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Jimmy Carter has died

washingtonpost.com

401–410 of 879 posts

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#401

I was thinking about Jimmy Carter on election day. Carter told America the truth about itself and they overwhelmingly voted to get rid of him. Trump has given nothing but lies and hate and America handed him the White House on a silver platter. This country didn't deserve Carter. I hope he is with his wife now.

Yes told the truth about using less enegergy.... got kicked out

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet people will mock you for saying that both parties are the same. "Just say no" to nihilism[0]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

Rejecting electoralism and demanding or organizing toward an alternative is not nihilism. Insisting that anything but electoralism is nihilism, might be.

> Rejecting electoralism and demanding or organizing toward an alternative is not nihilism.

I replied to this comment:

  And yet people will mock you for saying that
  both parties are the same.
The Democratic and Republican parties are demonstrably "not the same." This is evident in policy positions and party platforms. The assertion quoted reasonably satisfies the referenced definition:

  In philosophy, nihilism (/ˈnaɪ(h)ɪlɪzəm, ˈniː-/; from Latin 
  nihil 'nothing') is any viewpoint, or a family of views, 
  that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of 
  human existence, namely knowledge, morality, or 
  meaning.
To date, the United States federal government has been defined as a representative democracy. A critical component of same is participatory elections. Therefore, I do not understand your premise of "rejecting electoralism[sic]" for "organizing toward an alternative", unless the intent is to no longer have a representative government.

What alternative to an electoral process do you have in mind? And please be specific so that I may understand.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#403
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rates peaked in 1982.

Reagan and Volcker clashed (at least somewhat publicly). Not long after Reagan came to power, he pushed a massive tax cut that swelled the deficit. Volcker publicly complained that they were too early and were hindering his anti-inflationary work and then proceeded to significantly raise interest rates and only cut them in 1982 after taxes were raised (to lower than they were before the previous cut, but a significan…

The Reagan tax cuts were too big but they got increased substantially during his term after that to be a lot more right sized. He recognized the error and adjusted.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#404
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 not supported by the absolute crushing Carter got by himself in the 1980 election, losing the electoral college 489/538 (4th biggest in history). This isn’t due to some unsuccessful Kennedy run. Reagan set the highest such win 4 years later with 525/538 electoral votes. Carter was quite unpopular with the public after such poor economic performance. 15% inflation is the worst in modern times; it would be impossible for any President to get re-elected under such national suffering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia...

https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-inflation

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's ironic about this is that Egypt no longer poses a threat to Israel because of these peace agreements and reliance on American foreign aid. If this were not the case, Israel likely would not be a position such that they could pursue military attacks against Gaza and war in Lebanon.

My view of the future is that Israel’s borders will probably continue to expand opportunistically for the forseeable future. This is a doctrine known as Greater Israel. At some point the Egypt-Israel relationship could deteriorate and Israel could expand in that direction again. Overall expansionist/conquest urges are back in with Russia, US under Trump and Israel. We will probably see China also get into the act.

> Israel could expand in that direction again

I agree that Israel harbors Zionist destructive ambitions, but it doesn't really extend beyond "Greater Israel" which is the extent of Israel in Biblical times under King David and King Solomon. That does not extend in Egypt's direction, but it does include Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, so it's no coincidence that Israel has pushed in those directions (southern Lebanon, Golan Heights, and the West Bank).

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#406
post #176
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…

> the US would be in a much better place This would have been the case with Gore (2000) and Clinton (2016) too.

Gore in 2000 is one of the US' great missed opportunities.

Having a president at the time who understood the science behind global warming would have been a game changer. (To say nothing of not invading Iraq)

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#407
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For these reasons, Jimmy Carter is my third-favorite president of the 20th century, behind my favorite, Calvin Coolidge, and my second-favorite, Dwight Eisenhower. I am a very big fan of Paul Volcker and I’m glad Jimmy Carter nominated him as chair of the Fed. I wish Reagan kept Volcker as chair during Reagan’s second term.

How did Lyndon B Johnson not make your list? Beside the Vietname war he seems like the best President for innerpolitics.

> Beside the Vietname war

that's a pretty big "besides"

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#408
post #244
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over in Washington, the Hanford nuclear site is a big demonstration that we haven't really solved the holistic problems of nuclear waste. (Technical, financial, legal, political.) Even just trying to ship it elsewhere for processing gets blocked by other states and cities.

Most of the storage challenges are political, rather than engineering. There is so much fear around this stuff, but it's usually based on the incorrect notion that radioactive wastes is both super dangerous, and lasts forever. But this is not true. The super dangerous stuff doesn't hang around that long, whilst the stuff that does isn't that dangerous. The super-duper dangerous radioactive waste has a relatively shor…

Radiation and long term consequences of radioactive contamination is very specifically terrifying to the general public because you can neither see nor feel it happening and the consequences may not happen until much later. Both of those effects create an outsized defensive response that is not irrational at all but just most people are unable to modulate their perceptions of the size of threats like that.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#409
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…

I agree. He got more hate than he deserved, and was a human being that cared about people, which is something the US government seems to be lacking last few generations.
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