And 150 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln became our 16th President and changed history forever...

United States Post Office -1923 Abraham Lincoln 3-cent stamp

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2009 Bicentennial Lincoln Penny

Lincoln educating himself while working as a rail splitter in Indiana.

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Lincoln Addresses the Nation

By The Editors of the New York Times,

March 4, 2011

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/lincoln-addresses-the-nation/

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And on this 150th anniversary, here in Broward County, the people that still control power, the puppets and the strings are lobbyists and land development lawyers.
Sadly, corrupt Broward County is still NOT The Land of Lincoln.
Just like I say at the top of my blog.


excerpt from a May 25m 2008 email of mine:

What's been the central point that everyone been going on and on about over the past 18 months regarding Doris Kearns Goodwin's award-winning Lincoln biography,Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
http://www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com/team-of-rivals.php ?

That Lincoln wasn't afraid of putting very ambitious and capable people in his cabinet. People who had said terrible things about him and who'd actively sought to deny him the Republican nomination. He put the interests of the nation above his own.

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The Atlantic
Channeling, But Not Exactly Paralleling, Lincoln's Trip
By Marc Ambinder Posted: 17 Jan 2009 09:18 AM CST

PHILADELPHIA, PA --
The land of Lincolner embarks this morning on a 20th century version of Abraham Lincoln's dozen day trek from Springfield to Washington ahead of his inauguration.

Lincoln spoke more than 100 times during the train trips, often tailoring his remarks to his audience, and even more often, surprising his political handlers by provocatively challenging Southern secessionists.

In Steubenville, Ohio, just across the river from Virginia, he remarked that Virginians were entitled to their rights, but only the people collectively could express those rights.

Elsewhere, he spoke mainly of the country's Constitutional binds.

At Cooper Union in New York: "I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, this Constitution and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle."

Lincoln, visiting Philadelphia and Independence Hall: "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

Ironically, the Philadelphia to Baltimore trek was canceled at the last minute because Allan Pinkerton's intelligence indicated that Lincoln would be gunned down as he entered Baltimore's Calvert station. So Lincoln improvised, leaving Harrisburg, PA in the dead of night, hopped aboard a passenger train, crammed into a back seat, slid through Baltimore at 3:30 in the morning, head down, wearing a "gentleman's shawl," and arrived in Washington, D.C. the next day at 6:00 a.m.

Lincoln's caravan was fairly short: three cards and a locomotive. Historian Harold Holzer writes that Lincoln's compartment was flecked with patriotic flourishes, "warmed by modern heaters," lit by candles, had four "cozy" reading chairs and a black walnut table. The wall paneling was "curled maple" offset by zebra wood, gilt moldings and plush furnishings. The locomotives were called "The Union" and the "Constitution."

The national railroad superintendent personally supervised the trip along the "Great Western" tracks. All other trains had to give the right of way. Security, until Philadelphia, was light.

All the big journalists of the time accompanied him; journalists had ready access to Lincoln's car.

http://www.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/channeling_but_not_exactly_par.php

FYI: The paternal side of my family is based out of the same Steubenville, Ohio mentioned above in Marc Ambinder's essay, and they were there before Ohio was a state, and was part of the Ohio Territory.

Paternal ancestors of mine living then -along with the rest of Steubenville- saw Lincoln when he arrived and spoke on his way to his Inauguration, and some of them were later part of the volunteer force who made the Underground Railroad a reality.
Among them were some relatives of Lincoln's, since our own family is connected to the Lincoln family thru their Holmes connection, of early 18th-Century New Jersey and earlier, 17th-Century Rhode Island.

One of those Holmes descendants and ancestor of mine was a man that I've referenced here before on the blog, who, during the Revolutionary War, served as a spy for General Washington and the Continental Army against the British.

Twenty-plus years earlier, in 1755, when he was MUCH younger, he marched with Washington and British Major-Gen. Edward Braddock, commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America, on their famous ill-fated Expedition from Alexandria (VA) to take French-controlled Fort Duquesne on the forks of the Ohio River, in what's now present day Pittsburgh.

They ultimately failed in their efforts and Gen. Braddock and many other were killed, but some, including my ancestor and Washington, survived to make their way home and, yes, live to fight another day.

For his service to the fledgling country in their war with Great Britain, he was awarded acres of land in the distant Ohio Territories, in an area that is now a few miles north of Steubenville and Jefferson County.
Three-hundred years later, many of his descendants still make that part of Ohio, near Pittsburgh and across the Ohio River from West Virginia, their home -my father's hometown.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58RPS665V0

For more information:

http://www.in.gov/lincoln/
http://www.lincolnindc.com/
http://www.abrahamlincoln200.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock%27s_Expedition

Unlike Ann Murray & Jennifer Gottlieb, repeat no-shows at contentious Ben Gamla mtg. in HB Tuesday, Michelle Rhee will show up in public

Above, Ann Murray, our completely unreliable elected representative to the Broward School Board.
Her devotion to her constituents -us- like her time priorities, are completely upside-down and unacceptable.
She works for us, not the other way around, yet she seems to be unaware of this particular working arrangement.
Perhaps she needs to be "educated."


To quote the ever-observant Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic Online, below, in his essay on D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who resigned this week after Mayor Adrian Fenty was defeated in his re-election bid:

"And -- she was accessible. She did not cloister herself, nor did she shy away from town hall meetings. She showed up and made her case. Parents could talk to her, although they might not have liked what she had to say."

Well, at least Ben Gamla founder Peter Deutsch publicly admitted -a few times- to the SRO crowd of about 200-250 people at the HB Cultural Center Tuesday night what we in opposition to his proposed site in a single-family HB neighborhood have long suspected but heretofore been unable to prove.

If the City of hallandale Beach didn't require Deutsch to hold a "Community Meeting," he wouldn't hold one or talk to city residents.

Repeat after me - " He just doesn't care what YOU think."
If by YOU, I mean Hallandale Beach Residents.
I do.

Among the elected No-Shows at this meeting: Broward School Board members Ann Murray of District One, School Board Chair and At-Large member Jennifer Gottlieb, HB mayor Joy Cooper, and HB City Commissioners William "Bill" Julian, Anthony A. Sanders and Keith London.

London at least was next door, across the hallway, holding one of his regularly-scheduled monthly Resident Forum meetings with residents and interested guests, and had the event planned for that date long before Deutsch asked for that date, too.
(His next public meeting is Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the HB Cultural Center.)

London's the only HB commissioner who has regularly-scheduled monthly meetings with HB city residents and outsiders like Greenberg Traurig's Debbie Orshefsky have attended in the past, though her appearances were mostly for recon purposes in support of her client, the incompatible Diplomat LAC proposal which was later voted down by the Broward County
Commission.

And as anyone who has ever attended one knows, Mayor Cooper frequently crashes London's meetings too, -or sends her not-too-clever and transparent spies- when she feels like it, the most recent instance being the one held in mid-Sept. that City Manager Mark Antonio was at for about an hour, listening and answering questions about problems in the city
that the mayor foolishly insists don't exist, despite the fact that they are both numerous and self-evident to anyone paying the slightest attention.

That mid-September meeting was the one where Cooper reacted with a audible gasp when London responded cleverly in response to a resident's query about campaign contributions, as he spoke about the upcoming election, for which he is running for re-election -after Antonio left the room.

Cooper's gasp, which you can hear on the videotape I made of the meeting -which, for the record, are done largely so I don't forget something and don't have to write everything down and can just relax like everyone else- came when he mentioned that another HB city commission candidate, Cooper pet Alexander Lewy, who was sitting in the front row, just five feet away, had received contributions from both Cooper's husband and son-in-law.
About $1,500 between the two of them as I recall it now.

I will try to post that video here soon if I can, since the lighting in the small rooms is not always so great for recording purposes.

I am unable to go to the Broward School Board today for their 1 p.m. Ethics Policy Comm. meeting as I had originally planned, but I am going to find out in the next few days from the Broward Dept. of Elections how long we'd have to wait before, hypothetically, initiating a recall of Ann Murray, our dependably undependable No-Show of a School Board member, who acts like the HB part of her district is terra incognita, despite the fact that she lives in next-door Hollywood.
That's completely unacceptable.

I'll soon be filing a public records request at Broward School Board HQ to get Ann Murray's records and work schedule since getting into office, to see if, as everyone agrees, she has NEVER been at a public HB event that wasn't political or a fundraiser.

Like the meeting we made a point of being at on Tuesday night.

Murray not only couldn't bother, but never even responded to reminder emails sent to her last week about it by both Etty Sims and Csaba Kulin, the latter of whom's letter I ran here a few days ago.
Ann Murray just doesn't get it.

In a few months, we may well need to stage an intervention and help make Ann Murray's public invisibility act a permanent one, so that HB residents have a fully-functioning rep on the Broward School Board who is responsive and forthcoming, NOT impudent and thoroughly anti-social.

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I subscribe to Marc Ambinder's daily dispatches from The Atlantic Monthly Online in large part because he seems much more prescient than 99% of the political observers around.
I urge you to consider subscribing, too.

I was actually a subscriber to The Atlantic magazine for most of the 15 years I lived in Arlington County, VA, a little over three miles west of Georgetown, and kept the past issues stored in my garage in carefully labeled faux-wood paneled cardboard Banker Boxes.

Keeping The Atlantic company in the garage archives -with current ones upstairs- were, if I can remember the list: Harper's, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Maxim, The Washington Monthly, Esquire, The New Yorker, National Geographic Traveler, Conde Naste Traveler, Vanity Fair, Variety, Premiere, The Wilson Quarterly and some political, film and marketing trade journals that I received because of either my own personal interests or because some friends were involved with them as writers, editors or management.

Plus, of course, my favorite read, a newspaper, The New York Observer. which I first became familiar with in 1989, when I was up in New York City for my sister's wedding, and I discovered it while taking some personal time away from the family that weekend and walked on The West Side. I was immediately hooked -and still am. http://www.observer.com/

Make of that varied reading mix what you will, since it gives you some sense of my personality and interests, but the best part was that my part of the garage was -generally- like a pretty well-ordered and deep-pocketed law firm's library, with everything in its place.
You know, in case something unfortunate happened to the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Room at Library of Congress, long one of my haunts!

http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/
http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Marc Ambinder is the politics editor of The Atlantic. He has covered Washington for ABC News and the Hotline, and he is chief political consultant to CBS News.
Follow him on Twitter @marcambinder

Bio | All Posts

What's Next for Michelle Rhee?
Posted: 13 Oct 2010 02:01 PM PDT

Michelle Rhee has a plan.

Hours after she stepped out of the maelstrom that is the D.C. public schools system, her patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty, having been bounced out of office, she launched a Twitter feed and a website, teasing would-be followers to find out what she'll be doing next.

Rhee is a Grade-A edu-lebrity, and she's the perfect bureaucrat for the Reality Show age, when personal brands matter as much as ideas. Or when, at the very least, ideas don't succeed unless they've got good brands behind them.

Rhee is well-liked by the major educational philanthropy organizations, and though I Tweeted last night that she's probably headed to the Obama administration or to another school district, she could just as well become the public face of a major, well-funded campaign to promote her ideas about teachers, merit pay, and reform.

Read the rest of Ambinder's spot-on post at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/whats-next-for-michelle-rhee/64517/

Per the article below by The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder,

whose posts I receive via email every day, I'm posting about

this because it should have a lot of resonance for those of

you who held Obama events at your house.

Even when I disagree with what Ambinder has written,

hs writiing is always a pleasure to read.

My comments follow his:

"When Terry McAuliffe was the chairman of the DNC, his

staff used to joke at his expense that any number he

uttered -- usually a brag about some fundraising goal

or field accomplishment -- had to be reduced by about

a third in order to comport with reality. Dana Milbank,

writing in the Washington Post, suggests that the current

DNC regime is overboasting, too, about the number of

Obama budget pledges it received..."

To read the rest of the piece go to

Washington with Marc Ambinder

The DNC's Pledge Hedge?

April 2 2009

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/the_pledge.php

As you probably know, former DNC head Terry McAuliffe,

so beloved of Hardball's back-scratching Chris Matthews,

is running for governor of Virginia.

Most of my friends back there, even ones who are much

more liberal than DLC me, can't quite stomach the idea

of voting for someone for governor who, throughout his

career, has always been so preternaturally shallow

intellectually, so plain about his money-grubbing ways

and happy to an example of crony capitalism at its

absolute worst, with involvement in all sorts of sweetheart

business deals that most Democratic voters would never

have entree to, and to which many of my friends and I

feel were never thoroughly investigated before he became

DNC Chair.

Worst of all, though in a state that takes history very

seriously -almost to comical lengths at times- his

personal history shows him to be someone who has

zero genuine connection to the state, much less,

the "real" Virginia that's far, far away from the affluent,

comfortable and moderate Northern Virginia suburbs

I lived in for 15 years.

He's no Mark Warner, that's for sure.

Not that you'll read about any of that in the upcoming

national media stories on his campaign before next

month's Democratic primaryv, which will almost entirely

focus on his ability to convince average Virginians he

actually has -gasp!- principles and is connected to

their daily concerns.

Frankly, that's still an open question, even among folks

in D.C. who know him whom you'd naturally expect

to be favorably disposed towards him.

He is actually quite engaging according to folks I know

who are on friendly terms with him.

But he still tends to rub a lot of people the wrong way,

since he seems to be part of that political class that

imagines that talking about something is the same

thing as having actually done something about it.

It's not, of course, a distinction he has to hope

Virginia voters don't consider too strongly.

Personally, I feel that despite all the migration to

Northern Virginia from the northeast, I don't believe

he's an electable candidate, but the whole DNC

infrastructure tried to clear out the field so he can

spend some of his millions in his gubernatorial election,

so they can spend their funds elsewhere.

That didn't work, though, and I suspect and hope that

Brian Moran will emerge as the Democratic nominee

after next month's primary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/31/AR2009033103728.html?sub=AR

In case you didn't know, because of the way the Virginia

Constitution was written, most of the power resides with

the state legislature to a degree that's hard to imagine or

appreciate here.

The most obvious way this shows itself is the prohibition

on governors: one term and out,

Naturally, that's the way the veteran pols like it.

Besides having lived there for so long and one of my nieces

now attending Washington & Lee University in Lexington,

I have a tangible connection to the state of Virginia and

its history.

One of my ancestors was former U.S. Rep. Phillip Doddridge,

a very interesting fellow who died in 1832, though that's not at all

apparent in this short Congressional bio.

He lost his first two attempts to get into the House of

Representatives, served in both the Virgina Senate and the

Virginia House of Delegates.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000391

Among other things, he apparently argued many cases successfully

before the U.S. Supreme Court, and SCOTUS Justices attended

his funeral, which was actually his second one.

His first funeral had to be postponed after he woke up!

He later had it written into his new Will that a certain period

of time must elapse before a death could be announced and

a funeral scheduled.

I hate when that happens!

My paternal grandmother Anna was born in the panhandle

area of West Virginia, not far from the County named for

Phillip Doddridge in 1845, which was Virgina before the

Civil War, albeit an area of the state that was economically

and socially far removed from genteel and relatively affluent

Richmond and Williamsburg, where Phillip had served in the

state legislature.

Once upon a time, back when people in the colonies really

thought that Virginia extended west until it reached the

Pacific Ocean, this particular area was known as

West Augusta.

This area had been professionally surveyed for the largest

land owners: Washingtons, Fairfaxes, Lees and many others,

who, according to some sources, had it in mind as the 14th

American Colony, before the oncoming American Revolution

made that pretty much a moot point.

Phillip and his brother, The Rev. Dr. Joseph Doddridge,

arrived in Wellsburg, VA -now Charleston, W.V.- in 1795,

a year before the county was formed.

The Doddridge branch of the family is the one that was,

apparently, well-educated, heavily involved in the community

and very religious.

I'm sure they'd have been bloggers!

One of Phillip's ancestors was Obadiah Holmes,

(http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~sam/obadiah.html

and http://www.geocities.com/baptist_documents/holmes.obadiah.encyclopia.html )

who was the second pastor of the First Baptist Church

in the American colonies, in Newport, Rhode Island,

after the first minister, John Clarke, died not long after

it'd been built.

I only became aware of this fact within the past eight

years or so, and was quite pleased to discover that

the church is still there all these years later.

As it happens, the Doddridge family once lived in Salem, MA,

long before the Witch Trials there in the 1690's, and

SouthBeachHoosier daily attended the 1997 Marv Albert

trial/media circus in Arlington, VA while living there.

Ah, sweet symmetry!

Perhaps that explains why, years ago, I always had a

warm spot in my heart for actress Melissa Joan Hart

-Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

I ask you, how can you not smile at an adorably cute

witch with a cat named Salem?

http://www.tvloop.com/sabrina-the-teenage-witch/show/photos/top10/2

http://www.tvacres.com/horror_witches_sabrina.htm