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2/22/2024
Video about the Chicago neighborhoods of Morgan Park, Beverly, and Mount Greenwood
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Video about the Chicago neighborhoods of Morgan Park, Beverly, and Mount Greenwood
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2/20/2024
Doctor Master Gunnery Sergeant Harper's New Gig
Since Sebrena and I retired to Arkansas we have taken on raising miniature horses. That being said, it is difficult for us to leave them unattended for more than a day or two. Because of this, we will not be able to attend the reunion in Boston. We will miss seeing all of you and hope you have a great time!
All the best and Semper Fidelis,
Clarence and Sebrena Harper
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Clarence, we will miss you and Sabrena. Miniature horses, just curious, What do you do with them? Sounds interesting, there are few people near me here in Waterford that have miniature horse, I see on their land.
Joe Brooks
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Mainly we enjoy having the small horses. They are wonderful to watch and easy to work with. They need to be groomed regularly and have their hooves trimmed. We have a pony buggy and plan to train some of them to pull the buggy.
One of the horses is actually a Shetland pony.and she is broke to ride. The grandkids and neighbor kids love riding her. We also have 2 donkeys to protect the herd. We had a 2 day old foal killed by a stray dog last year. The donkeys will chase a dog (or cat) and keep them out of the pasture. So as you can see, they keep us busy and we love it! We are expecting new foals this summer...
Ya'll take care, as they say here locally.
Clarence Harper
Trump is Rated Worst President
Historians rate Trump Worst.
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/19/presidents-survey-trump-ranks-last-biden-14th
2/19/2024
Trump Worst President in History According to Historians
In historians' Presidents Day survey, Biden vs. Trump is not a close call
Jim Watson and Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
The 2024 edition of the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has Biden in 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Trump comes in 45th, behind fellow impeachee Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, the perennial cellar-dweller in such ratings due to his pre-Civil War leadership.
"While partisanship and ideology don't tend to make a major difference overall, there are a few distinctions worth noting," said political scientists Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, who first published their greatness survey in 2015.
Experts responding to the survey who self-identified as conservatives rated Biden No. 30, while liberals put him 13th and moderates ranked him 20th. All three of those same groups ranked Trump, whose presidency was marked by his flouting of historical norms, in the bottom five.
On the survey's 0-100 scale of "overall greatness," a rating of 50 means a president was average, while zero means a president is considered a failure. Only the top three presidents — Abraham Lincoln at No. 1, followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and then George Washington — scored above 90. The drop-off was sharp from there, with no one else above an 80 rating. Roughly half the presidents were rated below 50.
Trump's overall rating was 10.92, easily the worst showing, while Biden's 62.66 had him tied with John Adams. Some of Biden's appeal could be due to the person he followed in the Oval Office: Trump was seen as "by far the most polarizing of the ranked presidents, selected by 170 respondents," according to a summary of the survey.
The survey emerges as these two contenders for the 2024 presidential race are running against distinctly different headwinds. While historians might prefer Biden, polls show a lack of confidence in his handling of key policy areas, and he is routinely criticized over his age. And Trump is romping his way to another Republican nomination to lead the U.S. despite facing 91 felony criminal counts and lingering disapproval over his one-term presidency.
Academics wrote, "Republicans and Conservatives rank George Washington as the greatest president," while Democrats, moderates and independents slotted the nation's founding president in second or third place.
"There are also several presidents where partisan polarization is evident — Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Obama, and Biden — but interestingly not for Bill Clinton," the survey's authors said.
In fact, Clinton fared a bit better among right-leaning respondents, who put him at No. 10, than among liberals and moderates, both of whom had Clinton as the 12th-best president.
Measuring presidential greatness is, of course, both subjective and selective. Historians routinely reanalyze leaders' successes and failures — and in today's polarized political climate, those qualities can look very different, depending on whom you ask. It can also be difficult to extract distinct criteria for presidential greatness, other than helming the United States during critical moments in history — such as helping found the country or keeping the nation together.
For instance, the survey's greatest leader, Lincoln, is praised for preserving the Union and ending slavery. But Washington, who fell from second to third place in the new survey, was a practitioner of that abomination. Even Roosevelt, credited with both enacting New Deal policies that reshaped the country and leading the U.S. through the bulk of a world war, is also criticized for ordering the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The survey's goal is to give historians and experts on the presidency a chance to state their opinion of where today's leaders stand in a broader context. To do so, Rottinghaus and Vaughn sent requests to current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/19/1232447088/historians-presidents-survey-trump-last-biden-14th
2/18/2024
Corruption Index
Europe and the English speaking countries have been able to reduce public corruption with effective laws and law enforcement. It is no accident that better, more honest democratic government also leads to stronger economic growth. The best thing that any country can do to build a strong economy is to build an honest and effective government.
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