Seven days to Sestak-Specter and Halter-Lincoln

If you're as worn out as I am about the over-hyped and over-inflated importance of the TeaBag effect on the nations' Senate primaries, you're in for a welcome respite. From my Senate Guru e-mail:

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak is taking on recent Republican Arlen Specter.  As you may have read, recent polling has trended very much in Congressman Sestak's direction, but all polling continues to show a very tight race.  Democrats deserve better than nominating Specter, who not long ago championed McCain-Palin and stood as a roadblock to progress on issues like health care reform.

In Arkansas, Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter is taking on corporate lackey Blanche Lincoln. Lt. Gov. Halter has taken impressive strides toward tightening this race, and the numbers are moving in his direction, but Lincoln still enjoyed a high-single-digit edge as of the end of April.  (This more recent poll shows Lincoln with a 12-point lead.) Every poll -- including ones showing Lincoln edging Halter in the primary -- show Halter performing MUCH stronger against Republicans than Lincoln does.  In fact, Lincoln is arguably unelectable in the general election because of rampant anti-incumbent sentiment in Washington.  However, with Bill Halter as the Democratic nominee in the general against likely Republican nominee GOP Rep. John Boozman, Arkansas Democrats will turn that anti-incumbent sentiment from a weakness into a strength.

We might see a couple of actual progressives -- that would be the Democratic base, in case you were wondering -- knock off some conservative incumbents in their respective elections next week. And no TeaBags anywhere in sight.

How refreshing would that be?

Left over from Sunday Funnies

Lena Horne 1917 - 2010

A life in full.

Lena Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress who reviled the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom, has died. She was 92. ...

Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her sultry voice, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success.

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," she once said. "I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub and among a handful with a Hollywood contract.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical "Stormy Weather." Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her signature piece.

More from the NYT:

Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.” ...

When she was 16, her mother abruptly pulled her out of school to audition for the dance chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks, Duke Ellington was the star of the show and the proprietors were gangsters. A year after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo dance in the short-lived show “Dance With Your Gods” in 1934.

And concluding from the AP link above.

By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities in the civil rights movement, once throwing a lamp at a customer who made a racial slur in a Beverly Hills restaurant and in 1963 joining 250,000 others in the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Horne also spoke at a rally that same year with another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, just days before his assassination. ...

She had married MGM music director Lennie Hayton, a white man, in Paris in 1947 after her first overseas engagements in France and England. An earlier marriage to Louis J. Jones had ended in divorce in 1944 after producing daughter Gail and a son, Teddy.

In the 2009 biography "Stormy Weather," author James Gavin recounts that when Horne was asked by a lover why she'd married a white man, she replied: "To get even with him."

Her father, her son and her husband, Hayton, all died in 1970 and 1971, and the grief-stricken singer secluded herself, refusing to perform or even see anyone but her closest friends. One of them, comedian Alan King, took months persuading her to return to the stage, with results that surprised her.

"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," she said. "It was a long time, but when it came I truly began to live."

And she discovered that time had mellowed her bitterness.

"I wouldn't trade my life for anything," she said, "because being black made me understand."

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone had a lovely Mother's Day as it reviews the highlights from the blogs.

WhosPlayin has election results and commentary for Lewisville, Lewisville ISD, and Flower Mound.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a picture of the Mayflower landing in West Texas. Under Texas State Board of Education guidelines, you can teach kids just about anything as long as it is false.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme applauds South Texas for supporting their schools. Tea Party tax brats take note.

Indemnification language exposes industry known threats to safety, public health and environment from hydraulic fracture. On Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Bay Area Houston posted Governor Perry's personal offering on National Prayer Day: Let Us Prey.

Off the Kuff reminds us of the cost of Rick Perry's rejection of stimulus funds for unemployment insurance.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson states that the 2003 Texas GOP/DeLay redistricting scheme continues to cost Texas dearly, in The perils at the national level of being a majority minority-party state.

Rick Perry's ad attacked Bill White's ad this past week, and Rick Perry's ad lost. Not because it was filled with lies and mischaracterizations, and not because it used Yao Ming in a weirdly inappropriate way. No, Rick Perry's ad got kicked because Rick Perry is man so terrified of everything in his life that even laser sights and hollow points aren't enough to comfort him. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has "Perry v. White over the air", a fight which resembled Mayweather-Mosely in its one-sided outcome.

At TexasKaos, JRBehrman poses three questions about the BP oil spill and gives useful perspective on their answers... Check it out : Three Questions. Hint: no quick fixes here!