Happy summer to everyone …

SACRED COWS

Worst president ever: Harding? Pierce? Fillmore? Carter? Bush 43?

How about Ronald Reagan? That’s the nominee from Cracked’s Adam Tod Brown, who cites corruption, the inequality of Reaganomics, the union-crushing that hurt the middle class, ignoring the AIDS epidemic, botching the Middle East, and mental health/homelessness.

But maybe Bill Clinton messed up? Slate takes Hillary’s husband to task over welfare reform, painting it as a catastrophic “states’ rights” failure.

Here’s one you might not expect: Bleeding Heart Libertarians tackled the issue of biblical literalism. (As you might expect, the “against” view dominates here. It’s just a strange issue for them to take on.)

And in case some of you have not yet been offended (or given something to think about), consider these piece on our reaction to the Stanford swimmer sexual abuse case. Is unanimous condemnation ever a good thing?

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY

Cracked has been promoting some good pieces lately, even those from the archives such as this first-person account of being a Viet Cong soldier.

Another older piece, and I’m not sure how I found it recently — Psychology Today on new trends in the old American problem of anti-intellectualism.

EVERYTHING IS MUSICAL

Rush may never play live again or record another album, and yet they keep getting bigger. Here’s NPR talking with Alex Lifeson about the impact of 2112. Yes, they address the Ayn Rand themes.

And what’s that chord at the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night? Well …