CÉSAR’S FISHY BOAT: With the gridlocked Republican and Democratic parties here in the capital doing nothing but calling each other names these days, it’s nice that progressive Latino voices and regressive conservative nutcakes can agree on something.

They both want to scuttle the USNS César Chávez, a Navy cargo ship which was christened in San Diego on May 18.

Pedro Ríos, the American Friends Service Committee’s sentry on the U.S.-Mexico border, details his personal and professional reasons for opposing the act.

He asks whether an instrument of war is appropriate to honor a man dedicated to non-violence and peace.

In a press release, right-wing California congressman Duncan Hunter frames his objection more deviously. Obviously upset because the name “César Chávez,” who took on Hunter’s millionaire agribusiness buddies until the day of his untimely death, should be associated with anything patriotic, he craftily proposes replacing it with the name of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a Navy Cross winner from his San Diego district.

After years of opposing just about everything that would level the playing field for Hispanic families, Duncan chose the deceased Latino war hero to pit against one of our greatest icons, a man who devoted his life to making conditions that farm laborers suffered for decades more bearable (realities that in too many instances campesinos still are forced to endure).

Most media didn’t question Duncan’s motive, but that doesn’t change the color of his stripes.

Fellow radical right mouthpiece Maggie Thornton posts this comment in her online column The Lonely Conservative:

“Cesar Chavez, the Marxist community organizer and farm union leader, who hated the U.S. Navy and capitalism, has been honored with a Lewis and Clark class Naval vessel named the Cesar Chavez. The Lewis and Clark class ships are named after American “pioneers.” You’ll remember the outcry when another ship in the same class was named for the traitorous Congressman John Murtha, who did his best to ruin the Marines.”