Happy Birthday, Abe.
Only 1,438 days to go...
When I was a child we would drive out to Montana every summer to visit my grandmother. Once in while, we might stop by Mount Rushmore. Even as a child I knew, who the men in the mountain were: Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. In my history classes at school, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were always highlighted as the two truly outstanding Republican Presidents in our history.
I never knew my grandfather Jones, but looking through his papers and reading his letters, it’s pretty clear he was highly engaged with the Republican party - he even ran for office for some local Montana elected post. I don’t think he won, though. He was a Westerner, who adored the “first western president,” Teddy Roosevelt. My grandfather even bolted the party to vote Bull Moose in 1912.
Mother and her future father-in-law connected immediately over their mutual love of politics. However, my mother was raised in the Jim Crow South as a Southern Democrat. Being raised on the “Myth of the Lost Cause,” she tended to believe that Martha Mitchell’s Gone the Wind was an accurate portrayal of the “War of Northern Aggression.” Her great-grandmother told her the stories of the bushwhackers, who had come through and murdered her son and husband, so Mother naturally came to believe that Lincoln was one of the bad guys. After my folks died and as I was going through old papers, I even came across a certificate showing Mother had been initiated as a Junior Daughter of the Confederacy.
After my folks wed in 1948, they moved to Illinois. Mom wanted to vote in the presidential election, but had trouble establishing residency in time. My grandfather was more than obliging and said he would get her registered - but in Montana, as a Republican. So here she was, now living in the Land of Lincoln, where most everyone she met was a Republican, and she needed to switch loyalties. At the end of the day, she wanted to belong. (Although, I’m quite certain she voted for Truman in 1948 election!)
She eventually had three Yankee children who were taught facts and not myths about the Civil War, and who played at home rather than school every February 12th on an Illinois State holiday. Her southern sentiments essentially faded into the background, and I wonder, whether she ever told her parents she was a registered Republican.
What a topsy turvy world we live in. Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party is far cry from the Republican party we are living with today. With the bolt of the Dixiecrats in 1948 (southern Democrats dismayed by Truman’s executive order to desegregate the armed forces) and then with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968 to the 1980 Reagan Revolution to Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” to the Tea Party movement of 2007 and finally to the utter erosion of Reagan’s conservative principles, today’s Republicans are now either MAGA cultists, MAGA enablers or criminal thugs. The party looks nothing like it did when I was a child, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. Today’s MAGA loyalists would probably banish Ike from the party the way they did Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, et al.
Journalist Alfred Henry Lewis, who compiled a volume of Teddy Roosevelt’s speeches, remarked: “More than any other book or books, President Roosevelt has read and re-read the Life of Lincoln. Lincoln is his North Star; he steers by him. In those tangles which beset a president, his first silent inquiry is, ‘What would Lincoln have done?’”
I can’t help but believe that #FOTUS’s first silent inquiry is “What would Roy Cohn or Fred Trump have done?” Lincoln is clearly not his role model.
And the Republican party of Theodore Roosevelt, whose presidency saw the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the FDA to regulate food safety, is now placing this key government function to overseen by a guy, who eats roadkill.
It’s all so sad. To me, the MAGA enthusiasts will always be the RINOs. To me, the man who helped pass the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Pacific Railroad Act and proposed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments will always be the true Republican North Star.
I believe in the honor of the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, but sadly that party is all but gone. I fall back on Lincoln’s words of unity these days, when things feel bleak.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Happy Birthday, President Lincoln.
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” ~Abraham Lincoln
What I read every day…
Quote of the day:
“I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate. The President is attempting to seize control of power, and for corrupt purposes. The President wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies—that is the evisceration of democracy. You stand that next to the wholesale endorsement of political violence with the pardons given to every single January 6th rioter—including the most violent, who beat police officers over the head with baseball bats—and you could see what he's trying to do here. He is trying to crush his opposition by making them afraid of losing federal funding, by making them afraid of physical violence. So yes, this is a red alert moment when this entire country has to understand that our democracy is at risk—and for what? The billionaire takeover of government.”
~ Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy
What I’m reading today…
The Populist Cure Is Worse Than the Elite Disease
When historians tell the full story of the Trump era, it will also have to be a story about us, the American people. It will be a story about how democracies are prone to trade reason for passion, truth for lies and empathy for cruelty.
Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege
The role of the Treasury Department — and of the executive branch more broadly — is not to make determinations about which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep, and which it will not. … it is not for the Treasury Department or the administration to decide which of our congressionally approved commitments to fulfill and which to cast aside. No Treasury secretary in his or her first weeks in office should be put in the position where it is necessary to reassure the nation and the world of the integrity of our payments system or our commitment to make good on our financial obligations.
Tesla Sales Are Tanking Across The World
In recent days, full-year and January sales results from various markets around the world indicate a bleak picture for the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company. Even as it added the Cybertruck to its lineup in large volumes last year—which should have unlocked more buyers in America's expansive pickup truck field—Tesla is seeing serious declines in places where it once had a near-lock on electric sales.
USDA Freezes Conservation, Other Direct Farmer Funding
The freeze adds more economic uncertainty for farmers already struggling after several consecutive years of incomes dragged down by low crop prices. It also comes as a surprise to a community that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the past three presidential elections.
Concerns mount that Trump’s frenetic policies are spooking CEOs from making investments
President Donald Trump’s bellicose threats of tariffs on allies along with uncertainty surrounding his other polices seem to be causing big businesses to move to the sidelines and not invest in new production…. In addition to Trump’s proposed tariffs, details of deregulation plans and tax policies remain unclear. “There’s just a lot of uncertainty in the air, and it’s very hard to know what’s happening with growth and employment, what’s happening with inflation, until you get a little more clarity on all these uncertainties.”
Trump’s Deportation Plans Hit Bottlenecks
Arrests are reportedly below the Trump administration’s target of 1,200 a day, as immigration authorities contend with manpower shortages and a lack of detention facilities. And even the high-end figures are in keeping with or below deportations under previous administrations. According to figures from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), former President Joe Biden deported or removed 48,970 people, roughly 12,200 a week, in November 2024. And in his first year in office, former President Barack Obama oversaw the removal of 973,937 people—an average of more than 81,000 per month.
The resistance will be peaceful, nonviolent, colorful, multigenerational — we older people will march with you, no matter our sore feet and creaky joints. There will be beautiful old music. There will also be the usual haranguing through terrible sound systems, but oh well. Until then, this will be my fight song: left foot, right foot, breathe. Help the poor however you can, plant bulbs right now in the cold rocky soil, and rest.
Why Does Elon Musk Think He Can Treat the U.S. Government Like Twitter?
“Musk’s SpaceX has contracts with the Pentagon. The Pentagon budget is nearing $1 trillion, and half of that goes to contractors. There’s tremendous potential for cuts there. But will the Pentagon be a target for Musk’s agency, or will he focus on cutting programs like education and the environment that aren’t adding to his personal wealth?”
Sheriff? Congress? Criminal Justice reformer? Freed Proud Boys leaders have big plans
But these men remain felons convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power between former President Joe Biden and Trump. Asked if they were proud of their actions, all four unequivocally told USA TODAY they would do the same thing all over again.
Richard Gere Calls Donald Trump a ‘Bully and a Thug’ at Spain’s Goya Awards
“We are in a very dark place in America where we have a bully and a thug who is the president of the United States…the time has come for people to stand up. We must be vigilant about this dark marriage of money and power. It is irresponsible and corrosive that there are millionaires in charge of the United States; a danger to the whole planet.”
Early Crypto Traders Had Speedy Profit on Trump Coin as Others Suffered Losses
But the fast profits for early traders, whose names are unknown but some of whom appear to be based in China, came at the expense of a far larger number of slower investors who have cumulatively suffered more than $2 billion in losses after the price of the token crashed….Whether people made or lost money, it was stellar business for the Trumps. Nearly $100 million in trading fees have flowed to the family and its partners.