Showing posts with label POTUS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label POTUS. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

LBJ drives his car into a lake

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

LBJ driving his amphibious car.  He liked to scare visitors to his ranch by driving them downhill in his Amphicar into his property’s lake, "while shouting that the brakes had broken.”

---o0o---

President Ronald W. Reagan rides a missle

By Jack Brummet

This is a 1981 photo of a statue of President Ronald Wilson Reagan of the United States on a missile. This was a protest sculpture on the street Nieuwezijdsvoorburgwal (really?!) in Amsterdam.  RWR appears to be emulating the final Slim Pickins scene in Dr. Strangelove.

---o0o---

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

LBJ shows his gall bladder surgery scars at an impromptu press conference

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

In 1965, LBJ was released from the hospital after gall bladder and kidney stone surgery.  LBJ being LBJ, he stopped for the press, and instead of answering questions, pulled his shirt up and gave one of the strangest presidential photo ops of all time.  I can almost hear him narrating this...

---o0o---

Saturday, June 08, 2013

Poem: Autopsy of a President

By Jack Brummet




Weak character coupled with an honored place,
Half-baked knowledge with big plans,

And limited reason with heavy responsibility
Will not escape disaster.
                          ---o0o---

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Coincidences? JFK & Abe Lincoln

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

I don't know if you remember this ancient (pre-meme) meme, but here it is, slightly updated...


 ---o0o---

Friday, March 22, 2013

The complete (so far) painting oeuvre of George W. Bush (24 paintings and counting)

By Jack Brummet, Painting and American Art History Ed.


As you have possibly read,hacker--Guccifer--purloined these photographs of Ex-President George W. Bush and his paintings by hacking into the Bush family's email.  He originally furnished the stolen photos to The Smoking Gun and recently, to Gawker.  Three batches have been released so far.  We already knew a little about POTUS 43's painting from his art teacher's website and interviews.

Guccifer hacked the accounts of Dorothy Bush Koch and at least five others with close ties to the Bush dynasty. To highlight his brilliance, he furnished The Smoking Gun with a series of paintings  by Ex-President George W. Bush.  He also included a string of emails about Bush’s ailing father, POTUS 41. And, this week, he sent along to Gawker a new batch of photos of Dubyah's oil paintings. 



A scary dog behind bars with a prospect of the White House


In a package on Georgia’s WAGA-TV, Bush 43’s art teacher, Bonnie Flood, said the president regularly opts to draw household pets.


“He started off painting dogs. I think he said he painted 50 dogs,” Flood said. “He pulled out this canvas and started painting dogs and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I don’t paint dogs!”




Cats, dogs, and a still life


a photo of the President's painting of his recently deceased dog Barney

The artist at work, painting a church

Self portrait in the shower

Bathtub self-portrait

Twelve photos of paintings that Guccifer gave to Gawker
---o0o---

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Two more paintings by Ex-President George W. Bush - two dogs

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

Like his GOP predecessor in the White House, President Dwight Eisenhower, Ex-President George Bush has taken up painting.  See our earlier post with several of his paintings here.

---o0o---

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Three paintings by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower

by Jack Brummet, Studio Arts Ed.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a painter (as we have also recently discovered about former President George W. Bush - click here to see his paintings).


Ike in the studio





---o0o---

Monday, February 18, 2013

ATIT Reheated: My visits with Richard Nixon in NYC

By Jack Brummet, Editor-in-Chief
with research by Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor




Frank Curran, Claudia Curran, Nick Gattuccio, and Jack outside Richard Nixon's House, 1980 - click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

One of my favorite things when I lived in NYC was to visit President Richard Nixon.

The President had a sweet townhouse at 142 East 65th Street on the Upper East Side. We probably stopped by five times while I lived there. I would drag friends there in a taxi, or car, if someone had one. The President never actually came out to greet us, although I often hoped he'd come out and say hi to the kids, and hang with us like the time he visited the students at the Lincoln Memorial. Maybe we'd have another one of those uncomfortable Nixon moments where he is bound and determined to seem like a regular guy. . .an almost laughable goal.


A few years after he resigned, he returned east from his California exile. This is the President who wanted to send me to Vietnam, so I had mixed feelings, indeed, about this man. He kept the Great Society funded, even as he lied and weaseled his way to disgrace. What could you think of the ex red-baiter who went to China and opened diplomatic relations? He was a two-edged sword, which made him endlessly fascinating. And I went there to pay homage to both Good King Richard and Evil Dick.

These visits often occurred around closing time. I seem to recall often having a bottle or go cup in hand, as we stood outside the townhouse for ten or fifteen minutes and pondered the dark and magnificent phenomenon of President Nixon.

In all of those visits, the Secret Service never came near us. We saw them a few times, but no matter how loud and raucous we got, they never approached. I guess that makes sense. There were 20 million people living within an easy car drive. We were probably not the only knuckleheads in the region to stop by.


In the mid-eighties, Richard Nixon and I both moved from Manhattan. He moved to Saddle River, New Jersey and wrote a lot of books, and advised every President in some capacity.  RMN died in 1994, in NYC.
---o0o---

Happy Presidents Day - Selected Presidential Photos

Selected Photos by Pablo Fanque and Mona Goldwater

Presidents Gerald R. Ford and William J. Clinton

President William H. Taft

Presidents Eisenhower, Coolidge, Nixon, Taft, and Johnson

President Warren G. Harding

President Barack H. Obama

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

President Harry S. Truman (with Lauren Bacall)

President George W. Bush (with Karl Rove)

President John F. Kennedy

Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson

President Theodore Roosevelt


President Ronald W. Reagan

President Zachary Taylor

---o0o---

Friday, February 08, 2013

The paintings of Ex-President George W. Bush

By Jack Brummet, Painting and Drawings Editor


The artist at work [Guccifer is the hacker who stole these photos]

A hacker recently broke into some of the Bush family's email accounts.  From GWB's sisters account, comes images of paintings that Dubyah has created...  A report from The Smoking Gun is here.

For my part, the best revelations were of George W. Bush, the artist--one shows him naked in the shower, the other of his legs and feet in a bath, with the tap running. The Smoking Gun said that Dubyyah  sent them to his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch.  There was also a photograph showing him at his easel working.

 George W. Bush, self portrait in the shower

 George W. Bush, self portrait in the bath
---o0o---

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

President James Polk, the last POTUS to sport a mullet

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor



The 11th President, James Polk, presided over the Mexican-American War, which ended with the US annexing most of the southwest.  He also threatened to go to war with Britain (who still hadn't learned their lesson) over who owned the Oregon Country, which included Washington State.  When he ran for office, he vowed to serve only one turn, and did not run for re-election.  Perhaps most importantly, he was the President with the most bodacious mullet.
---o0o---

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Presidential truths, zingers, bloopers, and misstatements

by Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor 
illustrations edited by Jack Brummet



"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- Dan Quayle

"I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again."
 - Bill Clinton

"Look, when I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
- Barack Obama


I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
- Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952

"Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening."
–Bill Clinton

"I am convinced that UFOs exist, because I have seen one." (1976)
- Jimmy Carter

"Half the time, when I see the evening news, I wouldn't be for me either." (1995)
- Bill Clinton

"There are only so many lies you can take, and now there has been one too many. Nixon should get his ass out of the White House today." [in 1974, after some of the more damaging revelations implicating Nixon in Watergate emerged]
- Barry Goldwater (who didn't like Nixon in the first place)

"I'm the only President you've got." (1964)
- LBJ

“Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.”
- LBJ

"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside pissing in." [re: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover]
- LBJ

"So dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time." [re: Gerald Ford]
- LBJ

"I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is." (1986)
- Teddy Kennedy

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I wouldn't want to wake up next to a lady pipefitter." (1971 - quoted in Ms. magazine)
- Richard Nixon



"I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall--plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up, or anything else. If that will save it, save the plan." (1973 - to his subordinates in the White House during Watergate)
- Richard Nixon

"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook." (1973 - to the press during Watergate)
- Richard Nixon

"Well, I screwed up real good, didn't I?" (1974 - to Al Haig just before writing his resignation speech)
- Richard Nixon

"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. But I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and twisted it with relish. And I guess that if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing." (1977)
-Richard Nixon

"When I first came to Washington, for the first six months I wondered how the hell I ever got here. For the next six months, I wondered how the hell the rest of them ever got here." (1940)
- Harry S. Truman

"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." (1984 - testing a microphone before a radio broadcast)
- Ronald Reagan

"After seeing the movie Rambo, I'll know what to do the next time something like this happens." (1985 - referring to the TWA hostage crisis)
- Ronald Reagan

"I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer--a power from outer space, from another planet?" (1988)
- Ronald Reagan

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- Dan Quayle

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
- Dan Quayle

“Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." [during a September 6, 2004 speech in Poplar Bluff, Missouri]
- George W. Bush
---o0o---