By the Maui Curmudgeon (33rd in a 43-part series)

How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 43 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murrary-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.

HARRY TRUMAN: 1944-1952 ~ 33rd U.S. President

Image at left: Harry Truman playing piano for Lauren Bacall. If you have to ask who Lauren Bacall is, you haven’t lived. I can’t find a digital photo of my favorite shot of Truman – putting money into a parking meter in downtown Independence, just a month after he left office, not a soul around him

Historian David McCullough’s Pulitzer prize-winning “Truman” is among the finest books I have ever read, fiction or nonfiction, about anything. It is an enormous, 1000+ page picture of a great man, and a near-great president. McCullough could find no better summary of Harry S. Truman than political writer Mary McGrory’s tribute, which he quotes, and I reprint, in full:

He was not a hero or a magician or a chess player, or an obsession. He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct, fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted.

He did not require to be loved. He did not expect to be followed blindly. Congressional opposition never struck him as subversive, nor did he regard his critics as traitors. He never whined.

He walked around Washington every morning – it was safe then. He met reporters frequently as a matter of course, and did not blame them for his failures. He did not use the office as a club or a shield, or a hiding place. He worked at it. He said he lived by his Bible and history. So armed, he proved that the ordinary American is capable of grandeur.

Read the rest…

By Maui Curmudgeon

Wasilla, AK Police Department Report
Here’s an interesting report. Two months before Trig was born,  Bristol, at that point four months absent from school because she supposedly suffered from mononucleosis, gets a traffic ticket for an accident outside a family planning clinic:

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Ahhh, Sarah & Bristol Palin – The “Nucular” American Family

By Maui Curmudgeon

Is Sarah Palin, John McCain’s suprise selection for vice-president, really Desperate Housewife Bree Van de Camp? Remember how tight-ass, right-wing Bree faked pregnancy last season after sending her teen daughter off to deliver an out-of-wedlock child in secret?

 On Saturday I went to brunch with some friends, one of whom said he thought there’d be a scandal about Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin and her pregnancies, then low and behold ….

If you haven’t heard, Palin reported having given birth to a baby with Down’s syndrome last April. Her pregnancy was a surprise to her and her husband; they decided to keep the baby, as anti-women’s rights advocates who aren’t hypocrites do. That is all well and good.

Or so the story goes….

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