Nobel Peace Prize for Jimmy Carter

(sorry)

is there anything wrong with people who distrust anyone who is in a position of authority?

Trust but verify.

hahaha El BJ

-- HI DERE, Tuesday, October 30, 2007 12:45 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

(sorry)

-- HI DERE, Tuesday, October 30, 2007 12:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

totally in character, but also funny

morbs you make a pretty big deal about having given up on this country of idiots 15 years ago, a lot.

it really never stops being interesting

yeah yeah we all hate each other on the politics threads because we keep coming back to them so much that we've all become totally predictable

familiarity & contempt together at last

my politics are from Sleeper: Six months from now,we're going to be stealing Erno's nose.

that's not EMO'S

finally I can go back to my diet of chocolate cake and steak

taking politics as they are and getting involved = back-to-the world compassion (to lift from pop-buddhism, if you like). it's a grubby world, and it's bravery to NOT hold it at arms length, not the other way around.

constant above-it-all kvetching = self-aggrandizing uselessness, a fear response plain and simple. fake politics designed entirely to hog the spotlight rather than say anything about anything.

xp funny i love sleeper and i have no idea wtf you're on about

morbz if you followed the chronicles of and what you would know my props for lbj are x1000000000000000000 of that for carter (20 hour road trip this summer just to hit up the library in austin) but johnson represents everything you would hate on if he were actually running, withholding shit from the public and polling and shameless pandering and triangulating himself and working across party lines and etc etc etc - hey its kinda like voting for ppl who actually will get shit done is better than sitting around whining and waiting for a liberal fantasy candidate (or right wing fantasy candidate in the case of your now-forgotten ron paul dick-riding - what happened in the last 3 months that made you not wanna crew with white nationalists & militia dudes?)

oh, tee 'em

I can't recall Morbz ever complaining about polling

I'm well aware of LBJ's political style. If any of the current batch of slop dwellers could get his results, I'd excuse em.

I never rode Ron Paul's dick, but thx for homophobic slur.

voting for ppl who actually will get shit done

and that's exactly what Dem Hero Clinton got done, lots n lots of Reaganite SHIT

and what, i'm with you for the most part (and agree re: uselessness of idea of "purity" in politics), but i can't really let LBJ off with just a "he was a brilliantly corrupt politician who got things done" considering he launched a huge and unnecessary war in vietnam which probably fucked the country up worse than anything post-1960.

morbius gave up on america after three terms of republican preznits came to an end huh.

When the Democrat who was elected was an even worse Republican, yep.

Eisenhower and Kennedy launched or at least pre-launched the war, but obv it was part of the Cold War proxy bullshit LBJ believed in, yet people are so willing to forgive Carter for same upthread (I guess because no Americans were dying).

I have no aspirations to "purity"; I voted for Walter Mondale, and Bill Bradley vs Gore.

can't we just argue over which president had the worst siblings?

Clinton I

Anybody who says Billy Carter hates fun (and Billy Beer)

Carter's sister also entertaining

All I'll say about Carter is that he's the perfect example of the cult of survivalhood. A shitty president still carries a patina of respect because he writes a couple of books a year and is an irritant to every sitting president.

Somewhere in CNN's archives from 1998 there's a brief video of me standing next to Jimmy at the Carter family reunion in Plains.

Could someone recommend me a good book on the Carter presidency?

Neighbour kid mentioned in initial post turned out not to fall too far from the branch - either of parents or, it seems, of James Earl Carter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomkin_Coleman

Walter Karp's Liberty Under Siege discusses both the Carter and Reagan presidency. It does a smashing job of destroying stereotypes.

i strongly second that. karp's book is one of the reasons i got interested in politics and it's still a harrowing, powerful read. it's not exactly a cold, impartial reading -- karp frequently (and with hilarious offhandedness) refers to ronald reagan as a "tyrant" -- but it's full of gritty, gruesome details about carter's death struggle with congress.

Although he doesn't let Carter off the hook either – Carter comes off as clueless and haughty – it's impossible not to read the book and think that Carter wasn't doomed to failure from the beginning, thanks to a Congress that couldn't stand him.

JC's answer to why the US wouldn't pay reparations to Vietnam: "The destruction was mutual."

His current elevation to sainthood, complete with Demme doc, is kind of sad.

From Dennis Perrin, who is writing a book on the hypocrisies and evils of the Democrats from a leftist perspective:

Quick presidential Dem tidbit: Do you know why Jimmy Carter refused to offer Vietnam reparations for our murderous destruction of their country? Because "the destruction was mutual."

― Dr Morbius, Monday, October 29, 2007 11:46 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's a knee-slapper

I thot I'd checked for that, gawdammit. (I'm reading the Perrin book obv)

presidents always be funny re our Shining Moral Leadership

Hospitalized in Cleveland

RS publishes The Riddle of Jimmy Carter.

i lived in a duplex w/amy carter when i was a kid (heh, typed farter at first), one afternoon during summer vacay (i was 6 or 7?) jimmy rolled up with his secret service bros to visit her - she wasnt home, so he shook my older brother's hand and gave me a package of rainbow chips deluxe cookies - A+ for the peanut prez

I just finished that profile: it's outstanding.

I want cookies :(

naturally, though, it omits the part Carter played in helping Reagan's accelerated military spending and fucking up the ouster of Somoza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amycarterjpg.jpg

i like carter even if he was a crap president by most accounts

that profile was great! i was really impressed at the fine grain insight the author came away with

Nothing energizes Carter more than a good Guinea-worm meeting

Did you ever get to meet Gibby Haynes too?

i wish, gibby rules

I asked this on one of the presidential polls, but didn't really get an answer; I'm still looking to read a very good account of his presidency. It's one that interests me a lot, more in terms of the moment (post-Bicentennial madness) and my own timeline (high school) than Carter himself.

It seems inevitable that someone who has been the most powerful man in the world isn't likely to take orders well. But the official says it goes beyond that — it cuts to the nature of who Carter is. The former president, he says, doesn't seem to value others in any deep way, except in terms of what they can do for him. "Jimmy Carter is like the man of whom Goethe said, 'He loved humanity but hated people.' Such a strange, driven man. Almost possessed as he plods forward to spread good to the world in accordance with his — or His — plan."

Since democracies cannot act with the decisiveness of dictators, the world sometimes needs a man like Jimmy Carter, a democrat with the will of a despot.

"He's an engineer," says Andrew Young, whose loyal support of Carter's political career led the new president to appoint him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the first African-American to hold the job. "Engineers will tell you exactly how to build a bridge, but they can't seem to explain why you need this bridge. He's so fact-oriented, so detailed in almost everything."

That's precisely why he sucked as president!

A command of details is unnecessary to the modern presidency. Our last former engineer president: Herbert Hoover, also a whiz at details.

Beyond being one-termers who got killed in the election by their successor, he and Hoover have a lot in common.

x-post!

i loved the part about how its a pastime among people who know him to brainstorm for ideas on what his ideal job should've been - supreme court justice, pope, dictator, st. peter

A command of details is unnecessary to the modern presidency.

oh man there are so many good oliver north jpgs out there!

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1986/1101861222_400.jpg