Tag: Presidency

Come August

Closing Thought–04Jun21

Donald the Orange has made yet another of his ‘brilliant’ and uninformed predictions……it seems this ‘really smart person’ thinks that he will be reinstated as president come August……

Yep he believes that the election of 2020 will be overturned and he can once again sit in the seat of power…(and the peasants danced)….

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times covered President Trump while he was in office, and she now reports that he’s intent on getting back there sooner than people think. On Twitter, Haberman writes that Trump “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.” In subsequent tweets (there’s no Times story about this, at least as of Tuesday morning), Haberman writes that Trump is “laser focused” on state election audits still underway. “It isn’t happening in a vacuum,” she adds. “It is happening as he faced the possibility of an indictment from the Manhattan DA.” Haberman’s initial tweet on this was a reaction to a CNN story about Trump supporters wishing for a coup to restore him to office.

Business Insider notes that Trump allies, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, have been pushing the idea that the former president will be somehow restored to the White House, even though no constitutional framework exists for that to happen. And Forbes points out that even former Trump attorney Jenna Elllis, who maintains that the 2020 election was “lawless,” isn’t buying the idea. “The Constitution has only one process for removal of a sitting president: impeachment and conviction,” she writes. “No, President Trump is not going to be ‘reinstated.'”

Will this insurrection continue?

Further information…..https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-is-reportedly-telling-people-he-will-be-reinstated-as-president-by-august/

A deluded rejected demagogue who cannot accept that he was thrown out of office and desperately attempting to try an be relevant once again.

Is this a veiled call to arms for the loyalists to Trump?

Even his new ‘platform’ has been a dismal failure like his presidency….and it is now defunct….

“From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” we hardly knew thee. The former president’s blog ended up lasting just shy of a month. Senior aide Jason Miller confirmed to CNBC that the page has been shut down for good. “It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” he told the site via email, though he didn’t elaborate on those broader efforts and said he did not “have a precise awareness of timing.” A week after the blog’s launch, NBC News reported Trump’s posts had garnered about 212,000 engagements—shares, comments, etc.—across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit, on par with what a single tweet would formerly garner on Twitter alone.

Yet another failure for a failed presidency…..

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Look Ahead To 2021

This post just ask a couple of question that needs to be considered before one places their “X” in the box on election day.

Let’s look ahead….and theorize that the Biden/Harris ticket wins the election……

So Joe Biden is president….now what?

Assume Joe Biden wins the presidency. Assume as well that he genuinely intends to repair the damage our country has sustained since we declared ourselves history’s “Indispensable Nation,” compounded by the traumatic events of 2020 that demolished whatever remnants of that claim survived. Assume, that is, that this aging career politician and creature of the Washington establishment really intends to salvage something of value from all that has been lost.

If he seriously intends to be more than a relic of pre-Trump liberal centrism, how exactly should President Biden go about making his mark?

Here, free of charge, Joe, is an action plan that will get you from Election Night through your first two weeks in office. Follow this plan and by your 100th day in the White House observers will be comparing you to at least one President Roosevelt, if not both.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/13/joe-biden-wins-then-what

With said…let’s jump ahead to 2024.

Biden will be a one term president and his VP, Harris, will likely be the Dem candidate for president in 2024…..the question now is …can she win the presidency?

Since John Adams first held the VP post in 1789, 14 of 47 vice presidents have gone on to become president,1 making it the most likely — albeit still far from certain — stepping stone to the White House. The number of vice presidents who have sought the presidency has really skyrocketed in modern times, too. Of the 13 VPs since the end of World War II (excluding Vice President Mike Pence), eight — or more than half — have gone on to become their party’s presidential nominee. However, as you can see in the table below, far fewer — just three — have won a presidential election, and just four have become president at all. Biden, of course, is hoping to become the fifth modern VP to accomplish this feat.

That’s not a great batting average, especially when you consider that both Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford first became president because their predecessors could not finish their terms — in Johnson’s case, because John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and, in Ford’s case, because Richard Nixon resigned. At 77, Biden is the oldest major-party nominee in history and, if elected, would be the oldest president to hold the office, so without getting too macabre, there could easily be a scenario in which his VP must finish his term.

Could Kamala Harris Win The Presidency In 2024? Here’s What History Tells Us.

I am going out on a limb….Harris will not be elected president….the only way she will make to the Big Chair is if Biden dies in office.

Sorry if that is a downer for you…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Contested Elections–A History

As long as you await the final results and the announcement of who will be president in 2021…..why not learn something…..like a little history.  (I can hear the eyes rolling in the background)…..

This election will not be the only election where there was some contention on who the winner was……but it may be the silliest in history.

As states continue to count their ballots in the 2020 election, it seems possible that Democrats and Republicans will end up in court over whether President Trump will win a second term in the White House.

President Trump has said he’s going to contest the election results – going so far as to say that he believes the election will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has a team of lawyers lined up for a legal battle.

Unprecedented changes in voting procedures due to the coronavirus pandemic have created openings for candidates to cry foul. Republicans argued earlier this year that extending deadlines to receive and count ballots will lead to confusion and fraud, while Democrats believe Republicans are actively working to disenfranchise voters.

Should either Trump or Biden refuse to concede, it wouldn’t be the first time turmoil and claims of fraud dominated the days and weeks after the elections.

The elections of 1876, 1888, 1960 and 2000 were among the most contentious in American history. In each case, the losing candidate and party dealt with the disputed results differently.

https://theconversation.com/a-history-of-contested-presidential-elections-from-samuel-tilden-to-al-gore-149414

Like I said it never hurts to learn while you are wringing your hands waiting for the results to be finalized.

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Picking That President

Paper #2 of 2

2020 and we are in the process of picking our next president……all of which does not in the least represent what the people actually want or need.

Is there a better way to pick the leader of the free world?

Of course there is…..the quickest way in my opinion is to eliminate the Electoral College…..

Americans are understandably disillusioned with how the Electoral College picks presidential winners. The system arguably functions contrary to expectations of how a democracy should work, and inconsistently with the purpose the founders intended.

There are some bold reform proposals on the table that deserve consideration in the long run—ideas that would solve the problem that presidents can be elected despite the majority of voters opposing them, an outcome unthinkable in any democracycommitted to majority rule. The problem is that most of these proposals either aren’t going to be feasible by 2020, if ever, or, on close inspection, would actually worsen the problems they’re intended to solve.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/04/electoral-college-reform-2020-226792

But are Americans truly wanting to eliminate the stupidity?

The Electoral College, which allowed the past two Republican presidents to win office with fewer votes than their opponents, has officially become a joke.

In a skit last week, Saturday Night Live lampooned how the US is picking its leaders by highlighting the fact that most voters have no say in who will become president. But the Electoral College is no laughing matter. 

As long as the same person won the popular vote and the Electoral College, this wasn’t a problem. But with the last two Republicans owing their election to an antiquated system and not the support of a majority of voters, it has dawned on many Americans that something is amiss — especially because things seem to be getting worse.

If recent history is any indication, this is not just a problem for the loser but also for the winner. The former will miss out on being president despite getting more votes, while the latter has to live with questions about their mandate — or even their legitimacy.

Are Americans Ready to Junk the Electoral College?

There is yet another possibility that needs discussion……on the Electoral College and their voting for president….

Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging state laws that bind Electoral College electors to vote for the presidential candidate they are selected to support. The case was brought in response to four 2016 electors — three from Washington and one from Colorado — who tried to vote against their state’s popular vote winner, and, in the case of the Washington electors, faced fines for having broken their pledges.

These so-called “faithless electors” have long been a feature of American presidential elections, but it’s possible that the Supreme Court could shake up the Electoral College system, striking down state laws that try to guarantee electors’ votes by replacing or punishing those who don’t vote as they promised to. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the overall lack of enforcement of electors’ pledge to vote for the winner of their state troubled her, saying, “I made a promise to do something, but that promise is unenforceable.” But Justice Samuel Alito said that overturning the state laws could “lead to chaos where the popular vote is close.”

If The Supreme Court Lets The Electoral College Vote However It Wants, Will Chaos Ensue?

There are a wealth of ideas to fix the stupidity of the picking of the president/nominee….personally I kinda like the national primary thing…….Let people nationwide cast their primary ballots all at once.

There are others as well…here are 6 ideas….

Every four years, Iowans are deluged with the talking points, the stump speeches, the polls and, of course, the ads.

They also hear that they shouldn’t be first. Iowans are too white, too old and too few to merit first-in-the-nation status, say the critics.

But if Iowa shouldn’t be first, who should be? For more than a century, reformers have been proposing ideas for how to change the primary system. And they’ve been failing. And they’ll probably continue to fail.

No one is going to persuade state and party machinery to change the current primary system anytime soon. However, these ideas can at least help show what works (and what doesn’t) about the way things are now.

Here are just a few of the ideas people have proposed over the years:

https://www.npr.org/2016/01/26/463870736/no-way-to-pick-a-president-here-are-6-other-ways-to-do-it

One last thought on the presidency……a little historic rambling…..

If the prospect of the Trump – Biden presidential election fills you with horror and despair, you might give some thought to not just replacing both candidates but the presidency as well, at least as we now conceive it.

For some time now, but maybe since the Kennedy administration (which ended in a hail of voter-suppressed gunfire), I have been thinking that one of the biggest problems with American democracy is the presidency itself, the idea that the chief magistrate of the country should be one person elected every four years by a few swing voters in Ohio, North Carolina, or Florida.

Get Rid of the Presidency

Any thoughts on this topic?

One closing cartoon…..

Image

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

American Presidents–The Terrible

That time again…..time for a the old professor to expand your mind….and with out those drug altering drugs…..

History time again…..(I can hear the eye rolls and the heavy sighs)….as I type….according to some this admin is one of the worst in our history…..but how does it rank?

If you are a voter then you have an idea who you think was a terrible president…..most times it is along party lines…..but for the sake of argument I found a list of who they think were the “terrible” presidents…..this is along ethic and moral lines…..

Not all American presidents set a good example during their time in the White House. Your take on the most hated presidents probably depends at least a little bit on your politics. But when it comes to ethics, some presidents did things that, many Americans would agree, made them terrible people. Some committed crimes. Others took sexist, racist, or homophobic actions. Still others sanctioned unnecessary violence and brought about the deaths of thousands of people.

Democratic or Republican, numerous presidents have done things that Americans shouldn’t feel proud of. Read on to discover some of the American presidents who were actually terrible people.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/american-presidents-who-were-terrible-people.html/

Please if you have someone else in mind please let us know and we can discuss your choice.

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Corruption: Presidential Perspective

There is lots of noise these days about the Trump admin and how corrupt it has become…..but what about the other presidents that are said to have been corrupted as well?

A couple of cabinets that come to mind are Harding, Grant and Jackson…but could there be others?

Throughout American history, some presidents have had better taste than others when selecting the members of their Cabinets. The president’s Cabinet includes the vice president plus the heads of the departments of the executive branch of the government. With all those Cabinet members, sometimes not everybody has the best interests of the nation at heart.

Read on to discover which presidents appointed the most corrupt Cabinets. And get the details on how President Donald Trump’s Cabinet compares on page 7.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/presidents-with-corrupt-cabinets-and-how-donald-trump-compares.html/

Along the same lines as corrupt is the fact that some of the same presidents are considered some of the most notorious in our short history…..

From Richard M Nixon, who resigned following the Watergate scandal, to the impeached Andrew Johnson, historian Adam IP Smith considers five of America’s most disreputable presidents…

https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/the-5-most-notorious-presidents-in-us-history/

I always like to see the story of our presidents side by side……comparisons is always a good thing….helps presidents live up to the potential that the voters gave them…..unfortunately some have not lived up to their potential.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Those ‘Forgotten’ Presidents

The US has had some giants among men as presidents, right?

A presidential friend once was asked if his friend was up to the job of the American president……and his reply is priceless…..Harry Daugherty said, “Don’t make me laugh. The days of giants in the presidential chair is passed. Our so-called Great Presidents were all made by the conditions of war under which they administered the office. Greatness in the president is largely an illusion of the people.”

Keep hold of that statement.

This post is about the underrated presidents that we had in our country……..Harding, Polk, Jefferson (believe it or not), McKinley and Grant.

Historians make the president in our memories….but were they all that memorable?

Although Americans love to trash their most hated presidents, this list is dedicated to appreciating the men who very capably served as president, but have been criticized or under-appreciated by both historians and modern Americans. Each man on this list has warts and flaws, but all strengthened and improved his country in at least one key way.

Top Five: Underrated Presidents

I do not agree with them but then this article is an opinion and you may not agree either.

My list is Carter and Carter alone but then I am not a presidential historian just my personal opinion based on his policies.

I am sure that you have some thoughts on this as well…..What say you?

Be Smart!

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Class Dismissed!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Farewell To A President

Over this past weekend this country lost a president……POTUS 41…..George HW Bush died at age 94…..

I admit I was never a supporter of his……I worked against him in his run against Clinton but to be fair I worked in opposition to Clinton as well…..but from an international relations point of view Bush1 was a good president…..as the 41st president he oversaw the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a uni-polar world…..he went to war on several occasions that I opposed……and worked hard to stop the wars ….

Richard Haass wrote a good piece about Bush1’s chops as president…..

I have worked for four US presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, and perhaps the most important thing I have learned along the way is that little of what we call history is inevitable. What happens in this world is the result of what people choose to do and choose not to do when presented with challenges and opportunities.

George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was presented with more than his share of challenges and opportunities, and the record is clear: he left the country and the world considerably better off than he found them.

I worked for and often with Bush for all four years of his presidency. I was the National Security Council member responsible for overseeing the development and execution of policy for the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. I was also brought into a good many other policy deliberations.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-world-george-h-w-bush-made/

I think I liked Bush as a man because he actually served this country in the time of war…..the last president to do so……

And so passes George Herbert Walker Bush, the last American President to face combat. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the United States into World War II, he deferred admission to Yale and joined the Navy at the age of 18, just out of prep school in the June of 1942. He went to war in 1943, barely a man, saying later, “I was scared but I was willing. I was young, but I was ready. I had barely started living when I began to see men die.” He saw significant combat across the Pacific as a carrier-based bomber pilot, serving with deep courage and commitment, completing 58 combat missions and surviving two crashes.

http://time.com/5468640/george-hw-bush-military-service-navy/

But my memories are not all glowing…..I feel that under his leadership the GOP was handed over to the Religious Right which had the beginnings of the world we have today.

He also was a better president….he called supply side economics its better name voodoo economics….we can give him the win for the Cold War and he did what needed doing at the time raised taxes (that was the kiss of death for the rich donors) and he looked for a balance between the branches…..

I may not have wanted this person to be re-elected but I did appreciate what he was attempting to do as far as foreign policy goes….not much I would have supported but could understand.

But at least it threw Trump off the headlines and I bet he has had a sigh of relief for that.

Goodbye HW….You will be missed…..RIP

Sully, HW’s service dog bids farewell.

To Kill A President

Almost from the very beginning there have been those that have thought that killing a president would solve all the problems…..and unfortunately this president is no different…..

A North Dakota man has admitted stealing a forklift as part of a bizarre plot to kill President Trump last year. US Assistant State’s Attorney Brandi Sasse Russell says Gregory Lee Leingang, 42, stole the forklift and made his way to the motorcade route before Trump arrived to speak at a refinery in Mandan on Sept. 6. 2017, the Grand Forks Herald reports. “The intent was to basically try to get to the limo, flip the limo and get to the president and he wanted to kill the president,” Sasse Russell told a federal court Friday. As part of a plea deal, Leingang admitted attempting to damage government property and “attempting to enter or remain in a restricted building and on grounds while using a dangerous weapon.”

Leingang was arrested after the forklift became stuck in a gated area. Public defender Michelle Monteiro told the court the Bismarck resident was “suffering a serious psychiatric crisis during this incident” and his mental health has improved after seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist in prison. She said Leingang pleaded guilty in state court to stealing the forklift and setting two fires the same morning. He received 15 years for those crimes and 5 years for an unrelated burglary charge. Leingang will be sentenced on the federal charges Feb. 15, and Sasse Russell says she is considering making the federal sentence concurrent to the time he is serving on the state charges. (In 2016, a British man who admitted plotting to kill Trump was sentenced to a year and a day in federal custody.)

That puts Trump in good company (something he is not too fond of doing in person….I mean finding good company)……

From Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama, a look at presidential assassinations and failed attempts.

http://timelines.latimes.com/us-presidential-assassinations-and-attempts/

Notice as we get into the twentieth century the presidents involved in assassination attempts have gone up…..I wonder why that is?  (Geez!  That was sarcasm people!)

This has always been there and I guess it will continue to be so……

Remove A Difficult, Racist And Stubborn President

Read the title…can you think of what the post is about?

Before some well meaning thumb sucker gets on his low horse and tries to rip me for writing about the impeachment of Trump from the presidency……

Guess what?

This has nothing to do with the idiot in White House on this day….

It is about the president we knew as Andrew Johnson….the person that became president after the death of Lincoln……

The president of the United States was both a racist and a very difficult man to get along with.

He routinely called blacks inferior. He bluntly stated that no matter how much progress they made, they must remain so. He openly called critics disloyal, even treasonous. He liberally threw insults like candy during public speeches. He rudely ignored answers he didn’t like. He regularly put other people into positions they didn’t want to be in, then blamed them when things went sour. His own bodyguard later called him “destined to conflict,” a man who “found it impossible to conciliate or temporize.”

But the nation’s politicians simply had to interact with Andrew Johnson, for he had become the legitimate, constitutionally ordained chief executive upon Abraham Lincoln’s death by assassination.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413

Speaking of Abe Lincoln…..what do you know about our past president?  He suffered from depression……he was tall…..he was shot in the head…..president during the War Between The States…….anything else?

 So how much do you really know about Lincoln, the man?

We’ve gone through the tons of research available about Abraham (don’t call me Abe) Lincoln, so you can impress your friends and family with your Lincoln knowledge.

Here are our top 10 Lincoln facts, followed by 40 other pieces of trivia that you can research on your own.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/50-shades-of-abraham-lincoln-2/

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