I’m now feeling deeply uncomfortable as a Democrat who feels very strongly that Echo & the Bunnymen was indeed the greatest band of all time. Goddammit Trump.
And here I’d gone all in on the betting site 19thCenturyPresidentFans[dot]com that Trump was going to be yanking it to Rutherford B. Hayes (“What a tremendous job he did, a Republican who ended Reconstruction. Just tremendous.”).
Ha! It looks like I’m a fan of bitchy tariff jokes. Who knew?
Also: who do I need to kill to get rid of the new “AI decided what you probably really meant to say” style of autocorrect? I had to go back and rewrite that tiny 13 word starting paragraph twice because autocorrect first decided that I couldn’t have meant “tariff” because I’m too dumb, I guess, and I must have wanted to type “terrific”. Then it decided that, if I AM talking about tariffs, I must have meant to write “tariff hikes” and not “tariff jokes”. Just because.
How long before autocorrect just decides certain topics are forbidden and rewrites whole paragraphs in the milliseconds between when you stop typing and hit the submit button?
"What the hell, how did my essay about William Howard Taft turn into a glowing, 5-star review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3?"
Remember when conservatives freaked out about progressives renaming schools and said it was a colossal waste of the school boards' valuable time and resources? Apparently renaming mountains and bodies of water is super important, though, huh?
(Not that it matters, but I also thought that renaming schools was absolutely a waste of time. It's just the hypocrisy that kills me).
Theodore Roosevelt was a big conservationist and created a ton of national parks, national monuments and national forests. I don’t think that part was mixing him up with FDR.
Huh…I thought for sure he had to be referring to the New Deal (“dams” has to be the WPA, right?), but your point about “parks” now makes me not so sure. Though if he means TR or is conflating the two, he’s wrong in a different way, because the deficit did not increase under Teddy Roosevelt.
He is probably wrong in a different way. Dams . . . Well see below from the National Park Service website:
One of the original five federal projects authorized on March 13, 1903, under the Reclamation or Newlands Act of 1902, Roosevelt Dam was the first major project to be completed under the new federal reclamation program. This, the world's highest masonry dam, was started in 1906 and completed in 1911. The beginning of federal production of electric power occurred at Roosevelt Dam when Congress, in 1906, authorized the Reclamation Service to develop and sell hydroelectric power at the Salt River Project.
A fun tidbit about the Reclamation service: one of their first major dam projects was in Yuma, Arizona. They sent engineers to study irrigation in India for 6 months because Indians had a ton of irrigation practices in river valleys. They learned a lot and honored the contribution of Indian engineers by carving a religious symbol into the dam and even using it as the Reclamation service's flag for a few years. The symbol was, unfortunately, the swastika.
If you had to bet your life savings on the statement "Trump has a nuanced understanding of presidential history", would you?
This is what happens every time he makes a statement. The rest of us have to turn into syntactic sleuths to try to figure out if he has any fucking clue what he's talking about. And that's a bad place to be when the guy is supposed to be running the country.
Not to be mistaken for a defense of Trump — I agree with Jeff’s sentiments entirely — but the reference to dams can and probably does mean Teddy Roosevelt.
Thanks. In my post on the subject, I mentioned that the ironic thing about the McKinley Tariff of 1890 is that it raised prices so high that it caused the Republicans to lose the White House in 1892. IMHO, the Republican high tariffs (amongst other things) left the economy in such bad shape that the Democrats were saddled with the Panic of 1893. The economy couldn’t be fixed in time for the Election of 1896. You could say that the McKinley Tariffs ruined 2 Presidencies. But in the end the beneficiary of the bad tariff policy was McKinley himself, who was elected President in 1896.
we need to get trump on the U.S. Grant train so we can finish rehabilitating the legacy of one of our greatest leaders. Get him to put up some statues of when Grant stopped Lee's army after, as trump explained, Lee let his army fight uphill me boys.
Nah, Grant was a drunk and Trump, famously a teetotaler, wouldn’t get behind that. Of course, there’s that possibly apocryphal story that, after someone complained to Lincoln that General Grant was a drunk and shouldn’t be in charge of the Army, Lincoln supposedly said, “well, find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel to the rest of the generals.”
I recommend Chernow's biography of Grant, as if turns out the drinking allegations during the civil war were mostly made up by people who were trying to take Grants job and knew he had been a drunk when isolated and bored in California military posts in the 1850s. He was an alcoholic but he essentially defeated it by the civil war and never drank around his wife or close friends as president.
Of all the stuff Trump justly takes a hammering for, the Andrew Jackson thing isn't one.
"‘I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.”' - Trump
"The tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question." - Jackson in 1833, a quote Trump clearly read at some point.
So Andrew Jackson did see what was happening 'with regard to' the Civil War. Considering that Jackson threatened to invade his own home state and behead its senior senator for treason, I think there is some reason to think that if he'd been around 'a little later' things would indeed have gone quite differently.
Actually, I think Trump glanced at a copy of Karl Rove’s weird hagiography, "The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters" (2015), and thought it was gospel. I’d be surprised if he read more than the cover blurb.
But tariffs reduce real income, not rise it??? Now they do stick it to those raw materials exporting (Democratic at McKinley's time) states, so That'll show YOU Nebraska and Iowa and Kansas and energy exporting states.
If Trump promises to make the Federal government as small by percentage of the economy as it was in McKinleys term, I am all for it. He should adopt the thinking of the man in full or not at all.
Renaming of Mount McKinley. (a) President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights. He was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success, and he should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness.
In 1917, the country officially honored President McKinley through the naming of North America’s highest peak. Yet after nearly a century, President Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice.
This order honors President McKinley for giving his life for our great Nation and dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.
(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall, consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f, reinstate the name “Mount McKinley.” The Secretary shall subsequently update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to reflect the renaming and reinstatement of Mount McKinley. The national park area surrounding Mount McKinley shall retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve.
Trump is like a six year old who learns a fun fact about a dinosaur and then goes on to make it his whole personality.
I’m now feeling deeply uncomfortable as a Democrat who feels very strongly that Echo & the Bunnymen was indeed the greatest band of all time. Goddammit Trump.
I was about to post that exact message. This could be a movement.....
I'll go with a squish position: "Lips Like Sugar" is one of the catchiest songs of all time.
Hey, you came in right on cue!
I have to admit that sparked a strong desire to pull out "Bring On the Dancing Horses"...
Came here to say the exact same thing.
And here I’d gone all in on the betting site 19thCenturyPresidentFans[dot]com that Trump was going to be yanking it to Rutherford B. Hayes (“What a tremendous job he did, a Republican who ended Reconstruction. Just tremendous.”).
Ha! It looks like I’m a fan of bitchy tariff jokes. Who knew?
Also: who do I need to kill to get rid of the new “AI decided what you probably really meant to say” style of autocorrect? I had to go back and rewrite that tiny 13 word starting paragraph twice because autocorrect first decided that I couldn’t have meant “tariff” because I’m too dumb, I guess, and I must have wanted to type “terrific”. Then it decided that, if I AM talking about tariffs, I must have meant to write “tariff hikes” and not “tariff jokes”. Just because.
How long before people start to give up the effort, and just let autocorrect decide for them what they want to say?
How long before autocorrect just decides certain topics are forbidden and rewrites whole paragraphs in the milliseconds between when you stop typing and hit the submit button?
"What the hell, how did my essay about William Howard Taft turn into a glowing, 5-star review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3?"
Agree on the "it will remain funny until something awful happens" part.
Remember when conservatives freaked out about progressives renaming schools and said it was a colossal waste of the school boards' valuable time and resources? Apparently renaming mountains and bodies of water is super important, though, huh?
(Not that it matters, but I also thought that renaming schools was absolutely a waste of time. It's just the hypocrisy that kills me).
Theodore Roosevelt was a big conservationist and created a ton of national parks, national monuments and national forests. I don’t think that part was mixing him up with FDR.
Huh…I thought for sure he had to be referring to the New Deal (“dams” has to be the WPA, right?), but your point about “parks” now makes me not so sure. Though if he means TR or is conflating the two, he’s wrong in a different way, because the deficit did not increase under Teddy Roosevelt.
He is probably wrong in a different way. Dams . . . Well see below from the National Park Service website:
One of the original five federal projects authorized on March 13, 1903, under the Reclamation or Newlands Act of 1902, Roosevelt Dam was the first major project to be completed under the new federal reclamation program. This, the world's highest masonry dam, was started in 1906 and completed in 1911. The beginning of federal production of electric power occurred at Roosevelt Dam when Congress, in 1906, authorized the Reclamation Service to develop and sell hydroelectric power at the Salt River Project.
A fun tidbit about the Reclamation service: one of their first major dam projects was in Yuma, Arizona. They sent engineers to study irrigation in India for 6 months because Indians had a ton of irrigation practices in river valleys. They learned a lot and honored the contribution of Indian engineers by carving a religious symbol into the dam and even using it as the Reclamation service's flag for a few years. The symbol was, unfortunately, the swastika.
If you had to bet your life savings on the statement "Trump has a nuanced understanding of presidential history", would you?
This is what happens every time he makes a statement. The rest of us have to turn into syntactic sleuths to try to figure out if he has any fucking clue what he's talking about. And that's a bad place to be when the guy is supposed to be running the country.
The “dams” can only be referring to FDR though, meaning Trump actually does think the two Roosevelts are the same person.
Not to be mistaken for a defense of Trump — I agree with Jeff’s sentiments entirely — but the reference to dams can and probably does mean Teddy Roosevelt.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/roosevelt-dam.htm#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20original%20five,1906%20and%20completed%20in%201911.
Thanks. In my post on the subject, I mentioned that the ironic thing about the McKinley Tariff of 1890 is that it raised prices so high that it caused the Republicans to lose the White House in 1892. IMHO, the Republican high tariffs (amongst other things) left the economy in such bad shape that the Democrats were saddled with the Panic of 1893. The economy couldn’t be fixed in time for the Election of 1896. You could say that the McKinley Tariffs ruined 2 Presidencies. But in the end the beneficiary of the bad tariff policy was McKinley himself, who was elected President in 1896.
we need to get trump on the U.S. Grant train so we can finish rehabilitating the legacy of one of our greatest leaders. Get him to put up some statues of when Grant stopped Lee's army after, as trump explained, Lee let his army fight uphill me boys.
Nah, Grant was a drunk and Trump, famously a teetotaler, wouldn’t get behind that. Of course, there’s that possibly apocryphal story that, after someone complained to Lincoln that General Grant was a drunk and shouldn’t be in charge of the Army, Lincoln supposedly said, “well, find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel to the rest of the generals.”
I recommend Chernow's biography of Grant, as if turns out the drinking allegations during the civil war were mostly made up by people who were trying to take Grants job and knew he had been a drunk when isolated and bored in California military posts in the 1850s. He was an alcoholic but he essentially defeated it by the civil war and never drank around his wife or close friends as president.
Ooh, I haven’t read a good biography in a while; I’ll check this out, thanks!
Of all the stuff Trump justly takes a hammering for, the Andrew Jackson thing isn't one.
"‘I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.”' - Trump
"The tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question." - Jackson in 1833, a quote Trump clearly read at some point.
So Andrew Jackson did see what was happening 'with regard to' the Civil War. Considering that Jackson threatened to invade his own home state and behead its senior senator for treason, I think there is some reason to think that if he'd been around 'a little later' things would indeed have gone quite differently.
You got summit against the bunnymen there fella?
Actually, I think Trump glanced at a copy of Karl Rove’s weird hagiography, "The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters" (2015), and thought it was gospel. I’d be surprised if he read more than the cover blurb.
But tariffs reduce real income, not rise it??? Now they do stick it to those raw materials exporting (Democratic at McKinley's time) states, so That'll show YOU Nebraska and Iowa and Kansas and energy exporting states.
If Trump promises to make the Federal government as small by percentage of the economy as it was in McKinleys term, I am all for it. He should adopt the thinking of the man in full or not at all.
I mean, he also issued an executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-names-that-honor-american-greatness/) renaming Mount Mckinley (amongst other things)
Renaming of Mount McKinley. (a) President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights. He was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success, and he should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness.
In 1917, the country officially honored President McKinley through the naming of North America’s highest peak. Yet after nearly a century, President Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice.
This order honors President McKinley for giving his life for our great Nation and dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.
(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall, consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f, reinstate the name “Mount McKinley.” The Secretary shall subsequently update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to reflect the renaming and reinstatement of Mount McKinley. The national park area surrounding Mount McKinley shall retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve.
That's Trump, addressing the kitchen-table problems.
Will GMC also have to change the name of their Denali option to McKinley? It would make sense, I guess.