Thomas Jefferson

[Minimalist]

Jefferson's views on slavery were far more complicated than you know, Wyrd.  Much as with Robert E. Lee ( who is always referred to as an opponent of slavery even though he commanded the Army of Northern Virginia) those comments are generally spouted by people who have no idea what Lee's views on slavery were.  But there was no way that the southern colonies/states would have approved the Declaration of Independence or, later, the constitution if either condemned slavery.  Unlike these tea-bagging shits we have now, they knew that you had to compromise to get things done.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

That might be a bit of a stretch, regarding Jefferson and Washington... given that they were wealthy (at least for part of their lives) plantation owners in Virginia, both of them held radical views for their time, despite also holding slaves. Washington wrote extensively on the problems, both personal and economic, of maintaining the slavery system; he simply didn't see a way they could compensate people who'd invested large amounts of capital in their chattel-workers, in such a way that they could free the slaves without crashing the economy. However, Washington also lamented that the system did not allow flexibility-- you could not move individual workers around (or sell them) without breaking up families, to the moral detriment of the owner as well as to the morale blow it dealt to the workers, meaning you could not switch to a new crop easily (say, following land exhaustion or blight) because your workers only knew how to grow the previous one, and you couldn't just hire new wage-workers who knew the task for which they were being hired.

Jefferson, according to monticello.org, was quite racist (he believed that racial separation was necessary and that peaceful coexistence was impossible, and referred to the African race as "children"), but he was also fiercely opposed to the practice of slavery:

Throughout his entire life, Thomas Jefferson was a consistent opponent of slavery.  Calling it a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot,” he believed that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of the new American nation. Jefferson also thought that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature, which decreed that everyone had a right to personal liberty. [...]
At the time of the American Revolution, Jefferson was actively involved in legislation that he hoped would result in slavery’s abolition. In 1778, he drafted a Virginia law that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans.  In 1784, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories. But Jefferson always maintained that the decision to emancipate slaves would have to be part of a democratic process; abolition would be stymied until slaveowners consented to free their human property together in a large-scale act of emancipation.  To Jefferson, it was anti-democratic and contrary to the principles of the American Revolution for the federal government to enact abolition or for only a few planters to free their slaves.

[Internal citations omitted.] Reference: https://www.monticello.org/site/plantati...nd-slavery

There is no possible way you can justify the statement, "They fought a war to ensure slavery in America."

The Revolutionary War was fought to maintain slavery in America.  That's a historical fact.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/9/740365/-
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/23/w...e-slavery/

The English were abolishing slavery in their colonies and the American slavers saw that theonly way they could keep their slaves was to rebel against England.  Therefore the slave owners joined the Yankees in their revolution.  Slavers such as Washington led the military effort and other slavers like Jefferson wrote the propaganda.  When the war was over they ended up running the new country and made slavery the law of the land.

Washington routinely moved his slaves from one State to another so that he wouldn't have to pay taxes on them.  He was a tax cheat in addition to being the national leader.  

All of the Presidents have been racists but some have actually been good for the country overall.  The Clinton gang are bad racists.  Trump is a racist but if he is actually able to stop the influx of illegal aliens into the country as well as deport some of them he will have done a major service to the American people.  Being a Repub he will fuck everything else up but at least he will accomplish one major thing of significance  The others won't do a damn thing that's positive.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Jefferson's views on slavery were far more complicated than you know, Wyrd.  Much as with Robert E. Lee ( who is always referred to as an opponent of slavery even though he commanded the Army of Northern Virginia) those comments are generally spouted by people who have no idea what Lee's views on slavery were.  But there was no way that the southern colonies/states would have approved the Declaration of Independence or, later, the constitution if either condemned slavery.  Unlike these tea-bagging shits we have now, they knew that you had to compromise to get things done.

Jefferson was a complex person.  He was a slaver and a consummate BS artist.  But he wasn't necessarily mean.  His BS is responsible for knitting such a diverse population into a comprehensive and mostly unified country for the past 200 years.  It's doubtful if we would have survived as a nation without the ideas that he made popular, even if he never followed them himself.  But he was a revolutionary because he wanted to maintain slavery.  He refused to obey English law which would have freed his slaves.  And that's the bottom line.

[Pat Mustard]

GWB managed to win this way but only barely and against two uncharasmatic Democratic candidates.

The first election he didn't win at all. Only because Gore stepped down from making further complaints and only because a court stopped the vote counting, did Shrub manage to park his ass in the Oval Office. It was only about 500 votes in Florida - where another Shrub ruled at the time.

Florida wasn't even close, it was a matter of over 40,000 ilegally disenfranchised voters, a large majority of them black. If even 10% of them voted no Shrub.