More right wing, conservative/ republican/ libertarian lies and slander .

Mr. Carter has been too close to the truth on the I/P question (0.00 / 0)

My father-in-law was Assistant General Council in the Carter Treasury Department, so I am biased. The Carter administration was dealing with the economic aftmath of the Vietman War. I was glad to see Pres. Obama invite Mr. Volker to participate on his economic team.

Mr. Carter has his faults in working with the ways of Washington to accomplish his goals, and they punished him for it. IMHO Pres. Obama will not make that mistake. James Earl Carter may be the best former President we will have in my lifetime.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 00:48:51 AM UTC

Sounds like you have met some very interesting people in your day Berkley (0.00 / 0)

   Very , very cool.

   And yes I agree........  My favorite past modern president is Carter.

  No matter how they distort it . Facts are facts.  
 And the facts are carter inherited a mess.......... and even his own party was unwilling to help him try to correct it.

  As citizens its our job to make sure that doesn't happen to President Obama.  

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by: wvpeach @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 02:07:02 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

wvpeach... (0.00 / 0)

I'm with you all the way on this:

As citizens its our job to make sure that doesn't happen to President Obama.    

But there is a differing interpretation on President Carter:

It's a too-familiar position for progressives, one that winds back through all of the postwar Democratic administrations of my adulthood. We wanted Lyndon Johnson to push harder for civil rights and anti-poverty and not ruin it all in Vietnam. We were appalled at Jimmy Carter's attacks on government, his failure to use his large Democratic majority in Congress to press for progressive legislation, his refusal to lift a finger on behalf of labor law reform. The memories of Bill Clinton are sufficiently recent that we need little reminder of the needless tilt to the right on economic issues from NAFTA to welfare reform to financial deregulation.

To be fair to President Carter (and I'm sure the author of that quoted text, Robert Kuttner, would agree), he occupied the White House at a time that wasn't as propitious for a Democrat as it may have seemed at that time, in the immediate aftermath of Watergate, which gave Carter big majorities to work with in the House & Senate. The so-called (by liberal Democratic historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) pendulum of American political history was swinging from liberal back to conservative. Next came Reagan, and after him the deluge. Likewise, Clinton had to govern at a time when Democratic Party ideas were starting to come back into vogue, but conservatism still was in the ascendancy.

You can find Kuttner's opinion piece here (and it is deeply supportive of President Obama, but is nevertheless critical of what he and other liberal Democrats perceive to be the status-quo banking crisis advice he's receiving from Summers & Geithner, and Kuttner worries [as many who support Barack do] that his administration's cautious investment banking crisis policies could prove to be his Vietnam):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

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by: benjaminwalter @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 13:35:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

And it's funny how the tea-baggers and their fellow travelers... (0.00 / 0)

like Faux "news" irrationally hate and fear this president and call him a closet totalitarian Marxist when, in fact, he is if anything too market-oriented in the policies he's putting in place in his FDR-like effort to save market capitalism in its 21st century forms.

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by: benjaminwalter @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 13:47:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good post on Carter Ben. (4.00 / 1)

 A good abbreviated version of what kept  Carter from making any progress towards change at all ben.

  However if I may? Let me offer the following.

  I keep hoping progressives will get their heads together a bit and fight in unison to turn this nation around. ............. But it's sad to say progressives seem to have many  and  more diverse agenda's than do  right wing Republicans. Since the election I have heard so many disappointing things from Democrats and progressives. Not that I am not fully behind most of their wants and wish list. But as a old activist and lay economist it should be apparent that they can not have all they want immediately.  
  Nor is it economically desirable that they should.

  I applaud President Obama for tackling as much as he has so soon.  He is showing courage and needed restraint as well.

 But progressive / liberals in good numbers seem to not recognize parts of the reality of the world they live in.

Many progressive/ liberals are sounding something like this.

I am for gay rights and marriage............ If president Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and going to fight against him.

I am for handgun bans and if president Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and going to fight him.

I don't want religious symbols in public or being taught anywhere near a school, congress needs to stop praying too. If president Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

I want all illegals stopped from Mexico. If president Obama won't get behind that I am as mad as hell and will fight him.

I want the environment cleaned up now and pollution stopped. If president Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

I want America to stop all imports and bring the jobs home now. If president Obama doesn't get behind that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

I want Bush prosecuted and the creeps that tortured with him and thrown in jail or hung.  If Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

I think we could cut the defense budget by at least 65% , bring troops home and spend the money on social security , college, and such, if president Obama doesn't give me that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

I want the federal reserve abolished, I want to pay less taxes and not have any of my rights infringed on. If president Obama won't give me that I am mad as hell and will fight him.

We want wind and solar power yesterday........... and for utility companies to stop burning coal yesterday.  If President Obama won't get behind that I am mad as hell and will fight him. It's really disappointing. The lists go on and on of agenda's.  Agenda's and wish lists  I have heard liberal progressives whining must be done NOW! ...............  And it should be obvious to anybody with ears and eyes by now that progressives and liberals are all to ready to scream, whine and write editorials about why this should all be done NOW ....... or else!

The PETA people want everybody to stop eating meat........... last year.

The Sierra club wants all development to stop and all animals be protected yesterday and are mad as hell.

Anti Gun folk want Obama to end gun violence.

Gays want to adopt and marry yesterday.

Some want the drug wars ended yesterday and everybody let out of prison. Even though we have no jobs for them to go to.
  President Bush should have been convicted of war crimes ........... last month already.

  Very troubling. Because it will never work. As a middle aged political activist I can tell you from my own personal knowledge and history it just does not happen that way.
 To have that all happen we would have to do something like the following. .........  Declare the nation does intend to embark on  completely new economic system. Not socialism, but certainly not capitalism. All will be educated, all will have health care, all will be given jobs that have wage controls. While we are at it we will need rent controls, mileage standards. More people living in the city to take advantage of what little public transportation we have. Naturally  fossil fuel energy is going to be pushed to high costs to stop the pollution.

  Folks won't be able to afford the power to live in the hollers of West Virginia. Nor to drive to work from 45 minutes out, so they should move to the cities.

   We'd need to limit the amount of meat we allow to be sold. As all those factory farms are just adding to global warming. Encouraging things like chemical pollution and genetic modification . Everybody should start their own gardens and do it all organically. The cities can just knock down some parking garages for gardening spaces we won't be driving all those cars anyway.

  The drug wars have to stop immediately. Lets start looking over the cases we have in prison and turning non violent offenders free.

  And guns , the military......... LOL  well we all know we could do with a lot less of that stuff.  So lets ban most guns and cut military spending to the bone.

     This is Exactly why this nation was held hostage for close to 30 years by Republican conservatives. They all but bankrupted us and would finish the job off if put back in power................. Not to mention end social security and all social spending, tops on their wish list.

   Progressives can't seem to get their acts together long enough to come together to work for anything.   They want it all NOW! Without ever considering what  the consequences would be if they got it all now.

   Programs , structures, regulations all need to be put in place to support the wanted and very much needed change.
  It's all well and good to be a tree hugging hippie and live a sustainable lifestyle. Take it from me a old hippie it can be done. But the majority of people in this nation are in now way able or with the resources needed to feed and shelter themselves.
  All that needs done while finding away to pay for it and keep people in jobs. Lest we want a lot of dead people resulting from a total break down of society change has to be done in a structures organized way.............  And that takes time.

  If the progressives and liberals on the left got what they wanted NOW! The results are pretty easy to predict for anybody with a economic background.  The economy would finish grinding to a halt and progressives and liberals would be sitting around asking themselves what happened? .............  Whose going to pay for health care and the cops to round up all those guns now?  .............  
  Never mind that, where are the cops to keep that nasty looking man from breaking into my home and stealing my last can of beans? ........  Oops it seems the police are no longer being paid. So guess it's each man, woman and child for themselves. ............A pretty close scenario of what would happen economically if liberal progressives got everything on their wish list NOW!

 I am all for working towards a sustainable green economy. And a much more tolerant society. But it will not happen over night. ..........  At last we are poised at the point in history where leaps and bounds of societal change could be made. But not if the left and progressives become as intolerant as the right has always been.  Because intolerance only begets intolerance. We won't take those steady steps foreward towards a better society if the left insists on not compromising...........and I am sorry to say that is exactly what I see happening so soon after we manage to elect a progressive president .  Progressives are in a frenzy because he is not making it all happen NOW!  

  The Catholics murdered people for centuries for not swearing allegiance to their trinitarian God. Puritans put sinners in stocks.  It was illegal to teach evolution in American schools not so long ago. ............  We have come a long way since those dark days.  And now we can make even greater strides forward. But it's all lost with the radicalization of liberal progressives .  

     The progressive agenda will not be in place next year as they would like.  Maybe not even in ten years .  But we are making sure steps towards that goal if some can remain just a bit patient.

   The nation is not going to fall in love with gays adopting kids and marrying any time soon. Or the majority  even accept it................ But progress is being made slowly step by step like in the fight against religious intolerance. Does the reality that the same day we managed to elect President Obama in California a pretty progressive state, they voted to outlaw gay rights and marriage hit anybody?   .............  Irony some would say. Not so it's much more than that. It's the political clash of ideologies.  People want progress and change .  But they still cing to beliefs that when threatened cause them to vote against their own self interest in order to defend their ideologies. Most often about religion.
Nor are we able, if we don't want the economy grinding to a halt, to go off fossil fuels and stop polluting tomorrow.

Nor will we be banning any but the most ridiculous guns like assault rifles anytime soon.

Perhaps America deserves to fail if liberal progressives cannot get together and work  with some patience, to get anything done................ They seem to  have absolutely no patience, no forethought, they want what they want NOW.
 And most  when they don't get it go off and back third party candidates, the green party, the libertarian party, whatever in a stupid attempt to get what they want.

 And the only thing that accomplishes is the Republicans are able to walk away with the elections.  Continuing  on their quest to make this nation a place no progressive or liberal would want to live.

  Governor ED Rendell and Gov Palenti are on Sunday morning press shows right now arguing about gun bans.................... Sounding a whole lot less like Govenors than women screaming on the  Jerry Springer show. .................. LOL I imagine the screaming will go on.................. right up to the 2012 elections .
A NRA representative is literally screaming because they want to limit legal handgun sales  to 12 per year- one per month to individuals. Hardly the end of guns in this nation........... seems a reasonable thing to do.  But exactly the sort of thing that brings the radical nut case right out to the polls in mass.

 I am beginning to think maybe America is a lost cause after all. As some have said we will still be here just a much different America ........... Probably not one I will live in under conservative control but never the less still here just very , very diminished.

I predict if the progressive liberals keep pushing their individual agenda's then the Republicans have a real good chance of over taking over the nation again. Hopefully not until 2016 at least.........  That would give progressives a chance to wise up and work together.  

 It's  ridiculous really............ But I don't know that anything can be done to stop Republican control again.   Certainly nothing can be done if progressive liberals cannot get their act together and learn to see the big picture and accept the realities of a bit slower societal change than what they would have if they could wave a magic wand.
   Somebody let me know if we invent a magic wand that works.
   Will you?
   Till then it will take hard work, structure, planning and most of all patience.    

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by: wvpeach @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 19:24:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

So, in tough times, faced with an erosion of the manufacturing (0.00 / 0)

economy on Main Steet, they cling to guns and religion?

:)

just kidding, peach. I understand where you're coming from, even when we don't agree.

You want to be able to hold common-sense discussions with average, good ol' everyday working people about the president, now, in 2010 and in 2012, especially with those who weren't receptive to him last fall but should have been.

Obama's a systems thinker. He sees the inter-relationships, sees how all the diverse parts work together to form a whole that's greater than those parts when they're separated out and viewed discretely, apart from that whole.

He's trying to lay the foundations for a better future. And often, it seems almost impossibly hard to articulate that in practical ways that reach those who stand to gain the most from that future.

Bottom line, I think, is that he wants us to become a again a society that's committed to producing real things, both in an economic and a social, communitarian sense.

Rather than primarily an economic society that makes money off of money, including making money off of the idea of money (eg, debt).

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by: benjaminwalter @ Sun Apr 19, 2009 at 20:20:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Again well said ben. (4.00 / 1)

   But the real question is will President Obama be given the time to get where he wants to Go?

  Or will like Carter he be sidelined and the liberal progressives help to sit him on that bench?  

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by: wvpeach @ Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 00:37:40 AM UTC

[ Parent ]