Tag Archives: Abraham Lincoln

national news

Presidents Day? Why honor some of ’em?

Presidents Day is a federal holiday that for decades has gotten past me, in that I don’t understand it.

The day is meant to “honor” the men who have served as our head of state, head of government and our commander in chief. But … why?

Some of these individuals were truly despicable men, let alone presidents.

I remember when we used to honor only the birthdays of two of our presidents: the “father of our country,” George Washington and the “man who saved the Union,” Abraham Lincoln.

For my money, these gentlemen stand above the crowd of others who served as president. Indeed, they tower like the Colossus of Rhodes over a number of them.

I need not mention the names of the more despicable among the individuals who served as president. In my lifetime, I can think of just one man who not only never should have been elected in the first place, but who stands alone as the most vilified, despised and indisputably venal man ever to take the presidential oath.

I cannot honor him. Or many of the others who preceded him.

Yes, I have my favorite presidents. I already have mentioned two of them — Washington and Lincoln. They stand together at the top of the presidential heap.

I’ll just leave it at that.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Don’t walk away, Liz Cheney

Right-wing media commentators have been roughing up one of their own recently and it isn’t a pretty sight.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and Donald Trump’s No. 1 political enemy, got thrashed in this week’s GOP primary. What has been the reaction from some in the conservative media?

They are calling on her to resign from the House now, step away from her role on the House select 1/6 committee and, in effect, keep her mouth shut.

She should do none of that. Cheney’s term in office expires at the end of this year, which means this good-government progressive wants her stay on her watch and continue to hold Trump accountable for the crimes he committed while inciting the 1/6 insurrection.

To be sure, I believe Cheney inflated the significance of her primary defeat by comparing her fate to what happened to the father of the Republican Party, America’s greatest president Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln lost two congressional contests before being elected president in 1860, Cheney reminded us, as if to suggest that her own congressional loss might signal her ascent to the White House in the future.

She is getting way ahead of herself.

However, I do not for one instant believe she should step away. Cheney is providing a valuable voice of reason where few of them exist within her GOP.  Moreover, she is performing valuable service as vice chair of the committee led by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson.

My advice to Rep. Cheney? Stay the course. Wyoming voters elected her to serve until the end of 2022. She has more work to do on behalf of the effort to preserve, protect and defend our precious democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Honest Abe: unelectable

This is the face of an unelectable politician and, no, it is not because he isn’t particularly “telegenic.” It is because his ideas within his beloved Republican Party have become grist for the trash heap.

Consider the very notion that the man I consider to be our nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, is no longer the voice and face of a party that once called itself “The Party of Lincoln.” President Lincoln held the nation together during its darkest period, during the time when Americans fought each other over slavery and that thing one side referred to as “states’ rights.”

Then, as the Civil War drew to a close and as President Lincoln delivered his second inaugural speech after winning re-election in 1864, he said he would bind the wounds that divided us, that he would proceed with “malice toward none and charity for all.” An assassin struck a month later and denied the president the chance to deliver on his promise.

The party under which he ran for president twice has become something the president wouldn’t recognize. He certainly would not condone the tone it has taken in recent years. It has been hijacked and twisted into a form that bears no resemblance to the party of the so-called “big tent.”

Donald John Trump’s control over the party starting with the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign has taken it on a destructive course. It’s not that the party is destroying itself. It is that the ideas it promotes has gained new followers who are wedded to the hideous notions espoused by its leader.

The Grand Old Party has become a cult whose followers are infiltrating the ranks of candidates throughout Congress and into statehouses, county courthouses and even into ostensibly non-partisan city halls and school board meeting rooms.

Imagine a Republican with the chops of Abraham Lincoln seeking public office today. Imagine how the 16th president himself would fare were he to become a candidate.

Abraham Lincoln likely couldn’t be elected as a Republican because his party would lack the good sense to nominate him in the first place. The future of civil discourse and debate in this country deserves better than what lies ahead.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Lincoln Project firing on all cylinders

It’s called the Lincoln Project.

It is a political organization comprising former and even some current Republican politicians and political operatives. They all have one important trait in common.

They want to defeat Donald John Trump in this year’s presidential election. Why is that so unusual? Well, let’s see: Oh, yeah … Trump calls himself a Republican.

But … is he really created in the same mold as the man after whom the Lincoln Project is named? Hardly.

Abraham Lincoln was the nation’s first Republican president. He is arguably the greatest man ever to hold the office. He fought to preserve the Union that had been torn apart by Civil War. The Union won the war, but that victory cost Lincoln his life at Ford’s Theater.

The party that Donald Trump now controls bears no resemblance to the party that Lincoln helped create. The Lincoln Project has taken an astonishingly high profile in this campaign. No only is the Lincoln Project working overtime to defeat Trump, it is working equally hard to elect a Democrat, Joseph Biden Jr., to succeed Trump.

As this election continues to take shape, I am struck by the number of GOP operatives — if not active-duty GOP politicians — who have spoken of their utter disgust with Donald Trump. GOP members of Congress remain essentially silent as Trump continues to bungle the national response to the COVID-19 crisis. Trump also appears feckless as the nation reels from incidents of brutality against African-Americans, not to mention his shameful silence over reports that Russian government officials placed bounties on the heads of American service personnel killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Thus, the Lincoln Project is looking for a suitable alternative to the man masquerading as president. At this moment, the only possible alternative happens to be Democrat, Joe Biden.

And so the Lincoln Project, which carries the name of arguably the nation’s greatest president, is seeking to remove the individual who to my way of thinking has carved out his own niche as the nation’s worst president.

national news

Trump alienating his own party

The Lincoln Project has risen to speak out.

So has a coalition of staffers who once worked for Republican President George W. Bush.

Ditto for any number of conservative thinkers/pundits/commentators.

There might even be some hidden Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate ready to bolt.

What do they have in common? They are speaking collectively against a man who calls himself a Republican, but who has no affiliation, understanding or appreciation of what used to be considered basic Republican Party principles.

Donald J. Trump’s re-election appears to be in trouble … at this moment! Yes, that could change. I mean, this guy has managed to survive some of the more hideous faux paus in recent memory. He has held on to that base of support. He told us he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any votes; many of us cringed when he said that, but there is a distressing belief that he might have been correct.

The Lincoln Project, of course, is named after President Lincoln, one of the nation’s great Republican presidents. They used to call the GOP the Party of Lincoln. It has become the Cult of Trump.

The party that once was the champion of civil rights for all Americans, whose senators enabled a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, to push landmark civil rights legislation through Congress, has become unrecognizable to President Lincoln. It has coalesced behind an individual with no discernible moral compass, no philosophical guidepost.

Thus, tried-and-true real Republicans are locking arms in the hope of defeating this GOP imposter. Whether they belong to an actual organization such as the Lincoln Project, or are a loosely held gang of former GOP presidential aides, they seem to stand for a single cause: defeating Donald Trump.

What’s more — and this is truly astonishing — they are standing publicly and loudly in favor of a Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. One finds occasionally during every election cycle a notable partisan or two who might abandon the candidate of his or her party, but who cannot endorse anyone on the other side. That’s not happening these days.

My biggest concern at this point — given my own often-stated loathing of Donald Trump — is whether any of this will translate to tangible support when the election rolls around.

I merely want to caution everyone that Donald Trump was losing badly to Hillary Clinton at this point of the 2016 campaign. Then the wheels flew off the Clinton campaign. If there’s a lesson for the Biden team to glean from that effort it is that the 2020 Democratic nominee needs to avoid repeating the goofs that doomed an effort that fooled every political pundit in the land.

military news

President spoke eloquently on this battlefield

We’re going to honor our nation’s fallen warriors on Monday. We set aside Memorial Day to remember and salute the supreme sacrifice they gave to those of us who remain.

I want to share a brief statement that a president of the United States delivered on a battlefield in the midst of a war that took more young Americans’ lives than any other conflict in which this nation became involved.

The president was a man of few words. But those words he spoke that day will ring for eternity.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

national news

How stirring, Mr. POTUS

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, so I thought I would share it here.

This message comes to us from the 45th president of the United States, Donald John Trump. They just make you want to stand up and cheer … don’t they? Well, no!

  • President Abraham Lincoln stirred us in 1865 at his second presidential inaugural when he declared “with malice toward none and charity for all” he would seek to heal the wounds inflicted by the Civil War.
  • President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president and in 1933 told us during the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is … fear itself.”
  • President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation in 1961 and implored us to serve our country, that we should “ask not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country.”
  • President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall in 1987 and demanded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, if he intended to work toward creating a better world, to “tear down this wall.”

This president has reduced such soaring rhetoric to utter nonsense such as what he said this week about whether testing for the COVID-19 virus was helpful in stemming the rate of infection by the worldwide pandemic.

Yep, this is what we got when we elected this clown.

I am shaking my head in disgust.

media news, national news

Kitchen is getting too hot for Trump

It’s a cliché, but it’s worth noting: If you can’t stand the heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen.

Donald John “Wartime President” Trump says he’s being treated worse by the media than any president in history. That includes Abraham Lincoln, a real wartime president who fought like the dickens to preserve the Union.

He succeeded. The fight cost him his life when a gunman killed him at Ford Theater in Washington, D.C.

Now, though, for Donald Trump to suggest the media treat him worse than what the press did to President Lincoln simply is beyond the pale.

Trump doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the media’s role in protecting us against government that is capable at times of reaching too far and, yes, of making egregious mistakes.

Do you think Trump has made any such mistakes during his three years as president? I most assuredly believe that’s the case.

Trump spoke at a Fox News town hall. A woman asked him why he doesn’t answer reporters’ direct questions on the coronavirus pandemic. According to The Hill: “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said, sitting in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. “The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.” 

Cry me a bleeping river, Mr. President.

The media are doing what the Constitution allows them to do. No amount of bullying, intimidation, coercion or threats from the president or his lackeys should throw them off their mission.

Every presidential predecessor — all of whom had to endure negative coverage — has understood that it all goes with the job to which they were elected.

Until this clown.

Donald Trump

Cult of personality has captured the GOP

Donald Trump’s delusion is boundless.

He has embraced a new public opinion that suggests that today’s Republicans rate him a greater president than — get ready for it — Abraham Lincoln.

Sigh …

No, Mr. President, you aren’t. No matter what GOP faithful voters say today, Donald Trump in no way, shape or fashion can be compared favorably to President Lincoln, the man held up as the gold standard for Republican Party policy.

They called it the Party of Lincoln for good reason. He fought to preserve the Union against forces that sought to tear the country apart over slavery. Yes, that battle cost him his life when John Wilkes Booth shot him to death at the end of the Civil War. His fight was the most noble cause imaginable, given the context of the time.

What will the Party of Trump stand for when all is said about it? Let’s try, oh, insult, innuendo, chaos, confusion, betrayal of international allies, cozying up to dictators and, oh yes, impeachment.

That’s all I’ve got on this bit of fantasy.

Except this: I would be willing to wager real American money that they won’t build a memorial on the Washington, D.C. Mall in Donald Trump’s honor.

national news

What have they done to your party, Mr. President?

Dear President Lincoln,

Wherever you are, I want to wish you a happy 210th birthday. Man, we have gone a long way in this country you once led in the years since you came into this world. I’m glad you were here, although you preceded me by, well, many years.

Mr. President, I am writing you this note while wondering once again what in name of emancipation has become of the party that used to carry your name.

Not long after you left us, Mr. President, Republicans began referring to themselves as belonging to the Party of Lincoln. They were proud of the legacy you left, the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves, your fight to preserve the Union, the leadership you showed while the nation fought to save itself against the insurrection mounted by the Confederate States of America.

They took that pride well into the next century, Mr. President. Republicans joined hands with a Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, and helped enact the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, laws that bestowed full citizenship rights to all Americans, especially toward those African-American descendants of the slaves you freed.

But your party has morphed into something quite different, Mr. President. It’s now the party of Trump, as in Donald John Trump. It has become the party of nativism, of fear, of jingoism. To be sure, your party began marching down that road many years prior to that. Donald Trump was elected president and he has grabbed your party by the throat and sought to create a political entity that bears no resemblance to the party you once led.

Please understand, Mr. President, that you remain a hero to many of us who came along much later. We studied your presidency and understood how troubled you were for the entire time you served as our commander in chief.

I am one who wishes we still celebrated your birthday separate from the other presidents. Your time in office stands alone. The federal government, though, decided not too many years to meld your birthday into something called Presidents Day; it falls usually between your birthday and Feb. 22, which is when President/General Washington was born in Virginia. However, we now honor all the men who have held the office.

Granted, some of them deserve to be honored in such a manner. Not all of them, though. You might already know how I feel about the current president, so I’ll just leave that statement unsaid.

Happy birthday, sir. I wish your once-great party could find its way out of the darkness.