Monday’s Asshat of the Day
Today’s awardee will probably be praised by some of the Rethuglicans who troll our website. Jimmy Carter, the 39th President thinks that he is far superior to all of the former Presidents still living. And he still carries a hard-on for Ted Kennedy after 30 years, blaming Kennedy for his loss to Reagan. Carter has the chutzpah to blame Kennedy for the failure to get universal health care passed back in the late 1970’s. Huh?
Here’s some news, Jimmy. You were not that great a President. While you were able to bring Begin and Sadat together to sign a peace treaty (something I never thought I would live to see), your domestic policies sucked. You couldn’t deal with the energy crisis, the recession, or stag-flation. And while you pardoned Viet Nam draft evaders, you brought back the draft.
I didn’t support you during the primaries in 1976 (I was a Mo Udall supporter) and when Kennedy lost the nomination, I was one of the founders of the Colorado Democrats for Anderson. Jimmy – you need to let the whole “Ted Kennedy cost me re-election” thing go. It makes you look like a cry-baby who’s holding a grudge. Be a big boy and just let it go.
Jimmy Carter – not a total asshat, but still deserving of today’s award.
Carter did not say that he was superior — he did say:
He was asked about how he thought he was viewed as an ex-President. And I don’t think that it is fair to construe a fairly specific question and answer into a claim that Jimmy Carter thinks he is superior to all living ex-Presidents.
Carter is wrong — if I remember correctly — about Ted Kennedy and health care. There was a National Health Insurance proposal that had some popularity and Carter wasn’t interested in that, but in some DLCish weaker solution. Carter largely killed the NHI proposal and seems pissed that Kennedy wouldn’t support the weaker options.
But going back to Carter’s role as an ex-President — he has done remarkable work over the years in his chosen work of promoting Democracy and free and fair elections and peace. For as much as this country gives lip service to those concepts, Carter has been tireless in actually getting boots on the ground to get it done. That’s the work of civic angels and the man is credible and respected everyplace (except maybe here) for it. He’s been at the forefront of helping to publicize Habitat for Humanity. He is still a vocal critic (and lobbyist against) the death penalty. He is still a consistent voice on human rights issues. You could say that he has been a better ex-President than a President. But I think it is hard to argue that his ex-presidency hasn’t been the most productive of those still living.
Oh, c’mon. Jimmy Carter, a quasi-asshat? Give me a break. You worked for Anderson?? Really? What a dope.
Kennedy certainly DID fracture the Democrats in 1980. I won’t say that Carter would have won otherwise, but he certainly would have done better at the head of a unified party instead of one split apart at the seams by an egotistical womanizing coke-snorting drunk way past his prime and trying to relive the glory days two decades past.
Sorry, MJ, but you’re just flat-out wrong about at least one of the items on your list. Carter didn’t bring back the draft. He reinstituted selective service registration – which is NOT the draft. The draft hasn’t been around since ’73.
Incidentally, there are a lot of Carter-Obama parallells – the sense of an almost divine mission, the personal coolness and lack of passion, the cratering of the economy, the Chicago/Georgia “mafia” and staff drama … that would make for a really interesting book.
Carter was not a great president, but an exceptional humanist. Unfortunately, the hostage crisis was his undoing, and a total communication shut-down that Reagan was able to capitalize on, and come out smelling like a rose.
I think Carter’s era was the beginning of sound-byte gotcha moments, and irreverence for the sitting Chief-of-Staff. His Plains, Georgia family was like the Beverly Hillbillies in DC, and America lost a bit of respect for the whole Oval Office meme.
that is (sadly) exactly the narrative the Right wing jerks off to every single night, anon.
Make it look like he is always losing, claim he is getting nothing done… (even though he has won almost every legislative battle)
Say all the things he is doing is hurting the country and based in an intent to do harm to Americans
and say “oh he’s just like Carter”
sounds positively Rovian.
And from that same Brian Williams interview with Carter:
… you brought back the draft.
And the lie still stands. Classy.
“He reinstituted Selective Service registration.” like that was no big deal. It was a big deal for the people *I* knew.
It was the first wholesale restriction of individual liberty in my lifetime… it set the stage for the ones that followed, like the Patriot Act. It enshrined gender discrimination into law, again. It removed educational opportunity from poor men with objections to registration, whatever the source of their objections, and in that way undermined protections for religious minorities. It set up a conflict between progressive states with early anti-discrimination protections for gays and the federal government… conflicts which the Reagan administration used to suppress lgbt rights. AND those struggles presaged the “New Confederacy” arguments that power RW wing nuts today.
Shall I go on?
I’m glad ex-President Carter has done so much good since… but that was wrong.
heragain – But SS is NOT the draft. That’s my point. The draft is not SS. You can be as emotional about it as you want, but IT’S NOT THE DRAFT.
I was one of the first Carter asked to sign up. I marched in protests, and I refused to register (until they caught up with me years later).
Now I wish we had a draft. (yes, I know… I’m old now so that’s easy for me to say…)
The volunteer military has degenerated into a corps of Spartans – with families in tow! – who are distorting our politics and our foreign policy, and may one day threaten our democracy directly. Do you think we would ever have gone to Iraq if everybody’s kid had a good chance of going?
Today the military is becoming a dangerous and festering clique of socially isolated Christianists who think they are different from America. A draft helps keep the military looking more like America, continually bringing fresh injections of American decency and common sense.
Today the Army is becoming a dangerous and festering clique of socially isolated Christianists…
You really haven’t spoken with many new recruits, have you? Most of the kids I know who signed up were doing it for college cash. And they left the service as politically and religiously agnostic as when they joined.
anon, in 2010 it’s clearly “not the draft”. But in 1980, it was made clear that the purpose of registration was “readiness” and people who registered might be serving in as short as 6 weeks from the declaration of an “emergency.” (Over the objections of professional soldiers, I might add.) Imagine what that would have looked like, post 9/11.
anon2 We haven’t yet, in this country, seen an occasion when “everyone’s kid had a good chance of going.” I doubt we ever will. In addition to the systematic exclusion or abuse of women and gays, the armed forces still has a double tier system of ranked officer types (typically with more education before joining) and lower ranked people acquired through the “poverty draft”. If you have a problem with those people, take your kids out of college and send them along. They’ll still outrank the poor kids, and the ones who serve to gain citizenship for themselves and their families.
The military is no place for decency and common sense. It’s not structured for that. That’s not to say that it, as a community is any more or less decent than average… those just aren’t the characteristics that get rewarded by the system.
60%. That’s the number you need. SIXTY PERCENT of the American casualties in Vietnam were born by soldiers with Spanish surnames.
They’re ALL “our kids”. That’s the way we need to approach war-making. They’re our kids in our army, and they’re our kids in the other army and the civilian population.
the cratering of the economy
What economic statistics would you like to cite to demonstrate “cratering?”
Be careful; make sure whatever evidence you are thinking of actually happened during the Carter Administration.
We are all victims of “the victors writing the history books” when it comes to assigning blame for economic problems in the 70s and 80s. Republicans have hammered into us that the Carter Administration, wedged in for four short years between two-term Republican Presidencies, was somehow responsible for all the ills of the 1970s.
Socialist price controls, including on gas? Nixon. Peak interest rates? Reagan. Peak unemployment? Reagan. Ineffective WIN buttons to fight inflation? Ford. Deficits? Reagan again.
Also a lot of people remember the vicious early 80s recession and wrongly place it in the Carter Administration. Reagan created the recession by using methods to fight inflation that were previously considered inhumane – high interest rates and high unemployment.
Ending price controls? Carter. Capital gains tax cut? Carter. Deregulation? Carter.
So go on, pick some specific statistic, and let’s see how Carter did.
Hmm… a lot of you fuckers love your GOP framing. Interesting.
heragain – you and MJ must have drunk the same kool-aid. Selective Service registration IS NOT THE DRAFT. It has NEVER BEEN THE DRAFT. The draft is a fundamentally different animal. No one has been conscripted since the start of SS registration. So you need to STFU and MJ needs to correct his lie.
“60%. That’s the number you need. SIXTY PERCENT of the American casualties in Vietnam were born by soldiers with Spanish surnames.”
I am fascinated by this statistic, especially since it’s … not true. The official U.S. archive database on casualties did not divide them up outside the categories of Caucasian, Black/Negro and American Indian. There was no Hispanic category. Please show your sources or go stick your head up your ass again and shut up.
SS is not the draft? That may be technically, but the original reason for the SS was to compile a list of eligible men for conscription. It is also used today as a list for military recruitment.
Anon2, forced military conscription when not in the face of disastrous invasion is against everything that a free society should stand for. A military draft is basically slavery. You must go to a war, kill, and possibly die against your will. You obviously have never served, or you would know that your statement about the current makeup of our armed forces is utterly wrong.
*thumps head agsinst the Wall of Stupidity*
Selective Service Is Not The Draft.
If you can name a single person who has been conscripted into the military since Selective Service began in 1980, I will give you a gold star.
Anyone who insists the opposite is an intellectual cockroach. I’m done here with you fucking morons.
Thump your own head on the wall asshat. I said that it is a list of men eligible for a draft. Not that it has been used to draft anyone since its inception. So, its only reason for existence is *in case* there is a draft, they have a ready list to pull from. I guess I know for next time that I have to spell everything out for you. My bad for thinking that you could catch that.
Just found this link about the makeup of the Vietnam War casualties:
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwc20.htm
“It becomes apparent that the remaining 70% of our V’nam enlisted casualties were of English/Scottish/Welsh, German, Irish, and Scandanavian-Amer ancestries, more from the south and Mid-West than the other regions, many from the small towns with a family military tradition. The officer corps has always drawn heavily on English, German, Irish and Scandanavian-Amer ancestries from-lower-middle and middle class white-collar homes with other large percentages from ambitious blue collar and, of course, career military South and West regions – 4.1 deaths per 100000 to 3.5 from the Northeast and North Central (Mid-West).”
anon, its past the edit period for my post, so I can’t withdraw my statistic, and I apologize for citing something from fading memory rather than recent research. When I have a good number with a source you can check I’ll post it in the open thread.
No, you didn’t just cite “something from fading memory,” you declared it as fact, sacrosanct, irrefutable proof, a hard statistics, absolute truth… shall I go on?
In sum, you just made some shit up.
Have it your way, anon. 🙂 I made up a random statistic to impress an anon stranger on the net. Feel better?
You can assume the people you’re talking to here are real people, subject to ordinary flaws, or you can assume we’re malevolent entities trying to make you crazy. It’s your mental health; go wild, dude. 😀
Unbelievable. A liberal blog demonizing Jimmy Carter. I wonder if it has anything to do with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Peace_Not_Apartheid
heragain is making things up. Spanish surnames in the Nam, where I was, were closer to 6% and not more than 10-15%. But as a lib, you are typical in making things up out of whole cloth.
Of course, this oafish self-promoting bore invited himself to North Korea in 1994 against POTUS Clinton’s strong opposition. That started the ball rolling on the US’s giving the NorKs $2 billion to shut down their nuke reactors which they never did and all this while 2 million North Koreans died of starvation. Good work, Peanutbrain! Waddlin’ Madeleine Albright got conned, not hard to do, and James Earl “Welcome Back” Kotter looked once again like a meddlesome tiresome imbecile.
JEC is the ONLY person in the USA [who is sane] who regards himself superior to John Quincy Adams, who fought against slavery, and William HowardTaft, afterwards appointed to Chief Justice—Bill Clinton has raised over $50 billion in his CGI and he & GWB went to Haiti after the Quake and raised more money than the widely despised Carter EVER did for anything.
Anon – no one needs to STFU (except you, maybe) and I don’t have anything to correct. Paint it anyway you wish, put a suit or a dress on it, but forcing young men born after January 1, 1959 to register for the draft is basically the same thing. You’re creating a pool of young men (women are exempt from registering) you are, in effect, creating a draft, even if you aren’t pulling numbered balls from a drum.
Whybother – did you even read the post? Where was there any mention of Carter’s book? Hmmm? We’re waiting.
Hey MJ, you need to take your own advice because this post and your comments make “you look like a cry-baby who’s holding a grudge. Be a big boy and just let it go.”
As usual, A1’s comments make no sense except to himself.
Your post is one big whine. MJ. And the “you brought back the draft” line is a flat-out lie as pointed out in this thread, but you can’t admit it. Why don’t you get over your grudges against Carter, accept the fact that he beat Kennedy and that Anderson lost, and understand that Carter has done more as an ex-president to help humanity than GWB, GHWB, and BC combined.
BTW, it is interesting that you would support a candidate who introduced a constitutional amendment that would “recognize the law and authority of Jesus Christ” over the United States, as Rep. John Anderson did.
A1 – you are so full of shit your eyes are brown. Did you even read anything here, or are you on one of your crusades that you’re going to trash anything I post? Me thinks it’s the latter. And by the time Anderson ran for President, he had moderated many of his views, including the one you cite (if in fact you’re citing fact – which is highly doubtful coming from you).
I don’t trash everything you post, and you know that. Your grudge against Carter is wrong, particularly regarding bringing back the draft and his record of accomplishment compared to other living ex-presidents.
Calling Carter an “Asshat” is asinine. That’s my opinion; you don’t have to like any more than I have to like yours.
And Anderson did introduce that amendment as sure as my eyes are brown.
FWIW, Anderson introduced that amendment THREE TIMES. But he abandoned it by 1980. So both MJ and A1 are correct.
But for MJ to criticize someone else’s facts … wow, that’s just a hoot.
A1 – fair enough, but provide a link to this amendment. That’s all I’m asking.
Here’s the Reagan-Anderson debate transcript. It proves your own point better, MJ.
http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=september-21-1980-debate-transcript
Just check his Wikipedia bio. BTW, I supported Anderson, too. 😉
“A liberal blog and Carter”. Jimmy Carter has done more for humanity than all living presidents, thats a fact. Even ole Billy Boy Clinton has’nt done as much, in fact Clinton is a pariah making millions from the poorest people around the world. Haiti is one of his latest scams/shams. It was Carter who warned about global warming and conservation. It was Carter who wanted to put solar panels on the White House, so why would your fav Obama not let them be installed? Its a question of who is more green? Carter by far.
I like Carter, Clinton and Obama. But, then again, I never had best best friends either. 😉
“It was Carter who warned about global warming and conservation.”
The “Global Warming” jury is still out, and will continue to be exposed as a hoax. And Carter didn’t jump on the conservation train until long after it left the station.
” It was Carter who wanted to put solar panels on the White House, so why would your fav Obama not let them be installed? ”
Possibly because the solar technology used when Carter was president is obsolete and inefficient (like Carter). Apparently some douche bags took them out of mothballs, and tried to get Obama to reinstall them. However, I do believe our current president should install current solar technology as an example.
“Its a question of who is more green?”
Really? I think this is small facet of their respective administrations. The real question is which one will have the legacy of being the worst president of all time.
The Global Warming/Climate Change Jury is not still out, but I’d be interested in seeing your links to prove this statement – credible scientific links, please.
“… credible scientific links” ?
Since HuffPo, Eschaton, or Kos is the only source you’ll consider credible, there’s no way I’m ever going to find anything critical of global warming that you’ll accept.
So, do your own research.
Provide links to scientific, peer-reviewed articles. BTW, HuffPo science is terrible. Eschaton doesn’t cover science. Daily Kos has a couple of good science writers but doesn’t cover much science.
So… that means you can’t provide credible links? You made the statement that The “Global Warming” jury is still out, and will continue to be exposed as a hoax. Back up that statement, please.
Hint: Don’t go searching at the Pentagon, they believe climate change is real and a threat.
Miscreant gotta get his Limbaugh on. Sad you can’t stand alone. Missed you at target practice.
“Don’t go searching at the Pentagon, they believe climate change is real and a threat.”
That’s what they said about WMD’s.
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-scientific-tragedy-of-clim
I was there, Joe. It’s possible that you were distracted by Markos Moulitsas’ balls slapping against your chin. You’re quite the amateur sycophant over here.
MJ,
Yeah, I read your crappy post. Looks to me like you’re just a phony pretendo-liberal that likes to sucker your audience into a left-right paradigm based largely on bullshit cult of personality/identity politics. OMG CHRISTINE O’DONNELL IS A SCARY CHRISTIAN!! She doesn’t even like to have promiscuous sex or wank to porn!!! How can we trust her??? Please. Could you possibly get more riled up about stupider issues? Why don’t you photoshop more pictures of O’Donnell as the wicked witch of the west. Some real Woodward and Bernstein type reporting you’re doing there bro.
Let’s talk about Israel and it’s ethnocracy. Let’s talk about the million dead in Iraq. Let’s talk about how this is routinely ignored by the msm, and how we’re lied to and distracted by Paris Hilton type bullshit on a regular basis. Let’s get REAL. Did you notice that the verifiable votes (i.e. paper, absentee ballots) in the primary election went for Castle, while the electronic and unverifiable votes went to O’Donnell? Is that truly not worth a mention on your supposedly liberal blog? I’d think after the 2000 and 2004 election integrity would be an important issue to a REAL progressive. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what you’re not.
Get bent you friggin’ tool. You’re not fit to use the word we. When you use it it only refers to you, and the suckers that you’ve fooled into following you.
“will continue to be exposed as a hoax”
This is not a factual position; it is a statement of belief and not based on any credible evidence — that is, even if scientists are mistaken, there is not a shred of evidence that a “hoax” is being perpetrated, as it would involve literally thousands of researchers working in concert. As a logical position, it’s on a par with “Cheney planned 9/11.”
Gee, Why do you Bother to read the blog if it upsets you so? I’m sure there are other blogs out there that would satisfy your lefteabagging senses. Who gave you the authority to set the litmus test for who is a liberal/progressive and who isn’t? Was there some convention of the lefteabbing chai tea express that we all missed?
You’re on a par with Bill Colley from WGMD who “fired” Shaun Fink of CRI because Shaun wasn’t conservative enough. You and Curly – it’s a match made in Hades.
So I’m a tool? So tell me, Impotent One, who is using me? You have no idea who any of us are or what our backgrounds are, so for you to even write that shows how fucking stupid you are. BTW, I didn’t photoshop any pics of O’Whack-a-mole.
If you want to unload on DL, then start your own blog and do it there. But don’t think that you’re going to be able to get away with just picking on me to unload your anger over what you read on DL. It’s a fight you don’t want to start, big boy.
Oh, and Rosalynn, next time, let Jimmy defend himself. I also heard that the WFP is looking for a blogger. If that position was filled, I’m sure the SWA has an opening for you.