I don t know why this needed to exerpted, but this was an email.
Thought you’d enjoy this one!
This one you want your children and grandchildren to read.
They wont believe this happened, but it did.
Harry and Bess
This seems unreal . . .
Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more, important decisions regarding our nation’s history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.
The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ‘allowance’ and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, “I don’t consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.”
As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale.
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, “My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference!
I say dig him up and clone him!
This Harry Truman hagiography is just pure nonsense! It is an attempt to cover up the truth in the minds of the historically ignorant.
Truman was a active co-conspirator in the crooked Penderast machine, not any kind of honest man. He should have gone to prison with Pendergast.
One thing is for sure: Harry was certainly a guote-making machine - here’s a top 10 list:
1. There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
2. The buck stops here.
3. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
4. A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants
5. All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
6. Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.
7. Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.
8. Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
9. I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
10. I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.
Read “Plain Speaking” by Merle Miller.
Outstanding book of interviews of Harry Truman. He was so down to Earth he didn’t seem like a politician.