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Jimmy Carter has died

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Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#671

Post by moffkalast »

braza wrote: post #667

As a Brazilian I admire how some Americans here in the thread can say great things and passages about their presidents, regardless of the mistakes made and political party. Democracies are never perfect but I strongly believe that having something to say about a president it’s a great sign of a health democracy and institution (in this case POTUS).

Or maybe it's less about the politics and more about plain old celebrity worship. This thread isn't really all that different from when the average well known actor or musician dies.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#672

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

hylaride wrote: post #50

One could argue he set the stage for the 1980s economic boom by making short term sacrifices that cost him re-election. It was his administration that did market-oriented deregulation around airlines and trucking industries (meaning you didn't need to have a licence to ship goods across state lines and go through monopoly trucking companies to get your goods to market) as well as appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chair w…

Inflation was very obviously caused by oil price shocks. The price of oil tripled, which was an unmitigated disaster for the West's petro-economy.

It's an exotic reinvention of history to suggest putting up interest rates did anything to fix that. We had the same excuse rolled out in the UK, and legend still has it that rising wages "cause inflation" while resource price shocks, asset price inflation, and corporate profiteering magically don't.

As for Carter - an unusually decent and thoughtful man who genuinely spent his life trying to do the right thing. But perhaps a little out of his depth with the cutthroat psychopathy of geopolitics.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#673

Post by anovikov »

jdewerd wrote: post #174
bdndndndbve wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FDR doesn't make the cut?

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…

Infrastructure was mostly built in Eisenhower's era, not FDR's. Helping Soviets during WWII was a major mistake and it can be personally attributed to FDR - a radical leftist - himself. Many people around him advised him of the dangers of helping Commies.

U.S. should have ignored Soviet-German war. Then finish Commies with nukes.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#674

Post by FilosofumRex »

I often use President Carter's legacy to educate young & idealistic Democrats about how to be a progressive populist, in the traditional meaning of those words. I ask them to lookup how much money Obama raised from Wall Street tycoons to be elected and how much more he has pocketed from them by giving banal speeches about "hope" & "change", vs how much Jimmy Carter did.

Most young Democrats (college or 20 somethings) idolize Obama, whom bailed out banks (100% to a dollar); started (Libya, Syria, Yeman) and expanded (Afgan & Iraq) wars; Opposed single payer healthcare for uninsured and flooded the country with so many illegal & extra-legal (temp) foreigners, nobody has any incentive to wait to legally immigrate, anymore.

Awarding the Noble Peace Prize to Obama was an insult to the legacy of President Carter and reminds me of what Vietnamese leader Le Doc Tho said when he refused to accept the Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger in 1973: "Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put the aggressor and the victim of aggression on the same par. ... That was a blunder".

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#675

Post by roenxi »

anovikov wrote: post #673
jdewerd wrote: post #174

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…

Infrastructure was mostly built in Eisenhower's era, not FDR's. Helping Soviets during WWII was a major mistake and it can be personally attributed to FDR - a radical leftist - himself. Many people around him advised him of the dangers of helping Commies. U.S. should have ignored Soviet-German war. Then finish Commies with nukes.

> Then finish Commies with nukes.

If they'd done that they'd be down in history as worse than the worst of communism. It was bad enough that they dropped 2 on the Japanese which scores American civilisation a questionable footnote in the history books. "Only people to use a weapon this terrible".

The problem with unprincipled aggression is that, sooner or later, other people match it. The US ended up doing much better by defeating the communists without directly fighting them - one of the few wars the US unambiguously won and why people don't want to learn that lesson is one of the great mysteries. Victories through overwhelming prosperity are both decisive and comfortable.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#676

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

unitol wrote: post #639
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trans topic is a wedge issue that has absolutely no impact on 99% of people. Many of the things people like to bring up when complaining about "a shift to the left" are fringe ideas even on the left, and are amplified by right-wingers who are trying to paint the left as out of touch with reality. Having said that, age-appropriate sex ed in elementary school (e.g. talking about bodily autonomy and consent) is actu…

> The trans topic is a wedge issue that has absolutely no impact on 99% of people. The idea of "gender identity" as based on a subjective inner sense of self, and that "gender identity" must supersede sex, fundamentally reframes a core characteristic of the entire human population. When implemented in law and policy, this affects everyone. The impact is mostly on women and girls, for whom female-only spaces are essen…

But dying because a fatally unhealthy pregnancy can't be terminated, or being forced to carry a rape pregnancy to term, or being denied contraception, or being shot in a classroom doesn't harm women and girls?

Your priorities might be considered a little slanted.

Gender identity is used by the right because - like most sex-related issues - it's emotive and triggering. It's a single issue dog whistle.

Given the evidence, there is no reason to believe that anyone who uses it for political gain actually cares about women or girls.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#677

Post by andyjohnson0 »

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has written a lengthy, generous account of his life and legacy:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024

As a non-USian who was young when he was president, he has always seemed to me to be a decent person who tried to do good with what he had, and understood the limits of his own ambition. We need more like him.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#678

Post by kortilla »

boroboro4 wrote: post #385
kortilla wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public likes the immediate access to healthcare, they just don’t like it when the bill comes due. That’s why you get complaints about healthcare wait times in Canada and the UK when people propose adopting fully nationalized systems like those. Those complaints come from people with decent to good insurance that have never been bitten by a denial, which unfortunately is the majority of the employed population. Pe…

I’m not sure which immediate healthcare you’re talking about. Where I live in the US earliest available specialist I was seeking (nothing too special) was months away. We do have highest spending for healthcare among peers, having healthcare universal wouldn’t necessary mean long wait times.

>Where I live in the US earliest available specialist I was seeking (nothing too special) was months away.

How far were you willing to travel? In my local smaller city a skin cancer specialist was also unavailable for several weeks but I was able to take a two hour trip to the Mayo Clinic and got in there 2 days later with a referral.

In the UK it’s controlled at a a national level and you can’t travel two hours with an overnight stay to fix it like you can in the US.

Separately from specialists, urgent care facilities have a very high density here so immediate things can be addressed quite quickly.

>having healthcare universal wouldn’t necessary mean long wait times.

I have yet to see a system where that’s true. A friend got pneumonia in Canada and had to wait 14 hours in the ER before being diagnosed and given antibiotics.

I don’t think you can get all 3 of cheap, good, and fast. That adage applies to everything else in the world.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#679

Post by kortilla »

bdangubic wrote: post #395
bluGill wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the majority who are not denied our system is better. Waits are rarely long and that costs money as well. i don't like the curret system but it isn't as bad as you would think if you read he comnents on the internet.

while your experience might be tolerable that in no way reflects the realities for people at large. I have several close friends that are SWEs with high 6-figure salaries and “great” insurance that went through health scares that can tell you absolute horror stories (Dr. says this is gravery serious matter, you neee this test, call to schedule (in October) no availability till March in 100 mile radius - we live in th…

>while your experience might be tolerable that in no way reflects the realities for people at large.

Not sure what you mean by “at large” but it certainly reflects the reality for the majority of people. That’s why it fails to garner political support to disrupt.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#680

Post by kortilla »

macrocosmos wrote: post #432
kortilla wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public likes the immediate access to healthcare, they just don’t like it when the bill comes due. That’s why you get complaints about healthcare wait times in Canada and the UK when people propose adopting fully nationalized systems like those. Those complaints come from people with decent to good insurance that have never been bitten by a denial, which unfortunately is the majority of the employed population. Pe…

You think it's unfortunate that the majority of the population has not been bitten by a denial?

It’s unfortunate if you expect people to vote for anything disruptive to their own healthcare to fix it.
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