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Jimmy Carter has died

washingtonpost.com

311–320 of 879 posts

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#311
post #214
post #20

Looking back, to me he was a much better president then people believed in the 80s. I believe if he got re-elected in 1980, the US would be in a much better place. One thing, it could be argued real work on Climate Change would have begun in 1981 as opposed to where we are now, which is just watching the average probably blowing past 3C in around 70 years from now. For his loss in 1980, I still blame Kennedy. RIP, he…

> For his loss in 1980, I still blame Kennedy. I still blame Carter for killing single-payer health care. Almost 50 years later, we're still stuffering from that. Consider the recent murder of the United executive, and the public glee over it. The public despises our current health care system. Of course Obama had the chance to remedy the situation but instead chose to give government subsidies to the very health ins…

> the very health insurance companies that everyone hates

First of all, the vast majority of Americans like their health insurance [1]. There were talks of a public option but it would be political suicide for anyone in a swing state to support "government death panels." Indeed even the moderate ACA caused Democrats to suffer one of the worst Congressional losses in history [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/elections/health-insur...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_elections

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#312
post #181
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big one I wish he’d been able to do was getting a U.S. nuclear network going like France has. It’d be nice to have now but they’re so slow to build that a 40 year head start would’ve been invaluable.

Three Mile Island and then Chernobyl kinda killed that dream. Both had bad actors trying to cover up the leak, and caused the nuclear scare to go even worse. France also has majority ownership of the nuclear plants, something that would never fly in the US (because Socialism!). Even when I was an intern at a power company, the leaders there saw the nuclear power plant the company owned as an "albatross around their n…

Yes, nothing is certain but I do think it wasn’t preordained – a White House which took climate change seriously, which wasn’t so invested in fossil fuel production, might have shifted the conversation to making nuclear safer because it would also reduce the even larger ecological footprint of coal and oil production. Reagan famously appointed a self-described “anti-environmentalist” and counted the dubious accomplishments of increasing strip-mining and opening up land for oil drilling so pretty much anyone would have been an improvement.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carter deregulated more than Raygun. Raygun introduced more gun regulations than Carter. Both parties are worse than the other on the issues they promise to be better on. It's almost like it's a big club that you're not a member of.

>"Raygun introduced more gun regulations than Carter" People forget this, Reagan literally started the charter and expectations for the modern gun control movement just because of Black Panther advancements and protests in the street with firearms.

He got scared of their right to carry arms back then as a CA governor and started the gun control there.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look a little harder. The people living through the 1970s knew how bad he was and chose to put him out. He had bad staff, bad relations with the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, and we got the Mayaguez, iran hostage, stagflation, and other troubles too many to list. He was a bad president, a good man, and a great ex-president.

He appointed Volcker, who ended stagflation eventually. And his predecessor was appointed by Nixon so it’s hard to blame Carter for this.

He ended inflation by causing a brutal recession through extreme interest rate hikes, which resulted in an irreversible shift in economic paradigms which caused the US to abandon its industrial lead as we faced recession, idle capital accumulation, and mass unemployment. The US became a deficit economy after that point.

Nixon, though he caused the original shock, originally wanted to keep the Bretton Woods system intact, but that was impossible after what he did.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#315
post #47

Of all the presidents I've seen in my lifetime, I think President Carter might be the only one who felt genuine and didn't exhibit narcissism.

I think our culture needs some general awareness and “antibodies” against Narcissism, and emotional manipulation in general. People seem generally unaware of, and as a result easily manipulated and controlled by people with these behaviors. I only became conscious of it after reading a book about communication where I learned how emotional manipulation worked- and then realized I was in a relationship with someone do…

> I think our culture needs some general awareness and “antibodies” against Narcissism, and emotional manipulation in general.

This would be diametrically opposed to American culture lol

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#316
post #20

Looking back, to me he was a much better president then people believed in the 80s. I believe if he got re-elected in 1980, the US would be in a much better place. One thing, it could be argued real work on Climate Change would have begun in 1981 as opposed to where we are now, which is just watching the average probably blowing past 3C in around 70 years from now. For his loss in 1980, I still blame Kennedy. RIP, he…

Blaming Kennedy is a take I hadn't heard before. I always gave the folks behind Reagan a lot of credit, as it is a historical fact that they conspired with a foreign power to hold the American hostages until after the election. > A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election > A prominent Texas politician said he unwittingly took part in a 1980 tour of the Middle East with a clandestine age…

> Blaming Kennedy is a take I hadn't heard before.

Carter wanted to pass legislation to give every American catastrophic healthcare coverage, so that a major medical incident would no longer bankrupt families, as a stepping stone towards universal coverage.

Kennedy opposed this, despite being on record supporting universal coverage.

It would have been a major win for Carter, but Kennedy already knew he wanted to run against the sitting President.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#317
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"70s energy policy was a result of the oil crisis, not environment concerns." Quite - the environment was not much of a concern. Bear in mind that lead in petrol was your anti-knock agent and the catalytic convertor didn't exist. I remember really yellow coloured, sickly verges alongside roads and strawberry sellers in laybyes on the A303 ...

In the 1970s, the feared effect was global cooling. I doubt that Carter could have intervened in any case. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

I'm not sure your article agrees that cooling was the dominant thought in the public sphere:

> "While neither scientists nor the public could be sure in the 1970s whether the world was warming or cooling, people were increasingly inclined to believe that global climate was on the move, and in no small way"

And it definitely wasn't in the scientific world:

> Concern peaked in the early 1970s, though "the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then

Seems more likely that if Carter had an opinion it would be the scientific one, and even if he only read mass media on it he wouldn't necessarily think cooling was the dominant trend.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: "Two-year probe led by Republicans faults agencies for pandemic response, as Democrats on panel challenge final report’s findings on SARS-CoV-2’s origin" Yeah, the lying-ass republicans repeating the same bullshit Russian-made talking points, meanwhile the Democrats who aren't on the dole disagree. What gullible Americans "believe" on some random poll site doesn't matter. Belief in something doesn't make it true…

Since you are so blinded by party lines, here's an article in NY times from Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist from MIT Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid... "Given what we now know, investigators should follow their strongest leads and subpoena all exchanges between the Wuhan scientists and their international partners, includin…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42513063

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, he only busted the Great Depression, won WWII, built half of the infrastructure that we keep kicking the expiration date on, and negotiated 80% of the beneficial fine print in your employment contract. Don't you think he could have done a bit more? My list would be: 1. FDR, 2. Carter, 3. Teddy. Carter because he sacrificed his career to fix inflation (Republican attempts to rewrite history notwithstanding), and T…

> won WWII or so Hollywood would have us believe

Sure, the parts Stalin didn’t win.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#320
The last moral president. Always trying to do the right thing.

The last 'left' Christian. A politician that actually followed the bible. To bad Christianity has been co-opted by gun toting crazies full of contradictions like wanting to kill mothers and save un-born babies, then after they are born, not provide health care to the babies, spout nonsense about 'the kids', but then take away school lunches.

Even way back. During the Iran Hostage Crisis. The Republican's were dealing with Iran to hold the hostage's to sway the election. Carter got smeared with that for decades.

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