white house wiki: William McKinley

"Within five hours, McKinley had paid, out of his own pocket, for a railroad car full of food and other supplies to be sent to the miners."

white house wiki: Grover Cleveland

"When confronted with the emerging scandal, Cleveland's instructions to his campaign staff were: "Tell the truth."

white house wiki: Benjamin Harrison

"This served only to disappoint both factions."

white house wiki: Grover Cleveland

"Cleveland had qualms about the hanging, but opted to carry out the duty himself."

white house wiki: Chester Alan Arthur

"Morgan declined the offer twice, but Arthur submitted it to the Senate anyway, and Morgan was confirmed."

white house wiki: James Garfield

"Garfield's assassination is mentioned in the Johnny Cash tune, "Mister Garfield (Has Been Shot Down)" according to the album sleeve written by J. Elliot, released in 1965 by Columbia Records, and re-recorded for the 1972 album America - A 200 Year Salute in Story And Song; as well as in "Charles Guiteau" by Kelly Harrell & the Virginia String Band as included in the Anthology of American Folk Music."

white house wiki: Rutherford B. Hayes

"He also intended to build the U.S. controlled Panama Canal, though he wasn't the one who actually did it."

Christmas Beans

white house wiki: Ulysses S. Grant

"It was a two-sentence description that completely caught the essence of Ulysses S. Grant."

white house wiki: Andrew Johnson

"At the ceremony, Johnson, who had been drinking to offset the pain of typhoid fever (as he explained later), gave a rambling speech and appeared intoxicated to many."

white house wiki: Abraham Lincoln

"Lincoln later damaged his political reputation with a speech in which he declared, 'God of Heaven has forgotten to defend the weak and innocent, and permitted the strong band of murderers and demons from hell to kill men, women, and children, and lay waste and pillage the land of the just."

white house wiki: James Buchanan

"Before Buchanan left office, seven slave states seceded, the Confederacy was formed, all arsenals and forts in the seceded states were lost (except Fort Sumter and two remote ones), and a fourth of all federal soldiers surrendered to Texas troops."

white house wiki: Franklin Pierce

"His father put him in a wagon, drove him half way back to the academy, and left him on the roadside, never saying a word."

white house wiki: Millard Fillmore

"Utah now contains a city and county named after Millard Fillmore."

white house wiki: Zachary Taylor

"He ran his administration in the same rule-of-thumb fashion with which he had fought Native Americans."

white house wiki: James K. Polk

"Polk's views on slavery made his presidency bitterly unpopular between proponents of slavery, opponents of slavery, and advocates of compromise."

white house wiki: John Tyler

"In 1862, after complaining of chills and dizziness, he vomited and collapsed during the Congress of Confederacy."

white house wiki - William Henry Harrison

"Harrison's doctors tried cures, applying opium, castor oil, Virginia snakeweed, and even actual snakes."

white house wiki: Martin Van Buren

"According to Smith's grand-nephew, Van Buren said to Smith, 'Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri.'"

white house wiki: Andrew Jackson

"The executions, and Jackson's invasion of territory belonging to Spain, a country with which the U.S. was not at war, created an international incident."

white house wiki: John Quincy Adams

"He took the oath of office on a book of laws, instead of the more traditional Bible."

white house wiki: James Monroe

"It is the only non-American capital city named after a U.S. President."

white house wiki: James Madison

"However, George Washington avoided a trade war and instead secured friendly trade relations with Britain through the Jay Treaty of 1794, a treaty that Madison tried but failed to defeat."

white house wiki: Thomas Jefferson

"Thomas Jefferson enjoyed his fish pond at Monticello."

white house wiki: John Adams

"Unlike others, Adams thought that the definition of a republic had to do with its ends, rather than its means."

white house wiki: George Washington

there are 43 days left until GW Bush leaves office and Obama takes over. We'll commemorate each day of the countdown with a random wikipedia sentence about the 43 Presidents, leading up to President Obama.

"While Washington's role during the battle has been debated, biographer Joseph Ellis asserts that Washington rode back and forth across the battlefield, rallying the remnant of the British and Virginian forces to a retreat."

The Soldering Iron of Justice

Remember the good old days when you could walk around town with a gun on your hip and shoot anyone you wanted to? Remember when Aaron Burr murdered arguably the most talented person in America? Man, those where the good ol' days.

Well, good news! With a little hope, my great home state of Texas may do its part to bring 'em back. A Holstered Gun: So Shooting Yourself in the Leg can be a Daily Occurrence. It's just common sense, if you ask me. Plus, if more people had guns, no one would be dumb enough to then use it on somebody. Come on, that could get you shot! It's so logical it hurts.

Now, kids. If I could speak seriously for a moment. As a person who has literally been robbed at gunpoint before, I feel I have a pretty good grasp on this subject. Think, if only I had a gun on me at the time I would have been in such a better position. Instead of just giving them the $5 I had in my pocket and credit cards that I immediately canceled, I could have tried to grab my gun. Then I could have shot myself or been shot by the assailants in the process. I might (probably) would have ended up dead, but I would have had my dignity and my $5. And to think, if those fuckers hadn't of taken those $5, I could have used that money to buy the bullet the should have potentially ripped through body at some point.

All I know, is that if this country needs anything, it's more guns.

midnight beans

Recent Beans

Looking Forward

Some of you have no doubt heard that Barack Obama won the most recent presidential election. What you may not know is that not every person, even among those that voted, cast a vote for Obama. Nearly fifty percent of Americans voted republican, despite the fact that Obama was running. These people were vociferously averse to Obama for a variety of reasons, many of which gradually transformed into new and unrelated reasons. Here's the punchline: the people who hate Obama are already looking forward to 2012, when they might depose him in favor of someone who is not so, shall we say, repellant because of his or her, shall we say, policies. If I understand their series of loud complaints correctly, here are some things that Obama should be on the lookout for if he's going to appeal to the skeptics:

1) Experience: a major motif in the arguments against Barry. Presumably, being the president for a while constitutes experience which might prepare you for a job in the oval office. At that point, however, it is possible that Palin may have served as Governor of Alaska for four more years. Given how quickly that title elevated from comically irrelevant to supremely respectable in a few months, she could be the most important person in Real America by then. On the plus side, it won't matter at all how good of a president Obama was, just that he's been in charge of something. It's good to have wiggle room.

2) Being a Muslim/Terrorist. The hardest rumors to battle are the ones that are so dumb to begin with that there's no more possible evidence to suggest that they are incorrect. When the going gets tough, however, the tough create distractions. Stage an event where Obama is faced with the decision of deporting an American citizen who is wearing a turban so that a friendly white woman can have his job. It would be bonus points if the turban guy wears a name tag with "Hussein" written on it, that way people realize that Barack is capable of demonstrating moral probity even in situations when his name might tempt him to do otherwise. Also, switch out Wright for a Christian pastor who hates most of America based on God's word, but still likes the white straight protestant part.

3) Positive attention from the media. This makes people who are suspicious of the media feel that you are guilty by association. Or maybe they just think that since celebrities are on the TV, being on the TV is like being a celebrity, which is bad. Actually, I can't explain why this is a bad thing. I only know that it is because the conservative half of the media insists that the entire media was too biased in Obama's favor. This didn't sit well with a whole lot of Joe Occupations, because they only pay attention to the conservative half.

4) Being an associate of Bill Ayers. For God's sake, don't deny this friendship based on its undeniable transparency. That obviously doesn't work. I'd say tell Ayers to bomb a few abortion clinics, maybe mix in a mosque or a gay bar (somewhere that there's no Murkns). Democrats will hate it, but they're capable of telling the difference between Obama and Ayers, so it's win-win.

5) Socialism. Technically, there's no chance whatsoever of this being a threat. It's complicated though, because Republican pundits don't know what it means (Hint: it's not the same thing as paying taxes, or even "spreading the wealth", which is something all market structures do). I'm afraid Barry's gonna take a hit on this one. Four years is a long time, though, and I'm sure there's some money left over from the campaign. Running some ads with subliminal word associations between socialism and nascar or beef jerky might tilt the board in his favor.

So as you can see, Obama's got a few things to address before he's secure for 2012. If he hits these points, though, I'd say he'll be sitting pretty among the dissenters. That is, of course, unless they really are just straight up racist.

SOS

There's a buzz going around the online that Barack Obama wants Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. Here's a little roundup of opinion on that question.

Nate Silver: science indicates that hillary shouldn't take it

Matthew Yglesias: isnt this like the only policy sphere where they have starkly incompatible worldviews?

Andrew Sullivan: brilliant move, for she is the snake in obama's garden, and to defang the snake he must marry it.


My two cents are here.

Let's throw together some answers and questions out of order: What exactly does is this the change that we can believe in the drama quotient, how exactly are we gonna deal with what about the former President yes is this Lincoln's team of rivals, or is it, now but on the other hand she is world famous woman, ooh russia wants kiss, drink here is a toast to you!


A unity gesture is cool. I can't help but think of the one lonely hillary fanatic in my facebook circle of friends, who was bitterly anti-obama, rooted hard for mccain this november. how will she and the other PUMAs react when their Hillary herself says, "Well, actually, I like PU."
and I'm not snidely curious. It'll be honestly cool to see if these people come back to the fold.

I'll follow with more if she actually does in fact land the job. Until next time, I leave you with the first google image result for the words: until next time, I leave you with

Bush vs. Worst, Part IX

Welcome to the ninth installment of our series comparing George W. Bush to the worst U.S. Presidents in human history. This week, we take a look at a man whose shockingly proactive incompetence may surprise you: James Madison.

Madison arguably had one of the best pre-Presidencies. He wrote the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, came up with the Bill of Rights, did some solid work in Congress and, as Secretary of State under Jefferson, oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. Unfortunately, none of that stuff counts.

Foreign Policy: The main thing Madison did was the War of 1812, a comically poorly-handled fiasco. It started off as bad blood between the British and Americans. We felt that we should be able to trade with the French even if the British were desperately trying to ward off Napoleon, and the Brits felt that they should be able to pull people off our ships and conscript them into the Royal Navy. Madison decided the answer was to go to war against the most powerful nation on Earth. Naturally, pretty much everyone in America disagreed with him, noting that we didn't exactly have a "good military". According to this great Wikipedia sentence: "Madison carefully prepared public opinion for what everyone at the time called "Mr. Madison's War", but much less time and money was spent building up the army, navy, forts, and state militias."
Almost everything that followed was ludicrously terrible:

• Madison decided to get things started by invading Canada, which for some reason everyone thought would be easy. Jefferson called it "a matter of marching", and Madison tried to do it with a few small state militias. It turned out to be a matter of gross failure.
• The highlight of the war came when the British effortlessly marched into Washington D.C., ate the dinner that Madison had left when he fled the White House, burned down the White House, destroyed the Treasury, and scared the U.S. into setting our own naval yards on fire.
  
• Britain easily held us at bay even though they were also fighting the Napoleonic wars, one of the greatest military campaigns in world history.
  
• We started out with 12,000 troops. We tried to get more, but no one was interested. By contrast, Britain sent over 15,000 troops as a supplement, over a year into the war, after they had defeated Napoleon.
• Britain immediately set up a Naval blockade of the entire American coastline, destroying our economy. Total exports fell from $130 million in 1807 to $7 million in 1814.
• New England openly hated the war, smuggled goods to the enemy, and considered secession.
• We surrendered Detroit without even fighting, even though we probably had enough guys to win.
• One of our few victories came when we burned down a town near Niagra, causing all the inhabitants to freeze to death in the snow.
  
• We lost 40% more troops than the British.

Eventually everyone got tired of the war and quit. Under the terms of the peace, Britain made none of the concessions that we had demanded at the war's outset, and each country got exactly the same territory it had had before the war started. Our one gain was Mobile, AL, which had been owned by the Spanish. In Britain, according to another great Wikipedia sentence: "The war was scarcely noticed at the time and is scarcely remembered in Britain because it was overshadowed by the far larger conflict against Napoleon Bonaparte."
Did Bush Do Something Worse? No.

Domestic Policy: Technically a lot of the War of 1812 was domestic, since Madison elected to hold it on U.S. soil. But we only want to count it once. Even so, he is remarkably bad. For one thing, he let the charter for the National Bank expire and opposed renewing it for the next two years, until he realized he couldn't finance his war at all. The economy sucked when the British ended our trade with everyone (except for the illegal smuggling with the British), but that's foreign policy. He had dumb governing principles, refusing to fund roads, bridges and canals, which are the classic example of things that everyone agrees the government should fund.
DBDSW? Yeah, if we separate the War of 1812 from this, and consider Bush's own economic disasters on top of his wiretapping experiments, he takes this one.

Civil Rights: The British easily convinced tens of thousands of Native Americans and slaves to fight on their side. Also, Andrew Jackson killed a bunch of Creek.
DBDSW? No.

Corruption: Don't see much reported on Madison for this, though it's probably overshadowed by the War of 1812.
DBDSW? Easily yes.

Value of Replacement Player: For the first time, this is quite close. Jefferson and Clinton are similar tier Presidents, although Clinton is probably better. But I'd say the dropoff from the end of Clinton to now is greater than that from the end of Jefferson to the end of Madison. Madison had deeper lows, but ended better. So this goes to Bush in the closest contest yet.

Verdict: This is a really tough one. It is difficult to overstate the failure of the War of 1812. It's like the peewee football team of lovable misfits in the movie "Little Giants" took on the actual New York Giants, during the Super Bowl, and had all their parents' houses burned down. It is as though the Iraq War had been relentlessly campaigned for by Saddam Hussein. But I think there are three mitigating factors here:

1. The scope of possible failure was greater for Madison. As a young country with a shakier economy and smaller military relative to a very powerful Europe, we could easily have collapsed entirely. I'd say Madison's failure was well within the realm of the conceivable for his era, whereas someone sitting in 2000 would never have envisioned America as it is today under Bush.
2. We were doing OK by the end of Madison's run. He oversaw a recovery and general swell in morale (so great that they call it the Era of Good Feelings) that you can't really imagine under Bush.
3. Bush has a greater breadth of failure. No one thing he did is worse than 1812, but when you add up our current recession, the wiretapping, Iran mishandling, Afghanistan mishandling, North Korea mishandling, egregious torture of prisoners and associated war crimes, PATRIOT act, Dept.of Justice scandal, Valerie Plame scandal, No Child Left Behind failures, provocation of Russia, general anti-environmentalism including abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, historically enormous budget and trade deficits, anti-stem cell research positions, support of the Federal Marriage Act, Katrina fiasco, undermining of the Constitution especially with signing statements, illegal victory against Gore and swift-boating of John Kerry and ruination of the Supreme Court, you get something in the same ballpark as 1812.

Yikes, after writing that list, it seems pretty clear that Bush gets this one.
Coming up next: Presidents who are even worse.

the speech that could have saved William Henry Harrison

(In 1841, William Henry Harrison gave the longest ever Inauguration speech, at 8,500 words. He died of pneumonia one month later- and popular folklore suggests that it was this 2 hour speech, delivered in the freezing rain, that did him in. The following is a line-by-line paraphrase of Harrison's speech, 1,350 words long.)

I’m coming out of retirement to be your President. Here’s what I think about that.

Back in Rome, they used to say that guys never did what they said they would, after they were elected. Ain’t it the truth?

You voted for me, so technically your work here is done. But you’re probably curious about what I’m gonna do as President. Maybe you’re cynical about if I’ll actually do what I say. There’s no point in worrying. Only time will tell whether I live up to this speech, or if I’m remembered as a liar and failure.

My job is to do the best I can for as many of you as I can. Our country is unique because of the limits our Constitution puts on power. For instance, there are certain rights that the Government can never take from the people. This reminds me of Rome and Athens- as in, we’re better. So far, our limited Government has worked pretty darn well. That said, there are occasional disagreements about what the branches of government, usually Congress, are actually supposed to do.
These disagreements arise because the Constitution is ambiguous, not because anyone is power hungry or sinister. What scares me is that one government branch might take too much power from the other branches. And people don’t seem to know or care about that risk.

Back when the Constitution was written, a lot of people were concerned about all the powers granted to the federal government and to the President. These men feared that someday we’d devolve into Monarchy. Looks like they might be right, but rest assured: I will do everything in my power to not be powerful.
For instance, you know what I hate? Second terms! The longer a man is in power, the more power hungry he gets. And when you’re power hungry- it’s like a horrible disease that you absolutely cannot stop, it completely destroys your soul. Here’s a fact: I won’t serve a second term.
Also, the President should have absolutely nothing to do with legislation. He can make a suggestion now and then, but legislation is Congress’s responsibility.
The Presidential veto is good. But I won’t use it to advise or control Congress; the veto is just for making sure that nothing hasty or unconstitutional gets passed into law.
Also, sometimes Congress gets a little too clouded by regional interests, but the President doesn’t. So the veto makes sure that no minority region is ever bullied by legislation.

This government’s been goin’ on for 50 years. We need more transparency, across the board. It would be kinda cool to see how our government’s systems have changed in the past 50 years, like, is this how the founders pictured it? For instance, a lot of them were probably paranoid that by now, the states would’ve lost all their rights to a strong central government. And guess what: it’s happening! It hasn’t been overt or contentious, but it’s happening, and it’s bad.
For instance, the President appoints almost everyone, and they’re all at his beck and call. If you thought this was bad when Jefferson was President, just imagine how much worse it is by now. The only difference between a President and a King is that the King controls the public treasury, and hell, our President appoints the people who administer the public treasury. They owe everything to him. He could take that money for himself if he wanted. This reminds me of Julius Caesar.
The Treasury is staffed with very smart, patriotic people and they’re doing really hard work. That’s all good. My problem is they’re getting too cozy with the President. We need to make the Treasury independent from the Executive branch.
Across the board, public servants shouldn’t be the President’s puppets. We’ll have none of that during my tenure. Oh, and we’re definitely keeping freedom of the press. The more they scrutinize us, the better.
As I’ve said before, it’s not the President’s job to come up with legislation, especially in matters of finance. Let’s respect Congress’s authority. Maybe in England the King submits his financial plans for Parliament to rubber-stamp, but that’s not how this country does it.

I strongly oppose an exclusively metal currency. Metal currency will eliminate upward mobility. Metal currency will make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Metal currency will destroy our national character of generosity and kindness.

Another thing the President handles: the Territories of the USA. They don’t have all the freedoms of a state, but they’ll be states pretty soon. It’s tough for those people, not having their full political rights, but they do have heroic frontier border patrols.
Oh, and the Constitution isn’t too specific about this, so let me make this clear: The people who live in DC are free American citizens. Yes, Congress is the official Governor of DC, and Congress serves at the behest of the states. But if people in the states think of DC residents as their “subjects,” then they are as stupid as the stupidest Englishmen from 1776. They’re not gonna be your slaves, okay?

  Constitutional disputes between Congress and the President are tough, but that’s nothing compared to disputes between states. Sometimes things get crazy. But this country doesn’t work unless we like each other. You can pretty much do anything in this country, just don’t infringe on another state’s rights.
Sure, you might give advice to another state, politely, but too many people making forceful advice to other states, well, that’s a slippery slope. This reminds me of Athens.
Look at Switzerland. The Swiss should fucking hate each other, but instead, they all get along because they respect the usefulness of a strong union. Let’s aim for that. When states try to force their interests on other states, it puts us on the path to civil war.
Instead of pushing your angry little regional interests, we should all be proud and focused on our unity.

The economy’s not doing so well, and some of our states are struggling to make ends meet. A lot of this is their own fault, but that’s okay. We’ll get back on our feet together.
Don’t let this talk of constitutional disputes get you down. As long as we are all deeply patriotic and generally moderate, we’re gonna be okay. Now, if we’re not, then we can have the smoothest government in the world but we’ll still be fucked. History shows this. And we need to be vigilant about avoiding smooth-talking, power hungry types. This reminds me of Caesar.

Maybe partisan factions consider themselves patriotic, but rabid partisanship is actually the opposite, even the downfall, of liberty. When people truly believe in liberty, things are good. But when you’re negative, angry and partisan, that’s when evil Kings, pretending to be patriotic, will take over the country.

My foreign policy: we’re gonna keep up the friendly, hands-off status quo. I don’t actually know any details yet, but I have a good hunch that other countries are cool with this. Look, I was a General, so you should trust that just because I make peace with other countries, doesn’t mean the USA is getting walked over. And we’ll keep up the status quo with Indians. We should be proud of treating these weak, uncivilized people with fairness and restraint.

Before I finish, let’s mention political parties. You political parties are crazy and you need to relax. Parties are good watchdogs, but That’s It. Otherwise they’re vicious and awful. It’s such a shame whenever a great country loses their patriotism in the mix of all this party nonsense. This reminds me of Rome.
Now that I’m President, I can say this: stop it! It’s up to the people to get the partisanship under control. I’ll definitely do what I can. Congress: do what you think is best, don’t ever do me any political favors.

This is a this very serious and important day; in fact, it’s so serious that I am comfortable sharing this with you: I’m a Christian. God bless America.

Aaaand I’m done. Thanks everybody.

Not only is he a Socialist...

In my opinion, there are few things in the world more important than making sure people remain stupid, or at least ignorant. The last thing I want to have to do is concede that other people have valid opinions, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure they never know what in the hell they are talking about on the issues I like lecturing to them about. That way, I get to ramble on about whatever I feel like, quickly ignore counter arguments, and win every argument through the clever usage of phrases like "well, once you actually look at the issue," "many experts agree," or "well, that may be true in theory."


That is why I am happy to see articles like this that keep America stupid, at least in regards to foreign policy. This article benefits my cause on three levels.First, it plays into the assumption that Republicans are strong on defense and Democrats are weak on defense. According to the article, now that Obama is elected, everyone is calling in their demands. It's as if people can just smell the pansy on him. Reading the article, you would never think that such demands were ever made on Bush. "Lets just make up shit-ass demands and see what we can get away with!" Most of these were already ideas and policies that many people thought should be implemented. Just because Bush perfected the "Fuck You" doesn't mean they were bad demands. It just means that somebody in the White House might actually pick up the phone.


Second, it does nothing to distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas. Lots of countries have requests. Some are bat-shit crazy (The Taliban: Please stop bombing us!), others are fine and dandy (Russia: You should not try to piss us off intentionally). Some of them are in our interest (Eurpope: It's a bad idea to piss off Iran intentionally). Just because another country wants us to pursue an issue doesn't mean it's a bad thing. For example, the first three issues they mention are all bad Bush policies that people want extended or ended.


Missile defense with Russia is a stupid idea. Only reckless hawks pursue it. It is wildly costly, it doesn't work ("I know, we'll shoot down their missiles. That's easy to do, right?"), and it pisses off Russia, who had been dismantling and disarming missiles until we started talking about bullshit missile defense issues. Missile defense is normally nothing more than a lame attempt to add another notch to the Reagan history of belligerency. I say, for old times sake, we start re-sponsoring Central American terrorism. Those were the days when you were truly proud to be an American.


Then, the Regime Change policy is also a terrible policy. It largely discredits the US as a beneficial force in the world, violates multitudes of international law and diplomacy precedents, and is an extreme policy that will never have a good outcome (see Iraq, Mossadeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatamala, Allende in Chile, etc). In regards to Iran, keeping that policy makes future negotiation with them in good faith highly unlikely. "Just because we want to invade you doesn't mean we can't still be friends."


Then, on the same lines, listening to Israel tell us to be tougher on Iran is also a bad idea. Being tough on Iran hasn't gotten us anywhere, except to an angrier and more-armed Iran. By portraying all of these issues as demands, it makes US following any of them look like the actions of a weak-kneed pussy. "We're not going to give into their demands! We're Americans. We make demands." Some of these requests are really just people asking us to stop pursuing stupid policies that hurt both sides.



The third reason this article stupidifies is that it vilifies negotiation and diplomacy. Again, by portraying these issues as demands, or "requests," it automatically makes agreeing to them sound as if the US is coming from a position of weakness. Countries do just call each other to discuss important shit, you know. It isn't a bad thing either. It's actually the only way shit gets done that is beneficial to both sides.


Looks like I've got some bright days ahead of me.

Bush vs. Worst, pt. VIII

In this week's installment of our series comparing Bush to the worst Presidents in human history, we realize that Warren G. Harding isn't as bad as everyone says. Nonetheless, he is quite terrible, a preposterous inept clown if not quite a traitorous pro-slavery drunk. He's like a potato chip that everyone tells you is a vomit-inducing fecal abomination, and then you try it, and it's merely a horrible chip that you would never eat, the Doritos X-13D (this chip tastes exactly like a McDonald's hamburger) to John Tyler's Pringles Extreme Blazin' Buffalo Wing.
In addition to being like a Dorito, Harding is responsible for the greatest quote that any President ever said: "I am not fit for this office and should never have been here." Technically that's apocryphal, but it's the sort of thing that is true whether or not it happened.

Foreign Policy: Harding ran for President on a platform of isolationism, nativism, and turning away from reform. He signed the Treaty of Versailles, but the real credit for that goes to Ellen Wilson, who brokered peace in the free world after Woodrow had a massive stroke. Harding wasn't really a go-getter, or even really a do-anythinger, so he didn't have any big disasters here, although the Washington Naval Conference probably contributed to the riseof Japanese imperialism in the World War II era.
Did Bush Do Something Worse? His bumbling idiot approach to Iran alone would give him this one. We'll throw in the IRAQ WAR just to make his inferiority clearer.

Domestic Policy: Not much to speak of here. This guy really liked to take naps. It says here he invented the White House Press Conference. And he signed the Fordney-McCumber tariff, an asinine attempt to protect American economic interests. Basically he didn't like the "global economy" machinery, so he jambed the invisible hand into the gears, stopping them, but leaving the hand a soft bloody pulp. The resultant counter-tariffs helped cause the Great Depression.
DBDSW? The PATRIOT act. Also the economy. Wiretapping his own civilians. That's probably sufficient to give him this one without delving any deeper.

Civil Rights: Harding favored anti-lynching laws, which would have been a monumental achievement, but unfortunately he was Harding and he never did anything about it. He signed the 1924 Immigration Act, probably the most racist and horrible immigration policy since the Alien and Sedition Act.
DBDSW? Historically this is not Bush's weakest area, primarily because I've been treating this as a proxy for racism and not addressing the "spying on American citizens" aspect. So Harding wins.

Corruption: A truly amazing cavalcade of failure and outrage. The big one is the Teapot Dome Scandal, blatant thievery by his Secretary of the Interior that resulted in the first Presidential Cabinet jail sentence. His head of the Office of Alien Policy was convicted of accepting bribes. The personal aide to his Attorney General destroyed a bunch of papers and committed suicide. Charles Forbes, his director of the Veterans Bureau, skimmed profits, received large kickbacks, ran an underground alcohol and drug distribution network, was convicted of fraud and bribery, and had an aide who killed himself. Harding also had a well-documented affair with his friend's wife, which he lied about when the Republicans asked him if he had any big secrets before they nominated him for President, which resulted in them having to send her monthly payments for years. She's the only person known to have successfully extorted a major American political party.
DBDSW? Amazingly, someone has a more corrupt administration than Bush. Of course, Bush has more personal involvement in his corruption, and it hurts America more (lying about war, committing and covering up war crimes, etc.).

Value of Replacement Player: Will tells me I'm not using this term the way sports people do. So to be clear, what I mean here is basically: How much better or worse was this person than his predecessor? The idea is that a President receives the country in a certain condition and should lose points if he makes it much worse. So if Harding had followed Lincoln, that would have been a disaster. But he didn't. He followed the tattered remnants of Wilson, who was just kind of OK. A moderately competent person might have achieved, say, a thing, instead of sleeping through scandal, but Harding's failure isn't close to Bush squandering of Clinton's successes.

Verdict: Bush is way worse. Harding shouldn't be nearly this far down on the list. But that's OK because we've discovered that Madison was unspeakably awful. So we'll just reorganize:
10. Harding
9. Reagan
8. Pierce
7. Hoover
6. Tyler
5. Bush

John Adams is off the list! We'll fill in the founding father gap next time.

Bonus What the Hell Fact: Apparently a park in Seattle had a Harding memorial commemorating that one time he stopped there and led some boy scouts in the pledge of allegiance. But then in the 1970's they tore it down and buried it under the African Savanna exhibit in their zoo. Why did any of this happen? It is in the spirit of Harding that no one will try to find out.

Tuesday Beans

Gay Marriage and Unspeakable Filth in the Holy Word of God

Given that a large number of morons in California have just elected to go down in history as bigots who re-legalized discrimination, I thought it might be time for us all to turn to the Bible. Surely, no matter what creed one might profess, we can all agree that marriage is best defined by the infallible Christian word of God. So here is a brief anthology of Bible Heroes and Their Traditional Marriages.

Hebrew Bible (Old Testament):

Adam and Eve: Did you notice that she is not named Steve? This guy did. Often cited as the perfection of God’s plan for strong families, Adam and Eve lived together for almost a thousand years without ever officially getting married. In addition to raising a son who killed his own brother, this couple notably caused the fall of man. They worked as organic farmers and did not believe in Christ or democracy.

Noah: God’s mulligan, Noah had a more traditional marriage, though he also invented “passing out drunk” and cursed his own grandson into slavery. Fun fact: White people used this to justify African slavery for over a hundred years.

Abraham: His wife Sarah convinced him to bone his maid so he’d have a son, which worked, and, according to tradition, originated the conflict between Jews and Arabs. They proved that the family that prays together sends one son into the desert to die and attempts to sacrifice the other on an altar. Abraham also liked to pretend that his wife was his sister.

Isaac: Never really got his act together after his dad tried to kill him. His dad later sent a servant to go pick out a wife for him from his cousins, and Isaac married her at age 40. His sons hated each other.

Jacob: Met his wife in a land he fled to after stealing his brother’s inheritance by conning his blind father. His father-in-law pulled a fast one on him by slipping him the wrong daughter in the wedding, which Jacob didn’t even notice until the next day, so Jacob compromised by marrying both of them and having sex with sisters for the rest of their lives.

Moses: May or may not have had two wives, depending on whether you consider Zipporah from Midian and Unnamed Woman from Cush to be the same person.

Deborah: A strong working woman who may or may not have been married. Involved in some potential sexual intrigue.

Samson: Seems to have been sleeping with a woman who was not his wife, at least until she handed him over to be killed by the government.

Ruth: Married her relative in a weird economic transaction involving the exchange of a farm and a sandal removal ceremony.

Samuel: Bachelor.

King David: Multiple wives. Possible gay relationship for most of his youth. Once spied on a woman bathing and decided to sleep with her, but she was having none of it, so he sent her husband to be killed on the front lines in a war and married her. He felt bad about it, but he kept having sex with her. His son famously tried to kill him and usurp the throne, but David killed him first.

King Solomon: Multiple wives. By adopting their religions he helped cause the downfall of an entire nation. His son was a terrible king.

King Ahab: A horrible villain who killed indiscriminately, his marriage with Jezebel is arguably the strongest “one man, one woman” marriage in the Bible.

Elijah: Bachelor.

Elisha: Bachelor.

Jeremiah: Bachelor.

Esther: At the urging of her uncle, made herself look nice so the Persian king would add her to his harem. It worked. Strong hints that she used sex to get favors, although, to be fair, they were pretty good favors.

Ezra: Wrote a long screed against inter-religious (and, by implication, inter-ethnic) marriages.

Hosea: Married a prostitute. God told him to do this.

New Testament:

Mary and Joseph: Technically she got pregnant before they were married, but whatever, I’ll spot you this one.

Jesus: Bachelor. The only time he really mentioned marriage he mainly talked about how in paradise there is none, and on earth it seems fine for a brother to have to marry his sister-in-law if her husband dies.

Peter: Bachelor. Spent a lot of time hanging out at the docks.

Every other disciple: Marriage not mentioned; presumably bachelors for most of their discipling careers.

Paul: Said you shouldn’t get married unless you’re too much of a pansy to resist sexual urges. A big fan of women submitting to their husbands, though.

That’s about it. It seems we have a lot to learn in this country, but this much is clear: We cannot rest until the Constitution defines marriage as “something to avoid if possible, but, if you have to do it, between a man and one or more women, potentially sisters but at least your cousins, and preferably submissive Jews, and you have to marry your brother’s wife if he dies”. We should at least be able to get this on the ballot in Texas.

true

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are


I just watched this video; my entire day so far was spent lounging in bed.

this is the moment

Barack Obama, floor: Jimmy Carter. Meek failure in the face of enormous challenges.

Barack Obama, probable outcome: Dwight Eisenhower. Stable, careful leadership; the boats unrocked, but life in America gets generally better.

Barack Obama, ceiling: Ten years from now, historians will no longer, as a broad, nonpartisan consensus, acknowledge Three best Presidents (Lincoln, Washington, FDR). They will acknowledge Four.




Four years ago, I knew Kerry would lose, and I was disappointed in a cynical, kinda apathetic way. I mainly felt relieved just to be in New York, which really felt like the last, lonely refuge for the things that I believe in. One of the exhilirating sensations that took over last night, running through the cheering crowds all over the city last night:

America shares my values again.

We said No to torture. We said No to senseless war. No to arbitrary, vicious hate and paranoia. We said Yes to science, and Yes to culture, and Yes to diplomacy, and Yes to intelligent leadership. Yes to respecting one another, Yes to seeing what we can do For other people, instead of just Against them. Yes to talking to the world. Yes to dignity, Yes to a campaign that treated us like adults and made an honest case for itself. Yes to eachother.

We said Yes to Barack Obama.


And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's all about the beans.

THE ENDORSEMENT ARRIVES

"Starting tomorrow, it's tomorrow." -notes from PA part 2

It's 10 pm and I'm in the downtown Philadelphia HQ. There are still about 20 or more people calling, working, talking. Today I worked at the office in the poor black neighborhood. At night I transferred to the downtown office, to be closer to my host.

A few notes from yesterday and today:


• I'm staying with this very eastern spiritual, vaguely hippie woman. She signed up via the Obama campaign to house out-of-state volunteers. Her boyfriend was over last night, and he mentioned- politely, modestly- that he was a solid Nader supporter. I held my tongue. She turned off a night light last night. "Isn't it beautiful? It's a Himalayan salt candle."

• This morning a few kids from the neighborhood- Curtis (age 13), Denise (11) and Otaia (8) came to the office and wanted to help canvass. So me and my pal Adam took them out. Adam went with Curtis, I went with the girls. They helped hand out Obama stickers and voting info literature, I talked to voters. They had a little bit of kid impatience- 'is this the last house? is this the last house?' but amazingly, they all volunteered to join us for a Second canvassing shift. I absolutely thought they were bored but they all wanted to go again. So we did. And we had a great time together. We're kindof low on buttons at the office, and we get asked for them all the time, but we made sure to give each of the kids a button after they headed home.

• Once again, everybody we've talked to is registered, wants to vote for Obama, and knows where their polling place is. This is a neighbprhood that badly underperformed their vote in the primary, and turnout in places like this is crucial to guarantee the win. I'll be here tuesday morning to make sure they show up to vote.

• "I'm 34 years old and I'm voting for the first time!"- this great, funny guy we met on a stoop. On my last canvassing trip, it was pretty quiet until the last house, we met about six people hanging out on the stoop. They were all very animated and funny, joking around with us and eachother. "Vote McCain!" they shouted. "Right on! Country first!" I shouted back. We all laughed and talked about Obama, and it was all very helpful, answering their questions about the voting laws.

• This was one of the darker moments, but it was also really special. A canvasser, just in from New York for the weekend, was taking the bus with me from the poor neighborhood to downtown. We're waiting for the bus by the street. All black neighborhood. A car pulls up across from us, at the red light. White guy, clearly drunk, yells at us from the passenger seat.

"What are You doing here?"

"We're volunteering for Obama," says my fellow canvasser.

"Obama!? Are you some kind of Nigger lover!?"

"Yeah, I am."

and that was it. (green light, car's gone).

I turn to the guy and say, "that was a really cool response, I really liked that."
He says, "I wish I could say I came up with it. Back when I was a kid, my mom's friend told me the story of when he was down south, back in the civil rights days. And when one of the white guys down there asked him the same question, that was his response."

... and you know, this is the next chapter, guys. This campaign, this moment in history… it's all on the same continuum with that struggle for equality and respect. Just like that retort is handed down to the next generation, so is the mission. And we're on the frontlines, man.

Dispatches from the Pennsylvania Ground Game

I'm in a Cosi in Philadelphia, lounging through my extra post-daylight-savings hour, before I head out to an Obama field office.

This is my third trip to Pennsylvania over the past month. Around October 4 I spent a day trip in the suburb of Jenkintown; a week later I spent a saturday in Lower Merion. This time, from yesterday until mid-Tuesday, I'm gonna be in Philadelphia proper.

The general media narrative is, this election is fought mostly on red-state territory, but McCain might have a shot in Pennsylvania. But everything I've seen has looked pretty good for Obama.

A few anecdotes, personal and political:

• There's a very impressive, seamless share-of-power dynamic between Obama's paid operation and the old-school local political networks. When I canvassed in Jenkintown, I first received training at the Obama office, and from there they dispatched me, and other volunteers, to a local organizer's home. The trust they had in eachother was very impressive.

The organizer was a wonderful, wealthy old woman who knew everybody in her neighborhood. Her husband was an NFL player in the '50s, and she exuded this quiet vibe of veteran influence- she was a particular person that every Democratic campaign wants on their side.

She had photos in her home with the Governor of PA, various mayors, and a very proudly displayed photo of herself with Hillary Clinton. She really loved Hillary, and was deeply disappointed by her loss, but ultimately decided that she needed to work for Obama, for the good of the party. And she was working- organizing and making calls and leading our neighborhood canvass. I tremendously admire the Hillary Democrats who are working hard for Obama. I know I couldn't do it if the situation was reversed, so the people who can actually put it behind them, and not just vote, but devote their time- that's really incredible.

• Jenkintown was mostly Democratic, but the undecideds were delightfully varied. 3 houses in a row I got undecideds of every stripe- high information ("I've read Obama's policy papers, and I'm not convinced"), generic ("Uh, I guess I'll vote for whoever's better on the economy and taxes") and cynical ("I dunno… they're both politicians")

• In Lower Merion, in a crucial Philadelphia suburb- the very place where these elections are won and lost- the Obama office was absolutely bustling. A large office filled with dozens and dozens of people, including about two-busloads worth of NYC volunteers. I passed the small McCain office twice that day. When I left to canvass in the morning, it was closed, with a "back in ten minutes!" sign on the door. When I came back, hours later, it was untouched. "Back in ten minutes!"

• I'm spending this last weekend in a poor, black neighborhood in Philadelphia. In earlier weekends we were trying to persuade voters; for the final push we're focusing on getting all of our ID'd supporters to the polls. Every person I talked to was voting for Obama (except one undecided). And they all knew where their polling place was.

• a 13 year old girl ran up to me while I was canvassing yesterday. "How old are you? My cousin thinks you're adorable," she said. The whole neighborhood was so animated- lots of kids on their bikes, lots of guys out just chatting and having a good time, a few old women relaxing on their porches.

• After about 8 pm we left that office and headed to a downtown Philly office, closer to where I'm spending the night. I left at 11 pm and there were still people working- preparing some yard signs, calling the west coast. There's a spirit of fun and purpose all over this campaign. It's pretty exhilirating.



And now it's time to grab a taxi and head back to the office. More notes will come tonight or tomorrow

T-minus One week

Goodness gracious. Just one week left. All indications are that Barack Obama is gonna walk away with this thing. McCain's campaign is in this kinda sad, post-climactic flailing state. Tiny issues, big grudges, no legitimate message.

This little story out today felt like a nice picture of the campaign. In the cold rain, one man is still ready to stand up and rally his supporters, the other is thinking, 'what's the point?' Or maybe he's thinking William Henry Harrison.

Anyway, it's just about wrapped up. And all the news in the world doesn't matter unless things get tighter in Pennsylvania, Virginia or Colorado. Obama wins with VA and CO in his column, unless McCain pulls off a miracle in PA. (hint: don't cancel your rallies!)

Bush vs. Worst: Part VII

This is the sixth installment in our series comparing George W. Bush to the worst U.S. Presidents of all human history. This week, the fifth-worst: Franklin Pierce, the man who became responsible for the second-greatest Presidential quote of all time, when, upon leaving the White House, he said, “There’s nothing left to do but get drunk.”

The only President who ever sought reelection but got turned down by his own party, Pierce’s life is so pathetic that he almost deserves sympathy even in the face of his utter failure as a man. Consider the first four months of the year he took office: In January, his family was in a train wreck. He and his wife survived, but watched as their 11-year-old son was crushed to death (their two other kids died in 1836 and 1843). In March, Abigail Fillmore, the previous first lady, died, and in April, Pierce’s Vice President, William R. King completed the ruthless march of despair by dying of tuberculosis. Pierce never bothered to appoint another VP, pretty much summing up his legacy as a leader.

Foreign Policy: In Pierce’s era the U.S. didn’t really have much foreign policy, so his imperialism, though deplorable, didn’t result in much. Nonetheless, he still managed to have a hand in the Ostend Manifesto, which said that we would buy Cuba for $100 million, or, if that didn’t take with the Spanish, we’d probably have the right to take it over by force. The memo was supposed to be a secret but it leaked and was considered embarrassingly imperialist even though this was the mid-19^th century. Pierce manages to have a notably bad Cuba-policy for a U.S. President, which is also pretty impressive.
Did Bush Do Something Worse? The Iraq invasion alone is enough. Let’s just mention his botching of negotiations with Iran and North Korea to make this incontrovertible. For what it’s worth, his Cuba policy also sucks.

Domestic Policy: There are two main parts. First, Pierce worked closely with Jefferson Davis and Lincoln-opponent Stephen Douglas to replace the relatively-OK Compromise of 1850 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Basically it said those two territories could be states and the people would vote on whether they had slavery. Then people called the Border Ruffians snuck into Kansas from Missouri, terrorized voters and cast fraudulent votes. Pierce immediately recognized their government and openly detested the Free-Staters. Eventually this all led to Bleeding Kansas, open violent rebellion in an American State that left 56 dead.
Second, Pierce had a hand in the Gadsden Purchase, a $10 million deal with Mexico that bought us the southern parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Wikipedia calls this “the greatest success of the Pierce Presidency”. It is named for James Gadsden, a rabid pro-slavery asshole who called for South Carolina to secede in 1850. Many Mexican historians consider this deal the basis of Mexico-U.S. tension that still exists today. Otherwise, Pierce generically helped the country spiral into civil war.
DBDSW? I’d say it’s neck-and-neck, which is pathetic for Bush, since Pierce’s stuff led to the Civil War. But Bush has done a greater number of things (spying on U.S. citizens, the Patriot Act, Katrina, ruining the environment, etc.), and this economic catastrophe might put him over the top.

Civil Rights: Pierce was a staunch advocate of slavery. He was bad on civil rights even in the context of an era when owning humans was legal.
DBDSW? No.

Corruption: Pierce’s administration doesn’t seem to have had any scandals that stood the test of time.
DBDSW? The Justice Department thing alone is among the most deplorable Presidential scandals in history.

Value of Replacement Player: I don’t think anyone has beaten Bush in this category yet. Clinton was clearly a better President than Millard Fillmore, and Bush still arguably brought us lower than Pierce did.

Verdict: Pierce is definitely one of the ten worst Presidents, but Bush beats him so easily, and the Hoover and especially Tyler battles were so much worse than I expected, that I’ve decided to adjust the list a little: We’ll just switch Tyler and Pierce. So now it looks like this:
10. John Adams
9. Ronald Reagan
8. Franklin Pierce
7. Herbert Hoover
6. John Tyler
5. George W. Bush

Bonus Fun Fact: Harriet Beecher Stowe was none too happy about Pierce’s blatant pro-Southern leanings in the Civil War. She called him the arch-traitor. Her brother, famed abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, sent rifles to Kansas so Free-Staters could kill Border Ruffians. They were popularly known as Beecher’s Bibles.

seen on the streets

A stern, middle aged Christian Fundamentalist holding a huge sign over his shoulder: "THOSE WHO LOVE THEIR LIFE SHALL LOSE IT"

Mere feet behind him, a gangly man dressed as a cockroach, with a huge sign over his shoulder: "CHECK OUT THE HALLOWEEN STORE ON 8th & 42nd!"

Is McCain about to endorse Obama?

As evidenced in this clip, JSMIII is finding more and more common ground with Obama's surrogates. Could an endorsement come soon?

T-minus Two weeks

Obama looks good. Complacency is probably the biggest threat to a Democratic victory. Key blocs in the Obama coalition- minorities and young'ns- have failed to show up to vote in big numbers before. But that's probably no more or less dangerous than the equal and opposite reaction- lots of republican voters, discouraged by an inevitable loss, might not go to the polls either.

The movement that has surprised me most is Virginia's hardening into a strong Obama state. Obviously there's no guarantee that this holds up, but it definitely looks very good. Virginia in and of itself could settle this election; all the firmest Kerry states, plus Virginia, is enough to move Obama past 270. In the last day or two McCain has started to zero in on Pennsylvania as a pickup opportunity, but so far the polls aren't receptive. If PA and VA both report for Obama early on Election Night, that's game-set-match.

Bush vs. Worst: Part V

After a long hiatus, I will hopefully be returning to frequent posting again, and what better way to start than with our most tendentious feature: comparing Bush to America’s most grotesque Presidential failures. Just in case we have retained a reader, and that reader has forgotten, here’s the list so far:

10. John Adams

9. Ronald Reagan

8. John Tyler

7. George W. Bush

Can Bush keep chuggin’ on down the list? This week’s challenger: Herbert Hoover!

It’s kind of sad that Hoover was such a godawful President, because he was a pretty good guy. He made his name in World War I getting food to victims. When accused of aiding Bolshevism through food-relief, he said, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!", which is awesome. But man, the Great Depression. He royally screwed the pooch on that one. So we’ll add an economy category to this one.

Domestic: Some good. He added 3 million acres to national parks, proposed creating the Dept. of Education, and got Hoover Dam going. He doubled the number of veteran hospitals, although he’s net bad for veterans’ affairs because of the Bonus Army thing, where a bunch of WWI vets asked for their money, so Hoover sent the U.S. Army to attack its own veterans, first with a cavalry charge, then with a fucking bayonet charge. Patton was in charge of the tanks, because evidently they used tanks. To be fair, Hoover didn’t expect MacArthur to send bayonets after impoverished veterans—no one knew that guy was insane yet.*

Did Bush Do Something Worse? I don’t think any one thing is comparable to attacking the army with the army. But Hoover did have some good moves, and MacArthur really was a terrifying lunatic, and Bush has had many more terrible moves (worse education policy, Katrina, domestic wiretapping, etc.). To the extent you can separate this stuff from the economy (not much), Bush is pretty significantly worse.

Economy: Hoo boy. Wikipedia says his stance on the economy was “largely based on volunteerism”, which is exactly as brilliant as it sounds. He essentially took a Buchanan approach to economic disaster, sitting around while the whole world spiraled into a hellish maelstrom of failure. He avoided legislative solutions for years; the major legislation he signed was the Smoot-Hawley tariff, widely considered a primary catalyst for deepening depressions worldwide. Guys like Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke think that his contractionary monetary policy was the biggest problem, and guys like Keynes think it was his refusal to spend government money, but they all agree: he ruined everything. Of course, he inherited a lot of his problems, but he had been an extremely powerful Commerce Secretary for most of the 1920’s, so he largely inherited them from himself. Oh sure, he tried things like the National Credit Corporation, which could have saved banks, but it was based on volunteerism (i.e. the opposite of capitalism), so it failed horribly. Unemployment hit 24.9%, a preposterous number.

DBDSW?: No. Of course, when I started this series, I thought it would be Bush’s basket of failures against Hoover’s one big gun, but then I took a few weeks off and Bush came back with a competing economic tailspin. It’s hard to say how much worse our economy will get, but it’s very likely the worst since Hoover, and Bush is quite blameworthy (lax regulations plus corruption plus generally not knowing anything about the economy equals oh shit). So although Hoover easily wins this category, it’s not nearly by the margin I would have thought at this time in August.

Foreign Policy: It seems good: Solid foreign relations, more or less ending the Roosevelt corollary, asking for the “Hoover Moratorium” so Germany wouldn’t have to keep starving by paying France make-believe money. But then you remember that he oversaw the collapse of the world financial system, which among other things, led to the rise of the Nazis and set the stage for WWII.

DBDSW? Well, he’s trying. Iceland might be finished with its little independence experiment, for example. But he’s less to blame than Hoover on the economic side. On the other hand, the Iraq War, the squandering of U.S. goodwill abroad, the failure to win in Afghanistan, the blundering attempts to provoke China, Russia and Iran into power struggles, and the many war crimes represent a much more proactively terrible policy. Hoover was wrong, but he simply did not actively, maliciously create problems like Bush has. Call it a tie.

Civil Rights: Hoover was pretty solid for his time on Native American rights. He was not much worse than average for his time on black rights, which is to say, he ignored them completely as people were lynched everywhere. The Depression was not kind to minorities. He also supported the Mexican Repatriation, which sent over 500,000 people of Mexican descent back to Mexico, even though many (a majority by most counts I’m seeing) were U.S. citizens.

DBDSW? I’d say Bush is worse compared to his contemporaries, but Hoover’s contemporaries were such assholes that Hoover wins this one. It’s not the salient category this time, though.

Corruption: Hoover was not especially corrupt.

DBDSW? Ha ha! Ah, yes.

Value of Replacement Player: This category is turning out to be a real bummer for Bush. Say what you will about Clinton, there’s no doubt America did well under him. Hoover followed Coolidge and Harding, two of our worst Presidents. Bush has the misfortune (kind of) to follow one of our few non-dismal-failure Presidents, so instead of handling a terrible situation very poorly, like Hoover, he took a good situation, turned it into a terrible situation, and then handled it very poorly. Bush wins this one in a landslide.

Verdict: We’re getting into the tough entries here. The Great Depression is far worse than anything Bush has done, but he’s doing his damndest to catch up on economics alone, and by God if he isn’t making an impressive show of it. Even if the economy recovers, it’s clear that Bush was a remarkably terrible steward of it, and I think that when you add in his despicable cowardly militarism (Hoover was maybe the least war-criminal of any of our Presidents), immense corruption, and squandering of the Clinton successes, he still takes the prize.

*Bonus Fun Fact: FDR had to deal with the same pissed off WWI vets, so he sent Eleanor to smooth-talk them over some coffee. Somehow she convinced them they really wanted to volunteer to labor on the federal highway system in Florida, where 258 of them died in a hurricane.

Links to come later.

amazing anagrams: famous works

Declaration of Indepence.... "No finer deed, an ideal concept."

Patriot Act.... "Crap to a tit."

John McCain prepares for the final debate

Fucking perfect. Via TPM.

amazing anagrams

I was playing around with this anagram generator, typing in random names and getting pretty random word combinations in result.

But the outcome for "McCain and Palin for America" is astonishingly good...

"An impaired, farcical con man."




"Obama and Biden for America" is also hilarious, and fits the conservative caricature of liberals pretty well

"Abracadabra! Feminine doom."





...and here are some other fun discoveries.

Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama = Anarchism or lovably antiblack?

the George W. Bush Presidency = See! Power hungry, big chested.

the plain facts of the electoral map

The classic minimalist Obama victory plan: Kerry states + Iowa and New Mexico + Colorado.
The classic minimalist McCain victory plan: Bush states - Iowa and New Mexico, keeping Colorado.

That's the minimum success map for each guy. But then you also have the Offense options, the pickoff opportunities, where each guy is trying to expand the map.

Obama plays offense: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Nevada, and (the more-secure, longer-shots) Florida, Missouri, Indiana.

McCain plays offense: Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire.

Right now, McCain's pickoff opportunities have vanished completely. PA and MI are, by enormous margins, essentially in the tank for Obama. NH still might vary, although it's looking good for Obama now, but it's not a singular game-changer in the electoral vote count.

And on the other hand, Obama's map is Exploding- everywhere he wanted to challenge McCain, Obama is winning. Everywhere.

And the takeaway point is, Obama's lead is not only huge- it is also phenomenally superfluous.

The states where Obama earns a 95% or better chance of victory- the bluest, solidest Democratic states- currently add up to 260 electoral votes. He can seriously just win One, any one of the random swing states on the map, and he'll be the next President.

We could be in a position on election night, where Indiana- with its 11 electoral votes and early poll closing- might report an Obama win around 8 or 9 pm. And it'll be over before it even begins. Bust out the drinks and party the rest of the night.

T-minus Three weeks

So we're three weeks away. The story of the past few weeks is, Obama absolutely running away with this thing. The drama is simply not quite there anymore, there's this palpable sense that we're counting down to a coronation. Anything can happen, of course, but the huge majority of those any things lead to Obama victory.

The media narrative is all about what JSMIII has to do to get back in this thing, all about his campaign's awkward struggles, and the fact that one candidate is calmly and consistently talking issues while the other is frantically lobbing around little character bombs.

But let's just look at the plain facts of the electoral map.

T-minus Four weeks

Wow, only four weeks left? Crazy.

Don't have much time to write about the map, but Obama's basically pulling away. America's paying attention and they see one candidate who's pretty calm and talking about the issues, and one guy who's increasingly reduced to crazy character attacks. A week or so ago I was arguing that the national polls were deceptive, but now the state polls have all dramatically caught up with Obama's lead. Safe to say that this thing is pretty close to done.

gotcha journalism

Why, in the history of the world, does the inception of such a radical new ethos in journalism correspond with the arrival of an infuriatingly stupid gimmick of a politician? And why does it only ever target her ever and no one else ever?

I'm guessing sexism.

Probably Seen 'Em

But if not:

Holy Shit This Election is Important

Look here for voter registration deadlines by state! Some are today! Send in right now for your absentee ballot or register in NYC! Quell my apocalyptic dreams of McCain getting elected!

Wall Street vs. Main Street

As you may know, America can’t afford to keep bailing out Wall St. without also helping Main St. Obama has said it, McCain has probably screamed it to himself, and Sarah Palin accidentally said the opposite without even noticing. Even Yglesias talked about this after I wrote this post but before I put it up. Does this lame-ass metaphor actually resonate with Americans?

According to the Census Bureau, maybe not. “Main” is only the seventh most popular street name. The most popular is “Second Street”. Even “Park” is a more popular name than “Main”, meaning that, technically, we should be bailing out Second St. first and Park Ave. before Main St.

That seems about right to me. As a kid the closest Main St. to me was in a crappy little antique-store district called Old Town Spring. It’s .3 miles long, no one lives near it and I thought it was called Spring Cypress Rd. until twenty minutes ago when I looked it up. The nearest real Main St. was in Houston, and I mainly associate it with sad people going clubbing and half-assed public transportation that kept plowing into cars after it was built.

The whole Main St. trope strikes me as another one of those fictional Americana things that Republicans invent to make people nostalgic for stuff that, in reality, sucks. Another good example is small towns. People like the guy who wrote Sarah Palin’s convention speech like to pretend that small towns exemplify American values. Take a drive down Second St. in a typical small town, and that thought will horrify you. Are American values really encapsulated by a Dairy Queen, a condemned bank, and a gas station? Small towns are small because no one wants to live in them. Over there is the first Google image result that comes up for a small town where my siblings recently bought gas. It’s called Monahans, TX, and humans do not want to be there. You’ve never heard of it because it’s not important. My sister, not exactly a big-city elitist, forgot the name as soon as they left. “That sad, sad little town,” she called it.

Anyway, the point is that instead of bailing out Main St., we should be bailing out 155th St.

T-minus Five weeks

So, Obama's kicking ass. When you hold your ground with 'the expert' in a foreign policy debate, display steadiness and calm in the face of crisis, and generally see the entire country intensely focused on issues where you have a trust gap, kicking ass is what'll happen.

We'll see next week if this pace keeps up.

T-minus Six weeks

This was a rough week for McCain. the Financial Crisis and the fade of the convention bounce have left him down in a lot of polls, and led to a dramatic reversal of fortune in 538's map.

Lately I've gotten a little more wary of 538's calculation of national polls. Earlier, when state-by-state data was less frequent, it made sense to buffer the state numbers with the national numbers, but right now I think it's creating a deceptive map. Obama looks like an overwhelming favorite on this map, but state by state, he's in a tight race. Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire are the four Kerry states where he has to commit the most to defense. The Obama victory plan comes down to holding the Kerry states, plus Iowa, New Mexico, and at least one of this group (Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Florida). McCain's best bet is all about minimizing those Bush losses and flipping one of the vulnerable Rust Belt states, particularly Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Obama is overall about a +3 across the polling board. We'll see if that's an illusory bump, with the economic news playing to his advantage lately, or if the race has actually stabilized in his favor.

JSMIII

I've noticed some conservative blog commenters (not here; they all left when we announced that we would take every comment except for utter insane violent nonsense and impersonations of our writers) like to refer to Obama as BHO. Maybe they're just trying to avoid typing those extra two letters, but I think it's more likely this is another instance of idiots thinking it's somehow important to note that Obama's middle name is Hussein (coincidence? Or PROOF?). In addition to the usual hilarity of stupid racist rightwingery, this is also funny because McCain's full name is John Sidney McCain the Third. Can JSMIII defeat corporate greed and the Washington fatcats? Actually, yes he can.

Conservative Media Bias

As a group, conservatives spend a lot of time whining about how the media have a liberal bias. Normally smart people not in the media handle this the way they handle similarly valid issues like creationism and the War on Christmas: they completely ignore it. But, as anyone paying attention can see, the media actually have a systemic conservative bias, especially when it comes to Presidential elections. Since Palin is now doing so well in the polls, it's time to examine some reasons why the media hate America almost as much as her husband.

Media that doesn't even pretend: For some reason, conservatives don't produce many literate people, so print offenders like The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page are balanced by good publications. But conservatives are good at loud fury with no attention to fact, so your Limbaughs and Hannitys and O'Reillys have huge ratings with virtually no liberal competition. Air America and Rachel Maddow just don't compete. That in itself tends to pull the national discourse rightward- millions of people watch Hannity lie every night, whereas liberals aren't even allowed to have TV shows.

Effort to balance an unbalanced discourse: In an attempt to avoid liberal bias, the media often sacrifice accuracy in exchange for balance. The problem is, we don't always have balanced arguments. Almost any policy area in this election is a good example, but let's take the failing economy. Obama has a multi-tiered, very specific plan, and he's had it for months. McCain has barely articulated anything, admits he knows nothing about economics, has a history of corruption, and for the moment has directed his rambling to "forming a committee" and attacking "greed". These are not leftist opinions; they are demonstrable facts. An accurate story about their economic plans would note that, whatever its flaws, Obama at least has a plan, whereas McCain has nothing but a history of failure and a scheme to attack a form of human desire. But the media wants to seem balanced, since, after all, many people believe very strongly in this incorrect information (maybe they wouldn't if it got reported as incorrect information). So they report the economic plans as a serious debate instead of as a plan vs. irresponsible bullshit.

Dishonesty from the right: If you wrote a movie in which the evil old white candidate and his crazy media-whore running mate told as many lies as those two people do in real life, everyone would say you were a terrible, ludicrous failure as a satirist. The right lies frequently, about pretty much anything they want. Because of the balance issue, the media are reluctant to call out these lies. Even the New York Times, more accurate than most, calls them distortions. You you could have impeccable journalistic integrity and still run a headline like, "McCain Repeatedly Lies About Obama's Record". In fact, you'd have more journalistic integrity than most. But the balance issue keeps those headlines from appearing, and the right has disproportionately exploited that. The most successful democrat (or President) of the last three decades, Clinton, got as far as he did largely because he was equally willing to be similarly shamelessly manipulative. Worse, even when the media chooses to discredit a lie, they still air it repeatedly, so a headline like "Obama: Does He Favor Sex-Ed for Pre-Schoolers?" appears over and over without the corresponding labeling of McCain as a terrible asshole. Integrity is actually a detriment in terms of winning the news cycle.

Good ideas are harder to explain than talking points: Any idiot can say "We must have victory in Iraq", and that's an easy thing to put in a story. Even if your counter is obviously correct, like "You have no idea what 'victory in Iraq' even means, do you Senator?" it still probably takes longer to parse, because it's probably a serious thought rather than a stupid talking point. "Thanks but no thanks" is easier to repeat than, "Palin fought for the bridge to nowhere, gave up as soon as the going got tough, and kept the money anyway to build a gravel road". Obama is good at slogans, but his commitment to actual policy makes it harder to communicate his plans.

Most actual members of the media, except for a few very-well-compensated assholes, are not actually partisan hacks. Nonetheless, when one party has legitimate governance as a top priority and the other is committed only to cynical electioneering, the systemic biases are difficult to overcome. Until the mainstream media ignores disingenuous cries for balance and focuses on truly objective reporting, fear-mongering and cynical lies will remain the easiest way to win an election, and candidates who respect the electorate will keep losing to fundamentally dishonorable people like John McCain.