Donald Trump is no Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt used the phrase “bully pulpit.  He meant that the Presidency gave him a good venue to promote his agenda, an agenda that he believed would make the country better.

With Trump, he is the bully in the pulpit lashing out at anybody who contradicts him in any way.  Trump believes his bullying will “Make America Great Again”, but he is only dragging it down, making the world and America grate again.

See “CNN stars Blitzer, Cooper, Amanpour and others fire back at Trump in a day of rage.”

Coleen Rowley, Iraq War, and good quotes

I sent a note to Coleen Rowley about her op-ed column "Ten Years After Iraq" in today's Star Tribune.  I included a couple of the relevant quotes from Washington's "Farewell Address.  I also went to one of her web pages that included several relevant quotes.  Note that some of them are from well-known Republicans or conservatives like Theodore Roosevelt and Margaret Chase Smith.

Quote of the day - Corporate political contributions

"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Posted on Facebook by the Coffee Party.

For more, see the Wikipedia article "Tillman Act of 1907".

If you want to lead you need to read

"I'm a leader, not a reader.' - Herman Cain, Nashua NH, 2011-11-17, quoted in Union Leader. This is probably a swipe at Barack Obama who reads a lot. Cain went on to say that he would surround himself with "good people" who we can rely on for good advice. Excuse me, Mr. Cain, but how are you going to know they are giving good advice if you are not somewhat conversant with the subject matter?

Some of our best leaders have been voracious readers. Teddy Roosevelt, the second good Republican president, sometimes read several books a day. Thomas Jefferson had a very large library. Even leaders that are disparaged by some as anti-intellectual read lots of books - Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Richard Nixon said, "I am not educated, but I do read books." See "For Obama and past presidents, the book they read shape policies and perceptions", Tevi Troy, Washington Post, 2010-04-18.

Is Rick Perry anti-Constitution and anti-Republican?

One of the two departments that Rick Perry could remember that he wanted to abolish was the Department of Commerce. He seems to forget that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power "To regulate Commerce … among the several states…" He also forgets that the Department of Commerce and Labor was created in 1903 during the tenure of the second good Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt. He forgets also that TR was the trust-buster, but Perry wants to be the lackey of today's trusts.

The department whose name he forgot is the Department of Energy. He probably wants to abolish it because, among other activities, it seeks to find alternatives to oil, something that made Texas rich, and to coal, something that made his bosses, the Koch brothers, rich.

The agency that he named to eliminate rather than the Department of Energy was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that was proposed by President Richard Nixon. Its charge was to protect human health and the environment. So, he wants to stop the regulation of commerce that prohibits polluters, using Texas oil and Koch brothers coal, from putting their pollution in states downwind or downstream of the polluting sites.

If Perry is a favorite of some in the Tea Party who want a strict interpretation of the Constitution, where is his civic virtue? Civic virtue and common good are something stressed in the Federalist Papers, written by three of the signers of the Constitution: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.

Abraham Lincoln was a liberal!!

Take out a five-dollar bill. Fold it in half. Which side is Abraham Lincoln's picture on?

Our greatest Republican president was left of center!!!

Can you imagine any recent Republican president spending so much tax money to invest on railroads (Lincoln), parks (Theodore Roosevelt), or highways (Dwight Eisenhower)?