By the Maui Curmudgeon (40th in a 43-part series)

How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 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 Murray-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.

RONALD REAGAN :1981-1989 ~ 40th U.S. President

For nearly 80 years, it was a political tenet that the worst president in American History was the republican (I know, they have so many to chose from) Warren G. Harding. The last 30 years have shown that the Republicans have been breaking the sound barrier to try to find increasingly dangerous, stupid, disastrous men to rule. The granddaddy of them all is Ronald Reagan.

A liar, a cheat, an incoherent mess of a man, Americans fell in love with him, and they deserved each other. it would take volumes to illustrate how many of our current problems – debt, war, mutual hatreds among citizens, White House Crime – begin with or were fed by Reagan. There was nothing good about him, or his administration. The bad is too long to list, but includes in part:

• trillions in debt
• busted unions
• secret wars
• negotiating with terrorists
• violations of civil rights
• the destruction of social services
• the begating of the power of the Bush crime family.

He is not ranked in the Murrary Blessing interviews and there’s some justice in that – he doesn’t belong with anyone. Please don’t waste a breath of your life more in reading about him.

By the Maui Curmudgeon (39th in a 43-part series)

How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 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 Murray-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.

JIMMY CARTER: 1977-1981 ~ 39th U.S. President

A noble failure, Jimmy Carter tried to pick up the pieces of the federal government after the debacle of Richard Nixon’s crimes and Jerry Ford’s pardon of him. He did so in the midst of rising fuel prices, an oil embargo, and the 20th century’s first large scale resurgence of violent muslim terrorism – the taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. Despite all that, it took a consumate liar and idiot (Ronald Reagan) – someone a majority of American’s could see themselves in – to defeat him.

The Bad

Micromanaged – and therefore mismanaged – so much: from the federal budget to the congressional hearing about it, fiscal policy to citizen attitude (“there is a malaise”), even the aborted rescue attempt in Iran for the hostages.

Read the rest…

Babbling Day Day 295 of 2008 71 days left in this year

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GOP War On Truth. Today’s Threat Level: RED - Latest Lies >

HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — No’ono’o i ka mea e hiki mai ana: Anticipate
PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY — gras belong heti: Hair
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “The stars are the spies of heaven.”
HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.” – Benjamin Disraeli

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WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — The Daily Beast - Tina Brown’s latest
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — Palin Appears on SNL
NETCAST OF THE WEEK — 23/6 – “Some of the News Most of the Time”
GOOD DEED SITE OF THE WEEK — FactCheck.org

1805: The Royal Navy under British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain.

1879: Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb.

1915: The first transatlantic message was transmitted over radio telephone. The call was placed from Arlington, Virginia, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

1917: The first U.S. Army division enters World War I.

1925: Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company demonstrates the first photoelectric cell.

Ursula Le Guin, American science-fiction writer (1929)

Samuel Coleridge, English poet (1772)

Sir Georg Solti, Hungarian-born musician (1912)

Dizzy Gillespie, American jazz trumpeter (1917)

Whitey (Edward) Ford, American baseball pitcher (1928)