Whatever you are, be a good one

Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial
Washington, DC

On politics in the US, its hard for me to resist posting this picture of the one American president who’s quotes I have followed and loved for a long time.

Abraham Lincoln, the man who opposed the expansion of slavery in America, and successfully led the country during the Civil War was mostly self-educated. But his intelligence, wit and humor, were second-to-none.

A lot of us now use his quotes as status updates on our social profiles, but not all of us know just how many were uttered by this one man.

This post is essentially a collection of some of my favourite Lincoln-isms. Give it up for Lincoln, our man!

o How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

o If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

o If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

o Whatever you are, be a good one

o No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

o A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

o You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

o In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

o You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

The statue of Lincoln in the picture above is cast in marble and sits in the central chamber of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Pretty Darn Fucked

United States Capitol
Capitol Hill; Washinton, DC

America is a funny country. Here’s just one example why:

Two days after S&P downgraded the American economy’s rating from AAA to AA, President Barack Obama essentially dismissed the credit rating:

“Markets will rise and fall. But this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a triple-A country"-

President Obama

If that statement doesn’t exude confidence, I don’t know what does. Or wait, is the word to be used here ‘denial’? For, even as global markets shriek alarms of economic calamity, Obama, our man stands at a lectern to give a speech that could easily be mistaken for a campaign speech. At best, a press briefing. But nothing to speak as warning of a nation on its fiscal tenterhooks, struggling to tame a staggering accumulation of debt.

And yet, on the other hand, is the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Obama’s one time confidante, Christina Romer who didn’t mince any words when speaking of the situation on television said that the credit downgrade was a sign that the country was “pretty darn fucked”

While I’m far from any sort of expertise on financial matters (I barely manage to understand my own), I do know that the credit downgrade is not the end of it. It is, if anything, the proverbial ‘beginning’.

On that, I shall keep my rant continuing, but a photograph of the day that I found to be most appropriate – almost like the closest physical visual of the saga – Capitol Hill.

While Capitol Hill is actually a neighborhood in the District of Columbia (DC), where the Congress building resides, it has come to be a metonym for the United States Congress. The actual congress building, as seen above is called the United States Capitol.