POTUS in action: Presidents doing stuff

Jimmy Carter and an aide hop a fence at La Guardia to make a connection during the 1976 campaign

Future President Ike Eisenhower with General Omar Bradley and Winston Churchill on a tour of military bases

Candidate JFK riding a mule in the Chicago stockyards in the 1960 campaign

Gerald Ford Exercising

President George W. Bush fishing for bass

President Harry S. Truman bags a whopper

Cal Coolidge, 4th of July 1927

President Ronald W. Reagan, 1981

President Teddy Roosevelt hunts for bear, ca 1905

President Woodrow Wilson throws out the first baseball, 1916

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Four Presidents elected twice by a majority vote: FDR, DDE, RWR, and BHO

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

Question #1: 232 scholars think the President is rocking the Presidency.  What about the other 188, or 523 scholars who don't?

It's true only these four Presidents we're elected twice with majorities.  And it's awesome BHO is on the list.  Yes, he has taken a substantial political and PR shellacking while racking up some great accomplishments.  But so did the other three on this list (the shellackings anyhow).

RWR in particular was run through the mill--rightfully--his last two years in office, in addition to being portrayed as lazy and at times bizarre (e.g., consulting an astrologist regularly, seeing a UFO in 1974), on top of using drug money to arm the Anti-Sandinista Rebels, and the other clandestine acts  of the Ollie North era.   

Plenty of people called FDR treasonous after the Yalta meetings, and before.

Ike was often considered out of touch.  He was pretty bland. He was smart, but too blind to race.  He could have jump started the discussion.  But he did not.  He said a lot of smart things about the military and the munitions and war machine.

If BHO could communicate as passionately as he did when he was.a first term candidate, I think he would be on a lot steadier footing.  That's never been my problem with him.  Mine has been the hesitation, not waffling really, but kind of a Hamlet-like or Prufrockian pondering instead of acting.

Via Occupy Democrats - "OBAMA RATED BEST PRESIDENT IN PAST 50 YEARS, but you wouldn't know it. — Presidential scholars rank President Obama as the best president in the past 50 years, and Bush as the worst. Obama even bests the GOPper's sacrosanct cowboy, President Reagan. In fact, in the past 100 years only four presidents have been ranked better than Obama. Why then, do people question his achievements, ESPECIALLY in light of GOP obstruction bordering on sedition, and unprecedented voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering, along with Citizens United dollars? Eventually his rank will move higher on this list as Bush's moves toward the bottom of the barrel. But back to the premise of this image I created. Can there be any reason other than race that causes such widespread denial of presidential accomplishment and success? I conclude it can ONLY be about race. Millions of Americans will not give President Obama the respect he deserves not only as president but as a human being. The corporate owned media are among the worst sources for spreading these lies about the president's citizenship, academic accomplishment, presidential success, etc. These same deep rooted feelings of racial animus fuel the fear and hate that contributed to the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Racism has been institutionalized into our corporate hierarchies, into our prison and court systems and even into our police forces which are seven times as likely to kill black men as white men. Hopefully this image and the questions it raises, help put into perspective the deeply rooted racial undertones that guide our daily paths like the roads on which we drive, paths that dictate our sense of direction and our decisions, many of which are subliminal, yet have far reaching consequences, like police officer Darren Wilson wondering, "Can I legally kill this man?" Americans need to increase the intensity of this dialogue, to question their own conscious and unconscious decisions regarding race and its role in our lives. The future of our nation depends on this introspection, reflection and national conversation. Please share this image. Thank you. {Allow me to answer those of you who wonder about President Clinton's victories. You'll recall that H. Ross Perot mucked things up a bit, with Clinton winning but getting only 43% and 49% of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996 respectively." - Tracy Knauss

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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

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Alien Lore No. 244 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower Met With Aliens?

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower Met With Aliens, according to testimony by former New Hampshire State Representative Henry W. McElroy Jr.

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ATIT Reheated: [deceased] celebrity cookoff number three - President Eisenhower vs. Linda McCartney

By Jack Brummet, Food and wine editor


President Dwight D. Eisenhower, took office eight months before I was born and was the first President of all 50 states.  He gave this nearly 900 word recipe to the Women of Christ Episcopal Church, back in the 1950's. 



We have to give Ike a mulligan. Back then, you could still call a soup made with a beef bone ("the bigger the better"), chicken parts, and "a couple pounds of ordinary soup meat, either beef or mutton" a vegetable soup. Linda McCartney's soup, on the other hand, is even vegan. You do have to give Ike a point for using such a hip ingredient as nasturtiums. Linda McCartney's soup is magnificent: the best I've had. Her much briefer recipe follows DDE's. Ike was well-known for his cooking and grilling, particularly for his steaks, cornmeal flapjacks, and his "vegetable soup."

First up, Ike's recipe, verbatim:

"The best time to make vegetable soup is a day or so after you have had fried chicken and out of which you have saved the necks, ribs, backs uncooked. (The chicken is not essential, but does add something.)

"Procure from the meat market a good beef soup bone, the bigger the better. It is a rather good idea to have it split down the middle so the marrow is exposed. In addition, buy a couple pounds of ordinary soup meat, either beef or mutton, or both. 

"Put all this meat, early in the morning, in a big kettle. The best kind is heavy aluminum, but a good iron pot will do almost as well. Put in also the bony parts of the chicken you have saved. Cover it with water, something on the order of 5 quarts. Add a teaspoon of salt, a bit of black pepper and, if you like, a touch of garlic (one small piece). If you don’t like garlic put in onion. Boil all this slowly all day long. Keep on boiling until the meat has literally dropped off the bone. If your stock boils down during the day, add enough water from time to time to keep the meat covered. When the whole thing has practically disintegrated pour out into another large kettle through a colander. Make sure the marrow is out of the bones. Let this drain through the colander for quite awhile as much of the juice will drain out of the meat. (Shake the colander to help get out all the juices.

"Save a few of the better pieces of meat just to cut up a little bit in small pieces to put into your soup after it is done. Put the kettle containing the stock you now have in a very cool place, outdoors in the winter or in the ice box; let it stand all night and the next day until you are ready to make your soup.

"You will find that a hard layer of fat has formed on top of the stock which can usually be lifted off since the whole kettle full of stock has jelled. Some people like a little bit of the fat left on and some like their soup very rich and do not remove more than about half of the fat

'Put the stock back into your kettle and you are ready to make your soup.
"In a separate pan, boil slowly about a third of a teacupful of barley. This should be cooked separately since it has a habit, in a soup kettle, of settling to the bottom and if your fire should happen to get too hot it is likely to burn. If you cannot get barley, use rice, but it is a poor substitute. 

"One of the secrets of making good vegetable soup is not to cook any of the vegetables too long. however it is impossible to give you an exact measure of the vegetables you should put in because some people like their vegetable soup almost as thick as stew, others like it much thinner. Moreover, sometimes you can get exactly the vegetables you want, other times you have to substitute. Where you use canned vegetables, put them in only a few minutes before taking the coup off the fire. If you use fresh ones, naturally they must be fully cooked in the soup. The things put into the soup are about as follows:

"1 quart of canned tomatoes1/2 teacupful of fresh peas. If you can’t get peas, a handful of good green beans cut up very small can substitute2 normal sized potatoes, diced into cubes of about 1/2 inch size2 or 3 bunches of good celery1 good sized onion, sliced3 nice-sized carrots diced about the same size as potatoes1 turnip diced like the potatoesa handful of raw cabbage cut into small piecesYour vegetables should not all be dumped in at once. The potatoes, for example, will cook more quickly than the carrots. Your effort must be to have them all nicely cooked, but not mushy, at about the same time.
"The fire must not be too hot but the should should be kept bubbling.

"When you figure the soup is about done, put in your barley, which should now be fully cooked, add a tablespoonful of prepared gravy seasoning and taste for flavoring, particularly salt and pepper, and if you have it, some onion salt, garlic salt, and celery salt. (If you cannot get the gravy seasoning, use one teaspoonful of Worcestershire Sauce.) 

"Cut up the few bits of meat you have saved and put a handful in the soup.

"While you are cooking the soup do not allow the liquid to boil down too much. Add a bit of water from time to time. If your stock was good and thick when you started, you can add more water than if it was thin when you started.

"As a final touch, in the springtime when the nasturtiums are green and tender, you can take a few nasturtium stems, cut them up in small pieces , boil them separately as you did the barley, and add them to your soup."

And now, Linda McCartney's justly famous vegetable soup:

Linda McCartney eventually married one of my generation's great heroes: Paul McCartney. She was a photographer, and later a highly-regarded vegetarian cook, and food entrepreneur.

This recipe is from her excellent cookbook, Linda McCartney's Home Cooking (Arcade Publishing, 1989). When I make this soup, I only change a couple of things: I add a couple more cloves of garlic (I'm an addict), I peel the potatoes, and I probably use a heavier hand with the parsley and thyme. The recipe doesn't mention it, but after you add the tomatoes, I usually only cook the soup about five more minutes. I like this recipe because it tastes great and it is open-ended. However, she got it right, so you don't want to not stray too far from her instructions.

Linda Macca's Vegetable Soup

Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 cups trimmed (greens included), cleaned and sliced leeks
2 cups chopped celery
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups unpeeled, sliced carrots
1 cup shredded cabbage
2 cups unskinned cubed new potatoes
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon fresh parsley
6 cups vegetable stock (fresh or canned)
8 medium tomatoes or 1 16-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Heat the oil in a soup pot over medium flame, and saute the onions, leeks, celery and garlic for 5 minutes. Do not brown the garlic.

2. Add the carrots, cabbage and potatoes. Stir well. Add the thyme, rosemary and parsley. Cover with vegetable stock and simmer, covered, for 1 hour. Stir occasionally, adding water if evaporation is excessive.

3. If you are using fresh tomatoes, place them on top of the simmering liquid for about 2 minutes, or until their skins can be easily peeled away. Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon, and when they are cool enough to handle, remove the skins. Gently crush the whole skinned tomatoes and stir them into the soup. If you are using canned tomatoes, stir them, liquid and all, into the soup.

4. Season to taste. Serve hot.

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Photograph: Ike Lines Up A Putt

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

President Dwight D. Eisenhower lines up a putt.  Although Ike is probably the most famous golfing President, as it turns out, President Obama is on track to eclipse him in the number of golf outings (presuming, of course, that he has eight years to do this).

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Fun With Dick Nixon's Ghost

If you're a friend, or a blog follower, you probably know that LBJ and Nixon are the presidents I've studied most. With Nixon, it has been a life-long fascination. When I lived in NYC, I often brought friends over to pay homage at his townhouse on the Upper East Side--and where the Secret Service never hassled us, although we rarely arrived there before 2 AM, or even closing time (which in NYC then was 4 AM). I wrote a while ago about visiting him here. Or check here.

Anyhow, yesterday, I spent a half hour at his grave site, communing with the shade of Richard Nixon, who has fascinated me for forty-some years, and a couple more hours at his library, and birthplace. Despite being a Gorbachev Democrat, I still like the guy, and despise about 90% of his politics. He was a treacherous sneak, but managed to pull off some pretty stunning accomplishments before he was driven to the sea.

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POTUS 34 - President Dwight D.Eisenhower

* Click to enlarge *

Ike was essentially the CEO of World War II. He rose from being a mere Lieutenant Colonel in 1941 to a five-star general in 1945. As supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, he commanded the most powerful army, navy, and air force ever assembled on this great green sphere. He commanded the assault on Nazi-occupied France that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. In peacetime he commanded the NATO forces. He ran for President, and stomped Adlai Stevenson. Twice.

He was unable to duplicate his battlefield victories in the oval office. Ike had a congressional majority for only two years of his presidency, and truth be told, not a lot was accomplished in those eight years. Ike, in particular, turned his back on the great racial divide that would soon fracture the country once again.

There is a large body of scholarship and innuendo to suggest that President Eisenhower, like many of his presidential brethren, catted around and around and around on his wife, Mamie. Kay Summersby, his British driver, is often mentioned as the booty call.

He was succeeded as President by Jack Kennedy in 1961 (not averse to a little catting around himself), who narrowly beat Richard M. Nixon, Ike's barely tolerated Vice-President.
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Senator John McCain floats Dwight Eisenhower as possible running mate

In response to a reporter's question about running mates today at a press conference in Altoona. Pennsylvania, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain wondered aloud about bringing Ike out of retirement. "I wonder if, uh, uh, Ike, President Eisenhower, would consider joining the ticket?," the senator said in response to a question from Pablo Fanque. "Who better to take over if something--God forbid--were to happen to me than someone who has actually done the job. And done it admirably, I might add. We should talk to Ike's people...if we've ever needed the General, it's now. It may be tough to get Mamie on board 'though..."

As reporters chuckled, Senator McCain said "Who is better suited for the job? Any of you guys notice it's getting dark in here?" Two aides urged McCain offstage while a spokesman told the press corps that "The Senator is already behind schedule, and we'll catch up with the press after the rally in Bayonne, New Jersey."

According to our national affairs editor, Pablo Fanque, who attended the press "briefing" in Altoona, stunned reporters were quiet at first and then exploded in a frenzy of typing and cell-phone dialing.

"In New Jersey," Fanque wrote this morning, "after the press plane landed, yet another aide explained to the press corps that the Senator was "adjusting his schedule to spend some 'quiet time' before continuing his campaign swing."

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All This Is That's Dead Celebrity Cook-off: President Dwight Eisenhower's vegetable soup vs. Linda McCartney's vegetable soup

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took office eight months before I was born and was the first President of all 50 states, gave this nearly 900 word recipe to the Women of Christ Episcopal Church, back in the 1950's. Wiki Answers calls it "the best recipe for vegetable soup."

We have to give Ike a generous mulligan on this one. Back then, you could still call a soup made with a beef bone ("the bigger the better"), chicken parts, and "a couple pounds of ordinary soup meat, either beef or mutton" a vegetable soup. Linda McCartney's soup, on the other hand, is even vegan. You do have to give Ike a point for using such a hip ingredient as nasturtiums. Linda McCartney's soup is magnificent: the best I've had and the only pure vegetable soup I make. Her much briefer recipe follows DDE's. Ike was well-known for his cooking and grilling, particularly for his steaks, cornmeal flapjacks, and his "vegetable soup."

First up, Ike's recipe, verbatim:

"The best time to make vegetable soup is a day or so after you have had fried chicken and out of which you have saved the necks, ribs, backs uncooked. (The chicken is not essential, but does add something.)

"Procure from the meat market a good beef soup bone, the bigger the better. It is a rather good idea to have it split down the middle so the marrow is exposed. In addition, buy a couple pounds of ordinary soup meat, either beef or mutton, or both.

"Put all this meat, early in the morning, in a big kettle. The best kind is heavy aluminum, but a good iron pot will do almost as well. Put in also the bony parts of the chicken you have saved. Cover it with water, something on the order of 5 quarts. Add a teaspoon of salt, a bit of black pepper and, if you like, a touch of garlic (one small piece). If you don’t like garlic put in onion. Boil all this slowly all day long. Keep on boiling until the meat has literally dropped off the bone. If your stock boils down during the day, add enough water from time to time to keep the meat covered. When the whole thing has practically disintegrated pour out into another large kettle through a colander. Make sure the marrow is out of the bones. Let this drain through the colander for quite awhile as much of the juice will drain out of the meat. (Shake the colander to help get out all the juices.)

"Save a few of the better pieces of meat just to cut up a little bit in small pieces to put into your soup after it is done. Put the kettle containing the stock you now have in a very cool place, outdoors in the winter or in the ice box; let it stand all night and the next day until you are ready to make your soup.

"You will find that a hard layer of fat has formed on top of the stock which can usually be lifted off since the whole kettle full of stock has jelled. Some people like a little bit of the fat left on and some like their soup very rich and do not remove more than about half of the fat.

'Put the stock back into your kettle and you are ready to make your soup.

"In a separate pan, boil slowly about a third of a teacupful of barley. This should be cooked separately since it has a habit, in a soup kettle, of settling to the bottom and if your fire should happen to get too hot it is likely to burn. If you cannot get barley, use rice, but it is a poor substitute.

"One of the secrets of making good vegetable soup is not to cook any of the vegetables too long. however it is impossible to give you an exact measure of the vegetables you should put in because some people like their vegetable soup almost as thick as stew, others like it much thinner. Moreover, sometimes you can get exactly the vegetables you want, other times you have to substitute. Where you use canned vegetables, put them in only a few minutes before taking the coup off the fire. If you use fresh ones, naturally they must be fully cooked in the soup. The things put into the soup are about as follows:

"1 quart of canned tomatoes
1/2 teacupful of fresh peas. If you can’t get peas, a handful of good green beans cut up very small can substitute
2 normal sized potatoes, diced into cubes of about 1/2 inch size
2 or 3 bunches of good celery
1 good sized onion, sliced
3 nice-sized carrots diced about the same size as potatoes
1 turnip diced like the potatoes
a handful of raw cabbage cut into small pieces
Your vegetables should not all be dumped in at once. The potatoes, for example, will cook more quickly than the carrots. Your effort must be to have them all nicely cooked, but not mushy, at about the same time.

"The fire must not be too hot but the should should be kept bubbling.

"When you figure the soup is about done, put in your barley, which should now be fully cooked, add a tablespoonful of prepared gravy seasoning and taste for flavoring, particularly salt and pepper, and if you have it, some onion salt, garlic salt, and celery salt. (If you cannot get the gravy seasoning, use one teaspoonful of Worcestershire Sauce.)

"Cut up the few bits of meat you have saved and put a handful in the soup.

"While you are cooking the soup do not allow the liquid to boil down too much. Add a bit of water from time to time. If your stock was good and thick when you started, you can add more water than if it was thin when you started.

"As a final touch, in the springtime when the nasturtiums are green and tender, you can take a few nasturtium stems, cut them up in small pieces , boil them separately as you did the barley, and add them to your soup."

And now, Linda McCartney's justly famous vegetable soup:

Linda McCartney was born 12 years before me, and eventually married one of our generation's great heroes: Paul McCartney. She was a photographer, and later a highly-regarded vegetarian cook, and food entrepreneur.

This recipe is from her excellent cookbook, Linda McCartney's Home Cooking (Arcade Publishing, 1989). When I make this soup, I only change a couple of things: I add a couple more cloves of garlic (I'm an addict), I peel the potatoes, and I probably use a heavier hand with the parsley and thyme. The recipe doesn't mention it, but after you add the tomatoes, I usually only cook the soup about five more minutes. I like this recipe because it tastes great and it is open-ended. However, she got it right, so you don't want to not stray too far from her instructions.

Linda Macca's Vegetable Soup

Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 cups trimmed (greens included), cleaned and sliced leeks
2 cups chopped celery
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups unpeeled, sliced carrots
1 cup shredded cabbage
2 cups unskinned cubed new potatoes
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon fresh parsley
6 cups vegetable stock (fresh or canned)
8 medium tomatoes or 1 16-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Heat the oil in a soup pot over medium flame, and saute the onions, leeks, celery and garlic for 5 minutes. Do not brown the garlic.

2. Add the carrots, cabbage and potatoes. Stir well. Add the thyme, rosemary and parsley. Cover with vegetable stock and simmer, covered, for 1 hour. Stir occasionally, adding water if evaporation is excessive.

3. If you are using fresh tomatoes, place them on top of the simmering liquid for about 2 minutes, or until their skins can be easily peeled away. Remove the tomatoes with a slotted spoon, and when they are cool enough to handle, remove the skins. Gently crush the whole skinned tomatoes and stir them into the soup. If you are using canned tomatoes, stir them, liquid and all, into the soup.

4. Season to taste. Serve hot.

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