Who is Your Favorite U.S. President?

Teddy Roosevelt is my favorite U.S. president. Why?

Theodore Roosevelt, January 8, 1907, Cove Neck, Long Island, New York 

1. I loved reading The Alienist by Caleb Carr - which is when I learned that Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner in New York City from 1895 to 1897. I know. Just because I read about him in a fictional novel really should not count towards his prowess as president. But. Hey. Everything I ever learned has come from reading fiction.

2. His house in Gramercy is sick. He was born there in 1858. It is now a National Park! I went there once and the National Park Ranger fellow told me how Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt.

3. The dude survived an assassination attempt. He was reading a speech in Milwaukee and was shot. The papers he had stuffed into his breast pocket saved his life - cuz they partially blocked the path of the bullet.

4. Oh. About his service as President. How good of a president was he? I know he expanded the National Park Service. :-)

5. He was somehow indirectly connected to the creation/ marketing/rise in popularity of the Teddy Bear.

6. He was the most boyish president.

Theodore Roosevelt, Age 11, Taken in Paris, France circa 1870

7. And he was a New Yorker. The first President born and raised in the Empire State.

Happy President's Day! Who is your favorite president and why?

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Obama and the Peace Prize, And Other Rifts on Violence

   I wonder how our President can accept the peace prize and then cite an argument for just war?! I personally feel his decision to increase troops was morally bankrupt. A more peaceful approach would have been to refuse the prize.

President Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize. Image Credit: The White House (2009)

   Now, our prez did close Guantanamo, and he has laid down a progressive plan for peace, but I think the two wars he has inherited make it a prickly predicament.
   Is Obama a warmonger? Does he feel a little aggressive push is necessary to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is violence ever necessary?
   His decision to enact violence is not necessarily unethical. Even Gandhi and King understood violence is necessary to enact change. Violence, in some order, can bring about peace - even the non-violent violence that encouraged civil rights and brought down the monarchy in India was, in my opinion, ethical. The violence of WWII took the lives of millions of more civilians than any other war in this past century. Democracy does not deplore that war.
   If our president wants to make a change in our world through violence, he needs to enact violence in other sectors to secure peace:
   Reasons for "just war" in other regions besides the Middle East: