{"id":5599,"date":"2016-11-07T09:09:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T17:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=5599"},"modified":"2016-11-06T07:30:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T15:30:05","slug":"make-room-mt-rushmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=5599","title":{"rendered":"Make Room Mt. Rushmore?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5600\" style=\"width: 285px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=5600\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5600\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5600\" class=\"wp-image-5600 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/rushmore.jpeg\" alt=\"rushmore\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5600\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;My lips are sealed&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>This week<\/strong> we will, or already have, decided who will be our next president, or perhaps more accurately, decided who we want to keep from being our next president. In a desperate move to help us all to feel better about our new president-elect, I thought I would look at the <strong>\u2018character\u2019<\/strong> of some of our past presidents, who had the huge advantage of not living in this era of <strong>\u2018social media\u2019<\/strong> where everyone carries a <strong>camera<\/strong> and bad news travels at the <strong>warp speed of the Internet.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As it turns out our <strong>founding fathers<\/strong>\u00a0weren&#8217;t without their flaws, both <strong>Washington<\/strong> and <strong>Jefferson<\/strong> owned slaves, in fact Jefferson was more than a <strong>groper<\/strong>, he fathered six children with slave, <strong>Sally Hemings<\/strong> \u2013 that would have been a little difficult to keep off the <strong>TMZ<\/strong> network today!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lincoln<\/strong>, who is often revered as our best president, seemed to think of himself <strong>above the law<\/strong> as he single-handedly suspended <strong>habeas corpus<\/strong> (the principle that someone under arrest can\u2019t be held for long without being brought before a judge), shut down opposition newspapers and jailed their editors, conspired to establish a\n<div id=\"attachment_5605\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=5605\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5605\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5605\" class=\"wp-image-5605 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/TR-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"tr\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/TR-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/TR-768x523.jpg 768w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/TR.jpg 925w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5605\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Teddy the Elephant Killer<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>military government in <strong>Washington DC<\/strong> and used <strong>military force<\/strong> to keep the Maryland legislature from meeting so that <strong>it couldn\u2019t vote on secession<\/strong>. \u00a0I suspect that\u00a0<strong>WikiLeaks<\/strong> would have had a field day with old <strong>\u2018Honest Abe\u2019.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s<\/strong> lust was of a different sort, he lusted for war. His <strong>imperialism<\/strong> and <strong>racism<\/strong> can be summed up with the following quote from him, <em>\u201cAll the great masterful races have been fighting races,\u201d <\/em>he claimed<em>. <\/em>To fellow Anglo-Saxons, he said,<em> \u201cIt is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker races,\u201d <\/em>and added<em>, \u201cThe most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages.\u201d <\/em> I\u2019m guessing that <strong>Hitler<\/strong> was a big fan of Teddy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>OK, that takes care of <strong>Mt. Rushmore<\/strong>, but there is plenty more . . .<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Benjamin Franklin<\/strong> was careless with secretive documents that ended up in the hands of the enemy \u2013 a British\n<div id=\"attachment_5601\" style=\"width: 284px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=5601\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5601\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5601\" class=\"wp-image-5601 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/FDR.jpeg\" alt=\"fdr\" width=\"274\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5601\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Lying Franklin<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>secret agent. But he swore that those documents only contained information about how he was going to fly a kite to invent electricity and Chelsea\u2019s wedding.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/strong>\u00a0was known to lie a lot (What? A politician lying!!!) He was in terrible health, which he kept from the public, he was said to have liked <strong>Stalin<\/strong> too much and he had <strong>Soviet spies<\/strong> in his cabinet and didn\u2019t really care, family members enriched themselves by his being in office, the <strong>New Deal<\/strong> actually slowed the recovery from the <strong>Great Depression<\/strong> and, among other things, he was accused of trying to seize control of the <strong>Supreme Court<\/strong>. Gosh, he could easily get elected today!<\/li>\n<li>The list of sleazy presidents is too long for this blog, but here\u2019s a few of the all-stars:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>John Tyler<\/strong> \u2013 fathered 15 children with two different wives and had several more with his slaves; in November 1836 he became the <strong>Whig\u2019s<\/strong> party president <strong>\u2018erect\u2019<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Andrew Jackson<\/strong> invited prostitutes to the <strong>White House Christmas party<\/strong> \u2013 I&#8217;m sure he just wanted to make sure that there were plenty of <strong>Ho Ho Hos<\/strong> to go around!<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"attachment_5602\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=5602\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5602\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5602\" class=\"wp-image-5602 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/ClintonLewinski-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"clintonlewinski\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5602\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Bill &amp; Monica<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>While <strong>Jack\u00a0Kennedy<\/strong> and <strong>Bill<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Clinton<\/strong> are considered modern history&#8217;s best-know presidential horn-dogs,\u00a0<strong><strong>Lyndon<\/strong><\/strong> <strong>Johnson, \u00a0<\/strong>who called his naughty bits <strong>&#8216;Jumbo&#8217;<\/strong>,\u00a0was worse than either of them. \u00a0Both<strong> Grover Cleveland <\/strong>and<strong> Warren Harding\u00a0<\/strong>were also known to have a number of dalliances while in the<strong> &#8216;oval orifice\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_5603\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=5603\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5603\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5603\" class=\"wp-image-5603 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/kennedy-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"kennedy\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5603\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Marilyn &amp; Jack<\/strong><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<li>It is well known that <strong>FDR<\/strong> and <strong>Eisenhower<\/strong> (at least while a general in the army if not while president) had mistresses while serving in <strong>&#8216;pubic&#8217;<\/strong> life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There\u2019s more, lots more, but I think you get the point. So while you may think that we\u2019ve reached new lows with this year\u2019s two candidates, it\u2019s actually just politics as usual, so we\u2019ll be just fine. There now, don\u2019t you feel better? Yeah, me neither!<\/p>\n<p>Even if this didn&#8217;t make you feel better, why not <strong>SHARE<\/strong> it, maybe it will help a friend with pre or post-election blues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow This week we will, or already have, decided who will be our next president, or perhaps more accurately, decided who we want to keep from being our next president. In a desperate move to help us all &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=5599\">read more<span class=\"meta-nav\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2148],"tags":[2155,238,2360,2361,2362,863,1526,1564,2371],"class_list":["post-5599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","tag-bill-clinton","tag-fdr","tag-john-kennedy","tag-lyndon-johnson","tag-mt-rushmore","tag-teddy-roosevelt","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-tmz","tag-wikileaks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-1sj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5599"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5642,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599\/revisions\/5642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}