we shall not be moved

"What New Yorkers showed already is we will not change.  We will not be cowed.  We will not be thrown off by anything."

  | |  Mayor Bill De Blasio, responding to Tuesday's truck rampage on the West Side bike path in Lower Manhattan, the deadliest terrorist attack in the city since Sept. 11, 2001.

~ (QUOTATION OF THE DAY, New York Times)



"My son and I visiting from Australia rode bikes along that path in exact spot on a sunny day about two weeks ago.  One of the fondest memories I have of NYC.  This will  make no difference -- we will be back and ride again.

~ (Reader Comment in the NYT)

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("10 worst presidents" series, continued.
Reprinted from U.S. News)

#7     Ulysses S. Grant

[I thought he was supposed to be good...??]

Born:  April 27, 1822
Died:  July 23, 1885
Presidential term:  March 4, 1869 - March 4, 1877
Vice Presidents:  Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson

Serving right after Andrew Johnson, he presided over an outbreak of graft and corruption, but had good intentions.


------------------ At No. 7, Ulysses S. Grant has risen from No. 2 on the 1948 Schlesinger list probably because of the same revisionist take on Reconstruction that lowered Johnson in the eyes of historians.  


Although there is no way to overlook the widespread graft and corruption that occurred on his presidential watch -- it was at the time unprecedented in scope -- he was in no way a beneficiary of it.


"My failures have been errors of judgment," the popular former Civil War general admitted, "not of intent."

More important, the 18th president now receives plaudits for his aggressive prosecution of the radical reform agenda in the South.  

His attempts to quash the Ku Klux Klan (suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and ordering mass arrests) and his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were controversial and may have produced only short-lived gains for African-Americans, but Grant's intentions were laudable and brave.  

He also worked for the good of American Indians, instituting the reservation system as an imperfect, last-ditch effort to protect them from extinction.


Grant's reputation may continue to rise as a result of sympathetic biographies and studies -- and because of a renewed appreciation of his own excellent memoir, considered to be the best ever produced by a former president. ----------------------- [end, U.S. News reprint] ----------

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              That doesn't sound to me like a "worst" president; is sounds like he was doing good things, or trying to.  Maybe all presidents are good, basically, but these 10 wound up at the bottom of the list because the others ranked higher according to standards prepared by historians.  


    It's like ping-pong.  I'm good at playing ping-pong, but if we're comparing my playing to the playing of the Chinese players who used to win in the Olympics, then -- no, I would certainly rank lower than them.  So then -- compared to the Chinese ping-pong players, I'm "the worst."  


     Weird, how that works.  Or doesn't work.  That's why "comparisons" of things are, by their nature, dicey....

-30-