Who's your favorite president and why?

@f00l @moondrake

True. Especially considering what I’ve read about some of the more well regarded presidents.

@f00l TR FTW.

@elimanningface Fictional characters fall under “other”.

@moondrake haha, good point however wouldn’t also foreign presidents like Vladimir Putin be included in “other?” I don’t feel comfortable lumping those guys in together. Then again, you said we can’t poo-poo anyone’s selection either.

Just to be weird some more…could someone say a past president of industry like Steve Ballmer? If so, would that be included in the American president category or “other?”

@elimanningface
Putin.
Foreign President?
Or future President?

@f00l The now and future. The camel’s nose is under the tent.

@elimanningface I wouldn’t include presidents of industry, corporations or book clubs, but if that’s your passion, go for it. I was actually thinking of presidents of other countries when I included “other”. I was specifically thinking of President Nelson Mandela.

@elimanningface He would be my choice too. A very good excellent example of a president that thinks and has a good ethical construct. Unfortunately, he’s just a fictional character.

@rockblossom
Baldwin does have an uncanny resemblance, doesn’t he?
His resistance to war reminded me of our current President. Say what you want about him, but I respect his refusal to start a war just because the media and other politicians seem to be pushing him toward it for some reason.

@Barney
MVB FTW!

Once a Van Buren Boy always a Van Buren Boy - VIII

@mrapathy Aww… I can’t see your video.

@Barney

link

@mrapathy Got it. Thanks!

@mrapathy garlic saves the day…again!

@heartny
Exactly.

@f00l I agree. Good choice, though George Washington, who turned down running for president for an extended length of time & possibly even being in office for life, is a good candidate.
Ben Franklin was smart enough to never run!

@daveinwarsh
He’s “a favorite”. Not “the favorite”. Very interesting brain and outlook tho.

Total commitment to democracy. How many other Presidents ever decided to take a relatively mundane job (in comparison to the Presidency) of Congressional Representative and do it faithfully for 17 years, while having to run for election every 2 years, after being President?
That’s the real deal.

PS
George Washington not only refused to be considered for a third term, there was much talk of making him King. Offers were discussed in private among the powerful. Many people believed the country would be more stable with a ruling royal family. The early betting markets in London thought it would be George I soon enough, as did much of Parliament, and George III himself…
Washington refused to entertain these ideas. He had not weathered the deprivations and snows or Valley Forge and those years of desperation, and placed duty above all else, in order to fail of his honor and betray it all in the end.

@thismyusername Good choice but I voted for Kodos.

@bsci87

These days, you’ve got “rent a mobs” at town hall meetings so the congress person can’t even get two words out and people think that’s a good thing.

As opposed to the Tea Party? As opposed to Trump rallies?
Please read up on the long and frequently near riot-level conduct of ordinary partisans and extremists in American political campaigns.

I wonder if they are considered employed since they are paid in cash.

Facts facts facts? Hmmm.

We are a republic with normally strong institutions, and with a long history of having the balance among our institutions help us get through bad times. And we are a Republic with a history of finding genuine moral strength to move forward through hard times in the face of political extremism. And of finally getting past our worst and again moving forward a little toward our best. My hopes for our future come from these.

@f00l I agree that the tea party was born out of extremists on the other side. I’m not a supporter of the fringes in either party. Most of this nation is moderate but all we see on the news is the extreme elements. The actions at town hall meetings these days will soon be met by actions from the polar opposite. That doesn’t solve anything. Hopefully, we will stop yelling and start listening first. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s happening any time soon.

@bsci87 The Tea Party had large rallies and became quite a movement for limited government and lower taxes. They didn’t obstruct and attempt to take over like the protesters are doing now with very few exceptions. They felt about and feared an Obama agenda exactly like how protesters now feel about Trump. I also hope these stupid demonstrations end soon, as Trump did win & four years of this would not help this great nation at all.

@daveinwarsh I don’t think I could agree with you more. Where I didn’t agree with the Tea Party (too conservative for me, I’m more moderate), they didn’t act like the crowds that show up at town hall meeting yelling “Shame”. Shame on who? For getting elected?? I do believe that a high percentage of these people are professional protesters and the others just can’t get over the fact that the country isn’t as liberal as the democrats thought it was and the election was going to be a walkover. Get over it, Hillary lost the election and the country voted for a change, not 4 more years of stagnant growth.

@bsci87
Yes education is a huge issue. The solutions would involve student/teacher ratios and better working conditions for good teachers, among many other issues - so any serious improvement will be expensive.

As for the rest: yes, moving forward toward something better is the only historically viable path.

As for what path to take: no simple answer. Just this:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
– Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

@f00l I think step 1 would be to make gerrymandering illegal or impossible. To make political districts based on a square on a map drawn big enough to capture the desired amount of population, so some squares would be large and some would be small, but they would tend to capture a somewhat diverse ethnic, racial and socioeconomic group, depending on how well integrated your city/county/state is. Even in areas of strong segregation the catchment areas would be more diverse than the absurdly attenuated shapes drawn to serve gerrymandering. This is the primary tool used to keep educational money and resources serving specific populations while leaving others to struggle with antiquated books, insufficient teachers and overcrowded classrooms,

@moondrake
I remembering the Texan Rangers chasing the out-of-state in-hiding Democrats to force a quorum so that the Republicans could further destroy the Texas electoral fairness. Our districts look like octopi

Couldn’t agree more. Will prob take an amendment or Supreme Court decision tho.

@bsci87 As a white male, it would be easy for me to say

get the Hell over it and move on

but institutional discrimination (redlining/blacklining) is still widespread, especially in banking/finance, insurance, healthcare, and primary education. The corrosive effects are too significant to ignore. And there are many these days who would encourage further discrimination.
Sad.

@compunaut

get the Hell over it and move on

is exactly what the Republicans have not done for the last 24 years when a Dem has been in the WH. Hmmmm.

Redlining: after the last census, the Republican controlled state legislature decided to effectively redline Democrats in Texas. And they did a hell of a job.

Ought to be unconstitutional, plain and simple.

@f00l I’m aware - I live here.
Turns out it’s a much more effective & virulent power grab than stuffing ballot boxes or ‘voter fraud’.

@bsci87

You are a teacher. I assume many of your students are young.

Young persons, to my memory, tend to see the world far more simply, and in black and white moral terms through a very limited set of issues. Young people “put on and try wearing” political attitudes, just as they entertain various interests and other beliefs. There is a lot of intensity, a lot of self-righteousness, a lot of outrage over “why the world can’t be fair”.

They learn more realistic and useful approaching slowly, by testing attitudes in real life.

And I think that’s natural for the young. Over time, most of us grow up. We see more complexity. We have more empathy for others and their perspectives. We understand better what is simply not possible. We learn to see and operate in the real world, not the world we wish we lived in. We start to learn how to make things better starting now, without demanding things from only a single POV.

From my memories and experiences of the young - teenagers and young adults - I seem to recall that condemnation and hard argument just make young tend to dig in its heels about whatever the issues are.

I hope your goal is to help the young to a more complex and empathetic POV over time, gently, by offering and discussing alternatives and opportunities. Ultimately they have to teach new perspectives to themselves, or it’s just lip service. And ultimately, most will certainly then become good and generous adults.
At least I hope so.

@compunaut
I figured you didn’t miss the headlines. And the Texas Rangers on deadly assignment. And how gleeful the Congressional leadership was about it.

And how perfectly Texan a story it all was.

@compunaut I can agree with you but that doesn’t change anything. People will find fault in others especially when they fail. It may be based in race, religion, national heritage or you name it. The problem is that it will always be something so you either let it define you and don’t succeed or succeed in spite of it. I try to get students to feel like nothing is going to stop them and what I’ve found is that they have done more than they ever thought they could. I didn’t grow up privileged to any extent but I feel like I’ve made it pretty well in the education and business world. I’m hoping that my son takes the lead and passes me. Well that and be happy too.

@f00l My students are college age or people who have come back to finish their undergraduate degrees. I teach Ethics in the Information Age and I open the subject and let the students express how they feel and see how they look at the subject matter. Once everyone realizes they are all on the same level, people get along very well. I’ve found that it takes about 4 or 5 classes into the semester for a class to actually become a working unit. People aren’t afraid to say something and it is certainly something that is very noticeable to me. That being said, I don’t ever want any student or my 22-year-old son to think they are a victim. there is too much of that going on and once you are into that mindset, you’re going to constantly feel that someone is keeping you from achieving the goal you have set for yourself.
I will offer this as a difference of opinion to what you wrote. A quote from Winston Churchill (I believe and I don’t feel like looking it up. Please feel free to correct me if I referenced the wrong person) “If you are 20 and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you are 40 and not a conservative, you have no brain”. Myself, I’m a moderate so I’ll be liberal on some things and conservative on other but never to the extreme on either end. If you are interested, I recommend a book that is interesting and certainly not a hard and boring read. How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth Kidder. My dissertation was based in ethics and I referenced him several times in my work. It gives good examples of ethical situations that people encounter on a regular basis and just poses the question of what would you do. If you feel so inclined, I highly recommend picking it up.

@bsci87 It’s a lot older than that: "Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence located by QI appeared in an 1875 French book of contemporary biographical portraits by Jules Claretie. A section about a prominent jurist and academic named Anselme Polycarpe Batbie included the following passage. (French passage deleted) Here is one possible translation to English.

Mr. Batbie, in a much-celebrated letter, once quoted the Burke paradox in order to account for his bizarre political shifts: “He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.”"
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/

@compunaut @f00l @bsci87 Ya’ll might find this interesting:

The Redistricting Game http://redistrictinggame.org

““It is not easy to make the redistricting process understandable – and near-miraculous to be able to do so in a highly entertaining way. But that is just what The Redistricting Game does, to the gratitude of all who want Americans to understand how this process is working, and why it needs real reform.” Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute”

@moondrake

We are at the point where algorithms could do an excellent job of redistricting, while still respecting traditional neighborhoods and traditional boundaries such as major streets, natural and legal boundaries, zip codes, and whatever else makes sense. And the code could be written to generate reasonably “compact” results that respect legal city and county boundaries when possible.

This isn’t even close to being a difficult coding problem (except for the inevitable political war over the code. Politicians always have to fight over something.)

And the algorithm could be open-source code, so that anyone could read and critique the code, could compile the code and then run the code on the public census data to see how outsider run results match up to a government set of results.

Perhaps some local manual tweaking of the results could be allowed by law, provided the tweaking respected the same parameters as the algorithm, and did not depart from the idea computer-generated result by more than a small %.

We don’t do this, because national politics often seems to suck way more than i remember it doing at the height of the Cold War, when the parties were often willing to put aside partisanship in favor of the national good, and to be civil and productive with each other, and when politicians, in public at least, often tried to have a little dignity, and when the “political center” was seen as having virtue of its own.

Younger bro assures me that MD redistricting is as corrupt in the Dem direction as TX is in the Rep direction. Filthy business.

And that’s before we get to “post-truth”. Where the news media pays the price for never having seriously pursued public discussion of what exactly is a reasonable political, historical, or scientific “fact” or fact.

I really hope the Supreme Court and a few brave souls in Congress and elsewhere decide to have some intellectual and moral honor. And I hope that many local excellent people decide to speak up, peacefully yet with determination.

Sigh.

@bsci87
Regarding the Churchill or Burke or whoever the hell said it first quote: partially agree and partially do not.

Someone capable of both empathy and rigorous thought, who has studied even a little history, econ, and sociology/anthropology/phil/whatever ought to be able to see that there are merits to the “progressive”, “centrist”, and “conservative” positions, along with some outside-the-box thinking, by the time they are 20. If they can’t see that, they either have insufficient intellectual seasoning, or emotional and empathy-related blindness, and also likely a fondness for over-simple solutions.

The young should be taught to argue politically. They should also be taught to see what is wrong or limited regarding any political or economic or social oversimplified argument one could make, from any POV. They should be taught well enough, and exercised thoroughly enough, that they necessarily learn a lot of humility and a lot of respect for what they don’t know, as well as what they do know.

They should know a lot of this before leaving HS, but our edu system … well, you know.

And the middle-aged and prosperous or not-prosperous, and the older among us should be capable of the same. If they’re not, there is something wrong either with their minds, their “souls”, or both. These capacities should not decline before the brain seriously deteriorates with age.

I will take a look at that book. But since my current reading list has something like 10K books on it, I may or may not take a stab at it. Thanks for the mention.

Ethics in the Information Age

Now that sounds like a course that really needs a lifetime, not a semester.

@mfladd
Are they still living?

@f00l

@mfladd

President John Tyler, Born in 1790, Still Has 2 Living Grandsons | U.S. Ne
US News & World Report · 1 day ago

http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-02-20/president-john-tyler-born-in-1790-still-has-2-living-grandsons

(dated Feb 20, 2017)

@f00l I live in the general area, one of the grandsons very occasionally will do a tour at the Tyler Plantation in Williamsburg, VA.

@mfladd
I texted your factoid re Tyler out to several know-it-all relations of mine. They were impressed.

@spcial_snwflake But?..nevermind.
(I did play the part of him in a 6th grade play called Tall Tom Jefferson - don’t judge me!

@spcial_snwflake

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/alexander-hamiltons-adultery-and-apology-18021947/

@f00l If we stopped caring about the sex lives of our politicians, people would no longer be able to blackmail them over it. It’s our own unsavory fascination with everyone else’s private business that makes our leaders vulnerable to pressure. Personally, as long as someone is doing their job I could care less what (legal) personal escapades they undertake.

@moondrake
I googled up for a pix and came up with the Smithsonian article link. I was just looking for a pic, but then thought the article was interesting.

Hamilton likely setup for the entanglement, and was certainly blackmailed over it. I was not trying to imply Hailton does not merit or admiration and gratitude. He has quite a lot of mine in both counts.

I certainly don’t denigrate him over it. And he seems to have been the opposite of a “user”. In fact he may have been the victim.

Perhaps I should have offered some context with my link.

Interesting that sexual misconduct accusations were as big a part of politics then as now.

As to relevance to political qualities: I would say it was one the many factors that caused my many very staunch Republican family members to decide not to vote for the Republican candidate in the recent election.

For me, case by case. What does real or alleged sexual misconduct say about character? What are the other factors? How much of a predictor of is that sort of difficulty in terms of other character flaws? Are there alternatives candidates who are acceptable?

Sometimes it matters little. Often I don’t know about it anyway. Sometimes it’s just an interval the person had to get through. And sometimes it says a lot.

@f00l meh. Whether or not they are getting a quickie on the side does not determine the quality of their presidency. You can say it speaks to sexual morals - but that means diddly squat to me compared to how they run the country. Get some nookie - I don’t care.

@mfladd
What they do “on the side” in any area of life (sexual or otherwise) can speak to their strengths and limitations in other areas that may well pertain to the quality of leadership.

Put it this way: suppose some politically gifted soul routinely cheats at golf, and that’s common but low-key public knowledge. Does the person do so only among friends who are comfortable with the practice? Does the person sort of acknowledge the practice in a not-quite overt manner, or joke a bit about it? Does the person covertly acknowledge that others know and accept this form of vanity? Is it all really no big deal? Then I don’t think it amounts to much.

Suppose this person cheats at golf, and never, even covertly, and jokingly refers to the practice, gets furious when others make sly reference to it, does it while gambling on the game, tries to force others to be blind to the cheating, openly lies and denies all, and tries to bully relative strangers into accepting both the cheating and the denials? Suppose the person has punched or threatened to punch challengers, and has thrown public tantrums about it? And suppose it’s common knowledge. Then, to me, it amounts to much. Reflects on the character, self-knowledge, self-control, judgment, and capacity for reflection and honesty in that person - who is effectively lying when the lie is provably false, and is trying to deny reality and to force others to believe the denial.

So, small character flaws and common moral failings:
Sometimes matters more, sometimes less, sometimes very very little. A lot can depend on basic discretion and judgment, and who in the person’s life is paying the bill or carrying the lie and the pain in order to “go along”. A lot can depend on how habitual or fucked up or nasty the conduct is and how the same conduct may carry into other areas.
On one hand, anyone can have relationship issues at some point in life. Do they fix it, act in life an adult, try to be honest and take responsibility, and try to keep it from impacting others badly? That’s what I would hope. On another hand, some people go thru life being awful in relationships. With the latter, I think that carries over into their work.

I didn’t post the link to the Smithsonian Mag article on Hamilton to offer a condemnation of him. I went to google looking for a pic of him, and the pic I liked was on that article page, and I thought the article was interesting in its own right, and posted a link here. Out of interest in Hamilton’s life, times, and history, not because I wanted to make any sort of point about this diminishing his values in some way.

Tho I see how someone might have thought otherwise since I didn’t add a comment, and people often link to stuff like that as an attempt to achieve and “instant discredit” of the person.

I blame myself, not @Eluno, for having left my purposes unclear, when those sorts of links are often used as a cheap form of argument. My bad.

Besides, as the article makes clear Hamilton may have been targeted and setup from the beginning, and after the affair commenced, was clearly manipulated and blackmailed both by his lover and her husband, and threatened at various points. The whole business was pretty nasty. However the affair started (with a plea of an apparently abandoned woman for Hamilton’s assistance), once it had started, it seems Hamilton tried to be somewhat honorable or decent and thereby just got himself into more trouble. I just skimmed the article, so I may have missed some of the gist.

@f00l I didn’t think you were dismissing Hamilton on that point, my comment was simply an observation about how the public’s prurient interest necessitates secrecy and sets the ground for blackmail. One of the reasons used to justify denying gay people the right to serve in a number of public service roles was because they were vulnerable to being pressed to abuse their position in order to avoid being exposed. But if people didn’t care if a person was gay then they need not fear exposure and the risk of pressure disappears. We, as a society, said “We want you to keep what you are a secret”, then we said “people with secrets can’t be trusted”. It’s a poisonous circle of reasoning. Of course cheating on your spouse is not equivalent to homosexuality, but it has just about as much relevance to fitness to serve. I do get your point about character, and having been married to a cheat I certainly lost all respect for him as a man. But the relevance gets blown all out of proportion because Americans are just nuts when it comes to sex, and we so love to catch someone with their pants down.

@moondrake
Aw, come on. You’re being a little judgmental about we Inheritors of the Inquisition.

We only want to catch people with their pants down in order to enforce our medieval values! And then we only wish to torture and destroy them for their own salvation and the salvation of us all! And we only want audio and video in full so that we can review their sins thousands of times to make sure we fully understand the horrors the committed!

Give your local behavioral enforcement squads a break. We work hard every day infiltrating people’s communications and looking into their bedrooms. It’s a tough gig.

@christinewas I enjoyed it, but the Lincoln Memorial & Washington Monument are far more impressive. Even the JFK Memorial in Dallas, designed by Phillip Johnson, is a better artistic space.
The FDR Memorial felt to me like a museum piece, an educational installation. Kinda cool, but not really awe-inspiring.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@christinewas
@compunaut

Kinda agree w @compunaut. The Washington Monument is for looking at across a distance. It remind you that those ideals are still possible and alive in many of us, more than two centuries later.

The Jefferson Memorial is, to me, the place for intellectual contemplation.

FDR is inspiring and educational and brings to life specific hopes and dreams for betterment.

And the Lincoln Memorial is the one that carries the greatest moral weight and intensity. I can’t be in it without putting aside all other thoughts, to think of how I can do somehow better than I have done, and have a greater sense of responsibility and possibility than I have been pointed toward.

@woodhouse Are you male or female?

@woodhouse
@Barney

???
One like this?

@f00l Are those tonsils way back in there?

@Barney Does it matter? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

@f00l There’s a mustache somewhere too, but that’s pretty spot on.

@woodhouse No, it doesn’t matter, I don’t plan on dating you.

@Barney (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

@woodhouse
Perhaps she would take another look if you died yourself purple?

@f00l Only my mother could love my reptilian mug.

@woodhouse

@mfladd
Had forgotten how you look without makeup.

@gregormehndel
If wishes were horses …