#Inauguration of Andrew Johnson

[deadpresidents]

"Johnson is an insolent, drunken brute in comparison with which Caligula's horse was respectable."

-- Senator Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) on President Andrew Johnson

[thebreakfastgenie]

A United States president has left office before completing his term nine times. Four deaths from natural causes, four assassinations, and one resignation.

John Tyler assumed the presidency after William Henry Harrison died shortly after inauguration, but was not re-elected four years later, so he was only elected to the vice presidency.

Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency after Zachary Taylor died, but was not re-elected so he was only elected to the vice presidency.

Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, but was not re-elected so he was only elected to the vice presidency.

Chester Arthur assumed the presidency after James Garfield was assassinated, but was not re-elected so he was only elected to the vice presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency after William McKinley was assassinated and was later elected to another term.

Calvin Coolidge assumed the presidency after Warren G. Harding died and was later elected to another term.

Harry Truman assumed the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt died and was later elected to another term.

Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and was later elected to another term.

Gerald Ford assumed the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned and was not re-elected. Ford was also never elected vice president, he was appointed to the position after Nixon's previous vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned.

Four presidents were elected vice president but not president and one was never elected to either.

[odinsblog]

The Supreme Court is trying to drag America backwards to “Separate but Equal”

President Andrew Johnson vetoed the nation’s inaugural Civil Rights legislation because, in his view, it discriminated against white people and privileged Black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (which Congress enacted over the veto) bestowed citizenship upon all persons — except for certain American Indians — born in the United States and endowed all persons with the same rights as white people in terms of issuing contracts, owning property, suing or being sued or serving as witnesses. This law was proposed because the Supreme Court had ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that African Americans, free or enslaved, were ineligible as a matter of race for federal citizenship, and because many states had barred African Americans from enjoying even the most rudimentary civil rights.

Johnson vetoed the act in part because the citizenship provision would immediately make citizens of native-born Black people while European-born immigrants had to wait several years to qualify for citizenship via naturalization (which was then open only to white people). According to Johnson, this amounted to “a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the Negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence have just now been suddenly opened.” Johnson similarly opposed the provision in the act affording federal protection to civil rights, charging that it made possible “discriminating protection to colored persons.”

A key defect of the Civil Rights Act, according to Johnson, was that it established “for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the general government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” Johnson opposed as well the 14th Amendment, which decreed that states offer to all persons equal protection of the laws, a provision which he also saw as a wrongful venture in racial favoritism aimed at assisting the undeserving Negro.

In 1875, Congress enacted legislation that prohibited racial discrimination in the provision of public accommodations. Eight years later, in a judgment invalidating that provision, the Supreme Court disapprovingly lectured the Black plaintiffs, declaring that “when a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.”

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to carry out the order. Assailing the order, Representative Jamie Whitten, a Mississippi segregationist, complained that it would not so much prevent unfairness as “discriminate in favor of the Negro” — this at a time when anti-Black discrimination across the social landscape was blatant, rife and to a large extent, fully lawful.

Segregationist Southerners were not the only ones who railed against antidiscrimination laws on the grounds that they constituted illegitimate preferences for African Americans. In 1945, the New York City administrator Robert Moses inveighed against pioneering municipal antidiscrimination legislation in employment and college admissions. Displaying more anger at the distant prospect of racial quotas than the immediate reality of racial exclusions, Moses maintained that antidiscrimination measures would “mean the end of honest competition, and the death knell of selection and advancement on the basis of talent.”

Liberals, too, have attacked measures they deemed to constitute illicit racial preferencing on behalf of Black people. When the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, proposed “compensatory” hiring in the early 1960s — selection schemes that would give an edge to Black people on account of past victimization and the lingering disabilities caused by historical mistreatment — many liberals resisted. Asked about CORE’s demands, President John F. Kennedy remarked that he did not think that society “can undo the past” and that it was a mistake “to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion, or race, or color, or nationality.”

Kennedy’s comment that it would be a mistake “to begin” to assign quotas reflects a recurring misimpression that racial politics “begins” when those who have been marginalized make demands for equitable treatment.

When Kennedy spoke, unwritten but effective quotas had long existed that enabled white men to monopolize huge portions of the most influential and coveted positions in society. Yet it was only when facing protests against monopolization that he was moved to deplore status-based quotas.

This same dynamic has been recurrent in subsequent decades: Every major policy seeking to advance the position of Black people has been opposed on the grounds that it was race conscious, racially discriminatory, racially preferential and thus socially toxic. That racial affirmative action in university admissions and elsewhere has survived for so long is remarkable, given the powerful forces arrayed against it.

(continue reading)

[strictlyfavorites]

(From Left to Right) Outgoing Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, Incoming Vice President Andrew Johnson, and President Abraham Lincoln seated next to each other during Lincoln’s second inauguration, 1865

[demospectator]

San Francisco Chinatown men with queues, c. 1900. Photographer unknown (from the Pat Hathaway archives).

When San Francisco Criminalized Hairstyle

In a time where hairstyles such as dreadlocks and cornrows have often become a cultural battleground, emblematic of personal expression and cultural identity, the echoes of the San Francisco Queue Ordinance still resonate. As a former staffer in the halls of the US Senate, I recall my boss's assertion during my inaugural week—a proclamation that "there are no new issues." I realized then and now that the often obscure legislation, rooted in different times, can cast a shadow on contemporary debates, illustrating pertinent struggles for autonomy and acceptance within minority communities.

In California, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the Queue Ordinance in 1873. The was law intended to force prisoners in San Francisco, California to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. It affected Han Chinese prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their queue, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off. The proposal passed by a narrow margin through the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1873. The ordinance was immediately vetoed by Mayor William Alvord. In his veto, the mayor stated that “this order, though general in its terms, in substance and effect, is a special and degrading punishment inflicted upon the Chinese residents for slight offenses and solely by reason of their alienage and race.”

“Shaving, Cleansing and Scraping heads in a Basement Barber-shop,” June 6,1879, from the Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

An identical version of the law was enacted in 1876 and signed by a different Mayor Andrew Bryant. This set the stage for a federal case when a Chinese immigrant named Ho Ah Kow was arrested for living space violations under the city’s Cubic Air ordinance. Unable or unwilling to pay the fine for the violations, he was jailed. His jailers removed his queue during his incarceration.

Ho sued then Sheriff Nunan for damages, claiming that the "Pigtail Ordinance" caused him irreparable harm.

On June 14, 1879, trial in a case about what the New York Times would later describe as “this childish attempt on the part of a community to persecute a race, in defiance of the Constitution and the laws” began in a San Francisco federal court, presided over by United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field. On July 7, 1879, Justice Stephen Johnson Field — in spite of heated criticism from the general public and lampooning in the press — found in favor of the plaintiff.

Field’s decision held that it was not within the powers of the Board of Supervisors to set such a discriminatory law and that the ordinance was, in fact, unconstitutional. In particular, he cited the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which guarantees equal protection under the law to all persons within its jurisdiction. See Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 Fed. Cas. 252 (1879).

Nine days later, the New York Times reported Justice Field’s decision and the unusual “case in which the Constitution of the United States is invoked to defend a subject of the Emperor in China, temporarily residing in this country,” noting that “the cutting of the hair, otherwise, the cue, of the Chinese prisoner was not done to promote discipline or health. It was done to add torture to his confinement.”

The New York Times’ editors presciently observed the constitutional significance of the successful challenge to San Francisco’s Queue Ordinance, beyond the “cruel and unusual punishment” it inflicted, as follows:

"But, what is of more importance, the court held, in this case, that the whole spirit of the ordinance was in the violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. It was intended only for the Chinese of San Francisco. ... And in our country hostile and discriminating legislation by a State against any persons of any class, creed, or nation, in whatever form it may be expressed, is forbidden by the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution.”

The district court’s decision was rendered seven years before, and served as precedent for, the landmark SCOTUS decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins 118 U.S. 363 (citing Ah Kow v. Nunan).

Little is known about the fate of the plaintiff, Ah Kow. He was awarded $10,000 in damages. He undoubtedly had to wait a very long time before even contemplating a return to the motherland ruled by the Qing emperor.

In ensuing years, reform movements in China had begun demanding its removal as a badge of fealty, along with foot-binding and a change in constitutional government. In February 6, 1896, The San Francisco Call newspaper reported that the city’s Chinese residents were expressing concerns that wearing the queue as sign of loyalty to a foreign government could preclude native-born, Chinese San Franciscans from voting. More significant, The Call reported, “[t]here are about 500 voters in Chinatown now, . . . and before election day the Chinatown politicians expect to carry no less than 1000 in their vest pockets. At the last gubernatoral [sic] election 400 votes cast either way would have changed the result.”

Following the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, Chinese American men gradually abandoned the traditional Qing-era queue, as part of a symbolic departure from the Manchu-dominated imperial rule. The queue, which had been enforced during the Qing Dynasty as a sign of submission, became a powerful visual representation of resistance against the old regime. In the early 20th century, as Chinese Americans' abandonment of the queue not only symbolized their alignment with modernity and progressive ideals in China but also a desire to integrate into the American sociopolitical landscape. This shift reflected not only a break from a past in which hairstyle had been weaponized against the community but also a conscious effort to redefine identity in the context of a new era.

------------------------

Text of the Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan decision may be read here.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 20, 2023

Various constitutional lawyers have been weighing in lately on whether former president Donald Trump and others who participated in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The third section of that amendment, ratified in 1868, reads: 

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

On August 14 an article forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Law Review by William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael S. Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas School of Law became available as a preprint. It argued that the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment is still in effect (countering arguments that it applied only to the Civil War era secessionists), that it is self-executing (meaning the disqualification of certain people is automatic, much as age limits or residency requirements are), and that Trump and others who participated in trying to steal the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office.

This paper was a big deal because while liberal thinkers have been making this argument for a while now, Baude and Paulsen are associated with the legal doctrine of originalism, an approach to the law that insists the Constitution should be understood as those who wrote its different parts understood them. That theory gained traction on the right in the 1980s as a way to push back against what its adherents called “judicial activism,” by which they meant the Supreme Court’s use of the law, especially the Fourteenth Amendment, to expand the rights of minorities and women. One of the key institutions engaged in this pushback was the Federalist Society, and both Baude and Paulson are associated with it. 

Now the two have made a 126-page originalist case that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits Trump from running for president. Their interpretation is undoubtedly correct. But that interpretation has even larger implications than they claim.

Moderate Republicans—not “Radical Republicans,” by the way, which was a slur pinned on the Civil War era party by southern-sympathizing Democrats—wrote the text of the Fourteenth Amendment at a specific time for a specific reason that speaks directly to our own era. 

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Congress was not in session. It had adjourned on the morning of Lincoln’s second inauguration in early March, after beavering away all night to finish up the session’s business, and congressmen had begun their long journeys home where they would stay until the new session began in December. 

Lincoln’s death handed control of the country for more than seven months to his vice president, Andrew Johnson, a former Democrat who wanted to restore the nation to what it had been before the war, minus the institution of slavery that he believed concentrated wealth and power among a small elite. Johnson refused to call Congress back into session while he worked alone to restore the prewar system, dominated by Democrats, as quickly as he could. 

In May, Johnson announced that all former Confederates except for high-ranking political or military officers or anyone worth more than $20,000 (about $400,000 today) would be given amnesty as soon as they took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He pardoned all but about 1,500 of that elite excluded group by December 1865.

Johnson required that southern states change their state constitutions by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting enslavement except as punishment for a crime, nullifying the ordinances of secession, and repudiating the Confederate war debts. Delegates did so, grudgingly and with some wiggling, and then went on to pass the Black Codes, laws designed to keep Black Americans subservient to their white neighbors. 

Under those new state constitutions and racist legal codes, southern states elected new senators and representatives to Congress. Voters put back into national office the very same men who had driven the rebellion, including its vice president, Alexander Stephens, whom the Georgia legislature reelected to the U.S. Senate. When Congress reconvened in December 1865, Johnson cheerily told them he had reconstructed the country without their help.

It looked as if the country was right back to where it had been in 1860, with legal slavery ended but a racial system that looked much like it already reestablished in the South. And since the 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole people for the first time, southern congressmen would have more power than before. 

But when the southern state delegations elected under Johnson’s plan arrived in Washington, D.C., to be seated, Republicans turned them away. They rejected the idea that after four years, 600,000 casualties, and more than $5 billion, the country should be ruled by men like Stephens, who insisted that American democracy meant that power resided not in the federal government but in the states, where a small, wealthy minority could insulate itself from the majority rule that controlled Congress. 

In state government a minority could control who could vote and the information to which those voters had access, removing concerns that voters would challenge their wealth or power. White southerners embraced the idea of “popular sovereignty” and “states’ rights,” arguing that any attempt of Congress to enforce majority rule was an attack on democracy.

But President LIncoln and the Republicans reestablished the idea of majority rule, using the federal government to enforce the principle of human equality outlined by the Declaration of Independence. 

And that’s where the Fourteenth Amendment came in. When Johnson tried to restore the former Confederates to power after the Civil War, Americans wrote into the Constitution that anyone born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen, and then they established that states must treat all citizens equally before the law, thus taking away the legal basis for the Black Codes and giving the federal government power to enforce equality in the states. They also made sure that anyone who rebels against the federal government can’t make or enforce the nation’s laws. 

Republicans in the 1860s would certainly have believed the Fourteenth Amendment covered Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election. More, though, that amendment sought to establish, once and for all, the supremacy of the federal government over those who wanted to solidify their power in the states, where they could impose the will of a minority. That concept speaks directly to today’s Republicans.

In The Atlantic today, two prominent legal scholars from opposite sides of the political spectrum, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig and emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School Laurence H. Tribe, applauded the Baude-Paulsen article and suggested that the American people should support the “faithful application and enforcement of their Constitution.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[idance2silence]

We need an otome game of the first 50 United States of America presidents. Hamilton but worse. Omg 😲 they 💃 are 💕all 👀 stuck 😳 in 🕑 time 😵 together 😏 type vibe. Two Grover Clevelands who are hallucinating each other. George Washington talking to Trump. Willian Harrison being a zombie (he died 31 days into his inauguration) and the chrisitan/catholic presidents are trying to holy water the man or exorcise him or whatever. The heroine protecting Obama because the rest think he's a slave or are just racist. Both the father Bush and the son Bush trying to romance the heroine and its beyond creepy. Truman, the atomic bomb guy, talking to the generals Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant. Imagine the Roosevelts interaction with Regan. Jefferson bitch slapping Lyndon Johnson. There's just so much potential to this nightmare. Hell it'd even make a great anime.

It'd be a billion times funnier if the protagonist is an autistic lesbian with a history hyperfixation and the others just think she's some kind of tsundere or somthing. They all try to romance her and she's doing all kinds of genius science stuff to break the time loop. Maybe it'd be funnier if she was a straight simp who loved the presidents until she met them or somthing so she's falling out of love and is desperately trying to undo the device she made so she could finally be their true love or whatever. But the misogyny and woman are property is a ruse awakening. I'm not sure which is funnier. Think the Republicans of 2023 who romanticise the founding fathers actually have to meet them and survive them and escape.

This is utter cringe. It'd be an incredible game or show to watch though. Absolute nightmare. The shipping wars worse than Hamilton. I want it. How do we get this disaster into reality it'd be wild.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.24

484 – King Huneric of the Vandals replaces Nicene bishops with Arian ones, and banishes some to Corsica. 1303 – The English are defeated at the Battle of Roslin, in the First War of Scottish Independence. 1386 – King Charles III of Naples and Hungary is assassinated at Buda. 1525 – A Spanish-Austrian army defeats a French army at the Battle of Pavia. 1527 – Coronation of Ferdinand I as the king of Bohemia in Prague. 1538 – Treaty of Nagyvárad between Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and King John Zápolya of Hungary and Croatia. 1582 – With the papal bull Inter gravissimas, Pope Gregory XIII announces the Gregorian calendar. 1597 – The last battle of the Cudgel War takes place on the Santavuori Hill in Ilmajoki, Ostrobothnia. 1607 – L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its première performance. 1711 – Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage, is premièred. 1739 – Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nader Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah. 1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the principle of judicial review. 1809 – London's Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, leaving its owner, Irish writer and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, destitute. 1821 – Final stage of the Mexican War of Independence from Spain with Plan of Iguala. 1822 – The first Swaminarayan temple in the world, Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Ahmedabad, is inaugurated. 1826 – The signing of the Treaty of Yandabo marks the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War. 1831 – The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, is proclaimed. The Choctaws in Mississippi cede land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West. 1848 – King Louis-Philippe of France abdicates the throne. 1854 – A Penny Red with perforations becomes the first perforated postage stamp to be officially issued for distribution. 1863 – Arizona is organized as a United States territory. 1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitted in the Senate. 1875 – The SS Gothenburg hits the Great Barrier Reef and sinks off the Australian east coast, killing approximately 100, including a number of high-profile civil servants and dignitaries. 1876 – The stage première of Peer Gynt, a play by Henrik Ibsen with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, takes place in Christiania (Oslo), Norway. 1881 – China and Russia sign the Sino-Russian Ili Treaty. 1895 – Revolution breaks out in Baire, a town near Santiago de Cuba, beginning the Cuban War of Independence; the war ends along with the Spanish–American War in 1898. 1916 – The Governor-General of Korea establishes a clinic called Jahyewon in Sorokdo to segregate Hansen's disease patients. 1917 – World War I: The U.S. ambassador Walter Hines Page to the United Kingdom is given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declares war on the United States. 1918 – Estonian Declaration of Independence. 1920 – Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to speak in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom following her election as a Member of Parliament (MP) three months earlier. 1920 – The Nazi Party (NSDAP) was founded by Adolf Hitler in the Hofbräuhaus beer hall in Munich, Germany 1942 – Seven hundred ninety-one[22] Romanian Jewish refugees and crew members are killed after the MV Struma is torpedoed by the Soviet Navy.[ 1942 – The Battle of Los Angeles: A false alarm led to an anti-aircraft barrage that lasted into the early hours of February 25. 1945 – Egyptian Premier Ahmad Mahir Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree. 1946 – Colonel Juan Perón, founder of the political movement that became known as Peronism, is elected to his first term as President of Argentina. 1949 – The Armistice Agreements are signed, to formally end the hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. 1967 – Cultural Revolution: Zhang Chunqiao announces the dissolution of the Shanghai People's Commune, replacing its local government with a revolutionary committee. 1968 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnamese forces led by Ngo Quang Truong recapture the citadel of Hué. 1971 – The All India Forward Bloc holds an emergency central committee meeting after its chairman, Hemantha Kumar Bose, is killed three days earlier. P.K. Mookiah Thevar is appointed as the new chairman. 1976 – The 1976 constitution of Cuba is formally proclaimed. 1978 – The Yuba County Five disappear in California. Four of their bodies are found four months later. 1981 – The 6.7 Ms Gulf of Corinth earthquake affected Central Greece with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). Twenty-two people were killed, 400 were injured, and damage totaled $812 million. 1983 – A special commission of the United States Congress condemns the Japanese American internment during World War II. 1984 – Tyrone Mitchell perpetrates the 49th Street Elementary School shooting in Los Angeles, killing two children and injuring 12 more. 1989 – United Airlines Flight 811, bound for New Zealand from Honolulu, rips open during flight, blowing nine passengers out of the business-class section. 1991 – Gulf War: Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, thus beginning the ground phase of the war. 1996 – Two civilian airplanes operated by the Miami-based group Brothers to the Rescue are shot down in international waters by the Cuban Air Force. 1999 – China Southwest Airlines Flight 4509, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft, crashes on approach to Wenzhou Longwan International Airport in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China. All 61 people on board are killed. 2004 – The 6.3 Mw Al Hoceima earthquake strikes northern Morocco with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 628 people are killed, 926 are injured, and up to 15,000 are displaced. 2006 – Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declares Proclamation 1017 placing the country in a state of emergency in attempt to subdue a possible military coup. 2007 – Japan launches its fourth spy satellite, stepping up its ability to monitor potential threats such as North Korea. 2008 – Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba and the Council of Ministers after 32 years. He remains as head of the Communist Party for another three years. 2015 – A Metrolink train derails in Oxnard, California following a collision with a truck, leaving more than 30 injured. 2016 – Tara Air Flight 193, a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft, crashed, with 23 fatalities, in Solighopte, Myagdi District, Dhaulagiri Zone, while en route from Pokhara Airport to Jomsom Airport. 2020 – Mahathir Mohamad resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia following an attempt to replace the Pakatan Harapan government, which triggered the 2020-2022 Malaysian political crisis. 2022 – Days after recognising Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin orders a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

[the-firebird69]

It's very cold out yeah and it's warm in the library little too warm that's the way they like it so we are noticing that people are working on trying to manipulate the atmosphere into stuff they want for others to become ill in fact today become ill and continues and stuff by the way and at some point sound that Trump has to go ahead and become legend. His forces are small and that time he gets in real small can't have foreigners assistance do not dragged out in that proper. People like Ken know it and waiting for the right time and it is arriving this is a function it's very important.

--I think there's a 20th it's going to be very very small and he's going to try and ruin tons of people and he's going to beat up badly. Then for 3 months a little less you're both through all sorts of hell he's going to get kicked out of his job the hard way and until the day where Nathan Hill was hung will be a massive nuisance to everyone. And it's coming up pretty soon.

--now some of the scene what looks like Hawks and sometimes they are but you're really possessed by evil men more or less and they suffer a lot doing it in the bag there like bewildered like at times I can't figure out what's happening it's like postpartum depression and they know leaving their body doesn't give them a good chance of survival but it's really the schedule so they come and do this lower level demons and I think they can take the next step using them and they'll survive better and you're mistaken some of them are inside are a little demons and they don't have power ultimately we decide they're forced to proceed. Nathan Hale was a very big figure he was a rebel now he's a mess his methods were very provocative and most could not stand him and now it's worse. The truth is they all know the date and the empire transfer it. We try to grab our phone and try to grab my son on several days. And fail. There's a large amount of superhero action from this point forward you're trying to use it to capture hours, we show up and we capture them. It pretty much starts April 15th 2025 and after that the next date is of another president leaving office and this guy is a walking disaster. Grant is exceeded by Rutherford b Hayes and that's Terry cheese man and he is in office for a few hours too all three die on March 4th and they're out of office and they're not gone forever after him is Garfield it looks like Jason and his September 19th. And Rutherford b Hayes and the others cannot be in there for a year but April is after March so this question and for the answer is they try to take the office before the inauguration maybe are some things that Tommy f is president and hands it off to Rutherford b Hayes because Tommy is under pressure from the empire and that's probably what it is hands it off to Garfield A year later and he's a mess by the way. Then it goes to Garfield and they're saying for 6 months and that is actually Trump again and people are having a hard time believing it

Oh this is fine and dandy but it doesn't really add up to what's actually happening so he asked them they said that the new guys don't make it to April 15th and we don't think that's it and they said they fight over the office as one person that doesn't sound too good so we looked at it again and it says that their president for 4 years some more and these guys are fighting each other very harsh and we don't think that they're going to make it

There's a lot of fighting and a lot of infighting and there's a lot of people who want to be president. The pseudo empire is getting beat up as well we don't think they're going to do that great they are not looking good the more luck or not but their population is still there. The news people are very assuming and we are going to bust them up.

There's a couple clues it looks like Tommy f that's a vice president but only briefly and that's what happens

Abraham Lincoln equals Donald Trump out of office April 15th 2025

Andrew Johnson takes office April 15th and is there for half a year until March 4th that's what we see it as Grant ake Ken takes office on March 4th and is in office for a year and rather be Hayes he's in office for one year and that is Terry c

James Garfield is in office March 4th to September 19th and that's a few years from now 2 years really that's not too long

Chester Arthur takes off of September 19th and it's upon the demise of the president and his vice president and as soon as suspicious circumstances and there's a war started again and they're down to a few cities yes and he is president only until March 4th and these people are very weak and they acted and it's despicable awful of the Mac proper and there's a war on them because of it

Grover Cleveland and it's Brad takes office after Trump which is Chester Arthur and March 4th and he runs things for a year

William McKinley takes office March 4th and his little heart to recognize he looks like a Mac proper base not it almost want to say make green and that's who he is and he runs for 6 months and now Teddy Roosevelt that's a big one and once again September to March another 6 months it's odd but it just keeps happening and again kicked out and they're fighting each other like madness and it continues and continues Taft one year we believe it looks like Daniel now this happens in the next 4 years 5 years of continues and all this stuff happens over a period of years

If you believe that we have some waterfront property in Arizona....

We showed you the numbers those numbers are real it's going to speed up phenomenally very very soon to a running pace and they will all deteriorate very quickly because of their own actions what's going to happen and they will be out very soon so you can think about this but it isn't going to happen

Thor Freya

You can ask the Mac proper

Zues Hera

Olympus

He's succeeded by Andrew Johnson. And you think it's Tommy f and it is not it is a temporary president and he gets in the presidency until March 4th 2025 and he is succeeded by Ulysses S Grant who is Tommy f

[justiceheartwatcher]

Trump is not the only president to avoid attending a successor’s inauguration

Thats right! ha

No, Donald Trump is not the only president to skip his successor’s inauguration. Sign up for the VERIFY Fast Facts daily Newsletter!  WHAT WE FOUND Donald Trump did not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, but he was not the first president to skip attending a successor’s ceremony. Four other presidents have missed their successor’s inauguration, however, Trump was the first to do so in over 150 years, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and Andrew Johnson did not attend their successor’s inaugurations, The White House Historical Association says.  Woodrow Wilson also did not publicly attend the inauguration of Warren G. Harding, due to mobility issues, but he was in the Capitol building at the time of the ceremony, The White House Historical Association adds. Typically, an outgoing president is in attendance at the next president’s inauguration ceremony. This tradition initially began in 1837, when Andrew Jackson attended the inauguration of Martin Van Buren, a Troy University article explains. In 1801, John Adams became the first president to skip a successor’s inauguration, avoiding Thomas Jefferson’s ceremony possibly “to avoid provoking violence between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as this was the first time the presidency was transferred to an opposing party,” according to The White House Historical Association. He was also not formally invited by Jefferson.  In 1829, John Quincy Adams boycotted the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, according to the Library of Congress. It's unclear why Martin Van Buren did not attend the inauguration of William Henry Harrison in 1841, as multiple sources say the two seemed to get along and even had a dinner together shortly before the inauguration. The White House Historical Association notes that Van Buren’s son was ill at the time.  Andrew Johnson, who was also the first president to be impeached and had not run for re-election, skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration in 1869. The two “detested each other,” the Library of Congress explains, and “Grant said he would not ride in the same carriage with Johnson to the inaugural ceremony when it looked like Johnson might attend.”

[sinceileftyoublog]

Anna Butterss Interview: Los Angeles in 2024

Photo by Samantha Lee

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For much of their career, bassist Anna Butterss has constructed bridges between musical worlds. The classically trained Australian musician moved to Los Angeles a decade ago, not too long after beloved experimental guitarist Jeff Parker relocated there. Like the versatile Parker, who has made his mark in both the jazz and post-rock worlds, Butterss quickly became an in-demand player in the jazz and indie rock spheres, both as a session and touring musician. Shortly after moving, Butterss connected with Parker, joining his now long-running quartet, alongside saxophonist Josh Johnson and drummer Jay Bellerose. (I first heard Butterss' nimble work on Makaya McCraven's landmark 2018 album Universal Beings.) At the same time, Butterss, always on the periphery of hyped indie music through their friends, found themselves alongside Aughts stalwarts Jenny Lewis and Andrew Bird and then-up-and-comers like Phoebe Bridgers. Over the past five years, Butterss has buoyed career reinventions and risen alongside their peers.

2024, then, feels like the first year where Butterss is moving to the forefront. Though they released their debut album Activities and helped Parker immortalize the Enfield Tennis Academy in 2022, this time, over the span of a mere six months, they've been a part of three major improvisational jazz records. First, Butterss is one-fifth of SML, who I profiled earlier this year after their debut record release in June. SML Songs like "Industry" showcased Butterss' ability to steadily drive a track alongside freewheeling bandmates, while "Dolphin Language" gave them a turn to have fun splintering. The quintet played two sets at the inaugural Warm Love Cool Dreams festival at the Salt Shed in September, one performing material from Small Medium Large, the other backing Jamaican dancehall DJ and singer Sister Nancy.

Butterss delves deeper into the world of grooves on the just-released new Jeff Parker ETA IVtet album The Way Out of Easy, a follow-up recording to Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Like the latter, The Way Out of Easy was recorded at the ETA and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales, on a night in January 2023. The four longform tracks that make up the record are certainly opportunities for Parker and Johnson's expressions, but don't discount Butterss' understated and underrated adaptability. Throughout "Freakadelic", an extended version of a long-time Parker composition, Butterss and Bellerose provide a hip-hop groove underneath Parker's prickly and sinuous lines, only to wake up a little bit as Johnson's saxophone whirrs and hypnotizes. Butterss mirrors Johnson's rounded mournfulness on the otherwise beatific "Late Autumn", while on "Easy Way Out", they emulate Parker's slow cascades, a perfect contrast to Johnson and Bellerose's expressiveness. Of course, closer "Chrome Dome" ends up a blissed out dub song, Butterss once again a masterfully stable counterpart to Johnson's garbled notes and Bellerose's polyrhythms.

It's clear, then, that all of Butterss' experiences informed their second solo album and International Anthem debut, Mighty Vertebrate, released last month. In early 2023, Butterss found themselves wanting to create while balancing their busy schedule. In order to force themselves to write freely without succumbing to their own judgements and internal monologue, Butterss adopted constraints similar to Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. "Pokemans", for instance, arose from the goal to use the bass in a way that belies the instrument's typical role. But Butterss was careful not to let Mighty Vertebrate be an album solely reflective of its process, and it sounds loose. They created the stems of the songs before fleshing them out with percussionist Ben Lumsdaine; at that point, the songs were ready for tracking at Chris Schlarb's BIG EGO with Johnson and another SML bandmate, Gregory Uhlmann. As a result, Mighty Vertebrate is diverse and extensive. "Ella" creates a world out of a two-note guitar line and saxophone processed through a synthesizer. "Lubbock" juxtaposes wiry guitar and swirling woodwinds atop raining percussion. "Saturno"'s warped bells give way to a percussion and saxophone groove, Butterss leading the evolution into a rich tapestry. Standout track "Dance Steve" mashes up Malian desert blues and synth punk, a collage of samples, syncopated 808s, synths, and in a full circle moment, a Jeff Parker guitar solo. Perhaps most impressive is that Mighty Vertebrate is cohesive through natural patterns that emerged throughout its creation, Butterss paring its songs down before building them back up, just like on their work with SML and Parker.

In September, a week before the album's release and just before SML's sets at Warm Love Cool Dreams, Butterss did get to try out Mighty Vertebrate songs live with their band at Marz Brewing. They then played a proper record release show in Los Angeles at 2220 Arts + Archives, the day the album came out digitally and on vinyl. A few days later, I spoke to Butterss over Zoom about the making of Mighty Vertebrate, the L.A. scene and International Anthem, post-rock, album and song title meanings, and misheard lyrics. Next week, starting on Monday, Butterss will take a victory lap to celebrate their stellar year, playing in a three-night International Anthem residency at Public Records in Brooklyn: with Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, SML, and their band. It's safe to say you'll be continuing to hear Butterss' name a lot for the next several years. Not only is SML set to return in 2025 and Butterss working on their next record, but they've been a full time member of none other than Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit for a year. Add the Americana/alt-country genre to the list of worlds among which Butterss has built connections.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Why did you decide to make a record using Oblique Strategies-inspired tactics? Was it out of necessity, or was it something you always wanted to do?

Anna Butterss: It's the former for sure. Writing music, I enjoy doing it, but I also find it very hard, because I'm incredibly judgmental, and it's hard for me to think in the moment and follow an idea without already judging it. I'm like this with other things as well. I've always practiced the bass with these very specific restrictions in mind, very structured, so this was a way to get myself to be creative.

I started writing music that way a few years ago. It was a little challenge to myself called "one-hour beats," which is exactly what it sounds like. [laughs] How much of a beat can you make in one hour? If it's bad, if you don't like it, you've only spent an hour and have probably learned something. I started [Mighty Vertebrate] off like that. I spent a lot of time working on the music, but I'd go back and open up one of the ideas and ask, "Is this one cool?" I'd work on that one for an hour or two hours and put it away. I spent the whole year doing that.

SILY: Did you ever fully stray from your initial goal? Or were the finished songs pretty faithful to their original restrictions?

AB: I strayed away. The restrictions were a means to an end, to get something written. Once you get an idea down, it's much easier to manipulate it and try different things, but getting an idea down firstly is the hardest part. Once I felt like I had a strong or compelling idea, I'd let myself do whatever I needed to do. If I was having a good time working on something, I wouldn't put more restrictions on it.

SILY: What ties all of these songs together? Is it the process you used to make them?

AB: Hmm...that's a good question. It's a pretty eclectic record. I think the thing that ties them together for me is that they're songs I wrote during a period of my life, during 2023. A lot of them have similar sonic tendencies, a lot of guitars because it's an instrument I can kind of play, and drum machine. But the thing that ties them together is emotionally how I was experiencing that year. With the band, we all play together a particular way, and that ties them together, too. If I listen back to them, I can hear melodic tendencies I have and forms I gravitate towards, but I wasn't trying too hard to push them all into the same zone.

SILY: At what point did you bring in the band in the process of making Mighty Vertebrate?

AB: Quite late. I brought in [co-producer] Ben Lumsdaine...almost a year after we started writing it. I tried to get as much of it done by myself as I could. I had demos that were in pretty good shape. All the parts were there, but I wasn't trying too hard to get quality recordings. Some of the songs don't have a live band on them, like "Bishop" or "Dance Steve". Ben and I worked on them a lot. We tracked drums, bass, and more guitars. The other two guys in the band, I wrote charts for everything and we rehearsed one time and recorded in the studio for two days. Ben and I did some more overdubs, and that was it.

SILY: The songs on the album that do have a live band don't sound too different from the ones that don't have a live band. That is, if you were to listen to the album without paying the utmost attention, you might not necessarily realize which songs had a band and which didn't. There's an abstraction to the aesthetic. Was that something you were going for?

AB: In a way, yes. I had experimented a little bit on Activities with blending live drums, and we did synths with live bass. I had that in mind when I was making the record. Also, the fact that you have Greg playing guitar on some of the tracks, me playing on some of them, Jeff playing on some of them, Ben playing on some of them, it blurs the lines. Both Greg and Josh use effects in an organic way when they're playing, so it gets blurred a bit in a way I find pleasing. I wanted it to be its own world, not just an acoustic jazz record or an electronic record. I wanted it to live in a between space.

SILY: Do you think the individual musicians' playing styles started to blend, too? For instance, there were some guitar solos that sounded like Jeff Parker that might not have been Jeff Parker.

AB: Definitely. Jeff's been a big influence on the four of us, for sure. We've all played with him, and when I started messing around with the guitar, I thought, "Oh, this is just me sounding like a very cheap version of Jeff," because that's the guitarist I listen to the most. I think I sound a little less like him on the guitar now. Playing together for a really long time in different combinations, there's a shared language, sonic world, and tendencies. I hope other people hear this record and think, "This sounds like something that came out of Los Angeles in 2024." I like records where we can still have that sense of place, even though we're making music in such a globalized way. I feel like we have a little scene in Los Angeles that has a distinctive sound.

SILY: Certainly. The International Anthem family, while based in Chicago, has so many artists who are based in L.A. There's also the Enfield Tennis Academy and its branches. It's like one of the last remaining active scenes.

AB: [laughs] I hope not! It's definitely an International Anthem-sounding record as well. Greg's from Chicago, Josh grew up near Chicago, Jeff spent a lot of time in Chicago, and Ben, Josh, and I all went to school in Indiana, so we have a strong Midwest connection.

SILY: Where did the vocals on "Breadrich" come from?

AB: The ones that are a little sing-song are me. It's [inspired by] a character from a Mexican TV series called La Casa de las Flores, a Netflix series I've watched about three times during the pandemic. It's like a telenovela, but it's very modern and revolves around a lot of drag queens. There are trans people and bisexual main characters, but it's also a telenovela, so it's very dramatic and the plotlines are kind of ridiculous. One of the main characters, Paulina de la Mora, is kind of iconic and has an iconic way of speaking. I was also listening to a lot of Madlib and MF Doom, and MF Doom has so many cartoon and comic elements, so "Breadrich" was my hint at that, with me reimagining what it would be like if [Paulina de la Mora] had a spinoff.

I got into hip hop...in my 20's, having come from a very jazz background. It fascinates me and I love it. I'm not super directly hip hop-influenced, but it's something I think about a lot when working on things.

SILY: I was going to ask, since you collaborated on this record with John Herndon on the video for "Pokemans" and the album art, whether you were influenced by any of his A Grape Dope material.

AB: Not directly. Also, I get a ton of Tortoise comparisons, and I get why, but I really tried to steer clear of listening to that type of music when I was making this record because I didn't want it to sound too derivative. But I love John and am happy he did such great art for the record.

SILY: The Chicago post-rock connection to this current wave of jazz is palpable, because Chicago jazz preceded Chicago post-rock.

AB: Definitely. I've spent a fair amount of time in Chicago but have never lived there. I'm listening to all these records 10-20 years after they came out, so I'm getting a picture and sense of it. I also play a lot with Jeff and am close with people who have been involved in those scenes, so I'm getting a secondhand version of it. But I think it's cool that music that's been around for a while is still very relevant and current sounding.

SILY: How did you come up with the track titles on Mighty Vertebrate?

AB: "Bishop", my grandfather was a bishop. [laughs] What else do we have? "Dance Steve", I put a dance beat under a sample I thought sounded like Steve Reich. It was stuff like that. I do have a note in my phone where I collect phrases people will say, if they sound interesting, which is where "Breadrich" came from. My partner said that we were "bread-rich" after a friend gave us a bunch of bread, which I thought was funny.

SILY: It can be somewhat of a Rorschach test. Some of the titles on Small Medium Large were working titles or joke titles that ended up being perfect. It adds a levity to the project.

AB: I remember talking with Greg when trying to come up with titles and being like, "It's hard to come up with song titles that are original," and he was just like, "Oh, don't worry about that. There will always be another song [that shares a title.]" I don't think it matters that much. The record title, more so. But at the end of the day, it's instrumental music. It's already pretty abstract, and I want people to be able to have their own experience with it, instead of saying, say, "'Seeing You' is about the time I saw this person." Anyone can interpret it their own way and have their own relationship with it.

SILY: So what's the meaning of the record title to you?

AB: That came from an Andrew Bird lyric I misheard and was singing wrong when I was touring with him. [On Inside Problems' "Stop n’ Shop", it's] supposed to be "Mighty bird of prey," and I didn't realize that until he mentioned it. [laughs] I think it's evocative of a lot of different things. It can be a made-up or fantastical creature, or a way of describing humanity or the dichotomy of humans being so powerful but at the end of the day, vertebrates who will die just like everything else. There's an element of that. It doesn't mean one specific thing to me. I like that it's open-ended.

SILY: The fact that it came from something misheard, but still makes sense, is cool.

AB: [laughs] Yeah. I tried to convince Bird to change the lyric. He wasn't interested.

SILY: Do you pretty actively listen to new music?

AB: I'm trying to more these days. KCRW's morning program, Morning Becomes Eclectic, plays a lot of different genres, and I listen to that pretty religiously. It's where I find a lot of new music. That's probably where I heard Jenny Lewis. I remember driving on the freeway, hearing it and thinking, "What is that?" It turned out a bunch of my friends played in her band. These days, I'm trying to listen to records right when they come out, because otherwise it gets overwhelming.

SILY: What's your approach to playing the songs on Mighty Vertebrate live?

AB: There's more room for expansion. All of the tracks on the record are pretty short; I like to get in and get out, not have anything excessive. [Live,] there's more improvisation involved. A lot of the songs, the way they're structured, the bass line holds everything together statically, and everything is moving around it. I love that. As a bass player, that's what I want to do. I want to be the center of things and everyone else swirling around on top. I had the easiest time playing it live while demanding a lot of everyone else. [laughs]

SILY: Do you foresee these songs taking new shapes the more you play them?

AB: Definitely. That would be ideal. I don't know how many opportunities I'll get to play them. Unfortunately, it's really hard. Everyone's super busy, and I feel like it needs to be these specific people playing the music, and our schedules are all packed. After our show at Public Records, I'd like to continue to play it live and tour, but I don't know how that would work. I don't feel a need to adhere strictly to what's on the record, because if people want to hear the record, they should listen to the record. That's always been my feeling about it.

SILY: What else is next for you in the short and long term?

AB: Some SML stuff, definitely, in the new year. I'll start thinking about the next record. But right now, I'm trying to get through the rest of this year without having an emotional breakdown. [laughs]

SILY: You're very prolific.

AB: I'm a bass player. It's a blessing and a curse.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention or inspired you?

AB: Let me pull up my listening journal...I've been all over the place. My friends have a band called Twin Talk, [based] in Chicago. It's a great trio. They just put out a new record I've been heavily spinning. It's very beautiful. A lot of Brazilian music. We're reorganizing our record collection, so I've been going back and finding a lot of things. Honestly, it's all over the place. I like starting with my friends' records and going from there. Michael Mayo just put out a great record last week. I feel like a bunch of people put out records when I put out mine. Every Instagram post was about a new record.

[deadpresidents]

Was Trump's assassination attempt the first time people other than the president were also killed or hurt?

No, it definitely was not the first time. There have been a number of additional victims during Presidential assassinations or assassination attempts throughout American history.

Here are the incidents where someone other than the President was wounded in an assassination attempt on Presidents or Presidential candidates:

•April 14, 1865, Washington, D.C. At the same time that John Wilkes Booth was shooting Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Booth's fellow conspirator, Lewis Powell, attacked Secretary of State William H. Seward at Seward's home in Washington. Seward had been injured earlier that month in a carriage accident and was bedridden from his injuries, and Powell viciously stabbed the Secretary of State after forcing his way into Seward's home by pretending to deliver medicine. Powell also attacked two of Seward's sons, a male nurse from the Army who was helping to care for Seward, and a messenger from the State Department. Another Booth conspirator, George Azterodt, was supposed to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the same time that Lincoln and Seward were being attacked in an attempt to decapitate the senior leadership of the Union government, but Azterodt lost his nerve and got drunk instead. A total of five people were wounded at the Seward home as part of the Booth conspiracy, but Lincoln was the only person who was killed.

•February 15, 1933, Miami, Florida Just 17 days before his first inauguration, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt in Miami's Bayfront Park. Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt as FDR was speaking from an open car. Roosevelt was not injured, but all five bullets hit people in the crowd, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was in the car with FDR. Roosevelt may have been saved by a woman in the crowd who hit Zangara's arm with her purse as she noticed he was aiming his gun at the President-elect and caused him to shoot wildly. Mayor Cermak was gravely wounded and immediately rushed to a Miami hospital where he died about two weeks later.

•November 1, 1950, Blair House, Washington, D.C. From 1949-1952, the White House was being extensively renovated with the interior being almost completely gutted and reconstructed. President Harry S. Truman and his family moved into Blair House, a Presidential guest house across the street from the White House that is normally used for visiting VIPs, for 3 1/2 years. On November 1, 1950 two Puerto Rican nationalists, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, tried to shoot their way into Blair House and attempt to kill President Truman, who was upstairs (reportedly napping) at the time. A wild shootout ensued on Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt and Torresola dead, and Collazo and two other White House Police Officers wounded.

•November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas Texas Governor John Connally was severely wounded after being shot while riding in the open limousine with President John F. Kennedy when JFK was assassinated.

•June 5, 1968, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California When he finished delivering a victory speech after winning California's Democratic Presidential primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York was shot several times while walking through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. While RFK was mortally wounded and would die a little over a day later, five other people were also wounded in the shooting.

•May 15, 1972, Laurel, Maryland Segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by Arthur Bremer at a campaign rally when he was running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Three bystanders were also wounded in the shooting, but survived.

•September 22, 1975, San Francisco, California A taxi driver in San Francisco was wounded when Sara Jane Moore attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford as he left the St. Francis Hotel. Moore's first shot missed the President by several inches and the second shot, which hit the taxi driver, was altered when a Vietnam veteran in the crowd named Oliver Sipple grabbed her arm as she was firing. Just 17 days earlier and 90 miles away, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson family, had tried to shoot President Ford as he walked through Capitol Park in Sacramento but nobody was injured.

•March 30, 1981, Washington, D.C. President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by as he left the Washington Hilton after giving a speech. Three other people were wounded in the shooting, including White House Press Secretary James Brady who was shot in the head and partially paralyzed, Washington D.C. Police Office Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. Video of the assassination attempt shows that when the shots were fired, McCarthy turned and made himself a bigger target in order to shield the President with his own body. President Reagan was struck by a bullet that ricocheted off of the Presidential limousine.

[hackernewsrobot]

Andrew Johnson's drunk vice-presidential inaugural address

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson%27s_drunk_vice-presidential_inaugural_address

[grison-in-space]

What I enjoy about this is that we actually do have an incredibly accessible list of the presidential rankings made by political historians and scholars. Both C-SPAN and the Siena College Institute send out periodic surveys to US history scholars asking them to rank all extant US presidents in terms of best and worst, among other criteria, starting in 1983. There have of course also been other polls of US History scholars in terms of presidential rankings, stretching all the way back to 1948. Wikipedia, bless its heart, has a lovely archive of the results that is helpfully color coded by quartile, so you can see the patterns for any given president easily over time.

TL, DR:

None of these motherfuckers come close to the worst US president if you ask the people who develop, curate, and maintain our historical knowledge. For that, you generally see four (recently five) people jockeying for place:

Andrew Johnson, famously the first president to be impeached, took over for Lincoln after Lincoln was assassinated. Unfortunately, Lincoln chose the man more for his ability to try and clutch at some sense of American unity than for either his leadership skills or his decency, and Johnson spent his entire tenure as President trying to let the recently-cowed ex-Confederate Southern states have full rights reinstated and trying to undermine Reconstruction. Congress was not impressed.

Franklin Pierce, a northern Democrat who served two presidents before Lincoln, and who was pretty sure that the best way to achieve national unity over the increasingly violent and unstable American conflict over slavery was to try and strangle the burgeoning abolitionist movement in in its cradle. Pierce's greatest hits included the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which nullified the Missouri Compromise that had previously been holding things together), aggressively enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, and dying miserable and alone of liver cirrhosis.

James Buchanan, the guy immediately before Lincoln and after Pierce. You may be noticing a trend here. Buchanan was also a Northern Democrat who was real cozy with the Southern wing of his party, in part because the Whigs had recently imploded and the opposition were still trying to sort themselves out. Buchanan was a career politician whose primary goal was winning personal power and juicy awards to pass out to his friends, and his instincts for conflict resolution between South and North were astonishingly poor: he is responsible for the Dred Scott ruling that briefly held that free states had to respect the slave status of slaves who were brought within their boundaries, attempted to welcome Kansas into the union as a slave state, and generally pissed everyone off even more than they already were.

William Henry Harrison, who distinguished himself in 1841 by standing out in the rain to deliver a speech on the event of his inauguration, catching pneumonia, and dying 31 days into his term. No one had really formalized what happens if the President up and snuffs it yet, so this threw the young nation into a bit of a tizzy and motivated some firm discussion on the order of succession.

and, of course, the fifth addition to this august company, Donald Trump, who has scored in four surveys since taking office: three times out of 44 candidates coming in at 44, 42, and 41, and most recently in the Biden years cruising in at 43 out of 45.

There. You're fucking welcome. By the way, FDR is consistently rated in the top 3, the only person besides Lincoln to consistently wind up there who isn't a Founding Father. Wilson's star has been badly falling of late as more people pay attention to the power seizing, authoritarian decisions he made and the sheer power of his absolutely staggering racism; he actually is noted on the CNN poll as the single president for whom the estimation of "did he advocate for justice for all?" has fallen 17 ranks in the past 20 years. LBJ generally comes in at high second quartile but has risen some over time. And Nixon is generally cited as a president who did many, many things, some of which are phenomenally good and some of which are phenomenally bad; he usually comes in at the bottom of the third quartile or the top of the fourth.

Reagan is somewhat polarizing depending, I suspect, on whose scholars are being asked. But he was ranked quite poorly until 1996 and is once more falling, so one has to wonder at what time the cult of Reagan rose sufficiently high to capture the academy. I rather suspect he will drop precipitously in the next thirty years. He's still not in the same company as the people whose actions have literally been kicking off civil war, but he ain't great either.

[superdrivel]

Fresh off the presses of Wikipedia this week:

Bottom-tier vice president shenanigans, literal drunk history.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.8 (before 1940)

685 BCE – Spring and Autumn period: Battle of Qianshi: Upon the death of the previous Duke of Qi, Gongsun Wuzhi, Duke Zhuang of Lu sends an army into the Duchy of Qi to install the exiled Qi prince Gongzi Jiu as the new Duke of Qi — but is defeated at Qianshi by Jiu’s brother and rival claimant, the newly inaugurated Duke Huan of Qi. 870 – Treaty of Meerssen: King Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald partition the Middle Frankish Kingdom into two larger east and west divisions. 1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. 1264 – Mudéjar revolt: Muslim rebel forces took the Alcázar of Jerez de la Frontera after defeating the Castilian garrison. 1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1509 – Krishnadeva Raya is crowned Emperor of Vijayanagara at Chittoor. 1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven. 1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. 1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines: The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England. 1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill: English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces. 1648 – Mehmed IV (1648–1687) succeeds Ibrahim I (1640–1648) as Ottoman sultan. 1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal. 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard. 1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska. 1831 – Four hundred Shawnee people agree to relinquish their lands in Ohio in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Wapakoneta. 1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). 1863 – American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt). 1863 – Tennessee Military Governor Andrew Johnson frees his personal slaves in Greeneville, Tennessee despite them being exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation, now commemorated as Emancipation Day in the state. 1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania. 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph. 1903 – Black Saturday occurs, killing 12 in a stadium collapse in Philadelphia. 1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight. 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous Allied victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive). 1919 – The Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 is signed. It establishes peaceful relations between Afghanistan and the UK, and confirms the Durand line as the mutual border. In return, the UK is no longer obligated to subsidize the Afghan government. 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.