Year in Review: 2012

As we approach the end of yet another year, I thought I'd do a bit of reflection on the year that has just passed.  Not a reflection on all that has happened in the world since January, but rather a reflection of my own experiences through this two thousand and twelfth year of the common era.

For Christmas last year I got a Kindle Fire and a membership to Amazon Prime, so by January of this year I was riffling through all the free movies and TV shows available for live streaming.  I was wary at first of watching anything significant because the Kindle Fire screen, in case you don't know, is very small.  It's larger than a smartphone, of course, but only about 2/3rds the size of an iPad - slightly less than 8" by 5".  After doing a couple of test runs on a few Family Guy reruns, I decided I could handle watching an entire TV series on the Kindle screen.

As such, I started my love affair with Lost.  

When Lost first premiered back in 2004, I was intrigued by the countless commercials I saw for it, but wasn't in a place where I felt like I could dedicate myself to a weekly TV series (it was obvious from the commercials that this was the kind of show you had to watch every week to keep abreast of what was going on).  So instead, I put my interest in it on the back burner and figured I might watch it some day on DVD.  That "some day" finally arrived when I discovered Amazon Prime had the entire 6-season series for free.

I was completely, totally, and utterly hooked within the first ten minutes of the first episode.  

Long story short, I spent most of January to March watching Lost.  Instead of climbing into bed and reading, as I typically do, I climbed into bed each night quivering with excitement over the next installment.  I would turn the lights off, plug in my headphones, and watch the show with an eagerness that was almost stupid.  Sometimes I would watch two or even three episodes a night, depending on how early I had to get up.  I woke my wife up more than once gasping at some unexpected turn of events.  

She typically didn't share my enthusiasm.        

I managed to watch the whole thing, more than 120 one-hour episodes, in just a couple of months.  And I gotta say....waiting 8 years to watch it was well worth it, because instead of having to wait a week between every episode, and months during the summer, I got to go from one show to the next at my own pace.  This helped dramatically to keep the ongoing plot issues straight in my mind.  Anyone who has seen the series will know how utterly mind-boggling it can be at times.  Not having to wait a week or more between episodes made the progression of the plot much easier to follow.  After each episode, I would go to Wikipedia to read the summary of the episode I had just watched, and this also helped to keep things straight in my head (it was also useful for going back and reminding myself what had happened in previous episodes - this was particularly good because sometimes a plot element would be introduced in one episode, but not followed up again for a span of 10 or 12 or even 15 or 20 episodes; by the time they got back around to it, I'd forgotten what it was about).  

Anyway....totally loved it.  Highly recommend it.  

The only problem with my Lost obsession was that I got virtually no reading done whatsoever for those first few months of the year.  For a brief period of time, I basically became a non-reader.  Which was really weird, because I have been a more-or-less daily reader since at least the age of 30, and I was a frequent reader for a decade before that.  To go three months and read hardly anything at all (I think I finished one very short paperback during that stretch) was really out of character.

After the series ended, I got back on my reading wagon and actually managed to read more books this year than I did last year (more on that when I post my 2012 Reading List...I know you can't wait).

I turned 37 in February and celebrated with friends from work at a little bar called Mt. Lookout Tavern in Cincinnati.  We had a really good turn-out (which, of course, made me feel all warm and fuzzy) and I think a fun time was had by all.  I know I sure enjoyed myself - the gallon of beer and countless shots I drank helped significantly, although I'm sure I was hating life the next morning.  Don't actually recall, to be honest.  You only remember the good times.

This picture pretty much tells you everything you need to know about that night.

In March the NCAA tournament started, and I spent much of my free time fretting over whether my beloved Kentucky Wildcats were finally going to break their long championship drought.  I should never have worried: they had a run through the NCAA tournament that has got to be one of the most difficult stretches for an eventual champion in tourney history, and never really came in danger of losing a game.  It was topped off by meeting, and defeating, their cross-state rival, Louisville, in the Final Four - a situation that has literally been dreamed about by fans in Kentucky for decades.  The final victory over Kansas - the fourth "blue blood" school they had to face in their tournament run - was almost like an afterthought, on the heels of the win over Louisville.  

In the summer our family vacationed in Georgia at a place called Tybee Island.  We had a nice trip, but the accommodations were not as nice compared to where we stayed in 2011 in Isle of Palms, South Carolina.  I don't think any of us were able to keep that comparison out of our minds, and it led to a general feeling of letdown throughout the trip.  Still, there's no such thing as a bad trip to the beach, and despite nearly being blown away on the beach one day by a summer squall that blew up out of nowhere with disturbing speed, we had a nice time.  

The first night we spent there, I got so drunk I basically didn't get out of bed the next day.  Not a fun memory.  And not a very smart thing to do on a family vacation with not only your children, but your in-laws.   

The good thing that came from that night's debauchery, however, was that I used my hangover as an impetus to stop smoking and to start using my e-cigarette exclusively.  I made it three months on the e-cig until, sadly, I went back to the real thing this autumn.  Getting ready to try another brand to see if I can make it stick this time.  It's one of my New Year's resolutions, although I generally hate those things (New Year's resolutions, not e-cigs). 

After the joy of experiencing Kentucky's epic NCAA championship, I was pleased to have my hometown Cincinnati Reds dominate their division all year in major league baseball.  I thought there was a very, very good chance that both my teams were going to win championships - Kentucky in the NCAA's, and Cincinnati in the World Series.  Unfortunately, the Reds choked on their own vomit and failed to even make it to the NLCS, despite winning the first two games of the NLDS on the road.  Such a huge, huge letdown.  

During the summer, I made the very stressful decision to switch to second shift at work.  I angsted about it for several weeks, and actually turned down the offer the first time it was presented to me.  But after talking it over again with my wife (she was strongly opposed to me passing the opportunity up), I went back and agreed to make the switch.  The money is certainly better, and the hours work better for my own personal living habits, but I miss the camaraderie I shared with my friends on first shift, and I don't see my wife and kids very much during the week.  We've gotten those issues (mostly) ironed out at home, but I feel like some of my friendships and relationships at work have suffered as a result of the move.  I don't feel the closeness anymore that I used to feel with some of my co-workers from first shift, and I haven't really developed those warm, comfy relationships with anyone on second shift.  Both of those things are a real drag.  I also don't get to work much with the students anymore, and I don't like that either.  

In addition to these issues, of course, was the biggest public issue of all in 2012 - the presidential election.  I always get emotionally involved in presidential elections.  My blog pretty much attests to that.  Still, I think I did a pretty decent job this year - publicly, anyway - of staying above the fray and being as objective as reasonably possible.  I really liked the post I made in March about Mitt Romney's chances of winning in November.  If you missed it, you should check it out.  I think my analysis proved accurate.  I also correctly picked the winner in 47 of the 50 states.  The only ones I missed were states where I picked Romney over Obama.  Obama won every state I predicted for him.  

That wasn't just luck; analyzing polls really does lead to accurate predictions - which is why it's such a sham when political analysts or candidates' spokesmen get on television and suggest that polls aren't trustworthy.  They are trustworthy, if you know how to analyze the data, and you're honest.  Both those ingredients are required.  Some of my friends were shocked at Obama's victory in Ohio; that's because they don't know how to analyze the data.  Karl Rove does know how to analyze the data, he's just dishonest, intellectually and in every other way humanly possible.  

I've ended the year with a succession of four 3-day weekends in a row - all completely unplanned except for one.  I've managed to give away several of my shifts to people wanting to pick up hours.  I have plenty of vacation time, so I've still gotten paid.  It's been nice to have a little break from the grind each week.  We've already had more snow this week than we had all of last winter combined.  Not particularly happy about that, but so it goes.  

My plans for 2013 include losing weight, quitting smoking permanently (I've had way too many false starts), and finishing my book on political party history in the United States.  We'll see how I've done come next December.

Gratuitously irrelevant picture of Rush in the 1970's.

The Last Christmas of Innocence

I've never done this before, but I'm going to re-post an old post from a few years back.  I wrote this in December of 2006, and was thinking about it today.  I like it.  The pictures are new additions.

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Some of my best childhood Christmas memories were of the Living Christmas Tree at Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

The minister of music, Gene Sutherland, would put on a Christmas extravaganza every year that included a 50-foot Christmas tree packed with singers. Starting at the bottom, each row would have successively fewer singers, until the very top row, where a single female singer always stood, like the angel atop the tree.

Typically, there were several weeks of performances, for which practice would start in the early fall. Accompanying an array of Christmas songs would be various stage acts as well, usually incorporating more singers and children.

Since my parents were active in the choir, they were both routinely part of the Living Christmas Tree each year. I don't think my Mom did it every year, but I know my Dad did. Dad was always on the second row from the top - a row of only two people - right below the angel. I always felt that this meant he garnered a position of importance within the hierarchy of the Walnut Street Choir. I was proud to be his son.

Vinyl album from the 10th Year Celebration.  The picture is too blurry for details, but the figure at the very top, on the right, is my father.

My memories of the Living Christmas Tree are warm and cozy - good music, great visual effects, and that latent feeling of excitement that seems to stick in every child's mind throughout the month of December.

I guess my favorite Living Christmas Tree year was 1987 - the only year I was involved in the production. I was asked that year by Gene Sutherland to play a role in one of the stage acts. Basically, I stood on stage with a plastic trumpet, and at the appropriate time in the song, I raised the trumpet up as though to herald the birth of the Christ child. There were 3 trumpeters in the skit, rotated between performances among about 5 guys from the youth group.

As the skit/song that heralded Jesus's birth, this was probably the highlight of the entire program. It was a very powerful song, with a spine-tingling climax, and it always received the most raucous and heart-felt applause. In one performance, a black lady got caught up in the spirit and stood up after the striking of the final chord and spontaneously shouted "Hallelujah!" I know it seems odd - and it's quite funny in retrospect - and yet even now, 18 years down the road, I'm getting chills just thinking about it - that feeling of religious ecstasy which that song brought on, and which was put into words by that spontaneous utterance.

I sort of miss being able to feel that way...to feel so caught up in a religious moment like that, where any doubts and any skepticisms are washed clean away, leaving only certainty, comfort, and spiritual bliss.

When we did the last performance that year, I remember walking out into the parking lot with my Dad afterward, heading out to the car. And I remember walking there in that parking lot, the lightposts casting long, orange shadows across the dark pavement, while my breath condensed on the chilly air, and I remember feeling so utterly depressed - maybe more depressed than I had ever felt in my whole life. I didn't even understand it. I wanted to cry.

The reason I was so depressed is because it was over. All that hard work, all the rehearsals, dressing up in the costume, getting to stand there during that powerful song every night, experiencing the warm camaraderie with the other actors, feeling important because I was part of the show that people were flocking to come see - now it was all over. Finished. The tree would come down and be put away in some storage facility until next year. And I might not even get to be in it again. Maybe this was just a one time thing, and they wouldn't ask me next year.

Well, as it turned out, I wasn't in it the next year, and, in fact, I was never in it again. But that wasn't because I wasn't asked. In March of 1988, my grandfather died after a long bout with cancer.

Oscar Kirby, the way I like to remember him.

Then in the early summer, we moved to Cincinnati.

Nothing was ever quite the same after that. I remember Christmas of 1988, in our new house, and I do recall that particular Christmas with fondness - in fact, I've long said that Christmas, our first in Cincinnati, was the last Christmas of my childhood. It was the last time I remember having that distinct childhood excitement associated with Christmas. It was the last time I really felt consumed by the season.

I was 13 years old.

But, in retrospect, I think the last real Christmas of my childhood was in 1987. Our last Christmas in Louisville, my first and only experience performing in the Living Christmas Tree, and my last Christmas before starting that long, difficult, awkward road that took me through adolescence and young adulthood.

It was the last Christmas of innocence.

And I think the innocence first began to bleed away that cold night in mid-December, when I walked through that parking lot with my Dad, realizing that the show was over. Little did I know, then, that it wasn't just the show that was ending.

I got to see some Living Christmas Tree performances in later years - we would come back to Louisville to visit my grandparents, and we'd go see the show. I guess the last time would have been sometime in the early 1990's.

On doing a little research today, I discovered that Walnut Street no longer does a Living Christmas Tree performance. I know that Gene Sutherland is long gone (he died some years back), and I suppose his successors didn't continue the tradition. I don't know how many years its been since they quit doing it.

Strangely, on doing an Internet search, I came across a different Walnut Street Baptist Church. This one is somewhere in Arkansas.

And, remarkably enough, they have an active and current Living Christmas Tree program.

I don't quite know why, but somehow that's a comforting coincidence.

Album Review: Clockwork Angels

Clockwork Angels is the 20th studio album by the Canadian band Rush.  It was released in the summer of 2012, reaching #2 on the U.S. charts and #1 in Canada.  It was promoted by a world tour that, as of this writing, is still ongoing.

The band's first studio album in five years, Clockwork Angels is a concept album that mixes a modern progressive rock sound with themes and styles reminiscent of classic Rush masterpieces.  Though the band is famous (some might say "infamous") for their grandiose concept music of the 1970's, the fact is that 2012's Clockwork Angels is the band's first true concept album.  Their epic, "rock opera" music of the 1970's was always limited to individual tracks (such as 1979's 18-minute tour-de-force, "Hemispheres") and never included themes that covered all the songs on any one album.  The album 2112, for instance, had a 20-minute song of the same name on the front side of the original record, but all the songs on the B-side were unrelated to it.

Rush, circa 1975, in their "grandiose" days.  Alex Lifeson (left), Geddy Lee (right), Neil Peart (center).

Thus, Clockwork Angels is the band's first and (so far) only concept album, a collection of twelve tracks all linked together by a single theme.

Typical of Rush's intellectual and philosophical tendencies, together with their tastes for science fiction, Clockwork Angels plays on a modern genre of music, art, and literature known as "Steampunk."  Steampunk is a popular sub-category of science fiction that typically fuses a 19th century industrial setting of steam-driven machines and gadgetry with a science fiction or alternate universe theme.  Imagine, for instance, a 21st century still driven by the technology of the 19th century, and you can get an idea of what Steampunk tries to convey.

An example of the Steampunk-inspired art accompanying the album. Illustrated by long-time Rush collaborator, Hugh Syme.

Through it's twelve tracks, Clockwork Angels tells the story of a young dreamer's search for self-actualization in a dystopian clockwork universe ruled by an oppressive Watchmaker.  In the opening track, "Caravan," the narrator is boarding a steam-driven airship (a "steamliner") to escape his rural home and find his future in the alluring city.  As his travels and adventures are related song-by-song, the narrator encounters all the highs and lows of the human experience: success and failure, romance and broken love, security and vulnerability, belief and disbelief, hope and disillusionment.

In a unique twist for modern rock bands, the "story" of the album was actually novelized by sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson, in collaboration with Rush's drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, and released in September of 2012.  It reached #18 on the New York Times Bestseller List.  I read the book; it was just okay, and I would have a hard time suggesting it to anyone who wasn't a sci-fi reader and a Rush fan.  But that's not, by any stretch, a critique of the album.

The music of Clockwork Angels is very guitar-centered, with a slew of solos and growling riffs that fans of Rush's music are certain to enjoy.  The pacing of the individual songs varies, of course, but overall, the album has a very "driving" feel to it: a feeling of forward progression helped along with lively bass riffs, rhythmic guitar chords, and, of course, immaculate (one might say "clockwork") drumming.    

The first two tracks, "Caravan" and "BU2B" (which stands for Brought Up to Believe) were released in digital format in 2010, a kind of "teaser" for the album that would come along two years later.  Both are heavy and fast-paced, with "Caravan" detailing the narrator's journey away from his mundane home, and "BU2B" describing his struggles with religious belief in a benevolent God (symbolized by the "Watchmaker" in the album's universe).

The title track, "Clockwork Angels" is an epic song with many musical layers, ostensibly describing the narrator's experience with the divine guardians of his world, but clearly speaking metaphorically about the deep human drive for worship and spiritual awe.

Clockwork angels spread their arms and sing.  Synchronized and graceful they move like living things.  Goddesses of light, of sea and sky and land.  Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands...as if to fly.  

This picture really has no relevance to this review, but it just had to be posted.

The album's fourth and fifth tracks - "The Anarchist" and "Carnies" - continue the narrator's story as he encounters subversiveness (embodied by the "anarchist") and then finds a job working in a carnival.  These songs deal with themes of discontent and disillusionment, pointing towards those people in society who are perpetually dissatisfied and driven by greed, jealousy, and anger.

"Halo Effect" is one of the few songs Rush has ever written about love and romance.  This is a topic that Rush has intentionally steered clear from over the years, due to a general perspective that love songs are sappy, banal, and give unrealistic perspectives on human relationships (this according to an interview I read once with Neil Peart - sadly, I don't recall the source).  The band delves into this topic with "Halo Effect," as part of the ongoing human story of the narrator.  Typical of Rush - contrarians to the end - and fitting with Peart's comments about why the band typically doesn't do love songs, the song is about the illusion of "true love" and how "being in love" blinds people to reality.

What did I see, fool that I was?  A goddess with wings on her heels.  It's shameful to tell just how often I fell in love with delusions again.  

"Seven Cities of Gold" has the narrator searching for a mythical lost city, and deals with themes of the all-too-human tendency to chase impossible dreams, finding only disillusionment at the end.  This song has a fantastic opening bass riff by Geddy Lee that just growls in your chest before being picked up later by Alex Lifeson on guitar, making for a powerful melodic line.  The song is underscored, as always, by Peart's (seemingly) 8-handed drumming.

Track number 8 is called "The Wreckers" and is one of my favorites on the album.  Lyrically, the song discusses the frailty of human life and how easy it is to find your world turned upside down.  The song's title characters appear as pirates in the accompanying novel, and (like the anarchist before them) they symbolize life's destructive forces.

All I know is that sometimes you have to be wary of a miracle too good to be true.  All I know is that sometimes the truth is contrary to everything in life you thought you knew.  

This song is made even more poignant when you know lyricist Neil Peart's personal background: in 1997 his only child - a teenage daughter - was killed in a car accident on a Sunday evening while returning to college for the start of the fall semester.  Less than six months later, his wife of twenty years died of cancer.  Peart, quite literally, found his entire world in shambles around him.  The band did not write, record, or perform for nearly five years.  Eventually, Peart remarried and had another child, but the song's final line is a heart-rending statement that seems drawn from that tragedy:

All I know is that memory can be too much to carry, striking down like a bolt from the blue.

"Headlong Flight" is, in my opinion, the best song on the album, and probably the overall best Rush song since 1987's "Mission" from the Hold Your Fire album.  At more than seven minutes, "Headlong Flight" is the longest song on the album, and it is an absolute masterwork of modern progressive rock.  Hard-hitting and fast-paced, the song features guitar work by Lifeson that threatens to peel the skin from your face, drumming that illustrates why Peart is the best in the world, and vocals by Lee that probably represent his best performance in decades.  Like their radio classic "Freewill" from 1980's Permanent Waves album, "Headlong Flight" includes a long instrumental that is, in essence, a three-part solo.  No other band that I know of can pull this phenomenon off with such masterful precision.  My words don't do the song justice.  You've got to listen to it.




The very first time I listened to "Headlong Flight," on CD in my car, before the song was even over, one phrase was going over and over in my mind:

Instant. Fucking. Classic.

The album's tenth track is a short reprise of "BU2B" called (fittingly enough) "BU2B2."  At just over a minute long, the lyrics are written in the form of a pantoum - a type of poem where the second and fourth lines of each 4-line stanza are repeated as lines one and three in the next stanza, and the final line of the poem is the same as the first line.  Peart first toyed with this type of writing on 2007's Snakes & Arrows album, in the song "The Larger Bowl: A Pantoum."  "BU2B2" is a sort of dirge, describing the narrator's loss of religious faith and his growing disillusionment with life.

"Wish Them Well" picks up where "BU2B2" left off, with the narrator shaking off the depression resulting from failures, regrets, and injustice, and deciding that the best way to deal with those who treat you badly is to simply move forward and "wish them well."

The grudges you've held for so long.  It's not worth singing that same sad song.  Even though you're going through hell, just keep on going.  Let the demons dwell.  Just wish them well.  

The album's final song, "The Garden," is another instant classic.  Incorporating everything from strings to piano, it is a ballad that includes acoustic as well as electric sections.  The lyrics focus on finding inner peace and self-actualization through the tending of the garden - which itself is a metaphor for one's own life and loved ones.  The song is beautifully arranged, and contains some of Peart's best lyrical work.

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect: so hard to earn so easily burned.  

The future disappears into memory with only a moment between.  Forever dwells in that moment.  Hope is what remains to be seen.  

I rate this album a strong 10 out of 10, with no throw-away songs.  Each track has its place in the story, providing coherent lyrical content that not only carries the story along, but doubles with poignant references to the human condition.  The music is sublime and well-orchestrated, with the band playing at the absolute height of their powers.  For Rush fans especially, but also for anyone who enjoys modern rock with meaningful lyrics and skilled playing, Clockwork Angels is a must-have.   

Notes from the Cave

My parents were here for Christmas this past weekend, flying in from Texas on Friday.  We had dinner at The Pub on Friday night, then saw A Christmas Carol at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park on Saturday.  The kids got to open their presents from their grandparents, and I got a badly overdue new cell phone - a Galaxy S3, which I am thrilled with.  It's the first time I've ever owned a top-of-the-line cell phone.  When it comes to phones, I've always been 3-4 years behind the curve.  Of course, this one will be surpassed, no doubt, in a few months by something else, but at least I'll have a respectable phone for a while to come.  

Next weekend, I will be off Saturday through Tuesday.  I am really looking forward to that extended weekend.  It'll be the longest I've had off at one stretch since my vacation in July.  (Although, I can't really complain because I'm just finishing up the second 3-day weekend I've had in a row, and this will, as I said, be followed by the 4-day weekend coming up.)  

Despite two 3-day weekends in a row, I haven't gotten any legitimate writing done on my new book.  The book is a history of American political parties called Washington's Nightmare, and I had been making really good progress on it until a few weeks ago.  Now I'm stalled out, not because of writer's block, but simply sheer laziness.  I keep getting involved in other things.  In my defense, however, even though I've had double 3-day weekends, I've been really busy with family things throughout both of them.

In the wake of last Friday's horror in Connecticut, I considered writing a piece on gun control, but ultimately decided that nothing I would have to say hasn't already been hashed out by others who can probably say it better and more persuasively than I can.  Still, I thought I might make one comment to give people a little food for thought:

In the United States, we value our rights to own and use firearms.  This right is enshrined in the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution.  But like any valued freedom, there is a cost.  The cost, for instance, of freedom of expression is a multibillion-dollar porn industry.  The cost of freedom of speech and assembly is a KKK march or a Westboro Baptist Church funeral picket.  The cost of a fair judicial process is that sometimes murderers get acquitted.  The cost of free elections is that uninformed and misinformed people still get to vote.  

The cost of the right to bear arms is that, sometimes, schoolchildren get slaughtered.

The U.S. has one of the highest gun-related murder rates, suicide rates, and accidental death rates in the entire world.  Among developed, or "First World," countries, the U.S. is at the top of all three of those lists involving gun-related deaths.  

Is your right to own a handgun, because you enjoy target shooting (or any other reason), worth all those lives?  

10 Fun Facts About Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States

Be sure to check out my newest book, Washington's Nightmare: A Brief History of American Political Parties, available now at Amazon.com! 


1. John Calvin Coolidge, Jr., was born in Vermont in 1872, the only U.S. president born on the Fourth of July.  His father was a successful farmer and small business owner, and later served in both the Vermont House of Representatives and state Senate.  His mother died when he was 12 years old.  After attending Amherst College and then studying law, he opened his own law practice in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1898.

2. In 1905, Coolidge married Grace Anna Goodhue.  They had first met several years earlier after Grace caught site of Calvin shaving in front of a window in nothing but long underwear and a hat.  The hat, apparently, was worn to keep hair out of his face while he shaved.  Together they had two sons.  At the age of 16, and while his father was president, the younger son, Calvin, developed a blister on his foot after playing tennis and died a week later from sepsis.  The elder son, John, became a successful businessman and died in 2000.

3. Coolidge enter local politics in the early 1900's, holding several locally-elected offices.  It was during this time that he suffered the only electoral defeat of his career - a seat on the Northampton school board.  In 1906, he won a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Republican, later served as the mayor of Northampton, then served in the Massachusetts Senate, where he eventually became Senate president.

4. Following his time in the Massachusetts Senate, Coolidge served several terms as lieutenant governor to Samuel McCall before being elected governor himself in 1918.  Coolidge was a moderate Republican: fiscally conservative, but supporting women's suffrage and opposing prohibition.  He gained national prominence among Republicans in 1919 when he helped put down a strike, with subsequent riots, in Boston involving police officers who were attempting to unionize.

5. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Coolidge was discussed as a possible presidential candidate, but ended up coming in 6th on the balloting.  However, his name was brought up again during the balloting for vice-president, and he unexpectedly won the nomination to be Warren G. Harding's running mate.

6. It was during his time as vice-president that Coolidge earned the nickname "Silent Cal."  Though he was known for being an eloquent public speaker, in private he was withdrawn and quiet, typically deferring to his wife, who was equally known for her outgoing personality.  His tendency to withdraw from social situations intensified after the death of his son in 1924.

7. President Harding died suddenly in August of 1923, while Coolidge happened to be visiting his father in Vermont.  By that time, his father was a notary public, so in the presence of gathered reporters around 2:30 in the morning, he administered the oath of office to his son, after which the unexcitable Coolidge went back to bed.  There was some concern over whether a state notary public had the authority to administer the oath, so it was re-administered after Coolidge returned to Washington.

8. After finishing Harding's term, Coolidge was easily nominated for president in 1924, and despite a third-party candidate who effectively split the Republican Party, Coolidge still won in a landslide, thanks largely to a booming, post-war economy.  His inaugural speech that year was the first in history to be broadcast on the radio.  Though he had been associated with the Progressive faction of the Republican Party early in his career, as president he moved toward the right, embracing low taxes, deregulation of industry, decreased government spending, and famously stating that "the chief business of the American people is business."  His Secretary of Commerce was Herbert Hoover.  

9. Coolidge opted not to run for re-election in 1928, noting that it would mean he would be president for ten years, and ten years was simply too much.  He had very famously butted heads with his own vice-president, Charles Dawes, on numerous occasions, and when the 1928 Republican Nation Convention considered putting Dawes on the ticket with Herbert Hoover, Coolidge intervened and stated that he would take such a move as a personal insult.  The convention honored his wishes and chose Charles Curtis instead.  Dawes would later win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to rebuild Europe following World War I.

10. In his retirement, Coolidge wrote his memoirs and also wrote a syndicated newspaper column in the early 1930's.  Like his old running mate before him, Warren G. Harding, Coolidge died unexpectedly of a heart attack in January of 1933.  He was buried in a simple plot in the town cemetery of Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where he was born.

10 Fun Facts About Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States

1. Hiram Ulysses Grant was born near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1822.  Growing up in rural Georgetown, Ohio, he entered West Point in 1839.  His mother's maiden name was Simpson, and on his admittance papers to West Point, his name was mistakenly listed as Ulysses S. Grant (with the initial standing for his mother's maiden name).  Rather than correct the mistake, Grant decided to keep it, recognizing its patriotic implications.

2. Grant was a poor student who frequently got in trouble at West Point for refusing to attend required church services.  He excelled in horsemanship, but upon graduation he was overlooked for the cavalry appointed to the 4th U.S. Infantry.

3. Grant served with distinction during the Mexican War of 1846-48, and upon returning home in 1848, married his longtime girlfriend, Julia Boggs Dent - who was a sister to Grant's West Point roommate.  Grant's parents disapproved of the match because Julia's parents were slaveholders; they subsequently refused to attend the wedding.  The Grants had four children, three boys and a girl.

4. Now a captain, Grant remained in the military until 1854, at which time he abruptly resigned due, in part, to continual drinking problems that threatened his position.  Stationed in California at the time, he returned to his wife and children in Missouri, where he took over his father-in-law's farm in St. Louis.  Unable to produce much income, he briefly became a bill-collector before accepting a job with his father's tanning business in Galena, Illinois.  The Grants and their four children settled there in 1860.

5. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War a year later, Grant - being the only military professional in the area - was asked to assist in raising volunteers for the war effort.  Invigorated by the opportunity to do something other than farm or sell leather goods, Grant obliged.  He also began applying for reinstatement into the regular Army.  These applications, however, were ignored, and instead Grant was given command of the 21st Illinois Volunteers.  He was promoted to the rank of colonel, thanks to a recommendation from U.S. Congressman Elihu Washburne, who happened to be from Galena.

6. By February of 1862, Grant had led his regiment in a series of bold and successful battles along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.  News of his successes spread across the nation and Abraham Lincoln promoted him to Major General.

7. In March of 1864, after continued success, Grant was elevated to Commanding General of the U.S. Army.  In 1866, Congress created a new rank for him, called General of the Army, and he became the first 4-star general.  That same rank would later be used for the 5-star generals of the World War II era.

8. Following the disastrous presidency of Andrew Johnson, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republicans for the 1868 presidential election.  His popularity as a general helped him win in a landslide.  At age 46, he was the youngest man (at the time) ever elected to the presidency, and the first person to be elected president while both of his parents were still living.

9. Grant served two terms in the White House, and his presidency was marked by a return to stability following the war and Reconstruction Era, but marred by numerous scandals involving his cabinet and other appointees.  Following his presidency, Grant and his wife embarked on a high profile publicity tour around the world that lasted more than two years.  Upon his return, Grant ran for president again in 1880, but narrowly failed to win the Republican nomination, which instead went to James A. Garfield.

10. His trip around the world, as well as several failed business ventures, left Grant virtually destitute, with only his military pension as income (his pension had been forfeited when he became president, but an act of Congress restored it). As a result, at the behest of his friend Mark Twain, he decided to write his memoirs as a way to make money; Twain functioned as the publisher.  He finished the 2-volume work just a few days before his death of throat cancer in 1884.  The book became an immediate bestseller.  Grant was buried in New York, in what would prove to be the biggest mausoleum in the United States - Grant's Tomb.

Notes from the Cave

We will soon be leaving for the 30-minute drive to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving.  It will be at the house of my wife's aunt, which is where we have generally been celebrating Thanksgiving since my wife's grandparents' died.  My in-laws live two doors down from my wife's aunt, and the grandparents, when they were living, lived across the street.  Small town scenario in a large metropolis.

M has been slaving in the kitchen all morning, and it's about 269 degrees in there.  I helped by washing a pan for her :)

I recently finished a fantastic historical novel set in the 12th century called Lionheart, by Sharon Kay Penman.  As the name implies, it is about the life of Richard I, specifically his exploits on the Third Crusade in the early 1190's.

I'm now on to a Robert McCammon novel called Mister Slaughter.  Over the last year, McCammon has become my new favorite author.  I just LOVE his books.  Sitting down to read a McCammon book is like sitting down with an old friend.  I haven't disregarded my previous favorite, Wilbur Smith, but I've read all of Smith's 35+ books now and he only publishes a new one every couple of years or so.  Over 80 now, his newer books just don't have the spark of the older ones.

Work has been interesting of late.  Our lead tech on 2nd shift has been out for a few weeks, so I have been given the duty of temporary lead tech (with no extra pay of course).  It has been very hard - harder, I suppose, than I would have expected.  In addition to handling departmental calls and crises, as well as a few administrative tasks, I also still have to do my part as a regular old x-ray tech - namely, working in the ER, doing portable exams on the inpatient floors, and running x-ray machines in the OR.  So it's been pretty stressful, but I am adjusting to it now.  Makes me appreciate the work our real lead techs do year 'round.

In my predictions for the presidential election this year, I correctly picked 47 of the 50 states.  Additionally, every state I picked for Obama went to Obama.  The only ones I missed were states where I picked Romney, but Obama ended up winning.  Neither the electoral vote, nor the nationwide popular vote, was as close as I expected.  However, I said at the time that given two possibilities - A large Obama victory, or any Romney victory at all - I thought it was more likely that Obama would win big than Romney would win at all.  Still, I predicted a closer battle.  All political biases aside, I think the Republicans have some real soul-searching to do to figure out how to appeal to Americans across generations, economic backgrounds, and ethnicities.

Time to head to Cincinnati.  M just told me we were supposed to be there at 2 pm.  It's 215.

 

The Virgin Birth

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend is my latest book at Amazon.  It originated as a series here on my blog, but I have updated and revised it for publication as an e-book.  With Christmas upon us, it's a good time to examine this most important of Biblical stories.  

From Amazon.com: 

In this brief volume, writer and historian B. Scott Christmas presents a lucid and compelling account of the Biblical story of Christ's birth. Examining all the key texts, Christmas takes his reader through the story of the nativity, searching for the history behind one of Christianity's most influential beliefs. 

Is the story of the virgin birth literal history, or creative liturgy? 

How can Christians in the 21st century embrace this timeless story in a genuine and authentic way? 

Christmas tackles these questions head-on, presenting a thorough analysis on the creation of the stories, and offering a thought-provoking new way to understand exactly what the writers of the Gospels were trying to portray.

Follow this link to buy it at Amazon.  If you don't have a Kindle, no problemo!  Just download a free Kindle app for your computer, smart phone, whatever!

The ObamaPhone and U.S. Welfare

Living, as I do, in an area that can only be described as "conservative," I have heard a lot of comments the last few days from friends and co-workers who are disappointed with the results of the election.  

It seems, around here at least, that one of the most common issues among conservatives relates to welfare.  So I thought I'd make a few points to clear up some confusion.

THE OBAMAPHONE

Have you heard about this?  According to the stories, the Obama administration has created a program intended to provide high-end cell phones to welfare recipients.  The numbers recited are typically something like 16 million people receiving free cell phones.  At work just this evening, I heard someone comment on this phenomenon and lament the fact that a bunch of people who "refuse to work" have "better phones than I do."  

This story has been passed around so much and so frequently that it appears that the vast majority of people familiar with it don't realize that it's all a hoax.  

It's not real.  

It apparently started as a spam email forward (shocking, I know), and then got to YouTube and went viral.  I can tell you with absolute certainty that a significant number of college-educated people who I work with believe that this story, and this program, is real. 

It's not real.  It's made up.  There is no such thing as an ObamaPhone.

Welfare in the United States is a very, very complicated business with numerous different facets.  The very term "Welfare Program" can be misleading, because there is no one, single, overarching government program that establishes welfare.  Instead, it's a combination of numerous federal, state, and local laws that, when taken together, constitute "welfare," or "government assistance" in America.  And it's not even administrated by the federal government; state governments run welfare programs. 

In 1985, a program was added to existing welfare laws to provide assistance to low-income individuals to help pay for their phone bills - phones being a necessary device in modern life and irreplaceable in an emergency.  It is called the Lifeline program.  

Until 2008, it included only land line phones.  That year, during the Bush administration, assistance was expanded to cell phones, due to the decrease in land line usage.  Other than more companies getting permission from the FCC to provide subsidized phones to low-income individuals, no further changes have occurred during the Obama administration.  

Finally, the money that funds this program comes from fees assessed to telecommunications companies.  In other words, your tax dollars do not pay for these government-subsidized phones.  

The simple fact is, this entire story has gone viral simply because it plays on the misguided suppositions and false assumptions that people already have - that welfare recipients are somehow living like kings while the rest of us work our asses off to stay afloat.  In the hospital where I work, we have a lot of low-income patients.  Many of them, in the Emergency Department in particular, come in with cell phones.  So then you hear a story about the ObamaPhone, and all of a sudden it seems to click.  That must be why all these ratty patients come in with fancy cell phones!  The liberals are giving it to them!   

In fact, the whole thing floats on an undercurrent of racism and especially classism.  How else could a poor black person have a nice cell phone?  It couldn't possibly be that maybe they saved their own money to buy it, or maybe their grandmother bought it for them, or maybe they're just not as poor as they look.  It must be a liberal agenda in Washington.

And this leads into a much broader discussion about welfare in general.  Another co-worker of mine, yesterday, told me that she agrees with Romney's infamous "47%" comment.  She feels, basically, that half the country believe they are victims and won't work and rely on the government to take care of them.  I'm sure if pressed, she might agree that it's not really 47% of Americans, but I bet she thinks it's pretty close to that.

In fact, roughly 4.5 million Americans receive welfare in any given month.  By "welfare," I mean actual cash from the government that is given to poor people to help them pay their bills.  In case you aren't good with numbers, that represents roughly 1.5% of the U.S. population.  One-point-five percent.  Nowhere in the same universe as 47%.  Even if you count people who receive food stamps or other government assistance in any given month, it's only about 15%.  

The notion that half the country, or even anywhere remotely close to half the country, is living on government assistance is ridiculous.  

Welfare laws were overhauled in 1996, during the Clinton administration.  It was a bi-partisan overhaul between Clinton (a Democrat) and a Republican-controlled Congress.  Limits were added for how long you can be on welfare (no more than 2 consecutive years, and a 5-year lifetime limit), and a work requirement was added for those on welfare who are capable of working.  As a result, the number of people getting a welfare check every month has decreased by 67% in the last 15 years - from over 12 million in 1997 to the 4.5 million today.  

THE POVERTY LINE

The most recent numbers I have seen in regards to poverty in the U.S. is that roughly 15% of Americans live at, around, or below the the poverty line.  The "poverty line" varies depending on age and family size (for a family with two adults and three children, the poverty line is about $26,000 per year before taxes; for a single adult under the age of 65, it's about $11,000 per year).  

What happens if you put the welfare numbers together with the poverty numbers?  15% of Americans live in poverty.  Only 1.5% of Americans receive a welfare check.  That means that even among poor people, the vast majority are not "on welfare" at any given time.  

It seems that a lot of folks go through life just assuming that all the poor and homeless and disabled they see around them are "living on welfare" (i.e., "living on my hard-earned money!").  That's simply not true.  Most poor people, if they receive anything at all, are getting non-cash assistance (like telephone subsidies, food stamps, and the like).

Of course there are people who take advantage of government assistance programs.  Is it possible that some welfare con-artist is out there receiving a welfare check for a family of eight that doesn't actually exist, and is living fairly comfortably by doing it?  Sure.  But there is absolutely not one shred of evidence to suggest this sort of major fraud is widespread.  The laws themselves have safeguards built in to both detect and prevent fraud.  This is one of the reasons why the number of people receiving welfare checks has decreased by 67% in the last 15 years.  Fewer people are eligible, and there are fewer ways to take advantage of the system.  This is also why the number of people on assistance programs like food stamps is roughly equivalent to the number of people below the poverty line.  If numerous people above the poverty line were simply defrauding the system, it would show in the statistics.  

Suggesting that welfare should be de-funded or in some other way "gutted" by Congress, simply because there are a few people taking advantage of the system, would be akin to suggesting alcohol should be banned because so many people drive drunk.  

The simple fact is that there are not nearly as many people are on welfare as a lot of folks suppose, not nearly as many people "depend on the government" to take care of them as a lot of folks suppose, and the entire welfare system is not nearly as much of a black hole in the federal budget as many folks suppose.  

One final note: In 2010, the amount of federal money spent on welfare checks to poor people amounted to less than 1% of the total federal expenditures - something like 0.7%.  Even if you add in the cost of food stamps and other assistance programs, it's only about 3% of the total federal budget.  

If we can't live in a country where three government dollars out of every one hundred go to help the poor and needy, then we have a serious ethical dilemma on our hands.  

The 2012 Presidential Election: My Prediction

There are exactly two weeks to go before the polls open in the 2012 presidential election.  The primaries are history, the conventions are long since over, the debates are done, and there's nothing left to do but go vote.

Presidential elections are not decided by a popular vote.  Instead, they are decided by an electoral college vote.  Each state gets a set number of electoral votes, based on its population.  In all but two states, electoral votes are given in a "winner-take-all" system; in other words, all the electoral votes in the state go to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the state.  Maine and Nebraska apportion their electoral votes into districts, with the popular vote in each district determining who wins that district's electoral vote.

In this year's election, most of the states are already more or less decided.  It's not that those states have already voted, or that those states don't still have individual undecided voters, it's just that the polls in those states show one candidate leading by such a significant margin that the chances of that state going to the other person are slim to none.

These states, then, are basically already locked up for one candidate or the other.  There are 40 of them, and when you add up their electoral votes, you find that Romney currently has 206 probable electoral votes, and Obama has 201 (270 are needed to win.)

That leaves 10 states remaining, where the polls are still very close (within 5 percentage points) and which neither candidate has yet "locked up."  These are the states, then, that will ultimately decide the election.

Those states are: Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Nevada.

Let's look at each of those states individually:

Wisconsin: Obama currently has an average lead of 2.8 points.  That's an average of all state polls taken over the last few weeks.  However, Romney has not led in a single Wisconsin poll since mid-August, when he had a 1-point lead in two polls.  Prior to that, you have to go back to June before you find another Wisconsin poll Romney led in.  So despite the average lead being relatively small, Wisconsin has consistently been in Obama's corner throughout the election season.  Advantage: Obama.

Virginia: When you average all the Virginia polls over the last few weeks, the candidates are in a dead heat.  However, in all the polls taken since Romney's prominent victory in the first debate, Romney has led (albeit by small amounts).  Obama had a comfortable lead in Virginia throughout September, showing as much as an 8-point lead in two different polls during that month.  But clearly the momentum in Virginia is on Romney's side now.  Advantage: Unclear, but leaning Romney.

Florida: Romney currently has an average lead of 1.8 points.  More than a dozen polls have been taken in Florida this month alone, and Romney has led in all but three.  Like Virginia, Obama had a consistent lead throughout September, but Romney has the momentum there now.  Advantage: Romney.

Nevada: Obama has an average lead of 3 points.  Like Wisconsin, Romney's surge in the national polls has not been enough to overcome the comfortable margin Obama has enjoyed there throughout the campaign.  Not as many polls are taken in Nevada as some of the other states, but you have to go all the way back to April to find a Nevada poll won by Romney.  Advantage: Obama.

Colorado: Obama had a consistent lead in Colorado in September, but it has wilted in October.  This month, the candidates have gone back and forth, with Romney currently holding a fractional edge (0.2%) over the last three weeks.  Advantage: Unclear.

Iowa: Obama has tended to lead in Iowa throughout the campaign season, and currently has an average lead of 2 points in the polls of the past week.  As recently as last Wednesday a poll showed him with an 8-point lead.  But other polls have showed the candidates tied.  Even with Romney's post-debate surge, he has won only one of six polls taken since that time - and that was by just 1 point.  Advantage: Obama.

Michigan: Obama's current average lead in Michigan is 5 points, making Michigan just barely a toss-up state at this point.  Romney has not won any polls in Michigan since mid-August.  Advantage: Obama.

Ohio: Over the last ten days, Obama's average lead in Ohio polls is 1.9 points.  Since the first week of September, 31 polls have been taken in Ohio.  Obama has won, or been tied, in all but three of them.  The only three polls he lost were in the first few days after Romney's debate victory in early October, and Romney had only a 1-point lead in each of those three polls.  In the last week alone, Obama has had a lead as high as 5 points in one poll.  Advantage: Obama.

New Hampshire: In the last two weeks, Obama has an average lead of 1 point.  The last poll taken, however was just released today and it shows Obama with a 9-point lead.  However, as recently as just ten days ago, another poll had Romney leading by 4 points.  Obama has tended to lead in New Hampshire throughout the campaign season, but the polls have been unsteady since the debate.  Advantage: Unclear, but leaning Obama.

Pennsylvania: Like Michigan, Pennsylvania is only barely a toss-up at this point, with Obama leading on average by 4.8 points.  His lead in Pennsylvania was simply too large for Romney's post-debate surge to have completely erased.  Romney has not won a single poll in Pennsylvania since February, before the primaries were even finished.  Advantage: Obama.

So what does all this mean?  Well, it means that Obama appears to have weathered Romney's surge since the first debate, and seems on pace to win the election.  Of the ten states left whose electoral votes are still up in the air, the only one that seems very likely to go to Romney is Florida.  We saw that Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire are "unclear."  Let's give them all to Romney.  Even then, Obama still has 277 electoral votes and wins the election.  In fact, we could even throw in Nevada or Iowa, and Obama would still have 271!  So Romney could take 6 of the 10 remaining states, and it would still not be enough to give him the election.  And remember, of the 10 toss-up states, only one is leaning heavily towards Romney.

I see only one way for Romney to win at this point, and that would be if he could manage to steal Ohio. Ohio has polled almost exclusively in favor of Obama all season long, but it has become very close there over the last month.  Obama has maintained a lead, but only just barely.  If Romney won Ohio, plus Virginia and Florida, he would need to win only one more of the remaining seven states - even tiny New Hampshire would be enough to tip him over 270 in that case.  However, it is notable that even if Romney won the windfall states of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, Obama could still win if he took the remaining 7 toss-ups.

My prediction: Romney will win Florida, Virginia, and Colorado, but lose the rest, giving Obama a 281-257 electoral college victory.  As an alternative, New Hampshire might go to Romney, and Virginia might go to Obama, which would make the final tally 290-248 in favor of Obama.

Romney's only hope lies in winning Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, plus one more of the toss-ups.  I think this is an extremely unlikely scenario, based on the polling evidence.    

10 Fun Facts About William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States

1. William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857.  His father, Alphonso Taft, was a prominent lawyer who later served as both Attorney General and Secretary of War under Ulysses S. Grant.

2. Like his father before him, Taft attended Yale, graduating second in his class, then returned to Cincinnati in 1878 to study law.  He met Nellie Herron the following year, and they were married in 1886.  Nellie's father was a law partner of president Rutherford B. Hayes.  Nellie suffered a stroke just a few months after her husband became president and she never fully recovered.

3. Taft rose in prominence very quickly after being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880.  He served first as an Assistant Prosecutor in Cincinnati, and by 1887, at only 30 years of age, he was elected as a judge to the Ohio Superior Court in Cincinnati.  Three years later, Benjamin Harrison appointed him as Solicitor General of the United States, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

4. Following his term as Solicitor General, Taft was appointed in 1892 as a judge to the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.  During his time as a circuit judge, his old law school was merged with the University of Cincinnati to become UC's College of Law, and Taft served as its first dean and taught Constitutional Law there.

5. Taft's lifelong ambition had been to serve as a justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and everything he had done in his career up to that time had been in preparation for this goal.  However, in 1900, William McKinley asked him to take part in organizing a government for the Philippines, which had just been ceded to the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war.  Taft reluctantly agreed, becoming Governor-General of the new territory in 1901.

6. Following McKinley's death in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt offered to nominate Taft to the Supreme Court, and although this was Taft's undoubted ambition, he declined the offer because he felt that his job was not yet done in the Philippines.  Instead, Taft became Secretary of War in 1904, a position which would allow him to continue his work in building the Philippines.  He again turned down an offer for the Supreme Court in 1906.

7. Although he regretted his decision, Roosevelt had promised, in 1904, not to run for re-election in 1908.  Since Taft had become such a prominent figure in Roosevelt's cabinet by this time, it was apparent to everyone that he was the logical choice of the Republican party for the 1908 presidential election.  Though Taft still wanted ultimately to serve on the Supreme Court, he accepted the nomination at the urging of numerous friends and companions, including his wife.  The extremely popular Roosevelt heartily supported his campaign and Taft won easily, taking 66% of the electoral vote.

8. During his time in the White House, Taft departed from many of the progressive standards established by his predecessor, and by 1912, Roosevelt was so disgusted with his former protege that he decided to challenge Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination.  Twelve states held primaries that year, and Roosevelt won nine of them, while Taft won only one (the others went to a third candidate).  Despite this, Taft managed to outmaneuver Roosevelt at the national convention, and ultimately won the nomination.  Roosevelt, however, formed his own party, the Progressive Party, and ran on that ticket.  With the Republican votes thus split, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won easily.  Roosevelt, on the Progressive Party ticket, won more of the percentage vote, and more of the electoral vote, than Taft on the Republican ticket, making Taft's defeat the worst in U.S. history of an incumbent president.  It is also the only time since the advent of the 2-party system that one of the major parties has come in third in an election.

9. Following his presidency, Taft taught law at Yale, and vigorously opposed the prohibition movement, which had been gaining steam for some time.  In 1921, when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court died, president Warren G. Harding nominated ex-president Taft to succeed him.  His nomination was easily ratified by the Senate, and thus Taft became the first and only person in U.S. history to lead both the Executive and Judicial branches of the U.S. government.

10. Taft is most commonly remembered today for his corpulence.  While president, he famously became stuck in a White House bathtub and rescuers had to use butter to help free him.  He is known to have suffered from sleep apnea due to his weight, and there are numerous contemporary reports of his prodigious appetite and his flatulence problem.  He retired from the Supreme Court in 1930 and died several weeks later.  He and John F. Kennedy are the only two presidents buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Emancipation Proclamation: 150th Anniversary

The first page of the handwritten Emancipation Proclamation

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I thought a little background might be useful in understanding this important milestone in U.S. History.  I have divided the following information up into numbered sections, simply for ease of reading.

ONE

The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln in late 1862, scheduled to take effect on January 1, 1863.  As an executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation was not a law, but an order issued under the Constitutional powers of the president.  It sought to free slaves in areas that were then in rebellion, and made a precedent for using those freed slaves as soldiers in the Union cause.

TWO

Although Lincoln privately asserted that he personally wished to see an end to all slavery, his public position on slavery was never an abolitionist one.  On the contrary, he expressed his belief that the federal government did not have the legal right to outlaw slavery in the states, and said, instead, that his only goal was to keep slavery from spreading outside those states where it already existed.

In his first inauguration speech, in 1860, he stated emphatically: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

THREE

Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually outlaw slavery, or free all the slaves.  It only freed those people who were slaves in territories that were in rebellion against the United States as of January 1, 1863.  As such, the Union slave states of Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri were exempted from the order, and their slaves would not be freed until they did it themselves (Maryland in 1864 and Missouri in early 1865) or until after the war and Lincoln's death, with the passage of the 13th Amendment in December, 1865 (Kentucky and Delaware).

It also did not affect slaves in regions of the Confederacy that had already come back under U.S. control (such as Tennessee, parts of Virginia, and the area around New Orleans).  Overall, nearly a million slaves (about 25% of the total) were exempted from the proclamation, and thus legally remained in slavery.

FOUR

In light of Lincoln's insistence that he had no intention of ending slavery, why did he change his mind and issue the Emancipation Proclamation?  Quite simply, it served two political purposes: first to threaten the Confederacy, then to punish it.

The proclamation was issued in September, 1862, and stated that any area still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would have its slaves permanently and irrevocably freed.  As such, it served as a threat.  The threat didn't work, however; no states or territories within the Confederacy returned to the Union.

As such, when January 1 rolled around, it became a punishment: you have rebelled against the United States, so you will be punished by having your slaves freed as our armies move through and subdue your territories.  Since slaves were legally only property, they could be confiscated as part of the normal course of a war.

It's interesting to speculate about what might have happened if the states of the Confederacy had actually bowed to the threat of emancipation.  What if the rebellious southern states had put down their weapons and returned to the fold before the January 1 deadline?  Slavery certainly wouldn't still exist now, in the 21st century, but it may have carried on for several more decades than it actually did.

FIVE

Despite this, there can be no question that Lincoln's true motivation was not threats or punishments at all, but actually ending slavery.  There is also virtually no doubt that he never expected the "threat" to work; he surely didn't expect the rebellious states to drop their weapons and hang their heads in submission.  He had always publicly stated his opposition to abolition, on Constitutional grounds, but the war gave him an opportunity to get around the normal limits of the Constitution and ultimately end what he viewed as the immoral institution of slavery.

SIX

So how, exactly, did Lincoln achieve this?  After all, he had said himself, just two years earlier at his inauguration, that he had no legal right to free slaves.  So how did he justify his actions?

There is positively no question that the U.S. Constitution, in 1862, did not give the federal government the right to interfere with slavery in the states.  The 10th Amendment states that any power not expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution automatically becomes a right of the individual states.  Therefore, since the power to control slavery isn't given in the Constitution to the federal government, it must by default be a state's right.  This is why Lincoln, and most everyone else, never embraced abolition as a legal right of the federal government.  It was unquestionably a state's right.

But because the South had rebelled and was now at war with the Union, Lincoln could use the excuse of hastening the war's end by taking actions aimed at ruining the economy of the enemy - in this case ending slavery.  Many people throughout the Union, and particularly in Congress, had argued that ending slavery would decimate the South's economy and thus bring an end to the war.

This, then, is how Lincoln justified the Emancipation Proclamation from a legal standpoint.  He argued that hastening an end to the war through economic ruin was necessary to preserve the Union.  He further argued that since the president is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, he has the Constitutional right and responsibility to do whatever he deems necessary to achieve a military victory, particularly when it affects the very preservation of the Union.  Remember that the Constitution charges the president with the duty to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution, and Lincoln saw preserving the Union as his primary duty as a wartime president.

SEVEN

One argument that Lincoln could not make, and which no doubt caused him more than a few nights of fret, was that he had the right to end slavery because the Confederacy was not part of the United States.

Normally, if a country is at war with another country, and intends to overtake and rebuild that opposing country, setting up military rule and suspending the old civil laws is typically fair game.  This is what the Allies did in Germany in World War II, and what numerous other nations have done in wars throughout history.

So Lincoln might have argued that he had the Constitutional right to free Confederate slaves simply because the Confederacy was a foreign nation that the United States was at war with.  Anything goes, as it were.

Lincoln would no doubt have loved to make this argument.  But he couldn't, because he had spent the first two years of his presidency arguing vociferously that secession was not legal to begin with, the Confederacy was not a legal or legitimate nation, and the states comprising the Confederacy were still part of the "perpetual union" of the United States.  This, in fact, had been his entire justification for waging war against the southern states in the first place: they had seceded illegally, were thus in open rebellion against the Union, and the federal government thus had the right and responsibility to subdue them and bring them back into the fold.    

With that in mind, he couldn't now turn around and claim that he had the right to free the slaves based on the fact that the Confederacy was a foreign nation and the U.S. was not obligated to recognize its laws.  That would have been a "flip-flop" and it wouldn't have sat very well with his supporters, his generals, or his soldiers dying in the fields to preserve the Union.

EIGHT

It's probably fair to say that the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional.  That may sound shocking to a lot of people, but it was a common perception and criticism at the time.  Anti-war sentiment was very common throughout the North, especially in the first few years of the war.  Many people believed that the best way to end slavery in the United States was simply to let the slave states secede and go their merry way; that slaves weren't worth fighting a war over; that as long as slavery didn't expand from those states where it already existed, it wasn't a big deal.

Today we imagine a Union united behind the cause of freeing the slaves, but the fact is that the primary impetus for Union soldiers to fight wasn't freeing slaves; it was preserving the Union.  With the exception of the abolitionists, who represented just a small percentage of the whole Union population, most people didn't really have a problem with slavery continuing in the South.  Most people figured it would eventually die out on its own, and there were even political movements to give federal aid to states that voluntary repealed their own slavery laws.

So there were many critics of the Emancipation Proclamation when it was enacted, and some of their criticisms, from a purely Constitutional point of view, were probably valid.  No one, of course, questions the ethical and moral rightness of the document.  But if we look, for a moment, at the Emancipation Proclamation the way a Supreme Court justice might look at it, we're forced to accept the possibility that the entire thing was unconstitutional.

I've already provided Lincoln's own justification for issuing the proclamation.  If that passage sounded like a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and hair-splitting, that's because it basically is.  The Constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of the military, but it also assumes that the president will be commanding the military against foreign enemies, not internal ones.  And aside from giving the president this broad power, the Constitution is mute on what, exactly, the president can do as commander-in-chief.  Hire and fire generals, certainly.  Make military decisions during times of war, absolutely.  But the actual power of waging war and conducting war belongs to Congress, not the president.  It is highly questionable whether Lincoln, in his capacity as commander-in-chief, actually had the constitutional right to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.  His justification was, in my opinion, on very shaky legal ground, and probably overstepped his constitutional powers.

NINE

Even if we accept that Lincoln had the legal power to issue the proclamation, as part of his wartime powers, there is almost no question whatsoever that the wording of the proclamation itself was unconstitutional.

The key phrase comes in the very beginning of the text: "[Beginning January 1, 1863], all persons held as slaves [within the Confederacy] shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

In other words, the proclamation isn't vague at all: as of January 1, 1863, slaves held in any territories rebelling against the Union will not just be freed, but will be forever free.

The problem here is that even by Lincoln's own justification, this proclamation was issued as part of the presidential war powers.  As such, it could only be understood to be in effect as long as the war continued.  Once the war ended, the order could no longer be in effect - meaning that the proclamation didn't actually have the legal authority to declare slaves freed under its powers as "forever" free.

The fact is that if so much of the country had not been focused on waging and winning the existing war, it is a very good possibility that the Emancipation Proclamation might have been challenged in court, and it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty that it would have been upheld as legal.

TEN

In the end, the Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important executive orders ever issued by any president.  It was radical, it was provocative, and it might even have been unconstitutional.  But it undoubtedly gave a new focus to the war and a new expectation of the war's outcome and ultimate purpose.

Yet, at the same time, it was in many ways very limited.  It did not end slavery.  It left nearly 25% of existing slaves in servitude.  It did not make the practice of slavery illegal.  It did not have any authority beyond the war itself, or upon any part of the U.S. not currently in rebellion as of January 1, 1863.  Upon its initial implementation, it hardly affected any slaves at all - the slaves that would eventually be freed by it would not be freed until the Union armies reached them, which in many cases would be many months, and even years, later.  As one critic has cynically pointed out, the only slaves it freed were those in areas not controlled by the Union - in other words, the enemy is not allowed to have slaves, but we'll keep our own.

Despite this, it is hard to underestimate the importance of this provocative historical document, and the impact is has played on racial issues in the United States for the 150 years since it was enacted.

This photograph was taken in early October, 1862, just a few weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, to take effect the following January.