My Presidents and Their Tweets

Since our current President is REALLY into Twitter--here are  some tweets from the 44 (really 43) before President Trump

George Washington:  "Martha said I was rockin' the wooden teeth! Yeah, come on!"

John Adams: "You sux, @bigthomjefferson76".

Thomas Jefferson: "15 million for Louisiana? Really?!"

James Madison:  "My wife makes the best cupcakes!"

James Monroe:  "Hmmm, I'm pretty sure the other four don't have a doctrine named after him. Just saying."

John Quincy Adams:  "I wish I had a better initial besides Q.  Something like W would be awesome".

Andrew Jackson:  "I kilt fiddy men"

Martin Van Buren:  "I have the coolest sideburns of all of them- including @ChesterAlanArthur."

William Henry Harrison:  "I've got a great idea:  why don't I give a very long speech on a cold and wet day?  It's not like I'm going to get sick or anything."

John Tyler:  "I still have grandchildren alive in 2018. For reals".

James Polk:  "Call me President Mullet".

Zachary Taylor:  "Wait. Does anyone know the difference between the symptoms of cholera and aresenic poisoning?  Just asking."

Millard Fillmore: "Oh yeah?!  How many of you have ever been President of The United States?"

Franklin Pierce:  "Could I have been a worse President?"

James Buchanan:  "Welp, I've done nothing to prevent The Civil War. I guess this isn't the right time to announce I'm gay".

Abraham Lincoln: "Wow, I feel great now that The Civil War has ended. I think me and my gal pal will take in a play!" 

Andrew Johnson: "I've got this great idea: Let's get impeached!"

Ulysses S. Grant:  "Guess where I am buried."

Rutherford B. Hayes: "I am the Duck Dynasty President!"

James Garfield: "Hey, let's go down to the train station and see if there are some disappointed office seekers."

Chester Alan Arthur:  "I pronounce 'Alan' as "Alon", because I'm a dandy with great sideburns!"

Grover Clevland:  "It is easy to get young chicks when you are The President".

Benjamin Harrison:  "I stayed alive for all of my administration unlike a certain grandfather of mine."

Grover Cleveland:  "Back again. Did you miss me?  What do you mean no?"

William McKinley:  "Yeah, I'll go to Buffalo. What's the worst that could happen?"

Theodore Roosevelt:  "Let you in on a little secret-I don't even know what 'bully' means."

William Howard Taft:  "I'm just big boned! Stop fat shaming me!"

Woodrow Wilson:  "I have this real progressive idea: racism!"

Warren G. Harding:  "I did things in The Oval Office that Bill Clinton could only dream of."

Calvin Coolidge:  "I was just as exciting as I looked".

Herbert Hoover:  "I am going to punch the next person who says I invented the vaccum cleaner because I sucked".

Franklin Delno Roosevelt:  "I'm going to roll into The Oval Office and stay for a long time. Roll! Did you get it? Man, I am great."

Harry S. Truman:  "You'd act like a crazy man too if your middle name was S."

Dwight Eisenhower:  "Sorry about Nixon.  He had a great resume."

John Kennedy:  "Sure, put the top down. What could it hurt?

Lyndon Johnson:  "An undeclared ground war against guerilla forces in a far off Asian country?  Count me in!"

Richard Nixon:   "<expletive deleted>  I should have  burned those <expletive deleted> tapes. Ah <expletive>"

Gerald Ford: "Chevy Chase is a very funny suburb." 

Jimmy Carter:  "I'm going to declare a Moral Equivalence of War on The Energy Crisis and I urge your support by tweeting this: #MEOW."

Ronald Reagan:  "Sell arms to Iran for hostages? Why not?"

George H. W. Bush:  "I hate being the least popular Bush".

Bill Clinton:  "#Monica was worth every article of impeachment!"

George W. Bush: "Hold my beer, Dad".

Barack Obama:  "If you liked your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Yeah, I had a hard time keeping a straight face on that one, tbh."

The Obligatory Super Bowl Post 2018 Edition

Last week,  The 2017 NFL season mercifully came to a close when the Philadephia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots. If that doesn't prove there is a God in heaven, I don't know what will.

I know it is easy to complain about the domination of the Patriots. Since my son was in FIFTH GRADE, they have been going to The Super Bowl. By the way, my son graduated college in 2013.

The head coach of The Patriots, Bill Belichick, would be celebrated as THE GREATEST COACH OF ANYTHING FOR ALL TIME except for the fact he has the personality of prune juice and looks/dresses like he just came off of a three-week bender.

The quarterback of the Patriots is Tom Brady, the most handsome man in the world. 

Back when I was a kid, the "handsome" quarterback was Joe Namath.

When I came along, they wanted quarterbacks to look like the District Manager in Charge of Something Important.  Handsome, but not sexy. Not flashy. Serious. Like Bart Starr.

"I would like to talk to you about an exciting Whole Life policy we have"

Bart Starr was the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers back in the sixties. He looked like he would sell you some insurance.  I saw him one time at Town Center Mall in Kennesaw, Georiga. I kept pointing at him saying "Bart Starr. Bart Starr".  My wife reminded me Starr knew his name.

But Joe came along and he was "Broadway Joe"- all flash and a smile.

"I happen to notice you are a tight end".

Tom Brady makes Joe Namath look like a basset hound.

First of all, Brady has won five Super Bowls, which by definition means he is five times better than the rest of us schlubs, and I don't care how many cures for cancer you have discovered.

Secondly, he is married to a Super Model, Gisele Bundchen.  I'm not quite sure what separates Super Model from a Regular Model, except you would probably never see a Super Model in a Sears catalog. I will say, from a strictly scientific viewpoint, Gisele Bundchen is smoking hot.

Finally, Tom had an actress girlfriend, Bridget Moynahan, who happened to learn she was pregnant with Tom's baby after they had broken up and he began his relationship with his Super Model wife.

The website Heavy says, "Being married to and having two children with Bundchen while trying to maintain a relationship with Moynahan and their son Jack certainly sounds complicated, but they seem to have it all figured out."   Only a quarterback that has won five Super Bowls could have figured out something like this. I know I couldn't.

The Patriots were the favorites to win the game. The Eagles had a good season, but their second string quarterback,  Nick Foles, was starting.

It was one of those games, like last year's Super Bowl, you just kept expecting Tom Terrific to lead the Patriots to a comeback victory.  But it didn't happen.  It made you want to become a Calvinist because it seemed so predestined and seem to confirm that the Lord isn't thrilled with the Atlanta Falcons for some reason.

It has been a rough year for The NFL.

The combination of CTE, the kneeling non-sense, and the flat-out oversaturation of the product ("Welcome to Wednesday Morning Football with the Cleveland Browns at home against The New York Jets") along with the dominance of  New England has left some watching the sport out of obligation, sort of like the way some people go to church only at Christmas and Easter.

Until Philadelphia's victory in The Super Bowl, the season's lone highlight was the Viking quarterback Case Keenum's pass to Stefon Diggs on the last play of their playoff game versus the Saints. That play reminded people what they liked about football. Anything can happen at any time and when it does you want to be there.

Maybe, one day, it will be that way again.

Our Common Baseline of Facts

Have you seen David Letterman lately?

He simply looks ridiculous. I don't know any other way to describe it.

He no longer shaves and must be auditioning for a part on "Duck Dynasty.  That's the only explanation I can come up with. He looks like an off-season Santa Claus. By the way, before everybody starts defending Dave and his choice to look like a hobo, remember twenty years ago Dave would be doing a "TOP TEN THINGS LIVING IN THAT GUY'S BEARD" regarding anyone with a beard like his.

Well, Dave's "retired" now and no longer does "Top Ten Lists", "Stupid Pet Tricks", or jumps in a pool wearing a suit lined with Alka-Seltzer tablets.  No, Dave has decided to work for Netflix, and has a monthly show called "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction".  His first guest was former President Barack Obama.

Since Dave is all serious now, he asked President Obama what is the most dangerous threat to democracy: a President demeaning the press (like a certain unspoken current President with orange hair) or a foreign power sabotaging the voting process (on behalf of the orange hair President).

Obama took a deep breath and said, "One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts. If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”   
 
As long as we are talking about "demeaning", let's look at the last sentence in the above quote from President Obama.  People that watch Fox News ain't from around here, Buddy. They're from Planet Redneck with their My Pillows and Liberator Medical Catheters.

However, President Obama didn't answer the question. The answer is a foreign power sabotaging the voting process because Presidents have always been demeaning to the press. Personally, I think a President spying on a reporter is worse than him blowing raspberries at him, but that's just me.

A lot of the news media, like with most things during Obama's public career, treated this as some sort of new incredible insight, when it really wasn't.  I remember reading Peggy Noonan complaining about the same thing a couple of years ago.

In the past, Americans basically got their news from three sources: the 30-minute nightly newscasts of  ABC, CBS, and NBC.  When Walter Cronkite said "And that's the way it is", that was the way it was, dadgum it.

Now, we have three major 24-hour news networks and all of that has supposedly changed. But it really hasn't.

We all "share a common baseline of facts".  After all, it is a fact Donald Trump is the President of The United States.  It is the interpretation of those facts that is different.  Five of the six television news outlets think the Trump Presidency is THE APOCALYPSE and we must do what we can to resist THIS EVIL ORANGE HAIRED, FAT, TINY FINGERED MAN, including resisting a tax cut.

Meanwhile, over at Fox, Trump is treated with more respect. I personally think Sean Hannity would be in favor of Same-Sex Marriage if it meant he could marry President Trump.

All of this gives some people a headache, including me.  I don't mind people having different opinions than me.  I do mind people shouting about it 24/7.

Back during The Obama Years, there was all of this talk about "his birth certificate". I was never sure why this was important.  A lot of energy was put into this topic by various people of various levels of "conservatism".  It came up bupkis.

However, when he was a Senator, Obama met with Louis Farrakhan and had his picture taken with him. The nicest thing you can say about Farrakhan is that he has a great selection of bow ties.  Other than that, he is a hot mess of hate.  The journalist that took the picture said he didn't release it because he didn't want to hurt Obama's Presidential ambitions.

That, my friends, is why there is a Fox News. Four years ago, five out of the six news outlets were doing cartwheels and waving pom-poms about President Obama.

It may not have made a difference, but it would have been interesting to hear President Obama explain the meeting and the picture. My guess is that he would have tried to distance himself from Farrakhan like he did with his preacher.  But you'll never know and you never will because we are more interested in making fun of people that don't agree with us.