brainrow

This seems like an awkward moment:

Despite a steady downpour that chilled thousands gathered Saturday in the shipyard here, President Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, basked in the warm embrace of extended family and friends as they celebrated the christening of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after the former president.

…

President Bush also drew laughs when he lauded his steely mother, after noting that the USS George H.W. Bush will be the latest in the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers. “She is unrelenting, she is unshakable, she is unyielding, she is unstoppable,” Bush thundered.

“As a matter of fact,” he added, “probably should have been named the Barbara Bush.”

Uh…

Okay, I realize it was a joke, heh heh. But isn’t there a sort of creepy hostility, when something has been named in honor of your father, in saying it should have been named for your mother, instead?

There is a history here, remember. When Bob Woodward asked George W. Bush whether he consulted with his father in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush said “You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.”

In the short-lived CBS TV series Joan of Arcadia, God appears to Joan Girardi in a variety of human forms, and talks to her. When Joan listens and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, Joan asks why a passerby didn’t see God. “Just didn’t notice me,” is the reply. “That happens a lot.”

In the even shorter-lived Fox TV series Wonderfalls, Jaye Tyler hears voices. Inanimate objects — a wax lion, a brass monkey bookend, a cartoon bunny printed on the side of a box — deliver cryptic messages. When Jaye deciphers them and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, frustrated and fearful, Jaye demands of the brass monkey, “Tell me why you talk to me!”

The brass monkey answers, “Because you listen.”

When George W. Bush appeals to his “higher father,” do you suppose he ever listens? Could he ever hear something that would make him change his mind?

From Talking Points Memo:

Don’t you think that Republicans attacking Pelosi and CREW and bloggers over Foley is just like attacking Iraq when you know the crime was done by bin Laden? There they go again, Republicans attacking the wrong people when everyone knows who did the crime.

The video is shaky. Someone held a camera and pointed it at the TV set. In the background, you can hear sounds from the room. Nevertheless, here is Neil Young.

Did he give me the gift of voice
So some could silence me?
Did he give me the gift of vision
Not knowing what I might see?
Did he give me the gift of compassion
To help my fellow man?

When God made me
When God made me

A few weeks ago I wrote about Lincoln’s character test:

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Now Nicole Belle looks to Lincoln for Republican Talking Points I’d Like to Hear:

• Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
• Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
• Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
• Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
• I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
• I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
• If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
• Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

I was going to say “I don’t think Mr. Lincoln would last long in today’s Republican party,” but as I read his words, I think that’s wrong. He wouldn’t be a rubber-stamp Republican, that’s for sure, and he wouldn’t roll over when an imperial president told him to. He was a politician, and could bend with the political winds, but he had principles which he would not abandon.

Is there anyone in today’s Republican party who is fit to shine Lincoln’s shoes?