Blue is Me

Tag: president

  • Are there US presidents you like that are generally ranked poorly by historians?

    Warren Harding

    He’s generally ranked as one of the worst presidents ever by historians.. but why? It’s mainly due to the scandals that his cabinet members and officials were involved in. But there’s nothing that Harding himself did that would justify him being one of the ‘worst’ presidents.

    Here are some of Harding’s accomplishments

    • Cut taxes (Revenue Act of 1921)
    • Created and improved America’s highway systems (Federal Highway Act of 1921)
    • Standardized the 8 hour workday at the federal level
    • supported the federal anti-lynching bill
    • presided over the beginning of the roaring 20s, an economic boom that would last until the end of the decade
    • Was incredibly popular at the time he died in office
    • Was the first president voted in by women (after women were allowed to vote)
    • set rules and standards on radio broadcasting which was gaining traction at the time

    I don’t see how this guy could be considered one of the worst presidents ever given all these accomplishments when the only thing against him was that the people around him were involved in corrupt scandals. Seems like his reputation took the blame for what other people did, which is not fair in my eyes.

    https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/warren-harding-was-a-better-president-than-we-thinhttps://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?18822https://enotrans.org/article/warren-g-harding-1921-1923-defining-the-highway-system-managing-changing-rails-and-sealanes/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jazz-age-president-review-correcting-the-record-11649020056?msockid=24dff13f09b36e30261ee43c08bf6f46https://www.jstor.org/stable/43999675https://www.coolidgereview.com/reviews/harding-reconsidered

  • Why did Kamala Harris lose the 2024 Election?

    Despite alot of blame being pinned on her, I actually don’t think the reason she lost has that much to do with her but rather with people being unhappy with the status quo and wanting change.

    I keep hearing people say stuff like ‘she’s the worst candidate ever’ ‘she has nothing to offer but word salads’ ‘she has nothing of substance’ I think these are all knee jerk hindsight hating responses. Honestly even Bill Clinton or Obama could have ran this year and still lost. Kamala Harris had 100 days to run a campaign, did the best she could, campaigned in the swing states viciously (something Hillary did not do), and still lost – because the economic climate was just that bad. Incumbents worldwide have been losing elections – what other Democratic candidate would have done better?

    Besides Bernie Sanders I can’t think of any other Democratic candidate that would have been the ‘change’ candidate people wanted. Ultimately people voted for Trump again not because they liked him because they wanted change. They saw their egg prices go up, they saw tons of immigrants flooding into the country, and drug addicts everywhere and they wanted change. That’s really all it is. What could have Harris done better? Differentiate herself more from Biden even though she was the incumbent VP? No, she was fighting an uphill battle from the beginning and there wasn’t much she could do about it.

    I really think people should stop with the knee jerk hating responses

    This is getting ridiculous. She did not lose in a landslide. 312 votes for Trump and 1.5% margin in popular vote is not a landslide. If it was then almost every US Presidential election in the 20th century except for a handful would have been a landslide. Look up the definition of a landslide, people!!

    It’s only because she lost that you lowlifes came out of the woodwork to hate on every little thing about her. Now ‘she lost in a landslide’ ‘she’s the worst candidate ever’ ‘she has word salad answers’ is repeated over and over again. These are ridiculous exaggerations. ‘Word salad’ is a stupid term to use when her opponent can’t even make a coherent sentence. If Trump was some kind of gifted orator then it makes more sense, but he definitely isn’t anything close to that. Trump literally said people ate cats and dogs and still won. So don’t give me this BS about the way Harris talks. That’s not why she lost.

    She ran a respectable campaign given the odds and her limited time – she actually ran a much better campaign than Hillary Clinton did btw – and sure she lost, but losing doesn’t automatically make someone the worst candidate ever. Stop it with the ridiculous overexaggerated hating on Harris. Mitt Romney had a bigger margin of defeat in 2012 and yet I don’t hear anyone saying he’s the worst candidate ever, they don’t make fun of his laughs and they don’t say he lost by a landslide.

  • Donald Trump as dictator is very appealing too me and many of his supporters. The question I have for liberals is, how does it feel too have decades of disastrous progressive wins and precedents unravel before your very eyes and more to come in 2024?

    I’m not a Harris supporter nor a Trump supporter and I’m neither Democrat or Republican.. but I have to say that Trump supporters really make me annoyed sometimes and the question is proof of why; you people seem to be more concerned with making other Americans and other people feel bad, than actually caring about the politics and future of your country.

    Here is just a snippet of the Trump supporter comments found on an instagram post by the ‘left wing media’ see how all they do is post memes, make fun of others, enjoying ‘liberal tears’ etc rather than you know, caring about the actual future of the country?? This is very disturbing to me and really reflects the sad state of the society we live in today.

    I mean, it’s just sad. The President of the USA is arguably the most powerful position in the world. And Trump supporters like the above treat it like some sports match or video game. ‘Haha we won, you guys lost, keep crying’ etc it’s not a game folks. It’s not about who won or lost, because whoever is President will be making decisions for ALL Americans thus all Americans ‘win’ or ‘lose’ together. You should be concerned about what is actually going to happen to your country, instead of making fun of your fellow Americans and hoping that they keep ‘crying liberal tears’.

    ^ and this comment is *especially* ignorant.. the cease fire deal was negotiated by the Biden administration! Trump just took office less than 24 hours ago and already he’s getting the credit for it? wow. And the name calling.. everyone says oh Democrats lost the middle class because they called people ‘deplorables’ etc well here you go MAGAs calling people a ‘bunch of freaks’ so Democrats are the ones who insult people? That’s all I see Trump supporters doing online is insulting others online! Not to mention these are PEACEFUL protests – not storming the Capitol like what you guys did! geez..

  • Why has the reputation of Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson (who were historically highly rated presidents) suffered so much in recent years?

    Because they are being judged by a different standard now. Nowadays we have a tendency to judge historical figures not based on their era but based on the modern era.

    So Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist and a fully fledged racist. Was that much different than other men of his era? Not really. I mean see how big the KKK was at that time with millions of members across the US it’s obvious Wilson wasn’t really an exception to his era.

    Was Andrew Jackson solely responsible for Indian removal and genocide? Not really. He actually negotiated with the Cherokee and the worst parts of the Trail of Tears didn’t even happen under him but his successor Martin Van Buren. Most of his contemporaries wanted the Indians removed as well hence why he was able to get the Indian Removal Act passed.

    So the issue with modern day historians is that they are judging Wilson and Jackson through the lens of the modern day, rather than of their era. Past historians recognized that they were a product of their era and judged them more based on their actual accomplishments as President rather than being SJWs and seeing them as Wilson = racist! bad! Jackson = genocide! bad! that’s why they were ranked highly before but not anymore. For much the same reason now we are seeing lots of Confederate statues being removed and torn down because Americans want to remove the reminders of their ugly past. Everywhere you are seeing the past being torn down in the name of political correctness and social justice.

  • Who has been the best/worst US president and why?

    I’m going to name two Republicans as both the best and worst of modern times

    Best

    Dwight Eisenhower – Ended the Korean War, Responsible for the Interstate highway system, established NASA, as well as starting off desegregation. Warned us about the military industrial complex. A war hero and a great American.

    Worst

    This guy… what can I say. Lots of people here put Trump or Bush II as the worst, but without Reagan, then those guys wouldn’t be president. Reagan completely changed our politics. The BS trickle-down economics and tax cuts for the rich are still affecting us today, not only did the national debt quadruple in Reagans time, it has doubled almost every in administration since. And for what? We don’t see much real wage growth the past 3 decades. The gap between the rich and poor just continues to get wider and wider as a result.

    Oh and lets not forget overspending on the military. Reagan did this is combat the Soviet Union but since the Soviet Union collapsed we have continued to increase our military spending even though there’s no more valid reason to do so. You’d think that after the Vietnam war ended we would have learned our lesson not to interfere in global affairs.

    Paul Volcker increased interest rates which caused unemployment to temporarily jump but ultimately ended the stagflation of the 70s. He’s the true hero behind the 80s economic recovery, not Reagan. And the USSR fell as a result of internal issues, again not because of Reagan. He was just there at the right place at the right time.

    In terms of long lasting damaging policies, I have to pick him as the worst. He’s the reason why America is declining today and why it feels like we have to make it ‘great again’.

  • Opinions on JFK shooting: Do you think it was a lone shooting?

    Yes. After watching probably tens of documentaries and conspiracy videos and reading tons of conspiracy books as well, I’ve come to the Occam’s Razer conclusion that the simplest explanation is probably the most likely explanation. And why wouldn’t it be? President Garfield and President McKinley were assassinated by lone nuts. Why is it so hard to believe that JFK was killed by a single man? Yes President Lincoln was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy but in that case there was overwhelming evidence to believe so.

    In JFK’s case, there are simply too many confounding theories with no theory that is unanimously agreed on. The CIA did it. The FBI did it. The Mafia did it. The Cubans or Soviets did it. LBJ did it. The Dallas Police department/Secret Service/Bethesda hospital were in on it. It was some clone / mind controlled version of Oswald. Some guys on the grassy knoll. Some nefarious combination of those mentioned did it. I’ve even heard the theory that the limo driver did it. All sorts of crazy stuff. All these conspiracy books got something to sell to you to make their money.

    And then there’s the other thing. So called a bunch of assassination related witnesses died in short following years after the JFK assassination John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories – Wikipedia but the problem with this assertion is that literally hundreds of people with even the slightest connection to the assassination was included, and especially back then, people die from random stuff all the time. A lot of the modern safety mechanisms today like seatbelts, airbags, appliance saftey, vaccines for certain diseases etc that we have today back in the 60s wasn’t that common.

    The so called 3 shots in 8 seconds thing from that distance with a tree in the way with a Lee-enfield has been re-enacted many times by modern Marines and is on Youtube. Oswald wasn’t some super sniper or something. There’s also lots of computer CG re-enactments of the ballistics as well that show exactly how and why JFK’s head can move backwards from a shot from the back (contrary to popular physics belief that the head can only move backward from a front shot)

    The Warren commission did a terrible job of convincing people of this. There were many holes and inconsistencies (the magic bullet theory especially) with the report, and it failed to gain the public’s trust. That’s the real problem. Oswald was indeed the lone shooter, but because of the inconsistent way the Report was put together, many people had suspicions. This would have happened if you took some big event like 9/11 or the moon landing (I don’t believe in those conspiracies either FYI) but chances are if you had a group of government officials write a confusing inconsistent explanation of how 9/11 was done and the moon landing you would definitely get a lot of doubters. (And we do btw, the 9/11 conspiracies are especially popular).

    In the end, I think it’s just hard to believe for a lot of people. It’s hard for them to believe that such a powerful man like JFK could be killed like that in broad daylight. There must be some military-industrial-complex machinations going on right? But unfortunately powerful men do die to nutcases. Heck, it happened to RFK and MLK Jr just 5 years later. Lone nutcases. John Lennon. Lone nutcase. Reagan had the good fortune of surviving his encounter else we would have to deal with those John Hinckley conspiracy theories as well. Heck even FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Andrew Jackson all had assassination attempts and survived. All lone nutcases there too.

    The Secret Service was incompetent that day. Government officials should not have distributed Kennedy’s motorcade path beforehand like that. Kennedy, who was a giant risk taker, chose not to use the bubble top on his convertible that day, and also ignored warnings not to go to Dallas from Adlai Stevenson. What happened after the assassination was really confusing. Contradictory eyewitness accounts. Inconsistencies from Parkland/Bethesda hospital doctors. A really inconsistent and hole-filled report by the Warren Commission. ‘Doctored’ Zapruder film footage.

    And yet I have to believe that its not that this is all because of some massive cover up, but rather just because a bunch of people were just incompetent in handling the aftermath of the assassination. Oswald was the lone assassin. That’s the most believable theory because its one that has the most believers despite all these hundreds of conspiracy theories. The government just handled the assassination and aftermath in a really terrible and inconsistent way that ended up confusing the public, and honestly what do you really expect from the US Government? How did they handle the Vietnam War? The Iraq War? The 9/11 Commission? Is it so hard to believe that the US government is just bad at explaining stuff to the public? Of course not! The US government has always been terrible at it! That’s unfortunately the main impetus for all these conspiracy theories to exist, is simply the fact that on 11/22/1963 the US government f*cked up at protecting its leader, and then failed to explain it properly to its residents, that’s all. Don’t let that distract you from the fact that Oswald was the lone gunman.