There's a lot of media buzz about President Obama's first "hundred days." What's so special about one hundred days? After all, he was elected to a term of four years. One hundred days surely is not very long in comparison to the more than 1,460 days of a Presidential normal term. (Those hardy souls who are already sporting 1.20.13 bumper stickers seem to all their fellow commuters to have jumped the gun.)
The media is also full of stories of how Americans are in love with our "hip" First Family. If Americans are in love with a father-headed, married-with-children model family, that is certainly a very good thing. If the Obamas can make marriage hip, then I'd say hip, hip, hooray.
But that hundred day thing has an odd origin for a free people to celebrate. It comes from the Emperor Napoleon. Talk about hip. Napoleon was the trend-setter and fashion-maker of Europe for fifteen years. The "Empire" style in women's fine clothing, art, architecture, and home décor was all the rage. Napoleon's massive Arc de Triomphe in the heart of Paris commemorated all his spectacular military successes-and France did have spectacular military successes guided by the strategic and tactical genius of the young conqueror.
Aaron Klein: Obama Pushing Saudi Plan for Israel-Arab Peace
Perhaps, Barack Obama's bow to the King of Saudi Arabia was much more than a common courtesy. If Aaron Klein of WorldnetDaily and Schmoozing with Terrorists (his book) is correct then President Obama owes a great intellectual debt to the Saudi monarch, Abdullah. This is so because Obama is using the Saudi King's "Arab Peace Initiative" as the framework of his Middle East foreign policy.
The Arab Initiative, originally proposed by King Abdullah in 2002 and later adopted by the Arab League, states that Israel would receive "normal relations" with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount.
It also "demands the imposition of a non-binding U.N. resolution that calls for so-called Palestinian refugees who wish to move inside Israel to be permitted to do so at the 'earliest practicable date.'" There are approximately 4 million Arabs who claim Palestinian refugee status with the United Nations.
Netanyahu has told U.S. envoy, George Mitchell, that Israel will condition talks "with the Palestinians on Palestinian leaders' first recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, a step that would be difficult should Hamas join a unity government." According to Klein, Mitchell recently described Obama's general plan to Netanyahu, and the Israeli leader was dismayed to learn that Obama was following the Saudi proposal. Klein described these developments in an interview during the second hour of the John Batchelor Show (April 19, 2009) (minute 15 (mp3 file)).
In late January, Klein discussed Obama's attraction to the Saudi plan on the day of President Obama's interview on an Arab TV network. In that interview Obama referenced King Abdullah's plan and spoke approvingly of it ("... I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that."). Given Obama's admiration for a courageous plan, a bow to the author of the courageous plan was probably in order. (Unfortunately for Abdullah - Obama didn't give him the really cool Hugo Chavez-handshake in addition to the bow.)
Make no mistake about it: these are very dangerous times for Israel. According to Klein, "Defenders of Israel warn the plan would leave the Jewish state with truncated, difficult-to-defend borders and could threaten Israel's Jewish character by compelling it to accept millions of foreign Arabs." More to the point, Klein states that "Arab Street" views the Arab Peace Initiative as a way to fatally undermine the state of Israel.
Today is Thomas Jefferson's birthday. Born in 1743, Jefferson was described at age 32 as a young man who could "could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin."
Jefferson referred to his election as President as "the revolution of 1800." It was even more hazardous than the famous "hanging chads" of the Florida recount in 2000. His two terms as President were followed by two terms for his closest friend and political lieutenant, James Madison. These two terms were followed by two terms-almost uncontested-for Jefferson's second closest political ally, James Monroe. By the time John Quincy Adams was elected President in 1824, this son of an old political rival also counted himself a Jeffersonian.
The internet is alive with stories about President Barack Obama bowing low before Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. It was bad enough when George W. Bush invited this odious tyrant to Crawford and was pictured walking hand-in-hand with him. The White House defensively claimed then that it was a Saudi custom for men to express their friendship by holding hands. Had they never heard: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do"? That was bad enough. This Obama obeisance was horrible.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of wanting to be a king. But he knew a lot more about how to behave around monarchs than his present-day successors do. When King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth (parents of Elizabeth II) came to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park in 1939, Franklin and Eleanor gave them a picnic. They served the first British monarchs ever to set foot on U.S. soil hot dogs and beans! How thoroughly American.
The Attempted Assassination of President Reagan and the Value of a Single Life
As some commentators are noting, today is the 28th anniversary of the day President Reagan was shot. I remember the day vividly. The college dean for whom I was working told me the news. "I'm sorry your President was shot, Bob," he said, sucking deeply on his cigarette. Then he added, "Of course, my wife wonders why assassins on our side are always such bad shots."
The deranged young man who shot the President outside the Washington Hilton actually didn't hit him directly. His bullet seems to have ricocheted off a wall and entered the President's chest. The Secret Service agents who tackled the gunman had acted with heroism and speed.
Reagan was taken to George Washington University Hospital. He was in intense pain, but he managed to give a game smile to photographers. Only inside the emergency entrance did his knees buckle. He was rushed into surgery. His doctors later reported that they'd never seen a 70-year old man with such well-developed chest muscles. The bullet lodged less than an inch from the President's heart. His internal bleeding was massive, life threatening. His Presidency--less than three months old--could have ended at that moment.
James Madison's birthday came around this week. We might have celebrated with ice cream, which his beloved wife, Dolley, first served at a Presidential Inauguration in 1813. March 16th was not attended with the kind of celebration we used to accord George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Nonetheless, this 5-foot, 4-inch founder was a giant whose memory deserves to be honored. Sadly, all of our greatest Presidents seem to have been submerged in the indigestible stew we now call Presidents Day. Despite this, we should all be grateful to little "Jemmie" Madison.
Madison was a leader in establishing religious liberty for Americans-and this "lustre of our country" (his beautiful phrase) made America a beacon for the oppressed of many lands. In the nineteenth century, America was treasured as a refuge for Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, and Jews. Even today, Christian Arabs, Cuban and Vietnamese Catholics, Hispanic Pentecostals, Russian Jews, and many other peoples have found America a safe haven.
With his signature of his economic "stimulus" bill, President Obama puts the U.S. total indebtedness just a few billion dollars shy of the total world annual Gross Domestic Product. But he is not going for bust-and he can prove it. The President has sent back to our British allies a valuable bust of Sir Winston Churchill. The bust-valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds-was loaned to the White House by the British government after the September 11th attacks. President Obama wanted the thing out of there.
George Washington: First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of Nine Percent of his Countrymen
When George Washington died in 1799, the country was shocked. No one expected the apparently hearty 67-year old former President to die so suddenly. We felt orphaned. The outpouring of grief was nearly universal. Even bitter political rivals vied with each other in paying tribute to the "Father of our Country." General Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee of Virginia eulogized Washington as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
No more. The latest Gallup Poll shows a close race for greatest American President. Ronald Reagan tops the list, with 24 percent citing him as first. John Kennedy ties with Abraham Lincoln at 22 percent. George Washington registers and anemic nine percent. George W. Bush might feel a bit relieved.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament sheweth his handiwork." Thus saith the Lord. Not necessarily, saith George Will. Washington's leading smart man notes today's two hundredth anniversary of Lincoln's birth with a useful explanation of what Darwin taught. Darwin was born on the same day that Lincoln was born. Historian John Lukacs calls such coincidences spiritual puns. There are some secularists who are trying to make Lincoln and Darwin trans-Atlantic twins, suggesting somehow that just as Lincoln liberated the slaves, so Darwin freed us from religious dogma and catechesis through his writings on the origins of dogs and cats-and us.
Will notes that Darwin "had no intellectual room for a directing deity that wills a special destination for our species." Darwin, Will points out, "placed humanity in a continuum of all protoplasm." How elevating.
Will rejects Intelligent Design. "The fact of order in nature does not require us to postulate a divine Orderer." But is it reasonable for us to rule that divine Orderer out of order?
President Obama gave his first interview to the Al Arabiya television network. He talked of a new U.S. effort to reach out to "the Muslim world." He's hardly the first one to use that phrase. Think tank director John Esposito of Georgetown University regularly speaks of the Muslim world.
Question: What would be the reaction from the pundits and the talking heads if the President spoke of the U.S. reaching out to Christendom? That word used to describe the collection of countries in which Christianity predominated. You can well imagine. He would be denounced immediately as a theocrat. The very idea of Christian countries offends the cultured despisers of religion. Or, at least it offends the despisers of some religions.
I joined about 200 people yesterday in Annapolis for a re-tracing of President Lincoln's February, 1865, walk. He came to Maryland's capital only once--to catch a ship to steam down the Chesapeake Bay. He went there to discuss peace terms with Confederate commissioners at Fortress Monroe. Annapolis' Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was determined to make a great event of Lincoln's brief encounter with our town. Lincoln had to get off his special one-car train at the depot and walk across town to the Naval Academy to embark on his short sea voyage.
The handsome tribute booklet published by our Maryland State Archives titles Lincoln's sojourn "The Extra Mile." They tell us everything we could want to know about his cross-town walk except where they got the phrase the extra mile. It comes from the Bible. Jesus tells us we should "walk the extra mile" when required to go one mile. In Jesus' time, Roman soldiers could force Israelites to carry their heavy armor and gear one full mile. Jesus wanted us to do more than what was minimally required of us.
This fine booklet is another example of what the late Prof. E.D. Hirsch wrote on cultural literacy. Hirsch believed that we could not be culturally literate without a working knowledge of the Bible. I don't know if Hirsch believed the Bible, but he certainly understood its influence on our culture. He cited India as an example. That giant nation has more than 450 language groups. Only the English language unites the people of India, and only the Bible enables them to understand the language they use.
President Lincoln was literally walking the extra mile for peace. He knew that the peacemakers are blessed. Lincoln had read the Sermon on the Mount. His trip was a spur-of-the-moment thing. He slipped out of the Executive Mansion without his faithful secretary John Nicolay even knowing he was gone. General Grant had persuaded the President that he was needed at Fort Monroe. Even if the Confederates' peace offerings were unacceptable-and so they ultimately proved to be-Lincoln needed to show his own Union soldiers that he would spare no effort to bring peace.
So Lincoln strode purposefully through Annapolis, a distance of 1 ¼ miles. He passed by the Union soldiers' hospital at St. John's College on his left. As well, he passed the Old State House on his right. The Maryland legislature was in session then, debating ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. Lincoln worked hard to get Congress to approve the Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln went so far as to sign the Thirteenth Amendment, even though the President's signature is not required for a constitutional amendment.
Our little town of Annapolis made the most of Lincoln's briefest of walk-throughs. They did a fine job. We learned who carried Lincoln's toothbrush and the fact that he always got seasick. But if the program organizers had noted the origins of that beautiful phrase, "the extra mile," they might have given us a better insight into the Great Emancipator's heart.
May 10, 1940: The Day When Western Civilization Was Saved
Adolf Hitler and his top Nazi cohorts rode through the night on the Fuhrer's special train, code named "Amerika." In the pre-dawn hours, the train quietly changed course, heading west to take its passengers to the jumping off point for what would become the German army's stunning blitzkrieg through Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
On this same day, in London, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Buckingham Palace to resign his office. There was some last-minute hesitancy on Chamberlain's part, based on the powerful German offensive in France, but he was persuaded to go ahead with his plans to give up his post. King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a new British government. Churchill later said: “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been in preparation for this hour and this trial."
As Americans, we can celebrate this tenth of May as the day when Western Civilization was saved. Churchill knew the stakes. He warned the British people what would happen to America and the world if Hitler won: "If we fail, the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science."
On this day in 1776 Thomas Paine anonymously published his pamphlet "Common Sense," setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. "Common Sense" advocated independence for the American colonies from Britain and is considered one of the most influential pamphlets in American history. Credited with uniting average citizens and political leaders behind the idea of independence "Common Sense" played a remarkable role in transforming a colonial squabble into the American Revolution. At the time Paine wrote "Common Sense," most colonists considered themselves to be aggrieved Britons. Paine fundamentally changed the tenor of colonists' argument with the crown when he wrote the following: "Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still."
QoD: “If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” – Comedian Milton Berle. On this day in (DELETED) a woman who probably deserved a few extra hands let alone sainthood was born, my Mom.
On this day in 1643 was the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (any surprise the first destructive element against marriage in the States originated in Massachusetts?) is granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke, by the Quarter Court of Boston, Massachusetts. In a signed and sealed affidavit presented to John Winthrop Jr., the son of the colony's founder, Denis Clarke admitted to abandoning his wife, with whom he had two children, for another woman, with whom he had another two children. He also stated his refusal to return to his original wife, thus giving the Puritan court no option but to punish Clarke and grant a divorce to his wife, Anne. The Quarter Court's final decision read: "Anne Clarke, beeing deserted by Denis Clarke hir husband, and hee refusing to accompany with hir, she is graunted to bee divorced."
QoD: "A colleague of mine once noted, there is very little difference between men and women. But, VIVE LE DIFFERENCE!!" – Warner Brothers romantic skunk, Pepe le Pew, who debuted today in 1945 in the cartoon short “Odor-able Kitty.”
On this day in 1799, George Washington, the first president of the United States, dies of acute laryngitis at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. George Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. Two years later, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war's fighting moved elsewhere, he resigned from his military post, returned to a planter's life, and took a seat in Virginia's House of Burgesses. In 1774, he represented Virginia at the Continental Congress.
After the American Revolution erupted in 1775, Washington was nominated to be commander in chief of the newly established Continental Army. Some in the Continental Congress opposed his appointment, thinking other candidates were better equipped for the post, but he was ultimately chosen because as a Virginian his leadership helped bind the Southern colonies more closely to the rebellion in New England. After winning the war, the victorious general retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, but in 1787 he heeded his nation's call and returned to politics to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In February of 1789 Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the United States. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term. In 1797, he finally began a long-awaited retirement at his estate in Virginia. He died two years later. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
QoD: "Me and Janet really are two different people." - Michael Jackson. On this day in 1969 the Jackson Five made their 1st appearance on "Ed Sullivan Show."
On this day in 1928 the clip on tie was designed. The tie is a bow tie or four in hand tie which is permanently tied into its knot with a dimple just below the knot, which is fixed only to the front of the shirt collar by a metal clip. Many types of occupations require their personnel to wear clip-on ties for safety or efficiency reasons. These occupations include police, paramedics, and engineers. Other people may wear a clip-on tie in lieu of a standard necktie if they do not know how to tie one, while others feel it is less constrictive than a standard necktie.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!" - From Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," published on this day in 1843, selling 6,000 copies.
As some commentators are noting, today is the 28th anniversary of the day President Reagan was shot. I remember the day vividly. The college dean for whom I was working told me the news. "I'm sorry your President was shot, Bob," he said, sucking deeply on his cigarette. Then he added, "Of course, my wife wonders why assassins on our side are always such bad shots."
His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. Two years later, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war's fighting moved elsewhere, he resigned from his military post, returned to a planter's life, and took a seat in Virginia's House of Burgesses. In 1774, he represented Virginia at the Continental Congress. 
On this day in 1928 the clip on tie was designed. The tie is a bow tie or four in hand tie which is permanently tied into its knot with a dimple just below the knot, which is fixed only to the front of the shirt collar by a metal clip. Many types of occupations require their personnel to wear clip-on ties for safety or efficiency reasons. These occupations include police, paramedics, and engineers. Other people may wear a clip-on tie in lieu of a standard necktie if they do not know how to tie one, while others feel it is less constrictive than a standard necktie. 
