presidents the boys got their report cards in the mail this week. so i thought i'd grade the recent presidents. on a curve. in chronological order. starting with a president i can actually vaguely remember being president. nixon: opened the door to china. that's good. cheated during an election. that's bad. really bad. D. ford: pardoned nixon. that's bad. didn't otherwise fuck anything up. nor did he accomplish anything noteworthy. C. carter: the middle east fell apart. well, more so than normal. pardoned the shah leading to the iran hostage situation. and he seemed powerless to do anything about it. or was too busy saving the whales. sheehs. D. reagan: the hostages crisis ended the day he took office. he busted opec. that was awesome. set the us consumer economy on fire. and collapsed the soviet producer economy. lowered taxes for everyone. but more for the rich. raised taxes for everyone. but less for the rich. supply side economics took hold during his watch. that turns out to have been very very bad. he invaded grenada and panama. wtf? america felt really good about itself. C. bush the first: he handled the first iraq war masterfully. he set up the economic framework leading to a period of unprecedented prosperity. A. clinton: the economy boomed on his watch. he gets credit for not fucking things up. well, not in ways that should have been foreseeable. B. bush the second: handled the afghanistan war well. at first. but then gave up the hunt for bin laden to start another war in iraq. wtf? seriously. he should have been impeached and executed for being stupid. cases in point. he spent 10 years of savings in 6 months. and 9/11 hadn't even happened yet. he put the hammer down on the already discredited supply side economics. and the economy went absolutely nowhere. it worked for reagan because the saudis flooded the market with cheap oil. it failed for bush2 because the wars in the middle east drove oil prices through the roof. a very foreseeable outcome. F. obama: people love every part of obamacare. they just hate the whole. apparently the anti-obama propaganda machine is pretty awesome. no major fuck ups so far. B. i gave republicans ACCDF. and democrats BBD. which pretty much reflects my voting distribution. i wish more people gave more thought about who they vote for and why. sigh. timmer for president. hrm. wonder what grade i'd give myself.  ¶ 8:00 AM