Speaking Of Presidents

As God is my witness I thought caulking the reflecting pool would work https://t.co/jidKjIlmSA

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 4, 2026

 

If not that, how about the new golf course on the Potomac, or the now renamed former Kennedy Center, or the Ballroom, or the triumphal arch, or what about the Trump branded crypto currency - $Trump (I kid you not)?  Can they do the trick? THC, writing in August 2022:

If Trump wins in 2024, we will get a lot more of the bad and a lot less of the good.  He is focused on revenge.  He still shows no interest in the nuts and bolts of governance needed to address the serious issues we face.  He still has terrible judgment in the people he hires, and now that he's established a reputation as a terrible and untrustworthy boss, the types of people still willing to work for him are of the worst capability and character.  He'll be a 78 year old guy, set in his ways, with declining mental abilities.  Sound familiar?  The damage he will do to the issues I care about is incalculable.  

Donald Trump is a malignant force in American politics.

And now we have the new Tucker Carlson endorsed Muslim Brotherhood senator from Michigan, who wears tight fitting T-shirts while keeping his wife wrapped up like something out of The Handmaid's Tale, and the new dumb senator from Maine who told his female opponent to "shut up" and refused to apologize. 

I'm kind of confused at this point.  I think I've entered the phase of "she thinks I'm crazy, but I'm just growing old".

With The Soon To Be President

 

On this date in 1960 I stood with my mother a few feet from Senator John F Kennedy as he gave a campaign speech at the train station in Bridgeport CT to an estimated 6,000 people two days before the presidential election.  At the time my mother was very active in Democratic Party politics in the state and so we were able to get close to the candidate.  The tall man to the right of JFK in the photo is Governor Abe Ribicoff.  We were just a few feet further to Ribicoff's right.

I distinctly remember JFK making that pointing gesture.  Don't remember much of the substance of his speech, other than he spoke about the missile gap (which it turned out didn't exist) and the need to be tough on the commies.  Things have changed.

It was a beautiful fall day.  Because we were standing in the group next to JFK, I had a clear view of the crowd which was very enthusiastic and I remember being puzzled about the teenage girls in front jumping up and down screaming when JFK came to the podium.  The next time I saw something like that was in February 1964 when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.  

I didn't know what "charisma" meant at the time but realized JFK had that "thing", cutting a very impressive figure to the nine year old me.

The reason JFK was in Bridgeport only two days before the election was Connecticut's status as a swing state back in those days (another thing that's changed). Kennedy carried the state with nearly 54% of the vote, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had done so since 1944, though he lost Fairfield County, where we lived and where Bridgeport was located, receiving only 47% of the vote.  My parents were invited to the Inaugural Ball but did not attend.

The Good Old Days

Every once in a while this nonsense pops up on my social media feed.  Here's Charles Mann's (1) response.

 

 

The average 1910 home was <1000 sq ft, water-borne disease caused ~10% of US deaths, most Americans couldn't afford steak (they ate boiling beef, salt pork, sausages, mutton, organ meat, etc), a big % of food was non-local and transported by trains, pkg'd food was exploding...

— 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 (@CharlesCMann) November 5, 2026

He adds:

"people were skinny but not healthy--malnutrition was widespread, millions had chronic, low-grade infections and parasites (e.g., hookworm), average heights were 2-3" shorter than now or more, infant mortality was high, average life expectancy was 50 yrs, etc., etc."

Also, read The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann.

 

It's also true that for some Americans, mostly black, this was not a possible life.  No antibiotics, and for those homes without electricity, women spent their days keeping stoves hot and doing washing.  For the transformational aspect of electrification read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, the man who brought electrification to the Texas Hill Country in the 1930s.

Along the same lines, for those of us who grew up in the newly established suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s our idea of "normal" is actually quite "abnormal" viewed in the full span of American history.  The widespread prosperity of those times was unthinkable in earlier eras and other aspects unthinkable today.

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(1)  THC highly recommends Mann's books 1491 and 1493 on the pre- and post-Columbus western hemisphere.