POTUS 8: President Martin Van Buren

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Martin Van Buren was the first President born as a United States citizen. He was the last vice president to be elected to succeed the president under whom he served. . .until then Vice-President George H.W. Bush was elected.

He was described as a "dandy," much like President Chester Alan Arthur, and loved frenchified clothes, expensive wine and rich food. His muttonchops were even more impressive than those of that other dandy President, Chester Alan Arthur.

He presided over the economic Panic of 1837, which was the worst recession the U.S. had ever experienced.

Before he was President, Van Buren moved from the New York State Senate, to the New York attorney general's office, and on to the U.S. Senate. Unhappy with the policies of President John Quincy Adams, Van Buren aligned himself instead with Andrew Jackson, the war hero who wanted a return to the Jeffersonian policies of a small government.

In Washington, he continued his party-building efforts on a national scale. Jackson was elected and named Van Buren secretary of state, in recognition of his political skills (and his help during the 1828 election).

Van Buren oversaw the nation’s foreign affairs and continued to build the organization that would become the Democratic Party. He became one of Andrew Jackson’s most trusted advisers and friends. Van Buren also threaded his way through the palace intrigues and in-fighting that marked Jackson’s cabinet. Toward the end of his first term, Jackson fired most of his cabinet, cut his relations with Vice President Calhoun, and dispatched Van Buren to the political calm of London as U.S. minister to England. He replaced Calhoun in the next election with Van Buren.

His enemies called him "Martin Van Ruin." He lost the 1840 presidential election.

Van Buren played key roles in the creation of both the Democratic Party and the so-called "second party system" in which Democrats competed with their opponents, the Whigs. He ignored calls from some Americans to respond to Canadian and British provocations with force, working instead successfully through diplomatic channels to calm tensions.

Martin Van Buren said that the two happiest days of his life were his entrance into the office of president and his surrender of the office.
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POTUS 21: Pres. Chester Alan Arthur - Accidental, Partial One-Term President, Owner Of Some Impressive Muttonchops, And Dandy

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Chester Alan Arthur was catapulted into the Vice-Presidency and Presidency on the basis of a pretty thin resume. Arthur had been Collector of Customs for the Port of New York, an important and powerful position. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant but was fired by Grant's successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, under (probably false) suspicions of bribery and corruption.

Arthur is remembered as one of the most society-conscious presidents, earning the nickname "the Gentleman Boss" for his dandy dress and courtly manner.

Chester Alan Arthur was elected Vice President of the United States on the Republican ticket with President James Garfield. His term as VPOTUS only lasted a few months.

Following President Garfield's assassination, he became President of the United States on September 20, 1881. He was often seen in the company of the socially prominent in Washington, New York, and Newport.

To the outrage of stalwart Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York and dispenser of political patronage became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President. He lost what friends he had in the party, and was not nominated for his own full term in office, which he likely would not have completed. Early in his Presidency, he had contracted Bright's Disease, a fatal kidney disease, from which he died in 1886.
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Poem: The Countdown

The countdown is long:
3 Years
9 Months
4 Days
20 Hours
10 Minutes
17 Seconds.

Long Tall 'Abe weeps agates
From his throne of marble.
A wig of pain settles in.

The reign of error brings on xenophobia
And a touch of The Jitters.
Even a spring day is suspect.

A nervous wind
Rattles the windowpanes
In time with the sabres.
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The Nuge To Fellow NRAers "Let's Get Hardcore!"

Click the title for a link to the AP story on Ted Nugent's NRA speech.

"I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

POTUS 2: President John Adams, The Only President Defeated For Re-election By His Own Vice-President

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John Adams was our first Vice President, and second President. He was in the Federalist Party, and was a mover and shaker in the formation--and formulation--of our government. He worked on the Declaration of Independence; the actual drafting was assigned to Thomas Jefferson. When President Washington refused a third term, Adams ran to succeed him and beat Thomas Jefferson.

Adams's years as president (1797–1801) were marked by intrigues and public relations disasters that embittered him the rest of his life.

Passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts helped discredit the Federalist party. Four laws, were passed. Most would be found unconstitutional. The Alien Act made it possible for the President to deport any alien he judged to be dangerous. The Alien Enemies Act gave the President more power during times of war--allowing him to "remove" or deport any foreigner that hadn't been naturalized. These acts were aimed at garnering the support of immigrants , who were supporting the Republican Party.

The party devolved into backbiting factions. Adams and Hamilton sharply split, and members of Adams's own cabinet looked to Hamilton--rather than The President--as their political Rabbi. Adams was drawn into the European vortex (the XYZ Affair), and instead of taking advantage of the militantcy it aroused amongst the proletariat here, devoted himself to securing the peace with France. That cost him the whole tamale.

In 1800, Adams ran again as a Federalist candidate. Distrust of him in his own party, public dislike of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Thomas Jefferson's popularity led him to defeat. He was the first and only President to be defeated by his Vice-President. He retired.

Twenty-five years later--> On the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams died at Quincy, after uttering his famous last words: "Thomas Jefferson still survives." He didn't know it, but Thomas Jefferson (Potus 3) had died a few hours earlier.
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The Imagism Movement In Poetry

In a way, Imagism reminds me of the Dogma 95 movement (although I think it has generated more enduring works of art, and tends less to handcuff the creators).

According to Amy Lowell, one of the founders of the Imagist movement in poetry in the early years of this century, imagist poems should observe seven rules:

1. Use language of common speech
2. Avoid clichés
3. Create new rhythms to express new moods
4. Absolute freedom of subject
5. Create concrete, firm images
6. Strive for concentration as essence of poetry
7. Suggest rather than state

Some of my favorite poets briefly embraced imagism. As a movement it foundered, probably because it just had too many rules. However, some striking, small. and dense lyric poems came out of the movement. A few examples:


Aubade
As I would free the white almond from the green husk
So I would strip your trappings off,
Beloved.
And fingering the smooth and polished kernel
I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting.

- Amy Lowell

L'Art, 1910
Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.
- Ezra Pound

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
- William Carlos Williams

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
-Ezra Pound

MONOTONE
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.

The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful--
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.

- Carl Sandburg

Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandburg
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POTUS 41: Pres. George Herbert Walker ("Read My Lips") Bush

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George Herbert Walker Bush was a Senator's son, a New England blueblood, who transplanted himself to Texas after college at Yale (his father Prescott and son George also attended Yale).

He was the fifth cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce, the seventh cousin three times removed of Theodore Roosevelt, the seventh cousin four times removed of Abraham Lincoln, and the eleventh cousin once removed of Gerald Ford.

He started out as a good guy. Despite being born rich, on his 18th birthday, six months after Pearl Harbor, George enlisted in the Navy and became a bomber pilot. He flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific, earning four medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

George worked his way up the Republican ranks via some adept brown-nosing and served in President Ford's cabinet as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as Vice-President to the 40th President, Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. He got the nod from his party to run for POTUS, and won on the unspoken premise it would be Reagan's third term. Democrats Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro didn't really put up much of a fight.

Early in the 1988 campaign, George Bush jumped the rail to focus on one thing: winning. He said a lot of things he didn't really believe in, and made promises he would regret.

The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips: No. New. Taxes.'

He started a war in Iraq, targeting Saddam Hussein, and he invaded Panama (as the United States had so many times before) where he captured Manuel Noriega our old ally, who had now become a murderous drug kingpin and was openly taunting The White House.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mentioned that President Bush also made the unforgivable mistake of selecting Senator Dan Quayle as his Vice-President. Not only was Quayle an empty suit, he was a knucklehead too. He wasn't just bland or a faceless political operative. . .he was dumb as a post. A statement he made debating Senator Lloyd Bentsen (VPOTUS candidate on Michael Dukakis's ticket) is a classic deer-in-the-headlights moment:

Indiana senator Dan Quayle (George Bush's running mate) made a remarkable claim. "I have as much experience in the Congress," he said, "as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency." Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen was not amused. "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy," he declared. "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy!"

In his re-election bid, they never let President Bush forget "No New Taxes." Running in a strange three-way against a charismatic and politically savvy William Jefferson Clinton, and a complete dingbat, Ross Perot, he lost the election. Perot siphoned off something like 19 million votes, presumably largely from The President. Who knows how the election would have gone without Perot in the spoiler role? Bill Clinton easily won and remained in the White House for eight years (despite some close calls, including impeachment). The President's war against Saddam Hussein didn't seem to affect the election much. His son would would try to finish that war eight years later.
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Voices In Wartime: Poetry And The Wages Of The War Of Have Waged

This moving film just opened in Seattle, Washington D.C., San Francisco, NYC, and Los Angeles. Go see it now, while it's still in theatres. Bring some friends! Let's get the theatrical run extended. Don't wait for the DVD! See the trailer! Go to their website! The movie documents the wages of wars in interviews and in poems. Jonathan King, a beloved brother-in-law, produced this documentary, so I hold it to a higher standard than other works of art. Poets have been reacting to war since before Homer penned the ultimate war poem. And they have been doing it well. This movie shows a wide variety of poets and their take on the wages of war. The movie uses excellent stock footage and documents from World War I to the present. It even has an interesting score. You should see this movie.

One of the poets I enjoyed most on screen was David Connolly, a poet who lives in Southie in Boston. He served in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Vietnam war. The war palpably affected his life, and his work. A collection of his poems Lost in America is not in print, but is available from used bookstores on Amazon.com.

This is one of the Connolly poems, and may be the spookiest war poem I have ever read:

Food for Thought, 3:00AM

They moved in unison
like dancers in a ballet,
the spider, twenty inches from my rifle,
the VC, twenty feet farther out, in line,
each slowly sliding a leg forward.
I let the man take one more step
so as not to kill the bug.

- David Connolly
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POTUS 30: President Calvin Coolidge "Keep Cool With Coolidge"

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President Coolidge was a quiet, sober and somber man, whose pained expression concealed a dry wit. In the middle of the night in 1923, he was informed of the death of Warren Harding. Coolidge's father, a justice of the peace, gave Coolidge the Oath Of Office, and he immediately went back to bed! He finished Harding's term, and ran for one on his own. Although he was eligible to run for an additional term (like LBJ), he chose not to.

Although he was a well-loved President, after leaving office his policies were increasingly blamed for the events that led to the Great Depression.

On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death, Dorothy Parker famously remarked of the taciturn President, "How could they tell?"
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POTUS 1: The First President Of The United States, Pres. George Washington a/k/a The General a/k/a The Father Of Our Country

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More nonsense has probably been written about Washington than any other President. Except Jack Kennedy, about whom even more gibberish has been written because his murder literally sparked an industry of conspiracy theorists.

Did young George chop down the cherry tree? Was he lying when he said "Father, I cannot tell a lie," which may be the biggest whopper of all time? "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree," George says when asked by his father. This story elevated him into the pantheon and onto Rushmore. It is also bunk, bogus, hokum, flim-flam::::::::::100% ca-ca. Parson Mason Locke Weems concocted the story in a biography of Washington. In The Moral Washington: Construction of a Legend Weems wanted to humanize Washington after a less than flattering earlier biography of him as 'cold and colorless.' Weems book was very popular with the public and they equated Washington with honesty.

Did he wear wooden teeth? No. He had hippomus ivory teeth--from rarely visited Africa. How they became his teeth is a mystery.

His tight-lipped grimace is often attributed to the wooden teeth. We do know that his false teeth has springs that made them adhere in place, but that is not the reason for the tight-lipped grin. The raconteur, humorist, and radio legend Jean Shepherd talked about Washington on his Washington birthday show on February 22, 1973. Shep tried to bust a few of the myths around The General. In particular, some of the notions that have arisen from Gilbert Stuart's portraits.

We remember President Washington as tight lipped and aloof because as Gilbert Stuart wrote "When I painted him, he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face." However, we now know that Stuart disliked George Washington and many people speculate this led to the tight lipped portrait, as well as the air of aloofness we sense in Washington. Stuart also wrote that when he would sit for him: "an apathy seemed to seize him, and a vacuity spread over his countenance, most appalling to paint."

Thanks to the portraits, we also think of him as a dandified man, wearing flouncy shirts, an ornate doublet and knickers. We think of his hair as being bright white. As was the fashion at the time, that was a powdered wig!

We tend to also think of him as a genteel and gentle man of restraint (again, partly due to the portraits). However, he was a man of large appetites who enjoyed copious flagons of Madeira wine (and would have no doubt enoyed bourbon, had it been invented yet). He was not afraid to take a another officer out for a round of fisticuffs, and usually won. Martha Washington indicated in more than one letter to friends that "George is at it again," which some have speculated refers to extramarital affairs.

George was a big man. In that time, the average height of a Continental Army soldier was five foot six inches. George Washington stood six foot, two inches. He was literally a giant among men.

Washington was also an incredible horseman, by all accounts, both in peace- and in war-time. He was a strong man, and tough as nails, as he showed in the war, living under-equipped in the appalling climate of Valley Forge and the other battles of the revolution.

Washington State is the only state named for a President. When I grew up in the 50's and 60's, Washington's birthday was still a state holiday (before that abomination known as President's Day). On February 22, in celebration of the event, cherry pies were on sale in the stores and at bake sales by the Rotary, the Civitan Club, Kiwanis, and others.

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Poem: When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King

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When aliens land
Do they come as Farmers,
To harvest seeds they planted long ago?

Is it "hi, Mom," or "hello cousin,"
Or will we be enslaved as drones?

Will they stop in for phosphorous or zinc or bauxite?
Or will they just toss earth in the back
Of an enormous galactic flatbed truckfarm pick-up
And head back to Zeta Reticulon?

Will they make this spinning ball
A rendering plant, or will they
Come to absorb our wisdom, art and humanity?

We never picture
aliens, greys, or martians
Coming in peace
Because we never came in peace.
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How Do People End Up At Blogspot?, Continued

I wrote yesterday about how people end up at All This Is That. It's interesting...I went back over the referrals from search engines over the last 72 hours-->

Foot Washing Baptists (leads to my story about growing up Baptist)

video - cougar chasing pronghorn antelope (I published a land speed of animals list)

how many times david caruso appeared naked in NYPD (I mentioned this briefly in one post--it's obviously a popular search topic)

Urban Legend (the phrase occurs many times, and in my profile)

monkey and the engineer (I printed the lyrics)

creating chimeras (mentioned in one post)

im my own grandpa lyrics (printed the lyrics)

who runs faster - gazelle or pronghorn antelope (the land speed list again)

"heroes and villains" (the paintings again)

Optical illusion abraham lincoln (I have several Lincoln pieces, and I printed an optical illusion once)

"bella abzug" + "phyllis schlafly" (each appeared in heroes and villains paintings)

david caruso" +"three times" +buttocks (people love his butt I guess!)

The First "accidental president" was (mentioned in two or three posts)

song lyrics + I'm my own grandpa (I printed the lyrics here)

"29th presidency" (refers to Pres. Harding, of whom I did a POTUS painting)

"lockable pizza box" (comes from a list of new patents I published)

"lockable pizza box" (see above comment)

"condoleezza rice nude" (This was the title of a post I did about weird searches)

retriever "heroic dog stories" (referred to the story of dogs committing suicide)

im my own grandpa lyrics (see earlier)

Chinese astrophysicist Dr. Kang Mao-pang photos (Mentioned in The Skeleton On The Moon story)

"bug in the rug" +garciaroc jerrycan 1945 (interesting - this led to a piece about the Dead, where I wrote "there will always be a void that only Jerry can fill...")

disagreement between Bob Weir Phil Lesh on tour 2005 (Both Lesh and Weir were in the Heroes and Villains paintings)

Was Lauren Bacall Hot? (refers to the picture I printed of Lauren "Betty" Bacall on the piano while Harry was playing. And the answer to that question is "yes!").

Sex orgy+ oral sex (This is from a piece I wrote about President Bush where I used both those phrases in an indirect context--not referring to POTUS specifically).

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