Posts Tagged Abraham Lincoln
April A Particularly Historic Month In America’s Past
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on April 1, 2013
The month of April is a particularly historic month in America’s past in so many ways, with 20 significant events listed below.
April 2, 1917—President Woodrow Wilson asks the Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turks.
April 4, 1968—The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
April 6, 1917—Congress votes for entrance into World War I against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turks.
April 9, 1865—General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, marking the official end of the Civil War.
April 12, 1861—The Civil War begins, with the South Carolina attack on the federal military fort, Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
April 12, 1945—President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, and Harry Truman becomes President.
April 13, 1743—President Thomas Jefferson is born in Virginia.
April 14, 1865—President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, dying the next morning at 722 AM
April 17, 1961—A failed attempt to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro failed, coming to be known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and helped to lead to the later Cuban Missile Crisis, the greatest challenge faced by President John F. Kennedy.
April 18, 1775—The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, inspiring the first armed uprising against British oppression, occurred.
April 18, 1906—The highly destructive San Francisco Earthquake occurred, destroying much of the city, and killing 4,000 people.
April 19, 1775—The American Revolution began, with the Battle of Lexington and Concord outside Boston, Massachusetts.
April 19, 1993—The Waco, Texas tragedy of the death of 82 people in the Branch Davidian religious compound, consumed by fire, after an intervention by armored vehicles and federal agents occurred, inspiring conspiracy theories which led to the event below.
April 19, 1995—The worst domestic terrorist act in American history occurred, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, killing 168 people and wounding about a thousand others.
April 20, 1914—The Ludlow Massacre of miners by company hired National Guardsmen, killing 19 people, occurred in Colorado over a desire for recognition of the United Mine Workers for the coal miners.
April 20, 1999—The Columbine Massacre in Littleton, Colorado, led to the worst mass shooting of students and teachers in public schools until the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.
April 21, 1836— The Battle of San Jacinto near Houston, Texas, led to the victory of Texans led by Sam Houston over the Mexican army of General Santa Anna, leading to Texas Independence.
April 22, 1994—President Richard Nixon dies at the age of 81.
April 24, 1800—The national library of America, the Library of Congress, is established in Washington, DC.
April 30, 1789—George Washington is inaugurated as the first American President at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan.
159th Anniversary Of Founding Of Republican Party: Not A Celebration!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 28, 2013
The Republican Party, which gave us Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, William Seward in the years of the 1850s and 1860s; which gave us Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Sr, George Norris, William Borah, Hiram Johnson in the 1900s-1940s; which gave us Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr,, George Romney in the 1950s-1960s; and which gave us Mark Hatfield, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford in the 1970s–1990s, reached its 159th birthday today.
The Republican Party began as an anti slavery expansion party, with elements of abolitionism also present when the party began on this day in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.
It became the party of civil rights legislation, three civil rights constitutional amendments, progressive legislation, and supportive of much bipartisan legislation with Democrats in the New Deal and Great Society eras.
Of course, they had their evil elements, including McCarthyism, nativism, and tying themselves to organized religious influences that wished to take America backward, but until the past few years, they always had redeeming values in many ways, and would often denounce the extremists in their midst.
But now the Republican Party has become a party dominated by Tea Party radicals, who promote racism, misogyny, nativism, concern only to promote the welfare of the wealthy, and willingness to engage in foreign wars that have cost us dearly in treasure and loss of life and limb!
The Republican Party is no longer, in any way, reflective of its past, and in fact, insults its honorable, respectable history, sullying the names of its heroes and champions over a century and a half!
This is a tragedy of massive proportions, and the name “Republican” should be co-opted by the true moderates who are sitting by, watching the destruction going on, and holding their heads in their hands, ashamed that the name has been so damaged by reckless, anarchistic haters of the federal government! The party which fought the Civil War to uphold the Union is now more like the secessionist Democrats of that era!
Republicans Seem To Be Suicidal In Reluctance To Change Course
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 21, 2013
The Republican Party is in its death throes more and more each week.
The country is no longer interested in their agenda, in their candidates, in their goals, and in their promotion of fear and hate!
The GOP has lost five of the last six popular vote totals for President, despite spending inordinate amounts of money, the most ever in 2012, due to the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court in 2010.
But they have elements that are destroying them from within like a cancer!
These destructive elements include:
The right wing conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, who are making massive amounts of money promoting hate, fear and division, and until the GOP tells Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and their ilk to go somewhere, they will be going down the road to destruction!
The power of the National Rifle Association and Wayne La Pierre, and its campaign to defeat any candidate who wants any reasonable gun regulations, is going to cause the defeat of Senators and Congressmen, who are unwilling to sell their souls to this powerful pressure group!
The Tea Party Movement, which wants to wipe out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and is furious at Republican Governors, including the latest convert on ObamaCare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, making it a total of seven Republican Governors who have decided to accept that program, has plans to run candidates against anyone who does not wish to support their desire to go back to the 19th century and wipe out all aspects of the welfare state, so Maine Senator Susan Collins is on a hit list, as is even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for not being conservative enough! Do not forget that the Koch Brothers and other wealthy billionaires are the brains behind this movement, which is lower class populism gone wild, but they have the ability to harm the Republican Party establishment! And Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the lead elements in this Tea Party uprising, who might cause the Republican Party to go down to defeat in many races, because of their loony libertarianism!
The right wing evangelical Christian movement, which will fight any move toward acceptance of gay rights and gay marriage, abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun regulation, as well as their desire to promote religion in the education curriculum, rejecting science and history, and promotion of a theocracy in states that have large numbers of their believers.
The “NeoCons”, Neoconservatives, who want more money spent on defense, advocate overseas military interventions, and glorify wars in the name of American capitalism and profits! They had power under George W. Bush, but are now trying to defeat Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary.
And finally, the no tax increase crowd, led by Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, a group which is starting to see some Republicans abandon them, but not enough, and willing to back corporate loopholes and the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor, these two groups failing to understand that this elite has no concerns, except to back the establishment on Wall Street and in the corporate world, even at a time when corporate profits are soaring, and the stock market has doubled under Barack Obama!
These are the destructive elements in the Republican Party, and will cause its total dissolution very soon if the direction of the party is not changed to appeal to the moderate center, the tradition of the party under Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and YES, even in the time of Ronald Reagan, when moderates were still a major part of the party success, and Reagan a conservative but not an extremist, as these various elements of the party are in 2013!
The Biggest Loss Of A President Ever, Never Had Chance To Show His Brilliance—Our 20th President, James A. Garfield (1881)
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 18, 2013
America has suffered the loss of eight Presidents who died in office, four by natural causes, and four by assassination.
Each one was a loss, but the greatest loss is clearly James A. Garfield, our 20th President, who served four months before being wounded by an assassin, Charles Guiteau, and proceeded being the victim of medical malpractice and ignorance, and died after 80 days, much of it in a coma.
Sure, the death of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy were horrible losses, but all three had already made major contributions.
Sure, the death of William Henry Harrison after a month, and Zachary Taylor after 16 months, was a loss, but both, who had served as military heroes in wartime, did not have the same potential to have a dramatic impact upon history.
Sure, the death of William McKinley by assassination was a tragedy, but it caused America to have Theodore Roosevelt as President.
The death of Warren G. Harding led to Calvin Coolidge, who was certainly an improvement.
But the death of Garfield in 1881 was a case of a man who did not have a chance to show his brilliance, as pointed out yesterday in the Washington Post.
Garfield was born into poverty, but became a professor, Civil War general, businessman, and member of the House of Representatives, elected to the Senate at the same time he became President by a narrow margin, and the only President, therefore, to go directly from the House of Representatives to the White House.
A “dark horse” nominee who really did not want the Presidency, he gave a powerful Inaugural Address on March 4, 1881, speaking up for African Americans and civil rights, and also in his brief term, pushing hard for civil service reform.
Garfield appointed famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass and three other African Americans to posts in his administration, and he was said to have the ability to write in Greek and Latin with both hands, an amazing feat!
Garfield was a man of principle and conviction, and there are various memorials in Washington, DC and elsewhere in honor of a man who only served briefly in the Presidency, and a visit to his home in Mentor, Ohio, as this author has been fortunate to visit, is indeed a memorable event!
So as much as the loss of other Presidents is hard to deal with, the Garfield story is, in many ways, the most tragic!