World War II

Three Longest Economic Expansions Since World War II Under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson

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A fact often not acknowledged is that the three longest economic expansions in American history took place under Democratic Presidents.

The longest was under President Bill Clinton, with the expansion beginning under Republican George H. W. Bush in March 1991, but the expansion lasting until March 2001, a total of 120 months or 10 years, so the vast majority under Clinton.

The second longest is from 2009 to the present, nearly nine years recovery from the Great Recession, begun in late 2009 under Barack Obama, and continuing under Donald Trump.

Obama came into the worst economic situation since Franklin D. Roosevelt, succeeding Herbert Hoover at the worst moments of the Great Depression in 1933.

Donald Trump loves to brag how great the economy has been under him, without giving credit to his predecessor for the nearly seven and a half years of economic expansion that preceded Trump taking the oath, arguably the best inheritance ever in American history.

The third longest expansion was from 1961 to 1969, 106 months, which has just been surpassed now in 2018. It began under John F. Kennedy in February 1961, continued all the way through the term of Lyndon B. Johnson, and ended in December 1969 under Republican Richard Nixon.

Add the fact that nine of the last ten economic recessions occurred under Republican Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and it is clear the nation has benefited much greater economically from Democratic administrations than from Republican administrations.

Presidents Without Prior Elected Occupation

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A total of 6 Presidents have been elected without any prior elected position in government.

Three of them had careers in the military:

Zachary Taylor who was a Major General in the US Army, and served in, and became famous in the Mexican War of 1846-1848, and was elected President in 1848.

Ulysses S. Grant, who was a General in the Civil War, gained the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to end the war, and was elected President in 1868.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was General of the Army during World War II, and planned the D-Day invasion on France on June 6, 1944, and was elected President in 1952.

Two other Presidents had appointed experience in the US government as Cabinet Officers before they were elected President:

William Howard Taft, who served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt, and was elected President in 1908.

Herbert Hoover, who served as Secretary of Commerce under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and was elected President in 1928.

And then, finally, there is Donald Trump, in a category by himself, as Chairman of the Trump Organization, his whole career in real estate, and also a reality star on television, a public figure for decades, but never holding office in any form by election or appointment, or by military service, but elected President in 2016.

America In World Affairs Since First World War Entrance 101 Years Ago!

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America has been actively engaged in world affairs now for a century, finally abandoning isolationism in the first week of April 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson delivered a war message to Congress on April 2, followed by four days of heated debate, and then a declaration of war on April 6.

While America reverted to isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s, it failed, and once we entered World War II, the die was cast that we would always play a major role in world affairs, but not without controversy.

Since World War II, America has engaged in five wars–Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq, with none of those wars leading to victory, although at least, the boundary line in the Korean War was restored by 1953.

But we lost in Vietnam, and have not accomplished our goals in Afghanistan and Iraq, although the brief Persian Gulf War was won in six weeks, but the problem of Saddam Hussein reared its ugly head a decade later.

We have also been involved in many invasions, unofficial interventions, and many cases where we had troops without the knowledge of the American people, and often even leaders of Congress.

Secret wars have gone on and are going on right now, and under Donald Trump, we might very well end up sending troops to North Asia to fight North Korea and to the Middle East to fight Iran.

We now have the most militaristic government without any controls under Donald Trump, with his top aides now being extremely militaristic and warlike.

And war will likely reinforce the Trump supporters, and could, conceivably, cause public opinion gains that could help the Republicans keep control of Congress, and keep the White House in Republican hands in 2020!

We are at a very delicate time, with instability of our nation’s relationship with our allies around the world, and his “bromance” with Russia and Vladimir Putin, along with Trump’s “tariff wars” likely to provoke one crisis after another.

This is our situation as the 101st anniversary of our engagement in World War I is upon us three days from now!

88 Months of Job Growth, All Time Record, So Future Is Economic Recession, Just A Question Of When And How Severe

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America has experienced 88 months of job growth and an improving economy, an all time record, so the future is economic recession, with the only question being when and how severe it will be.

It is like gravity, in that what goes up must come down, and Donald Trump has been bragging as if he created the economic growth, when it was the contribution of Barack Obama, who was overseer over the greatest economic recovery in American history, and without war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt is credited with helping to solve the Great Depression in the 1930s, but it took until war spending for World War II for the recovery to be totally successful, while Obama avoided a major war, and created the economic conditions that now Trump is making it as if he did it all by himself in the past year.

Trump came into office with a great economy, while Obama came in at the worst time since Herbert Hoover, and had to deal with what we call the Great Recession.

As I write this, the stock market has had its two worst days in two years, losing 666 points on Friday, and 1175 on Monday, making for the greatest two day loss in stock market history. The market actually went down 1579 before it revived to 1175 by the close of trading. So it went down in the past two days by 1840, a total of seven percent of the stock market.

It will be interesting to see how Donald Trump reacts to this, since he loves to give himself credit for the improvement in the stock market, even though it was steadily rising under Barack Obama, who he will never give credit to on anything.

if the economy falters, Trump will lose a lot of his supporters, and his public opinion polls will collapse into the 20s instead of the low to mid 30s where it is right now.

The American Presidency And Racism Nothing New, But Donald Trump’s Comment Way Beyond The Pale, And Should Force His Resignation!

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The American Presidency and racism is nothing new, but Donald Trump’s comment about Haiti and the continent of Africa being a “shit hole” is way beyond the pale, and should force his resignation as a moral and ethical disgrace!

We know that nine of the first 12 Presidents were slave owners.

We know that Andrew Jackson slaughtered native Americans, and forced thousands to Oklahoma, the disgraceful “Trail of Tears”, and condemned abolitionists and worked to prevent their literature from going through the US Mail.

We know that John Tyler and James K. Polk worked to expand slavery territory.

We know that Andrew Johnson was a white supremacist in a disgraceful way.

We know that Theodore Roosevelt was critical of the mass migration of Catholics and Jews (the “New Immigration”) to America, and did not care about racial discrimination in the South.

We know that Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist, who segregated the nation’s capital by executive order and refused to give any honors for military service to African Americans, and looked at Japan and China as inferior nations.

We know that Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to take adequate action against the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews and others in World War II, and failed to move against racial discrimination, although his wife Eleanor did speak up and take whatever actions she could, as First Lady.

We know that Richard Nixon was antisemitic, and said biased statements against Jews and African Americans on the Watergate Tapes, which were recorded in the Oval Office.

We know there were other actions by Presidents which showed reluctance or refusal to take action against racism and antisemitism.

But Donald Trump, by his public utterance yesterday, and so many other statements and actions before he became President, and since he became President, is the most vile racist of them all, including his wish to deport tens of thousands of Haitians, Salvadorans, and Hondurans, and his lack of concern about the horrible damage done to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands during the hurricane season.

For that, Donald Trump will go down as the bottom of the list of all of our Presidents, and we MUST work to get him out of office before he does much more damage beyond what he has done!

2017 Horrible Year Of Reversal, In Many Ways The Most Tragic Year For America Since 1968!

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In the past half century, since the tumultuous year of 1968, acknowledged by many scholars and experts as the most significant single year in American history since 1945 (the end of World War II), America has gone through much turmoil and tragedy. This includes Richard Nixon and Watergate; the end of the Vietnam War; the rise of terrorism in the 1990s, leading up to September 11, 2001; two other unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which finally has led to full employment and an economic revival after nearly ten years, but with many Americans left behind.

It has also been a fifty year period of much progess toward civil and human rights amid massive social change , with the Barack Obama years being seen as a positive time in so many ways.

But now, 2017 has revealed that we are in a dramatic retreat from much of the reform and change that has gone on since 1968, and the nation and the world are in total chaos and anarchy, due to the rise of a truly Fascist wannabe, Donald Trump, who has clearly stolen the Presidential election of 2016 and is in process of destroying all of the positive changes of the past 50 years.

Domestic and foreign policy, and constitutional law is in revolution, and 2018 will likely be a continuation of the nightmare of 2017, but with the hope that at least Donald Trump will be forced out of office in some manner, not yet clear.

But the likelihood that Vice President Mike Pence will become the 46th President sometime in 2018, bodes ill for the future, with his extreme right wing evangelical conservative beliefs, which would make him more conservative and extremist than even the most conservative Presidents of the past century, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.

So we who are progressives have a lot of work to do next year to attempt to bring America back from the brink of destruction perpetrated by a man who is the most evil President in American history; and a party which has tarnished the reputation historically of Abraham, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and so many others who proudly carried the Republican mantle in the past 150 years until now.

It is time for progressives to fight with all their energy and strength to return this nation to the great advancements promoted by a century of Presidents and Congresses from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Produced An Economic Miracle Without War, Better Than FDR, But Not Acknowledged By Donald Trump

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This blogger saw a headline on MSNBC yesterday, stating that the stock market was on an upward spiral for the 8th year in a row in 2017.

That is correct, and Donald Trump keeps on reminding us of that fact.

But what he and the cable station did not make clear with that headline, is that the stock market has been going up steadily since 2010, the second year of the Barack Obama Presidency.

Obama had SEVEN years of economic growth, and the stock market up went up more than 250 percent in those eight years, unmatched in American history.

Additionally, unemployment went from 10 percent when Obama came into office to under 5 percent when Obama left office, a truly magnificent accomplishment.

Obama had to deal with the Great Recession that occurred under George W. Bush, and he brought about a tremendous revival, greater than Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, which he inherited from Herbert Hoover. FDR needed the war spending on World War II in 1939-1940, before we entered that war in 1941, to fully revive the economy.

So Obama had a greater success than FDR, and without America going into or about to enter into a major war.

That is no mean feat, and yet, Donald Trump acts as if the great economy he inherited was all due to him, and refuses to give any credit to Barack Obama. Trump is extremely lucky to have had a good economy when he entered office, unlike FDR and Obama, but that makes what they accomplished, even more impressive.

So the facts are that Barack Obama produced an economic miracle, which will help him to rise in rankings of Presidents in the future, from the present Number 12 in the C Span Survey of Presidential Scholars in January 2017.

Donald Trump, The Laziest And Least Knowledgeable President Since 1900, If Not Before

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It is difficult to know for certain how hard working our Presidents from George Washington to William McKinley were, as available sources cannot often pinpoint the work habits of the 24 Presidents before 1900.

It is much easier to pinpoint the work habits of the 20 Presidents since 1901, from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump.

It is also clear that being President is a tough, challenging job, and one does not have to be President to understand that reality.

But then, we have Donald Trump, who has expressed surprise at how difficult and complex and time consuming the Presidency is.

After all, Donald Trump has never truly worked that hard in his life, and always has had an advantage over others by his wealth and connections.

It is now clear that despite the burdens of the Presidency, that Donald Trump is the laziest and least knowledgeable President since 1900, if not before, but also likely.

Historians make clear how hard working and time consuming most Presidents have found their job and its duties.

William Howard Taft, being the heaviest President, took long naps daily, which makes it seem as if he was lazy to some, but clearly, Taft had a good mind, and a history of legal experience. He later became the only President to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as well, and no one has ever accused Taft in his nine years on the Court as not taking his job seriously.

Warren G. Harding was poorly qualified for the Presidency, and did not really like the job, and that he spent a lot of time engaging in love affairs and drinking alcohol in a time of Prohibition. But despite his generally disastrous Presidency, he comes across as still less lazy and far more knowledgeable than Donald Trump, and certainly more goodhearted and considerate of others who worked with him, and with the general public.

Calvin Coolidge, who was not at all overweight, also took a lot of naps, but despite that, he seems to have asserted himself, and his work load seems activist. His napping maybe was a way to cope with the loss of his younger son, Calvin, Jr at age 16 in 1924, just as he was running for a full term, after succeeding to the Presidency upon the death of Harding in 1923.

Dwight D. Eisenhower liked to delegate authority, and avoid dealing with many issues in detail, and was far less interested in dealing personally with every issue. But no one could accuse him of being lazy and lacking in knowledge, although many criticized his love of golf as a hobby during the White House years. But we must remember his military brilliance in World War II at D Day, and realize he was very capable of being President.

Ronald Reagan also liked to delegate authority, and liked longer vacations, but still could not be accused of lacking knowledge, or being overly lazy. His staff and his wife, Nancy Reagan, promoted an activist Presidency, and Reagan comes across as an activist President. He knew how to communicate in a positive way with the American people.

George W. Bush took many long vacations on his ranch in Texas, and seemed often poorly informed. He leaned too much on his Vice President, Dick Cheney, in his first term, but in the second term, his attention to issues and his commitment to his job grew, even though the results in his Presidency were often disastrous.

Once one goes beyond these six Presidents named above, there is no question that the other Presidents were committed to the work ethic, and had broad knowledge of the major issues of their times.

This is particularly true of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, who all governed in complex times with challenging issues to deal with on a daily basis.

But equally true is the competence and commitment of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

Particularly “workaholic” Presidents would include TR, Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Obama.

On the other hand, Donald Trump has spent more time on “vacation” than any President, and has shown ignorance and lack of interest in the details of his job. He spends more time playing golf; is constantly on attack against his critics on Twitter; and he eats unhealthy foods and drinks twelve Diet Cokes daily.

The man loves the title and the pomp and circumstance of the Presidency, but is extremely disinterested in the details of the issues he must deal with in domestic and foreign policy, and clearly is the laziest President in modern times, if not the entire history of the Presidency. He has undermined both domestic and foreign policy in dangerous ways.

The conclusion is that Donald Trump is ill equipped to be President, and disgraces the reputation of the office every day. If earlier Presidents were able to come back from the next world, they would be shocked at what harm he has done to the Presidency in just one short year! Heads would be shaking, and eyes rolling, without any doubt!

Harry Truman And Gerald Ford Share Death Date Of December 26 in 1972 And 2006

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The day after Christmas is a day shared by two Presidents in death.

The 33rd President, Harry Truman, died on this day in 1972.

The 38th President, Gerald Ford. died on this day in 2006.

These two Presidents, the first a Democrat, the second a Republican, shared many common traits.

Both were from the Midwest–Truman from Missouri, and Ford from Hichigan.

Both faced challenging times and issues–Truman with the end of World War II; the Atomic Bomb issue; the Berlin Blockade and Airlift; the Korean War;-McCarthyism;–and Ford with the pardoning of Richard Nixon; the final end of the Vietnam War; the Mayaguez Affair with Cambodia; the two assassination attempts 17 days apart in September 1975; and the challenge of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Both faced public opinion polls that made their governing difficult, with Truman surprising everyone with his upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948; and Ford almost winning a full term in 1976, and only losing because of close vote returns in Ohio and Hawaii.

Both had no desire to be President, and had not sought it, with both succeeding to the Presidency when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, and Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.

Both died at advanced ages, with Truman seven and a half months past the age of 88; and Ford five and a half months past 93, and the longest lived President until George H. W. Bush passed his age on November 25, a month ago, and also to be surpassed by Jimmy Carter on March 16, 2018.

Both Presidents have gained in stature in death and in retrospect, although Truman is in the top ten Presidents of all time, usually around number five or six in most scholarly polls, while Ford is in the mid to high 20s as an average President.

But both came along, unexpectedly, and performed their responsibilities in an admirable way, and have gained respect that both might not have imagined in their lifetimes.

Republicans Gave Us The “Panic” Of 1873, “Panic” Of 1893, The Great Depression, And The Great Recession, And Are Now Further Harming America With Tax Cuts For Wealthy And Corporations

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The Republican Party gave us the Great Depression of 1929 under Herbert Hoover, caused by Republican policies under Calvin Coolidge.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrats, and the New Deal programs saved millions of Americans in the years from 1933 to 1939, when the military buildup for a potential entrance into World War II finally led to a total recovery of the economy.

Earlier, in the 1870s, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant presided over the Panic of 1873, which lasted until 1879, also under a Republican Congress.

In the early 1890s, Republicans, under President Benjamin Harrison, undermined the economy, and as Democrat Grover Cleveland succeeded Harrison in the White House, America entered the Panic of 1893, which did not end until 1898, and entrance into the Spanish American War.

And in late 2007 until early 2009, we had the Great Recession under Republican President George W. Bush, the worst situation since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, and it took the entire Barack Obama Presidency to bring unemployment down from 10 percent to under 5 percent, and the stock market grew by close to 250 percent.

Obama accomplished a revival that was greater than FDR, and without going to war.

Now, the Republicans are trying to ram through a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy top one to two percent, which will further harm America. It is likely to lead to another Great Recession, made worse by the likelihood that the Republicans will attempt to undermine Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in 2018, because of lessened funding with the cut in taxes collected. This will force massive cuts in the social safety net of the New Deal of FDR and the Great Society of President Lyndon B. Johnson.