Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln — more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ

(npr.org/)

I just read and re-read a wonderful but short article concerning our greatest President.

We have a man who evidently wandered out of Kentucky as an adult with absolutely no idea what lied outside of his wilderness world.

Here was a boy who knew enough to rise at dawn and get some wood on that fire so that he would not freeze to death; a boy who knew how to shovel manure from a rather small number of domesticated animals and move it to whatever area provided for vegetable production and a boy who knew enough to head out to hunt some critters for dinner later in the day.

The boy had most probably traveled to some local town (with a hundred inhabitants) in order to procure those supplies that just were not available on the family grounds in exchange for whatever skins and such he had procured over the previous month.

Well this boy leaves his home for an outside world he could not have prepared for except for his greatest talent; his genius.

This man could not possibly have seen 'the outside world' with the same perspective as those who ruled it although he certainly would have met up with many folks who shared his own boyhood origins.

And somehow this strange personage ends up being elected as President of the United States of America; an entity that had only been around for some 72 years.

I am taken to the summer of 1862 when all appeared lost.

The newly elected President had appointed a top general who had the 'yips' (in the language of Johnny Miller); the Union Army was stalled.

The Copperheads were not sure that disunion was not a bad idea. Leave them alone and leave us alone!

What do I care if 'they' have slaves, just keep them the hell out of my town, city or state!

Heads of industry; just like today wondered:

How much is this going to cost us?

Lincoln loved metaphors.

This painful interim was necessary because Lincoln understood that even in times of extreme polarization, the moderate center is the path to presidential success. Was then and is now. He offered an arresting metaphor one summer day in 1862, when a delegation of prominent New England abolitionists admonished him to take a stronger stand against slavery. After a long pause, he surprised his visitors by asking if they recalled “that a few years ago Blondin walked across a tightrope stretched over the falls of Niagara.”

Of course they remembered. Lincoln was referring to well-publicized stunts by the tightrope walker Jean-François Gravelet, who went by the name the Great Blondin. In 1859, Gravelet made a series of crossings over the roaring water. He pushed a wheelbarrow, stopped to cook an omelette, even carried his manager on his back. Lincoln visited Niagara Falls in 1848, and it left an indelible impression. Now the image of a man making his way along a 3-in. rope above such sublime and terrifying force struck Lincoln as a perfect metaphor for his own balancing act.

One of the visitors later recalled the President’s words: “Suppose,” Lincoln said, “that all the material values in this great country of ours, from the Atlantic to the Pacific—its wealth, its prosperity, its achievements in the present and its hopes for the future—could all have been concentrated and given to Blondin to carry over that awful crossing.” Suppose “you had been standing upon the shore as he was going over, as he was carefully feeling his way along and balancing his pole with all his most delicate skill over the thundering cataract. Would you have shouted at him, ‘Blondin, a step to the right!’ ‘Blondin, a step to the left!’ or would you have stood there speechless and held your breath and prayed to the Almighty to guide and help him safely through the trial?”

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/10/25/lincoln-to-the-rescue/#ixzz2AQjBWfLq

If it had not been for this backwoods genius; we never would have seen the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America.

That is my opinion anyway.

I do not believe, even with the power of those Radical Republicans (where in the hell are they today?) that there would have been the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

I believe those Radical Republicans actually needed the instigation of the living Lincoln as well as the assassination of Lincoln in order to pass the single most important Constitutional Provision—let alone Constitutional Amendment in the history of our planet.

President Obama, as a subject of liberal blogs like this site and of course, as a subject of moderate right wing blogs (let alone ultra-right wing blogs) has been attacked as a coward, as a lazy Chief-Executive, as a liar, as a incompetent who could never put in force his oratorical aims.

As an older man, I have seen this country in precarious times over and over and over again.

Nixon would tell us that he had a secret plan to end our war in Vietnam

Carter would inform us that we must tighten our belts in order to fight uber-inflation and recession at the same time.

Reagan would inform us that capitalists must be freed from over regulation and high taxation and that unions and governmental supervision and lack of faith was destroying our nation. Trickle down economics would save us all.

An old CIA head would inform us that the 'Cold War' was finally over; that taxes should never be increased (although he changed his lips on that front); that we must engage our troops when necessary but withdraw them following a quick victory; and that there would be a thousand points of light or something that would....I really never understood that claim.

President Clinton would inform us that we needed national health coverage for our citizens and that although the needs for the poor must be provided the focus of our government must be upon the middle class. National boundaries were erased in the sense of international trade with the promise that jobs would be created. Over 20 million jobs were certainly created although the debates centered around the rights of unions, the loss of better paying jobs and the miracle of Silicon Valley arose out of nowhere.

President W. Bush showed up and with his Compassionate Conservatism managed to take his daddy's car and run over the locale deputy sheriff after burning down the barn and giving away all of the newly harvested grains. This man single-handedly (with the help of neo fascists sometimes called neo-cons) took us into two trillion dollar wars for no reason following his inability to deal with the greatest attack upon our nation by a few infidels who learned to fly without even bothering to learn how to properly land those planes. (I have written a least a hundred blogs on this subject, I refuse to give links with regard to the single most incompetent Administration since Coolidge/Hoover! Besides it just puts me in a bad mood!)

Now, in the midst of the greatest economic meltdown (world-wide) since 1929, this nation demanded change.

And through some fluke I will never understand; this nation chose a Black Man who was unknown until his speech at a Democratic Convention sent him into national consciousness.

If there was ever a candidate who came out of nowhere since 1861, it was Barack Hussein Obama.

I had personally been shocked out of my shoes when in 2006 our country appointed a woman as Speaker of the House of Representatives; the second most important office as stated in our Constitution.

But in November of 2008, I wept as much or more THAN I had in 2006.

This was not the manner in which the world worked!

Well anyway, Barry and Nancy found themselves in an entirely new world in January of 2009.

We were losing 750,000 jobs a month.

Banking institutions who had been bailed out in September of the prior year were awarding themselves bonuses whilst reporting losses to their shareholders.

Bernie Madoffs were being discovered that individually had been ripping off investors for a decade.

We were involved in two wars that were costing hundreds of billions of dollars every single quarter with no evidence of victory—whatever victory means.

The largest single deficit in the history of our nation had occurred in 2008.

Unemployment would reach over 10% before any action on the part of the New Administration would have any effect. And everyone knew that the 10%+ figure of unemployment masked a real unemployment rate approaching 15% or more with under-employment reaching unheard of heights.

The European Union was collapsing.

The rich in this country were growing richer (even in the midst of the economic melt down) and the poor poorer and the middle class disappearing.

A new class of what I call neo-Copperheads were screaming bloody murder that a Black Man and a woman were in charge of their government.

Well Nancy and Barry and even Harry decided that Bill Clinton's old dream of a National Health Care Act must be imposed while the iron was hot and the Dem majorities were in place.

But this trio did not diss all other legislation during this two year period.

A stimulus of unheard of proportions was passed.

A new strategy was imposed with regard to renewable energy.

I could go on and on.

But Nancy and Barry and Harry did not have anything approaching a true 'majority'.

They had to deal with the Browns and the Baucuses and a number of recalcitrant dems for those two years and with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and the West Virginia Liberal (to say nothing of the 6 month delay in the election of Al Franken).

The Copperheads and the new Know Nothing forces rallied in 2010 and have held our country hostage for almost two goddamn years.

Barry has had to emulate the Great Blondin once again.

And the Mitts and the Copperheads and the Know Nothing forces and the Greenwalds and the ultra-liberals and the pretend-liberals yell to him:

More to the left.

More to the right.

And the rest of us must just

...stand there speechless and hold our breath and pray to the Almighty to guide and help him safely through the trial?”Of course we have to go out and vote.

The end.