yeta

reesetee Might as well tag the whole site, then. ;-) Aug 18, 2008

chained_bear Yes, but you're right. Dork out implies a certain content that's not effectively true for this page. On the other hand, history dork out may not make much sense to anyone but me, and there are precious few (IMHO) Wordie pages that could honestly carry such a tag, but it's far more accurate.

Now, if we had a word geek tag, we'd have to go around tagging almost everything around here.
*ponders* Aug 16, 2008

sionnach Tag away, c_b! You know my tongue was firmly in cheek, sí? :-) Aug 16, 2008

chained_bear It's a history dork out thing. I'll remove the tag if there's any serious objection. Or heck, I'll just change it. Edit: Is it better now? Aug 16, 2008

sionnach Not to take issue with c_b's (?) helpful signposting efforts, but doesn't the tag "dork out" somehow require references to Star Trek on the page. Hitherto absent, but now helpfully present. Aug 16, 2008

reesetee Oh really? Then why do you have to come here to SPAM about it?? Aug 15, 2008

booyoboy vocabcloud is so much cooler.



Aug 15, 2008

chained_bear Oh, but we're not arguing politics. We're arguing history. That's different. :-) Aug 15, 2008

bilby I like sionnach's original observation about the 'ill-fated, palindromic, former president Menem', as if being a palindrome should somehow bring enough good fortune to ward off national and international crises ... what faith we have in the power of words! Aug 15, 2008

milosrdenstvi Not averted in entire; merely averted from the 1860s. Slavery had to go one way or another; but under better leadership from the 15th president it might have gone quite a bit less bloodily.

As for Coolidge, I can only repeat what was said of him by a friend when told that he had been nominated vice-president. "But that's horrible!" he said. "I've known Cal Coolidge all my life, and he is the luckiest dog you've ever met. Harding's going to die or get assassinated or something!" I don't particularly think you can blame Coolidge really for all that happened later. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody wanted him to do anything. He, serving the will of the people, didn't do anything. I'm also somewhat of the opinion that the attempts to fix the Depression rather lengthened it. But I gave up debating politics a long time ago, when I became an apathetic anarchomonarchotheocratic anticonstitutionalist. Aug 14, 2008

chained_bear Nothing went wrong during Coolidge's time? What about the mechanization of farms, evictions and overfarming laying the groundwork for the Dust Bowl? What about the rampant speculation that led to the stock market crash of 1929 that presaged the Great Depression?

Also, I respectfully take issue with the fact that the Civil War could have been averted in entire. But it's mighty pleasant conversing with you. :) Aug 14, 2008

milosrdenstvi No offense taken; and I certainly don't intend to lay the entire Civil War on Buchanan's doorstep. I still feel that a sufficiently strong leader could have either prevented the war in entire, or made the North's situation a good bit better than it ended up being. Just as not the entire blame for the Iraq War can be laid on Bush's doorstep.

Doing nothing as president can be really good -- I cite Coolidge as an example of somebody who did nothing for near six years while nothing went wrong. If you have crisis unfolding under you, like Buchanan, it can be awful. Aug 14, 2008

chained_bear Eamonn de Valera was nowhere near as cute as Eamon Sullivan is.

*hijacking complete* Aug 14, 2008

sionnach Yes. And how would we rank the late Eamonn de Valera among former presidents? He whose vision of Ireland involved "comely maidens dancing at the crossroads".

I would just like to point out that any comely Argentine lasses foolhardy enough to dance at any intersection in Buenos Aires would be roadkill within seconds.

Now back to your regularly hijacked page ... Aug 14, 2008

chained_bear No way. No one can blame Buchanan for the Civil War. I can fault Buchanan for a lot of things--doing nothing as one state after another seceded, as well as being a lame-ass president for his entire term instead of just the last few months--but you can't lay the whole war at his door, because you can't lay it at any one person's.

Rampant corruption and cronyism? Man, Bush has got nothing on Grant's administration. Or Harding's. Bad as things are now--and I'm as angry as anyone about it--they were far worse then. Seriously. And rolig, they only seem innocuous now because it's decades past the time when anyone's thinking about their legacy. (We're still thinking about Nixon's.)

W.H. Harrison was president for two months. How can you complain about him? Do you mean Benjamin Harrison, by chance?

Let's not forget Polk, that rat-bastard who started a war no one wanted. Or McKinley, the annexing fool.

My favorite fact about Calvin Coolidge is that he took a nap every afternoon while in office. Imagine having the time to do that in your real life, without even imagining the president's life. Crikey.

Hey, this page has really dorked out. Sorry about that, those of you who don't enjoy watching Presidential Smackdown. And Milosrdentsvi, or anyone else, please don't take these comments as attacks in any way. I'm just shooting the shit, as they say. Aug 14, 2008

rolig But GWB wins the quadrifecta: unnecessary mismanaged war, criminal neglect of social problems, a mangled economy, and rampant corruption and cronyism. Aug 14, 2008

milosrdenstvi Come on! Those are a study in genius and honesty compared with Buchanan, Harding, Grant, Pierce, and the redoubtable William Henry Harrison (although truth be told, he accomplished about as much as Coolidge, the chief crime which can be urged against him being that he was not bright enough to come in out of the rain).

Buchanan particularly. If Bush by dishonesty got us into the Iraq War, Buchanan by cowardice and incompetence got us into the Civil War. Aug 14, 2008

rolig Yeah, maybe, but the first two seem rather innocuous in retrospect, while Nixon did rack up a number of impressive foreign policy achievements, for all his evilness. Aug 14, 2008

chained_bear Come on. Now you're just bashing Calvin Coolidge, Chester A. Arthur, and Richard Nixon.
;) Aug 14, 2008

rolig Are you talking about George W(orstpresidentinhistory) Bush? Aug 14, 2008

trivet My favorite "W" bumper sticker had the big W, and then under the little flag were the letters TF. (like this I almost drove off the road. Aug 14, 2008

chained_bear Don't we?

Actually I saw a bumper sticker yesterday I'd never seen before. It had a large W on the left-hand side, and then the phrase "Footprint of the American Chicken Hawk."

Eesh. Aug 14, 2008

reesetee Wow. Why don't we do this kind of thing in the United States? ;-> Aug 14, 2008

sionnach The local pronunciation of this word is something like "Ssshhhetta" (rhymes with "Jetta"). It means something like a jinxed person, or someone who brings bad luck. A synonym is mufa ("moo-fah").

Apparently, this is the term used by most Argentines when referring to the infamous(?), ill-fated, palindromic, former president Menem, to whom the economic collapse of late 2001 is attributed (due to his U.S./World Bank/Big Capitalism - pleasing ways). He is held in such superstitious contempt that many people refuse to refer to him by name; instead the term "el Yeta" is used, in a kind of Voldemortian reverse homage.

(edited to correct the spelling of mufa, and "Voldemortian", though I reserve the right to change the latter back again, way too lazy to look it up) Aug 14, 2008