as far as I know, the first science fiction writer to use western North Carolina as a scene of action was JULES VERNE. That's fun!

My assumption is that Pete Hegseth is a more likely future GOP nominee than Rubio.

William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941) is not a fellow with many defenders on Bluesky. And when I use phrases like "Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law" and "the leading candidate supported by the Klan in 1924" and "the man who segregated the Treasury", you can see why.

the US could plausibly (though not certainly) have won the American Civil War even with European intervention.

The first has been finished, so we are down to why 1992 was probably going to be a Dem year whatever happened, or why we should maybe view Woodrow Wilson‘s son-in-law more favorably, but still not very favorably.

www.thebooksmugglers.com/2010/04/stea... I keep thinking of this book, which I don't think I've read since 1994-5 or so. (a perfectly serviceable steampunk novel)

one doesn't always need to comment on the latest thing (this is not against those who have)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_... new to me (short version - British bisexual Socialist MP is kidnapped by the Jane's Fighting Ships guy, fights in WWI, disappears mysteriously in 1920)

One of my many hobby-horses is that it's a real shame that we only remember Davy Crockett for his death at the Alamo - or perhaps for the Fess Parker Show - rather than his very interesting life as a celebrity-politician and in particular his heroic

Tomorrow can be: How Davy Crockett Could Have Saved America (Well Sort Of) Why Just About Any Dem Could Have Won In 1992 Or McAdoo Can Do But FDR Is Probably Better Depending on audience thoughts

Recently I was talking with friends on here about the lack of bisexual representation in the US government and I recalled that the US almost had a bisexual President (or at least VP, who is just one life or one general election away) from POTUS.

John Tyler John Tyler (1790-1862) generally appears on lists of worst American Presidents but I submit that he ought to be lower. (There is also a counter-argument.) Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan typically are given more blame for the Civil War than their

"All others pay cash" Salmon Chase (1808-1873) managed several political hat tricks during his long political career. He was a Whig, a Liberty Party man, a Free-Soiler, a Republican, a Democrat, and a Liberal Republican. He was a Senator, a Governor, a Cabinet official, and CJSCOTUS. but no POTUS!

Don't mind if I do!

"man this article is annoying. oh it's by _him_, okay."

I mean, the poster makes a valid point, they just don't recognize that the panicky cosplaying academics *are* the converts who refuse to listen to the people who have done this before.

because it's all imaginary hokum anyway, some randomized Dem tickets produced by (Random Dem Governor) + (Random Dem Senator) - Dan McKee-Tim Kaine. not my cup of tea. Michelle Lujan Grisham-Ruben Gallego. well that's one way to get the Hispanic vote back I guess.

did you know that "dumpster" is actually named after its inventor

I have to admit folks it doesn't sound like my party at all.

I should do a thread on the Peace Democrat - who could plausibly have been elected POTUS in 1864 if McClellan had died at Antietam- who wrote privately that not only was the South right to secede but that he regretted his native Pennsylvania wasn't joining them.

Horatio Seymour (But Not In 1868) Horatio Seymour (1810-1886) was one of the leading statesmen of the Democratic Party of the Civil War period – Governor of New York before and during the war period, he was a War Democrat who never flirted with becoming a Union man and so was widely talked about

“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite.” Reader! If I asked you the oldest US Senator you might say something about Chuck Grassley or Strom Thurmond. Wrong!

Vacancies Only three times in American history has there been no one in the Presidential line of succession – all of them prior to 1886, when the Presidential Succession Act of that year put the Cabinet in the Presidential line of succession for the first time in American history.

It is pleasant that George Sinner and Alan Bible shared the same political party and same region at roughly the same time, even if AFAIK they never met.

The sad news about the death of Robert Redford got me thinking about a man who today is mostly famous as a ‘ghost’ wearing Redford’s face – the character Redford played in 1972’s THE CANDIDATE was based closely on California’s then-incumbent Senator John W. Tunney.

It should be needless to say, but it is perhaps at this moment worth saying, that transgender individuals have the same right as anyone else to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I have often discussed the 1956 Utah gubernatorial election in terms of the Democratic nominee - LC "Rennie" Romney, the most prominent Democrat in that very large family, a dedicated public servant who devoted much of his long life to the people of Utah. www.deseret.com/2000/4/13/19...

Brimstone. no you don't need the Confederate cowboy show you have John Glover as Satan reject Whedon and all his empty promises.

All the recent talk re:political violence reminds me of an idea a friend of mine once had – (I believe this is what the kids call ‘cursed’): Spring 1856 President Franklin Pierce and President Pro Tem of the Senate Jesse Bright of Indiana are meeting in the White House to discuss that year's

The Vets For all of America’s often-performative embrace of “The Troops”, the US has been reluctant to elect a veteran President for most of the lifetime of people reading this. Part of this is simply that there are not as many veterans in the population as there used to be – we elected

Italian-American Presidents We’ve had Irish Presidents and German Presidents and Dutch Presidents and British Presidents but the US has been reluctant to really reflect the diversity of its population in the White House.

PresIdents: Like a normal person, I pass my time sitting at my desk thinking “who might plausibly have become President of the United States whose last name started with the letter I?” This is a challenge because a. names that start with I are not particularly common in the English language and

A thought popped into my head re:measuring figures on the German right. Show them (circa 1925) Berlin in the summer of 1945, give them a copy of a history of WWII - do they use this to win the war? Or do they have Hitler shot in 1926?

I applied for a job years ago at Utah Valley U - a big place with open admission, doing the work that community colleges do elsewhere in the nation. Orem seemed like a pleasant small city albeit being for people who didn’t care for the hustle and bustle of Provo. That poor community.

reader! we have had some young Presidents but never a Young President - even though one was seriously discussed as a Presidential candidate in 1932, and might not have been such a bad POTUS despite being very rich.

reader would you be surprised to learn that our first would-be CEO President was a serious Presidential candidate _before_ the American Civil War? a wealthy New Yorker with a whole hair thing going on, a nativist who clashed with Latin Americans, a builder of great works?

I think we all remember where we were on that day

was thinking today how one reason I don't feel like the parent of a high school sophomore is because my dad was so much older than I am now when I was _born_ - so my memories of "what the dad of a high school student looks like" are very different than the average person.

having great fun with Radium Age reprint YANKEES IN PETROGRAD by Marietta A. Shaginyan, which is weird, wonderful, and bizarre. proletarian animism, good. an extended diatribe against that class traitor Edison. free use of the names of American robber barons, sure.

stop saying kompromat. that makes them sound like the victims here.

A lurker

I have to admit, the Johnson Trump informant thing took me by surprise - I genuinely thought that was a fake headline when I saw it.

You can just delete the post with the typo in it.

this is a wild lie.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_... I had forgotten the palpable sleaze that drips off Robert Bauman's biography. still with us at 88 years old - younger than Chuck Grassley!

a mildly upsetting training video in the new job that consisted of nothing but people in a meeting committing various sorts of microaggressions against each other.

managed to get the Social Democracy game's (rare) outcome where Oscar Hergt is elected President in 1934 and successfully restores the monarchy. so not a great outcome but still probably better than what actually happened.

it was a little weird to share videos of that silly house to condemn the people who built it, folks.

so here's a question to which I honestly don't know the answer - What is the largest British political movement that embraces the rights of trans people - in the sense that "you will not be in/have power in this organization if you are a bigot about this"?

All this food discourse and nobody posting their favorite recipes for the thing!