraft than they have combat aircraft. Hell the biggest navy among them, Australia, can’t man the six submarines they have… they had to lay one of them up because they didn’t have a crew for it. The big question is India. She has the power to be an actual ally in this, if she wants to get off the bench on our side. Alternatively, she may either try to sit this out, or even come down on the PRC’s side. That would be a huge mistake in my opinion, because she would be the next country catching PRC bombs, but, well, I can’t make people do the smart thing.)

To anyone reading this while living in Europe, look, it would be great if we could fight a major two front war, like we were set up to do at the height of the Cold War, or like we did in WWII. That ship has sailed!

We do not have the national will to play that game any longer. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the gear, and we don’t have the men. We have spent the last twenty years doing our level best to destroy anything like patriotism, or a will to fight, in our military. Deciding instead to use it as a social engineering platform pushing DEI and perversions of the basic truth that there are Men, Women, and Psychologically damaged people who need help. That was more important to the people in charge, than being able to kill people and break things in pursuit of national policy. You don’t recover from that sort of shit overnight.

Ten years from now, maybe even five, that story might be different, but if the balloon goes up tomorrow, the only way we could fight a two-front war at the level that would keep you sitting on your ass eating bon-bons is if we threw nukes at them. I don’t think you want that, do you?

I see where the Seattle Times is whining that Trump is thinking about selling some federal property in Seattle https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-federal-buildings-on-trump-administrations-list-for-potential-sale/ You would think, that the way they hate Government, especially under Trump, that they would be all for it. And considering how many buildings the Federal gov. owns in Seattle (seriously, they’ve got buildings all over the damn place, some of which are populated only by the GSA cops that guard them, having had no one actually working there for years…) it’s PAST time for the US Government to sell some of the deadwood. But of course, as Lehman’s tenth law of politics says: 10. If it’s coming from government to someone else, and it’s not needed, it’s PORK. If it’s coming to YOU from the government, and it’s not needed, it’s your representative ‘bringing home the bacon.’ No one understands that bacon is still pork.

Finally, let’s talk about something that happened back in WA while we were away. restraining-order-filed-against-kingston-homicide-suspect A Kingston man was issued a temporary restraining order against his ex-wife the day before he is suspected of killing her in her home with their three children inside.

The woman and children, ages 17, 10 and 3, had filed a protection order against Fatih Mehmet Ketenci in October, according to court documents. She had filed for divorce two days before she was killed.

Ignoring the whole question of Muslim “honor killing” and all the rest of that swamp, I want something to be clearly understood here:

Protection orders are fucking worthless!!!

Seriously, the only thing they’re good for is to give the prosecutor something else to charge the perp with, after he kills your ass. That piece of paper will not stop a blade, a ball-bat, or a bullet.

With the response time of your average metro police force, by the time they get there, the only thing they will be able to do, is put the cuffs on the assailant, and draw a chalk line around your dead ass.

Lest you think I’m picking on “metro police” understand that their response time is BETTER than the average response time for a county sheriff. They won’t even get there in time to arrest your killer… Just in time to make the chalk line and put out a BOLO. Maybe they’ll catch the guy, maybe not.

If you’re relying on a protection order to save you, you’re screwed. A dog will do something, but a pistol is probable, and a shotgun is sure. If you don’t like that, you better move in with someone who does, or be prepared to star in a future news article and a fine funeral.

QOTD " The Biden administration launched a massive multi-year lawsuit against SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers, despite the fact that SpaceX is legally BARRED from hiring non-permanent residents under ITAR, because rockets are an advanced weapons technology. In other words, it was both illegal to hire asylum seekers and illegal not to hire asylum seekers!!" —Elon Musk

Yours in Service,

William Lehman