President's Day Presidents Thread for Pontificating about Presidents

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > President's Day Presidents Thread for Pontificating about Presidents

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

axeil posted:

This is James Buchanan. He was President from March 1857- March 1861. I am going to explain to you why he is, without debate, the worst president of the United States to have ever existed.

Fr�mont should have won.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2018 23:08

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:38

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Hoover presided over the mass deportation of Mexican-Americans (majority of which were US citizens and were born here). gently caress him.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2018 23:35

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Any chance for a writeup on why Millard Filmore is a motherfucker?

# ¿ Feb 20, 2018 01:15

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Woodrow Wilson is a motherfucker and was the worst president we had in the 20th century.

Wilson single-handedly rewrote the playbook on US diplomacy and his style of diplomacy remains in use to this day.

Wilson had the US occupy the Mexican city of Veracruz as well as the entire island of Hispaniola, via separate occupations of Haiti and Dominical Republic, prior to entering WW1. He was also super loving racist and endorsed the movie that single-handedly revived the KKK.

And in his second term, he was so goddamn focused on the Treaty of Versailles that he basically gave zero fucks about what was happening back home. But his cabinet full of absolute motherfuckers were doing everything they could to make it worse.

Bu the summer of 1919 had Wilson giving absolutely zero shits while things went to hell.

Notable cabinet members included Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who organized the predecessor organization to the FBI known as the BOI.

Highlights include:

Total loving Anarchy for a few days in Boston as the police went on strike.
White people in (name a city) deciding that black people had too much and it was time to start murdering some folks, and black people taking exception to that and fighting back.
Literally anybody involved in the left or organized labor was suddenly a Bolshevik and deported to Russia (which was in the middle of the Russian civil war at the time).

# ¿ Feb 20, 2018 01:43

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Alter Ego posted:

The 20th century included Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

That's fair, but Wilson was still responsible for the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1917 (which wasn't repealed until well after the war). So the modern Surveillance State was all on him.

Plus the Boston Police Strike was literally the 1919 version of The Purge.

And, you know, exiling political dissidents to Russia.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2018 01:55

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3GT9UN7nDo

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 00:54

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

�I believe demolishing Hussein�s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.�
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon�s Defense Policy Board, 2/13/02

�Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder.�
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon�s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

�Desert Storm II would be in a walk in the park... The case for �regime change� boils down to the huge benefits and modest costs of liberating Iraq.�
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon�s Defense Policy Board, 8/29/02

�Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world�s sole superpower.�
- William Kristol, Weekly Standard editor, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, New Republic senior editor, 2/24/03

�The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark.�
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/27/03

�I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us keep [troop] requirements down. ... We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark...wildly off the mark.�
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03

�The idea that it�s going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn�t going to last any longer than that.�
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02

�I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?�
- Bill O�Reilly, 1/29/03

�It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.�
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03

�It won�t take weeks... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there�s no question that it will.�
- Bill O�Reilly, 2/10/03

grover, March 18th, 2003 posted:

How long will it take to capture Baghdad? 2 days
Will Saddam be killed? Yes
Total Iraqi civillian casualties: 500 dead
Total military casualties Iraq: 3000 dead
Total military casualties U.S.: 15 dead
Will the Iraqi army regulars hold the lines? No
Will the Republican Guard fight to the end? No
Will chem/bio weapons be used on invading troops?: Yes
Will Saddam launch attacks on the Kurds? Yes
Will Saddam launch attacks on Israel? No
-If yes; will Isreal retaliate harshly? Yes
Will Saddam sacrifice Baghdad (gas/nuke it)? No
Will the Kurds make a grab for independence? Yes
Will Iran do anything silly like try for land? Yes
Will Saddam burn the oil fields? Yes
How long will the US be occupying Iraq? ~15 years
Will the Iraq war catalyze increased terrorism in America?No
In the long run, will this war be good or bad for the world? Good

We have to look at what those civilian casualties are- just because they're civilian doesn't make them innocent! Lets take a look at a few possibilities:

1) A civilian walking down the street to market gets killed by a cruise missile fired at the market.

2) A civilian asleep in their house is killed when their house is targetting by a smart bomb and blown up.

OK, these two are regrettable innocents being killed- but since the US doesn't make a habit of targetting markets or houses, they're very small in number!

3) A civilian working at a chemical weapon factory gets killed when the chemical weapon plant is bombed.

4) A civilian security guard at a weapons depot is killed when the weapons explode.

5) A civilian contractor repairing a tank is killed by a MOAB dropped on the unit.

6) A civilian engineer is killed when the military command center he works at is destroyed.

7) A civilian delivering snackiecakes to the baghdad bunker vending machines eats a 5,000lb bunker buster.

etc, etc. The list goes on. My point is that there are a lot of civilians directly supporting the military that aren't exactly "innocent" and would be mire rightly counted among the military casualties than civilian. I'm a civilian and work for the US military, but I acknowledge I'm also a valid military target because of what I do. And I think the vast majority of civilian casualties in this campaign will not be innocent.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 05:30

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Grouchio posted:

I spend a good amount of time contributing to alternate history timelines with other writers on another forum - like if 1980s Britain was magically transported back to 1730.

I like the one where McKinley not being assassinated leads to the US becoming communist in the 1930�s. (de Leonist anarcho-syndicalism if you wanna get technical).

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 05:38

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Zachary Taylor drank milk and died.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2018 03:49

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

You forgot that God-Emperor Jerry Brown ran in 76 as well. :colbert:

# ¿ Apr 19, 2018 02:52

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Excellent write up Alter Ego.

My read of Carter has always been that he was a good guy who happened to be president at the worst possible time when past president�s chickens started coming home to roost.

Nobody who got elected in 76 was going to come out of those 4 years looking good.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 18:00

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

How about Wilson?

# ¿ Apr 26, 2018 03:38

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Pierce and Reagan in either order.

Write in request for Zachary Taylor because my maternal grandma claims some distant relation to him and all I know is mexican war and apparently bad.

Zachary Taylor drank milk and died. You are now caught up on everything of significance that Zachary Taylor did as president.

Also, casting my vote for Pierce.

Instant Sunrise fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Apr 28, 2018

# ¿ Apr 28, 2018 08:25

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Grouchio posted:

He fired a lovely general who wanted to nuke Manchuria.

Henry Wallace would have won.

Instant Sunrise fucked around with this message at 06:37 on May 1, 2018

# ¿ May 1, 2018 06:34

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

I wanna know how much Hoover sucks.

# ¿ May 8, 2018 16:22

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Also can we request candidates who ran and lost, but still had a significant impact on our politics?

Cuz I wanna see you talk about William Jennings Bryan.

# ¿ May 9, 2018 14:43

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Echo Chamber posted:

Chinese Exclusion Act effortpost.

This was a great write up, you mind if I quote it in the immigration policy thread?

# ¿ May 18, 2018 03:03

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Tangentially related, but I made a Twitter thread last night dunking on every single US president in order.

https://twitter.com/instantsunrise/status/1033959100327976960

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 16:20

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:38

Instant Sunrise: Apr 12, 2007; The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.

Warren G's Harding please.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2018 16:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > President's Day Presidents Thread for Pontificating about Presidents