You had to know I couldn’t let that pass.
The second I saw Teddy in the “Near Great” category and White House Ethics Villain Woodrow Wilson in the “Great” category (along with Andy), I immediately knew the source. It was a late 1940s assessment by Democratic hack historian (and Kennedy shill) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. It even used the same pictures. Oh, someone cut and pasted Clinton’s face in there, but no Truman? No JFK? No Ike? No Reagan? No Obama? Literally no historian today dares to rank Wilson, an open, virulent racist, as “great,” but that was typical through the 1960s. Similarly, Jackson, though a Democrat and presumed great in the overwhelmingly left-leaning history departments has been cancelled since they started focusing on Old Hickory’s treatment of Native Americans. (Jackson was still a great President.) I know the point was the joke of putting Trump on top, but this was lazy and irresponsible execution by whatever staffer prepared it.
The one thing that puzzles me is how John Adams ended up in the “Near Great” tier. Even back when people took Schlesinger seriously, nobody, literally nobody, claimed Adams’s single term was anything but a disaster.
As for the silly thing in general, I know Trump does this stuff to annoy the people who hate him, but acting like a 12-year-old really does nobody any good, not Trump, not his party, not the country. In addition to making the Trump Deranged more crazy than they already are, such stunts make rational people question his judgment, not to mention his prudence and political skills.
But enough of that.
Let’s have a lively open forum this week. Last week’s was a dud.
Ethics Alarms 
Lake America troll ranks up there.
That is what I initially thought when I saw the headline.
A question related to Canada though, why has Canada set their country on fire every summer for the last 3 years. I don’t think it ever happened before, but now it is annual. Shouldn’t they get fined for air pollution? I think Michiganders would support an invasion and takeover of Canada to stop it.
Are you serious?
Which part. My family members couldn’t open a window for about a month this summer because of the continual smoke. Three years ago, I drove home from Michigan and the smoke was constant until I got to Springfield Missouri.
Something needs to be done to stop this.
I’m a bit surprised Canada hasn’t outlawed new trees and cut all existing trees down to prevent fires. There should be more discussion around common-sense tree control.
Ok, that didn’t really contribute much to the conversation…
You aren’t far off. Nova Scotia banned people from being in the woods. Even private property was restricted. Guests to your house were not allowed to enter any wooded land on your property. Despite these draconian measures, the forest fires continue to increase out of control.
Despite extremely high temperatures and drought in my state, our fires have been mostly normal and kept under control.
Canada (and the Canadians dwelling therein) pose a threat to our great nation. Are Canadians dangerous? The answer is yes! Do not be fooled by their apologetic, self-effacing manners.
Let’s just consider the evidence.
First, they master our language
Second, they mass on our northern border
Third, they’ve burned the White House once already. As any criminal investigator knows, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
The only question: How to manage what we in Great Upstate refer to as “The Canadian Problem”??
Yours in vigilance,
charles w abbott
rochester NY
I like the fact that all the “No Kings’ assholes are siding with Canada…which is officially governed by a king.
It gets better, because historically and analytically, ramshackle and mediocre monarchies seem to be no worse, and often better, than your garden variety republic. The typical republic is often more unstable and tyrannical. The Arab world provides good data. The case can be made, at any rate.
Long ago Samuel Huntington made the general point in _Political Order in changing societies_.
You might even be able to make the case simply with an appeal to Aristotle and what he said about “Mixed” government systems.
did you steal this from the movie, Canadian Bacon?
sounds vaguely familiar.
-Jut
It certainly could be in a movie. The movie you mention is not one I’m familiar with.
My understanding of the “Canadian Menace” comes from friendly “bar talk” or tavern talk about 30 years ago with colleagues, one of whom is Canadian.
As a form of political analysis, it could described as
stammtischpolitik.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
We could destroy them by consuming vital resources. Namely, we should all “Drink Canada Dry!”.
I agree. It’s silly. I’m too lazy to change names now. It’s Mount McKinley, it’s the Gulf of Mexico, it’s Lake Ontario.
It’s still the Hoosier Dome, too, even though it doesn’t exist anymore.
Gulf of America is the least problematic. May not even be problematic.
Unnecessary probably.
Is renaming the Strait of Hormuz to the Straight of America on the horizon? How do we get this on Polymarket. Trump trolls the left in America with these renamings but would he go so far as to troll Iran the same way?
Sometimes something comes up on my youtube feed that I find questionable. In Chris Hanse’s “Takedown” the perpetrator is forced to sit for an interview with Chris Hansen, who lets them think for the first several minutes that he’s law enforcement and not a journalist, and that they are going to be on television. Although I think suspects should be arrested for going to meet who they think is a minor for sex, I don’t see why they should be forced by the police to sit and be interviewed by a journalist. Especially when the circumstances suggest that that journalist is one of the authorities and there are hidden cameras intended for national broadcast. Note: I’m not defending the suspects; I’m just questioning the ethics of the forced-yet-disguised national media interviews.
I wrote a lot about that stuff at the time. Search for “Chris Hansen.” Absolutely unethical.
I don’t disagree. It sounds like entrapment to me.
In fact, one of my clients ended up on that show because he had agreed to meet up with a “teenage girl” for extracurricular activities, some of which included tutoring in biology, to be propelled by wine coolers and hard seltzers. His wife was not pleased when some of her friends saw the husband on the show and told her about it – he simply forgot to tell her that had a little legal problem that might require the services of an experienced criminal lawyer. I represented them in a separate matter but when I mentioned the situation to my long-suffering wife, she rolled her eyes and asked, “he’s still alive? Huh.”
I wondered, though, why he couldn’t assert a defense that a crime was not committed because the supposed target of the text exchange was not a minor but a 35 year old guy masquerading as a 15 year old girl and the supposed minor he met at the house was, in fact, a twenty-eight year woman speaking in a higher than normal voice. His defense lawyer had not considered that angle.
jvb
The entrapment angle is no doubt an interesting and controversial one. However, my original concern targets the police-enabled, deceptively framed media confrontation—not the legality or ethics of the underlying online decoy stings themselves. In fact, the police seem to force the media confrontation under very unclear circumstances. I think that is very unethical and I’m surprised it’s allowed to continue. Regarding the decoys, I think they’re trained to not initiate anything. But they do provide a fictitious temptation. Decoys have been used in police work for a long time, including having plainclothes police women walking the streets alone at night to provide targets for rapists. Do online decoys cross the line? I don’t know. But when the cops make a person sit through a national media interview — let alone without telling them what it is — is so far across any ethical line I can think of.
Some of these things sounds a bit like “precrime” to me and borderline or outright entrapment.
We really should do things we legally can to help protect those that are uniquely vulnerable, like children; however, lawmakers, the justice system, and the police need to be very careful when it comes to turning “precrime” into something that is prosecutable. Might be a very slippery slope.
It was Schlesinger Sr. who did the 1948 poll that ranked the presidents that Trump used for his post.
Thanks. My old book with Jr.’s list is almost exactly the same. But a Schlesinger by any other name….
Soon, it will be the twenty-fifth anniversary (hardly seems like the right word) of 9/11, the day on which more Americans were killed on a single day since Antietam. And who’s the mayor of New York City? The Ugandan born son of a Muslim, “post-colonial academic,” that’s who. Why did Osama Bin Laden bother with the whole plan? All he had to do was get Islamists appointed to professorships with green cards and others elected to Congress, the Senate and other top posts. Do you hate America? Come on in!
We are a nation of idiotic suckers.
Couldn’t have said it better.