Monday, February 21, 2011

My Favorite Lincoln Commercial... Evah!



Happy President's Day.

And, if you want something more intellectual about ol' Abe, then read this.

It wasn't until the Lincolns had cleared enough land -- Abraham remembered he "had an axe put into his hands at once" -- that they availed themselves of an 18-by-20 foot log cabin. That first winter in Indiana has been described as "a veritable childhood Valley Forge of suffering." According to Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame in his exhaustive, new two-volume "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" (a treasure on which I rely extensively here), another family in the vicinity recalled seeing the glowing eyes of wolves through the spaces in their cabin walls at night. This was the unadorned and unforgiving frontier, nearly uninhabited and characterized by ignorance, superstition, violence, drunkenness and death.

The adult Lincoln told a journalist that his youth had constituted "the short and simple annals of the poor": "That's my life, and that's all you or anyone else can make of it.
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5 comments:

  1. Why didn't Lincoln just cry and whine that housing was his right, and the government must grant him his right?

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  2. So do Republicans think Lincoln was wrong when he climbed out of a window to deny a quorem call?

    Just asking as an independent, who hates hypocery on both sides. You can't judge tacits based on if you like the goals. Either something is a valid political move or its not, that judgement is independent of what the goal is.

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  3. LINCOLN BROKE A QUORUM Back in 1839, the Illinois House was meeting in special session and hatched a plan to vote on a Democratic bill to require the state’s central bank to make payments in gold or silver, rather than paper money. The Whig Party strongly opposed the idea, and, led by Rep. Abraham Lincoln, decided on the spot that the best way to kill the proposal was to deny the majority Democrats a quorum. So, they left the building, the

    Second Presbyterian Church in Springfield. But two members were required under law back then to demand that a quorum call be made. Lincoln and another House Whig, Joseph Gillespie, walked into the chambers and made the motion. No quorum was present and a vote couldn’t be taken. The next day, though, Lincoln and the Whigs made the same attempt, but the House Speaker ordered the doors locked behind them and summoned some members who had previously been too ill to attend the session. A quorum was now present.

    Lincoln realized the problem and he and the other Whigs jumped out of a window to try to halt the vote, but the quorum was already certified and the Whigs lost. According to Lincoln friend William Herndon, the window jumping had no effect "other than to provide the Democrats with capital material for ridicule."

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  4. The above was from archpundit.com.

    Lincoln came back the next day. Then they jumped out of the window, but the the quorum was already certified. AND...the window jumping provided capital material for ridicule.

    Czabe: 1 vs. You 0.

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  5. Richard -

    The score is actually much worse than that ... if you ask Czabe. (If you ask me you get a different number). Reality is probably closer to the middle.

    My point is either stalling tacits are good or they are bad. This needs to be decided independant of the issue at hand.

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