When I was little I would hear school mates talk about how they wanted to be the President when they grew up. I knew better. Why the hell would I want the nation under my control? What kind of a control freak do you have to be in order to do that shit? You see how much shit Obama is getting trying to get proper health care off the ground. Hell, you have crazy pastors hoping that someone kills him. What kind of childhood ambitions would I have if I aspired to be the President? Might as well just want to be killed.
The President has it bad. Too many choices to make and in the end, everyone just remembers the bad things you did more than the good things you ever pulled out of your ass with a hope and a prayer. Yeah, sure. You're going to be in a select club that only 44 other people are in and if you want to talk about special days, forget Valentine's Day, in order to really feel celebrated try being a President. The majority of the people in that club are already dead and all of them, in retrospect, were only human.
Much like any human, we have our faults. Me? I like to consume large amounts of beer of mircorbrewery levels and then write blogs about pointless topics that have hints of comedy and perhaps some lesson snuck in there. And just to prove to you that your presidents of the past which you should be honoring today aren't beyond human, here's a list of the presidents and the terrible choices they made while in office.
George Washington:
* Pretty sure he said that stopping the lynching of loyalists would be a violation of the "rights" of the people.
* Signed the Fugitive Slave Act.
* Slave owner.
John Adams:
* Sedition Act.
Thomas Jefferson:
* Hypocritical racist slave owner.
James Madison:
* War of 1812, literally the stupidest war the USA has ever been involved in.
James Monroe:
* Imperialist war to steal Florida
* Missouri Compromise
John Quincy Adams
* Nothing, he owns, tell me something he did bad. I dare you.
Andrew Jackson:
* Trail of Tears
* Gag Rule
* Caused Panic of 1837
Martin Van Buren:
* Panic of 1837
* Trail of Tears
William Harrison:
* Literally ran on his genocide of Native Americans.
John Tyler:
* Brutal imperialist war against the people of Mexico for some slave-owning anglos.
James K. Polk:
* Brutal imperialist war against the people of Mexico for some slave-owning anglos.
Zachary Taylor:
* Slave owner.
* Set stage for Compromise of 1850
Millard Fillmore:
* Responsible for the creation of one of the most brutal empires in history just so the US could continue its endless expansion westward.
* Compromise of 1850
Franklin Pierce:
* Overturned Missouri Compromise, making more slavery.
* When both fanatical slavery and anti-slavery groups moved to the newly encorperated state of Kansas, formed seperate governments, and essentially had a mini civil war, he did nothing because of states right
James Buchanan:
* Saw the Civil War's beginnings, did fuck all.
Abraham Lincoln:
* Drafted civilian populace.
* Suspended Habeas Corpus.
* Shut down over 400 newspapers
* Set up a political prison camp on an island off of new york,
* Issued a warrant to have the chief justice of the supreme court Roger B. Taney arrested
* Had senators arrested on the floor of the senate
Andrew Johnson:
* Vetoed a bunch of civil rights bills.
Ulysses Grant:
* Horrifically corrupt.
Rutherford Hayes:
* First President ever to order US soldiers to murder strikers.
* Ended reconstruction
James Garfield:
* Didn't give Charles J. Guiteau his rightful post.
Chester Arthur:
* Chinese Exclusion Act
Benjamin Harrison:
* Annexation of Hawaii.
Grover Cleveland:
* Pullman Strike
William McKinley:
* Spanish-American War
* Philippine-American War
* Open door policy, formally tied US military imperialism to US economic imperialism.
Theodore Roosevelt:
* Invaded Panama to take control of the canal.
* Revised Monroe doctrine to be a rationale for US imperialism rather than a decrying of European imperialism.
William Taft:
* Invaded Nicaragua
* Got Woodrow Wilson elected.
Woodrow Wilson:
* American police state, brutally suppressed dissent.
* Espionage Act of 1917
* Sedition Act of 1918
* Wilsonian idealism
* Manipulated American public to convince them to enter into World War One
* Assistance to white forces during the Russian Civil War
* Initially opposed to suffrage.
William Harding:
* Pussy on lynching.
* Let his horribly corrupt friends run the government, culminating in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Calvin Coolidge:
* Responsible for the economic policies which lead to the Great Depression.
Herbert Hoover:
* Did fuck all for Americans during the Great Depression.
* Sent troops to stop the Bonus Army.
* Mexican Repatriation
Franklin Roosevelt:
* Firebombed Tokyo and Dresden.
* Purposefully, knowingly engaged in actions that would force Japan to go to war with the USA, but simultaneously failed to adequately protect the US Navy from a (probable) surprise attack.
* Illegally interned US civilians on the basis of ethnicity.
* Mexican Repatriation
Harry Truman:
* Overthrew democratically elected governments of Syria and Greece.
* Nuked Japanese civilian targets, a pointless act done solely as a show of force against the USSR (the Japanese surrendered because the Soviets declared war on them).
* National Security Act of 1947.
* Truman Doctrine
* Supported France retaining its colonial possessions.
Dwight Eisenhower:
* Began US policy of imperialism and neo-colonialism by overthrowing the democratically-elected governments of Iran and Guatemala.
* Started Vietnam
* Started COINTELPRO
* Interstate system
* Fomented revolution in Hungary, which was crushed when the US refused to support the revolutionaries
* Operation Wetback
* Lied about the U-2 spyplane shot down over the USSR, which halted talks to halt nuclear weapons production.
* Korean War.
* Overthrew the government of the Republic of Congo.
John Kennedy:
* Stepped up Vietnam War
* Relocated the Seneca Indians, breaking a treaty and a campaign promise.
* Allowed the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King on suspicion that he might be a Communist.
* Bay of Pigs
* Executed a coup in Iraq.
* Would have been remembered for more terrible things if he hadn't been killed
Lyndon Johnson:
* Drafted US civilians
* Backed Saddam Hussein's acquisition of power in Iraq.
* Stepped up the Vietnam War
* Suppressed Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (anti-segregation offshoot of Democratic Party)
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
* Backed a coup in Brazil.
Richard Nixon:
* Bombed the shit out of the Cambodian civilian populace, enabling Pol Pot's regime to take power.
* Illegal wiretapping
* Directly involved in the overthrow of Allende, established Pinochet
* Watergate
* Implemented the southern strategy which used racism to bring southern whites into the Republican Party
* Ordered a coup in Chile.
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Started War on Drugs.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
Gerald Ford:
* Pardoned Nixon.
* Brought a whole slough of shitty neocons into the political mainstream
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Gave the OK to President Suharto of Indonesia for the invasion and genocide of East Timor.
* Mayaguez Incident.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
Jimmy Carter:
* Stepped up aid to the Jakarta regime in Indonesia as it committed genocide against the population of East Timor.
* Fed Mujahideen
* Backed a coup in Turkey.
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Refused to return Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi to Iran for trial.
* Funded the training of insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to combat the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan according to the Carter Doctrine.
* Cracked down on pork spending which in turn got the dems in Congress' panties twisted up in a knot and they sat there like children and crossed their arms and went "LALALALALALA" to everything he said from then on.
* The Malaise speech which did the same thing to all of the US and along with the Iran Hostage Crisis rolled out the red carpet for Reagan.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
Ronald Reagan:
* Bombed Tripoli, Libya and killed a bunch of people.
* Initiated the trend of modern prison privatizations.
* Sold Saddam Hussein biological and chemical weapons during the Iran/Iraq War.
* Created mandatory minimum sentencing.
* Appointed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Supported Apartheid
* Surrendered the working man in the USA to capitalist-class interests.
* Fed Mujahideen
* Iran-Contra Affair
* Tried to veto Martin Luther King Day.
* War on Drugs
* Invaded Grenada.
* Ignored HIV/AIDS
* Killed Fairness Doctrine, leading to rise of conservative talk radio.
* Supported various violent warlords in the third world
* Reaganomics.
* Cut the taxes on the wealthy dramatically.
* Set record deficit.
* Sponsored death squads in El Salvador.
* Responsible for Savings and Loan crisis.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
* Military aid to Israel.
George Bush I:
* Gulf War
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Pardoned a bunch of people involved with Iran Contra
* Stepped up the War on Drugs.
* Appointed one of the least experienced judges in history.
* Appointed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
* Set record deficit.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
* Military aid to Israel.
Bill Clinton:
* Seriously expanded extraordinary rendition.
* Iraq Liberation Act.
* Appointed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Didn't do anything to stop Rwandan genocide
* Ramped up Drug War
* Hit Iraq with cruise missiles.
* Brought heavy influence from the military with personnel and equipment to the Drug War, often in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
* Doubled prison population.
* Bombed Somalia, let the entire country collapse.
* Don't Ask, Don't Tell
* Lied under oath.
* Crime Act of 1994
* "Welfare reforms" of 1996
* NAFTA
* Signed DMCA
* Kept and defended China's most favored nation trading status to "democratize them."
* The Massacre at Waco
* Bombed pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which supplied more than half its medicine and 90% of its most critical medicines, leading to countless civilian deaths from preventable diseases.
* Military aid to Israel.
* Bombed civilian targets in Yugoslavia.
* Defense of Marriage Act
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
George Bush II:
* Lied to the public to start idiotic war in Iraq.
* Started idiotic war in Iraq, killing many civilians.
* Appointed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
* Began torturing "suspected" terrorists.
* Paid conservative columnists to push his policies.
* Politicized justice department
* Pushed for the allowance of offshore drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge
* Illegal wiretapping
* 9/11
* Mishandling of Hurricane Katrina
* War in Afghanistan
* Spent at least part of 1,040 days on vacation.
* No Child Left Behind
* Destroyed the budget
* Medicare drugs act
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Attempted to privatize social security
* Allowed the economy to be destroyed on his watch
* Set record deficit.
* PATRIOT act
* No-bid contracts to corporations
* Secret prisons
* Commuted Scooter Libby's sentence
* Military aid to Israel.
* Politicized global warming reports
* Vetoed SCHIP and stem cell research
* Clear Skies Act
* Tried to amend constitution to ban gay marriage. Twice.
* His tax cuts.
* Established Department of Homeland Security.
* Nominated cronies to important political positions.
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
Barack Obama:
* Stepping up war in Afghanistan
* Under his regime, torture rates in Guantanamo have gone up.
* Set record deficit.
* Military aid to Israel.
* Failed to implement Universal Health Care
* Maintained the embargo against Cuba.
* Allowed the Banks to pretty much rape the public
* Still has yet to close Guantanamo
* chooms it up
* is a better campaigner than a better leader
And while we're talking about Presidents of the past - let's talk about a moment that I would consider a precious moment in our nations history. Scary enough, it's dealing with someone I would consider the worst president ever. One who I have constantly made plans to go to his library as well as his grave in Orange County and pissing on. Richard Nixon. From the New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 9 President Nixon left the White House shortly before dawn this morning, drove to the Lincoln Memorial and spent an hour chatting with young people who had come to protest his war policies
Most of all that no-one is beyond redemption. Yeah, a lot of you are thinking that this was nothing more than a presidential photo op. But then again, what sort of photo op is it without a photograph of the event?
Richard Nixon was evil, let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.
In retrospect, I think I'd rather have Nixon be President-for-Life than have any or all of the ensuing administrations. Hell, if having Nixon in office would have precluded Reagan from being president, that alone is worth it. Nixon hated Reagan and probably would have had him assassinated. That in itself is grounds for me saying that sometimes some evils should be accepted.
I'm not going to try to defend the asshole but he was trying to convince Congress to pass UHC before Watergate. I guess we're just cursed to not have health care for all options anytime. Bill Clinton almost got there, but some head really blew that one and made a mess of that term of office. Nixon was also known for instituting affirmative action, pushing forward desegregation, and setting up OSHA. So there was something to come from that evil.
Just imagine that if watergate never happened Nixon wouldbe in the top 5 of the greatest presidents and he would have won that election anyway. What an error on his part to even have to go through the whole watergate situation to begin with. I guess great power does corrupt. So perhaps that's why it confuses me that we even have this day of celebration of only 44 men who have stepped up to the plate to lead us, the utterly mindless public into a better tomorrow.
Perhaps I just answered my own question there. In a nation that is full of retards and people who don't know any better and try to tell lead them is a job that I don't think any sane person would really want. It's thankless and as you can see by me pointing out all the negative events that happened on their watch, many of which are not their fault, some of which were caused by the previous administration, I guess this day should be used to think about those people in the past that made those difficult choices and had to live with the results.
So enjoy this day and try to think of one president in the history of our nation and realize how difficult their actions and choices must have been. Don't just use this day to buy a mattress or appliance.
Happy Presidents Day
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