St. Ronnie's Boondoggle Lives!

[joe king]

If D-Day were operated like this, 90% of the threads on sportsjournalists.com would be about the Bundesliga.

Damn, Batman beat me to reminding you that D-Day was indeed, held up because of stormy weather over the English Channel.

 

[Football_Bat]

If D-Day were operated like this, 90% of the threads on sportsjournalists.com would be about the Bundesliga.

Damn, Batman beat me to reminding you that D-Day was indeed, held up because of stormy weather over the English Channel.

The other 10% would be about Serie A, since Italy and Germany were allies. ☻

 

[poindexter]

Direct hit.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/21/satellite.shootdown/index.html

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Congratulations to the Navy for proving that you can shoot something down with a missile, which we've known since the ABM days of the 1970's, as long as you know where it is, when it's coming down, and the weather cooperates.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

We'll be paying for that senile old idiot's bull**** for the next 50 years. Next 100, in some ways. ****ing doddering moron.

Well, in your opinion. Two landslides in 1980 and 1984 would seem to indicate the vast majority of voters in this country disagreed with you.
Sorry if they inconveninced [sic] you.

The national debt skyrocketed under his watch, and we will be paying the bills for decades to come. That is not a matter of opinion, despite the fact that you feel his winning two elections makes it so.

So, yes, those voters did inconvenience the country.

I'm always amazed how people who bash Reagan for the deficit always like to pretend that Jimmy Carter didn't exist. The alternative to Reagan in 1980 was history's greatest monster and spiraling stagflation - Jimmy Carter would have turned us into Canada with better weather.

Reagan righted the ship on the economy and kicked off the boom years we've been having for the past 28 years.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

I'm assuming that since you mentioned Kodos that you got the Simpsons reference to Carter.

As far the recession of the early 1980's - that was not caused by Supply Side economics. That was caused by Jimmy Carter raising the prime rate to 21.5% in his last month in office (December 1980). That's the highest that rate has ever been under any President but something Carter was forced to do because inflation was out of control under his watch.

Not sure if you want to bring up the subject of Iran in regard to Carter since be basically made the theocracy possible by stabbing the Shah in the back.

 

[jgmacg]

The Great Communicator! City on a hill! Etc!

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

I'm assuming that since you mentioned Kodos that you got the Simpsons reference to Carter.

As far the recession of the early 1980's - that was not caused by Supply Side economics. That was caused by Jimmy Carter raising the prime rate to 21.5% in his last month in office (December 1980). That's the highest that rate has ever been under any President but something Carter was forced to do because inflation was out of control under his watch.

Not sure if you want to bring up the subject of Iran in regard to Carter since be basically made the theocracy possible by stabbing the Shah in the back.

Wow. That's some serious revisionist history right there. The Shah -- the very ideal of a corrupt autocracy that had rotted from within-- got overthrown by an authentic popular revolution about which the United States could do nothing. The Embassy wasn't seized until AFTER Carter, against his better judgment and at the urging of Henry Kissinger, allowed the Shah into this country for medical treatment. At which point, the Iranian revolution turned on us. Carter immediately froze their assets and waited. The one genuinely stupid thing he did -- the attempted rescue mission -- was a result of his taking bad advice. (Cyrus Vance saw it coming and quit in protest). Whether or not you believe that they monkeyed around with the Iranians during the 1980 campaign -- and I do, to a limited extent -- the Reagan people immediately capitulated, unfreezing the assets and, ultimately, arming the mullahs, who waited until the moment that Carter was out of office before releasing the hostages. All of this is in the historical record.
We'll get to the causes of the 1982 recession some other time, although it takes some real economic gymnastics to prove that a ballooning deficit had less to do with a 1982 recession than a president whose last budget was signed two years earlier.

 

[D-Backs Hack]

The Great Communicator! City on a hill! Etc!

And he raised his arms to Heaven, bellowed, "Begone, Communism!" and it was so!

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Fenian - simple straightforward question. Are you saying Jimmy Carter was a better steward of the economy than Ronald Reagan? Simple question - no need to quote some ancient Greek or make some obscure literary reference to answer it.

 

[Starman]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

Oh, but Reagan went on TV and said he "assumed full responsibility" for the deaths of the Marines.

Then he went back to sleep, seeing as it was after 7 p.m., his bedtime.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

Oh, but Reagan went on TV and said he "assumed full responsibility" for the deaths of the Marines.

Then he went back to sleep, seeing as it was after 7 p.m., his bedtime.

In the final year of the Carter Presidency there were 2,392 military deaths. No year during the Reagan administration topped that figure including the year the Marines were killed in Lebanon.

Much of the deaths during the Carter administration were due to neglect. Reagan ran up big deficits retooling the military and with that money came a reduction in accidental and training related deaths.

IN NO YEAR UNDER BUSH WERE THERE MORE MILITARY DEATHS THAN THE FINAL YEAR OF THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION. Wrap your mind around that for a minute. Wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and yet members of the military are safer today than they were under James Earl Carter.

 

[jgmacg]

The junior communicator with another non sequitur.

Source, please.

Point, please.

 

[Armchair_QB]

The junior communicator with another non sequitur.

Source, please.

Point, please.

I think the point is that it's safer to be a soldier under Bush 43 than it was under Jimmy Carter. But I could be wrong...

 

[alleyallen]

"History's greatest monster"?
Was Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, or Kodos on the ballot in '80? I forget.
And the deficit ballooned under Reagan and because of Reagan's devotion to the crackpottery of supply-side economics. He got bailed out of the inevitable recession by some sensible folks on his staff and by Tip O'Neill after the '82 midterms. He then sold missiles to the country who sponsored the murder of 240 of our Marines. As far as I know, Carter never did that.

Oh, but Reagan went on TV and said he "assumed full responsibility" for the deaths of the Marines.

Then he went back to sleep, seeing as it was after 7 p.m., his bedtime.

In the final year of the Carter Presidency there were 2,392 military deaths. No year during the Reagan administration topped that figure including the year the Marines were killed in Lebanon.

Much of the deaths during the Carter administration were due to neglect. Reagan ran up big deficits retooling the military and with that money came a reduction in accidental and training related deaths.

IN NO YEAR UNDER BUSH WERE THERE MORE MILITARY DEATHS THAN THE FINAL YEAR OF THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION. Wrap your mind around that for a minute. Wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and yet members of the military are safer today than they were under James Earl Carter.

Without seeing your source for this information, as a veteran I can tell you that a big part of the problem with the military in the 70s and early 80s had to do with sub-standard safety policies and massive drug use in the wake of the Vietnam War. And I don't need a source on that one...I talked with active military men who were still in uniform and served at that time.

Once drug testing and a major stepup in safety was put into place, the numbers started to decline.

 

[HejiraHenry]

The boondoggle will not do what it's supposed to do AT ALL.

Good call.

 

[jgmacg]

Rather than pin the blame on preceding presidents, the junior communicator wants to blame this on the one US president to graduate the Naval Academy. The state of our armed forces in the late 70s was an inheritance from Mr. Nixon (and before that, Mr. Johnson) and our corrosive policies in Vietnam.

So was that crappy economy.

Google "Whip Inflation Now" for more.

The world as you see it didn't begin the day we inaugurated Carter.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Rather than pin the blame on preceding presidents, the junior communicator wants to blame this on the one US president to graduate the Naval Academy. The state of our armed forces in the late 70s was an inheritance from Mr. Nixon (and before that, Mr. Johnson) and our corrosive policies in Vietnam.

So was that crappy economy.

Google "Whip Inflation Now" for more.

The world as you see it didn't begin the day we inaugurated Carter.

By your logic the economy should have not improved under Reagan nor should the conditions in the military have improved because that's the way they had been for years.

The world didn't begin the day Carter took office but it got a hell of a lot better the day he left it.

I notice that not even on this ultra-liberal board does anyone want to praise Carter for his handling of the economy.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Fenian - simple straightforward question. Are you saying Jimmy Carter was a better steward of the economy than Ronald Reagan? Simple question - no need to quote some ancient Greek or make some obscure literary reference to answer it.

Yes.
The economy was pretty bad in both eras. Carter's problem was an oil shock and leftover economic neglect from the last two years of Nixon, when the old guy was consumed by Watergate and didn't do his job, and Ford, under whom inflation began to rise for reasons he couldn;t do very much about, truthfully.
Reagan's policy deliberately ran up the debt, for reasons the Reagan people were not shy about projecting ("Starving the beast") at the expense of wildly out-of-control military spending. Poverty went up. A recession came down. So, in a battle of neither one being, say, Bill Clinton, I'd say Reagan was worse.
Thuycidides is really good. You should check him out sometime.