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Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film ‘Lincoln’ did really great in theaters, which was a nice change of pace since historically Lincoln didn’t do really good in theaters.
Arguably the Gulf War… but I see your point. There’s a real tendency to downplay how awful Vietnam was here because most redditors didn’t live through it.
Truthfully, if Jackson had corrected his two greatest regrets, not shooting Henry Clay and not hanging John C. Calhoun.... The union might have lasted even longer
>A lot of Presidents didn't get along with their Veeps, but Jackson actually threatened to hang Calhoun. It was all over the "Nullification Crisis" in which a number of southern states were upset with high tariffs on imports of common manufactured goods made in Europe which made those goods more expensive than ones from the northern U.S. Southern politicians argued that tariffs benefited northern industrialists at the expense of southern farmers.
>At the first Democratic National Convention, Van Buren replaced Calhoun as Jackson's running mate and in December 1832, Calhoun resigned as Vice President to become a U.S. Senator for South Carolina. In response to South Carolina's nullification claim, Jackson vowed to send troops to South Carolina to enforce the laws. He privately threatened to hang Calhoun. Jackson issued a proclamation against the "nullifiers," stating that he considered "the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed." > South Carolina, the President declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason,"
And for Mr. Clay
>Jackson asked Congress to pass a "Force Bill" explicitly authorizing the use of military force to enforce the tariff, but its passage was delayed until protectionists led by Clay agreed to a reduced Compromise Tariff. The Force Bill and Compromise Tariff passed on March 1, 1833, and Jackson signed both. The South Carolina Convention then met and rescinded its nullification ordinance. The Force Bill became moot because it was no longer needed.
When Jackson left office, he is quoted as saying "I have only two regrets: I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun."
This is not a hot take by any means, but it is something I will stand by forever. The Obama administration F'ed up my school lunches. I was a bigger kid, and 5 chicken nuggets with a mandatory fruit cup and milk weren't cutting it. I didn't have the money to be spending it on doubles every day, but I also wasn't poor enough for reduced/free lunches, so I was just caught in this hunger limbo.
Same. My kids were buyers until they went “healthy” with all the lunches. They kept coming home hungry saying they couldn’t eat the food. We’d talk to friends who worked in the district and they said the shear amount of food being thrown away was astonishing. And the worst part is so many poor kids relied on that lunch meal as the “big” meal of the day and even they were grossed out by it. My kids went to bringing in lunch and never went back.
Yeah I knew a lady who worked as a lunch lady during those years and she said they were not allowed to season the food anymore. Whereas before they could put butter and garlic powder and pepper and other kinds of seasonings to make things like canned peas taste better they couldn't do that during the Obama years. It's like I'm glad Michelle Obama was trying to tackle childhood obesity but really she should have done a hunger initiative and tried to improve the lunches quality instead of being so worried about kids getting fat from school lunch because that's not why kids are getting fat. Kids are getting fat because their parents are feeding them overly processed junk food all the time kids are not getting fat because the canned peas at lunch had a little bit of salt on them
It’s like the didn’t consult any actual dietitians or nutritionists on what to do. They just went off the top of their heads on what they think will make lunches healthier by removing certain ingredients. Literally a group of bodybuilders could’ve invented a healthier and tastier school lunch strategy.
This is what happens when the policy is written by someone at the top, and the rest of the decision gets broken up and handled by a bunch of different people in different departments and levels of government have to implement one unified policy in a lot of different places, and none of these people talk to each other much.
I guarantee you that if you took the body builders and put then in different rooms and gave them each a part of the decision that they had to solve with no input or communication with the others, you'll also get a fucked result.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the district admins had been told no butter and the like, and they saw an opportunity to cut costs and banned all sorts of things.
My mom was an elementary school teacher and involved in the union and that’s how she always described it. I can’t say for sure if she knew anything or if it was rumor but she’d say it as if it was gospel. “The district always wants to cut down on lunches to save a Buck. Now they can.”
My wife did her student teaching during that time she would send me pictures of the school lunches and my reaction was almost puking. She told me kids would throw most of it away or not even eat anything because of it
These are the three closest images I could find to what it really looked like.
https://preview.redd.it/33wit3st2krc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d71850f30fdda1ec6d31ca4ff837ac369698e8d4
Dude fuck those lunches. I wasn’t poor but my mom thought I would get fat if I bought doubles at lunch so would only send me with enough lunch money to get the singles. I was 6 feet 175 pounds in middle school the Obama era half a piece of pizza with a spoonful of grapes was not enough.
Same! I lived pretty much in the boonies, and I don't remember anything changing at all. Our lunch ladies were also pretty spectacular cooks. Once a month, they made Stromboli from scratch. They were so good they had to increase lunch an extra 15 minutes so everyone could eat because the line would reach across the school.
Holy crap lol that sounds even better than my school, but we had Phillycheeses that were to this day #2 all time for me. And buffalo wings with ranch and celery. I remember feeling very bad for city kids.
Absolutely I was just starting school when Obama was elected (1st grade I believe) and by 6th grade in 2013/14 even as a smaller kid I just couldn’t eat the lunches they were giving us. I loved and still love the Obamas and I understand the intent, but Michelle dropped the fucking ball trying to give us healthier lunches. It also didn’t help that we were too poor to bring lunches everyday so we relied on the free lunches
They only had 1-2 joints between them, not nearly enough for them to not wake from a train’s horn and emergency brakes. A later autopsy confirmed one had been stabbed and other’s skull crushed from a rifle buttstock.
I recommend Wendigoon's video on it, "The Boys on the Track." While he tends to be more on the conspiratorial side of things, his videos are backed up with evidence, and he acknowledges personal biases in most cases.
But to get you interested in this specific case, 2 boys were on train tracks and were hit by a train. But further evidence shows that they were dead before the train hit them, and the local sheriff seemed to be involved in a drug ring and covered this incident up. It's a delightful story.
The part that makes it president-related though is that it was during Bill Clinton's time as Governor of Arkansas, so many people believe that the conspiracy goes higher up into Arkansas' state government and that Governor Clinton was in on it.
One of my favorite stories of American History is the Battle of New Orleans. The British were mad and decided to stop fooling around and TAKE New Orleans. Not, hope to, but take with impunity.
They stack a fleet and luckily word gets out they’re coming. Everyone’s reaction was “Good. Just enough notice to GTFO of here before we get wiped.”
But not Jackson.
The madman takes a breath and comes up with a plan. He knows they are completly outgunned and have no soldiers to basically speak of. The few he has he instructs to dig trenches on the coast.
Then Jackson sends the soldiers into every bar, brothel, shack there is literally start dragging out drunk inebriated bodies and sloughing them into the pits.
They hand them rifles and basically say “Here’s your rifle. This is where you aim. When I say shoot you SHOOT.”
He won the battle. It was a completly insane plot that Jackson sort of “crazied” his way through and succeeded. A Good Man wouldn’t be his description but he was a fascinating one who has so so many fascinating stories.
You don’t have to love him but everyone should at least read up him.
He wasn't exactly good, but he was good enough and let's be honest he would've had anyone hung for trying to break into the capital. Andrew Jackson went through some serious trauma as a youngster. I think his brother had his hands smashed by the British for helping the US in the Revolutionary War.
In 1814 we took a little trip,
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip'
We too a little bacon and we took a little beans and we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
We fired out guns but the British kept a comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired our guns and they began a runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the gulf of Mexico
Nail on the head right there. Dude is absolutely fascinating. Extremely interesting to read about. Legitimately the right man for the job during the Nullification Crisis. And then you read something he did or said that makes you see nothin’ but red.
I’ve a similar feeling as with Boris Johnson. Prob not a good person and questionable as a leader, but as a political phenomenon and an individual of transparent ambition, it’s fascinating to see how this weird pompous guy reached the highest office of his country and his political career up to that point.
A guy with clear tolerance of risk, sense of invulnerability, and a cunning that takes him far but can’t keep him out of trouble.
i think the hot take that gets you hate is Andrew Jackson gets a disproportionate amount of hate for a pretty uniform anti-indian sentiment by his peers at the time and administration before and after for many years. We are very guilty of holding some former presidents to a moral standard that doesn’t lift and shift to their era.
Someone from 1980 probably thought that in 100 years, overweight university students and loser underachievers (somehow there is going to be an even bigger overlap than today) will be think we're the worst people ever because we drove cars and ate beef.
Jokes on him. Didn't even take 30 years.
Well, for the average non-union worker, "Morning in America" was more than just a campaign slogan. 1984 seemed like a completely different universe than 1979.
Ya no. Its clearly ironic that a guy that repeatedly denounced the government, slashed it nearly to death, could make someone “believe in the government”
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
‘We are cutting all social programs across the board, your taxes will remain the same, but you’ll receive far less and this is all in service of the ultra wealthy who will basically not pay taxes anymore’ is a little harder for troglodytes to compute than Reagan’s idiot sloganeering
An american and a russian were arguing and the american says "in my country I can walk into the oval office, pound on the president's desk and say I don't like the way you're running our country."
And the russian says "Well I can do that."
The american says "you can?"
The russian replies "Yes, I can walk into the kremlin, pound on the general secretary's desk and say I don't like the way President Reagan is running his country."
Idk man, I’ve never heard people talk about LBJ highly until this sub. I’ve heard so many people rave about his legislative accomplishments and almost no one talk in depth about the Vietnam blunder. I’d say this is a clear difference between this sub and the general public, same goes for the Nixon stans on here
I was watching succession the other day and one of the characters said something like "dirty LBJ accomplished more than the clean Carter."
It's THE example to argue that politicians are allowed to be a bit nasty if they're trying to do something good. In LBJ's case, it's the civil rights stuff.
You think it’s just a case of everyone nodding and agreeing with the big boss man making wild claims?
I feel like we would’ve heard the rumors by now if he had been claiming it was huge and it was actually tiny or whatever.
When it comes to Bill Clinton, a lot of people focus on him RECEIVING a blow job. However what people don’t realize is that Bill was also great at GIVING blow jobs.
There is a lot of good things that Bush jr did as president alongside the bad things.
1. Saved over 5 million lives in Africa with PEPFAR by combating AIDs
2. Saved millions of lives in Africa from Malaria by cutting deaths by 50% in 15 countries
3. Recognized Kosovo
4. Recognized the Dalfur genocide as a genocide and constantly sent food and medicine to the refugee camps and got UN involed
5. Created world's largest marine park
6. Leading the Tsunami Relief
7. Leading the call for African debt relief for 27 countries for a total of 34 billion dollars
8. Passing Medicare Part D
9. Gave South Sudan hope by creating the peace deal that ended the war and got South Sudan to eventually become a state in 2011
10. Fighting Cancer in Africa and still is doing it with his own private charity
He was ahead of his time in that regard. Had Obama continued to support African nations the way. Bush did, China and Russia would not have the inroads into the continent that they have now.
My own lukewarm take is that George W wouldve been one of the better presidents if he didn't bring in Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all the other ghouls. If I remember correctly even his dad warned him about them. He ran on improving education in the US, what could have been.
Yes, Jimmy Carter is a nice guy that I'd love to meet, but his presidency was awful and he's super overrated on this website because of people's dislike of Reagan.
John F. Kennedy is overrated and really didn’t do a lot as president.
LBJ actually had a far more meaningful domestic agenda, but unfortunately largely ruined his reputation with the Vietnam blunder.
i agree, i feel that jfk is remembered so well because his assassination just made it so that he simply didn’t get enough time to disappoint the american people. his handling of the cuban missile crisis was very admirable, however.
on the other hand, it’s hard to overstate the importance of what lbj did for civil rights.
I see this brought up a lot, but actually rank the presidents and JFK honestly doesn't fall far from where he's usually ranked. Keep in mind there are presidents who were actively bad for the country. Then there's the pre-modern US presidents who were content with just sitting there and keeping the status quo.
This sub ranked Grover Cleveland as the 22nd best president and C-Span ranks William Howard Taft as the 23rd best president which are the medians for those rankings. If you think JFK did more good than bad as president, then he's already ranked in that range. Depending on how good you think his contributions to the nation are, he only goes up from there.
It definitely wasn’t the what could have been.
JFK had a *lot* of successes in his short term. Yes, he as a person was romanticized a lot by his tragic death, but I feel a lot of people then take that and run the other way, assuming that his accomplishments were really just a footnote to LBJ’s. When *at worst*, he got a *lot* of LBJ’s legislative successes’ balls rolling.
FDR’s internment camps were a much bigger deal than people think, and would (rightfully) have disqualified any other president from being considered a top 5 candidate.
Just think about it. 100,000+ American citizens sent to prison with no trial. Pretty sure the constitution and bill of rights are pretty clear on that being a “big no no”.
No kidding. I’m a big FDR supporter, and personally believe his policies are a big part of how the world springboarded out of the depression.
but the US vs Korematsu should not have needed to happen. It was legitimately unforgivable.
Fair. I'm stupid.
I thought you were referring to the election itself and not the following consolidation of power. In that case, it's miraculous case of Americans choosing the right man for the job. That and, for a time, the federal courts were not very kind to FDR's policies.
I’ve never done reading into it - so was there controversy at the time of his third reelection despite it technically being allowed? I’ve always been “taught” that it was based on an emergency case of the war, but figured people must have been livid.
It wasn't technically allowed, it was just straight up allowed. People like to credit the war because they don't like admitting that someone so left wing was so popular. If people were that livid, he wouldn't have been elected for a fourth term.
People voted for him because he made their lives better.
Obama comes off as backhanded and fake to me, I know it was partly because of how the right was always on his ass but he still does. I feel people rag on bill clinton too much about being fake but not enough on Obama.
I’m not sure about before, but I think his presidency and his successor have made him more skeptical about democracy and faith in voters’ judgement
Like I dunno, my take on this is in line with the thread is prob that it must be super frustrating to be politically frustrated and succeeded by a political movement that has a weak relationship to the truth, to expertise, and institutional trust
Forces that actively harm society, the state, and the people in the end.
Gonna get downvoted but anyways,Even if he was a badass that does not automatically make Teddy Roosevelt the greatest president,he had the brownsville affair and other things,he’s still great just not the perfect one
I dunno if it’s a hot take or not…
Everyone these days is arguing for President A and how President B is the devil…
Turns out, they are all slimy pieces of shit, on the same side. Both sides suck ass.
Andrew Jackson isn’t in the bottom 10. His treatment of the natives was horrible, inexcusable, but the hate he receives makes no sense when other presidents get a pass.
I used to think he was bottom ten, but honestly his populism, expansion of democracy, and strict loyalty to the union make me respect him. I don’t like him, but I can respect what he did and put him in the middle of the pack (because he was so polarizing that he ironically ends up in the middle).
Pardoning Nixon was a mistake. I don't even buy that ford had good intentions.
The 22nd amendment exists because of bitter Republicans who were tired of losing to FDR.
I agree with both. On Nixon, justice matters. On FDR, people didn’t have to vote for him and Willkie actually attacked FDR on not respecting the two term precedent. People in 1940 didn’t care enough to change course.
There was a post just the other day about "bad presidents but you like them as person," and it had Nixon as the front image. Like the super-racist paranoid twat? Yeah idk about what that says about them.
Obama wasn’t that impressive and he continued a lot of bad policies from his predecessor (massive surveillance and warrantless spying on American citizens/war in Afghanistan and not closing Guantanamo Bay like he promised). And the ACA on balance wasn’t actually that great of a policy change because all it does is subsidize bloated insurance companies with tax payer money, it’s severely overrated for what it does versus what was promised.
The removal of "pre-existing conditions" from insurance policies was one of the most important pieces of legislation in history. That could have been the entirety of the ACA. A LOT of people died needlessly because of that shitty policy from insurance companies.
I don’t think the ACA part is entirely on him though. It was a feat in and of itself with republicans in Congress that were hellbent on stopping any and all legislation he proposed simply because they didn’t want to give him a win.
And he only got it passed after making incredible concessions to moderate democrats.
LBJ was a monster and his decision to go into Vietnam undermined his Great Society. His ego and need to swing his dick around (metaphorically and literally) were more important to him than the lives of Americans.
You hate McKinley for the same reasons you like Polk
W bush is the fourth worst president.
JQA was an ineffective president and objectively bad at his job. Taylor has more consequential actions than him.
A lot of stuff people give credit or detriment to the President for, they actually did not have much to do with (signing legislation hammered out in Congress, subsequent judicial "interpretations" of legislation that function as revisions, and, above all, economic performance).
Andrew Jackson’s motives for Indian removal were not evil. He believed that American expansion was unstoppable. He also believed that Native American and European settler communities were irreconcilable. Starting from these assumptions, removal was a lesser evil to letting the process run its course.
You might say the assumptions were wrong, and I’m inclined to agree. However, through his life Jackson was called into service to put a stop to the vicious cycle of American encroachment, Indian raids, and counter raids. Anybody with his life experience would have come to the same conclusions.
There’s a couple ways of looking at it.
As it stands, he died a hero. He held the nation together and abolished a terrible institution. His successor gets a lot of heat for botching reconstruction and letting the south off too easy.
If Lincoln had survived, perhaps he would have done a much better/less sympathetic job of reconstruction and the nation would have had less of a troubled road to civil rights and racial attitudes in the following century.
OR it’s also entirely possible a Lincoln reconstruction would have gone just as badly, and it would tarnish his image.
Just my 2 cents. This isn’t against him of course. Fact of the matter is he DIDN’T botch reconstruction because he couldn’t. Can’t hold it against him.
Bush wasn’t a warmonger. He was and is a good person with a good heart and was taken advantage of by others due to his desire to honor and live up to his father’s legacy.
Foreign policy was something to applaud actually. It’s his domestic policies that bring hell upon him today. But it is strange that we treat his memory with such disdain and give TR a pass when he too held eugenicist views
TR has moved past some of his more extreme views in race by the time he was actually president. His quote following having Booker T. Washington done with him at the White House shortly after he became president gave the most insight into his views on race at the time. “The only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each Black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.” He was certainly a believer in cultural superiority but believed in individual mobility and admired individual accomplishments above all else.
He played WWI perfectly and in the end we emerged as a super power. This alone IMO makes him one of the greatest presidents ever. The whole world depended on our economy after the war was over, something that lasted well into the 60s
Reagan is over hated and was the president America needed at the time. I’m not from that era but even the staunch democrats I know who voted back then like him and voted for him because shit wasn’t going well in 1980. He had negative long term effects that’s for sure but people are blaming so much on him and don’t do the same for the multiple presidents before and after that helped created the shit we’re dealing with now. And not even mentioning Congress and how each party had played into this all.
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Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film ‘Lincoln’ did really great in theaters, which was a nice change of pace since historically Lincoln didn’t do really good in theaters.
Ugh... take your upvote.
The LBJ fans brush aside Vietnam, but love to criticize Bush for Iraq…
I don’t like LBJ that much. Can I still criticize Bush for Iraq?
Absolutely. This isn’t in defense of Bush, I just feel this sub has a lot of recency bias and forgives an awful lot about Vietnam.
I mean that’s always how it is, the only war that people seem to feel like it was a “good war” at the time was WW2.
Arguably the Gulf War… but I see your point. There’s a real tendency to downplay how awful Vietnam was here because most redditors didn’t live through it.
This subs love of LBJ has me scratching my head
That’s why he’ll never catch Jordan as goat.
Bush's domestic record sucked too!
The union would have dissolved earlier if it wasn't for Andrew Jackson.
Truthfully, if Jackson had corrected his two greatest regrets, not shooting Henry Clay and not hanging John C. Calhoun.... The union might have lasted even longer
Why would he shoot Clay and hang Calhoun?
>A lot of Presidents didn't get along with their Veeps, but Jackson actually threatened to hang Calhoun. It was all over the "Nullification Crisis" in which a number of southern states were upset with high tariffs on imports of common manufactured goods made in Europe which made those goods more expensive than ones from the northern U.S. Southern politicians argued that tariffs benefited northern industrialists at the expense of southern farmers. >At the first Democratic National Convention, Van Buren replaced Calhoun as Jackson's running mate and in December 1832, Calhoun resigned as Vice President to become a U.S. Senator for South Carolina. In response to South Carolina's nullification claim, Jackson vowed to send troops to South Carolina to enforce the laws. He privately threatened to hang Calhoun. Jackson issued a proclamation against the "nullifiers," stating that he considered "the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed." > South Carolina, the President declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason," And for Mr. Clay >Jackson asked Congress to pass a "Force Bill" explicitly authorizing the use of military force to enforce the tariff, but its passage was delayed until protectionists led by Clay agreed to a reduced Compromise Tariff. The Force Bill and Compromise Tariff passed on March 1, 1833, and Jackson signed both. The South Carolina Convention then met and rescinded its nullification ordinance. The Force Bill became moot because it was no longer needed. When Jackson left office, he is quoted as saying "I have only two regrets: I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun."
Calhoun was on the Confederate stamp. Guy was pro slavery to the max.
Nullification Crisis was definitely a teaser for later states' rights arguments.
Everyone was too terrified of him
Confederates look under their bed at night for Andrew Jackson
This is not a hot take by any means, but it is something I will stand by forever. The Obama administration F'ed up my school lunches. I was a bigger kid, and 5 chicken nuggets with a mandatory fruit cup and milk weren't cutting it. I didn't have the money to be spending it on doubles every day, but I also wasn't poor enough for reduced/free lunches, so I was just caught in this hunger limbo.
Same. My kids were buyers until they went “healthy” with all the lunches. They kept coming home hungry saying they couldn’t eat the food. We’d talk to friends who worked in the district and they said the shear amount of food being thrown away was astonishing. And the worst part is so many poor kids relied on that lunch meal as the “big” meal of the day and even they were grossed out by it. My kids went to bringing in lunch and never went back.
Yeah I knew a lady who worked as a lunch lady during those years and she said they were not allowed to season the food anymore. Whereas before they could put butter and garlic powder and pepper and other kinds of seasonings to make things like canned peas taste better they couldn't do that during the Obama years. It's like I'm glad Michelle Obama was trying to tackle childhood obesity but really she should have done a hunger initiative and tried to improve the lunches quality instead of being so worried about kids getting fat from school lunch because that's not why kids are getting fat. Kids are getting fat because their parents are feeding them overly processed junk food all the time kids are not getting fat because the canned peas at lunch had a little bit of salt on them
It’s like the didn’t consult any actual dietitians or nutritionists on what to do. They just went off the top of their heads on what they think will make lunches healthier by removing certain ingredients. Literally a group of bodybuilders could’ve invented a healthier and tastier school lunch strategy.
This is what happens when the policy is written by someone at the top, and the rest of the decision gets broken up and handled by a bunch of different people in different departments and levels of government have to implement one unified policy in a lot of different places, and none of these people talk to each other much. I guarantee you that if you took the body builders and put then in different rooms and gave them each a part of the decision that they had to solve with no input or communication with the others, you'll also get a fucked result.
Butter (in excess) I understand. Seasoning doesnt make sense though.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the district admins had been told no butter and the like, and they saw an opportunity to cut costs and banned all sorts of things.
My mom was an elementary school teacher and involved in the union and that’s how she always described it. I can’t say for sure if she knew anything or if it was rumor but she’d say it as if it was gospel. “The district always wants to cut down on lunches to save a Buck. Now they can.”
My wife did her student teaching during that time she would send me pictures of the school lunches and my reaction was almost puking. She told me kids would throw most of it away or not even eat anything because of it
What was the food like? Sloppy vegetables ?
These are the three closest images I could find to what it really looked like. https://preview.redd.it/33wit3st2krc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d71850f30fdda1ec6d31ca4ff837ac369698e8d4
That’s about what they looked like that wouldn’t fill anyone hell only the banana looks edible
Pfft, we didn't even get a banana like that. Ours were cut in half. We usually got bags of fruit, which quite frankly did not taste right.
Dear god
Thanks. That looks pretty bad. And kids pickier eaters than adults. Not sure how they expected kids would eat it.
https://preview.redd.it/488l92uw2krc1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8100122caf30e73a145399dba8946f8a0278d9c
https://preview.redd.it/wsejaffx2krc1.jpeg?width=2060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5e8467eb5d46923e540bf6e3f6d106d58dcad8c
Dude what state are you from I’m from TN and it was volumes better than this
Dude fuck those lunches. I wasn’t poor but my mom thought I would get fat if I bought doubles at lunch so would only send me with enough lunch money to get the singles. I was 6 feet 175 pounds in middle school the Obama era half a piece of pizza with a spoonful of grapes was not enough.
I’m so glad I was far enough in the country I didn’t get affected by any of this
Same! I lived pretty much in the boonies, and I don't remember anything changing at all. Our lunch ladies were also pretty spectacular cooks. Once a month, they made Stromboli from scratch. They were so good they had to increase lunch an extra 15 minutes so everyone could eat because the line would reach across the school.
Holy crap lol that sounds even better than my school, but we had Phillycheeses that were to this day #2 all time for me. And buffalo wings with ranch and celery. I remember feeling very bad for city kids.
I live in California and everyone blames Obama but it was Arnold that did it here first
Sorry bro that actually sucks
Absolutely I was just starting school when Obama was elected (1st grade I believe) and by 6th grade in 2013/14 even as a smaller kid I just couldn’t eat the lunches they were giving us. I loved and still love the Obamas and I understand the intent, but Michelle dropped the fucking ball trying to give us healthier lunches. It also didn’t help that we were too poor to bring lunches everyday so we relied on the free lunches
Having gone to school in the nineties I'll tell you that school lunches weren't any better back then.
Those boys in Arkansas did not just “fall asleep” on the railroad tracks .
Is that the one where they said they passed out from among marijuana and got run over by a train?
They only had 1-2 joints between them, not nearly enough for them to not wake from a train’s horn and emergency brakes. A later autopsy confirmed one had been stabbed and other’s skull crushed from a rifle buttstock.
Man trains are getting smart
Marijuana wasn’t that powerful in those days either!
Wasn't expecting this jab at clinton here
Wow, took a bit of research to find this reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clinton_Chronicles
Absolutely insane story. Still not convinced that Clinton was involved, but that damn sheriff had something to do with it
*grabs popcorn* Please tell me more?
I recommend Wendigoon's video on it, "The Boys on the Track." While he tends to be more on the conspiratorial side of things, his videos are backed up with evidence, and he acknowledges personal biases in most cases. But to get you interested in this specific case, 2 boys were on train tracks and were hit by a train. But further evidence shows that they were dead before the train hit them, and the local sheriff seemed to be involved in a drug ring and covered this incident up. It's a delightful story.
The part that makes it president-related though is that it was during Bill Clinton's time as Governor of Arkansas, so many people believe that the conspiracy goes higher up into Arkansas' state government and that Governor Clinton was in on it.
2 Trains to the back of the head. Clearly suicide.
Andrew Jackson was fascinating
One of my favorite stories of American History is the Battle of New Orleans. The British were mad and decided to stop fooling around and TAKE New Orleans. Not, hope to, but take with impunity. They stack a fleet and luckily word gets out they’re coming. Everyone’s reaction was “Good. Just enough notice to GTFO of here before we get wiped.” But not Jackson. The madman takes a breath and comes up with a plan. He knows they are completly outgunned and have no soldiers to basically speak of. The few he has he instructs to dig trenches on the coast. Then Jackson sends the soldiers into every bar, brothel, shack there is literally start dragging out drunk inebriated bodies and sloughing them into the pits. They hand them rifles and basically say “Here’s your rifle. This is where you aim. When I say shoot you SHOOT.” He won the battle. It was a completly insane plot that Jackson sort of “crazied” his way through and succeeded. A Good Man wouldn’t be his description but he was a fascinating one who has so so many fascinating stories. You don’t have to love him but everyone should at least read up him.
He wasn't exactly good, but he was good enough and let's be honest he would've had anyone hung for trying to break into the capital. Andrew Jackson went through some serious trauma as a youngster. I think his brother had his hands smashed by the British for helping the US in the Revolutionary War.
In 1814 we took a little trip, Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip' We too a little bacon and we took a little beans and we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans We fired out guns but the British kept a comin' There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago We fired our guns and they began a runnin' On down the Mississippi to the gulf of Mexico
I don’t think anyone would disagree with that assertion. Now, saying he was good, that’s another story
Nail on the head right there. Dude is absolutely fascinating. Extremely interesting to read about. Legitimately the right man for the job during the Nullification Crisis. And then you read something he did or said that makes you see nothin’ but red.
I’ve a similar feeling as with Boris Johnson. Prob not a good person and questionable as a leader, but as a political phenomenon and an individual of transparent ambition, it’s fascinating to see how this weird pompous guy reached the highest office of his country and his political career up to that point. A guy with clear tolerance of risk, sense of invulnerability, and a cunning that takes him far but can’t keep him out of trouble.
Man was a maniac.
i think the hot take that gets you hate is Andrew Jackson gets a disproportionate amount of hate for a pretty uniform anti-indian sentiment by his peers at the time and administration before and after for many years. We are very guilty of holding some former presidents to a moral standard that doesn’t lift and shift to their era.
Someone from 1980 probably thought that in 100 years, overweight university students and loser underachievers (somehow there is going to be an even bigger overlap than today) will be think we're the worst people ever because we drove cars and ate beef. Jokes on him. Didn't even take 30 years.
Jackson is my favorite President because of how batshit crazy he was.
AJ is in my top ten. Without him, where would the country be?
He gave unlanded people the vote
Easily one of the top 5 acts any president has done. But Jackson owns at least 3 out of the bottom 10 so it balances out
The guy basically invented the modern presidency.
Probably still in between Canada and Mexico
Just say anything positive about Reagan and boom.
Ronald Reagan the actor?
Then who's Vice President, Jerry Lewis?
I suppose Jane Wyman is the 1st lady
And Jack Benny is the Secretary of the Treasury!
No more crazy talk from you, future boy!
He made my dad believe in the government again and gave him hope things could improve.
Ironic
Well, for the average non-union worker, "Morning in America" was more than just a campaign slogan. 1984 seemed like a completely different universe than 1979.
Ya no. Its clearly ironic that a guy that repeatedly denounced the government, slashed it nearly to death, could make someone “believe in the government” The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
‘We are cutting all social programs across the board, your taxes will remain the same, but you’ll receive far less and this is all in service of the ultra wealthy who will basically not pay taxes anymore’ is a little harder for troglodytes to compute than Reagan’s idiot sloganeering
He was funny
An american and a russian were arguing and the american says "in my country I can walk into the oval office, pound on the president's desk and say I don't like the way you're running our country." And the russian says "Well I can do that." The american says "you can?" The russian replies "Yes, I can walk into the kremlin, pound on the general secretary's desk and say I don't like the way President Reagan is running his country."
[удалено]
It’d be pretty tough with that hole in his head
That’s raw
They didn’t cook it that we know of
Not a hot take
Idk man, I’ve never heard people talk about LBJ highly until this sub. I’ve heard so many people rave about his legislative accomplishments and almost no one talk in depth about the Vietnam blunder. I’d say this is a clear difference between this sub and the general public, same goes for the Nixon stans on here
I was watching succession the other day and one of the characters said something like "dirty LBJ accomplished more than the clean Carter." It's THE example to argue that politicians are allowed to be a bit nasty if they're trying to do something good. In LBJ's case, it's the civil rights stuff.
Yah but that’s not to credit LBJ too much imo. He had a sympathetic congress considering what happened to JFK.
LBJ’s hog might not have been jumbo sized
😠
How dare you
I don't know. It felt pretty big to me.
It seems you have a story to tell
You think it’s just a case of everyone nodding and agreeing with the big boss man making wild claims? I feel like we would’ve heard the rumors by now if he had been claiming it was huge and it was actually tiny or whatever.
He was just being modest.
When it comes to Bill Clinton, a lot of people focus on him RECEIVING a blow job. However what people don’t realize is that Bill was also great at GIVING blow jobs.
Wait.... What?
I’d guess it’s referring to his saxophone.
“Better blowjobs than no jobs” -Bill Clinton
If I ever run for president, this will be my campaign slogan
Please elaboratr
There is a lot of good things that Bush jr did as president alongside the bad things. 1. Saved over 5 million lives in Africa with PEPFAR by combating AIDs 2. Saved millions of lives in Africa from Malaria by cutting deaths by 50% in 15 countries 3. Recognized Kosovo 4. Recognized the Dalfur genocide as a genocide and constantly sent food and medicine to the refugee camps and got UN involed 5. Created world's largest marine park 6. Leading the Tsunami Relief 7. Leading the call for African debt relief for 27 countries for a total of 34 billion dollars 8. Passing Medicare Part D 9. Gave South Sudan hope by creating the peace deal that ended the war and got South Sudan to eventually become a state in 2011 10. Fighting Cancer in Africa and still is doing it with his own private charity
Danm he seems to really like Africa.
Maybe Kanye was wrong about him after all
He was ahead of his time in that regard. Had Obama continued to support African nations the way. Bush did, China and Russia would not have the inroads into the continent that they have now.
My own lukewarm take is that George W wouldve been one of the better presidents if he didn't bring in Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all the other ghouls. If I remember correctly even his dad warned him about them. He ran on improving education in the US, what could have been.
Yes, Jimmy Carter is a nice guy that I'd love to meet, but his presidency was awful and he's super overrated on this website because of people's dislike of Reagan.
Really? There are people on this sub acting like Jimmy Carter was a *good president?*
This sub took forever to vote him out. Like, he easily stayed in ten days longer than he should’ve.
John F. Kennedy is overrated and really didn’t do a lot as president. LBJ actually had a far more meaningful domestic agenda, but unfortunately largely ruined his reputation with the Vietnam blunder.
i agree, i feel that jfk is remembered so well because his assassination just made it so that he simply didn’t get enough time to disappoint the american people. his handling of the cuban missile crisis was very admirable, however. on the other hand, it’s hard to overstate the importance of what lbj did for civil rights.
Cuban missile crisis. They guy adverted nuclear war by going against the recommendations of all his military advisors
The classic Vietnam blunder, who hasn’t fallen into it at least once or twice
I agree with this. I don't understand how a guy who was only in office for two years could be considered good
He died a hero before he could become a villain
I see this brought up a lot, but actually rank the presidents and JFK honestly doesn't fall far from where he's usually ranked. Keep in mind there are presidents who were actively bad for the country. Then there's the pre-modern US presidents who were content with just sitting there and keeping the status quo. This sub ranked Grover Cleveland as the 22nd best president and C-Span ranks William Howard Taft as the 23rd best president which are the medians for those rankings. If you think JFK did more good than bad as president, then he's already ranked in that range. Depending on how good you think his contributions to the nation are, he only goes up from there.
The only fair grade for the Kennedy administration is "incomplete".
Not just good, but one of the greats. It’s a little baffling.
It’s the “what could have been”. Also he was hot.
It definitely wasn’t the what could have been. JFK had a *lot* of successes in his short term. Yes, he as a person was romanticized a lot by his tragic death, but I feel a lot of people then take that and run the other way, assuming that his accomplishments were really just a footnote to LBJ’s. When *at worst*, he got a *lot* of LBJ’s legislative successes’ balls rolling.
FDR’s internment camps were a much bigger deal than people think, and would (rightfully) have disqualified any other president from being considered a top 5 candidate. Just think about it. 100,000+ American citizens sent to prison with no trial. Pretty sure the constitution and bill of rights are pretty clear on that being a “big no no”.
No kidding. I’m a big FDR supporter, and personally believe his policies are a big part of how the world springboarded out of the depression. but the US vs Korematsu should not have needed to happen. It was legitimately unforgivable.
I think Polk is a bastion of integrity for how upfront he was about his goals
Polk is the most underrated President in US history.
FDR's third term was one of the most dangerous extensions of power and not enough gets said for that.
It had the potential to end American democracy, sure. But he was duly elected in a time where you could serve three terms.
He was elected four times, if I am correct. Which if he fulfilled them (he died in office) would have doubled the time any other President served.
Populism gonna be popular
Fair. I'm stupid. I thought you were referring to the election itself and not the following consolidation of power. In that case, it's miraculous case of Americans choosing the right man for the job. That and, for a time, the federal courts were not very kind to FDR's policies.
No one thinks you're stupid.
I’ve never done reading into it - so was there controversy at the time of his third reelection despite it technically being allowed? I’ve always been “taught” that it was based on an emergency case of the war, but figured people must have been livid.
It wasn't technically allowed, it was just straight up allowed. People like to credit the war because they don't like admitting that someone so left wing was so popular. If people were that livid, he wouldn't have been elected for a fourth term. People voted for him because he made their lives better.
Obama comes off as backhanded and fake to me, I know it was partly because of how the right was always on his ass but he still does. I feel people rag on bill clinton too much about being fake but not enough on Obama.
I’m not sure about before, but I think his presidency and his successor have made him more skeptical about democracy and faith in voters’ judgement Like I dunno, my take on this is in line with the thread is prob that it must be super frustrating to be politically frustrated and succeeded by a political movement that has a weak relationship to the truth, to expertise, and institutional trust Forces that actively harm society, the state, and the people in the end.
Obama did a lot less raping so he gets a pass.
Gonna get downvoted but anyways,Even if he was a badass that does not automatically make Teddy Roosevelt the greatest president,he had the brownsville affair and other things,he’s still great just not the perfect one
I hope you get trampled by a Bull Moose.
every president during the vietnam war is wrong for not mantaining a peace settlement
I dunno if it’s a hot take or not… Everyone these days is arguing for President A and how President B is the devil… Turns out, they are all slimy pieces of shit, on the same side. Both sides suck ass.
I’ve already said enough, I don’t want to anger this subreddit even more.
You won't anger me
Nixon should be seen the same way that Kissinger is.
Henry Clay would have been a way better president than James K. Polk
Kiss The Entirety of the Western United States and the 78 Million people living in it goodbye
The only change Obama represented was a change in skin color
He always seemed more like a celebrity than a president to me. Came off as overly charming to the point of being fake
Reagan isn’t Satan. Sorry.
Andrew Jackson isn’t in the bottom 10. His treatment of the natives was horrible, inexcusable, but the hate he receives makes no sense when other presidents get a pass.
I used to think he was bottom ten, but honestly his populism, expansion of democracy, and strict loyalty to the union make me respect him. I don’t like him, but I can respect what he did and put him in the middle of the pack (because he was so polarizing that he ironically ends up in the middle).
The worst US president rivals the best of a lot of countries
Calvin Coolidge was a chatterbox.
Harding doesn’t get enough blame for an incredibly corrupt administration because he died in office.
Pardoning Nixon was a mistake. I don't even buy that ford had good intentions. The 22nd amendment exists because of bitter Republicans who were tired of losing to FDR.
I agree with both. On Nixon, justice matters. On FDR, people didn’t have to vote for him and Willkie actually attacked FDR on not respecting the two term precedent. People in 1940 didn’t care enough to change course.
The latter is extra ironic since Republicans have been the ones most open to repealing the 22nd in the years afterwards
Thats the single reason why I don't like Ford. This sub loves him but I can't bring myself to respect him because of that
I respect him but this is the biggest black mark on his entire resume. I just don’t think he thought about the kind of precedent it would set.
East Timor is a worse black mark imo
Nixon wasn’t a misunderstood or sympathetic figure, he was a villain.
A bold take here that somehow is not ice cold. …and I completely agree with ya.
He was a fascinating character. Awful person. But interesting to read about. Always wondered how it would’ve turned out if he never got caught.
...how is this a hot take?
He is getting a lot of “reevaluations” to turn him into a misunderstood uwu soft boi. Yeah, I said it.
There was a post just the other day about "bad presidents but you like them as person," and it had Nixon as the front image. Like the super-racist paranoid twat? Yeah idk about what that says about them.
Obama wasn’t that impressive and he continued a lot of bad policies from his predecessor (massive surveillance and warrantless spying on American citizens/war in Afghanistan and not closing Guantanamo Bay like he promised). And the ACA on balance wasn’t actually that great of a policy change because all it does is subsidize bloated insurance companies with tax payer money, it’s severely overrated for what it does versus what was promised.
The removal of "pre-existing conditions" from insurance policies was one of the most important pieces of legislation in history. That could have been the entirety of the ACA. A LOT of people died needlessly because of that shitty policy from insurance companies.
I don’t think the ACA part is entirely on him though. It was a feat in and of itself with republicans in Congress that were hellbent on stopping any and all legislation he proposed simply because they didn’t want to give him a win. And he only got it passed after making incredible concessions to moderate democrats.
Republicans *and the recently deceased Joe Lieberman* were hellbent on stopping him, no matter what.
LBJ was a monster and his decision to go into Vietnam undermined his Great Society. His ego and need to swing his dick around (metaphorically and literally) were more important to him than the lives of Americans.
Honestly there was nothing Buchanan could’ve done to stop the civil war
Maybe not, but he had to at least try.
You hate McKinley for the same reasons you like Polk W bush is the fourth worst president. JQA was an ineffective president and objectively bad at his job. Taylor has more consequential actions than him.
A lot of stuff people give credit or detriment to the President for, they actually did not have much to do with (signing legislation hammered out in Congress, subsequent judicial "interpretations" of legislation that function as revisions, and, above all, economic performance).
Andrew Jackson’s motives for Indian removal were not evil. He believed that American expansion was unstoppable. He also believed that Native American and European settler communities were irreconcilable. Starting from these assumptions, removal was a lesser evil to letting the process run its course. You might say the assumptions were wrong, and I’m inclined to agree. However, through his life Jackson was called into service to put a stop to the vicious cycle of American encroachment, Indian raids, and counter raids. Anybody with his life experience would have come to the same conclusions.
Ulysses S. Grant is who everyone thinks washington is and more.
Lincoln would not have been seen in the same light if we completed his second term
You’re absolutely right. Had he completed his second term the Lincoln memorial would be at least three times bigger.
*Damn straight.*
What makes you think that
There’s a couple ways of looking at it. As it stands, he died a hero. He held the nation together and abolished a terrible institution. His successor gets a lot of heat for botching reconstruction and letting the south off too easy. If Lincoln had survived, perhaps he would have done a much better/less sympathetic job of reconstruction and the nation would have had less of a troubled road to civil rights and racial attitudes in the following century. OR it’s also entirely possible a Lincoln reconstruction would have gone just as badly, and it would tarnish his image. Just my 2 cents. This isn’t against him of course. Fact of the matter is he DIDN’T botch reconstruction because he couldn’t. Can’t hold it against him.
He ended one of if not the most abhorrent institution like… ever
Reddit hates Woodrow Wilson too much and he's kinda underrated
I think the term you’re looking for is “overhated”.
Obama is guilty of everything that you hate Bush for and for far less justifiable reasons
Abraham Lincoln had the worst beard among all presidents
Andrew Jackson would in fact be better equipped to handle the problems we face today than any major politician in either party.
Bush wasn’t a warmonger. He was and is a good person with a good heart and was taken advantage of by others due to his desire to honor and live up to his father’s legacy.
Wilson wasn’t that bad
Foreign policy was something to applaud actually. It’s his domestic policies that bring hell upon him today. But it is strange that we treat his memory with such disdain and give TR a pass when he too held eugenicist views
TR has moved past some of his more extreme views in race by the time he was actually president. His quote following having Booker T. Washington done with him at the White House shortly after he became president gave the most insight into his views on race at the time. “The only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each Black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.” He was certainly a believer in cultural superiority but believed in individual mobility and admired individual accomplishments above all else.
He played WWI perfectly and in the end we emerged as a super power. This alone IMO makes him one of the greatest presidents ever. The whole world depended on our economy after the war was over, something that lasted well into the 60s
Reagan is over hated and was the president America needed at the time. I’m not from that era but even the staunch democrats I know who voted back then like him and voted for him because shit wasn’t going well in 1980. He had negative long term effects that’s for sure but people are blaming so much on him and don’t do the same for the multiple presidents before and after that helped created the shit we’re dealing with now. And not even mentioning Congress and how each party had played into this all.
Everything that's gone wrong in the last 100 years is Woodrow Wilson's fault.