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Jimmy Carter has died

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451–460 of 879 posts

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

more than one major political party would be a good start so that your “democracy” is more little more than “it is 2am at a bar and there are two of the ugliest people to ever roam the Earth but you are drunk and you are taking one of them home with ya…” :)

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it simply is :) EDIT: I’ll elaborate quickly why… the country is so divided these days that you can hardly engage in any conversation regarding politics across the aisle. so your only option to discuss things is with like-minded people. now when you get into like-minded group there is a herd mentality happening and serious echo chamber. here’s a personal example - one of my dearest friends on this planet used to be a…

>> Categorizing in terms of absolutes, such as "there are no liberals who ..." and "no conservatives who ...", is to engage in reductionism ... >> This is simply not true. > it simply is :) People make choices for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes those choices are knowingly to their detriment and can be confounding to others whom are not a part of their decision process. Many times the reasoning is "sacrifice for th…

edited my comment to elaborate and not be snarky as I was

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#453
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…

Carter's party controlled the legislature for a half century roughly centering on his presidency; it's hard to see why his reelection would have drastically changed policy. Democratic hegemony at the time was strong enough that Republicans were said to be "in the wilderness", which I think might be the origin of that idiom with respect to national politics.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#454
post #182
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…

>it could be argued real work on Climate Change would have begun in 1981 as opposed to where we are now That's a common myth. 70s energy policy was a result of the oil crisis, not environment concerns. Sometimes the result was conductive to the environment (e.g. efficiency increases), sometimes it was less so (various US gov research into more polluting alternatives like synthetic oil or shale oil), and sometimes it…

> (like Carter banning nuclear waste reprocessing which set back that entire industry)

How did this set back the whole industry? Experience since then, even in France, is that reprocessing is uneconomical. Understand that Carter's executive order was rescinded by Reagan, and yet reprocessing has gone nowhere since then in the US.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so. But Anderson also pulled votes from more-or-less Republicans who didn't believe Reagan's assertion that cutting taxes and increasing spending would narrow the deficit.

It is true that Reagan campaigned against Carter's 'profligate' spending. But then it's also a fact that Carter (2.6% in 1980) had reduced Ford's deficit (4.1% in 1976) and then Reagan's deficit (5.9% in 1983) greatly increased Carter's. Reagan's Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney summarized the Reagan governing philosophy as deficits don't matter .

Almost 50 years later, borrow-and-spend politicians still sell themselves to US voters as fiscally responsible.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#456
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are serious proliferation concerns surrounding nuclear waste reprocessing. Btw Carter put solar panels on the white house.

Which didn't justify the ban. Other countries didn't follow suit, main effect was hurting US nuclear industry and increasing pollution. P.S. These weren't solar panels (i.e. electricity generation), but solar water heaters . A very different tech, a useful tech, but not a global warming solution.

Solar thermal water heaters are a retro technology at this point. It's simpler and easier to install PV panels driving a heat pump water heater.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even if Reagan and Carter were the same on deregulation, it would be a huge logical error to conclude that the parties were "the same." But it's even more comically wrong because it's being pointed out that the presidents were different!

Politics, mēh!

The divergence of the Democrats and Republicans is twenty first century.

They were not identical back in the day, but they were broadly the same pro business pro money machines.

Not unusual, happens in most parts of the world.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#458
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Republicans have always been pro-immigrant because it's inherently pro-business. They just have to do a song and dance routine for the low IQ racist cohort of their constituency to make it seem like they're tough on it. It has consistently been about illegal immigration. You are calling people "low IQ" and "Idiots" and you, literally in this very post, show you are falling for the same thing they fell for.

> It has consistently been about illegal immigration. Not Trump. He’s been opposed to immigration from the ‘wrong” countries, regardless of legality.

Trump likely employs massive numbers of illegal immigrants in his hotel empire. He did nothing substantial about illegal immigration in his first term, he's not going to do anything substantial in his second term. He's all talk.

The way to eliminate illegal immigration is to go after the people who hire them. But Trump isn't going to put rich white people in jail.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

https://visualizingpalestine.org/visual/shrinking-palestine/

Doesn't include the parts of Syria that Israel just expropriated.

Are you sure you aren't parroting Zionist tropes?

That sea phrase ...

Likud Party Platform https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...

> between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjhXXspw7pw

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#460
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…

> Three Mile Island and then Chernobyl kinda killed that dream

With very good reason.

Nuclear power leaves a 200,000 year head ache.

Climate change is a mild problem in comparison, it will correct itself in centuries (taking most of civilisation with it, but mēh!)

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