Random History Thread

That's why I ask if the Latin phrase only applies to the Roman empire, or can it be used with modern incidents as well
 
China went full retard with proposing one country/two systems idea to Taiwan.

Btw this Tienanmen picture is widely circulated atm as "massacre"

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For historical accuracy reasons, these in all probability aren't dead people, they're laying down in cover because Chinese are sporadically firing at their own people. The dudes on the bikes are running towards the bunker part seen low left. It depicts a moment of battle, if one side unarmed can be a battle, of people against their own government full swing. They ain't dead yet, they're fighting.
 
Speaking of China and erasing history, they don't teach the Tiamen square massacre in schools. Mexico is barely talking about the 68 massacre.
 
102 years ago Russia implemented fully paid maternal leave, world's first. The executive decree defined responsibilities of employers towards employees that became ill, pregnant, or died. Today, Russia still has the longest paid maternal leave.
 
  • today, paid maternity leave in Russia is the longest in the world;
  • it's 70 days before birth and 70 days after (84 and 110 if more than one child born), fully paid;
  • then 1.5 years of 40% paid leave after birth;
  • then another 1.5 years of unpaid leave after that (counts toward retirement as work);
  • your job is reserved for you, you can come back any time, they cannot fire you while you are on leave;
  • fathers can take these 1.5+1.5 years too (one of the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles), 2-2.5% use this opportunity;
  • a single mother cannot be fired at will until the child is 14;
  • a $7000 bonus for the second child; it must be spent on the child, usually on buying a bigger apartment, but also on education, etc;
  • a free plot of land within city lines for the third child, to build a house;
  • full retirement at 57 for women with three kids, at 56 with four;
  • various other petty or regional stuff, in some regions you get sizeable cash for having a child within a year of the wedding, and in Tuva, they lend you a cow
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Source from a comment
 
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It's not much different than ours then. We have 45 days before birth and one year after birth, paid 90% of the salary, then another year paid at minimum wage, and then a third year non-paid, but you can't be fired or made redundant. During all three years you are still entitled to your 20 days paid leave annually, which can be used at the end of the third year, so you get another 60 days of paid leave.
 
That's quite good. We have 18 months at 55% wage, can be taken before or after. And that's it.
 
Mexico and the US only have 3 month leaves paid at 60-70% depending on employer. That's it. Some US companies are starting to do leave for father's as well. Here in Mexico my brother got 5 DAYS when my neice was born, gee, thanks.

So my question is, is that sctrictly for mothers? I heard that in Scandinavian countries that year leave is a combined 6 months between mom and dad. Oh and that is for both Zare and Ariana.
 
In Bulgaria fathers get 15 days off right after the birth of the child, paid fully. Then, after the baby has turned 6 months, the father can take the remaining 6 months paid at 90% if the mother wishes to return to work. It is assumed that the first 6 months are for the mother to recover from birth and to breastfeed. I forgot to say that mothers are entitled to reduced working hours for as long as they breastfeed, regardless of the child's age.
 
So, let's start our discussion of US presidents by establishing what does bad mean. If we're going to know which of the 44 illustrious Chiefs Executive of the United States of America are the worst, we have to define the pool from whence that comes. Conversely, that means what is good? and what is average?

We can roughly break each president's achievements (or lack thereof) into a few differing categories, listed in no particular order: foreign policy, executive leadership, civil society, crisis management, legacy.
  • Foreign policy - how did this president manage the affairs of the United States vis a vis the rest of the world?
  • Executive leadership - inside the role as president, how well did they lead the nation (IE, cabinet appointments, policy initiatives, the bully pulpit)
  • Civil society - how did the president change America's society? Were they emblematic of change or resistant to it? How has history judged those decisions?
  • Crisis management - most presidencies have a crisis of some sort, and how did the president do at managing it?
  • Legacy -when leaving office, how was the president regarded at the time? How did he impact the Office of the Presidency going forward? How did he change America, and how are those changes viewed.
Note: Economy is not on this list because the president has very little control over the economy. The state of the economy is a function of Congress, and wrangling Congress is under the "executive leadership" tab. I also am not going to rank every single president by this fairly informal scale, but let's go over it.

Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L.B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump

Washington gets full marks on legacy, civil society, executive leadership. Jefferson scores big on foreign policy and legacy, Madison's crisis management was arguably bad but gets good marks on leadership and legacy, Monroe nails that foreign policy thing (ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine, it's kind of a big deal). Polk won the Mexican-American War, Lincoln did OK, Teddy Roosevelt invented national parks and is on Mt. Rushmore, Wilson won WW1 and invented the League of Nations, FDR beat the Great Depression, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and invented a better League of Nations with less legs, Truman successfully managed the post-WW2 reintegration of the economy and opposed Communist rule, Ike had a great name, Kennedy gets points for the space race, LBJ gets points for Medicare, Reagan gets points for foreign policy, Clinton for domestic and Obama for a little of each. So that brings us down to:

Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L.B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump

So who was an OK president? Average.

John Adams argued with his own VP too much but at least he got that fixed, Jackson was the first populist president but at least he didn't tank the economy, Van Buren didn't do much one way or the other, Grant had corruption issues but actually addressed a lot of underlying domestic problems and was a champion of reconstruction, Garfield got shot and has a cat named after him, Arthur reformed the spoils system, Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms so he must have been OK, McKinley was good on foreign policy and was the last of that era of "kinda boring" presidents, Taft was fine, Coolidge was fine, GHW Bush was fine and won the Gulf War. Where are we now?

Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L.B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump

17 presidents in the below average, bad, and terrible categories. Let's do one more pass and aim for the merely "below average" guys and clean this up a bit.

JQ Adams won the presidency in a weird way and spent most of his time arguing with his own people, WH Harrison died after 30 days, Taylor actually might have been an OK president if he didn't die 18 months in, Harrison wasn't anything special but he wasn't atrocious, Ford was about the same.

Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L.B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump

Okay, that leaves us with 12. I think 12 is a pretty reasonable place to start, and I'm going to start with the only of the 12 to serve out 2 complete terms: George W. Bush.

  • Foreign policy - Spoiled the good will of the world to invade Iraq unnecessarily, destabilizing the region and paving the way for the rise of ISIS. Failed to defeat the Taliban. Failed to kill Osama bin Laden. Fail is a good word for his achievements here.
  • Executive leadership - Some excellent cabinet appointees, but overall his biggest failure here was Hank Paulson, who was completely incapable of understanding/preventing/blunting the 2008 crash. But he gets good points for his leadership after 9/11. But bad points for Katrina. The economy was strong for most of his time, and the 2008 crash isn't really his fault legislatively. I'd go with below average.
  • Civil society - PATRIOT Act, so let's go with bad.
  • Crisis management - He starts out good on this one in 2001, declines in 2003, bottoms out in 2005, and actually comes up a bit with the 2008 crash when he worked with both parties to pass TARP.
  • Legacy - we're still sorting this out but Americans are also still dying in Afghanistan, so I'd say not great. However, there is one particular place I want to say he's done well in legacy - George W. Bush is the only Republican since his dad's first shot to win the popular vote in a US presidential election. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, only one Republican has won the popular vote. But they managed to win 3 elections, hmm...
Final grade: Pretty bad, but not worst. OK, hear me out. Bush gets a bunch of points for the two years following 9/11. If you ranked his second term alone, it'd be in the worst, but he gets 8 years to work with. So bad, pretty bad, but not the worst ever.

Next up: Rutherford B. Hayes.
 
Really enjoying this so far.

It’s hard not to call Buchanan the worst, how many other presidents can be largely blamed for a civil war? Provided he doesn’t win a second term, Trump might finish his presidency without getting there.

Bush has had his image rehabilitated in a lot of ways, in some parts thanks to Trump, but I think it’s still a close call as to who is worse between the two. Bush’s second term wasn’t just historically bad, but it had ramifications that America is still dealing with today. We don’t know what ramifications Trump will bring, but it’s possible he and his administration is/was so ineffective and incompetent that his presidency becomes a wash. Some might point to scandals and incompetence, but presidents like Grant and Truman had their fair share of that before a 24 hour news cycle. Of course you really can’t say now, especially without knowing if he will be a one termer. As of now, though, maybe the most incompetent but not the worst.

Looking forward to other reviews.
 
Mosh said:
Looking forward to other reviews.
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For reference, I am not doing this in order of least-worst to most-worst. Just kinda in a semi-logical order that meanders in that direction, but just by writing it out I might change my own mind.
 
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