Have We Ever Enjoyed A Good Run?

[EE94]

This subject is the reason I'm increasingly convinced that it's almost irrelevant who becomes president.

Every administration has its disasters and achievements....some Americans will suffer and some will prosper. Is it possible for a country of this size and diversity to have a 'good run'? Someone is always going to be unhappy.

And in the meantime, in the tiny little history of this country, we've survived world wars and civil wars and illegal wars and really stupid wars...slavery and bigotry and depressions and recessions and oil shortages....rap music and Ann Coulter and the Colts leaving Baltimore.

Somehow, we just roll on. I have no idea how.

how can you say it makes no difference?

You think you're in Iraq if its not Bush in office?

Not a ****ing chance.

There would probably have been 9-11 and Afghanistan, but not Iraq.

The world's history often swings on the ambitions and personality of a single person - Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, HITLER!!

Yeah, it makes a difference

 

[old_tony]

I don't recall a lot of hemming and hawing in 1996.

Yup. We had two years of GOP-controlled House and Senate running the country and forcing Clinton into line, and things were humming along.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

 

[beardpuller]

To go back to the original point of the thread:
I wasn't around, but weren't the 1950s under Eisenhower pretty good?

I was around--just.

I do remember lots of pictures of Ike golfing --not much else.

I remember growing up in Leave it to Beaver land and I also remember "duck and cover" from public school. Two sides of the same coin.

That's about it.

And down where I was born in the '50s, we had this little thing we called "segregation." Kind of a buzz killer for some.

 

[21]

This subject is the reason I'm increasingly convinced that it's almost irrelevant who becomes president.

Every administration has its disasters and achievements....some Americans will suffer and some will prosper. Is it possible for a country of this size and diversity to have a 'good run'? Someone is always going to be unhappy.

And in the meantime, in the tiny little history of this country, we've survived world wars and civil wars and illegal wars and really stupid wars...slavery and bigotry and depressions and recessions and oil shortages....rap music and Ann Coulter and the Colts leaving Baltimore.

Somehow, we just roll on. I have no idea how.

how can you say it makes no difference?

You think you're in Iraq if its not Bush in office?

Not a ****ing chance.

There would probably have been 9-11 and Afghanistan, but not Iraq.

The world's history often swings on the ambitions and personality of a single person - Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, HITLER!!

Yeah, it makes a difference

I didn't say that individual presidents don't impact the country. My point is that despite what individual presidents do, somehow the country moves on.

 

[DanOregon]

To go back to the original point of the thread:
I wasn't around, but weren't the 1950s under Eisenhower pretty good?

Sunday, Monday HAPPY DAYS, These Days are OURRRRRRS!

Though I'm kind of partial to the Era of Good Feelings. Not to be confused with the mid-90s when a presidential blow job was the worst of our problems. Ah, the good old days.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

The 1980s were a timely combination of a lot of things. A fortunous fault, we might term it in the now.

The sainted halfwit in office had nothing to do with any of it.

 

[writing irish]

93, We actually subsidize corn farmers in this country, and growing corn is STILL not a profitable activity. And when it comes to ethanol, sugar cane-based ethanol burns much more efficiently -- and cheaply -- than corn-based ethanol. Sugar-based ethanol costs less to produce and generates more than eight times more energy per unit than corn-based ethanol.

Of course, sugar costs twice as much in the U.S. as it does anywhere else in the world because of government-guaranteed fixed prices for sugar and tariffs and quotas that don't allow anyone to import sugar from somewhere else more cheaply. As if that isn't enough, there is a Congress-imposed 54 cents per gallon tarriff on sugar-based ethanol, to protect the corn growing industry.

Incidentally, Jimmy Carter was the one who instituted the price fixing to boost the sugar industry and supported the tarriffs on foreign sugar:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7451

He's by no means the only problem though. The sugar and corn industries have had hundreds of politicians in their pockets. The end result is lunacy, though. Our government pays billions in subsidies to try to get us to use more ethanol... and at the same time, it institutes tariffs and quotas that guarantee we use less of it, and in terms of the ethanol we use, it guarantees we use an inferior, less energy-efficient type.

Not that it really matters that much. The price of oil is what is killing us. Even sugar-based ethanol would only have so much effect on that.

James Surowiecki wrote something about this in the New Yorker a year or two ago, and I was floored when I started reading up more about it.

Brothers and sisters, y'all best git right with Jeebus...cause there's a sign of the end times a-comin'...I agree wholeheartedly with Ragu. On the above post, anyway. Spot on.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

To go back to the original point of the thread:
I wasn't around, but weren't the 1950s under Eisenhower pretty good?

Things were fine in Brooklyn, except for that little home run in 1951, and that guy moving the local baseball team to the West Coast.

 

[chester]

I don't recall a lot of hemming and hawing in 1996.

I recall things not being terrible (then again, I was still in college at that time) but it wasn't all rosy either. Didn't they have to shut the government down for a short while because of the budget, or was that in '97?

 

[Boom_70]

I don't recall a lot of hemming and hawing in 1996.

I recall things not being terrible (then again, I was still in college at that time) but it wasn't all rosy either. Didn't they have to shut the government down for a short while because of the budget, or was that in '97?

shutdown was Nov of 1995 - The president worked during that time though.

 

[Lyman_Bostock]

Yes, we've had a good run.

For the last 232 years.

 

[GB-Hack]

I've always subscribed to the thought that things are never as good or as bad as they seem. Right now, though, there seems to be a greater level of exasperation as I've ever seen in the time I've been on this earth.

There seems to be a far greater willingness to point fingers at this point, play the blame game, work 'talking points' rather than actually figure out how to fix things and make it better. I'm not saying telling people they're wrong is a bad thing, but at some point you've got to illustrate what could be done to get things back on the right track.

 

[Starman]

The 1980s were a timely combination of a lot of things. A fortunous fault, we might term it in the now.

The sainted halfwit in office had nothing to do with any of it.

He had a lot to do with rocketing the budget deficit and the national debt over the moon to pay for his military budget explosion, for which we'll be paying for the next 50 years. Then we can get to work on Junior Bush's budget deficits.

 

[Lyman_Bostock]

The 1980s were a timely combination of a lot of things. A fortunous fault, we might term it in the now.

The sainted halfwit in office had nothing to do with any of it.

He had a lot to do with rocketing the budget deficit and the national debt over the moon to pay for his military budget explosion, for which we'll be paying for the next 50 years. Then we can get to work on Junior Bush's budget deficits.

Yeah, God forbid he spend money on the military. Not like the Soviets were able to keep up or anything.

 

[BTExpress]

Yeah, God forbid he spend money on the military. Not like the Soviets were able to keep up or anything.

It was sooooooo important that we had 50,000 nuclear warheads to the Soviets' 45,000.

If we had stopped at 100, we still could have destroyed their country and saved billions of dollar.

 

[Lyman_Bostock]

Yeah, God forbid he spend money on the military. Not like the Soviets were able to keep up or anything.

It was sooooooo important that we had 50,000 nuclear warheads to the Soviets' 45,000.

If we had stopped at 100, we still could have destroyed their country and saved billions of dollar.

Yeah, it was important. That's why we won. That's why you're free to spout stupidity on a message board.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Ever been to Russia? I have. That ****hole was gonna' crumble regardless.

 

[GB-Hack]

Am I to take it I would be speaking Russian right now if not for the number of nuclear weapons the U.S. had in comparison to the U.S.S.R?

 

[Bubbler]

Yeah, God forbid he spend money on the military. Not like the Soviets were able to keep up or anything.

It was sooooooo important that we had 50,000 nuclear warheads to the Soviets' 45,000.

If we had stopped at 100, we still could have destroyed their country and saved billions of dollar.

Yeah, it was important. That's why we won. That's why you're free to spout stupidity on a message board.

Why do conservatives hang on to the Reagan-ended-Communism dogma?

There's virtually no evidence to substantiate it. Records indicate the Soviets were in serious trouble at least in the 70s, probably the 60s, and the military adventure that accelerated what would have been an Ottoman Empire-like decline (Afghanistan), started before Reagan took office. The arms race had little to do with it.