Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 20, 2012

Always look for the loopholes. The fine makings of a good lawyer.

A long time ago for I.

“For I”? Somebody needs to go back to school then ;)

texters lose the ability to spell correctly

He’s not dodging work. It is much easier to find information about a U.S.A. president than about an average corporate president.

I think all commodities are fungible by definition.

Who was the president between James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor?

Yes this is one but it is skirting a very fine line. I knew the answer and had one customer at Borders who asked me. We got the answer from different source which confirms the validity of it. Mine is from a poster on presidents and he got it from “The Big List of Presidents” or something like that.

Quote, “Senator David Rice Atchison of Missouri served as president for the 24 hours between the expiration of Polk’s term on March 4, 1849 and Taylor’s inauguration on March 5th . (Taylor refused to take the oath of office on March 4th, which fell on a Sunday.) Atchison signed a few official documents, but spent, most of his one-day term sleeping.”

Ronald Davis: No ther’re not. You don’t borrow sugar and return bacon or coffee unless you agree on an exchange price, which can change quickly. Cash is fungible. You borrow $5 and you can return 5 $1s

How about a paper on John Hanson, the first President of the United States? Check it out. The Postal Service even honored him during the Bicentennial—on a post card.

How about Joe Biden, who was arguably president between noon on 1/20/09, when GW Bush automatically ceased to be president, and 12:05 pm, when Obama took the oath of office? (They squeezed in Biden’s oath of office as VP sometime around 11:55 but then had one more musical performance.)

If we’re going to nitpick, let’s at least be complete and precise.

“The United States government” existed under the Articles of Confederation, but in a different form. John Hanson was the first President of Congress elected under the provisions of the Articles, so it isn’t absurd to consider him the “first President of the United States.”

(By the way, neither John Hancock nor John Hanson was the first President of the Continental Congress; that was Petyon Randolph. But John Hancock held the office when independence was declared.)

“The president was not only a presiding officer. As a delegate, he had power to vote and to serve on committees…He was in effect the administrative head of state…As Congress’s social functionary, the president was its undisputed first member…the ceremonial head of state, and, indeed, foreshadowed the high tone set by President Washington under the federal Constitution.” – Historian Richard B. Morris

George Washington himself referred to the office as “the most important seat in the United States”.

Anybody figure what the stock ticker symbol for ‘Fungible Commodities Inc’ would be? It MIGHT have fun in it.

“Or Millard Filmore, or Cal Coolidge, neither of whom ever did anything of sufficient interest to warrant a grade school report in the first place.

Hey, at least Fillmore got a Junior High School named after him on “The Brady Bunch.” That’s worth remembering.

F! F! F-I-L!L! L! L-M-O!O! O! O-R-E!FILLMORE JUNIOR HIGH!!!

OK, I can’t just let this go. There is no logical argument by which one could claim that David Rice Atchison was ever President of the United States. The whole notion rests on the argument that, since Taylor had not yet taken the oath of office, he was not yet technically President. The problem is that Atchison never took the oath of office, either, so if that’s a requirement to be President, then he fails the requirement, too. You can argue that Taylor became President a day before he took the oath, or you can argue that for that one day, there was no President at all, but there’s no logical way to argue that there was a President, and it was Atchison.Likewise, it’s sketchy to claim John Hanson as a President of the United States, since by that same argument, you would end up concluding that Joseph Biden is the current President of the United States. Hanson was the President of the Congress of the United States, just as Biden is the President of the Senate of the United States. The office of “President of the United States”, analogous to the office that Obama currently holds, did not exist at that time.

“There were I think about 12 presidents before Washington, he was the first Pres after the Constitution was made. So the otheres are mere footnotes in history.”

Well, we consider the United States to have been “born” in 1776, but our current Constitution wasn’t ratified until 1787. Apart from a general understanding that there was a war to fight, those are sort of the “missing years” of formative U.S. history. What you consider “footnotes” a historian might consider “woefully underacknowledged.” That you don’t know anything about it doesn’t make it “not worth knowing.”

I’ll probably never need to use it, but I thank you all for the opportunity to learn something new.

No. But they’re sometimes told to.

@c001 – Yes, but generally the reports are allowed be critical of their chosen subject — they aren’t required to be laudatory.

That’s true, beady.el, I know a kid who got an A on a paper that was very critical of Andrew Jackson’s treatment of the Indians….And not just the Trail of Tears….He actually betrayed Indian friends who had fought with him. Nasty dude….

I stand corrected. John Hanson was a President of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. (1779) However, his role was largely ceremonial and lacked any executive real authority such as that later given under the Constitution. As no federal government existed yet, he could only truly be called the President of the Continental Congress, NOT President of the United States.

I really like Caulfield’s character but sometimes…He’s just an annoying little smart@$$.

BIGPUMA: I am trying not to respond to every crotchety old fart thing you say (and I don’t care how old you are, you’re still a crochety old fart) because these are postings from five years before I’m reading them. All the same I wish (vainly, I’m sure) that you would take you personal vendetta against Mallett, along with your seemingly endless campaign to prove your moral superiority over everyone who disagrees with you, somewhere else.