POTUS 39: President James Earl Carter - Not As Bad A President As You Have Been Led To Believe, But Rather A Victim Of Circumstance

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I remember how proud I was of Jimmy Carter, that Tuesday in November, 1976, when he stomped President Gerald R. Ford. It was my second Presidential election, and my first election had been a disaster, for me, and for the country.

With Ford's departure, the White House would finally be swept clean of the detritus of Dick Nixon. President Carter was my kind of people. Even among hillbillies, there are a few who rise above their mean beginnings. Of course, his brother Billy Carter was more my kind of people with his constant beer infusions, improvident talk, and public urination.

I didn't take long before things didn't go so well for President Carter, even though he would win the Nobel Peace Prize eventually. The last year of his admininstration was scarred by the Iranians holding a large number of Americans hostage. They would not be freed until the moment Dutch Reagan took the oath of office. Runaway inflation didn't help his election either. Since his forced retirement, the former President has worked tirelessly for various causes, most notably Habitat For Humanity.

He is the only person to be sworn in as president using his nickname. President Carter was also the first president born in a hospital. Jimmy Carter caused quite a stir when he said he had lusted many times in his heart after seeing pictures of women such as those in Playboy magazine. He instituted the first live televised phone-in broadcast from the White House in March 1977. He also began regular Saturday morning radio addresses to the American public.
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Poem: Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon

Crossing real estate lines
That mean nothing to him,
Coyote traverses the pale fog
Driven in from the sea.
He has a loan of time
To walk through his old salal tangled home.
Sneaking through nettles and Oregon grape,
He carries his battered canoe
Along magnolia darkened clay
Back where he grew from whelp to pup.
Down whitewater roiling over boulders
He feathers the current with his paddle,
Turning in the current like a leaf.
The spent river slinks into the sea.
Pipers spoon their bills in the sand for clams
And robins claw at earthworms.
A diving hawk sends smaller birds
Tumbling into hysterical flight.
His bones feel fragile as obsidian
As he watches the green Kalopanish stop
And they all come to the end:
The river, the creek, and God's old friend.
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Jack Brummet
poem started in 1983, finished 4-23-2005.
That took a while!

Jack Brummet And Keelin Curran On The I.R.T. Local, 1982

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Happy Birthday Bill!

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William Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, 351 years ago. Although he was writing fairly early in the development of modern English, no one has come within spitting distance of the master.
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Poem: Shorts For Jerry Melin ca. about 1988

1
A dim crescent
Hung cockeyed
On cathedral skies.

2
An orchard of salt pillars
Circles Gomorrah's ashes:
Lot's Wife had no name.

3
Two vultures flap
Side by side into the sun.
Calcutta awakes.

4
The wine in this cup
Has a tide all its own.
I am the sucking moon.
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POTUS 15: President James Buchanan, The Man Who Left A Divided Country And War For Pres. Abraham Lincoln

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James Buchanan rose from the state legislature to representative, senator and cabinet member. He made a run at the White House in 1844, 1848, and 1852 before finally winning in 1856.

In the 1850s, the question of slavery divided the United States. People hoped that the new President, "Old Buck," was the man to prevent a national crisis. He failed miserably. During his administration, the Union broke apart, and when he left office, civil war was just around the corner.

By 1856, the debates over slavery had reached hysterical intensity, with abolitionists and proslavery forces alike advocating violence and resorting to it frequently.

Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court announced the Dred Scott decision. Influenced by the new President's pro-southern interests, the Court ruled that because slaves (and former slaves) were not citizens, they had no right to sue for freedom. The court also invalidated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery in the portion of the Louisiana Purchase above 36 degrees latitude. Republicans denounced the decision and vowed to repudiate it.

America was a hopelessly divided nation. The Republicans were anti-slavery Northerners, and the Democrats, mostly Southerners with Northern allies who defended states' rights.

In 1859, John Brown seized the Southern town of Harpers Ferry in Virginia in an attempt to spark an uprising of slaves. Brown was captured and hanged but his action only fanned the flames.

The Democratic Party finally snapped in two. An unknown lawyer from the insurgent Republican Party--Abraham Lincoln--won the White House. The election of a Northerner opposed to the extension of slavery outside existing Southern states was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Six weeks after Abraham Lincoln's election, South Carolina left the Union, and six other states soon followed. Lame Duck Buchanan did nothing to stop the secessions, which strengthened the young Confederacy and gave seceding states time to set up a government. Buchanan was eager to depart the White House before the real disaster. On leaving office, he saw only close friends until his death in 1868.
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Sasquatch Sighting In The Great White North

A Manitoba ferry operator has filmed what many people feel is a real Bigfoot.

What he captured, according to his sister, Sharness Henry, is the image of a massive creature that stands eight, nine, maybe 10 feet (three metres) tall, walking along the edge of the water through some bulrushes. Near the end of the video, the creature turns and appears to stare into the camera, but the details of its face are impossible to make out.

Click on the title to link to the article.
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The Pope: Number One With A Bullet

The Yahoo Buzz Index is a cool web site, which tells you on any given day what's hot on the internet. The Pope is big this week. Out of the top 20 searches, four of the top 7 are Pope-related. Divas like Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, and Britney take four as well. Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Akon, and Fiddy Cent get one slot each. Paris Hilton is in the top 20 too. . .she seems to appear there whenever pictures of her naked or in flagrante appear on the 'net.
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The Wrong Stuff: Pope Benedict XVI

Some facts, wild suppositions, and articles re: Il Poppa: Pope Benedict XVI (a/k/s Cardinal Georg Ratzinger).

• This Pope is teetering on the brink of death? The College of Cardinals wanted a short term Pope, who would not have a long papacy. In the past 227 years there have been 14 popes, with an average age at death of 78.8 years. The Pope was born on April 16, 1927, and should last about nine months, if he conforms to the statistical bell curve.

• We can safely bet The Pope will not be among the 1.5% of all Catholic Popes who died during sex: Leo VII (936-9) died of a heart attack, John VII (955-64) was bludgeoned to death by the husband of a woman he was "ministering" to, John XIII (965-72) was also murdered by an angry husband, and Pope Paul II (1467-71) allegedly died while being sodomized by a page boy.
  
  
• Joseph Ratzinger, served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography. Ratzinger's wartime experiences have been a source of controversy in some newspapers when he became a frontrunner for the pontiff's seat. His biographers say he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime. BERLIN, April 19 (Reuters). But it still sticks, you know? Just a little.

• In a Good Friday Mass this year he said: "How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him." I guess he is referring both to Priests and lay sinners. Watch out.

• In choosing Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinals picked the most polarizing figure in the Catholic Church. No one was respected more as a student of theology. But, as CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports, no one was more feared as a chief enforcer of Vatican orthodoxy. "He has the most appalling reputation around the world as someone who has squashed theology, persecuted theologians - the chief of the thought police, the master of the inquisition," says Catholic journalist and feminist writer Margaret Hebblethwaite. (CBS) In short, I don't think women will make many strides in the church, if they're not actually propelled backwards. I also suspect we won't see the celibacy doctrine lifted from the priesthood on this turn on the merry-go-around. Therefore the numbers of brothers, sisters, and priests will continue to decline.

• The brother of Pope Benedict XVI Georg Ratzinger, 81, said he was "very concerned" and "shocked" upon hearing that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected as head of the Roman Catholic Church because of his age and frail health."I am very concerned. I would have thought his advanced age and his health which is not very stable would have been reason enough for the cardinals to pick someone else," said the visibly moved sibling in an interview on German television after the election of his 78-year-old brother. (AFP)
  
  

POTUS 19: Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes - "Rutherfraud"

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Rutherford B. Hayes, as 19th President, began implementing policies to heal the nation after the Civil War. He had a reputation reputation for integrity as a soldier and politician. His election was the lengthiest , most bitterly contested, and corrupt presidential election in history. . .until the year 2000.

After the Civil War, Hayes served as a governor and congressman, and by 1876, Republicans recognized that the scrupulous Hayes--a swing state war hero--was potential Presidential timber. His opponent, Democratic opponent Samuel J. Tilden of New York rolled up a plurality of 250,000 votes, but the vote in three southern states was close enough for both Republicans and Democrats to contest them. Congress set up a special commission which awarded the disputed electoral college votes. The outraged Democrats called Hayes "Rutherfraud" and "His Fraudulency."

As President, Hayes believed that military occupation bred hatred among southerners and prevented a national healing. Reconstruction was nearly over when Hayes took office in 1877. Federal troops were stationed only in New Orleans, Louisiana, and South Carolina. The federal occupation ended early in his administration. Alas, by the 1890s, the racist Democratic hold on the South resulted in a complete denial of voting rights for blacks until the 1960s.

Hayes ran for only one term. In retirement he worked for equal educational and prison reform.

President Hayes was the only President whose election was decided by a congressional commission. He was the first president to travel to the West Coast as president and the first to have a telephone and typewriter in the White House.
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Poem: Bird

Carrying his dented horn in a paper sack--
Pawned, lost, fifty times found and bought back.
He paid the price of a Stradivarius
To unhock that horn and blow for us.
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James Joyce's Ulysses: A Book Report

For what little actually happened, the book could have been a bit shorter. He lost me at times, but the crux of the biscuit is this:

Stephen - Telemachus loaned Malachi his hanky, two cents for beer, handed him a key, suffered agenbite of inwit, and got drunk.

Leopold - Ulysses grilled a kidney, fed his cat, bought some soap, sat and read on the 'loo, commited an act of self-love and pondered The Suitors.

Molly - Penelope said "rocks," dreamed of sexual intercourse, and answered several times in the affirmative.
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