According to the most recent poll of social science experts Donald Trump is deemed the worst president in history, while Barack Obama climbs into the top ten.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

James Buchanan, who was at the helm as the United States careened into civil war, was dislodged from his position as our nation’s worst president by our current president, Trump. 

His Oval Office predecessor, Barack Obama, shot into the Top 10, up from 18th in the previous survey. 

The biggest declines were for Bill Clinton, arguably the result of contemporary scorn for his treatment of women, and Andrew Jackson, for evolving attitudes on his treatment of Native Americans.

This poll is quite prestigious, as it elicits opinions from scholars who specialize in presidential history. 

Barack Obama is now ranked as the 8th greatest president in American history, which is a rank I always knew he would attain, but certainly thought it would take longer than one year.

The only Presidents ranked higher than Obama are Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Jefferson, Truman, and Eisenhower. (Bill Clinton sits at 13 currently.)

Hard to argue with those rankings, and Obama even beat out Reagan for that eighth spot, which you just KNOW is going to drive the conservatives out of their minds.

As will the fact that their current party leader is ranked dead last.

And not by a little bit either, Trump is behind former last place holder James Buchanan by three whole points.

Hell even George W. Bush is in the top 30. Well actually to be honest he's number 30.

But still a hell of a lot better than sitting dead last. 

Disney adds Donald Trump to the "Hall of President" and it is just as bizarrely creepy as everything else about his presidency.

Disney finally put Trump in the Hall of Presidents and the others are all “can you believe this schmuck” pic.twitter.com/cpn3N3kxfe

— shauna (@goldengateblond) December 19, 2017

I like how Abraham Lincoln seems to be thinking "Now there is somebody needs to take in a play at the Ford's Theatre."

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

And you thought the real version was scary. 

On Tuesday, Disney World will unveil an animatronic version of the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The robot Trump will stand next to other American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, and George Washington, who introduces Trump, as part of the Mouse House’s Hall of Presidents attraction. 

The Disney-centric website WDWMagic posted a video on Monday of robot Trump’s Disney speech, wherein he says: 

“From the beginning, America has been a nation defined by its people. At our founding, it was the American people who rose up to defend our freedoms and win our independence. It was why our Founders began our great Constitution with three very simple words: We the people. Since that moment, each generation of Americans has taken its place in the defense of our freedom, our flag, and our nation under God.

“These are the achievements of the American spirit—the spirit of a people who fought and died to bring the blessings of liberty to all our people. Above all, to be an American is to be an optimist, to believe that we can always do better and that the best days of our great nation are still ahead of us. It’s a privilege to serve as the president of the United States, to stand here among so many great leaders of our past, and to work on behalf of the American people.”

There is actually video of animatronic Trump saying those words, and even when spoken by a robot they sound like bullshit.

There are some on the internet claiming that Trump's robot doppelganger looks more like Jon Voight than the stubby fingered vulgarian, but I like the theory that Disney actually thought that somebody else was going to win that 2018 election and started to craft a robot of her before suddenly being forced to modify it to look more Trumpian.

I mean look at those eyes. They look decidedly Clintonian to me.

Personally I don't know why they even had to add Trump to this exhibit.

I mean don't they already have one Haunted Mansion?

Focus in the presidential photos in the background.

Somebody has some serious photoshop skills. 

I think if these paintings were to actually come to life we would find Trump's lifeless corpse in a White House bedroom with a ring of ancient paint flakes around his neck. 

Former presidents band together to participate in concert to raise money for victims of the numerous hurricanes.

Courtesy of CNN:

All five living former US presidents will participate in a benefit concert to raise money for hurricane relief efforts in Texas later this month, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation announced today. 

Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter will appear at Reed Arena at Texas A&M University on October 21 for the "Deep From the Heart: The One America Appeal" concert. 

The event will also feature rock and country musicians including ALABAMA, the Gatlin Brothers, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Sam Moore, Yolanda Adams, Cassadee Pope and Stephanie Quayle. Country music artist Lee Greenwood will emcee the event.

"The 43rd President and I, and our distinguished colleagues in this 'One America Appeal,' are very grateful to these wonderful performers -- some of them old friends, some of them new -- for giving their time and talent to help the urgent cause of hurricane recovery in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean," President George H.W. Bush said in a statement. "It's important that those affected by these devastating storms know that, even if the path to recovery feels like a road that goes on forever, we're with them for the long haul."

I have to admit when I first read this I thought they were only raising money for the folks in Texas that were victimized by the hurricanes, but a closer reading revealed that they are raising money for ALL of the hurricane victims, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Can you even believe that we are living in a time when one concert is being put on to raise money for the victims of back to back hurricanes?

And people say climate change is not real.

All I can say is that it is certainly a good thing that we have all of these ex-presidents around to provide some leadership in this area, because the idiot currently in the White House has no fucking idea what he is doing.

I'll just leave this here.

Imma just drop this little nugget of truth right here @realDonaldTrump. My prediction is that these numbers are going to grow bigly soon. pic.twitter.com/ZhxpW9qVC3

— 🖕🏻Aunt Crabby 🖕🏻 (@DearAuntCrabby) July 15, 2017

I keep hearing that the Democrats need to come up with a reason for Americans to vote for their candidates.

I can't think of a reason they wouldn't.

We actually get things done, we make things better, and we do it without breaking the law.

A whimsical moment.

So much bad news these days, a little of this is certainly a welcome respite.

New book called "The American President" on Ronald Reagan: "No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed."

Courtesy of Salon:

In all fields of public affairs—from diplomacy to the economy—the president stunned Washington policymakers by how little basic information he commanded. His mind, said the well-disposed Peggy Noonan, was “barren terrain.” Speaking of one far-ranging discussion on the MX missile, the Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, an authority on national defense, reported, “Reagan’s only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from War Games.” The president “cut ribbons and made speeches. He did these things beautifully,” Congressman Jim Wright of Texas acknowledged. “But he never knew frijoles from pralines about the substantive facts of issues.” Some thought him to be not only ignorant but, in the word of a former CIA director, “stupid.” Clark Clifford called the president an “amiable dunce,” and the usually restrained columnist David Broder wrote, “The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan’s ears is a challenging one for his aides.” 

No Democratic adversary would ever constitute as great a peril to the president’s political future, his advisers concluded, as Reagan did himself. Therefore, they protected him by severely restricting situations where he might blurt out a fantasy. His staff, one study reported, wrapped him “in excelsior,” while “keeping the press at shouting distance or beyond.” In his first year as president, he held only six news conferences—fewest ever in the modern era. Aides also prepared scores of cue cards, so that he would know how to greet visitors and respond to interviewers. His secretary of the treasury and later chief of staff said of the president: “Every moment of every public appearance was scheduled, every word scripted, every place where Reagan was expected to stand was chalked with toe marks.” Those manipulations, he added, seemed customary to Reagan, for “he had been learning his lines, composing his facial expressions, hitting his toe marks for half a century.” Each night, before turning in, he took comfort in a shooting schedule for the next day’s television- focused events that was laid out for him at his bedside, just as it had been in Hollywood. 

His White House staff found it difficult, often impossible, to get him to stir himself to follow even this rudimentary routine. When he was expected to read briefing papers, he lazed on a couch watching old movies. On the day before a summit meeting with world leaders about the future of the economy, he was given a briefing book. The next morning, his chief of staff asked him why he had not even opened it. “Well, Jim,” the president explained, “The Sound of Music was on last night.”

The rest of the Salon article is just as damning as the excerpt up above and of course it simply reinforces what most of us who lived through the Reagan presidency already know to be true.

In fact Reagan was essentially the perfect Republican president. An empty vessel that the conservative puppet masters could use to put forth their message, and implement their policies, in the most amiable way possible.

After all even Ronald Reagan's detractors were often charmed by the man.

And if you think about it the GOP has been looking for a similar standard bearer ever since.

We all know that George W. Bush was at least as ignorant and easily manipulated as Reagan, and I have little doubt that Mitt Romney seemed to them the perfect mannequin to voice the policies that were fed to him by the real power behind the office.

I would think that John McCain would be less likely to play ball, but then they had Sarah Palin waiting in the wings didn't they?

Anybody else just get a cold chill run up their back?

Buzzfeed asks Australians some fairly basic questions about America. The results are a little troubling.

Gratuitously sexy representation of Australians. 

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

Charlie Sheen? Well I guess he's not completely wrong.

Okay that one's pretty accurate so I will stop there. If you want to see more just click the link at the top.

Right now I am having trouble deciding if these answers are the fault of the Aussie education system, or essentially OUR fault for being who we are.

What do you think?

If we impeach Presidents for using executive privilege to alter immigration laws, then how did these avoid a similar fate?

Courtesy of Pensito Review: 

Pres. Dwight Eisenhower: 

1956 

By executive order, circumvented immigration quotas to allow 900 orphans to join their adoptive families in the U.S. 

1956-1958 

By executive order, allowed 31,000 Hungarian anti-Soviet insurgents to emigrate. 

1959-72 

By executive order, allowed 600,000 Cubans fleeing Castro to emigrate. 

Pres. Gerald Ford: 

1975 

By executive order, allowed 360,000 refugees, mostly from from Vietnam, to emigrate. 

1976 

By executive order, allowed 14,000 Lebanese nationals to emigrate. 

Pres. Ronald Reagan: 

1981 

By executive order, allowed 7,000 Polish anti-Communists to emigrate. 

1982 

Allowed 15,000-plus Ethiopians to emigrate. 

1987 

By executive order, rescinded deportation of 200,000 Nicaraguans. 

1987 

By executive order, deferred deportation of undocumented children of 100,000 families. 

George H.W. Bush: 

1989 

By executive order, deferred deportations of Chinese students. 

1989 

By executive order, reversed visa denials of 7,000 Soviets, Indochinese. 

1990 

By executive order, deferred deporations of previously amnestied citizens’ 1.5 million spouses and children. 

1991 

By executive order, deferred deportation of 2,000 Gulf War evacuees. 

1992 

By executive order, deferred deportations of 190,000 El Salvadorans. 

George W. Bush: 

2002 

By executive order, expedited naturalization for green-card holders who joined military. 

2005 

By executive order, deferred deportation of students affected by Hurricane Katrina. 

2006 

By executive order, enabled 1,500 Cuban physicians to seek asylum at US embassies. 

2007 

By executive order, deferred deportation of 3,600 Liberians.

Strange but I remember hearing nothing about impeachment, or the threat of impeachment, concerning any of these "amnesties." 

Is it just the fact that they are Republicans that protects from conservative anger at their "shredding of the Constitution?"  Or is there another differnce that I just can't quite put my finger on right now that sets President Barack Obama apart from his predecessors?

Two year old quotes Presidents with unerring accuracy.

I think my favorite one is the George W. Bush quote, though I think this little guy actually made it make more sense than it did originally.

(H/T to HuffPo)

Gee, and the white American males had such a great winning streak going to!

Am I the only one that hopes the next face on this graphic is that of a woman?

And no NOT that nasty thing from Wasilla either! I mean a REAL woman, who didn't use eye winking, fake pregnancies, and short skirts to get ahead.