KIKO'S HOUSE

Lincoln's Spymaster & The Rebel Rams

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:04:00 +0000

ONE OF THE LAIRD RAMS CONFISCATED BY BRITAIN

While the tide began to turn against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and subsequent victories in Tennessee that opened the way to Georgia and the heart of Dixie, it was a forgotten foreign-policy coup engineered by the Lincoln administration that arguably sealed an eventual Union victory.

That coup came in September 1863 when the British government succumbed to intense lobbying by Secretary of State William Seward and seized two formidable ironclad rams being built for the Confederacy at the Laird Shipyards in the great port city of Liverpool, ending the last serious threat to a Union blockade of Southern ports that was slowly strangling the rebel cause.

* * * * *
The key player in this diplomatic coup was Thomas Haines Dudley, who has been called "Lincoln's spymaster" for operating a small group of detectives who scoured British shipyards and ports searching for evidence of Confederate shipbuilding activity.

Dudley, a Camden, New Jersey attorney and Republican Party operative, was appointed to the consulship at Liverpool in 1861 as a reward for his help in getting Lincoln the presidential nomination and then winning the 1860 election.

Even before the Civil War, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston had urged a policy of neutrality. Britain had long insisted that neutral nations abide by its blockades, and when the war began it tacitly supported the Union blockade of Southern ports. Palmerston's concerns were focused in Europe where Napoleon III was bent on expanding the French empire and Otto von Bismarck was on the rise in Germany.

But the Confederacy, with few shipbuilding facilities of its own, was desperate for fast ships that could raid Northern ports, destroy Northern shipping and commerce and run the blockade.

Led by Confederate Navy Captain James D. Bulloch, representatives of the Confederate government exploited the weak language of the British Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819 to manipulate the British government's declaration of neutrality, as well as the widespread sympathy with the South among many Britons fueled in part by the Trent Affair.

Bulloch's initial efforts to work with British businessmen to build and outfit warships were successful, and in March 1862 an unarmed CSS Florida sailed out of Liverpool harbor, completed its armament outside British waters and proceeded to raise hell with Union shipping until the fall of 1864 when it was captured by the Union Navy. Despite Dudley's efforts to get the British government to intervene, the CSS Alabama was to soon join the CSS Florida.

Subsequent efforts were less successful.

Dudley and his detectives learned that the Laird shipyards were building two massive ironclads with rams on their prows under the guise of merchant ships eventually named El Tousson and El Monassir. They were due to be delivered to the Confederacy in March 1863 at the cost of £93,000 each.

Each ship had a length of 230 feet, a beam of 42 feet, and a fully loaded draft of 15 feet. The deck was designed to raise a mere 6 feet above the water line, while the ships' outer surfaces were teak over iron and finished with armor plate to a depth of 5.5 inches. Both ships had a pair of revolving turrets, each of which was to house two large bore guns, but the vessels' most ominous features were massive rams made of solid iron that jutted out 7 feet beyond the prow.

As construction ran past the deadline, the U.S. increased pressure on the British government and Parliament regarding the ships. Indeed, a growing number of MP's considered that the construction was tantamount to full participation in the war. One week after the Battle of Gettysburg, U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams gave a thinly veiled warning that if the vessels were delivered to the Confederates, a state of war would exist between the U.S. and Britain.
Bulloch had anticipated just such a turn of events, and through political maneuvering in France, attempted to transfer technical ownership of the rams to the Egyptian government. This delaying action ended when Napoleon III backed down in the face of American threats.

Nevertheless, Bulloch's actions very nearly bought enough time. El Tousson had been launched and was being fitted out for sea at Liverpool's Albert Dock, while pre-launch finishing touches were being made to El Monassir back at Laird.

A second threat of war by the U.S. finally tipped the scales against the Confederates.
On the night of October 8, 1863 the Royal Navy warship HMS Goshawk dropped anchor near El Tousson while HMS Liverpool did likewise near the dock where El Monassir was berthed. Two days later both vessels were officially impounded by British Customs and Royal Navy personnel were put aboard the them.

Following their seizure, the British Government tried to placate the Confederates by paying them compensation totaling £180,000. The ships were were turned over to the Royal Navy and commissioned HMS Scorpion and HMS Wyvern, but were never used in the role for which they had been designed and proved to be poor ocean going vessels.

It seems unlikely that the course of the Civil War would have been significantly altered with the two ironclads flying Confederate flags, but their construction did lead to a major change in British warship building design, and sparked a string of events that would lead to the emergence of the Dreadnought series of vessels four decades later.
PHOTOGRAPHS (From top): Seward, Dudley, Palmerston, Bulloch, Adams.

'The Greatest Question Ever Presented'

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:02:00 +0000

AN ALLEGORY SHOWING REBUILDING OF THE UNION

40th of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

Lincoln returned from Gettyburg [on November 19, 1863] with a fever, and his doctor put him to bed, diagnosing varioloid, a mild form of smallpox. For the next three weeks he remained under quarantine in the White House, seeing few visitors and transacting little public business. But he remained in good spirits, and newspapers reported that he was able to joke that his illness gave him an answer to the incessant demands of office-seekers. "Now," he is supposed to have said, "I have something I can give everybody."

His convalescence gave him an opportunity to reflect on the tasks that still lay ahead of him. The most immediate of these was the drafting of his annual message to Congress, which assumed great importance because it would deal with the thorny question of the terms on which the rebellious Southern states could be restored to the Union. This, the President believed, was "the greatest question ever presented to practical statesmanship." . . .

Lincoln was aware of three possible plans. The first was advocated by Democrats ranging from the pro-Confederate Fernando Wood of New York (above) to the staunchly Unionist Reverdy Johnson of Maryland; it called for the President to withdraw the Emancipation Proclamation and to offer a general amnesty to the rebels. The Southern states, which had never legally been out of the Union, would simply send new congressmen to Washington, and the war would be over.

Conservative Republicans made Liberty as well as Union their war aim. Apart from insisting on the Emancipation Proclamation, they favored generous terms for the conquered South. [Secretary of State] Seward let it be known that he hoped that no conditions, beyond the emancipation of the slaves, would be imposed on the returning rebels, and his powerful friend Thurlow Weed (right) believed that Southern planters, mostly former Whigs like himself, would recognize the impending defeat of the Confederacy and lead their states back into the Union. . . .

Radical Republicans sought to add Equality as a third war aim. Most called for a drastic reorganization of Southern social and economic life before the rebellious states could be readmitted. Thaddeus Stevens, the powerful head of the House Ways and Means Committee, favored treating the South as a conquered province, wholly subject to the legislative will of the Congress. In a more elaborate argument, Charles Sumner maintained that the rebellion had vacated all government in the South and the region now fell under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, like any other national territory. It followed that slavery, which could not exist without the protection of positive law, was abolished in the entire region -- not merely in the more limited areas designated in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. . . .

In his sickroom, the President began working on an annual message to Congress that would avoid both extreme Republican positions. . . . Only at the end of the message did Lincoln's distinctive voice emerge. Announcing a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, the President offered "full pardon . . . with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves," to all rebels, excepting high-ranking Confederate officials, who would have to take an oath of future loyalty to the Constitution and pledge to obey acts of Congress and presidential proclamations relating to slavery.

An Index To Abraham Lincoln Posts

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president because none faced such enormous challenges, none grew more in office and none reinvented the United States to the extent that he did. All of that and the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of his birth is reason enough to publish posts each Sunday on the great man.

Series highlights:

'AND THE GREAT STAR EARLY DROPP'D' (11/1) The great poet Walt Whitman's admiration for Lincoln bordered on a fixation. LINK

THE COMPLEXITIES OF MRS. LINCOLN (10/25) History has not been particularly kind to Mary Todd Lincoln and it's not difficult to understand why. LINK

CAPITULATING ON BLACK ENLISTMENTS (10/18) Lincoln had vowed to never use African-Americans in the Union Army, but that finally changed in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation LINK

HE MADE THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME (10/11) Lincoln was a superb railroad lawyer before he became a superb president, so it should come as no surprise that the American rail network grew during his four years in office not despite the Civil War but because of it. LINK

BRILLIANT, HUMANE & RUTHLESS (10/4) More recent authors have disputed Lincoln's brilliance as commander in chief. Military affairs expert Eliot A. Cohen says that they're wrong. LINK

THE WAR WITHIN THE CIVIL WAR (9/27) Lincoln knew virtually nothing about Native American affairs, an ignorance driven by the commonly held view that the U.S. government should disenfranchise Indians of their land because they were barbarians. LINK

'HIS AMBITION WAS AN ENGINE THAT KNEW NO REST' (9/20) Historian Richard Shenkman debunks several Lincoln myths. LINK

HOLLYWOOD'S OBSESSION WITH LINCOLN'S LOVES (9/13) The great man -- and his loves -- have been played by an eclectic range of actors and actresses over the last century. LINK.

THE MONITOR-MERRIMACK SHOWDOWN (8/30) The battle between the ironclads settled nothing but did change navies forever. LINK

'STAND BY OUR DUTY' (8/23) Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was probably his finest. Yes, greater than the Gettysburg Address. LINK

WAS HE DISHONEST ABE? (8/9) Historian-economist Thomas DiLorenzo says that scholars criticize Lincoln at their own risk, but there is plenty of bad about the man along with the good. LINK

THE TRENT AFFAIR (8/2) In 1861, Lincoln had little to do with foreign affairs. This myopia was to exacerbate a crisis early in his presidency that could have transformed the war into an international conflict. LINK

COMPLEX & IMPERFECT (7/26) Historian Edna Medford argues that we do better for Lincoln and for the nation -- and for understanding of the Civil War -- if we view him in all of his complexity. LINK

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED LINCOLN & AMERICA (7/19) Uncle Tom's Cabin shook the U.S. like an earthquake when it was published in 1852. LINK

SLAVE COLONIES (7/12) Lincoln believed that he found a way to deal with the problems caused by slavery in sending blacks back to Africa to colonize Liberia, but hee was wrong. LINK

A TRUE GENIUS (6/28) Historian Shelby Foote says that there has never been a president who functioned like Lincoln did, and despite having no executive experience, he was a miracle at it. LINK

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE (6/21) Historian Harold Holzer leads an intimate walk-through of the very different presidential mansion of Lincoln's time. LINK

EVEN LINCOLN NEEDED A GOOD EDITOR (6/14) Guest blogger Michael Reynolds imagines how the Gettysburg Address might have turned out had the president had a good editor. LINK

MOST HANDS-ON COMMANDER IN CHIEF (6/7) The outcome of the Civil War in all likelihood would have been different had Lincoln not cajoled, taken over for and in some cases dismissed the generals who lacked his vision and courage. LINK

A SKIMPIER RESUME WOULD BE HARD TO FIND (5/31) David Herbert Donald, the recently deceased Lincoln biographer, writes that an inexperienced chief executive can cause the country immense heartbreak, but that with time and good common sense can grow into greatness. LINK

NOW ALIEN TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (5/11) Pete Abel writes in a two-part guest blog that while there are a few common traits between Lincoln and today's GOP, the differences are far more substantial. PART 1, PART 2

THE ASSASSINATION (4/22, 4/29, 5/4) It is rather amazing that so little is known about basic aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy while there is virtually no aspect of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier that remains a mystery. PART 1, PART 2, PART 3

THE STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (4/5) It took fewer than three minutes to deliver the famous speech, but it was an afterthought on the day it was given and remained so into the next century. LINK

HOW VALID THE COMPARISONS? (3/29) With the nomination and election of Barack Obama, the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln have come fast, thick and furious. But do they hold up? LINK

A PATENTLY CLEVER PRESIDENT (3/22) That Lincoln was the only president to get a U.S. patent is not surprising when you consider that he was an inveterate tinkerer and had a lifelong fascination with mechanical things. LINK

A PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR ON LINCOLN (3/15) A wide-ranging interview with James Hilty on Lincoln's greatness, frailties and innate conservatism. LINK

A BUMPY RIDE TO HIS REWARD (3/8) There was a controversy over a photograph taken of Lincoln's open coffin, an attempt to steal his corpse and his body was exhumed an extraordinary 17 times. LINK

WAS THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR GAY? (3/1) No revisionist history of a famous person would be complete without a book on whether they were gay, or if they were gay whether they were bisexual, or if they . . . LINK

PRESIDENTIAL POWER GRABS (2/22) The infringements by Lincoln on civil liberties arguably were greater than during any period in American history, including the last eight years. LINK

EARLY ASSASSINATION PLOT (2/15) A March 1861 assassination plot was never carried out, but Lincoln's response to it sullied a carefully cultivated image of dignified courage. LINK

OH HE OF LITTLE FAITH (2/8) Beyond Lincoln's opposition to slavery there was no aspect of him more controversial than his spiritual bona fides. LINK

THE BOHEMIAN BRIGADE COMES THROUGH (2/1) Modern journalism can trace its roots to the Civil War, which because of the telegraph and steam locomotive was the first instant-news war, something of which Lincoln was very much aware. LINK

LINCOLN ON BLACKS & SLAVERY (1/25) His metamorphosis from a frontiersman who always opposed slavery but like most white Americans felt that blacks were unequal into the Great Emancipator was as complex as the man himself. LINK

LINCOLN'S CAUTION (1/18) Guest blogger Robert Stein writes that Barack Obama can learn much from the 16th president, who perhaps even more than wisdom and moral strength needed a highly developed political sense of the possible. LINK

THE FIRST TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT (1/11) Arriving in Washington at the dawn of the age of the telegraph, Lincoln embraced this new technology of instantaneous communication with a passion and used it not just to communicate with his generals in the field during the Civil War, but to bend them to his will. LINK

LINCOLN LINCOLN BO BINCOLN (1/4) A substantial Lincoln mythology had taken hold in the American imagination even before his assassination in 1865. This canon of broad brush strokes and tall tales gave Lincoln his historic due but overlooked or willfully ignored the myriad complexities of our greatest president. LINK

Save the Babies! Why It's Long Past Time To Clean Up U.S. Thoroughbred Racing

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:10:00 +0000

EIGHT BELLES GOES DOWN AT THE 2008 KENTUCKY DERBY
I used to look forward to the Breeders Cup, an annual thoroughbred horse racing competition with more than $25 million in purse money that begins this weekend. Same with the Triple Crown. But it is obvious that the people who run this sport in America have only their best interests in mind. The horses are mere commodities to be raced and too often raced to death.

I began to sour on a sport that I have long loved because of what happened after the 2008 Kentucky Derby, an incredible race by any account.

Big Brown closed with an extraordinary burst of speed under picture-book blue skies to become the first horse to win the first leg of the Triple Crown from a 20th post position since 1929 and the first to win after only having run three races since 1919. And if that wasn't enough, Eight Belles -- the rare filly in a race dominated by colts -- gave Big Brown a run for the roses awarded the winner since the first Derby way back in 1874.

Eight Belles crossed the wire nearly five lengths behind Big Brown, but moments later the champion filly fell without warning in front of her outrider as she was easing down. She had fractured both of her front ankles -- extraordinarily in the same stride -- and was euthanized as 157,000 Churchhill Downs fans and tens of millions more at home, at bars and betting parlors looked on in stunned silence.

I had watched last year's Triple Crown races with trepidation. Two years earlier, Barbaro (above, right), the Kentucky Derby winner, had broken down in the Preakness after shattering his right hind leg. He died several months later from the inevitable complications of such a severe injury.

The Barbaro tragedy prompted calls to adopt safer synthetic racing surfaces as opposed to traditional dirt ovals like Churchill, and there was the inevitable second-guessing over whether Eight Belles was done in by the track, which happened to be dry and fast, let alone whether she should have been competing against colts.

Eight Belles had never raced beyond a mile and one-sixteenth in her prior nine starts. The Derby is a mile and one-quarter. Only four fillies have ever won the Derby; the last was Winning Colors in 1988. And when Rags to Riches won the 2007 Belmont Stakes, the last leg of the Triple Crown, she was the first filly to capture the grueling mile and three-quarters race in 102 years.

There is an even larger issue that will never be addressed: Three-year-old horses -- and the Triple Crown is open only to three year olds -- are mere babies.

These horses may appear to be magnificent specimens but in reality are pedigreed freaks bred for speed who have extremely fragile and still developing bones that make them especially prone to what has happened to too many young horses. These include Barbaro and Pine Island (above, left), who had to be euthanized after the 2006 Breeders' Cup Distaff race at Churchill when he suffered a dislocation of the left front fetlock.

If that weren't bad enough, there is an ongoing scandal off of the track. The New York Times reports that Steve Asmussen (above, right), Patrick Biancone (below, left) and several other Breeders Cup trainers have multiple and serious drug violations, and in fact of the top 10 American-based trainers in purse winnings this year, only one has never been cited for a medication violation.

It is part of an evolving culture in horse racing that ultimately rewards those who seek any means, legal and otherwise, to get an edge. When illegal drug use goes undetected, trainers walk away with the winnings and an enhanced reputation. But when they are caught, they are all too often handed punishments that are in name only. Their horses still run and their stables still operate, usually under the name of a trusted assistant.

It is long past time to go to the safer racing surfaces widely used in Europe and already adopted by many equestrian venues, and otherwise clean up thoroughbred racing. It is long past time to stop racing three-year-olds into early graves. And it is long past time to stop giving trainers wrist slaps for illegally drugging their horses.

But all of that is wishful thinking in a sport is awash with big money, outsized stud fees and enormous egos.

Cartoon du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:09:00 +0000

Tony Auth/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Fort Hood Short & To The Point

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:08:00 +0000

The sheer amount of misinformation and speculation about the Fort Hood massacre is staggering even by mainstream media standards. My take is simple: This one's on the Army. Given what we now reliably know about Major Nidal Malik Hasan, he should have been mustered out years ago.

Photograph by Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Miss Goody Two Shoes' Sex Tape

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:02:00 +0000

I will say one thing about Carrie Prejean: Rank hypocrisy does sometimes come in pretty packages, even if they are of the cosmetic surgery variety.

You may recall that Prejean lost her Miss California crown last year because it was learned that she had posed naked (from the waist up, anyway) on the Internet in her pre-boob job incarnation. Prejean, who had parlayed her tiara to become a tiresome scold against same-sex marriage, sued the California pageant organization for a gadzillion bucks claiming that she was tossed because of her views.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Settlement City. It turns out that Miss Goody Two Shoes was the star of a Triple X-rated home video in which she graphically reveals that she has talents that don't involve standing in high heels. Pageant officials waved the video in Prejean's face and poof! the lawsuit went away in a flash.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

SPIRAL STAIRCASE
(Former insane asylum, Roosevelt Island, New York City)
From Spiraling Out of Control
Hat tip to Woods' Lot

This Just In: John F. Kennedy Is Still Alive (But In My Dreams, Not Yours)

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:10:00 +0000

(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 2009)
I can remember some but by no means all of my dreams, which are seldom erotic, rarely nightmarish and more often than not mundane, frequently involving people and places that I have known, although the people are in places different than where I have known them, while the places are conglomerations of, say, a big old farmhouse where I once lived, a rustic high street bookshop in England and a coastal fishing village in Japan. These nocturnal journeys usually have soundtracks, sometimes music that I recently listened to with no apparent connection to the dream and seems to have been selected by some mad deejay. My dear departed parents make occasional cameo appearances in my dreams, less so my siblings and children, and only rarely the woman who has to put up with me as I toss and turn my way through these somnambulations, which I am able to interrupt to have a drink of water from a bedside glass or a shuffle off to the loo for a piddle, and then continue. Oh, and I always dream in color.

Having gotten those preliminaries out of the way, I am happy to report that John F. Kennedy is still alive. Or at least he was in a dream of several parts and epic length I had the other night that was more unusual than usual for several reasons, including it being partially in the third person; that is, unlike my usual modus, I could occasionally see myself as opposed to being inside myself looking out onto the dreamscape.

This dream opened on a balcony above an old and rather ornate Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, possibly at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South where I played water polo as a young man before living in that farmhouse and visiting that bookstore and fishing village. The occasion had the feel of a graduation or some other ceremony just ended. Everyone in the knot of a dozen or so people was dressed formally as would seem to befit such an occasion, and the center of attention was Mr. Kennedy, who by my reckoning is now a ripe 91 years old. He was shaking hands, back slapping and handing out really big Cuban cigars. I had several friends with me, but who they were was not revealed. There also were pair of elderly and diminutive identical twin butlers in evening coats and white gloves hovering nearby.

(I would like to pause for a moment to thank the folks who do the lighting and cinematography for my dreams. The results are fabulous -- a texturally rich but slightly gauzy look reminiscent of a Baz Luhrmann movie.)

If you're wondering what John Kennedy would look like as a nonegenarian, the answer is an even puffier version of Teddy Kennedy, but with the same steely yet warm gaze and incredible greenish-gray eyes that met my baby blues when we shook hands on an airport tarmac a few weeks before the 1960 presidential election. (He was 44, I was 13.)

The dream Mr. Kennedy took my hand, his as firm as it had been at the airport, and introduced me to several of his companions with effusive praise. Unfortunately, that part of the dream was interrupted by a water break, so I suppose I'll never know about what or why I was so great.

(If you, like me, think there may be a connection between spicy food and vivid dreaming, I would like to again pause to let you know that my pre-dream evening meal consisted of a bowl of pasta with a homemade clam sauce generously imbued with hot peppers. Ta-da!)

The over-the-pool formalities concluded and a big Cuban cigar tucked into a pocket of my waistcoat, we were escorted out a door by the bookend butlers onto an ivied university-like campus. Things get a little hazy here (it's a dream, okay?) but a door was opened to an outsized English estate car, possibly a custom Bentley, with wood side paneling and a cavernous back deck. I was beckoned inside.

One of the butlers slipped behind the wheel, his bald head barely visible over the seatback, while his companion rode shotgun. Mr. Kennedy, his companions and my friends were nowhere to be seen. Sitting on the spacious back deck with legs crossed, as it was suggested that I also do, were several children that I didn't recall seeing at the pool and some older lasses whom I did. As noted, my dreams are seldom erotic, but I did eye one of the women with a lust that was not just in my heart.

"Off we go!" announced the butler driver as he hit the starter and the estate car charged out onto a wide boulevard under a full moon no doubt arranged by my dream lighting guy. Kaboom! We were suddenly riding very fast through New England farm country and the occasional picture-postcard town. At some point after a piddle break and brief announcement to my then stirring bed mate that I was having the most amazing dream, it shifted into its final phase as the other butler declared "Here we go," or words to that effect. The estate car burst through a covered bridge, hurtled down a lane bordered by fieldstone fences and slowly lifted off, gaining altitude as I awoke.

Now here's where things get really interesting: The soundtrack to my dream was not something that I had recently heard, but rather something that I had wanted to hear and had left next to the stereo with that intention. Holy cripes! The very same music -- Santana's "Eternal Caravan Of Reincarnation/Waves Within" from the Caravanserai album -- came on the radio station that I was listening to as I wrote this the morning after. A marvelous piece of music but with no apparent connection to the dream. Natch.

If that wasn't a hoot, dig this: I decided to write out a draft of my dream as a text document before cutting and pasting it into this blog post. I have a blank document hanging around on the computer for such exercises and typically wipe this template clean after using it, but failed to do so last time. And so when I double-clicked on the template it came up with the text still intact from the last time. It was a quote from John-freaking-Kennedy that I had used after Barack Obama's victory in November. It goes like this:

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

What does all of this mean? I really don't have a clue, but your thoughts are welcome.

PAINTINGS BY KEVIN WRIGHT

Cartoon du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:09:00 +0000

Michael Ramirez/Investor's Business Daily

Party Of No Becomes The Party Of Uh-Oh

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:08:00 +0000

Turns out that having no Republican health-care reform plan may have been better than having one.

The Congressional Budget Office slices and dices the GOP plan, as it did the Democratic plan, and finds that the Dems' plan covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Repub's plan.

The plan, of course, has no chance of being adopted, but if it did almost as many Americans would be denied access to health care than are today.

The Face Of American Conservatism

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:07:00 +0000

MORE HERE IF YOU DARE.

Photograph by Chris Connor/Getty Images

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

JUMPING SPIDER EYES
By Thomas Shahan
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish

Schadenfreude, Baby, Schadenfreude

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:10:00 +0000

It was only a matter of time before the Wingnut Express collided with the Reality Choo Choo, and how fitting that the kaboom occurred in a backwater congressional district in upstate New York that has voted reliably Republican save for a single election since Rutherford B. Hayes was wearing holes in the Oval Office carpet.

Mind you that the election of a Democrat in a district where that party polled barely 35 percent in the last election over a carpetbagging right winger endorsed by Republican Party leaders Beck, Limbaugh and Palin will not appreciably slow let alone halt the Wingnut Express. That is not likely to happen until 2010 or perhaps 2012 when these certifiably extreme hacks render a national GOP wildly out of step with the mainstream totally irrelevant and cooler heads recapture the party leadership.

Beck and Limbaugh make no pretense of wanting to be taken seriously. They are clowns to their very cores. But Palin, who can't even maintain the high ground in a faceoff with the 19-year-old high school dropout who knocked up her daughter, yearns to be taken seriously and the victory of Bill Owens over Doug Hoffman in a race that she transformed into a contest about herself is a big cream pie to her smarmy face.

The larger lesson here is that the good Republican burghers of NY-23 wanted to be taken seriously and they had a winner in Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who was a moderate in step with their views and had deep local roots.

Instead, Scozzafava was tea bagged out of the race in favor of an inarticulate carpetbagger whose infatuation with big national names out of step with the district angered the Republican base so deeply that enough of them crossed over to send Owens to Washington. Meanwhile 6 percent of voters still cast their ballots for Scozzafava in what has to be viewed as a protest.

There needs to be a place in the national conversation for conservatives, but not the kind who demand party purity, don't even bother to try to understand what voters care about, and excel only at empty sloganeering.

Don't Try This At Home, Kids

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:09:00 +0000

From the always delightful Mudflats:

Thought I'd share a newly developed recipe for Elephant Upside-Down Surprise Cake. First you take a congressional district that has had Republican representation in the U.S. House of Representatives since two decades before the Civil War, then add a teabag, pour on some hot steamin' Sarah Palin, add a squeeze of Rush Limbaugh, then carefully strain the mixture until there is no trace of the moderate Republican. Then just wait and watch. Pretty soon you’ll have . . . Surprise! A Democrat! There you go folks. Dems across the land can now send thank you notes to Our Lady of Perpetual Meddling. Can’t wait to find out whose fault this one is going to be.

Cartoon du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:08:00 +0000

Mike Luckovich/Atlanta Journal Constitution

Vote Early & Often. Splat!

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:02:00 +0000

MORE HERE.

Only 14 Weeks Until Spring Training

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

AHEM.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

CAREFREE
By Ursula I. Abresch

America's Soul & Health-Care Reform: The Devil Is In D.C., Not In The Details

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:10:00 +0000

Although the media, lobbyists, Joe Lieberman and even Nancy Pelosi may not see it my way, the debate over reforming the dysfunctional health-care system is been nothing less than a battle to define America's soul.

A decade into the new millennium, the U.S. remains the only industrialized country that allows a large percentage of its men, women and children to go uninsured while those who are fortunate enough to be insured pay through the nose. Canada, France, Germany and Japan, to name but a handful of nations with universal coverage coverage, have systems that have the inevitable warts, but overall they work very well.

Among the actors in this battle are Republicans and a few Democrats who not only are beholden to the billions of dollars in contributions from the health-care lobby but simply do not believe that being able to get help when you or your children get sick or come down with a life-threatening disease is a right like an education or voting.

Other actors are Democrats who believe in reforming the system, but only in ways that will not impact too harshly on the hands that reliably feed them each election cycle: Big Pharma, insurance companies and hospital systems more concerned with profits than quality of care.

Finally there are the Democrats who believe in nothing less than universal care, but know that as hard as they may try to shoot the moon, they will fall short and success must be judged by how many more people would be insured than the other major goal of reform -- reducing out-of-control costs.

* * * * *

While a large majority of Americans tell pollsters that they support health-care reform and that they support reform with a public option, that support wanes when they learn that they will be required to buy health insurance from their employer or a new insurance exchange or pay a penalty.

Such a so-called mandate is necessary for a couple of fundamental reasons that explain why enacting reform has been so damned difficult:

People who are uninsured tend to be less healthy and suffer more severe illness. They end up in emergency rooms, which drives up costs. But reforms won't work unless nearly everyone carries insurance because if there aren't a large number of healthy people then the costs through an insurance exchange will be too high.

* * * * *
After months of criticizing the Democrats' health-care proposals without offering one of their own, House Republicans will unveil legislation this week that to no one's surprise will be too little too late and too light on real reform.

GOP leaders are unable to say how much their bill would cost or how many Americans would be insured under their plan, but it will not bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions nor will it give individuals income tax credits to buy them insurance, which the Democrats bills in both the House and Senate do.

Republican sentiments were nicely summed up by Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who in a speech on the House floor revealed herself to be a soulless one.
"I believe that the greatest fear that we all should have . . . to our freedom comes from this room, this very room, and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health-care bill," Foxx declared. "I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country."

And so this is the state of play one year to the day after Barack Obama was elected with the promise that he would work tirelessly to reform the health-care system. That he has, but what transpires in the coming weeks will tell us much about where his and our other leaders priorities -- and their souls -- really lie.

IMAGES (From top): "Washington Crossing the Delaware " (1851) by Emanuel Leutze; "The Marines at Tripoli" by C.H. Waterhouse; "The Gettysburg Address" (1931) by Mort Kunstler; "Boom Town" (1928) by Thomas Hart Benton; "New Deal Builders" (1934) by Charles F. Quest; "Freedom of Speech" (1943) by Norman Rockwell; "Martin Luther King" (2005) by Tim Okamura.

Cartoon du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:09:00 +0000

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

NY-23: The Mouse That Roared

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:07:00 +0000

You are a voter in a congressional district in upstate New York that has gone reliably Republican save for a single election since the 19th century. Your Republican congressman is picked to be Army secretary by President Obama and your county GOP committee taps a woman with deep local roots and moderate credentials in keeping with the tenor of the district to run in a special election to succeed him.
But it is 2009 and that woman is not extreme enough for the national GOP, which foists a carpetbagging right-wing Glenn Beck acolyte with no experience and even less sense on you, driving the woman from the race.

Predictions that the right winger will win overwhelmingly do not take into account that the people of the district are deeply insulted that their election has been hijacked by uncouth loudmouths like Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, who may speak for what is left of the national GOP but not the good burghers of NY-23. Against all odds, the Democrat wins.
Oh, and people who see the Republican victory in the New Jersey gubernatorial race as a rebuke to Obama have their heads up their backsides. The incumbent was deeply unpopular and the victor is a moderate out of step with the national GOP.

Meanwhile, back at the World Series . . .

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1909-2009)

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:02:00 +0000

MORE HERE.

What! No Nose Picker?

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:01:00 +0000

Behold the Giant Swiss Army Knife.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

kikokimba@gmail.com (Shaun Mullen) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is considered an analog to our own Milky Way and lies about 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus.
Photograph courtesy of NASA