Clinton – Page 2 – I Think, Therefore I Rant!

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

By admin | January 6, 2009 | Comments 2 comments

The web is filled with pronouncements that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever (or not). I thought I would spend a few moments on the subject. This is a multi-part post so come back later to read more on this subject. Better yet, subscribe to the feed and you can get it delivered to your email or feed reader.

First, lets look at what the historians say about W or at least how they grade other Presidents. Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on the subject so let’s start there. As with all of the recent Presidents there is a lack of the number of surveys and rankings. We can see from the couple that are there that the Wall Street Journal ranked him 18th out of 42 and Siena put him at 23. That is squarely in the middle of the pack and nowhere near the worst. The worst Presidents tend to Harding, Grant, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Buchanan. Depending on your political bent, you could throw Carter or Coolidge into this mix for the worst. W doesn’t appear to be in this company.

If you look at History News Network though, we get a slightly different picture. There, Mr. McElvane cites several people and informal surveys that put him as the worst or among the worst. Mr. McElvane is not exactly impartial though as his various writings on the web show (a quick look at Huffington Post shows he strongly favors Democratic ideals and liberal policies). We can probably discount him as just another of the liberal herd that are saying W is the worst.

Rasmussen Reports did a poll that pretty much splits on the subject of being worst. 41 said the worst and 50 didn’t. Unfortunately the poll didn’t ask was he among the 5 worst or the 10 worst. To be honest though most Americans probably couldn’t get within 10 of the number of Presidents that we have had so this poll (and any other poll) probably is not a good barometer.

The US News and World Report interviewed Jay Tolson and he ranked the 10 worst Presidents. George W. Bush doesn’t appear on this list but perhaps that is because he was being nice to a sitting President. It is interesting that the reader poll that is on the page lists George W. Bush as the worst by 72% of the voters (as of this writing). This is far from scientific or lacking of political slant since Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan make the worst 5 vote receivers but there is little historic push to list those two gentlemen that low. Even Mt. Rushmore President, Abraham Lincoln, received 8% of the vote in contrast to most lists that put him at or near the top of the group. So obviously, polling data doesn’t really mean that much.

What we need to do is grade the President on his actions for the important issues of the 8 year tenure. Read the next post to start to dig into that subject.

RANT! Left Right and Center is named incorrectly

By admin | July 10, 2008 | Comments 3 comments

I regularly listen to KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” on my iPod. While I enjoy the intelligent discussion I think they should rename the program to “Left, Very Left, Ultra Left, and Pretty Far Right”. The show now has a blog so I think it is fair to chastise them a little and condemn them for not being as open as they claim that they are – if they disagree they can say so on their blog.

Tony Blankley does an excellent job of holding down the right. His opinions are typically well thought out and his intellect does a decent job in offsetting the radical left. My biggest complaint is that he always seems to have predicted everything and wrote about it months ago and it is amazing that us mortals have only just now got to where he has been for a long time. It appears that, in his opinion, if we were just smart enough to read his column every week we wouldn’t have any problems in the world.

Arianna Huffington is on so infrequently it is a joke. She used to be on the right when Bill Clinton was the President but now that we have George W. Bush, she has decided to be on the left. She does fine representing the left when she bothers to participate but she is out promoting her books or getting interviewed by the rich and famous so much that she is rarely there. When she is there it seems like she is sending emails on her Blackberry when someone else is talking. She supposedly represents the “progressive blogosphere” (whatever that means) but this doesn’t make sense since Bob heads up TruthDig.com so they really don’t need both Arianna and Bob.

Robert Scheer is so ultra left that he is embarrassing and just saying he is on the left is insulting most of his true positions – they are farther left than just left. I assume the only reason he is on the show is that he is old, can’t find someone else to employ him and he needs the money. To him all of the ills of the world were caused by the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. He will go to great lengths to find some obscure way to link every bad thing to one, both or all three of them. He is so out of touch with mainstream America that he even supported Dennis Kucinich for President! Bob lives up to his left title though in insisting that all taxes are good and all money should be taken from everybody and given back to those that the government thinks should deserve it.

Matt Miller is supposed to be the center and he is the moderator. Occasionally, he is out doing something else and then we get to hear a real center as the fill in is almost almost always a true centrist. How does someone that worked for President Clinton and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress call himself a centrist? He is not as far left as Bob and Arianna so I guess that gives the producers the freedom to call him center. He must be right of the producers!

All of them do a very good job of promoting their books. I don’t have a big problem with that but it is obvious that they see this show as a way to sell more titles.

As much as I deride their non-balanced viewpoints, the show is actually quite good. The three of them (when Arianna shows up) try desperately to outwit Tony and, for the most part, fail miserably. They bring up weak ideas and Tony points out that they don’t have all of the facts. Tony usually does the show from Washington DC and I have this feeling that he is laughing at them when he is off microphone.

KCRW MANAGEMENT – FIRE 2 OF THE LEFTISTS ON THIS SHOW AND GET SOMEONE TO BE A TRUE CENTER! FAILING THAT, CHANGE THE NAME OF THE SHOW!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Technorati Tags: KCRW,Left Right and Center,NPR

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RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

By admin | February 20, 2008 | Comments 2 comments

I am a big fan of the music of Sheryl Crow. I have all of her CDs and have bought each one (no, I didn’t “borrow” someone else’s MP3 files). I have enjoyed her music over the years but, to be honest, her first CD was probably her best and she could be accused of coasting since then – a couple good songs per CD with so-so songs after that.

I have listened to Ms. Crow’s latest CD several times. It is titled “Detours”. It is an apt title since it is a detour from her usual high quality work! I feel like the Democratic Party, Al Gore, and Laurie David have been injected into my brain via my ears! To think that I spent $15 for a CD of political propaganda.

I have no problem with the occasional activism song. I actually applaud this even when I don’t particularly agree with the message. For instance, Matchbox Twenty’s recent video “How Far We’ve Come” (see the bottom of this post to watch the video) is absolutely a political statement and it is excellent (I am not sure that the ending of showing Mr. Gore, Ms. Clinton, and Mr. Obama is a statement to the positive after watching the fall of the Berlin Wall but maybe that is their point).

Thankfully, Ms. Crow has put the lyrics to her songs in the CD package. I appreciate that gesture and she has regularly done this for her listeners. However, the words that she is portraying are over the top. Does she really know for a fact that the President was lying to get into a war? When I want to listen to someone exaggerate the truth, I will watch Al Gore’s movie since the British courts have already called that a political document.

Sheryl (and other artists) should limit her political statements to one or two well done messages and then spend the rest of the CD entertaining me. That is what I am paying her to do.

SHERYL – I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR POLITICS! I WANT YOU TO ENTERTAIN ME, NOT LECTURE ME ON YOUR OPINIONS!