worst President ever?

I think the comparison to Jackson is apt, and illustrates that one can't
really compare. I mean, AFAIK, Jackson was the main leader responsible
for wiping out the Native Americans. If you want a comparison to Hitler,
that's it. . (in fact, I think Hitler studies Jackson's methods).

But of course, it's hard to compare. . because Presidents are more
restricted in the "evil" that they can do now (believe it or not). I
mean, even the invasion of Iraq, horrific as it's been, think of what
it would have been like with 1800's moral standards: we probably just
would have nuked them (given the technology), and the word "Empire", I
believe was uttered proudly by leaders well into the 20th-century. Even
the Bush people at least "pretend" they're not interested in that. (which
means they know that as far as the general public is concerned, it's now a
dirty word. . .something that wasn't true in the 1800's) And
they certainly didn't have any notion of trying to avoid civilian
casualties, with "laser-guided munitions" and what not.

So Bush is probably better than other "worst" Presidents, simply because
he's not allowed to be as bad, even with all of the massive
corruption, lying, imperial thinking, and so on that goes on.

Again, just imagine what things would have been like with a Bush-like guy
in the 1800's---not that things aren't bad now, and not that we shouldn't
be fighting them now (far from that !)---but it's a testament, certainly
not to Bush and his crew, but to the centuries of hard-fought social and
political struggle that put laws into place and raised public awareness
such that there are some things that Bush and crew still (though for how
long?) can't get away with.

hi Chris and Carl,

(Carl, thanks for posting that article about Jackson.)

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Bailey <chris@m...>
wrote:

> I think the comparison to Jackson is apt,

one might think so, because the electoral shenanigans
seem comparable -- but they're not.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, ***STOLE*** the 2000 election.

please read that again.

Bush did *not* win the popular vote in that election
(Gore did), and the only reason Bush won the electoral
votes he needed in Florida was because he and his cronies
BROKE THE LAW by preventing thousands of legally
registered Florida voters from voting, and also by
counting duplicate absentee ballots twice.

once all the votes were finally counted, long after the
Supreme Court invalidated the process and installed
Bush as "President", it was clear that Gore won the
popular vote in the entire country, but he did *not*
win Florida, whose 25 electoral votes put Bush ahead
of Gore by 5 electoral votes ... but there were some
very ugly tricks W and his buddies pulled to successfully
prevent many Florida democrats from voting.
(more on that below ... )

for the states which Gore won by more than 1% of
the popular vote (ranked according to ratio of
Gore/Bush votes: DC, RI, MA, NY, HI, CT, MD, NJ,
DE, CA, IL, VT, WA, ME, MI, PA, MN), Gore won
236 electoral votes.

for the states which Bush won by more than 1% of
the popular vote (ranked according to ratio of
Bush/Gore votes: UT, WY, ID, AK, NE, ND, MT, SD,
OK, TX, KS, MS, SC, IN, KY, AL, NC, GA, CO, VA, LA,
AZ, WV, AR, TN, NV, OH, MO, NH), Bush won 246
electoral votes.

the "close" states which Gore won, by less than
0.5% of the popular vote (OR, IA, WI, NM, winning by
6765, 4144, 5708, and 366 actual votes, respectively),
earned Gore another 30 electoral votes, putting his
total at 266.

the only other "close" state was Florida, which
Bush ultimately won by only 537 votes -- which is
LESS THAN 1/100 OF A PERCENT OF FLORIDA VOTES CAST
-- and which gave Bush the 25 electoral votes he
needed to beat Gore.

all the data is available at the Federal Election Commission's
official government webpage:

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm

yes, most of this does sound a lot like Jackson ... but
as i said, the Bush campaign ILLEGALLY managed to remove
voters from the rolls. details below.

> So Bush is probably better than other "worst" Presidents,
> simply because he's not allowed to be as bad, even with
> all of the massive corruption, lying, imperial thinking,
> and so on that goes on.
>
> Again, just imagine what things would have been like with
> a Bush-like guy in the 1800's---not that things aren't bad
> now, and not that we shouldn't be fighting them now (far
> from that !)---but it's a testament, certainly not to Bush
> and his crew, but to the centuries of hard-fought social
> and political struggle that put laws into place and raised
> public awareness such that there are some things that Bush
> and crew still (though for how long?) can't get away with.

Chris, you say truthful things here ... but do you really
read the news? watching TV news (even CNN) doesn't count.

from the first webpage i cite below: "In Florida, felons
are banned for life from voting unless granted clemency."

The Bush gang took advantage of the fact that Jeb Bush was
governor of Florida, which made it easier to abuse (note:
i did not say "exploit") that law -- thousands of Floridians
who were legally registered to vote had been removed from
the polls *without their prior knowledge* because they
shared a name or birthday with a convicted felon. they
didn't find out until they showed up at the polling place
to vote and were turned away.

and the second website i cite below notes that voting
irrelugarities were documented in about a dozen other
states besides Florida.

the US 2000 Presidential "election" was nothing other than
a bloodless coup d'etat.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0527-03.htm

http://www.naacp.org/news/archives/2000/florida_irregularities.shtml

i also highly recommend the first chapter of Michael Moore's
book _Stupid White Men_, which documents the sordid tale
in detail.

-monz

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@a...> wrote:

> <snip>
>
> Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, ***STOLE*** the 2000 election.
>
> <snip>
>
> for the states which Gore won by more than 1% of
> the popular vote (ranked according to ratio of
> Gore/Bush votes: DC, RI, MA, NY, HI, CT, MD, NJ,
> DE, CA, IL, VT, WA, ME, MI, PA, MN), Gore won
> 236 electoral votes.
>
> for the states which Bush won by more than 1% of
> the popular vote (ranked according to ratio of
> Bush/Gore votes: UT, WY, ID, AK, NE, ND, MT, SD,
> OK, TX, KS, MS, SC, IN, KY, AL, NC, GA, CO, VA, LA,
> AZ, WV, AR, TN, NV, OH, MO, NH), Bush won 246
> electoral votes.
>
> the "close" states which Gore won, by less than
> 0.5% of the popular vote (OR, IA, WI, NM, winning by
> 6765, 4144, 5708, and 366 actual votes, respectively),
> earned Gore another 30 electoral votes, putting his
> total at 266.
>
> the only other "close" state was Florida, which
> Bush ultimately won by only 537 votes -- which is
> LESS THAN 1/100 OF A PERCENT OF FLORIDA VOTES CAST
> -- and which gave Bush the 25 electoral votes he
> needed to beat Gore.

all this and more can be seen on graphs in a nice
Excel spreadsheet i made from the official government
data -- it's in the "monz" folder in the "files"
section of this list:

/metatuning/files/monz/2
000-presidential-election.xls

or

http://tinyurl.com/2nscc

-monz